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That’s it! We’re out of here!
We’re off for a brief vacation and a family wedding. Back next week for…drywalling!
We were not completely honest in our weekend round-up. There was more to the weekend, but we didn’t want to talk about it. Partly this is because it deserved its own separate entry, and partly because it took us several days to recover from the trauma.
This weekend, we picked out floors.
We made an appointment with the local building supply place’s design consultant. We thought this would be fairly painless. We knew what we wanted…pretty much. We had a shared vision…pretty much. We had highlighted some things that we liked in some Arts and Crafts books that were consistent…pretty much. How bad could it be?
Oh. Lordy.
We arrive bright and early Saturday morning, ready to go. Design Consultant (DC for short, ’cause we’re hip like that) makes a joke about how she frequently has to serve as a marriage counselor. Ha ha ha! What silly people fight over things like floors?
DC: Okay, so what do you want to start with?
M: The wood floors.
DC: What kind of wood floors?
C: The wood kind.
M & DC: (*Disapproving looks.*)
M: I like White Oak.
C: What’s that look like? Ew. That’s ugly.
M: What? It’s traditional.
C: It’s gray! It looks like a dead fish.
M: It’s wood! How can wood look like dead fish?
C: When it’s got green and gray undertones. I was hoping for something warmer. More golden.
DC: How about Beech?
C: What’s that look like?
M: Too flat. Not enough grain.
C: I kind of like it. It’s better than the dead-fish White Oak.
M: Would you stop with the White Oak?
DC: Okay…There’s Douglas Fir?
C: What’s that look like?
And on…and on…and on…until we ended up with…White Oak.
No, seriously. We did. Cherie couldn’t believe it either. But, we did go for the prefinished White Oak with a "Butterscotch" stain that makes it look less like dead fish and more like, you know, wood.
Like so:
Then we moved on to tile for the upstairs bathroom.
C: So, I was thinking white and black mosaic for the floor, maybe with a border, with subway tile for the tub surround.
DC: Oh, that’s a very classic look. You’ll never get tired of it! I have black and white in my bathroom, and I love it.
C: Or maybe I want blue…
DC: Blue with the white?
C: Do you think white is too institutional?
M: What about green?
DC: (*sigh*)
So, yes, she hated us. But, like a true professional, she got the job done.
We ended up with the black and white because that DC, she’s a smart woman. Seeing no end to our endless debating she made this statement:
"Listen guys, here’s the deal. You are on a limited budget. If you had all the money in the world, I’d encourage you to put in lavender tiles if you wanted, because you could rip it out when you got tired of it. But you don’t have all the money in the world, and you won’t be able to change it on a whim. So, go with the black and white tile. Paint your walls a color, then you can change it with a gallon of paint. But you will never get tired of the black and white."
We shut up.
Here’s what we ended up with:
All white 1 inch hex tile for the main floor:
with a black-and-white border that looks like an abstract wave, though you will have to imagine it because darn if we can figure out the tile company’s website.
White subway tile for the shower enclosure with a black insert, something like this, only ours will only have one black stripe:
(Photo mercilessly stolen from some poor schmo on Flickr because we couldn’t find a good example. Sorry about that!)
So the lovely Design Consultant lady did not lead us astray. In browsing blogs today, however, we discovered that we managed to come up with the exact same bathroom that every other bungalow owner has. Ah, well. We’ll stand out from the crowd with the fuchsia and purple paisley wallpaper that’ll go up.
DC: Say what?
We really have no shame. There is no houseguest that we will not put to work. They know this, and yet they keep coming.
This past week, the victims were Michael’s parents. Bubba Greg and Annie drove all the way up from South Florida. It took them three days of travel in heavy summer traffic. We gave them one day off, and then they got to…
dip shingles.
Hey, they said they wanted to!
This is Annie, showing off her superior dipping technique:
Sorry the picture is so blurry. Michael says it’s because of Annie’s blinding shingle dipping speed.
And this is Bubba Greg, with his farewell gift to Cherie:
They are a mixed blessing, those houseguests. Cherie thinks he’s actually laughing at her in this picture.
In other breaking news, we passed our electrical and plumbing inspection! Next up: insulation.
Like any diligent blog owners, we like to follow our referrer logs to see what fine folks are checking us out. Earlier this week, doing this caused us to question our very existence. Okay, not our existence so much as our house’s existence. Okay, not really our house’s… sorry. We’ll get to the point.
This Space For Rent used us as an example of a house that would not be considered a "True Craftsman" (scroll down, the entry is "Three Stickley Houses" from Monday, July 17). In our house-building tunnel vision, we weren’t even aware of the True Craftsman concept. We are now.
What’s a True Craftsman? Simple. It’s a house built from the plans that Gustav Stickley published in The Craftsman magazine. See this.
What’s not a True Craftsman? Every other Arts and Crafts house in America.
Why does anyone care? Authenticity and rarity. The vast majority of Arts and Crafts or Craftsman-style houses in America were built from Sears kits and other Stickley imitators. There’s nothing wrong with that–they are nice homes, they brought beautiful living to those with lower incomes, and they have produced some of the loveliest neighborhoods out there. But, for the purists, it’s the difference between a Prada handbag and a handbag you buy from some guy on the street that says "Prada." Both bags look nice and hold your stuff, but in the end only one is the "real thing" and Those Who Care will always know the difference.
In the True Craftsman sense, the "real things" are the homes that were built directly from Stickley’s plans, not those merely inspired by them. There’s only a few of those. How many? We’re not sure, and we couldn’t find an answer out there in internet-land. If you are a true Stickley geek and you have an idea, please feel free to share.
All of the discussion around this seems to focus on houses built in the same period as the design. We don’t know how the True Craftsman people would react to a new house being built from Stickley’s design. We have made changes to the plans, which may disqualify us. But, then, this house also had changes, and it’s considered true. We’re following Stickley’s philosophies as much as we are able, including using building materials found on the site, paying attention to texture, details, built-ins, and making as much use of the space as we can. And would it matter that we didn’t have full plans, but just the little drawings from the magazine? We don’t know that either.
Where does all this leave us and our little house? Um…dunno? Is that an answer?
We’re not architecture geeks. We picked this house because it was a beautiful example of a simple family home and it fit both our needs and our aesthetic. And, yes, we thought a modern update of a Stickley was a pretty darn neat idea. But True Craftsman? That’s a lot of pressure. We’re not sure what Those Who Care would think of us.
But we’re okay with that. Those people seem wound pretty tight.
Long-time readers will remember a time when all we did was cut down trees. Over and over again. For a while there, it seemed that all we would ever do was cut down trees. It even made us slightly delusional at one point. But we did it. We whined about it here afterwards, but we did it. And then we actually started building the house and forgot the pain of cutting down trees. Foolish, foolish us.
This weekend we got to experience it all again. We had to finish clearing the area for the septic system and field, mostly in the “build it and they will come” optimism that the only thing keeping our contractors from finishing was us holding up our end of the bargain. Because it is now July and the heat (and, despite all the eyebrow-raised doubt received from our more Southerly friends in this post, it is hot. Trust us), and the humidity, and the bugs are in full swing, cutting down trees this time was a whole new exciting experience. Plus, we learned that the layers of clothing required to work outside in Maine in February and March (when it is cold, unless folks from Alaska and Saskatchewan would like to argue about that with us, not that we’re bitter) also serve a protective function. Shorts and t-shirts don’t work quite as well in protecting from scrapes and bumps and downed spruce trees that seem determined to exact their revenge by inflicting 10,000 microscopic wounds.
So we spent the weekend covered in sweat, bug spray, sunscreen, dirt, sap, and a wee bit of blood. And we didn’t finish. But we did what we could. And then we went to our reward: the local swimming hole.
We don’t get to do that in February.
Cherie has a very strict rule about complaining about the weather. You can either complain about being cold in the winter or complain about being hot in the summer. Pick your battle. Complaining about both just makes you a whiner. Cherie chooses to complain about the winter (a fact blatantly obvious to anyone who has read the entries prior to June).
Therefore, this is not a complaint, but merely an observation. It is very hard to motivate to go build a house when the effort of eating breakfast causes near heat exhaustion. Especially when the tasks for the day include moving hundreds of pounds of chopped down trees and mucking around in gallons of stain.
And even more especially when the neighbors across the street just put their kayak on top of their car and headed down to the ocean. That kind of taunting should be illegal.
There is a conversation about this blog that is frighteningly common in our house. It goes something like this:
M: Hey, did you put up that picture of the [shingles/wiring/random 2x4 that looks like every other 2x4 in the house]?
C: No.
M: Why not? We did something.
C: It’s not a good entry. There’s no story. You want me to just slap random pictures up there?
M: But…but…it’s progress! And I took all those pictures!
C: I’m not going to put something up unless there is some sort of comprehensive structure and storyline to the entry.
M: *sigh*
C: Stop looking at me like that.
The problem is that housebuilding doesn’t always happen in big, easily relatable chunks with a nice storyline, especially housebuilding the way we do it (slow and painful with lots of swearing). So this is a catch-up entry. Here, in no particular order, are some of the things we’ve been seeing:
Electrician handiwork in the basement:
C: Wow. Just…wow.
M: I don’t understand how that man works.
The final brackets under the bay window:
C: Those look great! Um…how are they different from what was there before?
M: They are white! And pretty. And there is a gentle, subtle curve in the front, see? And did you see how nice the underside of the window looks?
C: Uh-huh. What else we got?
M: You have no soul.
A backdoor:
C: Yay! Something to keep out the mosquitos!
M: Well, we still don’t have a front door.
C: *sigh*
The well drilling in process:
M: He gave us all complimentary ear plugs!
C: I am so happy I missed this.
The completed well:
M: I told you that the pipe sticking out of the ground wouldn’t be a big deal.
C: I’m not worried about the pipe. I’m worried about the industrial wasteland surrounding the pipe.
M: Landscaping is next year.
And some last minute clearing for the septic:
C: Speaking of industrial wasteland…
M: Chainsaw! More chainsaw!
…and finally some to drink.
The well was drilled yesterday. Water was found at 225 feet. This is slightly deeper than expected since all the neighboring wells are under 200 feet, but we like think it’s because we are Special.
The electrician is done wiring the walls too, which means our list of five Big Things:
1) The Electrician
2) The Plumber
3) The Well Driller
4) The Septic System
5) The Electricity
now looks like this:
1) The Electrician
2) The Plumber (he’s only halfway done)
3) The Well Driller
4) The Septic System
5) The Electricity
Don’t know about you, but we’re calling that progress!
Don’t think that the silence means there is nothing going on. There’s shingle dipping, there’s shingle shingling, there’s window trim, there’s plumber and electrician, there’s forced enslavement of relatives, there’s final interior wall-building, there’s so much going on that there’s no time to write about it.
We will try to get back on the updating wagon soon. As soon as July 4th passes and lives return to normal.
In other news!
We would like to welcome our newest niece: Parker Anne, born Sunday afternoon to Michael’s brother Clinton and his wife Julie. Parker’s got a couple of weeks to rest up, then we’ll put her on shingle-dipping duty.
