It might not seem like trim could be such a big deal, but it is.
Before I met David, my love of remodeling was mostly limited to reading renovation stories in Better Homes or watching This Old House. I surfed the web and bookmarked photos that I lovingly called “house porn.”
I paid attention to lighting and color. I liked shapes–especially symmetry and bold, straight lines.
I rarely noticed stuff like orange peel or mudcaps. These were details that I had never had to quibble over, so I had no understanding of their importance in creating an overall ambience.
When we sat down and created the materials list in December, David and I got down to business noting all the specifics. It wasn’t just about paint color or light fixture model numbers. David had spent many, many hours redoing the house before the remodel, and there were details he had painstakingly noted back then. Covebase. Dimmer switches. The devil, I tell you, is in those details.
In our backyard is a sea of trim that was specially cut to match the odd yet original trim of our home. The fact that we even have trim is a big deal to me (as someone who lived in homes and apartments built post-1980 for many years–those houses don’t have moulding or mudcaps!), but I can’t say I ever noticed the specific groove or cut.
Unfortunately, once someone like David points out the trim to a gal like me, I can’t stop noticing it. Suddenly, everywhere I go I look at the trim. Is it strange like ours, caught between the plain s-grooves of the 1940’s and the modernist zigzag of the 1950’s? How muddled in glops of paint has the pattern become over the years? Is it repeated under the windowsills as well as on the baseboards?
When you walk through our home in a few months at our highly-anticipated open house, take a gander at the trim which, at the present moment, sits tanning in the backyard, waiting for the varnish on the floors to dry. The upstairs bathrooms might not have mudcaps, but the trim will rock your world.
With the new baby the days have been a blur. These are the things that happened over the last 2 weeks.
1. The Garden Tub. This is a big (expensive) screw up. Somehow our contractor thought that, because we wanted a garden tub in the master bath, that meant we did not want a shower. The tub he installed cannot be used for a shower. It will certainly leak, onto the kitchen. The new tub costs twice as much and takes 14 days to ship. Ugh. This is exactly the kind of thing I wanted to avoid when I drew every room by hand. At least he caught this before tile went in. (Even better, thank goodness he’s the kind of guy who has to do things the right way. We wouldn’t have known anything was wrong until the ceiling fell in.)
2. We made our Rejuvenation order. Doorbell, mailbox, two lights, two shades. It’s going to be one glorious box of chrome.
     
3. They started the deck. What a difference a joist makes. Or is that a beam?
4. They finished the floors. We really like the guy doing our floors. He had the crew pull out boards with flaws that I wouldn’t have noticed. And they fixed a mistake in the transition from the living room to the kitchen.
5. We speced out these $3 jelly jar porch lights for above and below the deck. Not because we liked them, but because we didn’t like anything else. The electrician put them in the wrong place, but after looking at them for a few days, we decided to keep them. They are surprisingly nice and we can have some fun customizing the glass. Next time I buy jelly, I’m bringing a tape measure.
6. Baby baby baby.
Ah, dear reader, I am now like you, able to enjoy the redo only in pictures.
Just wait til you see the stain! Might be the only time in my life as a mother where I welcome a stain with glee.
In other news, I used to rent an apartment with a garden tub and shelf much like the one we’re installing. It had a shower, too; not a separate stall. My parents had a shower/garden tub combo in their Pulte home built in 1993. Anyway, we’re having trouble spec’ing this for our contractor, specifically finding a garden tub that is non-jetted, steel, and can be used with a shower (i.e. has a lip). If ya’ll in internetland can help, we’d be much obliged 
The US Congress has recently passed a bill that would end Network Neutrality on the Internet and it will soon be up for a vote in the Senate. This is an issue anyone who has a blog or web site, or works for a small company, or cares about free speech should be interested in.
There is a lot of misinformation on the internet. The big telecommunications have built websites that look like poorly funded citizens groups, and they really do their best to confuse the issue.
Here’s what you can do.
- Understand Network Neutrality.
- Call your senators. Be nice, brief, and professional. Say, “I am calling to voice my support for Network Neutrality and I would like to know how the Senator plans on voting on this issue.” If they are undecided, give them a simple reason why you favor Network neutrality. Something like this:
- “The internet has been key to our economic growth over the past 10 years. This is not a time to change its most basic principles.”
- “I work for a small business that uses the internet. My job depends on Network Neutrality.”
- “I already pay for internet access. I don’t want to be double-charged.”
- “I have a website and I can’t pay extra just so my mother-in-law can see the new floor in my bathroom.” (ok, not that one)
- Of course, spread the word.
Baby Erwin was born at home, 4:27am Saturday June 17th, 2006. 8 pounds 3 ounces (give or take an ounce of squirming on the scale.) 20 inches long. She and Christiane are doing well and finally getting some rest. She is all kinds of cute, and we are super-happy.
When we originally started designing the house, I spec’ed in a garden tub (non-jetted) for birthing. It had always been my dream to have a waterbirth, but with the last two the bathrooms were simply too small and the tubs too uncomfortable.
The tub is in, but not really ready, and neither is the baby it seems!
This past week, I was out of commission with a severe outer ear infection. My entire ear swelled and the swelling travelled down my neck and into my shoulder, into my sinuses and right eye, and up the back of my skull. My jaw was swollen shut and I couldn’t talk. Being about as pregnant as they come, I couldn’t take pain meds and had to simply suffer through it.
We made a trip to the ER (where I was asked three times when my water had broken–you mean, I wasn’t there to have a baby?!) and another to a specialist (you don’t want to hear that horror story). After our regularly scheduled false labor this morning, today was the first day I felt a little human again and got a good bit of sleep.
In between naps, we made a trek to the house. They were installing the hardwoods upstairs and had more piled in the livingroom. What a beautiful thing, that house. I feel so much pride. I considered a recent article in Dwell in which the couple finished construction on their home on the same day the baby was born. Now that is timing.
I don’t think we’ll be waiting that much longer for the baby at this point. A little more healing, and I am ready to tackle labor in or out of water. We’ll have to save the new tub for family baths and chill-out sessions.
But, don’t worry, when she comes, you know David will proudly post about it here… and then check the stats 
No baby. Not yet. I expected the house to go past it’s due date, but never the baby. As I write she is five days over her scheduled appearance. It has been a rough and sleepless 5 days.
There has not been much to post about the house for a while too. Since the drywall went in, my focus has shifted from “What happens next?” to “When do we move in?” Little things do not have the same thrill. As the outlets and light switches appeared, I did not feel compelled to photograph them.
But today some of the fans and light fixtures were installed. And it has changed the feel of the house dramatically. The house has gone from a thing that might be a house someday, to a house with messy construction stuff that needs to be cleaned up.
I let the boys pick out fans for their rooms. I made no promises, but they picked out reasonably priced fans with a modern feel. They were put in today and the kids were very excited. (I just hope they don’t expect the fans to go with them when they change bedrooms.)
 
The fans we picked out for the living room and office were slightly on the goofy side (as are all fans available at Home Depot), but the glass on the light is great. They are in, and it is good.
Our Ikea lights are the best so far. The sconces look greater than great in the piano niche. (You can also see these in President Bartlet’s Air Force One Office on The West Wing.)
This morning our older boy helped me assemble the pendants for the dining room. They are glorious. I hung one temporarily over the bread machine for safe keeping, and that dusty bread machine now glows in our kitchen as if anointed by angels.
It is completely unphotographable. I’ve seen many bad photos of the Knappa and now I know why people point their cameras at it. This is my bad photo of it. It doesn’t begin to capture how beautiful the light coming from it is.
I have also been building the pendant light that will go over the stairs. It is a vase I picked up a few years ago. I had been laid off shortly after buying a house. I believe this happened to roughly 65% of the population of Austin in 2000. I bought it and said, “This is optimism. I will get a job, renovate my house, and hang this as a lamp in it.”
And so it will be.
The Mega Catch arrived on Monday. It was a much needed pick-me-up after a very bad day of breaking cabinets. I immediately assembled it and put it in the backyard. I noticed a few details that were not available online.
First is the liquid trap. I had assumed this was some special stuff that was sold separately. In fact it is a deadly cocktail of tap water, dish soap, and soda pop. The soap is to break surface tension, but the only thing I know about the pop is that it must not be diet. If this thing was made by an American company, the liquid would be packaged and sold for $10 a gallon.
The net is an inferior catch but is provided for easier identification of species. Indeed, they don’t look much like mosquitoes after soaking for a while. I tried fishing them out with a plastic knife at the dinner table. This is one of those times when it’s nice to have a wife around to point out when I’m acting like a crazy person. I’m pretty sure we caught an albino mosquito (which replaced the Trammps song that was stuck in my head with a Nirvana song).
Second is the attracting lights. When I switched it on, red, green, and blue lights started flashing like the encore at a Duran Duran show (yes I’m that old). I checked inside for a disco ball. Nope, but it is lined with foil for a similar effect. A pattern of colored lights danced on the nearby fence and I wondered if I had just been hoodwinked out of 200 bucks. I chose a shady location near the source, where the lights won’t wake the neighbors.
Third is the timer. Why would a mosquito trap have a 7-day programmable timer? Maybe some people don’t want to kill mosquitoes on Sunday? Or maybe they want to save energy on Tuesday, when mosquitoes typically stay home for dinner.
Twelve hours later we had about 40 dead mosquitoes floating in the trap. After 12 more hours we had about the same number. And at 36 hours, maybe 10 more were added to the tub. I’m wondering if I’m doing something wrong or maybe we only had 50 or so mosquitoes. Three is a swarm as far as I’m concerned so 50 is a lot. Or maybe we just killed the 50 dumbest ones and the smart ones hang out by the trap to bite me on the ankles while I’m checking the tub for carcasses.
Day 4. Another break-in. This time smashing up the side door and the Pod. The new padlock is gone and the latch is wrecked.
The police came by to dust for finger prints. They burglars left some pretty clean foot prints (thanks to all the drywall dust and two clean steps), but they don’t do footprints for a crime like this. The officer says our house is gonna be bad-ass, man. And he said he would use our driveway to write reports at night. Ace is having temporary lights put in.
Day 5. I hired a guy to help. He asked if the cabinets came with instructions. Good one. He’ll be back tomorrow. I wrote down some notes for him, went home and took a shower.
I’m hoping day six is the last day.
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