House Made

pioneer square
Originally uploaded by merideth.

Once again no work progressed on the house this week. Beth and I took our one and only vacation of the year: A brief weekend to Seattle. Normally we travel and camp all year long, but this year we’ve done nothing as life has been all about the house. In fact, we started looking for a house this time last year and looked at our first house in Oakland on Nov. 1. Halloween is a good time to explore neighborhoods. Seeing who’s decorated and how they’ve decorated lets you kind of gauge the personality of a neighborhood. After living in San Francisco for years and only decorating our flat’s windows, I’m looking forward to decorating more maniacally this year.

But anyway, Seattle. It was gorgeous. Perfect experience for Beth’s first and my second visit: The weather was crisp but not too cold, colorful trees dropping leaves everywhere, nice people, a great view of the Sound, the Space Needle and Lake Washington from our room. Delicious food at every turn and you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a cup of coffee in that town. Sadly, the 49ers humiliated themselves against the Seahawks in the first shutout since 1977. Sigh.

Now Beth is out of town for 10 days and work is crazy so I doubt things will go much further around here for a while. And you know, I’m about to get crazy for Halloween.

master with Redoute plates
Originally uploaded by merideth.

Well it’s been hot and we’ve been tired. So nothing has been done on the house aside from cleaning it inside and hanging some pictures in the bedrooms that look FANTASTIC.

Beth got these great botanical plates by Redouté (a favorite of the Empress Josephine) who was renowned for his paintings of Roses (we have one rose plate). While it sounds a little old-ladyish, it’s not at all and looks freaking cool. The Pottery Barn catalog will be stealing the idea soon, mark my words.

Other than that, we have nothing to show for our time. Oh, and I’ve been drying our millions of tomatoes and making tomato soup, tomato salad, and sandwiches. Remarkably, I’m not sick of them.

Beth has just informed me that it should be “Casita Chunkita.” My apologies to any Spanish-speakers.

Craftsman Door
Originally uploaded by merideth.

We have a new door! Hoooray! Okay, we bought a new door. We do not have it yet.

We’ve been scouring the salvage yards for a second hand door to fit our ridiculously wide front-door opening with no luck. So the other day while I was looking for tools on ebay, I randomly looked for a front door. Voila. The almost perfect door.

Perfect would have been the same door but with all square lights. We have no curves anywhere on our little block-of-a-house to tie in with the curves in the door windows. In fact, I think I will start calling the house “Chunkito” (deference must be paid to its Spanish style..hence the “-ito”) to reflect its blockiness. But the door is pretty damn close to perfect and, remarkably, it’s the right size.

With all the other expenses and projects, it will most likely sit in the garage for a little bit before we either learn to hang a door or hire someone to do it. Right now I’m just overjoyed to have it!

lime
Originally uploaded by merideth.

Sunday was more pleasant than Saturday. We bought two delightful little citrus trees to plant in the backyard: a Bears’ Seedless Lime (the bartender’s favorite) and a wonderful Meyer Lemon.

lemon
Originally uploaded by merideth.

They’ll grow into little evergreen bushes that prouce lots of great fruit and fragrant flowers. I’m so excited for the Meyer lemon as I have tons of recipes to try that make use of the curious little fruit.

Dixie dug up one of the snail vines twice this weekend. She hates that vine.

That’s what we did, or really Beth did, on Saturday. Poor girl had to put a new garage handle on our new garage door. Why? Because the keys that the garage door installer guy gave us when he installed the door two weeks ago don’t work. And installer guy hasnt returned our calls. In two weeks. Oh and by the way, installer guy installed the garage door crooked. That’s right. So crooked door, which we couldn’t open, and no call-back from installer. So we had to A. call locksmith to open the door for us and B. purchase new handle and lockset so that we could get in and out of the garage. Annoying in the extreme, not to mention a waste of $100.

Here’s something interesting: All of the contractors and workmen we’ve found on our own have been awesome, conscientious, skilled, fantastic workmen. This guy, who was the chosen installer of Costco from whom we bought the door and the installation service, has been a headache. If we’d interviewed him as our possible installer the way we interviewed other contractors, we never would have hired him as he started our first meeting by insulting our house and our neighborhood. What?

new pear tree
Originally uploaded by merideth.

So we put some new trees in the backyard – four trees to be precise. When we took out the giant acacia we also, sadly, took out the big green privacy giver. So, in went the new things.

We went to a fantastic tree farm up near Santa Rosa called the Urban Tree Farm which was recommended by our tree guy. They specialize in trees that work well in urban neighborhoods. So we went up there with digital photos of our backyard and sketches of what we plan to do and one of the nursery guys, Tim, drove us all around the property in this little golf cart pointing out things that would meet our needs. He was so knowledgable, helpful and friendly. I cant recommend this place highly enough.

In the end we got four trees: the dancing pear, a non-fruiting flowering plum with maroon foliage called a “purple pony,” and two trees called “tiwiwis” whose actual name we cant pronounce or remember. The tiwiwis are evergreen but not of the pine family and should help us create a nice screen in about a year.

So they’re all planted and doing well with soaker hoses swirled around their bases for good deep watering.

Beth also planted about ten evergreen, flowering vines, one at the base of each panel of the fence and wired them up to get climbing. They already smell great and should look really lush as they fill in. We’ve got jasmine, potato vine, bougainvillea, and this cool thing called a snail vine whose buds look like little snail shells until they open and flower.

snail vine
Originally uploaded by merideth.

The back yard is going to be so quaint and cozy when it gets done. It’s nice to be finally seeing some progress back there. Oh how I wish I had a zillion dollars to do everything at once. I do not.

tomatoes
Originally uploaded by merideth.

I’ve wanted to grow my own tomatoes since I was a kid. Growing up, we frequently had veggie gardens and there is nothing NOTHING like a real home-grown tomato. Ours are coming in like gangbusters.

There is also nothing like a potato dug out of the garden and popped in the microwave for immediate consumption. Dixie, however, destroyed the potatoes her first weekend in the yard so we’ll try those again when the tomatoes die back.

mailbox
Originally uploaded by merideth.

So why do the dang things cost one meeelion dollars? Everything beyond the standard fare you find at the likes of Home Depot seems to be ridiculously priced. Frequently, too, accompanied by some snotty description whose subtext is “surely you arent planning to hang this outside?! unguarded?! on your HOUSE!?” I even ran across one pompous blurb that explained how the mailbox in question was designed by an architect without consideration for how much it would cost to produce (or buy).

Ultimately though, we found this. Style appropriate? Yes. Lovely detail for the outside (that’s right) of the house? Yes. One million dollars? No.

If you love it and want one too, it came from here.

Today’s house “project” consisted of my reading as many old-house blogs as I could find and then excitedly passing the highlights on to Beth who good-naturedly listened to various details about saw blades, ancestors, and materials that I found interesting.

The girls with Chateau Ste. Mold have had an unbelievable project on their hands but boy is their house going to be cute! Scott Dennis is restoring a great little cabin. Heather and Dave are chipping away at their darling bungalow in SoCal, and Aaron and Jeannie are cranking on everything including a wiring plan whose very concept intimidates me. Oh and there’s Enon Hall. Wow. Built in 1666. Makes my little 1922 job look like a spring chicken. Nothing in California is that old except the odd mission or Indian village site.