3.23.2012
Into the Breach
There is knowing that your house is going to need "a lot of work" and then there is living it. This house, friends and neighbors, needs A. Lot. Of. Work. If there was a movie made about this house, it would be called "A Lot of Work: The Blue Elephant Story." Or just "Fright Night". It is not like one of those shows on HGTV where the couple debates buying a house and they say "There is just too much work!" because the paint is an ugly color or the bathroom fixtures are outdated. This is like an HGTV show where the couple walks in and then runs out screaming, because zombies are coming up from the basement and mutant Termite Monsters are swinging from the chandeliers, and that same couple end up rocking on the floor sucking their thumbs and humming, just trying to forget...
Let's recap. This week I kicked off the festivities by coming to the house at night the day after we closed and began tearing out the carpets and curtains upstairs. We knew for sure that the worst of the visible damage was upstairs (with the exception of Hell Bathroom downstairs- but that's another story for another day) but had no idea just how awful things were with the condition of the walls. In one bedroom there is an entire wall being held up by the tenacity of the dingy floral wallpaper. In the bedroom next door, I pulled back the colorless rug (I think in another life it was sea-foam green?) to find that the padding beneath was so old it had literally disintegrated into orange dust- I was able to fill a shop vac sucking up a room's worth of foam-dust. I filled 5 contractor bags with stick-em tiles from under the rugs and tossed curtains that were so old and dirty they could stand straight up off the rods. But! The good news! Under the horror of the rugs were unfinished pine floors- so no wall-to-wall carpet will be needed! Hoorah for unspent money!!
Next Mom, my grandmother and I went on a quick tour of the house (Grammy hadn't seen it) and couldn't help but tear down some wallpaper while we were there (yes, my 87 year old grandmother was put to work. We do not age-discriminate at the Elephant). We found a weird/cool Chinese-style mural under one wall's worth of paper in the living room (see pic left) and a lifetime's worth of MOLD under another in the kitchen. NOOOOO!!! It seems like it was part of some bathroomtastrophe from the past- there was clear warping from water damage in the stick-em tiles outside the bathroom door and in an entire house of plaster the only new sheetrock is in the kitchen ceiling below said bathroom (which by the way has a lovely painted plywood panel in place of tile in the tub, ostensibly for quick access to whatever pipe-demon had caused the flood I deduce caused all this damage). I guess that was where repairs stopped because some seriously scary beardy-black mold was practically flipping me off once we got rid of a big swatch of (mustard and green plaid- my hand to God) wallpaper. Ok house. You win. For NOW.
So let's see- that was day 3. On day four Gavin began by spraying some bleach water on the mold (we will tear out the wall later). He also tore out the big sheets of brown faux-wood panelling in the kitchen. Yes, the same kitchen with the green and mustard wallpaper. I'll give you a moment to process how pretty it was. Oh, and sea-foam green painted cabinets. Yeah....now you're there.
At some point he went down to the basement to get a tool or something and BOO-YAH- a giant puddle of water. I had turned the water on the night before so I guess it served me right. I should have known better than to just assume basic plumbing is, like, a thing. Thank God turns out it was a simple fix of tightening a couple of pipe joints but just the Elephant's way of reminding us who's the boss (It's Tony Danza. That's who).
On this same day we got the first quote from a roofing company to flash our chimney. You see one of the selling points (hah!) of the Elephant was that there is a very well-done brand new roof. There apparantly was not, however, any attempt made to seal around the chimney (usually done with metal "flashing" which is kind of layered like fish scales at the base to keep water out). So a van rolls up and all these bizarre little men come pouring out. My brother Joe wondered out loud if they had been bred for chimney maintenance over the generations- they were all tiny and had weirdly large teeth and beedy eyes and were clearly related. Any-who, they walked up to our attic to look and point at where the sunlight glints in around the chimney gaps, said something to each other in Chimnese and then quoted us $1850.00. Har. De har har. When I actually laughed out loud in their faces they immediately dropped it to $1400 but at that point I was already dialing another company for another quote.
Which brings us to day 4. I forgot to mention that our cellar doors (the double sided hatch-type ones like they use for tornado shelters in movies) are literally rusted through with giant decroded holes all over and blue tarp and logs on top to keep the elements out. Really, this was the solution someone came to. So we had to order a new set, and because God has a sense of humor the only place that carried our size was a Lowes about an hour and a half drive from where we live. The other option was to order a different brand at nearly twice the price so of course we loaded an infant and a toddler into our Santa Fe and away we went. I had thought to ask over the phone how big the box was and I felt confident it would fit in the car. What they neglected to mention was that this box weighed about 300 pounds. Oh, and once Gavin had given himself a near-hernia getting it into the back of the car it rattled the whole way home like a box car full of ball bearings, causing the baby to endlessly howl in annoyed rage. Goodtimes.
But we got it to the house. Gavin then began ripping the acoustic tile off the downstairs ceiling (while I wrangled the babies and worked from Mom's local and lead paint dust-free house) to reveal how bad the plaster was under there; the plan is to reveal as much as we can throughout the house so we can make an educated decision this weekend as to what our game plan is re: ripping out walls, etc. The good news- the bowing we saw above the mantle in the dining room fireplace was not from bricks crumbling in on us as we initially feared but just some manky plaster falling behind a piece of plasterboard that had been slapped up as a quick fix. The bad news- chimney guy number two informed us, after walking our roof, that if he really wanted to he "could kick the whole sonofabitch chimney right over. It's shot." Awesome. Well, we weren't under the impression that the fireplace worked, so not the end of the world I guess. Plus turns out that until we are ready to rebuild the chimney, it would be stupid to do metal flashing (like putting a nice new brass bell on a sinking ship) and he suggested meshing and tarring the whole thing and doing a rain barrier. Long story short- half the price and they guarantee their work not to leak. Works for me.
And finally, as we were packing in day four, a wee winged insect landed on my hand. Gavin said "That's not a termite, is it?" "No babe!" says I. "Termites look like this..." I whip out my trusty iPhone, do a quick search, and proceed to pull up a photo that Mr. Bug-on-my-hand could have posed for. So yeah, turns out termites "swarm in spring" and they are swarming their asses off all over our porch. There is a termite contract on the house so our bug man will be there next week to well and truly kill the little bastards, but the idea that creatures are actively eating his house has Gavin freaking the freak out. This morning he said to me "I just feel like I'm gonna open a wall and there will be a million termites in there, doing cartwheels and eating and crapping all at the same time..."
Tomorrow we meet with my uncle Joe (who hereafter shall be referred to as "the Taper" since there are no less than three "Joe"s involved in the rehab of this house) for walk through. He is a professional drywaller (you didn't think we were doing this completely unarmed, did you??) and he will give us his opinion as to what we should do with our walls. I can hear the words "Gut it!" in my very near future.....
So that was the first week. Wow. But....Onward and upward! Into the fray! Fight the good fight! A bunch of other uplifting platitudes! Wheee!
Let's recap. This week I kicked off the festivities by coming to the house at night the day after we closed and began tearing out the carpets and curtains upstairs. We knew for sure that the worst of the visible damage was upstairs (with the exception of Hell Bathroom downstairs- but that's another story for another day) but had no idea just how awful things were with the condition of the walls. In one bedroom there is an entire wall being held up by the tenacity of the dingy floral wallpaper. In the bedroom next door, I pulled back the colorless rug (I think in another life it was sea-foam green?) to find that the padding beneath was so old it had literally disintegrated into orange dust- I was able to fill a shop vac sucking up a room's worth of foam-dust. I filled 5 contractor bags with stick-em tiles from under the rugs and tossed curtains that were so old and dirty they could stand straight up off the rods. But! The good news! Under the horror of the rugs were unfinished pine floors- so no wall-to-wall carpet will be needed! Hoorah for unspent money!!
Vacuuming up The Orange Carpet "Padding" Note the artfully placed hole in the plaster.
Next Mom, my grandmother and I went on a quick tour of the house (Grammy hadn't seen it) and couldn't help but tear down some wallpaper while we were there (yes, my 87 year old grandmother was put to work. We do not age-discriminate at the Elephant). We found a weird/cool Chinese-style mural under one wall's worth of paper in the living room (see pic left) and a lifetime's worth of MOLD under another in the kitchen. NOOOOO!!! It seems like it was part of some bathroomtastrophe from the past- there was clear warping from water damage in the stick-em tiles outside the bathroom door and in an entire house of plaster the only new sheetrock is in the kitchen ceiling below said bathroom (which by the way has a lovely painted plywood panel in place of tile in the tub, ostensibly for quick access to whatever pipe-demon had caused the flood I deduce caused all this damage). I guess that was where repairs stopped because some seriously scary beardy-black mold was practically flipping me off once we got rid of a big swatch of (mustard and green plaid- my hand to God) wallpaper. Ok house. You win. For NOW.So let's see- that was day 3. On day four Gavin began by spraying some bleach water on the mold (we will tear out the wall later). He also tore out the big sheets of brown faux-wood panelling in the kitchen. Yes, the same kitchen with the green and mustard wallpaper. I'll give you a moment to process how pretty it was. Oh, and sea-foam green painted cabinets. Yeah....now you're there.
Current color-scheme of our kitchen. It is the full spectrum of colors found in infant diapers.
On this same day we got the first quote from a roofing company to flash our chimney. You see one of the selling points (hah!) of the Elephant was that there is a very well-done brand new roof. There apparantly was not, however, any attempt made to seal around the chimney (usually done with metal "flashing" which is kind of layered like fish scales at the base to keep water out). So a van rolls up and all these bizarre little men come pouring out. My brother Joe wondered out loud if they had been bred for chimney maintenance over the generations- they were all tiny and had weirdly large teeth and beedy eyes and were clearly related. Any-who, they walked up to our attic to look and point at where the sunlight glints in around the chimney gaps, said something to each other in Chimnese and then quoted us $1850.00. Har. De har har. When I actually laughed out loud in their faces they immediately dropped it to $1400 but at that point I was already dialing another company for another quote.
Which brings us to day 4. I forgot to mention that our cellar doors (the double sided hatch-type ones like they use for tornado shelters in movies) are literally rusted through with giant decroded holes all over and blue tarp and logs on top to keep the elements out. Really, this was the solution someone came to. So we had to order a new set, and because God has a sense of humor the only place that carried our size was a Lowes about an hour and a half drive from where we live. The other option was to order a different brand at nearly twice the price so of course we loaded an infant and a toddler into our Santa Fe and away we went. I had thought to ask over the phone how big the box was and I felt confident it would fit in the car. What they neglected to mention was that this box weighed about 300 pounds. Oh, and once Gavin had given himself a near-hernia getting it into the back of the car it rattled the whole way home like a box car full of ball bearings, causing the baby to endlessly howl in annoyed rage. Goodtimes.
But we got it to the house. Gavin then began ripping the acoustic tile off the downstairs ceiling (while I wrangled the babies and worked from Mom's local and lead paint dust-free house) to reveal how bad the plaster was under there; the plan is to reveal as much as we can throughout the house so we can make an educated decision this weekend as to what our game plan is re: ripping out walls, etc. The good news- the bowing we saw above the mantle in the dining room fireplace was not from bricks crumbling in on us as we initially feared but just some manky plaster falling behind a piece of plasterboard that had been slapped up as a quick fix. The bad news- chimney guy number two informed us, after walking our roof, that if he really wanted to he "could kick the whole sonofabitch chimney right over. It's shot." Awesome. Well, we weren't under the impression that the fireplace worked, so not the end of the world I guess. Plus turns out that until we are ready to rebuild the chimney, it would be stupid to do metal flashing (like putting a nice new brass bell on a sinking ship) and he suggested meshing and tarring the whole thing and doing a rain barrier. Long story short- half the price and they guarantee their work not to leak. Works for me.
Above Our Mantle (Hey, the chimney's not collapsing- just the wall! Yay?)
Tomorrow we meet with my uncle Joe (who hereafter shall be referred to as "the Taper" since there are no less than three "Joe"s involved in the rehab of this house) for walk through. He is a professional drywaller (you didn't think we were doing this completely unarmed, did you??) and he will give us his opinion as to what we should do with our walls. I can hear the words "Gut it!" in my very near future.....
So that was the first week. Wow. But....Onward and upward! Into the fray! Fight the good fight! A bunch of other uplifting platitudes! Wheee!
3.16.2012
The First Day
So here we go. About 2 1/2 months ago, on Gavin's birthday, in fact, we went to see a certain sprawling blue house. From the moment we walked in one word was forefront in our silly, starstruck minds: potential. Po-freakin-tential. Sure, the plaster was cracking or gone in many all places, and the kitchen hadn't been updated since the Nixon administration, and a certain bathroom seemed to not only have been designed by Sunoco but to actually be slowly falling off the back of the house, but underneath all of this, we couldn't shake the feeling that this house could really be something special. Oh, and it was going for a song (because, quel surprise, not very many people seemed to see all that raging potential under the mountain of dirty sweaty LABOR that was also in very much in evidence).
After a long bout of doubts, and inspections, and price reductions, and more inspections, we decided that we did in fact want to see what we could do about knocking some of the "rough" off this old diamond. And today, we signed an absolutely insane amount of paperwork to legally make it ours. Going forward on this blog I will show you plenty of the hideously ugly features of our Blue Elephant as we chisel through the Bad and the Ugly to get to the Good. But for today, the first day, let's just enjoy a bit of that lovely potential, shall we?
Opening the door for the very first time!
A bit of champagne....
The foyer
It is impossible to tell from this photo how incredibly monstrous this wallpaper looks in real life...
Pocket doors!
Dining Room fireplace.
Lots of light!
In the attic we found a bunch of Playbills from the 1950s...
And someone's stamp collection as well.
Carving our initials in the "locust post"...
An Irishman goes through a pair of French doors...stop me if you've heard this one...
Found this leather-bound copy of Euripedes in the attic as well- dated 1928. I take it for a sign!
1.12.2012
Thank Heaven for Little Girls
Having a daughter inevitably brings memories of your own little-girlhood to the forefront. It's one of my favorite things about spending time with Gwendy- watching her experience things for the first time and remembering a time when the world was new and wonderfully confusing and crammed full of hidden delights and dilemmas.
Today I painted her little finger nails an iridescent blue (a shade she picked herself at the drugstore). When I was done carefully dabbing color on her minuscule nails and blowing on each one in turn, I watched her gesticulate and wave away invisible fog, showing off her hands to herself like a newly-engaged debutante with a 3 carat rock. I was struck hard by the memory of myself as a child, delighting so thoroughly in my own red fingernails. I kept noticing them-how adult and legitimate they seemed- and went about finding new things to do with them so I could admire how they looked in different poses. Here are red nails holding a dinner fork! Here are red nails flouncing a hanky! How wonderful to feel such delight in something so very simple...
And so tonight, at my girl's insistence, I painted my own nails for the first time in forever in that same blazing blue. And God, but I couldn't help but notice my hands all night- pouring in bubble bath, toweling off a squirmy toddler, tucking a blanket all the way up to her perfect little chin. And I took delight in this simple thing- having my girl and being a girl again with her.
1.01.2012
Resolved:
Instead of nebulous and unattainable goals for this year (Be kinder to myself!- what the f does that mean?), here are 10 completely do-able resolutions for the year to come:
1. Shred documents that have personal info on them as I come across them, rather than just putting them in the ever-growing Bag Of Papers Intended for Future Shredding, or BOPIFFS, for short.
2. Spend more time cuddling my dogs. It's not their fault I'm all "touched out" by the end of a day of kid wrangling. Of course I'd be more kindly inclined to them if Emmy could go more than three days without managing to remove a diaper from the trash and shred it to bits all over the rug...
3. Go to the dentist with consistency. Also, floss more. And also also, buy more floss instead of just keeping empty floss thing in medicine cabinet.
4. Throughly rinse out my recyclables rather than pass them under the faucet once regardless of amount of sticky gunge still stuck to insides.
5. Shave my legs with more frequency and more attention to detail, regardless of season.
6. Piggy-backing on #5, look at legs twice a week so as to avoid that queer feeling when you first put on shorts in the summer and it's like someone surgically grafted someone else's pale, chubby legs onto your torso whilst you were asleep.
7. Remember to bring non-disposable shopping bags to grocery store. I have enough disposable trash bags in my basement to melt them into a mold and make a usable kayak. I don't want to toss them, and yet have no use for them, so there you go.
8. Eat less sugar (currently I am on the Hummingbird Diet).
9. Go out for coffee/wine/whatever with friends without kids in tow at least once a month.
10. Never utter the phrase "I'm so tired!" Because really? Everyone is tired.
If I can hit 50% of these, I'll be in pretty good shape on my way to world dominance, I think. So, c'mon, 2012! Let's go!
10.04.2011
A Perfect Storm
I was all set to finally post a new blog all about my lovely charming kids with little sentimental bits about the things I hope to remember about them at this age blahdy blah and then this afternoon happened.
To preface, Gwen has been learning to use the potty, and in the grand toddler tradition has this irrational fear of pooping any place but her diaper. So I bought her a toy and hid it in the closet and told her she could have it once she pooped on the potty and blah blah, a week of moderate pee success but no poop and then...
Ok, please hit play on the song below while you read the rest. It really makes the story feel like it did in my head...
I am sitting on the couch in the living room with Wes in my lap when all of a sudden, Gwen, who'd been playing quietly a moment before starts going "AHH!! -grunt- AhhhHHH!!-grunt-AhhhHHHH!!" which I take to mean she is in the process of pooping her pants. So I put Wes down on the couch and run to scoop her up, trot to the potty, and pull down her pants and underwear all in one graceless movement as she starts a'poopin.
As the #2 lands both in the potty and in said underwear, I notice Wesley has chosen this moment to learn how to roll onto his side and is nearing the edge of the couch. So I leave a Gwen who is now alternately laughing and screaming (knowing she's gonna get her "poop toy" but also freaking about the whole poop-process) to reset Wesley on the couch.
I then grab Gwen who is finished and is trying to sit on the rug with her dirty butt and stuff her under my arm to take her with me to her bedroom to get wipes and new pants/underwear. I find said garments and then carry her back to the living room where what to my wondering eyes should appear but...
EMMY EATING THE POOP OUT OF THE POTTY!!!!! Oh. My. God.
I chase Emmy off (I think my exact words were
"OHMYGODNOOOOYOUARESOGROSSGETAWAAAYY!!!") and use the wipes to return the remaining poop to the potty. Wesley is now working on a front-to-feet roll forward so I retreive him and plop him in the bouncy. I race the potty back to the bathroom to dispose of its contents, et al.
Upon returning to the living room Gwen is still standing there with her pants around ankles so I then clean her up and get her dressed.
I proceed to catch Emmy and clean her mouth out with Crest Total Care Mouthwash, because WHAT THE HELL ELSE TO YOU USE TO CLEAN OUT THE MOUTH OF A PUG WHO JUST ATE FECES AND FREQUENTLY ENJOYS KISSING YOUR TODDLER ON THE MOUTH??!!??
And that was my life from approximately 2:18-2:24. Jealous? Yeah, you know you are. Welcome back, blog.
7.24.2011
Our Ship Comes In
And aboard it was a wee swarthy pirate named Wesley! Here's some pics of his birth and....aftermath? afterglow? I dunno.
We were admitted around 1pm on 7/9. I'd been having contractions 5 minutes apart since about 4am that weren't getting stronger so we decided to head in and get checked out.
Turns out I was in early labor, and the frequency of the contractions (which were 2 minutes apart by the time I was admitted) was due to dehydration. (S'riously, I don't know how I could have drank anymore. I was downing gallons of water each day and peeing like every 4 minutes) Dehydration made getting a viable IV in very...um....interesting. 8 sticks and a resident (2 very skilled nurses having been unable to get a vein) later, I had my saline drip. All my boo-boos:
After a few hours and slow dilating (only between 3 and 4cms by now), my OB decided to break my water. That made things much more....interesting, pain-wise:
There's a bit of a gap in photos here, as I had grown black bat wings and was ready to disembowel anyone bold enough to snap one. Here's where Mom and Gavin were truly awesome, being supportive and helpful and just getting me through it by any means necessary (including some ill-conceived comedy routines).
I opted for the epidural after about 5 hours of !crazy! pain only got me to 5 lousy centimeters dilation. Once the epi was done I was so giddy I could dance (ya know, but for the fact that my lower body was asleep). My contractions still hurt but were totally bearable and I felt so much more relaxed....Only 2 hours later I was at 10 cms and ready to rumble. My AMAZING OB suggested we try pushing, and about 15 minutes later...
Mom telling it on the mountain:
That Ashley can take a picture:
Aunt Joy the next day:
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