Things of Import

As we think of the multitudinous 'things' that are important in life, such activity obscures 'The Thing" that is important above all things. 

What is it?

This is a post to inspire reflection.  So the "it" will be savored for a time in the future.

So the present moment is left with the contemplation of and the answer to the question.

Master Bath

The master bath at the SR project was completed this weekend.  It is really, really beautiful.  I'll get some pictures, but I'm not sure that I can get a good vantage point giving the small bathroom.  My tile man had to do lots of extra work to ensure that everything fit well--to include extending the frame of the shower so the vanity top would be flush with the shower opening and reframing for the centering of the niche.  Weekend before last he alluded that I might not be happy with his price.

On Saturday he said that he thought a long time and that he had to charge me $X for the work. He was apologetic because it was a small space, but I had budgeted for a figure a little higher than that.  As he clearly was giving me a discount, I told him that I would give him $Y, a number 11% higher and the number that I had budgeted (though I did not tell him I had budgeted that).  He seemed relieved.

This tiny bathroom is expensive, coming in at $10k or so including the demolition and reworking the plumbing.  It would likely be at least 50-75% more had another contractor do the entire thing. Given that this home is on a block of expensive homes, it made sense to 'splurge'.  Splurge is in quotes, because at least 1/2 of the cost was unavoidable given the condition the existing state of repairs (unworkable vanity, unworkable plumbing, large expanses of missing tile from the floor and the wall).  Gutting and starting over was the only course of action that was going to yield a satisfactory result. This bathroom will certainly be a selling feature; however, any looking for a bathroom 'suite' will not be moved.

I'm positioning this home to be a a turn-key home with 'affordable luxury'.  I want the home to have features that are consistent with a home costing much more--the bathroom, kitchen/den flooring, kitchen appliances, premium lighting (purchased at a discount), and finished garage being central to executing on that plan. Therefore, I'm very cognizant of  getting lot of  bang out of every buck spent.

With the floors getting refinished this week, the living area of the home will be fully complete.  We'll tackle the garage over the coming few weeks and get this wrapped up to put on the market.

Return to Normal

My daughter came back a day early from the beach.  Last Saturday, our guest, Blaze, the ebullient English Setter, departed.  While he was happy with his vacation pack, when he saw my daughter he was so excited he piddled.  Hannah informed that upon arriving home, Blaze slept early evening, throughout the night and most of Sunday.

I guess he was as sleep deprived as we were!   The picture to the left depicts his typical activity level. Ella is not looking too happy! In addition to being active all day with our dogs, he was over-vigilant at night in investigating every little and big noise in the household.  Mark and I have enjoyed our uninterrupted sleep since his departure.  But he was a neat fella, and we were very glad to have him.

On the SR project, the tile man finished putting up all of the tile.  He said, "I now see your vision for this bathroom."  The tile still needs to be grouted--and I'm not sure why my vision for this master bathroom took so long for him to see.  It is not yet grouted, but it is a small, but beautiful space.  

As I've mentioned before, the ideal renovation would have been to build a two story addition that would have added amenities to both the master bath and the upstairs bath (that are side by side).  However, taking down walls and building additions of these homes is not in my planned scope of
work.  On this project, I concentrated dollars on the master bath, because (1) it was in the middle of a partial renovation that just wasn't going to work; (2) I wanted it to be beautiful and useful from the get go and (3), the other bathrooms were renovated on a quality level short of what I would have done.  With respect to (3), everyone who sees these bathrooms still likes them.  When they see the master bath, they are going to be wowed.

Mark and Reade worked on wiring the garage.  It has been beastly hot and humid.  I've been working on getting all my stuff out of my FD project.  This project required more of my time and effort than I had anticipated.  One happy result is that I have lost a few of the extra pounds that have been lurking here and there.  It helps that the weather has been hot, appetite has been lacking and there has been an abundance of fresh vegetables from the garden.

 





Picking....err Scounging.

While I'm not American Picker, I do enjoy finding a good deal.  In the past few days, I've scored a few good deals.  I picked up these chairs, replete with new pads, from Colonial Harbor Antiques.  They were priced at 19.95 each with 20% off.  I paid less than $16 for the each chair and the cushions.  I saw the cushions at Lowe's for $15 ea.  A good deal for the combo! These chairs and the round table (with  a large begonia plant) look very nice on the porch of the house that I'm trying to sale.  It surely give is a more inviting look.  I was glad to get this look for less.

My next scrounging (I guess 'picking' sounds better than scrounging, but I'm going to call a spade a spade here!) led me to the Salvation Army store. Here I nabbed 3 mahhogany dining chairs. While I cannot tell from the marking what chair it is, I found this picture of Councill Craftsmen mahogany chairs.
My chairs have the EXACT back design, though the apron on the seat has some curvature rather than being straight as the picture above.  I'm going to assume the back designs are specific to the manufacturer, accordingly, I'm going to 'call' my chairs made by Councill.  The seats have been reupholstered, so there is nothing on the seat to cushion to show origin.  There was an inventory, bar code tag on the furniture.  It stated "US Senate, Sargeant at Arms Office".  I paid $19.95 each for my 3 chairs, and I'm adding to my eclectic mix of dining chairs for when I have a big meal.  Seating is precious at those times, and now I have comfortable, tasteful chairs.  I lost  chairs when I gave my daughter my original dining table. I can also use them to provides some seating at the houses I'm trying to sell.




Blaze

In addition to describing our recent weather, it is also the name of my daughter's not quite one year old male English Setter.  She and her beau are off for an entire week at the beach.  We graciously (stupidly?) offered to be a member of our household. 

We are currently on night 4--and he has just been a wonderful 'young man'. Look at that happy face.  The dirt on his tongues is from a recently fetched ball.  How he loves to play ball. 

My daughter asked me several times if we would allow him to sleep in our bed. The answer was, and still is, a resounding "No!".  Nevertheless, he has been persistent, and over the last two nights he snuck up into the bed.  I  already tossed him out twice.  The third time I tossed him out (after being awakened).  However, it turned out to be Macy, and not him.  Macy (our Am Bull dog mix) sleeps in the bed with us. 

She was nonplussed, and he just jumped on the bed again.  She gets a little hot, so she has not minded the cooler strata of air by the floor.  Plus, last evening I brought Blaze's dog bed up--a large comfy thing that I would find comfortable.  Macy commanded that, and Blaze jumped up and made himself small and put his head on my feet.  It is important for him to be beside a human.

He is a rescue from Fredericksburg Humane Society.  The shelter believe that the owner's turned him in unable to keep up with such a rambunctious dog.  For the first couple of days, I wondered of our own ability to keep up. Luckily, my other three dogs have been wonderful girls, and they are all getting along fine.  Daisey, though, keeps guard of me, and Ella tries to stay out of the way.  Daisey, Macy and Blaze play ball together.  Ella couldn't care less about the ball. She'd rather swim than do anything else.

Blaze is very aware of every little movement inside the house to include our two cats.  He's interested in stalking them, but not doing them any harm.  They are wise cats around dogs, so I'm not worried.  There are plenty of indoor and outdoor places for them to get out of harm's way from him.

I'm glad that he is with us. Here he is waiting for Daisey to move onto the ball. She's the senior setter, and commands their respect.  Macy though could care less about the Setter pecking order.  Both Daisey and Blaze are similar build--that skinny field Setter with irrepressible energy.  Always on the lookout for something to mess with.  In these hot days, they pant so hard, they remind me of just one big organic radiator with a large tongue hanging out the side of their mouth.

At mealtime, he has no interest in his Puppy Chow, but all interest in the Dog Chow.  Our dogs are the opposite.  So after failing to get him to eat when he was partitioned from the others, I've given each dog a mix of food.  It works out well as Blaze will be almost a year old.  So mixing his chows will help him over the next month.  

He goes home on Sunday.  We will surely miss him.

The Sound of Silence

I'm in one of Dante's 7 circles of hell of the internet...Sound.  Some plug-in zapped my ability to play sound in Firefox. Despite my bird-dogging a solution and trying them (perhaps incompetently), I still have no sound.

My internet Explorer works just fine.  Because I'm tired of the frustration of troubleshooting the sound issue (which was previously a video issue...fixed the video issue, but there is no sound with the video), I'm switching back to IE after more than 5 years or so of being exclusive to Firefox.

I just don't have time to be bothered with this technical difficulty.  I've also had some difficulties with other areas (website interface etc), that I never used to have.

A reminder about how easy it is to lose customers.

(P. S.  It seems that there is a Flash problem that is fairly pervasive.  If i fix it so that I have audio, I have no sound (on Firefox) and vice versa.  Same conclusion...I really don't want to go through this much bother to have an online experience.).

Favorite things to do: dig potatoes

Good thing that I'm not on E-harmony....that title wouldn't likely get me a date!

But...there is something wonderful about digging potatoes out of the ground.  There's a plant, a mound of dirt and about 1/2 dozen or so edible jewels under each plant.  Unless you've grown potatoes yourself (or have a neighbor who does and is generous), there is just no describing what a new potato toted 50 yards from the garden to your kitchen tastes like.  The same can be said of corn...as soon as it is harvested, there's the cruel clock of nature tick-tocking away and breaking down the starches.  So picking just before preparation yields an incomparable succulence.  A little butter, salt and pepper are all of the accoutrements needed.

I liken digging potatoes to looking for Easter eggs.  My husband is very picky about how I should dig potatoes (as if it is frickin' rocket science!).  Well, I've dug more potatoes in my youth than he ever has in his adult life...nevertheless, he is still hyper-critical of how I do it.  Oh well.... (However, he knows that he is safe because if I declared my true interests on e-harmony or match.com no  man would linger on my profile!). 

I dug the last few mounds of potatoes.  We've been eating them almost every night, and we've not tired of them. I wished I had some fresh parsley (I didn't plant any!).  New potatoes with some garlic, butter, and a squirt of lemon are wonderful....and  great accompaniment for fresh fish.

I've found that simply piercing all over the potatoes and microwaving them in a FreshVAC container is a quick, easy and delicious way of cooking my new red potatoes.  Why I didn't not discover this before this year, I do not know.  But it steams them just right.  If you boil them, sometimes they cook too much and get water logged (or I just got distracted!).  Cooking them in the Freshvac in the microwave provides the best consistency--and they are ready in minutes for consumption or for dicing and cooking with a bounty of squash.  I like to roast peppers too and add them into the mix along with some onion, salt and pepper and paprika.

If you are looking to try something new in the culinary area, I'd like to encourage you to roast fresh, hot peppers.  Roasting hot peppers takes the bite out of them and really deepens their flavor.  Because hot peppers are so small, you can roast them quite well over a gas flame.  I don't try to roast cayenne's due to their slim profile.  I roast my peppers over the gas flame of my cooktop.  While it is best to have a grill basket, I use my stainless still spaghetti insert (with holes).  I managed to ruin my grill baskets while undertaking a very ill-advised experiment with my ceramic grill which involved smoking a chicken.  However, molten aluminum is quite a beautiful thing...and not something that you will want to see near your skin.  See picture to left.

 I was not harmed, but I had some sainted grill baskets whose metal melt points were exceeded. Good thing I don't have an interest in crystallizing meth at home.  You'd be reading about me in the paper--a news story and an obituary. 




Paint

Our heat wave in the East continues.  At least the three successive nights of violent storms have abated.  With power restored, at least we can keep cool. However I'm aware that in these economic times, there are many who cannot keep cool.

I wanted to do a post about the paint colors that I used on the FD Project.

BM Urban Legend on the door
and Oak Ridge Trim



BM Oak Ridge on Porch and
Urban Legend on the front door
 The exterior of this home is belies its 2552 interior space.  This home has 25 windows, a full walk out basement.  This will be a spacious, comfortable and beautiful home for the new owners.   
I stayed mostly within one card on the Benjamin Moore color chart (from the Classic Deck), beginning with Winter Wheat (232).

For the exterior of the house, I wanted to find a color that would harmonize (rather than provide too striking a contrast) with the existing siding.  My designer and I chose Benjamin Moore Oak Ridge for the porch and for the window trim.  I used a DTM product for the metal trim on the windows and the door.  It covered the previously brown trim beautifully.

The front door also had storm door (that had to be removed due to style and condition).  It had been screwed into the metal wrap,  leaving holes.  Further, the metal wrap was separating from the wood.  I puttied and caulked all of the issues away, leaving an intact substrate. 
BM Cream Fleece (233) in Aura matte on the walls
 and Linen White Trim


The home looked overwhelmingly beige.  I went further down on the color card and painted the front door Urban Legend.
For the bathrooms, which exceeded my expectations, I used Creme Fleece on the walls with Linen White Trim.  It is a soothing and beautiful combination, and it looked terrific with the tile choices.  I chose the Aura Kitchen and Bath paint for the walls.  It is a product that is expensive, but it has many attributes that make it a great choice for bathrooms.   I also chose this for the master bedroom. 

For the upstairs bedrooms, I chose Linen White on Linen White to create a soft white that would blend well with many decors without being 'blinding white'.



Pergo Elegant Expressions Buchanon Maple
BM Winter Wheat (232) walls/trim
Pergo Buchanon Maple Elegant Expressions Laminate
 The downstairs (it doesn't feel like a basement) and the great room upstairs were painted in BM Winter Wheat--another great neutral that is soft, harmonizes well with most colors.  The Pergo Elegant Expressions Laminate in Buchanon Maple was a great choise for the downstairs which has 3 more bedrooms. The bow front window in this walk out basement gives this a downstairs v. basement feel.  This is truly a spacious and comfortable room.  The wainscoting and trim in this house was previously stained dark wood.


New flooring, recessed lighting and paint transformed this room to this. 




Mother Nature

Mother Nature has shown her might yet again.  We were spared the loss of electricity for the first and second wind/rain events, but the third one was definitely the charm.  Our electricity went out last evening after my phone provided a "Tornado Warning, take cover now" alert.  Well, my dinner was on the grill.  I thought I might have just enough minutes to get it cooked...

I was wrong.

The wind started to kick up in that sickening sort of way when the wind swells and blows the leaves backwards.  The light was looking 'sickly'...that yellowish green light that always means that Mother Nature is taking you to the woodshed.

We turned the grill off and started fastening it and other things that could blow away down.  These thunderstorms have had ferocious, straight-line, winds of up to 80 mph.  My sister, who lives in Bedford, endured a period a couple of nights ago where she thought the roof was going to blow off her home.  Her electricity and phone line are out.  I've talked to her after that ordeal, but not today.

The storm brought lots of wind, fierce lightening and some rain.  After a couple of hours, we started the generator hookup.  This was important for the reasons of comfort, but MOST importantly (at least to husbando) to finish washing the NASCAR race.  Apparently the cable had not yet kaputted.

As I've mentioned before, my husbando is an electrician.  However, you have to be an astrophysicist in order to go through the steps necessary to successfully hook the generator up into the panel.  Well, all of 'that' was done, with the final step of getting the generator started in order to hook up the plug (which hooked into one panel, which hooks into another panel).

Flip on switches.  Push "start".  Rumble.  Nothing.  Rinse and repeat several more times.  Starter gives out.  Pull start does not work.  All is lost at least for the evening.  Surely the dawn will bring better luck.

Nope.

While our luck was not much better, we did manage to drain the gas (it had fouled), clean the carburetor and in general learn several intricacies that we had not known before.  While we got a little further each time, and actually managed to get the darn thing running a bit longer than the last time on several successive attempts, we still ended up with a non-running generator. 

Our good friend calls and is a mechanic.  He is generous and comes over.  As a mechanic, he is knowledgeable about the intricacies of carburetors (whether on a car or a generator).  Within about one hour, we are up and running.  Water!  Lights!  Fridge!

No AC...but it is withstandable for the moment.  At least I could get a much needed shower.  We spent all day working and sweating.  We spent all morning working and sweating over the generator.  We smelled like goats.  It was good to wash it away.

We brace for more heat and storms.  We are inconvenienced.  Others are not so lucky.  We are mindful of our blessings.