Category Archives: 1920’s house

Open your mouth wide, the universal sigh…*

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*Lyrics from Radiohead’s song Bloom from their album The King of Limbs. I mean no disrespect by using the lyrics in this playful manner – the song, the album, both amazing. Worth every penny and every minute of listening. Every time.

There’s a light (shining at the Frankenstein place). There’s a ligh-hi-high-hi-high-hah-ha-hight (burning in the fireplace!). There’s a ligh-high-uh-hight in the darkness of everybody’s life. There’s also a light in my office now. So, woo-hoo!

Many moons ago I began compiling bits and pieces for my inevitable office transformation. Up until a few years ago I would have self-identified as a hair colorist who was struggling to find my place in the world. Now I’m not afraid to say I’m a budding artist and designer, and a student of interior design (albeit a former student). Before our kitchen renovation began I had a little tiny area of the kitchen that I referred to as my “hair studio.” Now I have a fully-fledged, proper office. With a portable drafting table, portfolio pieces, and countless implements for design and drawing. (Perhaps not countless, but who wants to count that sort of stuff?)

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Cupcake Monthly: July

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So, the only time I allow myself a blog title that’s not a song is for Cupcake Monthly. I’ll admit, I’ve missed a few months. I may have to start calling it Cupcake Quarterly though, since my plans for the future include reigning in my sweet tooth. Anyway, several weeks ago, our dear friends Dave (of Team Carpentry) and Abbie’s lovely son, Eli, had his first birthday. And I was enlisted to provide his first ever(!) cupcake.

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I can make a change, I can start a fire…*

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*Lyrics from Janelle Monae’s song Locked Inside from her album ArchAndroid. If you don’t already own this album, buy it. It’s incredible.

New things are happening all around us. Google+ just (soft) launched, we now have Spotify in the U.S., and now I have a place to hang my step stool. (I don’t see how those things don’t relate, so stop laughing.) Though not as exciting as new technology, Jeff and I managed to get excited about a mini-makeover of sorts on our basement stairway. Which I now call the kitchen closet.

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It’s a low, low road you’ve gotta roll down before you find your way…*

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*Lyrics from Grace Potter & the Nocturnals’ Low Road from their self-titled album.

I’ve said it before, and it’s still true: there is something inspiring about having teams of people at your house doing work that always makes me want to do more things. After Candy and the ladies (and gents) of Ladies Landscaping came to refresh our yard we determined that if we were ever going to stain the fence, now would be the time. Before any more plantings get put to bed, before the weather turned, while we had the vicarious energy boost from the Ladies’ day and a half microburst of yard beautification. It was time, and we got to it.

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She’s like the wind, through my tree…*

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*Lyrics from, well, if I have to tell you then you didn’t watch Dirty Dancing for three weeks straight when it played at the Calvin Theater in 1987. In which case, I can’t help you.

When we lost our beloved pup, Bec, we knew we wanted to bury her in the yard. It was where she was happiest, where she longed to be during all hours of the day, all times of the year, and where she took her last breath. She belongs to this place, if for no other reason than that she loved it, and we wanted her to remain here, even if we don’t. Of course I couldn’t stand the thought of actually digging a giant hole and chucking her into it, so we had her individually cremated. We also knew that we wanted to give her some sort of marked spot, so we’d know where she was, and be able to know she wouldn’t be accidentally dug up by any future owners. So we decided to plant a tree. A dogwood, because she was a dog, and one with pink blossoms because she was a girl. (My 8 year-old niece figured that rationale in seconds, so we knew it was the right choice.)

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Music, makes the people, come together…*

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*Lyrics by Madonna, from Music.

Well, in case you hadn’t noticed, I almost always use song lyrics as my blog post titles. I don’t really know when I began doing it on purpose, but I do know that music has been a central part of my experience of the home improvement process. Perhaps it was my attempt to make the renovation seem more like the best parts of my summer in Boston at art school, where our loooong work days were punctuated by a variety of different musical styles, contributed by a variety of different people. Perhaps it’s because Dave and his crew started out happily playing the radio (yes, the actual, commercial soaked, ten-song-per-day playing radio) during their workdays and I just couldn’t handle it. We were already squeezed into only one-third of our downstairs, and half of our upstairs (and by half I mean two of four rooms, but not half of the square footage – it was also probably more like a third) and sharing the airwaves with craptastic music was where I drew the line. Either way, we quickly remedied the situation by supplying loud computer speakers and a cord for a wi-fi equipped iPod.

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Like a fool, I fell in love with you…*

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So, in an effort to distract ourselves from the lingering sadness that comes when you lose a family member, and to distract my 8 year-old niece from missing her mother too much (who was away on a vacation/conference trip for 10 days) we took a little vacation to NYC to visit family. We (not in this order, and not all in one day, and I’m certain I’ve left something vital out): walked until our (my) feet were swollen; enjoyed the Botanic Garden in Brooklyn; walked across the Brooklyn Bridge (twice!); ate real New York pizza, bagels and doughnuts, and visited restaurants old and dear; saw Chinatown and, as my niece put it, a “Little Tiny Italy”; strolled through Central Park; (she) went to Coney Island and swam in the ocean; (she, ok and we) played at NY parks, including running through a sprinkler with her clothes on; took a trip to the New York Hall of Science (a kid-tastic highlight); visited with each and every auntie and (formerly) untle (now uncle – sigh) we could muster up, and just generally forgot about the world at home for a bit. Well, we mostly forgot about it. We did manage to do a little design reconnaissance at Room & Board.

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I won’t forget, I swear…*

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I am sad to report the passing of my beloved baby dog, Bec.

My beloveds.

May was a rough month. She was diagnosed with lung cancer on the first of May, and by May 30th she was gone (hence the blog absence). We are devastated by her loss, and are still adjusting to the new reality. We’re still coping, and trying to put our life into an order that has never existed. Until now I’d never known my husband without Bec – they were a package deal when we first started dating. It’s strange for both of us to have the whole house to ourselves… there’s no one to bark at the mailman, there’s no one to try to eat our dinner, or to get startled by the loudness of sound effects in movies, no one to get scared by the thunder and lightening, no one to greet us when we come home, and no one to curl up at the foot of the bed at night. We miss her dearly, and are doing our best to be grateful for our time with her, and to remember her in her healthiest days, rather than how sick she had become.

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Late at night I toss and turn and dream of what I need…*

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Firstly, an update on the pup. Thank you guys for caring, and for sharing your own stories. Pet love cannot be underestimated, taken for granted, or fully explained if you haven’t experienced it. And I, for one, am among the lucky who get to experience it. The doggie had her visit with the specialist today who was pleased to see that the palliative care medicines that she’s on are helping. A lot. Still, that doesn’t change the fact that she’s got cancer, and that she’s not a candidate for surgery. After a long visit, and a slightly less-long conversation amongst ourselves, we’ve decided to just try to keep her comfortable for as long as possible. Chemotherapy, while possibly (20-30% chance at 20-30% improvement) assisting in keeping up her physical quality of life for as long as possible, would no doubt strain our baby’s nerves, thus degrading her emotional quality of life (vet visits are the bane of her existence and always have been). Short term problem, sure. But when we’re looking at only a couple of months (at best) for our little one, those short term problems really add up. So, for now, we’re on a hospice-like path. She’s regained her usual spunk, thanks to the steroid/painkiller combo, and has her appetite back. We’ll see how long the current drug therapy works, and adjust as we go. We’re hoping that if she were able to choose for herself, this would be the choice she’d make.

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I really feel that I’m losing my best friend, I can’t believe this could be the end…*

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I don’t know how my every-other-daily blog posts turned into week-and-a-half-ly blog posts, but there you have it. Things have been slow on the home improvement front. And it’s difficult to photograph paint drying. But, I can report that I have completed the painting of the cabinet and shelves, the second coat is on the wall, and a coat of enamel paint is curing on the countertops. I finally tackled the stripe treatment that I threatened (promised) to do, even if I did simplify it a bit (for expediency as well as design – sometimes less is more). Everything is coming together nicely, and the weather improvements mean that I can open the windows while I use toxic enamel paint.

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