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Dear Readers:
I’ve been remiss in my blogging duties and therefore have most likely squandered all of your goodwill & readership loyalty. I know that there are a small number of human beings out there (some of whom aren’t even related to me) who have enjoyed this blog and have checked it regularly. But recently I’ve failed to keep my end of the bargain, and have not posted anything new. For this, I can only apologize (and suggest that you might want to sign up for email delivery of my blog posts so that you don’t have to check the website to find out whether I’ve written anything recently.)
And now (drumroll please), my complete lack of blogging is brought to you by:
The Blues.
If you’ve ever built or renovated a house, you may understand many of the ingredients that make up the renovator’s blues, and make the project (and life in general) feel rather overwhelming. In our case, we’ve got our own special family recipe for cooking up a big helping of The Blues:
Begin with an unusually substandard piece of real estate. Make sure house has no actual virtues to recommend it (like functional plumbing or wiring).
Next, remove all substandard or ugly portions of the real estate, using a very sharp knife. Do not be afraid to cut away as many layers as necessary, even if it means reducing the house to a shell.
Then, take the unreasonably large gut renovation, and season with an unrealistically small amount of cash. Boil the project for a year or two over medium heat in a small, economically depressed town, and flavor with a hereditary dislike of debt that necessarily keeps working capital to an impossibly low figure. (Do not lower expectations of future home to reflect financial reality.)
At the same time, mix together the following ingredients in a separate bowl:
1) A genetic disposition (brought in from both sides of the marital family tree) that tends toward never ever hiring help, except in the most extreme circumstances (like open heart surgery).
2) A brand of perfectionism that results in a laborious decision making process, and an overwhelming desire to have the project built to our aesthetic & craftsmanship specifications.
3) A long suppressed desire to live in a house that reflects our aesthetic rather than that of various family members, landlords, roommates, and second-hand sausage vans.***
Allow the above three ingredients to marinate together for, say 30 + years (or to taste), so that their flavors are inextricably melded. Then pour the marinade over the project, making sure to soak thoroughly.
Next, add the requirement that the project be as energy efficient & green as humanly possible. Add plans for a solar electric system & a solar heating system into the pot. Thoroughly soak them in the marinade listed above. Do not, under any circumstances, reduce the scope of the project. If possible, expand the scope of the project to include a future solar-heated hot tub, handmade cabinetry, and structural renovations to the garage.
Carefully document the entire project, and require self to write about it in self-effacing blog. Garnish with a healthy dose of sarcasm.
Next, prepare the following side dishes:
Start with matching cases of the flu resulting in the production of copious amounts of both green phlegm and misery. Add this to a couple of marginal business ventures, and a general sense of discouragement about the direction of our lives (particularly our careers). Mix in a dash of the following: 4 -5 rapidly ailing grandparents, winter coming on like a freight train, and an international economic crisis that makes our already-shaky household income look extra scary. Add water & stir over medium to high heat.
Separately, combine a ticking biological clock with self-employment and citizenship in a country with few healthcare choices (none of them good for people like us), and add a handful of doubts about whether we really want to live in the town where we’re building this house.
Recipe serves two. (Can be stretched to encompass the lives of various hapless relatives.)
_____
The result? A bit of a melt down (sort of like an economy we all know), a big pot of
The Blues, and, well…. a few weeks in which I didn’t do much blogging.
You’ll have to forgive me.
(*** Regarding sausage vans: that’s another story. If you’re interested in reading it, you’ll have to stay tuned. I’ll get around to writing it as soon as I’m done with this funk.)
Filed under: house thinking | 6 Comments
Tags: blues, cooking, depression, recipe, sausage van
pics of the big dig.
The “big dig” is moving along. Last weekend we got all the digging finished, and the fresh water line that goes out to a hydrant in the yard has been laid. In all, we had about 100 lineal feet of trench to dig between the house and the alley, some in the most difficult places possible. The spot between the shed & the fence was about 5 feet wide, and much of the digging involved a true feat of choreography for the bobcat operator. There was nowhere to put the dirt, we were trying to avoid killing all our precious vegetation (the only decent legacy left to us by the previous owners), and the dirt was so sandy and loose that we had to keep shoring the trench in many places to keep it from subsiding. We dug the trench 5+ feet deep for the fresh water line to the hydrant (hopefully that will be deep enough to keep it from freezing because we couldn’t have gotten it any deeper!). Now we’re filling the trench back up to an appropriate level for the sewer line. We have little choice about the level of the sewer line because it has to match the existing tie-in to the city sewer. Many of the sewer lines in Monte Vista froze last winter, because many portions of the sewer aren’t very deep, and we had an extremely cold winter. Probably they didn’t have very good digging equipment when they installed it originally, and this isn’t exactly the sort of place with lots of extra dollars lying to around to upgrade infrastructure. Our sewer didn’t freeze last winter mainly because it didn’t work, due to extreme clogging by tree roots. Anyway, we’re installing a 4″ line, even though a 3″ line is allowable, and hopefully the larger pipe will help with the freezing issue. It will probably take us much of this upcoming weekend to get the sewer line properly located & bedded. We’re going to have precious little “fall” in the line, since we’ve got 100 feet to get from the house to the alley. A 4″ line can tolerate a smaller slope, so that’s another reason to pony up for the larger (and more expensive) pipe.
Note: the explanations for the photos are below each picture.
We had to remove this poor cherry tree in order to dig our trench. We cut off the dead stump, and replanted the living part of the tree in another corner of the yard, along with some other small cherry trees that were in the path of destruction. It remains to be seen whether they survive. The soil is so loose that we couldn’t keep any dirt around the roots when we dug these things up. Hopefully by having them out of the ground only a few minutes, and keeping everything really wet, the poor buggers will have a chance.
Filed under: house building | 6 Comments
Tags: big dig, bobcat, sewer, trench
scope creep + the big dig.
For those of you who may be interested, our concrete floor is still only half done. We’re waiting for Dick’s broken ribs to heal, and for his schedule to clear up. And we’re hoping that maybe he knows someone we can hire to help him out with the finishing when we do pour the second half of the floor. Since the weather here is known to get bloody cold, bloody early, we may also be babysitting the floor once it does get poured, to ensure that it doesn’t freeze before it cures.
Meanwhile we’re moving on with our house-renovating lives. This means we run around like crazy all week trying to get our work obligations taken care of, and then spend all weekend trying to make progress on the house while also trying to take care of the socializing that we want to do (or in some cases are obligated to do.) This, while simultaneously trying to prepare for the onslaught of the coming week. Last weekend we spent Saturday trying to visit with Luke’s brother, Olin, + his girlfriend, Kim, while also digging a big hole in the yard. (I’ll discuss the hole in a minute.)
Architects sometimes talk about the phenomenon known as “scope creep.” This term refers to the gradual upsizing of the scope of a project– often in a progression that seems so natural that you hardly realize it is happening. Scope creep occurs when a faucet starts dripping, and a homeowner decides that, instead of replacing a fifty cent washer, she should buy a nice new faucet, justifying the purchase because the old faucet is looking cruddy. Then the nice new faucet makes the sink look pretty lack-luster, and before you know it, an entire $50,000 kitchen remodel has been embarked upon. Architects and contractors are hired, the economy gets stimulated in ways that make George Bush very proud to be president, and the whole thing quickly gets out of control. Frankly, I think scope creep is what makes the world go around.
Filed under: house building | Leave a Comment
Tags: big dig, concrete, electric meter, scope creep, sewer, trench
The concrete truck backed up to our house last Thursday.
This post is brought to you by a couple of broken ribs. Unfortunately. I’ve been trying to find time to write about our concrete pour last Thursday. But things have been really crazy, and I haven’t had a chance. This morning, we were supposed to be pouring the second half of the floor, but our concrete guy called last night at 9:00 p.m., just as we were finishing up all the preparations for the next pour, and said that he’d broken some ribs, and wouldn’t be able to pour. A bit of a disappointment, but probably not as disappointing as being stuck with broken ribs. So, because of the broken ribs, I have a little bit of time this morning to write a blog entry. That seems to be the only silver lining involved.
We don’t hire people to do very much for us. That’s just the way we are. Luke fixes our cars. (I pretend that I’d like to learn something about fixing cars, but after handing him a few wrenches, I get bored and wander back inside.) We made our own wedding rings, we’re building our own house, doing our own plumbing & electrical, along with nearly every other aspect of the building project. When the hard drive on the computer died, we used the internet to get instructions on how to do surgery on a laptop. We don’t make much money at this point, but we get by because we’re willing & able to do a lot of stuff for ourselves. And we’re willing to fix things & keep our old things running. (Thus, our 14 year-old car and our 25 year old truck. We’d love to replace them, but we can’t afford to pay cash, so we don’t.)
But I firmly believe that the secret to good craftsmanship & doing things WELL is knowing your own limits. And, for better or worse, I think that if something isn’t worth doing well, then it’s probably not worth doing. I pay someone to cut my hair because, really– I don’t have a clue. We have an accountant do our taxes because it is cheaper than the marriage counseling that would otherwise be necessary. And medical care really isn’t a do-it-yourself activity. We hired Curt to help us frame our kitchen, because it was a complicated framing job–plus we wanted it done well AND done during this decade. So, when it came time to pour a concrete floor in the old portion of the house, we looked around for an expert. We’ve poured a lot of concrete ourselves, but we’ve never made beautifully finished concrete. And we wanted BEAUTIFULLY finished concrete. The smoother the better.
Filed under: house building | 7 Comments
Tags: cement, concrete, hiring professionals, pouring
new look.
I changed the “theme” of the blog today. Hope you don’t mind. I did it because my father is an ophthalmologist who always used to harp on me to stop reading in the dark– and I thought that the text of the previous theme was excruciatingly hard to read. This free blog software has all sorts of “themes” from which to choose, many of them far too cheesy to be taken seriously, unless you’re a teenage girl blogging about makeup. My architectural training tells me that I shouldn’t use “stock” designs of anything, and that type should be small, elegant, and verging on cryptic, so that only the other folks who are in-the-know (e.g. other architects) will get it. Still, I struggle with my professional identity, particularly because we live in the boonies, so I try not to ignore my professional training entirely.
Frankly, I wish I didn’t have to deal with pesky things like graphics & photos. I’m not inherently a photographer or a typographer, but I appreciate good graphics, and I wish they would just magically make themselves beautiful. If the day comes when more than five-people-plus-my-mom read this thing, then I’ll hire someone to make my “look” graphically beautiful and not off-the-shelf. I have very little discretionary time (I’m building a house & business, remember?), so for the moment I’ll have to stick with off-the-shelf.
Since I have limited time & energy, I have to learn to develop boundaries– including boundaries around my inherently perfectionistic nature that tells me I should be staying up all night, making my blog very well designed. Instead, I’ll focus on the writing. The thing that makes this blog fun for me is getting the opportunity to write a few things, and it seems that all my life I’ve been looking for opportunities that will force me to do more writing. To the horror of my friends, I chose to do a written thesis (rather than a “design thesis”) when I was in grad school merely because I knew it afford me lots of hours to spend writing. I know that makes me a bad designer– it brands me uncommitted to the cause, and not one of the elite. Whatever.
I hope the new off-the-shelf graphics make it a little easier to actually read the blog. Trust me, nobody is stopping by Home is a Process for the pictures of dead cats. Anyway, I hope that you six readers enjoy the blog. I’m having fun writing it.
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a trap to catch meddlers.
Warning: Graphic kitty-content below. If your children are prone to nightmares, do not bring them over to our house. Or let them read this post.
My husband has left me. Fortunately, it is only a temporary condition, as he’s spending the week in Paonia at a solar training class. This means that I’ve got nobody to pamper me, humor me, entertain me. I had figured that the silver lining in this lonely week would be that I’d get to spend lots of uninterrupted time blogging. Ha! It’s a lovely fantasy. The reality is that instead of blogging, I’ve been trying to keep things from falling apart around here. Bidding, billing, fixing a flat tire (actually paying a guy named Anthony-who-should-be-named-Jim to fix a flat), dealing with shipping debacles, trying to keep a frustratingly diverse set of customers happy. Also trying to deal with my procrastination tendencies.
Things have been moving along with the house. I swear I am going to provide some updates on all that. But first: cats. Those of you who have actually read this epistle from the beginning may remember my earlier reference to our little kitty crypt under the floor. When we were ripping out the rotten flooring in the living room, we found our friend, Fluffy, who had been mummified along with several of her offspring underneath the living room floor. Meet Fluffy:
Filed under: house building | 3 Comments
Tags: cats, graduating suckers, rodents, rotten floors
Last Monday, we were in Denver, picking up a pallet of batteries. While we were there, we checked out our usual house-building haunt, Boulder’s ReSource store. This place is great– it’s a big yard full of recycled building materials that have been removed from existing buildings, or were un-needed for some reason. We were hoping to pick up a couple of doors for our shed, but nothing really seemed “right,” despite the fact that they have a huge inventory of doors. It was actually lucky that we didn’t buy anything big because it would have been a huge hassle to somehow slide a ton (literally) of batteries underneath the doors. We got some copper fittings, which we paid too much for because we disobeyed the cardinal rule(s) of shopping at second-hand stores. Though perhaps never-before codified, the rules are as follows:
1) Find a good employee to give you pricing on the item(s) you want. You can “test” an employee by asking for a price on an item that you’re not really all that interested in. Eavesdropping on other pricing transactions is also a good way to evaluate an employee’s attitude toward pricing.
Continue reading ‘the cardinal rules of second-hand shopping’
Filed under: house thinking | 6 Comments
Tags: Home Depot, plumbing, quality, Resource Boulder, second-hand, shopping
green is a process too.
I got a little tiny baby note about my blog on the houseblogs.net site. The link is here, though I’m not sure that it will send much traffic my way, especially since it is buried amongst a lot of other stuff. However, the Houseblogs post says that my little blog is about our “green” renovation. So I thought maybe I should use this opportunity to explain exactly how our little disaster of a house is “green.” I know that I haven’t (yet) done the greatest job of giving background on exactly what it is that we’re planning to do this place (beyond our attempts to make it less depressing & more habitable.) So consider this my first attempt to rectify that situation.
Why is our gut renovation project green?
1) Re-use. First and foremost, this house is hurtling us toward planetary destruction at a slower pace than the average house because we’re re-using a 100 year old house that would otherwise have had a date with a bulldozer. Instead, we’re going to give it another 100 years or so. (If we can make that structure last another hundred years, then we’ve done our job with the place– after that, I take no responsibility– I expect at that point it will be some other sucker’s problem anyway.) So we’re turning an unlivable, unheatable nightmare into a house. Maybe someday it will even be our home. And we’re doing it without tearing up any virgin farmland (or forest land, as is more common in this area.) We’re not spurring the construction of new roads, adding new EMT or fire services, not spurring the need for new schools, not adding to the sense of abandonment in a neighborhood that really could use some re-investment. The latent city planner in me says that this is a really good thing, and perhaps the biggest contribution to our “green” bragging rights.
Much of the house wasn’t particularly salvageable– miles of faux-wood paneling (think: 1970s), knob & tube wiring that our insurance company required us to remove IMMEDIATELY, and more rotten wood than I care to remember. But we didn’t mindlessly haul it all to the dump. We’ve taken a lot of stuff to the dump, because it is just unavoidable. (What else am I supposed to do with a trailer load of plaster dust?) But all the wood that is not re-usable has been burned in our wood stove to keep us warm while working on the house last winter. It’s a good thing that we did tons of demolition during the winter, so we were able to use the “burn as you go” method of demolition. (Perhaps we would have been wiser to use the “gasoline + match” method of demolition in the first place, but unfortunately insurance companies and police departments really tend to frown on that sort of thing.) If we hadn’t utilized the “burn as you go” method, we’d have the most un-holy piles of wood in our yard, waiting for winter. Let me rephrase that. We’ve got the most un-holy of wood piles in our yard anyway– but it would be a lot worse if we hadn’t been able to burn a lot of it while we were demolishing our house in 30° (below zero) weather. Instead of hauling it all to the dump, we found that faux-wood paneling has many uses in a renovation project: we’ve used it as a “drop cloth” for painting, as a “base” to shovel dirt on to, as a temporary dividers in rooms, as a cover for mouse-entrances to our basement. Trust me, the stuff is useful. Even Luke finally agrees with me.
And, when it comes to getting rid of crap instead of sending it to the dump, you wouldn’t believe the power of a “free” sign taped to an item placed on the curb. (The only problem is keeping my husband from indulging in the practice of picking up such items. Ahem. When exactly are you going to learn to ride a unicycle?)
Continue reading ‘green is a process too.’
Filed under: house building | Leave a Comment
Tags: energy efficiency, green, photovoltaics, recycling, renovation, reuse, solar, solar thermal
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