You are currently browsing the monthly archive for October 2006.
It seemed like everyone we knew who had built a house, or renovated a house, or moved to a house, warned us. "Don’t move in until it’s done," they all hissed. "Because if you do, you’ll never finish it."
Are you kidding? We don’t have a bathroom sink, or any cabinets, or even a place to hang our coats. Trust us, nothing will motivate you to keep working on the house like brushing your teeth in the tub or digging through a three-foot pile of coats on the floor to find the fleece that already has paint on it.
Or will it?
Truth is, we’ve slowed down a lot. Part of that is self-defense. We simply could not maintain the work ethic we had going on in August and September. It was inhuman. We worked all day, then put in a of couple hours drywalling, then went back to the rental to pack, then fell over at around midnight only to get up the next day and start all over. We sniped at each other. We complained a lot. We were tired all the time and were generally thoroughly unpleasant people. So it is really only natural that we should lighten up a little bit, right? Right?
Wait for it.
This Saturday was quite a wild one. It has become perfectly clear that Maine has moved out of early fall (crisp and colorful) and is now well into late fall (blustery and brown). Saturday was full of torrential downpours and high winds and general misery. We had plenty of work to do inside, but did we? Well, we half-heartedly sanded and primered the entryway and then decided that instead of working, what we really needed was a trip to Home Depot. Just for planning purposes, you understand. And, oh yeah, the phone needs a new battery so we’d better stop at the electronics store, too. And since we were going into town, we might as well stop for a pizza. It’s about lunchtime and there isn’t much food in the house. By the time we staggered home, fat from pizza and poor from Home Depot, we decided that on a stormy afternoon like this, what was really called for was a nap. We’ll work after the nap…whoops! We are supposed to be at a party at 6! No time to work.
Yes, we procrastinated. Just a smidge.
On Sunday morning we felt a bit guilty about the whole thing. We got an early start (helped along by daylight savings) and were plowing through the tile for the entryway–the start of an ambitious workplan for the day–when…the high winds finally knocked out the power. For 12 hours. *
So much for catching up. We hung what drywall we could, took a tour of our blowdowns (the storm helpfully took out most of the dead spruce that we were planning on clearing anyway. How thoughtful!), and went to a movie.
At this rate, we’ll have that bathroom sink by Christmas.
*Which we are not really complaining about. Some of the neighboring towns were out for two days.
Been wondering where we were?
Yeah, us too.
We’ve been trapped under insulation, burrowed under sink cabinets, and hunkered down in the basement trying to run phone line.
However, we are proud to announce that all of that effort paid off and that the basic functions of our house seem to be working very well. Heat? Check. Water? Check. Telephone (inside the house)? Check. Working stove? Check. Roof that made it through the first brutal windstorm of the season? Check. (Thankfully.)
Since it’s been so long, we thought we’d jump back in by taking a little walking tour of the house in its current state. Just so you can see exactly what we are living in.
First up, through the back door and into the kitchen:
C: That’s a nice sink.
M: And a nice dishwasher.
C: And a nice microwave that’s facing the wrong way because we don’t have a counter to put it on.
M: And a nice bar standing in for cabinets.
C: And nice plants in the window. Do you think they can photosynthesize through the dust on their leaves?
M: And nice paint chips that have been on the wall for two months because you can’t decide on a cabinet color.
C: Doesn’t matter, does it? What with the lack of cabinets?
M: I built you a sink! You are so needy.
Other side of the kitchen:
M: Didn’t take long to get the magnets up, did it?
C: Everyone has their priorities. And magnets are far more important than getting rid of the wires sticking out of the wall.
Next is the entryway. You may think it odd that we didn’t start the tour at the entryway. In fact, we can’t use the front door yet since there are no steps to the porch. For that matter, there’s really no porch, just a few pieces of plywood thrown down. So it isn’t the most useful entryway, but still:
M: I notice that you didn’t take a picture of the entryset I spent two days installing, but instead are showing off the loose tiles that you threw down in an hour because you wanted to see what they would look like.
C: She who wields the camera has the power.
Our living room. You might guess that there is very little living happening in this living room, and you would be quite right. Makes one heck of a woodshop, though:
C: I think we should just leave the miter saw there. It’ll go with the couch.
M: Excellent!
C: No.
M: You suck.
And the dining room. For a while there we had a piece of plywood across those sawhorses so that we could pretend it was a dining table, but then it started to seem like a cruel joke:
M: Ah, yes, the drywall staging area.
C: All that dust will flavor our meals for years to come.
M: Mmmm-mmm. Tasty.
At the top of the stairs is the laundry room. It’s very hard to take a picture of our laundry room, but we decided to show it anyway because it contributes to the general sense of chaos. Everything is in the middle of the floor because we haven’t taped and mudded yet. And the dryer is currently vented out the window:
M: Do you think we could hang the dryer outside the window to make more room in there?
C: The best part of this picture is that I took it over a week ago, and those same clothes are still on top of the dryer.
M: We rule.
Across the hall from the laundry room is the third and smallest bedroom, which will also be used as an office. We don’t like to talk about this room right now:
C: I don’t want to talk about it.
M: Now, to be fair, this is what our office usually looks like anyway.
C: I don’t want to talk about it.
Next to the room-that-shall-not-be-spoken-of is the guest room. This picture is several days old. By now, it actually has much more drywall up. And it actually had a guest in it (Cherie’s mom. She is a very tolerant guest.):
C: Nice door. Too bad there’s no doorway there.
M: It’s giving the Shop Vac something to lean against.
C: How kind. Do you think it could totter across the floor and hang itself in the doorway instead?
And back across the hall again to the bathroom. We once promised a better picture of the bathroom. This is not it:
C: Why does that paint color photograph so poorly?
M: Because you don’t know how to work the camera.
C: Maybe I was distracted by the trowel that is still in the window, even though it was last used two months ago.
M: That’s actually the trowel for the entryway tile. I didn’t use it in the bathroom.
C: Why is it there?
M: So that I know where it is when I start the entryway.
C: *sigh*
And a close-up of the floor, because we are very proud of the floor:
C: Oooohhhh. The floor.
M: Should we tell them about how the radiant heat makes it all warm and cozy?
C: No. Then they’ll all want to use our bathroom and they’ll never leave.
M: Good point.
And, finally, this is the master bedroom, including Nori the Neurotic Wonder Dog in a typical action pose. This room is currently serving not only as our bedroom, but also our dining room, living room, office, and zoo.
No, we didn’t just throw the cover over to make it look like we made our bed that day, like we do everyday without fail because we are not slobs. What are you insinuating?
C: What is she looking at? The flies in the window? Is she afraid that they are going to attack her?
M: She’s waiting for another layer to be added to her Princess and the Pea bed before she’ll sleep there.
C: Where’s the cat? Is she at least doing something useful?
C: Oh, right.
M: Still in the the rafters.
It will not come as a surprise to anyone who has met her that Cherie has a tendency to, well, exaggerate occasionally. She has even been known to, once in a while, very rarely, um, make stuff up. It’s all for the good of the story–really!
Therefore, we must come clean and tell you that in yesterday’s entry, which was written while Cherie was at work* and not in consultation with Michael, she posted a conversation that did not actually, in the normal definition of reality, occur. It certainly could have occurred, and has occurred many times in the past given Michael’s tendency to think that Cherie’s moments of genius are more moments and less genius.
But when Cherie got home and told him about the entry, Michael was, in fact, horribly offended that she would think that he wouldn’t want a phone booth in the front yard. In fact, Michael would like it publicly known that he is fully in favor of a phone booth in the front yard. As noted in the comments for yesterday’s entry, Michael has a bit of a thing for Superman and his first reaction to the phone booth idea was, "That would be great! I could change in there!"
So, it appears that we will, at some point, be putting in a (red, London-style) phone booth in front of the house so that Michael can continue under the delusion that he is, in fact, Superman.
(C: Perhaps this can wait until after there is no longer a miter saw in the living room? M: *sigh* I suppose.)
*And she was working hard! She was multi-tasking! Creating reports in one window and writing an entry in another while making phone calls with one hand and scheduling meetings with another. She was very busy and you are lucky she found time for an entry at all! Don’t you judge her!
Yes, yes we do. We think. Perhaps it’s buried in dust like everything else in this house? Anyway, we still don’t have pictures.
We are on a big home improvement bender these days, trying to bring our living conditions up to the standard enjoyed by those in other first-world countries. To wit:
1) We now have a kitchen sink. It works. Water comes out of the faucet and drains into the magic pipes that take it far, far away. Or at least a few hundred feet away into the septic field. This has revolutionized our lives, especially our cooking lives since we no longer have to run upstairs to fill pots out of the tub and then step outside to drain water into the backyard and then go back upstairs to wash the dishes in the tub. How civilized.
2) We now have a dishwasher. Well, we’ve had the dishwasher but it hadn’t been hooked up (see: no kitchen sink). It is now. The Dish Fairy has come to life.
3) We now have heat. The radiant heat is on in the bathroom upstairs, and it is just as delightful as we thought it would be. The baseboard heat is taking care of the rest of the second floor. The radiant for the first floor isn’t on yet, but only because we haven’t hooked up the thermostat. Perhaps tonight.
4) We now have telephone service. Kind of. Sort of. We have telephone service to the pole out in front of our house, and, as Cherie was helpfully told by the telephone company guy, we can plug right into that pole and use the phone! Super. Why don’t we just build a phone booth out there and forget the whole "inside phone thing"?
(C: Hey, that’s a great idea! Let’s build a phone booth. M: No. C: Why not? We can make it red and pretty like a London phone booth. It would be very cool. M: *icy stare* C: You think you’re the only one with good ideas.)
We had been told by the phone company rep that they ran the wiring to the inside of the house, so we told the electrician that he didn’t have to do it. Hey, guess what, the phone company rep lied. We’ll have to do it ourselves or call the electrician again.
(C: Or build a phone booth! M: Please stop.)
Everything we did this weekend was boring. Endlessly, endlessly boring. We are so boring that even we are sick of ourselves.
Cherie installed the reflective insulation for the radiant heat (*yawn*). Michael built a door for the basement (*snore*). We put in the door stops in the bedroom and bathroom, built a bedframe for the bed, and put up a closet rod (drool… *snort*). In a last-ditch effort to try and jazz things up, we put up a few sheets of drywall in the living room. This clearly indicates what sad, desperate people we are.
*sigh*
Wait. Perhaps we are just taking the wrong attitude here. Maybe what we need is some positive spin. Less defeatism, more panache.
Start over.
This weekend, despite crippling physical ailments including a wicked bad* head cold and a sinus headache, Michael overcame the odds and completed an insulated door for the basement! Not to be outdone, Cherie, driven on by the bitter chill of these autumn nights, single-handedly installed over 700 square feet of Reflectix insulation. Nothing would stand between this woman and warm toes–not even the threat of brain injury from the repeated smashing of her head into floor joists. But that wasn’t enough…oh no! In his ongoing efforts to placate his wife, Michael also built a bedframe to keep Cherie, that delicate flower, from the drafts of the floor and installed a closet rod so that her beautiful garments would not be rendered unwearable from wrinkling and cat-nesting. And then, just to prove he could, he installed door stops to protect the door hinges from overwork. What a guy! Cherie, meanwhile, kept the home fires burning by completing untold loads of laundry and spending three-quarters of an hour washing dishes in the bathtub. Truly extraordinary! Finally, our heroic duo managed to summon their last remaining energy to hang three (THREE!) sheets of drywall in the living room! How do they do it? And all before dinner!
Still boring, eh? Well, we tried.
*Sometimes we worry we aren’t being Maine enough. To compensate, we will start utilizing Maine slang whenever applicable.
