*Lyrics from Mumford & Sons’ song Winter Winds, from their album Sigh No More.
Spring has finally, and truly, begun here in the northeast and I couldn’t be happier. It’s that wonderful time of year, before the allergies really kick in, and before the mosquitoes take over (though I confess to already having two bites from one walk sans socks). Before you realize that soon you’ll be showing your legs to the world (by hook or by crook, shorts are an evil necessity in summer), soon you’ll be wishing you can have a third shower every day, and that soon you’ll be exhausted at the thought of turning on a single burner to cook (and you can forget baking). For now, we can remain blissful in the awakening of our landscape, our newfound bird and squirrel population (a point driven home by a surge in roadkill being picked clean by crows), our ability to occasionally open the windows to let a fresh, slightly warm breeze into the house. It is a joyous time, made especially joyous by the bountiful buds and blooms that begin to emerge as if gifts (as our neighbors like to say) from Mother Nature herself. Gifts they are, slowly unwrapping, slowly and carefully making us stop dead in our tracks as we see yet another hit of color in our formerly brown-gray, seemingly lifeless vistas.
The book of love has music in it, in fact that’s where music comes from…*
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*Version by The Airborne Toxic Event, lyrics by Magnetic Fields.
As the last bits of winter melt away (though we are expecting another winter storm this Friday), and as my efforts to recover from dentist-induced injuries continue, I find myself reflecting on the changes that have occurred in the past year, and the past ten years, really. In the past year we’ve: met our contractors for the first time; signed contracts and pulled permits; spent more money than we knew we had/had to; renovated our kitchen and three bathrooms (almost done with the last bathroom); had our entire house rewired; painted every inch of trim and walls in the first floor (except the ceiling and crown moldings), and half of the second; and started friendships that will (hopefully) last the rest of our days.
You may ask yourself, what is that beautiful house?…*
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And you may ask yourself, well, how did I get here?
While enjoying some retro tunes (rocking the David Bowie & Talking Heads station on Pandora) with Jonas working in the background (making excellent headway on the family bath built-in unit), I started poking around in my photo archives. I was looking for inspirational spring images, you know, to get a burst of color, an inkling of growth, anything that could lift up the winter doldrums that have settled pretty heavily this year. Instead of flowers, or other springtime imagery, I found old pictures of the house, from right after we purchased it in the end of 2006. This house is rapidly becoming the place where I’ve lived the longest, and will probably be the place I think of as home for many years to come (whether or not we still live here).
You are sound itself, and you are flight…*
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Who knew that blogging could make the world so small? But in a great way!
When Jeff and I started designing the kitchen and bath renovations we looked for inspirational images in magazines, books, on TV and the internet. It was then that I discovered (quite late, I’m afraid) the entire world of design blogs out there. Of course I had come across some while in design school (thanks to my lovely school peeps, you know who you are), but I hadn’t really found all the cool DIY ones, or the really homespun ones. Initially I discovered Rambling Renovators, a really great blog for inspirational design ideas and DIY stories (her husband HandyMan is, well, really handy) based in Toronto, Canada. It was where I got the inspiration for our floors in the half bath. But the tale doesn’t end there.
Everybody’s got a vision, everybody’s got a plan…
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Day 36 starts week 8 (!), and even though this was Labor Day, we still had some actual labor to attend to. Caleb and J.J. toiled at their tile today, forgoing basking in the most perfect weather imaginable to make some headway on the shower (including hand-polishing some rough parts of the marble chair rail to finish out the niches), and grouted both bathroom floors. Caleb also saved us from disaster (not really, but gauche-ness was averted) by letting us know that our shower drain, if grouted into place, would be permanent, and that the black PVC edge of it would always show. Gross! We will be getting another shower drain (chrome all the way, baby) post-haste, and it can simply be screwed into place instead of the builder-grade (plumber standard?) one we were given. Phew. Thanks, Caleb. Good save.
Inch by inch, row by row…
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Day 29 and the weather couldn’t have been more perfect. Sunny, breezy, warm, but not too hot – spectacular. And it came just in time. The dreary weather had taken its toll on the Team, leaving them listless, tired, and just plain exhausted. Yet they persevered, rallied, and managed to turn out a day full of detail work, full of intricate measurements, and full of hauling themselves up and down ladders in search of a finished exterior. Success! Despite the stain (which we will apply), they finished the exterior! Brad finished his exterior electrical (save for the last doorbell – hey, a potential movie title!), and Dave and Eric finished shingling around the windows (including moving some fragile, antique shingles from one part of the house to another for continuity’s sake), and painting the trim on the new windows. What a relief to have one part of the job wrapped up! I know they needed the sense of finish more than we did (we’re no where near normal inside, so we didn’t so much mind the exterior as it was), and the knowledge that they got it done was not unappreciated. Good work, dudes!