For the last few years my husband and I have been renovating the house that we bought in March of 2018. I’ve been posting pictures of it on my social media and writing up articles about it since we bought this money pit… And I was finally, finally, starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. That light might just have been a hanging bulb at the two-thirds point, who knows!?! (Full disclosure- The house is done and sold. It was a LONG slog to finish it that I’m still mentally processing… When I started writing this, I was deep in the trenches.)

It’s exciting when you get to that point in a renovation, when you start testing paint samples on the walls. Right then I had these beautiful stripes on 6 or 7 walls, just to test how they look in different lights. One looked too green…one looked too brown…one looked too blue/purple…and then there’s that ONE, that One that still looked White Grey on every wall. Finding the right paint color is almost like finding the right pair of running shoes or the best chocolate bar, sometimes you just know when you’ve got The One.

I feel the same way about tile, when you find the right tile combination things just fit…And in this last year when everything has gone truly sideways, heaven knows we all need things that are soothing.

While this Covid period has been unsettling for everyone, our family has had more upheaval than most people that we know. In February of 2020, my husband was offered a job hundreds of miles away from our project house (the house we were living in!). Our initial thought was for him to move ahead of the rest of the family and I would stay behind so the kids could finish the school year while I managed the finishing of the house. We figured this rough patch would last a few months, 3 or 4 at most. I had been paying close attention to the news, I was very aware of the Covid threat, but when we made this plan and he signed for the job there were 2 cases in the United States. We all know what happened with the numbers from there.

March 13th. I got the Voicemail Blast that nearly stopped my heart. The schools were shutting down in-person instruction, until at least the end of March, due to Covid-19 concerns. Classroom teachers would be sending out activities for each grade, using their chosen digital platforms each day, please make sure to check my email for these instructions… With one phone call I’d become a Home School Teacher and half my day of construction was gone. Each day that we worked on homework, there was a different issue to work through, it took at least 4 weeks to work the kinks out of the system. Remote learning went through March. Then through Spring Break. Then the governor extended the remote schooling mandate through the end of April. I’m spending half of my day working on the house and half of my day being a home school teacher; not in that order. I was going to bed well after midnight every night just so I could have some time to myself, but I knew the situation was becoming unhealthy.

My husband meanwhile started his job hundreds of miles away in mid March. Imagine moving into an unfurnished house last April…back when no one could find toilet paper or cleaning supplies and half the grocery store shelves were empty? Getting him set up in our empty house was no picnic! Thank heavens for the kindness of a couple guys working at Home Depot who tipped me off to a shipment of toilet paper that was being unloaded the next morning. The half pallet that was delivered was gone by 10am that next day. Thankfully, my husband had gone over there shortly after they opened. Home Depot toilet paper may not be the fluffiest stuff, but it sure beats going without!

When the Governor announced that the schools would not be resumeing in-person in instruction during the 2020 school year, I will admit to feeling the “depths of despair”. I could not see a way to continue home schooling two kids and finish a house and keep all of us safe with Covid cases rising quickly.

As often happens in life, blessings come from those around you who are inspired from above. Knowing about the bind I was in, my husbands parents (who live only a couple hours from the new job) offered to have the kids come stay with them while they finished the school year remotely. In the same week, my Mom decided that she was not going to wait until she felt that it was safe to fly again to come help me on the house; she was going to drive herself across the country…. So at the end of April I tearfully left my kids in the loving care of my in-laws and drove back to the construction site/house that felt like a mill-stone around my neck.

I took these pictures about a week before I stared hiring drywall people. I knew I would need reminders of how much progress had been made while I was working. What I didn’t know was just how much I would rely on these pictures, the nearly eternal optimism of other people and my own capacity burying my sense of panic in order to deal with the job at hand.

Things did get easier once my Mom got there…

There’s nothing like the world around you grinding to a sudden halt to make you think about everything. And I do mean EVERYTHING. While most people …

#SaveIndependentArt

There’s nothing like the world around you grinding to a sudden halt to make you think about everything. And I do mean EVERYTHING. While most people were busy hoarding meat and trying to find paper towel and joining the endless search for toilet paper (seriously people stop hoarding the f-ing toilet paper), I started thinking about a few other things.

It started while I was on FaceTime with my Mom, doing the socially responsible thing, and taking a break from painting a bedroom. She was expressing concern for some friends that she’s made in her retirement. I use the term “retirement” loosely, as she’s one of the more active people I know. I haven’t met the friends that she is concerned about, but I hear so much about them that I feel like I know them well. They are independent jewelers who’ve been designing and creating their own work for, in some cases, decades as artists and teachers.

In the best of times, without a viciously contagious virus shutting the world down, these artists often function on the smallest of margins while trying to make a name for them selves. One of my Mom’s friends had just won a very prestigious award and wasn’t allowed to go public with the news until a particular trade show…That trade show is now cancelled until an unnamed time, and this artist is out all the cash that he’s had to put up for the registration, reservations, materials, etc., that he would have taken to that show where the announcement would have been made. And this is just one example!

There are thousands of independent artists in communities around the United States. They enrich our daily lives in countless ways, adding beauty to our communities, educating in our schools, volunteering their talents in times of need… They make the beautiful yarns in the local yarn shop, the personalized watercolor or your favorite Etsy print maker, the people who you buy from at you local farmers market, those are the people whose livelihoods are now in jeopardy.

In the last week of monitoring the news, because I’m that kind of person, I’ve noticed a very important thing or two. The Feds finally passed their 2 trillion dollar stimulus plan, with bipartisan support (someone check Hell, it must be frozen), and it included some cash for regular folks, HUGE bailouts for some industries and for small businesses there are low to interest-free loans… IMO it should be the other way around. In all honesty who is more likely to bounce back faster, a giant multi-national business or a small local place now saddled by a loan from the Feds??? Sooo it looks like it’s up to us, you and me and our neighbors and friends down the street and people we know in the PTA and from Church; it’s up to US to make sure that the independent businesses don’t disappear!

Where can I find these people??? I hear you asking, well, I’m glad you asked! I’ll share my personal wishlist, with some of my favorite artists, a couple are bigger names, a couple are just starting to make their mark, but they are all worth your time and a bit of you CASH if you can spare some right now!

Michael Boyd- He makes the most amazing stacked stone, imaginative jewelry and I dream of owning one of his rings some day…You can find him on IG @ michaelboydstudio or michaelboyd.com

Cj Hendry- She is a once in a generation talent, her drawings are so lifelike it’s hard to believe they aren’t photographs and the spaces that she chooses for her exhibition openings are breathtaking. She’s a true visionary talent! Find her on IG @ cj_hendry or http://www.cjhendry.live

Marla Aaron- When I first became obsessed with custom jewelry as an adult, it was Ms. Aaron’s things that drew me in. I’m head over heels for her basic Locks and Silver Cuff bracelet. The simplicity and range of her designs, and the range of prices that are available make her jewelry available to everyone who can place an order from their computer! Find her on IG @ marlaaaron or marlaaaron.com

SeeWhatISeaDesign- You need a personalized gift, but not something insanely expensive? A personalized watercolor is a fantastic solution! I can attest to how beautiful these paintings turn out, as I happen to have one on my wall. She also has many options for notebooks, stationary, Easter cards, mugs and I think wrapping paper soon…. She’s on IG @ seewhatiseadesign or search SeeWhatISea on Etsy

Ryan Gardner- He’s an up and coming jeweler and he happens to make the most incredible looking earring that I’ve seen in a very VERY long time. And I’m a jewelry and gem junky so I look at this stuff all the time. He’s able to make quartz look like it has little gold bubbles coming up through it! I’d love a pair of his earrings… You can find him on IG @ ryangardnerdesigns or ryangardnerdesigns.com

String Theory Yarn Company- This yarn store happens to be my personal favorite yarn store, but I’m placing it on the list as a representation of all independent yarn stores. Most of them have IG accounts and I’d bet that most of the owners are willing to ship right now… And what better time to work on those knitting skills than when we’re all stuck inside anyway!

One last though…On the day that you’re looking for that special thing for that extra special someone, think of the heartbreak if all the people who make those special things have been forced to stop and go back to their office jobs???

We’re NOT done with demo just yet. I figured I’d get that out of the way before anyone though otherwise.

We have hit the point in the renovation where things are starting to change shape though, and I have to admit that this is extremely satisfying. The change is happening slowly, achingly slowly, glacially slowly some times, but it’s the fact that change is happening, that isn’t behind or inside the walls, is joy inducing and terrifying at the same time. The terrifying side of this progress is stepping into the unknown. I don’t know how to do a bunch of the things that need to be done to get the new walls built to make one bathroom into two! So I did what children have done since the beginning of time when they’ve come up against a problem they don’t know how to solve; “Mom, could you help me…???”

Thankfully, my Mom is amazing (we’ve covered this before), and she was able to get a couple inexpensive plane tickets which allowed her to come and teach me how to frame internal walls, and do it THE RIGHT WAY. (Full disclosure: I almost called this article “How to Build The Wall THE RIGHT WAY”, but I did NOT want to wade into those murky political waters… I’ll save those for another time and place; if you know me, you know where my multicultural loving self stands.)

Since we had already removed the bathroom drywall on all sides, and taken down the ceiling from the side of the family room that we are planning to turn into the kitchen and master bathroom we had easy access to the joists to attach anchoring braces for the framing walls. The first step in the process was to make a rough drawing and measure out where the walls should be; keep in mind that you are going to have to put doors in and that those doors will most likely interact with other doors if they are in hallways… Basically the fist step in the process is to do more measuring that you’d ever think was necessary, and then to a bit more to make sure that you initial measurements are correct. I would also recommend taping out the shape of the walls and doorways on the floor; if you are a more visual person like I am this is extremely helpful. You want to make sure all your proportions are right. Once you’ve figured all the sketching out, make sure you know the supplies you need. Most of our framing walls required standard 2x4s, but we did have one bathroom wall that required 2x6s to accommodate the venting and piping that is going through. One thing that I found was invaluable during this project was our larger nail gun; that along with our pancake air compressor were key tools in putting everything together.

The hardest parts of what we were doing was planning for the doorways and the transom window in the bathroom wall. That’s right, there’s going to be a transom window in the top of our bathroom wall. I was worried about the back of the kitchen being dark so this will allow for the light from the bathroom window to go through the wall. Sigh! The thought makes me happy!

After you cut everything, lay it out on the floor like a giant puzzle, because that’s really what it is, and make sure that things measure up right. Another tool that is essential for this job is a carpenters square, you might have seen one hanging in the back of someone’s garage or basement, they look like large steel or aluminum 90 degree corners. You want to make sure that your corners are in fact corners. Some saw horses and a circular saw, or a table saw, or something with a setup like that also makes things go faster, anything so that you don’t have to hand saw your 2x4s…

After we nailed the bathroom/rear kitchen wall into place into place my Mom was nice enough to hold enough to hold up the salvaged window that will be the transom window so that I could see what it will look like; eventually. Of course I did the same when she hopped off the ladder.

Now all we need to do is wait till the rest of the plumbing is replaced, then start on the electrical, get the floors redone, think about the tile choices, work on the new bathroom vanities…

I was almost certain that I was done with demolition. That our house was done being a place that was almost constantly full of the fine, floating dust that can only be created when one is tearing things apart…but I should have known better. I should have known that just when you think you’re done, you remember that there’s that one section of things that you needed take down that you forgot about; and in my case, I somehow forgot about most of a wall.

We needed to test a theory about whether or not there was insulation in the wall between the room that will be our kitchen and the garage, and if there wasn’t would we be able to get any in there with the space that we had…

NO. There was NO insulation in the wall. What you can’t really see in this picture is how little space there was between the wall and the brick: at most 1″, the width of those faring strips that the drywall was attached to plus a bit… Needless to say this made for some interesting questions and thoughts about whoever put this together. The rest of the wall continued in very much the same fashion, but with a couple surprises.

Notice anything weird about the outlet bellow? Look closely. Notice the conduit? No? That’s because the genius who installed that particular outlet decided it would be easier to drill the conduit through from the garage, through the double layer brick wall, than to bring it up along the wall from the basement (like you normally would). It’s just unreasonable.

I knew the garage and sunroom were not original. I KNEW IT! I absolutely sent my hubby an “I knew it! I told you so!”text after this header was uncovered. This is clearly, CLEARLY, a bricked over old window. I think after the massive fire that happened some time in the 1940’s (we think), the garage and sunroom were added and the window was bricked over. Although that does make me wonder why we still have the other window open to the garage…???

After finding these presents from the house, my hubby and I decided that the smartest thing to do was make sure that there weren’t any other MAJOR surprises hiding on this side of the first floor before we started rebuilding it, so the ceilings on that side of the first floor all had to come down.

Hey, there was a ceiling light up there…. More presents.

Now we’re ready to build some walls.

I realize that I’ve bee a bit absentee. It’s not that I haven’t been thinking of things to write, it’s just that I’ve been ridiculously busy.

Most of the activity was concentrated in two weeks; in those two weeks I had two road trips, took out a couple ceilings and walls, filled all of our garbage cans twice then filled a Bagster, and learned how to frame and build walls. Listing it all off again makes me think about a nap!

One of the things that we discovered not long after we moved into our house was that the bathroom sink on the second floor didn’t drain right, like it took minutes to drain a cup of water. I tried every trick I could think of; vinegar and hot water, baking soda and hot water, baking soda and vinegar, Draino… Nothing worked. We finally called in plumbers to take a look at a couple of the other issues in the house and they were kind enough to explain what happens to pipes sometimes when a house is left empty for years-the pipes rust on the inside, essentially choking them off. Think of it like the cholesterol that your doctor, and my doctor, freaks out about sometimes, closing off the veins. Unlike the cholesterol in your veins though, rust cannot be cleaned out! SO that marked one section of plumbing to be replaced.

Not long after that we needed to consult with a structural engineer to make sure things were all a-okay with the house structure, that is what lead me to remove the first floor bathroom ceiling in all it’s moldy nastiness. When you find damage that bad, there are so many scenarios that go running through your head, none of them are good and almost all of them require you to take apart the rest of the room and find out just HOW BAD things are.

And Oh baby, were things ever bad… Those of you with eagle eyes will notice something different about this collection of pipes. Starting with the fact that it is really a collection of pipes; materials that is! In this one little corner of the bathroom there was brass, copper, PVC, and galvanized piping. In case anyone is wondering, that’s not normal.

The first pluming picture is almost comical, not because it has a collection of materials, but if you glance at the picture you could mistake it for a game of Tetris. Especially with the three lines of electrical conduit going up the middle and being attached to the 2×4 with garden twine. I sent that particular picture to our plumber, just to let him know what we’d found behind the wall. He sent me a hilarious, one line response, “All of that has to go bye-bye.”

After discovering this interesting collection of materials, I spent some time with my flashlight in the basement and noticed some little drips on the floor. Someone at sometime decided that they’d just connect the plumbing in the house with whatever supplies they had around at the moment, in our case that became an issue because they used COPPER and GALVANIZED pipe in the same runs without taking the necessary precautions. These two materials do not play well together-when used in the same run they cause a chemical reaction in the copper pipe that causes pin holes to form in said copper pipes leading to leaks and damage!

So we need to have the plumbing in the house replaced. At least this way we won’t have to worry about the upstairs sink anymore.

Oh well!

I think that’s the nicest thing I can say about who ever the idiot is who worked on our first floor bathroom last. For starters, the proper way to repair a ceiling that has been water damaged IS NOT to simply leave the soaked and soggy drywall attached, and put another sheet of quarter inch drywall over it. The biggest reason that this cheap, and disgusting, “fix” didn’t work is that they didn’t bother fixing the reason for the damage in the first place! So the leak from the bathroom above persisted, till the leak went through both layers of drywall and they were forced to fix something in the offending pipes above…

But the drywall still looked like THIS underneath. I hope you can all keep your lunch after looking at that….

I wish the idiocy had ended there, but I wasn’t that lucky. Whenever they “repaired” the ceiling, they also decide to put new tile up in this bathroom. They decided it was a great idea to save themselves some time and put the tile up over the unsized wallpaper… So that when I went to take down the tile, there was not way to pop the tile off the wall like you could normally do with older tile. It was almost like they used glue instead of mortar! With every chunk of tile that came off, chunks of drywall collapsed too…

At this point, the only thing to do is tear out the rest of the drywall, and redo the whole bathroom. OH WELL! I didn’t really like the color of that toilet anyway… Ha ha ha!

Dear Dining Room Set,

Ever since I was little, I wanted something like you. Something big and beautiful, and old, to store other old and beautiful things inside… Something lovely to make a statement in my dining room.

Then I grew up, and bought a huge mess of a house with a formal dining room in the front of the house. I then succeeded in convincing my hubby that we needed a dining room set and found a lovely one for sale. We bought it from the original owners estate, they had apparently purchased it not long after they’d gotten married, in the 1940’s! It was very clear that the whole set had been treasured. A few years of dust came off with a quick wipe of some furniture polish and some shop towels, and if you didn’t know that soft furniture wax can do marvelous things to restore finish (and help keep furniture from drying out); it does and it’s a good thing to keep on hand.

The dining table and chairs are so lovely and fit the dining room in our old home so well that they, along with the matching buffet were used in the staged pictures of the house when we were getting ready to sell. Both photographers that we used asked who we had borrowed our furniture and odds and ends from, I could not help but grin from ear to ear when I told them that I hadn’t borrowed a thing!

However, now I find myself in a new place and space. This home has a completely different feel than our last home; lower ceilings, larger windows, lighter floors, and unfortunately, much smaller rooms. And quite honestly, you just don’t fit in the space we have now…it’s breaking my heart but, I think it’s time to let you go.

So I’ve posted you for sale, and I’m praying that someone emails me soon, someone who will love you and care for you as much as you deserve. And hopefully you’ll be around to be admired for at least another 70 years.