Getting the Blues

"Fly A Kite." That's the name of the paint we chose for our bedroom. Darryl saw this color in an episode of "Modern Family" and he loved it so much that he decided right then it would end up somewhere in our house. At first we thought about repainting our living room, but once the remodel was in full swing we just couldn't bear the thought of working on another part of the house at the same time. So we decided to use the color in our bedroom instead. What you see in the photo is a taste of the color, but of course it looks different in person. Actually, I haven't seen exactly what it looks like yet, just with work lights shining on it unnaturally. But it doesn't matter. As soon as I walked into the room this afternoon I felt calm and comfortable and relaxed. The perfect sense for a bedroom. I could almost feel the tension washing away; now I can't wait to relax in a chair by the window in the delicious afternoon light, reading a book and occasionally glancing up at the walls. 

In fact, as I'm looking at this photo, I can visualize exactly how this room will look. It's incredible what just the right shade of color can do to your mood. When we first bought our house 15 years ago, Darryl wanted every room in various shades of white but I managed to convince him that adding color was a good thing. We painted our living room a sunny yellow, welcoming and warm. The dining room is forest green from the chair rail up and I'm convinced that the rich tone of the room is what pushed us both to become such good cooks - you can't serve bad meals in a room this color. We originally painted the hallway a beautiful ruby red, which was stunning but showed every scratch and speck of dirt. That wasn't a problem for the first couple of years, but once the girls came along and started putting their hands, mouths, toys all over that wall, it was time for a change. Now it's a simple off-white and it's a great backdrop for our row of family photos. The room that was the spare room when we first moved in (later to become the baby's room) had three walls of light blue and one of dark. I was trying to make it seem like the sky during the course of a day. Once Julia came along we added cloud-shaped pieces of foam. When the girls got a little older, we painted it pink; not original, I know, but they liked it. When we painted the kitchen, we started off with yellow, but after about half an hour we knew it wasn't going to work. So we switched to a pale leaf green that blends perfectly with the cabinets (and if you've seen our kitchen you'll know it wasn't easy to match those things!).

So color on the walls is really important to us. It sets a mood and works as a background note while setting the tone for the room, and even the whole house. Plus when I really want to annoy Darryl I can remind him that he's the one who chose a pale shade of "Dodger" blue!

Look how shiny the ceiling is!

P.S. The new - and hopefully undamaged - tub comes tomorrow. Cross fingers, toes, anything else you can think of. Thank you!

A Picture is Worth 1000 Words

Tonight's post is all about photos. I haven't posted any new ones for a while and since I was home today I thought I would take some pictures while it was still light. There isn't any electricity in there yet, so I can't do much once the sun has gone down (which is usually right about the time I get home from work). So no news other than that today; nothing new happened really, besides for the 15 mini pecan and pumpkin pies resting in the oven, the cranberry walnut bars in the fridge, the pomegranate molasses sauce waiting to be poured over the roast veggies, and the vanilla ice cream setting in the freezer. So just enjoy the pictures and look forward to a longer post later this week. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

The unfinished door leading into the closet.
Doors are sanded and primed, waiting for paint and handles.

Looking from the hallway into the new bedroom.
I think we'll probably replace the ladder with
a dresser at some point!

This is where the glaze on the new tub broke off when the
(not-so) protective plastic was removed. It's crazy how
something so small will hold up the entire project for
about 10 days.

The shower is all ready for its tile. Notice the
two insets for shampoo etc. The shower doors
will be practically the very last thing to happen,
since the people who install them refuse to come
and measure until everything else is complete.

The view from our bedroom into the back yard.
We really like the double-hung windows.

Smooth Moves

One of the things we discussed when we were planning was trying to make the new rooms match the old ones as much as possible. We don't want people to walk in and say, "Oh, this is obviously an addition." If you walk into the new rooms and don't even realize it, then we'll know it was successful. That's why we have the 70-year-old doors and the cast iron bathtub, we're replacing the hardwood floor in the entire house so the rooms flow, and we chose a sink and toilet with an old-time style.

Darryl and I decided that the most important way to make sure the new rooms feel like the rest of the house is to match the walls. We have plaster throughout the house and we were adamant about plaster in the addition. Of course, the drywall had to go up first, but we asked the contractor to plaster over them. When Ron showed up to organize the plaster, a 70-something man who never seems in a hurry, we knew we had the right guy for the job. Sure enough, he has been working hard (along with his worker Pablo) to make sure the walls are just what we wanted. They had to find the right texture and thickness of plaster and apply it in such a way that the patterns looked right too.

Of course, as we have come to learn, nothing ever goes perfectly the first time. When the walls were "finished" they had a somewhat sharp feel to them. When I put my hand on them, I could feel angles and lines. Not what I wanted at all. So Pablo had to come back and adjust the texture. He went over all of the of walls and the ceiling and sanded it down inch by inch. (By the way, all of that sanding created clouds of dust. What's new?) It took him two days to get to every part, but he made it and now when I touch the surfaces, they're smooth and cool with just the right hint of bumps and indentations. Best of all, they feel like the walls in the rest of the house.

So now we can start painting. Ummmm, not "we" I suppose. My job is just to choose the colors. Done! Somebody grab a brush.

Open a New Door

I wonder what is the most important part of a room? When the framing was complete, I could get a great sense of the new rooms and when the walls were built I could see the scope of the rooms. The windows were installed and the rooms seemed pretty much complete. Now today I realized what it is that makes a room feel like a place to live in - it's the doors I think.

There's a feeling of intimacy when you can close a door and keep the living spaces separated. When I came home today, all the doors had been installed and each room now had a complete footprint. I opened a door and looked into the new hallway closet; through another door I could see the spare bedroom. Best of all, I opened another door and there was my beautiful new bedroom. Do you remember the scene in The Wizard of Oz when Dorothy stepped out of her house through the door and saw a world of color? That's what it felt like to me this afternoon. I stepped through the door and saw a room that just two and a half months ago did not even exist.

The doors themselves are about 70years old. Tom stripped them of their paint, sanded them to a smooth finish, and hung them in place. They're multicolored right now because the wood has gone through so many years of use, being painted, sanded, stained, repainted, and on and on. Soon they'll be a nice shiny white and I'll be able to leave them open to share the room or close them to keep things cosy. Either way, the new doors have given these rooms a feeling of life. As the remodeling process draws nearer to its end, these doors make me feel as if things in our home are just beginning.

FAQ's #2

Q: Is everything still on schedule?
A: If you had asked me that yesterday, I would have said yes. Today, however, brings a different answer. First of all, the plasterer needs about half a day's worth of work to finish up, but he chose this week to go on vacation, so the half day won't happen until next Monday. Second, we had a little problem with the new bathtub. When this 500-pound cast-iron tub was delivered, it had plastic tape around the rim to protect it. The tub was installed, and yesterday when our contractor pulled off the tape, parts of the glaze came off with it. The company was very nice and offered to replace the tub for us, but that's going to mean that the bathroom tile cannot be installed for another 10 days (because no one wants to be responsible for dropping 500 pounds of cast iron onto newly laid marble tile). That'll teach me to be so smug about being on time.

Q: Is it still dusty in the house?
A: Put it this way, earlier this evening I was on my hands and knees in the hallway with a bucket and sponge trying desperately to erase the white layer that seems to permeate everything I see. Last night we had to sleep with our bedroom doors closed because the dust from the plaster and concrete was so bad. We all woke up this morning coughing and with headaches. When I looked at one of the new window frames I thought it had already been painted because it looked so white. Nope, just dust. White, fine, powdery, gag-inducing dust.

Q: Why are you still parking in your driveway?
A: If you look in our garage you'll see 1500 feet worth of mahogany hardwood floor waiting to be installed. Apparently the wood has to sit in the environment that it's going to be laid in for a few weeks in order to adjust to the temperature and humidity of the house. Our contractor told us that he laid wood in a house around the corner and the owner insisted on laying it down immediately it was delivered. The next morning, he woke up to a floor that looked like cooked lasagna, all wavy and scalloped. Needless to say we listened to what the contractor recommended. So the garage is out of commission for a couple more weeks still. That's OK though. If it rains at all we get our cars cleaned without any effort on our parts at all.

Q: Do you still stand by your decision to remodel?
A: The easy thing to say would be, "Come back to me in a couple of months and I'll let you know for sure." But the reality is, no matter what happens, our house is going to be wonderful and it's going to be an even better home for our family. The girls are at a point where they need to define their own spaces (not to mention the fact that they're finally going to have to learn how to keep a bathroom clean!). Julia will have her own desk and a private place to study and write, instead of fighting for room amidst Grace's stuffed animals. Meanwhile Grace will have her own walls to decorate instead of having to look at Julia's objects of adoration. And having that brand new spare room means that any of you can come and stay with us any time you like (assuming you can live with the dust, which I think will be here for the next 50 or so years).

Color Me Excited

You can't see this color on the photo - this is the bathroom color

Yesterday Darryl and I had a breakthrough moment - we went to look at paint colors and we agreed on the same ones with very little discussion or convincing on either side. For those of you who know us well, you'll know that making decisions is not one of our strong points (well, for one of us anyway). Yet choosing paint was painless and fun. My guess is that we were going into Dunn Edwards with such a positive outlook that the gods smiled on us and let us enjoy the moment.

That's because choosing paint seems to me such a huge sign that we're almost at the end of the journey. The big decisions have been made, the large-scale projects completed, and now things are at the detail stage. The plaster needs to be touched up, the bathroom tile is ready to go, we finished designing the bathroom cabinets and decided on the closet structure. Yes, it's the finishing details at this point and I couldn't be happier.

One of these will be the walls of the spare room

So we chose the paint for the ceiling and trim and brought home swatches to consider for the rest of the walls. My favorite thing about the paints are their wonderful names. The ceiling and trim paint is called Swiss Coffee, which sounds like it should be a warm brown, but is in fact a white with a touch of yellow. I've never been to Switzerland, but I'm guessing their coffee is a little darker than that. The bathroom paint is called Melting Glacier, which might not be the best name for a bathroom. Since we had so many problems with the plumbing, I hope we're not putting a curse on the room by giving it a paint that implies so much water that cannot be controlled.

The walls of the spare room will be a nice, warm yellow, which we think will be welcoming and peaceful for our guests. These names are much more friendly: Sheer Sunlight, Creamed Butter or Afterglow. I think we'll go for the Creamed Butter because, as I'm sure you know, everything is better with butter.

Our bedroom walls will be some combination of these
beautiful blues

Finally, we're choosing the walls of our bedroom. We have a comforter that we bought several years ago that we both love. It's a white comforter with embroidered flowers of blue, periwinkle and yellow. I had it in my head for years that we would match our bedroom walls to one of the colors on this comforter. Our bedroom right now is lavender, and we are really happy with it, but we made one mistake that we need to fix this time. When we looked at the color, it was daytime and the sunlight was streaming through the windows. But the reality is we spend most of the time in the bedroom when it's dark and the lights are on - it's a completely different kind of light and the paint looks very different. So this time around we're going to make sure we look at the swatches at different times of the day and night to see how it looks in natural and artificial light.

On the other hand, I might just choose the paint based on its fabulous name. The one I like the best is called Fly a Kite, and when I see it I start humming the song from Mary Poppins. You know, the one at the end of the movie when the Dad realizes that his kids are more important to him than any old job and he becomes the father they need, so Mary Poppins can leave them and move on to help another family. Just thinking about it makes me smile, and wouldn't that be a nice thing for a bedroom?

Holey-Moley

The ceiling in the hallway where the return is going

Everywhere I look, there are holes in my house. I'd say that I can feel a draft, but actually it's more like we're living outside and there are just a few places where the wind isn't blowing. Right now I'm sitting in the living room looking down the hallway at a hole in the ceiling. Eventually the heating/ac return is going there; for now it's just a piece of cardboard. Let me tell you, cardboard is not the best way to insulate your house. When we stand under it, we can feel the wind, and, what's worse, we can see little bits of plaster gently floating to the ground. I don't even want to know what my sinuses look like on the inside.

The new hallway entrance 

Farther on down the hallway, there's another hole where the old house meets the new. There used to be a door there separating the hallway from the "big room" at the back, but now the door is gone and there are not one but two door-shaped holes in the wall. It looks like we can't quite decide where we want the new hallway to be so we're hedging our bets. Apparently, the original doorway was not the correct size for the new code. Back in the late '30s people were a lot skinnier I assume, so doorways were narrower. Nowadays the doorways need to be 32 inches wide, so the contractor had to move the opening a couple of feet to the right of the original one. So we're looking at the new hallway opening and another space where the old door was. Of course, the new rooms aren't quite finished, and the windows haven't been framed yet, so the air whips through the new space, unencumbered by any furniture of course, and turns the corner into the rest of the house. It hadn't been a problem up until two days ago; now that the weather has changed, the cold night air is really noticeable.

As you cross the threshold from old house to new, look up and you'll see where the attic access will be. I haven't talked to Darryl about this yet, but hopefully there will be some sort of door up there and not just another piece of cardboard. It makes getting into the attic pretty easy though. Just climb a ladder and pop right through. Just be careful where you step when you're up there, that's all.

Attic access or crazy modern art?

Don't touch that switch!

The last few holes are spotted throughout the new rooms. Everywhere there is supposed to be a light switch is currently a space with a jumble of wires. I don't want to be picky, but I do hope someone realizes that there are probably safer ways to turn on the lights than this. And why is the opening such a random shape? Again, I'm no expert on construction and I don't want to be the nagging home owner who harps on every little flaw, but wouldn't a rectangular opening be better? Just asking.

Down Time

Indulge me for a minute, if you will. We have just spent the last few days having a wonderful family vacation with my parents, my brother and sisters, our spouses and our kids, in the beautiful sunshine of Palm Springs, and I'm not quite ready to jump back into the reality of remodeling. To be honest, the entire issue of the house and its contents were completely out of my mind while I was gone. It was nice. Both Darryl and I were aware of a level of relaxation we haven't felt in several months.

As we drove home, Darryl mentioned that he was starting to tense up. It was as if a rope was pulling our car toward a black hole into which our energy would disappear. The strange thing is (and pleeeeeease don't let me be jinxing myself right now) the remodel process is going quite well. From what I have heard, we're not running into the horrors that others have encountered, nor are we tearing out our hair at the schedule lapses. Besides the crazy plumbers (and I still have nightmares about pipes flowing backwards and sewage coming up through the bathtub), there haven't been any major issues. Oh sure, there were the roofers who thought they were doing us a favor by pulling the antenna off the roof - nobody uses those things any more, right? Except in the Vinyard house we don't have cable TV and we rely on those rabbit ears to watch broadcast stations. So they had to figure out a way to weld them back onto an existing pipe somewhere on the roof. Still, I can't spend too much energy complaining about that.

In addition, our contractor keeps telling us that things are right on track and he hasn't amended the original date he told us back in July. That's kind of weird I think. Of course, things could change in a hurry. The tile could take much longer to lay, we might have problems getting the countertop cut, the trees for the new floor might not be growing quickly enough (yes, it's a stretch, but we're still waiting for the floor to get delivered and I can't think of any other reason why it isn't here yet). But (deep breath) things look pretty good. And I'm trying desperately to hold on to that wonderful relaxed feeling I had in Palm Springs, so if I sound naive at all you must humor me. During this remodel process, I need to take any of these moments that I can find. The tension will worm its way back into the household soon enough. For now, I'm going to enjoy the photos from my vacation and possibly start chanting. Hey, whatever works.

The whole family, all 18 of us, with two parents, four siblings, three spouses, and 9 grandkids,
all wearing black and white at Roger's 70th birthday party