Homeowner Woes and Garages

This past academic quarter has been very demanding for me, because I took on more work than I should have. Plus, things have been kind of crazy at home. Within the past two months or so, we have had three separate ant invasions (in different parts of the house), two incidences with mice in the home, a leaky roof, and a water leak in the basement. And there are some slightly unusual smells in the basement now, which may or may not be related to the problems stated above. Ugh. The new roof is supposed to be finished this week, and I hope things will calm down after that point!

We also will likely be getting our shed torn down sometime next year (due to a local construction project which will require us to sell part of our property). This means that we need to quickly build another shed or a full garage, so we will have a place to house our lawn mower and yard tools. I don't know when we will be able to afford a garage (it depends on how much money we get for our property that is being sold), but J and I are spending our free time mulling over garage options. We like this one by Garages Etc. Ideally, we would like something with a loft for storage (and J ideally would like to have a studio space). Plus, we also need something to fit with the aesthetic of our home. This prefabricated option is nice, although there are some practical space logistics which might prevent this model from being a viable option:

Sometimes I wish I could spend all of my savings on trips to Europe, instead of on home improvement projects. Maybe one day that will be the case, but I doubt it!

Shermag Chairs Galore!

The two-year drama of searching for Shermag chairs has finally ended, as of fifteen minutes ago! After buying the wrong type of chairs to complete our dining set last year, I halfheartedly kept an eye on Craigslist while I was pregnant. After Lucy was born, since I had more free time to surf the internet while nursing her, I renewed my search full force. By sheer luck, in July I found a lady on Craigslist in Stowe, Vermont (the place where the Von Trapps came to America!) who was willing to sell her chairs to me. I had to agree to buy all six of her chairs, though, which was fine. I'm actually excited to have all of these chairs, because we now have four side chairs (and we have only been able to find arm chairs ("captain's chairs") before this point).

Although there was a slight bit of drama in getting the PayPal payment to go through to this woman (which involved me getting on the phone with PayPal and the shipper while at the Hi-Mountain diner in Kamas while vacationing), everything worked out. And now, unbelievably, we have an overabundance of these discontinued Shermag chairs.

Come over to eat with us sometime! We can seat ten people at our house now, and you don't even have to be a midget so as to wedge your legs between counter-height chairs and the standard-height table top like before!

The New Nursery

 Our nursery has been ready for almost three weeks now. I'm glad that I pushed ahead and got things ready early, because I don't have much energy to put together furniture or organize living spaces right now. It's been fun to put this nursery together; we weren't able to have a coordinated nursery space when Sam was a baby, because of our living situation and circumstances back then.

I especially love the floral rug and the series of bug prints that we got from the Land of Nod for this room. We picked orange for an accent color, which I think is very cheerful. Although we do have a little bit of pink in the flowers and storage bins, I'm hoping that pink will never be a major accent color in this bedroom. I don't like how pink is such a pre-selected and promoted color for little baby girls and toddlers these days. If anything, I think it is ironic, since in the early 20th century pink used to be the color associated with boys, not girls.

J and I spent a few hours mulling over which crib bedding to get. We both wanted orange to be an accent color for the bedding, but we couldn't find anything that we both liked. We ended up getting solid light orange fitted sheets from Carousel Designs, and then the Georgia Nursery Bedding bumper and Lara Eyelet Crib Skirt from Pottery Barn Kids. The quilt draped over the side of the bed was made by one of my friends from work, who happened to pick colors that fit well with our bedding color scheme.

Deluge of House and Garden Projects

I have been swimming in a deluge of house projects over the past few weeks. This sudden push to complete house projects largely was due to two things: 1) the kinda-sorta finding of chairs to complete our dining set (see below) and 2) more free time since Sam started kindergarten. I wanted to get all of these projects done before school started, too.

We haven't bought any furniture for our house for over a year, even though we would have liked a few things. J said that he didn't want to get anything else for the house until we solved the dining room chair issue. So, we have been saving money for other furniture projects while I hunted for chairs online, insisting that we could find readymade chairs at a reasonable price somewhere (so we wouldn't have to pay through-the-nose to get the last chairs custom made). And, after searching for a year, I miraculously found a fourth chair at a consignment store in New York state that was willing to ship the chair to me. That completed our set (with two local chairs, one received through a store in North Carolina, and the fourth from New York state). We wanted to get two more chairs for the ends of the table, and I found some similar chairs (made by Blosser) on Craiglist in North Carolina. I had the chairs shipped, only to realize that I had bought pub-style chairs instead of regular chairs. Argh! So, the saga still continues a bit, but things are finished enough for J to feel okay about working on other furniture and house projects. We may have the legs of these high chairs cut, to help accommodate someone sitting at our table. But if you look at the set of chairs at the table, the set looks pretty good:

The Blosser chairs will need to be refinished with a darker color, too. You can see the difference between the chairs when they are side by side:

The other really big project was spreading gravel on our driveway. (I wrote a little bit about the early stages of this project HERE.) We got a little too much gravel, but luckily our next door neighbor was able to use most of the extra gravel. We also were able to spread some of the gravel on our walkway, which was pretty much nonexistent before. I'm so thrilled too walk out of the house and see gravel instead of dirt and weeds.

BEFORE

You can see where I had started to pull out grass and weeds in the foreground of the image, along the fence

AFTER 

IN PROGRESS

You can see how much grass we had to pull out, based on the unfinished portion in the background

I've also had the chance to paint, find furniture, find lamps, and work in the garden lately. Here's a smattering of images:

I painted the interior of our front entryway closet. This was the last area of unpainted drywall in our entire house. No more major painting projects!

We found a small bathroom cabinet for downstairs. J had to saw off the towel rod underneath, so that it would fit. I painted it a cream color to match the beadboard.

A curtain for the upstairs hallway! It's nice to have a little color there and more privacy.

His-and-hers lamps for the sides of our bed. When we moved in, some faux-antique white lamps were installed in the walls. My lamp didn't work, so we had it removed and there was a gaping hole on my side of the bed for about a yaer. I searched diligently for new lamps for a long time. J finally told me that I didn't need to be passionate about every single lamp and piece of furniture that we buy, so I settled on these practical ones.

We also rearranged some furniture and brought this chair upstairs to create a little reading area in our room. I got a little Ikea table and small Ikea lamp. I'm not passionate about them either, but they fill the space just fine.

I do really like this hall tree that we put in our entryway. The storage bench holds all of our boots and unseemly dirty shoes.  It's also nice to have a place to hang coats when guests come over.

 This lamp helps to really make our entryway seem more complete, I think. I really love this lamp. It has some nice purple and raspberry colors that go well with both the interior walls and the exterior color of our front door. I'm glad that I'm passionate about the first and last thing that I see when I go in and out of the house.

We created a little reading area in the downstairs living room with this accent chair and ottoman.

I've also been working in the garden. The flowers on the side of the house are coming along nicely. I also pulled out all of the old California Poppies, and put a few Black Eyed Susans in the gaps that were created. These Black Eyed Susans are perennials, so I hope to enjoy them each year.

I feel like the house has really come together over the past few months (although there are more projects I could name - don't look too closely at that shed in the background of the last two pictures!). Now I feel like I can move on into the fall season and upcoming school year, since I have been able to make visible improvements in the house during my summer break. I really love this house and enjoy making it a beautiful space that fits J's distinct taste and my distinct taste. It's really fulfilling and rewarding for me to work toward something that I hope to enjoy for many years to come.

House paint: MASTER LIST

After painting the wrong color of paint on a cabinet this morning, I decided that it is a good idea to have a master list of the colors of paint in our house. This is the second time that I have mixed up paint samples when touching up something in the downstairs bathroom. Hopefully, with this list, I won't make this mistake again.

Interior:

• Basement: Valspar, Blanched Thyme, Signature, Interior Semigloss, Base B (Lowe's) 
• Laundry room: Valspar, Kitchen & Bath, Ultra Int, BsA-391672109-5, 111-1Y27.5, 203-2.5 (Lowe's)
• White trim throughout house: Glidden, Swan White, Interior Satin (Home Depot)
• Main level: Restoration Hardware, Silver Sage, Subtle Velvet finish (Restoration Hardware). Update: Silver Sage is discontinued, but I found a custom color match:

• Downstairs bathroom: Behr, Martha Stewart Living?, Bone, Ultra Flat, Matte (Home Depot) 
• Upstairs hallway and stairwell: Valspar, Salisbury, Interior Eggshell (Lowe's)
• Sam's Room: I seem to remember that there was a leftover Disney paint can when we moved here.
• Office: I think it is Valspar, Martinique Dawn, Interior Flat Enamel (half of a gallon left in basement by previous owners).
• Upstairs bathroom: Restoration Hardware, Silver Sage, Subtle Velvet finish (Restoration Hardware)
• Master bedroom: Restoration Hardware, Sea Green, Subtle Velvet finish (Restoration Hardware)
• Master bedroom closet: Glidden, Egg shell, Low L____ (missing), Martha Stewart Living 122, Milk Pail
• Studio (updated 2024): 6222 Riverway, Eggshell finish, (Sherwin Williams)

Outside:

• Front Door: Olympic, Apple-a-Day, Premium Exterior Latex, Semi-Gloss (Lowe's)
• Porch floor: Behr, Porch & Patio, Lus__Door (word obscured), DP-358, Coffee (Home Depot)
• Side porch railing and floor: Behr, solid color wood stain, SC-103, Coffee (Home Depot)
• Fence: Behr, Weather Proofing Wood Stain, solid color, DP-358, Coffee

Mystery/unwanted/unknown paints in basement:

• Behr, Interior flat enamel, W-F 700, Moon Rise (Home Depot) Left over from previous owners. Could this be the white paint used for the office closet?
• Valspar, Snow Cap, Signature Sample (Lowe's). I don't know why we originally got this, but J did use this color for the Rouen Cathedral print frames.
• Auditions, Willow Wind, Satin (Lowe's). Was this a sample intended for the upstairs office?
• Olympic, C36-4, Horizon Glow (Lowe's). Left over from determining good basement color.
• Unknown what pink paint was used in office closet

To Desperately Work

I love sleep. I love sleep way more than the average person, I think. But one of the few things that can get me out of bed - even get me out of bed when it is inordinately early - is the opportunity to finish a project. Like the time that I got out of bed at four in the morning to paint the trim in our upstairs bathroom. Or the time that I got up at five in the morning so I could stain the fence for a few hours before going to work.

And now, once again, it is five in the morning. I've been wide awake for an hour already, because my body feels compelled to spread the 20 cubic yards (enough to cover 3000+ square feet) of gravel that we had dumped in our driveway yesterday afternoon. I started to spread some of it yesterday afternoon, but I've barely made a dent in the piles. I'm anxious to continue on the project this morning, but it is still dark outside.

As Sam and I worked in the driveway yesterday afternoon, Sam wanted to chat about different topics to help keep him from being bored. His mild complaints of boredom made me think about how I reacted to work as a child. When I was a kid, especially when I was about nine and ten, I was very much interested in integrating work and play. Most of my playtime and pretending involved some type of work: starting up a restaurant with V called "Surprise Supreme," setting up a business called "[M] and Company" (in which I coerced my siblings A and C to work for me), organizing a ballet class for C and her neighbor friends, and building a ramshackle clubhouse out of wood scraps from our garage.

I would often ensure that these work situations were somehow unnecessarily intense, too. When I wanted to work, I would generate these romanticized situations in which I would need to desperately work. When I organized the ballet class for C and her friends, I rushed to the library to check out an oversized book on ballet; I needed to hurriedly research dance moves before "class" (because I really didn't know anything about ballet). When I built the ramshackle clubhouse, I worked all day long so I could finish the project in a single day. And, back when I was this age, my favorite thing to pretend at the time was that I lived in a forest and I desperately needed to gather food so I wouldn't starve. I would huddle in this little wooded area behind our garage, with my freshly-gathered stash of "edible" sticks and grass, pretending like I could carry on and survive in the forest for another day.

There was almost always some sense of urgency, desperation, or sacrifice in these play scenarios that I created as a child, and I realized yesterday that I haven't changed much. In order to save myself from boredom during this last month of summer, I've obsessively thrown myself into different house projects. Just this week I decided that we needed to clear out the weeds in the driveway. I had the idea that we could get the driveway paved, but after learning that option was too expensive after receiving a few bids, I decided to have these huge mounds of gravel delivered. But, as so often happens, I created a rather narrow window of time to finish this project. I needed to clear the driveway of weeds before the dump truck arrived, which meant that I needed to dedicate hours and hours each day to pulling weeds out of our driveway. And, as if the cosmos cheekily wanted to help me create an especially desperate and urgent situation, it has been raining quite a bit this week. So, I've been clearing out weeds in the rain, as our driveway (and the mossy carpet that has been growing in our driveway) has become muddy and sodden.

On Thursday, after an unusually heavy downpour of rain, J and I went into the driveway in a last-ditch effort to pull up weeds before the truck came the next morning. As we worked in the weeds and mud, kneeling down and practically crawling around to pick up globs of mossy mud and weeds, J said that he felt very much like the two figures in the "Constitutional Peasants" sketch from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. "Dennis, there's some lovely filth down here!" J called to me across the driveway while speaking in a high voice with a British accent. We both laughed, especially since we were creating piles of large piles of muddy weeds, similar to how the peasants build a big pile of mud while chatting with King Arthur. J even was pulling our compost bin around the driveway, similar to Dennis pulling his cart. I keep chuckling about the similarities between us and that sketch. What a desperate, silly situation I created! If anything, my nine-year-old self would have relished the dramatic, sacrificial scenario in which I had placed myself, down to the last raindrop.

It is just beginning to get light outside. I'm going to go outside and shovel gravel for a few hours before the boys wake up.

Update: I didn't end up shoveling gravel in the early morning, after all. My neighbor's bedroom had an open window right next to our driveway, and I thought it would be cruel to be working so loudly in the morning. Luckily, I did end up falling back asleep.

My Dining-Room-Chair Saga

 The spindle chairs from the Portfolio Collection

Tea and Antique Glow finish

86C1-PF

The ones in the image are side chairs; we currently own three arm chairs

Almost a year ago, I fell in love with the wrong kind of dining room chairs - and by "wrong" I mean the discontinued kind. Oh, and the discontinued kind of chair that was broke too: They were made by Shermag, a furniture company in Canada that declared bankruptcy a few years ago. There's no hope that these spindle chairs, from the Portfolio collection, will ever be made by Shermag again. And it's really unfortunate, because I can't seem to find any chairs that I like as much as these.

We saw two of these chairs for sale at Sansaco, a furniture warehouse that used to be a dealer for Shermag. I convinced J that we could buy these two arm chairs and the table from Sansaco's clearance overstock, and that we would somehow find more side chairs or arm chairs to complete the set. After several days of searching, I finally was able to find a dealer in North Carolina who contacted the Shermag warehouse and got one more chair to send to us; it was the last possible chair in the same style, which luckily happened to be was the same finish as ours. So, now we have three arm chairs. (It only took seven months for the seller to finally get the chairs to us, but that's another story.)

For the past year, I have been trolling the internet on an obsessive basis, visiting Craigslist, eBay and Kijiji ads (to name a few sites) to try and find more of these chairs. I feel like I have visited the deepest bowels of the internet. Tonight I even found an auction listing for the multi-spindle boring machinery that Shermag had to sell after declaring bankruptcy. Anyhow, Shermag furniture rarely comes up for sale in the United States, let alone the chairs from the Portfolio collection.

In the process of searching for these chairs, I have unwittingly become an expert in different types of chairs that are done in a Shaker style. We have two-tone, high spindle back chairs that are topped with long finials. Our chairs are different from ladder back chairs, bird cage chairs, Windsor chairs, and arrowback chairs.

I have come close to getting more chairs twice, and both accounts were very recent. About two weeks ago someone in Ontario offered to ship four chairs to me, but she flaked out. And then, miraculously, a complete dining set with eight chairs happened to come up for sale last weekend in a town that is 20 minutes from our house! I was so excited! I couldn't believe it! I kept hugging J and jumping up and down. J says that he literally has never seen me so excited, and he may be right. I couldn't even get over the fact of how the ad was worded, because the seller was using the exact phrases and words that I commonly used to search for the chairs. (Yes, I was geeking out on many different levels.) It was meant to be! We waited with bated breath for a day and a half, hoping to hear from the seller, only to learn that the set was sold to someone who contacted the seller a few hours before us. We were too late.

I was so devastated - probably more devastated than I should be about something as silly as chairs. That night I curled up in the bed, lay under the covers, and moped. It wasn't just about the chairs, though. I was so sure that all my hard work - a year's worth of searching - was going to pay off in a single weekend. And then it didn't. As I lay under the covers, I reminded myself of the dangers of having expectations.

Before this point, I was convinced that we would be able to find either this chair, or a lookalike chair that is made by Klaussner, an American furniture company (shown on the right). Unfortunately, the Blosser collection by Klaussner (#987) is also discontinued. It's especially unfortunate, too, because I quite like the side board that they sell with this set. Why do I like things that are discontinued?!?

Now we are at a point where we are seriously considering getting some custom-made chairs. I want to move on with my life. It's quite difficult to find woodworkers who specialize in chairs - it really is quite an art. Do any of you know of woodworkers who specialize in quality, solid wood chairs? Or do you miraculously have three Portfolio or Blosser chairs that you want to sell to me? I'll pay good money for these chairs. As you can tell from this post, I'm desperate.

Spring Break 2013

This past Spring Break was lovely. The weather was wonderful. I got to do a lot of outdoor and indoor projects that I have meant to do for some time. I also finished reading one novel and made great headway into another. And then, this weekend we even had time to go over to the Olympic Mountains for a bit and stay at the Lake Quinault Lodge. Here are some of our adventures:

KidsQuest Museum

An Easter egg hunt in the park with friends

 A visit to the aquarium with Sam's friend Leah (here they are looking at a diver inside the tank)

A visit to the park

The tulips behind our daffodils started to bloom this week. I also noticed that the allium started to sprout yesterday; I was glad that they weren't upset too much when I planted dahlias earlier this week.

J and I also painted our basement and laundry room this week. Sam helped out a little bit too, which he enjoyed. Since these walls had never been painted before, I didn't think Sam could do much to mess things up. We painted the laundry room light yellow and painted the basement a light green.

J let Sam borrow his camera when we went to Lake Quinault, although Sam had to be very very careful (and not mess with the settings). Sam took hundreds of pictures during the whole trip. He would often say, "Got it!" after clicking the shutter of the camera.

We stayed in one of the lakeside rooms of the lodge (in the newer part of the lodge complex)

 The lodge hosted an Easter egg hunt on their Great Lawn. The Easter Bunny even came by for a visit!

Back to School Chaos!

School started again yesterday. I fully expected to have a very calm transition into the school year, similar to what I had last year, when I was able to clean the house thoroughly and get everything in order. This year, though, the exact opposite happened. The day before school started, some construction workers knocked on my door at 8:00 am. I wasn't expecting them until another day, so I had to quickly jump out of bed and get dressed to meet them - no shower for me.

We're getting baseboards put in every room of our house. It's very exciting to think that all of the unseemly gaps between our floor and walls will finally be covered up. But this project (which I wanted to have done at the beginning of the month) has thrown our lives into disarray. Last night, instead of doing last-minute preparations for school, I spent the evening emptying out our closets and pulling all of the furniture to the middle of each room in the house. While I did that, J scrambled to put up some drywall patches in the basement, so there would be a place for the baseboards to go.

The day before school was filled with other bits of chaos as well. J bought a used car (which is happy and sad for me at the same time - I liked being a one-car family). The VW Golf was supposed to be ready about a week ago, but the dealership had some set-backs. The car was finished on Tuesday, at the same time that I was dealing with carpenters, taking Sam to a doctor's appointment, taking Sam to swimming lessons, going grocery shopping, and trying to pull everything together for school. We got the car picked up though, and everything worked out. It actually will be nice to have a car, because J can help to take Sam to preschool when I need to leave for work.

I hope that everything settles down soon. The baseboards were installed yesterday, and today a painter will begin to match the new boards with the color of our already-existing trim. Sam and I will try and stay out of the house for the next day or two, so we don't have to smell fumes all day long. I can't wait to put things back into the closets.

Oh, and did I mention that another adjunct professor suddenly quit her job the day before classes began? We have been scrambling to find a professor to fill the class that begins today. I teach another section of the same class, so I imagine that I will be meeting with the new adjunct and filling him/her in on the course outline.

Phew! And now, onward into the school year! Welcome to my 150 students! Welcome to my four classes! Welcome to my responsibilities as the supervisor for museum interns! This will be fun, even if it is a little hectic. I just hope that I don't feel as internally-jumbled as my office appears in that photo above.

UPDATE: The chaos continued throughout the rest of the week! Friday was pretty awful at school: the projector broke in my classroom and threw all of my lessons off. I had multiple issues with the temporary projector that was finally brought to my classroom, and I ended up having to teach half of two different class periods without images to show the students. It was a very stressful day, but luckily it all ended. The upstairs baseboards are finished too, so now we can maneuver around the house much better. I'm sure that things will get better from hereon out.

End of Summer Recap

I have been loathe to have the summer end. School starts in just a little over a day, though, so I know that I need to gear up and move on. The problem is that the weather is still incredibly nice. We have been without rain for virtually a month and a half, and the temperature still reaches the 70s and 80s each day.

This has been a very good summer. It's been filled with sunshine, fun activities, family, friends, vacations, good books, blogging, as well as personal insight and growth. I feel so lucky that my family and I have gotten to do so many wonderful things.

Turkey with my dearest of dear friends. This is in the Blue Mosque in Istanbul (photo removed)

 

I painted white trim for several weekends. (This wasn't fun, but it did take up a lot of my time this summer.) 

Superhero costumes and superhero pretending happened almost every day

 A visit to the Discovery Point Zoo (Visit #1)

 A visit to the new Great Wheel of Seattle

Visits to Riverbend (including on the Fourth of July)

Visits to the King Tut exhibition!

We went on lots of hikes

We visited a lot of NW beaches

 

The Enchanted Forest with Anna! (Visit #1, photo removed)

 

A relaxing week in a beautiful beach house in Oxnard

California Adventure with B cousins!

Disneyland!

The tram leading up to the Getty Museum!

The Enchanted Forest for Lydia's birthday! (Visit #2)

A visit to the San Juans with the S family!
(My brother A wasn't able to join in the fun, since he just started medical school about a week before.)

Riding the ferry to Orcas Island

 

An early-morning view from our cabin on Orcas Island

 Zip-lining on the San Juan Island

 We got to host our friends in Fictionist for one night, who came up here on tour

A visit to Discovery Point Zoo on Labor Day, which included a camel ride (Visit #2)

 

Two camping excursions (Orcas Island and the North Cascades)