M and C Build a House

Please Remember That the Blog Is Not Called “M and C Build a GARDEN”

November 2, 2009 in Landscaping, Uncategorized | 3 comments

Every once in a while, it occurs to us that the exterior of our house is extremely depressing. We are still surrounded by fill (brown) and blown down trees (brown) and lots of stumps and dirt (brown and brown). During the summer, the green of the leaves help disguise the problem, but after the foliage has passed by and the leaves are on the ground, there’s no more denial. Our landscaping reaches the depths of its brown misery in the early spring. When the dingy, muddy snow melts to reveal the even dingier, muddier ground beneath it, with months to go before the leaves return, it’s a mighty depressing farewell to winter. For the last few springs, Cherie has always hit this point, this height of brownness, and desperately wished that she’d thought to plant some bulbs the fall before so that this sad, dingy, brown time of year would have a spot of color in it.

Today was a sunny, remarkably warm November 1st, so we decided it was now or never. We picked a spot in view of the house and started digging. And digging. And digging. And digging.

Because do you know what Maine dirt has?

rockpile

Rocks.

Lots and lots of rocks.

These rocks all came out of a 4 by 9 foot area of dirt. Yes. That’s correct. Let’s all take a moment to ponder what those early subsistence farmers in Maine went through, shall we?

Right. Moving on.

Anyway, we finally loosened up enough area to plant our 12 lousy narcissus bulbs.

annabelbulb

Now all we can do is wait impatiently for spring when these little beauties brighten our lives. Until then…

planting

brown.

And in case you think that Annabel didn’t look too thrilled to be helping, you are right. She abandoned us pretty quickly in favor of this:

leaves2

Kids today.

And Behind Door Number One, We Have…Door Number Two!

September 1, 2009 in Exterior | 5 comments

A while back, you may remember, we bought ourselves a new front door.

You don’t remember that? Yes, well, it was some time ago, we admit, but it did happen. And since we bought it, that door has held a special place of honor in our dining room. Oh, yes, we admired it all winter long. Cherie would occasionally stroke it and talk to it about how pretty it was and Michael would tell it stories about how some day it would grow up to be a real door, but that’s about it. But no more! Last week Michael had a few days in-between jobs and decided to devote himself to some long-delayed house projects. And high on the list was the door.

First, he ripped out the old door.

ripped apart

This is one of those projects Cherie was really glad she missed.

Next he extended the door jamb. Remember that the door was such a deal because it was an exterior door for a 2X4 wall, not a 2X6. In order to make it fit our wall, the frame needed to be extended those extra 2 inches.

door jamb extension

The white part is the extension, the unpainted wood is the original frame.

Then it was merely a case of installing the frame and hanging the door. Here’s the finished product on the inside. On the left you will see the sad, dejected white fiberglass door that was removed.

doneinside

On the table you will see a sad, dejected Annabel shoe. We don’t ask anymore.

And–bada bing, bada boom–this was the view Cherie had on her return from work: a pretty new wooden door that’s much more suited to the house.

doneoutside

It goes without saying that this is how Cherie prefers all housework to be completed, right? While she is off somewhere else entirely? Right.

We’d call that a pretty successful day of door swapping.

The Things We Know

August 14, 2009 in Complaining, Life | 6 comments

We know we are hideously behind in posting. There’s stuff going on, it’s just not making it here because of, well, life. (Hint: It’s shingling. We are still shingling.)
We know that you are really sick of shingling posts, which is why we aren’t doing much posting. (Hint: That’s not really the reason. Cherie’s laziness is really the reason.)
We know that all the picture links prior to our move to WordPress in December 2008 are broken. This happened because when posts were brought over from Typepad, the pictures didn’t import. That happened because Cherie didn’t read the fine print. (Hint: you should be SHOCKED at that.)
We know that we need to reimport all the pictures, and we will, except that the computer that has all the pictures on it is off at the computer hospital. We have back-ups, but the thought of digging through all the photo CDs to find the right ones is, um, daunting. (Hint: It’s possible we can’t even remember where the back-up CDs are.)
We know that we will feel extremely accomplished once we reimport all the pictures, because our archives will be useful again. Especially those early archives when we posted more than once every two months and, in fact, posted as often as twice a week. (Hint: We are horrified to learn both that we were once that motivated and that our past motivation means we have hundreds of photos to reimport.)
We know that this post is really yet another giant pile of excuses but what we can say, blog readers? We are excusing-making people. (Hint: We really are.)
We know that this excuse-heavy post is really only salvageable with a good picture of Annabel, but we don’t have one of those so here’s one of her eating watermelon on the back deck. (Hint: We actually think this is a good picture, but then, we are her parents and thus are allowed to think that.)

watermelon

We know that we never actually mentioned that we now have a back deck. (Hint: We didn’t? Oops.)
We know that this format has really overstayed its welcome. (Hint: Bye.)

Running to the (New, Improved) Bathroom

June 12, 2009 in Bathroom | 6 comments

Back on Memorial Day weekend, which was how long ago? Almost three weeks? Really? Sorry. Anyway, way back then Cherie and Annabel went to Vermont to watch Cherie’s sister Angela run the Vermont City Marathon. It’s become a bit of tradition to do so, as she runs it every year. It’s great fun to go cheer her on because she cuts an inspirational and striking figure on the course.

See? Here she is, ready to start:

vermont

Well, she’s in there somewhere. She did great and finished in just over 4 hours, despite inclement weather and generally not feeling her best. But that’s not really the point of this post.

Michael didn’t go along this year because he had quite a bit of work lined up for the weekend. For other people. Other people who were going to pay him in real money. We decided that would be a priority over a trip to Vermont. Since he would be on his own for four days, he thought it would be a good time to redo some of the drywall in the bathroom.

See, the bathroom was the very first room that we drywalled. And mudded. And taped. And sanded. And mudded. And sanded. And mudded. And sanded. And let’s not ever do drywall again, okay?

If you take any piece of advice from this houseblog, take this: do not make your first attempt at mudding and taping drywall in the dampest, steamiest room in the house. In the almost three years since the bathroom was done, the steam took quite a toll on our amateurish attempt at drywall mudding.

Here’s what it looked like in the shower:

showerbefore

And outside the shower:

mainbefore2

We had peeling tape, bubbling drywall, and cracks galore. Not a pretty sight.

So while Cherie and Annabel were gone, Michael took time out from his consumption of greasy Chinese food and bad action movies to retape and mud the seams. It was quite a sacrifice, since it meant he couldn’t shower until it was done. (That went with the whole theme of the weekend, really.)

Here’s the shower now:

shower finished

And outside the shower:

mainafter

We can all agree that the finished product is a great improvement, yes? We still need to repaint, but we are not quite as in love with this color as we were at the beginning, so we are taking some time to look at some other options.

Cherie is pleased to tell you that Michael was so lonely without his family that even after finishing the work in the upstairs bathroom he kept working away his sorrows by tiling the downstairs half-bath before sobbing himself to sleep in his empty, quiet house:

downstairsfinished

But the sobbing had nothing to do with this pinwheel tile, which looks fabulous.

Needless to say, Cherie is planning her next trip away as quickly as possible.

No Good Deed Goes Uncomplained About

May 27, 2009 in furniture, interior | 2 comments

A few weeks ago, Michael volunteered to help out a friend who was moving into a new work space, a space previously occupied by a builder. The former tenant had left some of his custom-built furniture behind and the owner of the building told her to use what she needed and get rid of the rest. So Michael helped her retrofit an old desk to suit her needs and when all was said and done, he left with this:

drawers

A custom-built mahogany two-drawer filing cabinet.

We’d always planned on having a built-in desk in the corner of the living room, tucked away in a little nook left for that purpose at the base of the stairs. This wasn’t to be a major workspace, but just a spot to keep the laptop, sort mail, and write checks. Our idea was to modify a classic Stickley desk for this purpose, maybe with a drop-front to help make the most of the space (and to hide our “important papers” in an emergency guest situation). Or maybe with lots of pigeon holes (for more of those “important papers” and possibly some “important rubber bands”). We hadn’t really worked out the details yet. But in any case, our plans didn’t involve a filing cabinet. But…custom-built. Mahogany. Shiny. Pretty. Who are we to argue?

completedesk

We also were given some mahogany plywood for a top. A quick trim and a few screws later… ta-da! A desk.

Clearly, this isn’t a permanent solution. The cabinet in that small space doesn’t leave enough legroom for a chair and it doesn’t have any of those all-important quick hiding places. But for now, it works pretty well.

So what’s the problem?

Well, having these pretty new filing cabinets around means that we need to fill them with the aforementioned important papers and rubber bands. And before we can do that, we need to sort through our current storage situation.

paperwork

Right. We’ll see you in a few months.

(Cat not included.)

(Or is she?)

A Picture Is Worth At Least 150 Words

April 28, 2009 in Exterior, Shingles | 6 comments

The weather was beautiful on the coast of Maine this weekend. Unseasonably high temperatures up in the mid-70s with bright beautiful sunshine meant that we had to get outdoors. And what could we do outside?

Hmmmm….

Well, there was a little bit of this:

flashing

That’s copper flashing (in case there are any Cheries out there).

Then there was some of these:

nails

Yes, we know that it is misspelled on the can. We know what we mean, so let’s all move on, eh?

And, of course, where you find those, you find this:

gun

Hello, old friend.

Because we are almost up to the second floor windows, we needed some of this:

trim2

Trimmy trim trim. (You try to find something witty to say about trim.)

And, of course, it almost goes without saying that we had plenty of these:

shingles

Cherie occasionally has nightmares about being attacked by shingles. We have no idea why.

And that was our weekend in a nut shell. A little of this, a little of that, and a whole lotta this:

shingling

You are impressed at our progress, right? Please tell us you are impressed.

Because this was an incredibly boring post and you deserve a reward for making it this far, we include a gratuitous Annabel shot for your enjoyment. You’re welcome.

ladder

Look at that wary expression. She knows what’s in store at the top of that ladder.

A Fate Worse Than Trim

April 20, 2009 in Uncategorized | 2 comments

We always have such big plans, don’t we? “Let’s build a house,” we say. “How about we start a blog?” we ponder. “Let’s save the wood from the trees that we had to cut down and use it as our trim,” we decide.

Mm-hmm.

And that’s how we end up living in a half-built house, with a website we never update, and a pile of logs sitting in our front yard for a year-and-a-half.

We had such high hopes for those logs. But, alas, our original plan fell through when our pulp truck connection didn’t work out. We always meant to find another way to get the logs to the sawmill, but it turned out to be one of those things that was really, really easy to put off. And thus they never went off to become real boards, but sat in our yard (and sat and sat and sat) until, finally, we noticed this:

mushrooms

Mushrooms.

Wood that has mushroomed isn’t really wood you want to use as trim.

We just let them sit too long. Typical.

Luckily, as always, we had an alternate plan.

It involved chunking the logs up into smaller bits,

sawed

hitting them repeatedly with a sharp, heavy instrument

splitting

and stacking them neatly in a row, where they will stay until they are needed to keep Cherie’s feet warm next winter.

woodpile

Not quite what we were hoping for, but in the battle of window trim versus warmth, warmth always, always wins.

The House That One Sheet of Plywood Built

February 10, 2009 in Kitchen | 6 comments

Every so often, someone who for some reason feels the need to stroke Cherie’s ego a bit will suggest that she should turn this blog into a book. After she finishes cackling, Cherie briefly considers that if she were to take on such a foolish venture, she should name it, “One Sheet at a Time.”

We’ve written before about what creative (and desperate) folks like ourselves can do with one sheet of plywood when properly motivated (and desperate).

Well, we’re at it again!

This was our entryway:

closetbefore1

It’s not the most organized closet in the world. Or perhaps that’s an understatement? The lack of shelving in the closet meant that all of the winter gear that we own (and given the living-in-Maine thing, that gear is considerable) lay strewn about hither and yon. That meant in order to find the bag we needed, we needed to dig through all the boots, hats, gloves, scarves, snowshoes, and dog toys that we didn’t need. Good times.

So Michael went ahead and addressed the issue using our old friend: the single sheet of plywood. A few cuts, a screw here and there, and a face frame, and tada! Done! A shelf. We organized everything, sorted it into boxes to go on the shelf, and, just that quick, rediscovered our floor.

[insert picture that we forgot to take here. Ahem. Sorry. But it looks much better!]

But, wait, you say. One closet shelf doesn’t use a whole sheet of plywood! What did they do with the rest of the wood?

Lest you leave here thinking that we are slackers…

We took this empty space:

before11

(Why, yes, we did consider cleaning off the kitchen countertop before taking a picture for the entire internet, but ultimately decided: nah. Why pretend?)

(Also, did you not see the entryway closet? Didn’t that give you a good enough sense of our housekeeping skills?)

(Where were we?)

Oh yes. We took that empty space and turned it into:

kitchenafter1

Open shelves that will serve as the new home for various bowls and other more attractive kitchenware.

Not bad, eh?

And the moral is: one sheet of plywood is your friend. If you are, like us, good thinkers. (Also, desperate.)

Welcome To the New Casa, Kids

December 28, 2008 in Uncategorized | 2 comments

If you are reading this, you’ve found your way to our new home. Please ignore the boxes and dust while we rearrange. Things will likely be changing here for a while.

If you read this blog through a reader, you may need to change your settings. See the “Subscribe to this feed” link at the top. And let us know if you are having any problems with the site. We likely will not be able to fix your problem, but we will nod sympathetically at you while you complain. And, really, did you expect more?

Welcome!

New for 2008: M and C Build a Tree

December 22, 2008 in Uncategorized | 10 comments

This year marks our third Christmas in Chez M and C. Our first year we scavenged a tree from our land, with predictably depressing results. The second year, suitably distracted by a new baby and a flurry of snowstorms, we just bought one and remembered what a Christmas tree was supposed to look like.

This year…well… you know our motto:

“Why pay for something decent when you can throw a baby on your back and tromp through the snow in search of a completely imperfect, but free, tree?”

(That’s one of our mottos, anyway.)

We divided duties in the usual fashion. Cherie carried Annabel and gave helpful suggestions while Michael did the actual work. It didn’t take us long before we found a tree we thought might work.

(He is actually sawing the tree down in this picture, though it doesn’t much look like it.)

We brought the tree in, shook off all the snow, trimmed off the bottom branches, set it up in the stand, and took a good hard look. And…hmmm.

Seems a bit sparse, doesn’t it?

It’s not that bad, of course, and it’s certainly light years ahead of that first sad, little tree. But it could be better.

Luckily, we are very (veeeery) used to making do and thinking creatively. And we had all those extra branches that were trimmed off the bottom. Why don’t we just drill some holes…

Whittle down those spare branches…

And use them to, you know, fill things out a bit?

That is better, don’t you think? Now it just needs some lights and decorations…

And we’re ready to go.

Oh, wait, one more thing. How could we forget? The star! That most valuable star that we made last year when we desperately needed something to top off our otherwise wonderful tree.

That’s what we are looking for. Now that is a proper DIY tree.

Happy holidays! May all your trees be jerryrigged and your ornaments homemade!