M and C Build a House

Less M, More C

Cherie — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 01:59:09 +0000

You may have noticed that our enthusiasm for the ol’ house blog has waned a bit. It’s partly time, which is mighty short these days, and it’s partly other demands, which are many, and it’s partly, sad to say, lack of content.

There’s just not that much happening on the house front. There’s too much happening on the life front.

So it’s time to move on from the house blog. Instead, maybe, we’ll try a life blog. Okay, fine, Cherie will try a life blog. Michael is going to try simply having a life.

There will likely be house stuff over there as well, but not as much, and not as technical. Michael may continue to update over here very sporadically, as content warrants.

Otherwise, find Cherie (and Michael, when she allows it) here: beyondthedooryard.wordpress.com

And thanks for coming along for the ride.

Success breeds success. Or at least something new to do with the rocks.

Cherie — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 01:44:05 +0000

So we had great success with our narcissus bulbs. Look, actual flowers:

And, okay, that success was a while ago given that those beautiful yellow flowers are now brown, dying stalks. But nevermind. Success.

Which of course motivated us to do something about the depressing brown hillside. For the last few weeks of her maternity leave, Cherie spent naptimes digging pile after pile of rocks out of a small bed. Endless rocks. More rocks than dirt, really. And when you have that many rocks to deal with, you have to come up with a use for them.

How about pathways?

Lots of pathways made out of lots of rocks. The goal was both to guide foot traffic along specific routes to reduce erosion over the whole hillside and to help add structure to the blank slate that is the Hillside of Doom.

Also, because paths look pretty.

This left us with two triangular planting beds to prettify and that prettification is underway. One of the paths leads up to Annabel’s swing. The other leads up to the fire pit area, which we’ve also prettified. Let’s just say that prettifying is our mantra for this summer.

Admittedly, our pretty is other people’s barely tolerable. But we take what we can get.

We are now

Not the Most Pathetic Gardening Post on the Internet, But Close

Cherie — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 19:08:24 +0000

Remember last fall when we worked ourselves into an overly excited lather because we managed to dig up enough rocks to put in 12 little narcissus bulbs? And we explained that, although we are terrible gardeners and had lousy, rocky soil, it was important that we get them planted because there’s nothing more depressing than April in Maine?

Well.

It’s April.

And look what we have:

They actually grew! It’s a springtime miracle!

We are so inspired by this little patch of green that we have decided to extend our gardening efforts. Heck, Cherie’s still on maternity leave and the weather is still too unpredictable to dip shingles, so why not? So she’s taking on the Hillside of Doom:

You might think that “doom” is overstating the case, but that’s only because you don’t know how many rocks will need to be dug out of there.

More to follow. (Really! We mean it!)

Overdue (like almost everything else having to do with this house)

Cherie — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 16:53:25 +0000

This is Sam:

Sam isn’t looking at you like that because he’s being forced to share his swing with Annabel’s doll. Nor is he looking at you like that because this angle makes his uneven newborn hair look like a receding hairline. He’s not even looking at you like that because he’s sad that he has been dressed in horizontal stripes. He’s looking at you like that because he’s trying to gain you sympathy because his parents, slackers that we are, kind of forgot to mention his existence.

So we are mentioning it. This is Sam. He’s *mumble mumble* weeks old.

Internet: He’s HOW old?

Uh, *mumble mumble* weeks old.

Internet: We still can’t hear you.

EIGHT weeks, okay? He’s almost eight weeks old and we haven’t written about him and we are terrible and we’re sorry.

Okay?

Okay.

Don’t hold it against the baby. The baby is totally innocent in all this. Say hi to Sam, internet.

Distractions

Cherie — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 03:19:19 +0000

And just like that, it’s 2010.

It’s safe to say that 2009 wasn’t our best blogging year. It’s even safer to say that 2009 wasn’t our best housebuilding year. We tried. We really did. It’s just… there were a lot of distractions.

There was this distraction:

Hi. I’m two.

If you’ve lived with a two-year old, then we don’t really need to explain any more. If you haven’t, imagine a short, cute, demon that picks up everything you put down and moves it, objects to every plan, enters every day with an agenda of their own, and is otherwise generally ornery and objectionist. And cute. Did we mention cute?

Then there was this:

Hi. I’m the weather forecast from most of the summer.

It rained pretty much every day through June and July. It rained enough that Mainers started getting twitchy and lakes overflowed. Rain, rain, rain. Since the majority of the work planned for this year was exterior, you might say that this caused a problem.

And, of course, there was this distraction:

Hi. I’m the U.S. economy.

We all went through this, right? No need to elaborate? Didn’t think so.

And, finally, there is this distraction:

Yep. Another cute, short, ornery, objectionist demon will be arriving in a few weeks.

So 2009 was a bit of a bust house-wise, but we hold out high hopes for 2010. The new baby is actually working in our favor. The last major overhaul of the house was probably around the time we turned a junk-filled room into a nursery. And now that we’ve got another one on the way, well…Annabel will be needing a big girl room, right?

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

Cherie — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 02:34:14 +0000

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?

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.

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

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:

Kids today.

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

Cherie — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 00:41:52 +0000

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Cherie — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 15:08:03 +0000

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.)

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

Cherie — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 01:32:32 +0000

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:

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:

And outside the shower:

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:

And outside the shower:

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:

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

Cherie — Wed, 27 May 2009 01:58:01 +0000

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:

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?

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.

Right. We’ll see you in a few months.

(Cat not included.)

(Or is she?)