Once Upon A Farmhouse

Cottonwood Falls and Love's Fatal Arrow

2008-10-05T21:46:00.020-05:00

A recent trip with my bookclub to historic Cottonwood Falls Kansas, a jewel of a small town set right in the center of the Flint Hills, set my pulse to racing and my heart to pattering, as I was able to view some very fine architectural details in the Chase County Courthouse as well as tour a beautiful turn of the century farmhouse.

WooHoo! Was that a run-on sentence or what?

Maybe I should break it down in an outline so it will be easier to grasp...

1. Book club to Cottonwood Falls

a. Jewel of a small town

b. Center of the Flint Hills

c. Pulse races

d. Heart goes pitter pat

2. Chase County Court House

a. Beautiful architectural details

b. I got to see 'em

3. Farmhouse

a. Turn of the century

b. Still clinging to the butler's pantry.

c. Wait! That comes later

d. Nevermind!

What more could an architecture junkie ask for?

The courthouse, which is currently undergoing an extensive renovation features some massive trim. The windows have deep sills that are set into the thick limestone walls of the 1872 building.

A curving staircase reaches all the way to the third floor.

As you ascend, you can visit the courtroom.

And the jail, where I hope your stay will be very brief!

Many lovely sights will greet you once you again gain your freedom...

...and begin your descent back into the town itself.

Where, if you don't stop for a piece of pie at the Emma Chase Cafe, with your friend and your other friend... you might as well not have come in the first place!

The main event of the day for me, was touring the childhood home of my friend Nancy, of Three Blondes and the Law.

Other than the addition of a main floor bathroom and mudroom, this gorgeous turn of the century farmhouse has not been altered in any significant way from it's original floor plan.

Which includes a Butler's Pantry...

A Butler's Pantry...

A Butler's Pantry that I fell deeply, deeply, DEEPLY in love with.

I also struggled in leaving this dining room behind.

But not nearly as much as I struggled in disentangling myself from the heated embrace of the butler's pantry.

There were some trim details that included an outer ribbon of chocolaty wood encasing a rich golden inner layer of wood that did cause me to suffer a few unladylike palpitations.

And an INGLENOOK that brought me to my knees!

Until I remembered the butler's pantry and all that we had been through.

His noble gait, his broad shoulders, his steady gaze, and I re-pledged my troth to be his and his alone and I felt whole and unviolated again.

So that the "come hither" curve of a certain beguiling stone wall.

and the ferocious virility of a large red barn may have caused me to tremble for a second... or two seconds... or maybe three...

Still... nothing made me as fluttery and as weak kneed, and as quivery as the love of my fragile youth... the butler's pantry.

And our love will live on in my heart... like a quiet burning ember of love... stricken through by the cruel arrow of fate... but still beating, beating, beating... and yes still... throbbing, throbbing, throbbing.... and still quivering, quivering, quivering... like a green gelatin salad... with sweet little marshmallows inside... quivering in love... quaking in love... until the sands of time are no more.

Fare thee well my love.

Fare

Thee

Well...

Hand Made Barn Doors

2008-10-01T22:56:00.004-05:00

On my days off from work, I have a strong tendency to occupy myself with the one or more of the following activites.

1. Stare blankly into space for hours.

2. Stare blankly at ceiling fan for hours.

3. Attempt to guide tea and sandwich into mouth while staring blankly at walls and fan.

4. Miss mouth while trying for several minutes to guide tea and sandwich into cheek, ear, eyebrow, and forehead.

5. Finally, find mouth and give self food and drink.

6. Wipe drool from chin with back of hand.

7. Nap.

The Country Doctor on the other hand is a whole different animal. He happily gyrates from one insane project to another. A few days ago he informed me that "September was yard month" and "October is barn month." To celebrate the start of "Barn Month" the Country Doctor built himself some doors.

To build the doors, the Country Doctor used some left over tongue and groove pine floor boards from our mudroom flooring.

He managed to work in a few cute "barn type" details into the door.

He enlisted Ethan to help him paint.

One of the doors has a window and one does not.

He originally planned to purchase ready made doors, but at the last minute he decided to try and build some himself.

I am really glad he did.

I wonder what other projects "Barn Month" has in store?

I hope there aren't any stanchions... or horse stalls involved.

The Hutch Saga Continues

2008-09-22T14:59:00.006-05:00

Kitchen Hutch - (from before the house was completely finished)

This is what the hutch now looks like with two coats of "Cottage Cream" paint from Sherwin Williams.

Yes, I went with cream.

Yes, I realize that cream was not really an option before.

Yes, I seriously considered many of the suggestions that were offered in the previous hutch spasm story.

Yes, I almost went with black and then I almost went with the same color as the walls, but in the end I wimped out with cream. Or maybe I whipped out with cream!

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha - boy am I funny today.

So back to me, me, me and more me, and also my hutch.

Here are all my problems for you to solve.

1. So far I have not painted the inside of the hutch with the cream paint. Can you even tell from the picture? Or does it all look the same?
If by some miracle, you can tell that the inside is still a pale blue/green and the exterior is now a warm cream, I really would appreciate your opinion as to if I should go ahead and paint the inside cream as well. Or if I should paint it an entirely different color. Or if I can leave the inside of the hutch the pale green/blue color and maybe have a slim chance of getting the damn... I mean DANG thing finished in this lifetime.

PS - If you vote for painting it cream or painting it an entirely different color - YOU HAVE TO COME OVER AND DO IT FOR ME!!!

2. My second problem is even spazzier than the first. Do you see how the top of the hutch is currently sitting on the bottom of the hutch? I don't know if you realize this, but the top of the hutch used to hang on the wall suspend about a foot above the bottom of the hutch.

Like the above pic.

This is not how I intended for the hutch to be. I originally drew the hutch to be a single piece, but the country doctor was concerned that we would not have enough counter space, and so at the last minute, the cabinet makers hung the top of the hutch a foot above the bottom of the hutch. We could not hang it any higher because of the vent on the wall. And guess what? We do really use that counter space. Mostly to catch all the junk mail, and the permission slips and the book orders, and the soccer schedules and the school picture packets... which keeps the other counters free from all that junk, which makes me pretty happy. On the other hand, I always though that the two part hutch looked kind of odd.

3. Can you also tell that we took off the crown moulding and we moved the hutch out from the wall? Am I the only person on the planet who cares this much about my silly little hutch? If there is anyone still reading this - I always wanted my kitchen hutch to LOOK LIKE A HUTCH! But it never really did. So I am considering giving it a complete makeover. I want to move it away from the wall, put on a new countertop that is edged all the way around, find a smaller crown moulding for the top. I would also like the cabinet makers to build a piece that goes in between the countertop and the upper cabinet that sort of connects the two pieces together so it looks like a whole. I know this is all terribly confusing so look... I drew a really bad picture...

Is it all crystal clear now?

Do you think that it will look terrible and I should just put it back like it was? Should I keep the upper cabinet on the lower cabinet? Is anyone still with me?

Anyone?

So cream inside or cream not inside?

Upper on lower or upper not on lower?

Out from the wall or not out from the wall?

Place her in psychiatric care immediately or sedate her and lobotomize the frontal lobe?

Tell me what you think.

Muchas Gracias!

Kitchen Hutch Does Funny Cowboy Dance

2008-09-17T22:28:00.006-05:00

I have mentioned before, that we ordered about half of all the cabinets in our house in "paint grade poplar" meaning the cabinets were delivered and installed unpainted in order to save a few shekels. I really enjoy painting and thought it would be no trouble at all to paint twenty odd cabinets myself.

Har Har Har!

I think I will have unpainted cabinets in my house until I am ninety years old at this point. And even funnier is that I actually did paint the kitchen hutch already!

Yeah - isn't that funny!

Isn't that just the funniest thing you ever heard?!?

I am laughing really, really hard right now.

Tears are just streaming down my face, I am laughing so hard.

Wait! I'm not laughing... I am sobbing!

But I have never really liked this faded greed on the hutch. Actually - I do like the color. I just don't like it on the hutch. Actually I do like it on the hutch. I just don't like it on the hutch in this room. The kitchen is painted in a very nice warm yellow and the washed out greenish/blueish hutch has never looked right to me.

Believe it or not the door above is actually painted in two different colors. One side is a deep orange and other side is a cardinal red. I ragged a brown glaze over both colors. What do you think? Can you even see a difference?

This is the closest color I could find to a pumpkin... because I just had to try a pumpkin color on my hutch. I also used the brown glaze over the top and I love this color... I am just not sure I want my kitchen hutch to be this color.

This is a deeper red with the brown glaze over the top.

Then I got tired of the reds...

So I decided to try a few greens. I just had to try them. The samples are cheap and I just had to see if a "harder green" would do the trick for me. I especially like the darker green, but again I am not sure it is the right choice for the hutch.

Do you see a color that looks perfect?

Please don't tell my you like the original color!

Because it is not going to be easy to cover up all that red paint!

While I was at the paint store, I happened to notice that they had a huge wallpaper book collection, so I took a break from my hutch paint color spasms and flipped through a few books.

I am usually the type of person that likes to drag home as many samples of certain materials as I can get away with. I will lug twelve carpet samples, nineteen tile boards, and four hundred paint chips home, spread them all out, and glory in all the possibilities for days. But the wallpaper books were different. After looking through several, I stumbled upon one that instantly made my heartbeat erratic. My pulse quickened. My skin glistened with sweat. My bosom heaved. Every page in the wallpaper book felt like a scene from a Jane Austen novel.

I guess you could say that I judged the book by it's cover.

And as tears rained down on my cheeks....

I whispered the dearest feelings of my heart...

You had me at hello...

You... had.... ME... at... HELLO!

Huh?

Oh yeah - so if you have an opinion on a good color for that horrifying hutch up there please let me know.

Because the clown look is really not working for me.

Muy Muy Appreciado,

Rechelle

Salvaged Brick Sidewalk

2008-09-01T23:23:00.006-05:00

This story begins with a nice pile of bricks. A pile of bricks that our family salvaged from an old sidewalk in town which ran in front of my friend Kara's house. Kara was having a new sidewalk put in and called to let me know that we could take the old bricks out of her sidewalk before the concrete truck arrived - if we still wanted them. We did want them and spent the next two weekends digging the bricks out of her old sidewalk, loading them into the back of the pick-up, driving them out to our building site, and unloading them.

After the immense effort of moving those bricks, I am sorry to tell you that we grew a bit prideful of them. Nevermind the new house, the quaint barn, the view, the pond and the shiny new kitchen cabinets... WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE OUR SALVAGED BRICKS?

Because we salvaged them...

OURSELVES...

WITH OUR OWN HANDS!!!

And this makes us much better than most people on earth. Because WE ARE SALVAGERS...and EVERYONE in AMERICA knows that re-using old building materials is what makes you closest to God these days.

This is what our sidewalk looked like back when I was having a delirious visit from Beverley Nichols, my favorite garden author.

Over the course of the summer, the only thing that changed in this path was that the weeds got taller and taller and taller. I am very glad Beverley was not around to see that happen.

One of the reasons for the delay, was that we needed to pick a pattern in which to lay the bricks. While on the UC Berkeley campus - we found our inspiration.

In the shadow of a tall clock tower were bricks in a herringbone pattern. We thought if it was good enough for Berkeley, it was good enough for us.

Back home, the Country Doctor, tilled up the dirt in the sidewalk.

Mixed in some cement.

And then we had to move the pile of bricks from behind the house to beside the pathway.

I did not help with this step as I had seen a black snake crawl out of this pile of bricks earlier that summer and had no interest whatsoever in seeing him again.

I was further vindicated when the Country Doctor found a snake skin.

The bricks were unloaded in various piles around the pathway. You can see here the sand and the screed that the Country Doctor built to smooth out the surface evenly before setting the bricks in place.

Here's the screed again...

At least I think it is called a screed.

And here is a live snake they found in the brick pile.

The Country Doctor lined both edges of the pathway with bricks placed end to end, and then he started working on the herringbone pattern.

It was about here that we realized how many bricks we were going to have to cut to make this pattern work.

And right about here, we realized that we would be cutting bricks to fill in the holes in this pathway for the rest of our lives.

And when I say "we would be cutting bricks" ....

I actually mean "the Country Doctor" would be cutting bricks.

Because my hands started to sweat buckets every time I watched my husband slice one of those bricks in half. I eventually had to retreat to the porch and sit there helplessly, fanning myself with a wide brimmed straw hat, saying things like "I do declare!" and "Glory be!" and "Heavens to Betsy!"

Besides, why exactly did I have all these boys, if not to help their father build a brick pathway?

Here is Drew marking chalk lines on the bricks to show their dad where to make a cut.

The thousands and thousands.....

And millions and trillions of precise brick cuts...

Eventually, the Country Doctor wore out the blade on the big saw and for the last twenty odd cuts he used a hand saw.

This is the last brick!

This is the last cut!

But it isn't over yet.

I was able to help the Country Doctor spread a fine layer of sand over the sidewalk as there were no snakes and no saw involved. But I did have to take frequent breaks to drink my coffee, admire my roses, practice some modern dance steps on the sweeping front lawn and oh yeah... take some pictures....

HEY! SOMEONE HAS TO TAKE THE PICTURES!

The final step involves sweeping the sand into all the cracks and crevices in between the bricks...

And using one of these thingys to... to... Heck I have no idea what that machine does.

Jack gave the new/old sidewalk a test drive.

Here is the Country Doctor standing on his new brick pathway.

Nice job Honey!

Now honey... we have to get that other sidewalk done.

Honey?

Dear?

Honey?

Show Cat Upstages New Barn Door

2008-06-02T22:34:00.007-05:00

The Country Doctor has been building some doors for our barn.

These doors have opened up a new debate between the CD and myself in regards to hardware. I would like some nice iron handles possibly forged by the CD's father, while the CD want to fashion some simple handles from wood himself.

And it was while I was photographing these doors and mulling over our hardware debate when I spotted Cookie on the window sill...

And suddenly I had trouble focusing on the barn door... or on the potential barn door handles.

Because I was distracted by a sweet fluffy tail which used to be connected to a fluffy body which is not quite so fluffy anymore...

And then I saw the dangling leg and I thought to myself... Oh! She is so beautiful....

Look at that face.

Look at it.

Wooky Cookie Wooky over here at your mama.

Oh sweet little Cookie cat.

Who wuvs you Cookie?

Who wuvs her wittle Cookie kitten cat?

Wook at her!

WOOK AT HER!!!

Huh? What? Where was I? Oh yes, barn doors. I think I will shut mine right now. And go find my wittle Cookie Kitten Cat. Sweet little girly girl kitty. Here kitty kitty. Here kitty!

Grey Gardens, Then and Now

2008-05-20T08:21:00.003-05:00

I have to blame Jean over at Renovation Therapy for my obsession with Grey Gardens. Several months ago she wrote something on her blog about Grey Gardens and it was compelling enough to make me want to know more. Eventually, I had the presence of mind to place both of the Grey Gardens documentaires in my NetFlicks queue. A few weeks later, the two Grey Gardens films arrived. I made a cup of tea, sat down to watch them and sat mesmerized through both films.

Firstly, Grey Gardens is about two crazy women... a mother and daughter... relatives of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, living in squalor in a crumbling shingle style house on some of the most expensive real estate in the United States. Secondly, Grey Gardens is about the house and the gardens and I can't ever resist a movie about a great old house surrounded by a overgrown, abandoned garden.

In the film, the house is a wreck, with racoons coming in and out the walls, but you can still see the faded glory of what once was. The mother, confined mostly to her stained mattress of a bed with feral kittens on her lap, eating carton after carton of ice cream, while her daughter... her fifty six year old daughter... completely steals the show with her dramatic outfits and head scarves and bathing suits and dance steps, exhibiting the same faded glory of the house, she dances, she sings, she talks... and talks and talks and then she talks some more. Everything Edie says is both completely absurd and astonishingly compelling. She eats ice cream and goes swimming and it was all captured on film by two documentary film makers who would go down in history for capturing a slice of American life... madness and blight... spirit and independence... squalor and valor in one amazing film.

After watching the two films I had to rush to my computer and see if I could find out what had happened to the women and to their house. I found a link to a story about the renovation of Grey Gardens in 2005, House voyeurism at it's finest.

I also found an interview with one of the film makers. This interview gives you a great overview of what the films are about and why Edie was such a watchable character. Everytime I see pictures of her, it is so clear to me how much influence she has had on fashion today.

Would Anthropologie even exist without Edie?

Despite Show Cats, Shrubs Planted At Last

2008-05-18T20:02:00.010-05:00

This is Cookie, one of our "Show Cats". She is not really a "Show Cat" but she used to kind of look like one until she had to be shaved due to massive hair-ball-itis all over her under carriage.

On Sunday the whole family sans Show Cats, loaded up in the truck and we went to the Garden Center where I work. Our mission: to pick up a load of shrubs to plant around the foundation of our house.

Our boys were not thrilled about planting shrubs around the foundation of our house all afternoon with their parents, but once we got into the swing of things they settled into the task at hand.

With only the occasional break to rest on a bag of mulch and pet Arod, the other show cat.

OKAY SON, BREAK IS OVER!!!

We planted three Dwarf Korean Lilacs on the Southeast corner of the screen porch. Then we planted 97,532 Many Happy Returns Day Lilys in front of the lilacs... Okay, maybe not quite 97,532... but it seemed like it...

The cats continued to distract us with their fluffy cuteness.

I would like to interrupt the fluffy cuteness to point out that the owner of these yellow polka dotted Converse tennis shoes is the person who dug almost every single hole for every single shrub that we planted. And since my four sons are not likely to sport a pair of yellow polka dotted Converse tennis shoes and neither is my husband, that leaves me or the Show Cats, and I am sorry to say, that it was me.

Jack did all the interpretive shrub dancing.

Until we grew weary of Jack's interpretive shrub dancing, and forced him back to planting.

After a long afternoon planting, we had dinner on the screen porch.

The Country Doctor traded his glass of wine for Jack's grape juice.

Jack rapidly discerned that a switch had been made...

At this point in his life, he still much prefers the unfermented grape. Unfortunately, his parents have learned to rely heavily on the medicinal value of a large glass of wine after a day spent planting shrubs with four children and two crazy cats...

Or maybe two large glasses of wine...

Or maybe...three...?

What We Planted and Why

2008-05-18T20:01:00.001-05:00

We planted one lonely Double Knock Out shrub rose. We hoped to plant a half dozen of these wonderful plants, but the Garden Center was down to it's last one. The Double Knock Out shrub rose is a fantastic new rose, known for it's toughness, and blooms that last all summer long. We will have to wait until July to buy the rest of our Knock Outs.

We planted three Dwarf Korean Lilacs on the Southeast corner of the house. Despite their short blooming season, these plants are a favorite of mine. They are already perfuming the air with their blossoms.

We hemmed the lilacs in with a semi-circle of Many Happy Returns Day Lilys. I am not a big fan of Day Lilys as they are just planted everywhere, but it is hard to beat this tough low maintenance plant, plus they have large yellow blooms all summer.

The Southwest corner of our house was planted out with three Snowbelle Mock Oranges. I don't know much about this particular shrub, but it has the sweetest bell shaped flowers.

We planted two Polka Weigela. (pronounced wuh-jeel-ya). I think they look like a bunch of fake plastic flowers stuck in the ground. Evidently they bloom all summer which means we will have a shrub that looks like a big pick of fake flowers crouching by our air conditioner all summer long.

On the Northwest corner we planted a Compact Burning Bush. The "compact" part is certainly true at this point, but the whole "burning" thing has me baffled.

We planted SIX hydrangeas!

I have to tell you that when I saw that the landscape architect had placed hydrangeas around my house, I was a little nervous.

"Aren't they a tricky plant to maintain?" I asked him shakily.

"No... not really" he replied.

"But Martha Stewart is constantly talking about hydrangeas, and whatever she loves tends to be impossibly complicated!" I cried out in fear.

"Um... well... the hydrangeas that I put on your plan are actually very hardy, and should do just fine." he assured me.

I took his word for it and I am terribly excited about our hydrangeas. Having them in my yard makes me feel very sophisticated and complicated like such a serious gardener. The hydrangea in the picture above is a "Annabelle" Hydrangea. The Annabelle has white blooms that can be as large as ten inches across!

Holy Crap!

We also planted some Penny Mac Hydrangeas on the front of the house. The Penny Macs have blue or pink blossoms depending on what type of soil they are planted in. For blue blooms you may have to add aluminum sulphate. Did I seriously just type that last sentence? What am I going to say next? Something about alkaline versus acidity?

Finally, we planted this here Emerald Triumph Viburnum on the Northeast corner of the house. The strange thing about the Emerald Triumph Viburnum, was it's cost. It was twice as much as every other plant we bought. I am very curious to see if this plant lives up to it's designer label price.

We have lots more plants to get, but this was enough for one day for us!

Strange Man Appears Out of Mist, Paints Barn

2008-05-16T10:30:00.009-05:00

On my way home from work a few days ago...

As I turned down our driveway...

I almost ran over my son's bicycle...

And had to veer suddenly off the road to miss it!

And that's when I took a picture of the dashboard...

Because I was distracted by the sight of a strange man appearing out of what seems like mist, but it is not mist, it is actually just a very poor photo...

And here is another very poor photo...

But back to that strange man who was wearing shredded clothing and sporting a bad haircut.

Who appeared to be painting my barn!

I had grown so accustomed to the "Bleeding Kansas Barn" that I was speechless!

No one seemed to mind that I was rendered speechless, especially the strange man with the shredded, stained clothing and the poor haircut.

A few days later, I took some more photos of our new red barn.

And then I took some more...

And yes sorry, just a few more...

Screen Porch Installed, Builder Weeps With Joy.

2008-05-15T10:31:00.017-05:00

I woke up on Thursday morning, looked out the window and saw a familiar truck parked in my driveway. A truck that was a fixture around this place for over a year. A truck that I used to tuck little envelopes inside of, under a spare pair of pliers or a hammer so that it wouldn't blow away. Envelopes with checks inside to pay the owner of this truck for all of his hard work.

Because this truck belongs to the man who built our house.

When I saw that truck, I threw some clothes on and rushed downstairs to snap a few photos. I had to take the photos quickly, because I was not going to be able to hound them all day long with my camera as I now have a job. When I told our builder, Dennis and his crew that I would not be able to take pictures of them working on the house all day long, they just sat down on the grass and started sobbing.

I had no idea that my taking pictures of these men working on my house meant so much to them!

Okay - actually that is not true. Actually, when I told Dennis and his crew that I would not be able to hang around them all day long taking pictures while they worked and ask stupid questions about what they were doing and why they were doing it and how they were doing it, and what they were going to do next... and oh dear!!! if you don't mind... I would like to change everything you just did... etc...etc...

When I told them I wouldn't be able to hang out with them all day long... they all got tiny little smiles on their faces.

Yes... tiny little secret smiles and I could kinda tell that on the inside they were dancing an Irish jig and hoisting massive mugs of frothy brew above their heads and tossing nearby barmaids into the air, and catching them and then dancing a Russian jig while balancing a shot of vodka on their heads and then tossing a Siberian husky into the air and catching it and hugging it tightly and then... Okay - well maybe the whole Siberian Husky thing is a bit much... but I don't think they were very disappointed when I told them that I was not going to be able to document their every move.

I am pretty sure they were not disappointed at all.

Not even a teensy bit.

But I was...

Look - Jordan grew a beard over the winter!

Anyway... what I mean to say is that they spent Wednesday installing the screens on our screen porch and giving the front porch one final coat of paint. It was so nice to see them. I am so glad that Dennis and Jordan built our home. Even if I did torment them the entire year they were building it, by being a constant nuisance with my camera, and my changes, and my questions.

They tolerated it amazingly well.

Dennis keeps talking about retirement. He seems to talk about it particularly a lot whenever I am around. But in my dreams, the Country Doctor and I build another house about fifteen years from now. A much smaller, much more affordable house.

And how could anyone except Dennis build it???

Dennis?

Dennis???

Who's up for another construction project being blogged!?!?!

Raise your hand!

I think that counts as a hand raising. Yes... I think it does.

They finished before I got home. I didn't even get to say goodbye! But I did get the address of the new house they are working on now. Moohahahahahahah. Moooohahahahahaha!!!

Mary Receives Sign

2008-05-10T13:58:00.006-05:00

Sure was fun reading through everyone's sign ideas. If you ever need an idea for a sign, the comments on the below post would be an excellent place to start. Jack helped me pick a winner. The photo essay follows.

Mary wins the $60.00 gift certificate for a custom made sign! Please e-mail me Mary, countrydoctorswife@live.com, and I will give you the details. Congratulations!

CDW Receives Sign, Mudroom Cabinets Killim

2008-05-08T22:27:00.008-05:00

We ordered several cabinets in our house in paint grade poplar in an attempt to hold costs down.

Ha ha ha heee hee ah ha ha ha ho ho hee hee hee ho ho ho har har har har.

What?

Huh?

Where was I?

Oh yes... saving money.

Can I just say that this tiny little cost saving measure in no way compensates for the thousands of "surprise costs" and "last minute changes" and "hidden expenses" and YOU BOUGHT WHAT!?!?! and HOW MUCH DID YOU SAY THAT EXTRA STEP ON THE SIDE PORCH COSTS???!!!???

So getting the paint grade cabinets was not only a very minor savings, in the grand scheme of things, it also gave us one more task to do ourselves which I have just been too weak and shaky to even think about...

UNTIL NOW!!!

The Country Doctor took all the boys on a camping trip last weekend. I decided to use that precious, golden, holy, sacred, blissful, gift of time alone to paint the stinking... not cost effective... not saving us any money... %$*#*#%^& mudroom cabinets.

I decided to make the cabinet doors into a chalkboard.

No mom, I did not use the magnetic/chalkboard paint. I could not find any magnetic/chalkboard in my small town hardware store and I was not about to drive 20 miles to the bigger town just for a can of magnetic/chalkboard paint. My family is just going to have to suffer and subsist on chalkboard only cabinets! How will they ever face another dawn?

Here is the dreary aftermath.

Here is where I started to paint the mudroom cabinets in the high gloss Killim Red paint that I bought right before Thanksgiving in order to have the mudroom cabinets painted by Christmas.

Ha ha ha ha ha hoo hoo hee hee hee ho ho ho har har har heh heh ho ho hee har ho.

Here is where I started to have serious misgivings about that high gloss Killim Red paint on my mudroom cabinets. Here is where I started to think that my mudroom cabinets were beginning to look like they were painted with left over fingernail polish from the Dollar store. Here is where I started to wonder if I was completely cracked out on cranberry sauce when I bought that high gloss Killim Red paint.

Here is where I thought about toning the cracked out glossy red paint down with a pale yellow interior on the inside of the cubbies.

Here is where I considered repainting the cabinets in Ralph Lauren Sun Washed Blue.

Here is my son Calder running in a local track meet on a Killim Red Track.

Here is his little brother Jack drinking a Ralph Lauren Sun Washed Blue Gatorade.

Here is where I received the sign and went ahead and finished off the cabinets in Killim Red.

Can you see the sign?

This very, very cute sign!

I ordered this custom sign from one of the artisans at our hometown Tulip Fest.

When I walk in my mudroom, I try very hard not to look at the glossy garish killim red cabinets and I focus all my energy on this cute sign.

I am giving away one $60.00 gift certificate for a custom made sign for your own garish glossy mudroom.... or for any other room in your house. Your sign can say whatever you like! Cindy at Cindy's Signs and Such will make it for you and I will ship it out.

Just tell me what your custom made sign would say in the comments. I will have a random drawing on Saturday to find the winner. Contest ends at noon CST on Saturday. Thanks for dropping by!

The Italian Papers

2008-05-02T22:22:00.003-05:00

On a recent trip to the Italian Riviera...I mean to Lawrence, Kansas (which is practically the same thing) I stumbled across these very cute poster sized Italian papers at a wonderful store on Massachusetts Street called Brits.

I don't know why a store called Brits which specializes in all things British was selling Italian papers. All I know, is that the papers were very cute and very cheap ($3.99 each) so I grabbed several, and a handful of chocolates, paid my tab and drove home.

I bought these plain black frames almost a year ago in a pathetic attempt to hang something on all the blank walls in our house. I brought the frames home, tucked them securely behind the laundry room door and that is where they have been all this time.

When I got home I rushed upstairs to get the frames from behind the laundry room door, lugged them down to the kitchen table, only to discover that the papers did not properly fit the frames. Ugh! I don't want to buy more frames!

So I started playing with the papers thinking maybe I could use one paper to frame another paper.

Finally, I found a combination that I liked, and I started hacking away.

I used spray adhesive for this project to avoid any unfortunate glue smears which is something I am prone to do.

Look at that! It is almost like my body was temporarily possessed by someone with actual crafting skills!

Please step back. If you examine this project too closely you will start to see the seams and the cracks and the crevices and it is really better if we can just all pretend that they don't exist.

Voila! Cute Italian papers with cute French sayings from a cute British shop. I am so well travelled! I wonder how long these will sit here before I get them hung on the walls?

But seriously these papers are extremely affordable and the possibilities are endless. I would like to see what a truly gifted craft type person could do with these. Okay - I gotta go find a place to hang these now.

Au Revoir,

Rechelle

GiGi's House

2008-05-02T13:27:00.005-05:00

(This is not a picture of Gi Gi's house, but it is similar.)

Gi Gi's house was a rambling white clapboard Dutch colonial in a town where just about everyone lived in a ranch style home. Most everyone in the small town I grew up in, referred to Gi Gi's house as the "barn house". It was one of the few two story homes in our town, which made it distinct to start with, added to this was the classic proportions, the timeless design, the ongoing renovation and updating by Gi Gi's mother and you had a spectacular home.

It was always a thrill to visit GiGi's house. Although we never used the front door, I still remember the lovely stair hall that greeted you upon entry. To the left was a spacious formal living room in which we rarely stepped. I always desperately wanted to sit in that room and absorb it, but Gi Gi had too many plans and ideas and we were all too often being hunted down by Gi Gi's older sister, who we managed to perpetually enrage in one way or another. So I was not a guest, instead I was a refugee, fleeing in terror from one room to another desperately seeking sanctuary and a good hiding spot. Thus, I was never able to satisfy my longing to just hang out in that glorious formal living room.

Tucked around the corner from the formal living room was a formal dining room and this was another space I rarely found a good enough excuse to be in, but I did poke my head in it whenever I could. When we were not running for our lives, we spent most of our time while on the mainfloor, in the kitchen.

We would seat ourselves at the peninsula bar which divided the kitchen from the family room and here we gorged ourselves on the chili dogs that GiGi's mom made for us. She would split a hot dog in half, cover it in chili, freshly cut red onions, and a slice of american cheese. I found this dish to be supremely exotic, as my own mother never made chili dogs. GiGi's kitchen was open to both a family room and a spacious sunroom. Tucked behind the brick wall that housed the fireplace in the family room, was an office or study where Gi Gi's dad stationed himself in a swirl of smoke. I peeked in there a time or two but quickly got the distinct feeling that this was probably forbidden territory.

The second floor of Gi Gi's house was another wonderland to me. Growing up in Western Kansas, I was all too aware of flat horizontal surfaces. There are not too many vertical planes in either hills, trees, or even two story homes. Climbing up to a second floor was an adventure in itself. All the bedrooms were located on the second floor. Gi Gi and her sister shared a suite of rooms that included a spacious bath and a sitting room. They also had a long "L" shaped closet that connected their two rooms. I never got over that closet, as it was huge, full of girly get-ups as well as being a secret passageway between two rooms! I remember Gi Gi's parent's room also had a sitting room off their bedroom that overlooked the backyard which was of course, beautifully landscaped and included a playhouse. (Where Gi Gi and I liked to sneak off and smoke her mother's cigarettes.) This backyard also had a pool, a sauna, a trampoline, and many flowers and trees.

Strangely, as gorgeous as Gi Gi's house was, we spent most of our time in the basement . Her basement was finished with two guest bedrooms, a large living room and a bar. There was also a fun hidey hole under the basement stairs where we often drug a TV, sleeping bags and snacks and hid away like the little rats that we were. But the most fun part of that basement was that bar.

Gi Gi's basement was set up like a lounge. There were several small tables with leather captain chairs as well as a bar with bar stools. So we did what every child must do in that particular situation. We played bar. We had imaginary customers to whom we served tumblers of Coke and Seven-Up, carefully placing a napkin underneath all of their drinks. We took their orders on an endless supply of notepads which we probably stole from GiGi's dad's office and slapped them on the bar yelling for two gin and tonics, a strawberry daquiri and a martini straight up and make it snappy! I learned all my bar lingo from Gi Gi, as my parents aside from being grossly inadequate in chili dogs also rarely had more than a stale beer in the back of the fridge. We took turns being bartender and cocktail waitress, exhausting ourselves to frenzied little nubbins by racing back and forth between the tables and the bar. After hours of play, we would drop onto the comfortable leather barstools and break open up a jar of spicy pickles.

Gi Gi's mom had rows and rows and rows and rows and rows and rows of homemade spicy pickles in mason jars stored on the shelves by the bar. We would start eating them. They were sour and spicy and left your mouth burning and the only cure was to eat more pickles, so we did. We ate spicy pickles until our bellies distended out over our hip hugger jeans and then we ate even more pickles. We drank Coke and ate peanuts and polished off jar after jar of Gi Gi's mom's spicy pickles.

After a while, I would need to visit the basement bathroom, to make room for a few more pickles, but once I entered that bathroom it was hard to leave. That bathroom had the kind of wallpaper that was comprised of old fashioned newspaper stories. Do you remember that kind of wallpaper? It was made to look like old newsprint including pictures of people in old fashioned swimsuits and on those big old tricycles wearing frilly bloomers and carrying parasols. I would get absolutely lost in that bathroom reading every single story on the wall, until the pattern repeated, and then I would start over again.

I loved visiting GiGi's house. As I think about it now, I am very aware of how much of an impression it must have left on me as some thirty years later I built a house and I can see how Gi Gi's home influenced my own. Mostly because I chose to build a new home in a classic style, but also because I tried very hard to create a house that is an opportunity for adventure and fun. Our basement isn't finished yet, but I am making a note to myself to add a bar, a lounge and long shelves for spicy pickles... and also to find some of that old newspaper wallpaper!

Men At Work

2008-03-03T13:26:00.001-06:00

The foundation for our house was dug in early September. After years of dreaming, planning, and drawing hundreds of houseplans, we had a hole in the ground. I drove out to the site one hot afternoon as a work crew was setting up the forms to pour the basement.

Three pick up trucks were parked around the building site but there were no workmen around. I decided that they must have all gone to lunch in one truck as I got out of the van with my four year old son. My son scurried up one of the big dirt piles as I slowly walked around the foundation snapping pictures. As I approached the back of the hole I noticed some boots beside one of the trucks. Wait, those were not just boots, there were also legs...attached to the body of a ...man! No wait - two men. Two men were lying down in the shade under the truck taking their lunch break. I was a little surprised to find them there, but tried to pretend that I had known they were there all along. I nodded and smiled at them and continued to circle the foundation taking pictures.

As I rounded another corner my perspective on the basement changed and I saw another man stretched out in the shade at the bottom of the hole. He had long flowing white hair and looked sort of like a wizard in jeans in a t-shirt. I waved at him and tried to remember if when I got out of the van I was picking my nose or talking to myself - because I was so sure that no one was there. As I completed my walk around the foundation I suddenly noticed another man quietly sitting in one of the trucks with a cold drink. He raised his hand in a slight wave. I slight-waved back.

It was odd how the men were separated from each other and so quiet. I suppose it was just a way to have an efficient break maximizing your rest without having to go somewhere for lunch. The silence was pronounced, but they didn't seem like the kind of men that would be chatty under any circumstances. The strangest part however was not the quiet or the odd places they seemed to be in (under the truck?), or even the wizardy appearance of the guy in the hole, but rather how I felt suddenly disassociated with my own house. I mean I had planned, and drawn, and sketched, and sharpened pencils, and learned to draw elevations, and read books, and articles, and clipped magazine pictures and figured out a virtual reality architecture program, and measured staircases, and ceiling heights and porch depths, and taken pictures of every old house that turned my fancy to get to the point of actually building a house. And now walking the perimeter of the foundation of my dreams there are suddenly four strange men involved.

Four strange men I have never seen before. Four strange men I do not even know their names. Four strange men hired by our general contractor to build the foundation of our house. And suddenly I feel like I am a trespasser. I feel like an intruder. An intruder in my own dream.

The men were just men - hard working men on their lunch break. It was not their job to shake my hand or tell me that my foundation was the most spectacular foundation they had ever had the privilege to work on. And it was not really my job to shake their hands or critique their work or ask a bunch of questions since I had no idea what to ask and I know nothing about building a foundation. So instead I climbed the dirt pile with my son and looked at the hole some more and snapped a few more pictures. I was trying to make myself feel like this was my building site and this would be my house and I had every right to be here. But I didn't. I felt like an outsider. So I loaded up my son and we drove home. Later that evening I crept back out to the site and walked around again. This time I was really alone and the house felt like mine again.

The Road to a New House

2008-03-03T13:25:00.002-06:00

This is a picture of the driveway that leads to our house. As you can see it goes over the dam that created our pond. This driveway was a long way coming and somewhat of a sticking point. Before we could build a house, we had to decide where to put the house. We had eight acres to choose from, but there were really only two spots that made sense. One was in front of the pond and one was behind the pond.

The type of house we wanted to build included an expansive wrap around porch, and it seemed clear that it would be nice to sit on the porch and look at the pond. However, building behind the pond required quite a bit more expense including building a dam that was large enough for a driveway, and longer electric and water lines. We actually gave up the idea of building behind the pond for these reasons and I designed a house to build in front of the pond. But it just was not the kind of house we wanted. Why bother constructing a beautiful deep covered porch to overlook a road, when you could overlook a pond.

Finally we gave into the ancient architectural theory of chi, which demands that the mountains be at your back and that you face the water. We moved the building site behind the pond, re-drew the house to fit the new site and bit the bullet on the extra money. It is easily the smartest decision we made as the house is so beautifully sited, reflecting on the water, with a treeline at the back and a few trees framing the house as you look at it from the road. Trust the ancients. They knew what they were talking about.

Front Door With Boys

2008-03-03T12:37:00.000-06:00

Farmhouse Under Construction

2008-03-03T12:33:00.002-06:00

Click on photo to view more construction photos

I was in the process of hanging some insulation when suddenly.....

2008-03-03T12:30:00.001-06:00

I was in the process of hanging some insulation, when I noticed how quiet the work site was. This was somewhat disturbing because seven boys were playing on the site, my four and three friends. However, I figured what's the worst thing that could happen... at a construction site... with a pond... and the neighbors pond... Then I heard the piercing wail.

I met Jack the youngest outside. This is what he looked like...

He was upset because his shirt had some mud on it, and he was pouring the blame on his brethern. I turned the corner and this is what I saw...

And this...

Show me some muscles mud boys!

Bagels Anyone...? Uh... er... Bagels...?

2008-03-03T12:28:00.002-06:00

So I decided that I would make some brownies for Dennis and the boys. But I am not very good at things like baking food for people and then giving it to them. It makes me feel conspicuous. Plus, it makes me feel like I am a caricature of myself. Like I am this stay at home mom that actually does the appropriate stay at home mom things like bake brownies for people. And yeah sometimes I do bake brownies, but usually I eat most of them myself. Anyway - I was struggling with the concept. I was imagining this scene

Me - Er Uh Um yeah so Hi Guys...

Them - Hello (bang bang bang - hammers)

Me - uh well er um I well

Them - sweeeeeeeeeee bang bang bang (hammers and saw)

Me - I made you some brownies

Them - Bang Bang bang Sweeeeee, ca chunk ca chuck (hammers, saws, nail gun) WHAT?

Me - I made you some brownies.

Them - Ca chunk ca chunk sweeeeeeee, bang bang WHAT!

Me - (sudden silence) BROWNIES!

I knew it would be very awkward mostly because I am very awkward.

However, I tried it a few times and it worked out okay - but it had been a while. So I was in Manhattan and was driving by Panera and I thought how about some bagels for the guys? So I stopped and got a dozen bagels.

As I approached the house I was suddenly caught up in a gale of anxiety that went something like this...

Me - How in the world am I going to give these guys bagels?

Me - They probably don't even like bagels.

Me - They probably think bagels are sissy girl food.

Me - Heck - they probably have never seen a bagel and will think I am giving them weird tasting donuts.

When I got to the house, I had a some stuff to unload. I started with the light fixtures, carrying them down to the basement. Then I unloaded the stuff I had cleaned out from our closets to make our house more presentable to sell. Finally I could put it off no longer. The guys were working on the second floor, and I was a mess of nerves. All I could do was tiptoe in and leave the box of bagels on the saw horses in the great room. Then I fled.

That evening I came back to the house because I love to walk through the house when no one is there. I noticed the box of bagels was still on the saw horses. I looked inside and not one bagel had been touched. I fished out a chocolate bagel for myself, worried a bit about the cream cheese sitting out all night. But it was still pretty cold out, so I figured it would be okay. Then I put the bagels on the fire place which is a bit more prominent spot and left.

The next day I went out in the evening and the bagels were still on the fireplace, untouched. Clearly, they had either been rejected as sissy food or as food that the builders weren't sure they were supposed to eat - since I did such a bad job of giving it to them. I took the bagels home and threw them away. Later that week I made a batch of brownies. The builders were grateful for them and ate every last one.

Insulation Bomb

2008-03-03T12:25:00.002-06:00

Well I have some rather bad news to report.

Last night I visited the work site and saw something horrible.

It appears that some type of newspaper bomb went off in our house.

Shredded newspaper seems to have exploded in every room in the house!

Actually - this stuff is insulation, but it sure made a mess!

Hoses blow this stuff in and thankfully will suck it back out when they are finished.

One step closer to sheet rock and then paint and then floors and then cabinets and then trim and then plumbing and then appliances and then furniture and then HOUSE!

Notes on a House

2008-03-03T12:24:00.002-06:00

The country doctor grew up in the house his grandfather built. His own parents did a lot of remodeling on that same house over the years. As they worked on it, I have heard stories of how they uncovered notations left by my husband's grandfather.

Dennis, our builder also does a lot of figuring right on the bones of the house.

Here are a few notations he has left behind.

Here lady... let me draw you a little picture...

2008-03-03T12:22:00.000-06:00

There have been several occasions during the construction of our farmhouse, that various men have made drawings for me. It is always a man, and it is always a very little drawing. Usually on a tiny scrap of paper.

They use these drawings as tools to try and explain some construction method to me, so that I can then use this wee little drawing to make a decision on some element of the house.

When I was trying to pick out our windows, a man, at the local lumber yard grabbed the pencil tucked behind his ear and drew something to explain something or other about how the window sat in the framing.

On numerous occasions, our general contractor has drawn a sketch for me on the side of the house or on a spare board, to try and show me how the siding or the window trim was going to look.

Even the cabinet maker has occasionally sketched a little something to try and make me understand how a certain corner cabinet might be affected by the cabinet next to it and why I might not want to put a drawer in that particular space.

All of these men are knowledgeable, hard working, decent people. I trust them with my house and my cabinets and my windows. I know they have skills and tools and abilities. But I could never understand a single one of their drawings.

I pretended that I could. I nodded my head and said "Oh!" or "I get it!" or "Yes, I understand now..." But it was a bald faced lie.

They may as well have been drawing pictures of a rocket launcher, for all the sense it made to me.

Construction Terms I Have Learnt

2008-03-03T12:20:00.002-06:00

Ridge Beam - The one at the very very top

Header - The wide board above the doors and the windows.

Purlins - The horizontal wood pieces on the trusses.

Joist - The heavy duty wood boards that support the floor

Riser - The "up" part of the stair

Tread - The "step" part of the stair

Gypsum - Also known as sheet rock - but saying gypsum makes you sound smart.

Friese Board - The trim piece that outlines the gable

Rafter - Old school roof construction. Like they made back in pioneer times. They built the roof on our house this way cause it was so dad blamed steep.

Truss - Factory made roof parts ordered and delivered to the site. The barn roof is constructed of trusses. We designed half of the trusses in a traditional manner and half we designed to house a loft, up under that there barn roof.

Sheet Rock

2008-03-03T12:15:00.001-06:00

The sheet rock is going up, very slowly. But I have gotten used to the slow building pace. There are even some good things to be said about slow building. You can make changes and it is no big deal. You can move outlets from one side of the house to the other. You could even re-wire and or re-plumb the ENTIRE house. There is never really a rush. You also get to know the men working on your house.

Out here in these parts we don't have many big sheet rock crews, roofing crews, or electric crews - and our contractor seems to prefer the single man operation when subcontracting out jobs. So these various subcontractors are around for several days to weeks, depending on the task, and you get to know them. There are certain advantages to this. They can't get really angry with you for asking them to move that light fixture just a little more to the right - and then the next day maybe just seven more inches to the right and then the next day. I think I liked it better in the first location... if they know they have to see you the next day and the next day and the next day. You learn to get along.

The country doctor and I were visiting the work site together and the builders and the electrician were taking their morning break with a box of donuts and coffee. They were talking about sheet rockers and how difficult their job is. Lifting the 9' X 4' sheets overhead and holding them in place, while screwing it in - even with the proper tools this is a back breaking job.

The country doctor mentioned that he takes care of a few men who have bad backs, bad ankles, spongy knees, crackly hips, elbow no bendo, necks that have gone soggy, and fingers that hang uselessly from their hands. He asks them what they do for a living.

"Sheetrock".

Then Larry the electrician piped up. He said that he knew of a small wiry fellow who amazed him with his ability to lift the heavy boards of sheet rock and install it. One day he asked the man how he did it? The man replied...

"Sometimes I fill my shorts with blood."

And so with that bit of wisdom , the coffee break came to an end.

Countdown to Move In

2008-03-03T12:11:00.002-06:00

Oh Dear - I am afraid that the next few weeks are going to be a hectic spasm of activity. Here is what has to be done before we move in on July 1.

1. Paint all interior walls three times (one coat primer, two coats color) - this is my job, I primed the upstairs this weekend.

2. Paint all ceilings - Dennis and Jordan's job.

3. Drag reluctant tile contractor by his throat to the house and get him to install a tile floor in at least ONE bathroom, so we can have a functioning bathroom when we move in. I feel certain I am going to have to stand over him with a hack saw and a gleam in my eye until he is done.

4. Install wood floors throughout entire main floor (Country Doctor's job)

5. Move contents of current house to new house. (all warm bodies in family will work on this).

6. Have lateral field installed and hooked to house so that we can flush.

7. Hang light fixtures

8. Install carpet in upstairs bedrooms.

There are many many other things that have to happen before the house in finished - like paint cabinets, install cabinets, tile other bathrooms, trim entire house, install plumbing fixtures, paint and hang doors, etc, etc, etc...but they are not as necessary as the aforementioned items. And even though it is somewhat overwhelming and not likely to work out as I would like, I am looking forward to all of it. I will be happily working in the depths of my house, covered in paint, sweat in my eyes, but a big smile on my face. Very happy to be getting to do something I always dreamed of. I may not see you all as often as I would like, but I will try and update occasionally. Tomorrow please stop by as I will be typing out my grocery list for you.

Soup Door

2008-03-03T12:09:00.001-06:00

Okay - you want to impress a contractor? Next time you build a house, ask for a soup door. Then step back and watch the new found respect dawn on his face.

A soup door is a factory second, something went wrong, so the door is sold as a "soup door" and contractors use them as temps until the construction work is done.

The door in this picture is a soup door. It even says "Soup" on it. When I first saw it, I thought, that sure is strange graffiti. I mean if you are going to scribble a word on a door, deface property, vandalize - why write write "soup?" It puzzled me for a long time. Then Dennis, our contractor explained.

I know a few of you have been worried about that door. Thinking, why is that door there? Surely that is not their door. Surely they realize that door is not really right. I know you have. I just KNOW!

And you are correct. It is our soup door. The real door is coming...sometime...hopefully...soon

Hive of Activity

2008-03-03T12:08:00.003-06:00

Our general contractor Dennis, arrives at 7 am. A time of the day I try to avoid at all costs. He is currently sawing oak boards for trim.

Jordan shows up a few minutes later and gets set up to stain trim in the basement.

Ron, the tile guy shows up around 8 am to start putting our bathroom floors together. Can I hear an Amen!

And the propane company stopped by to deliver a propane tank and dig a trench.

Then there is always this activity. Which goes on night and day without ceasing until they fall into a comatose like state around midnight.

The concrete guy just showed up to pour a foundtion for the A/C. It isn't even 10 am yet. Good Lord!

Countertop Choices

2008-03-03T10:07:00.002-06:00

I have narrowed our countertop choices down from five billion to three. I have crossed out granite, marble, stainless steel, tile, concrete, laminate, wood, stone, quartz, paper, cotton, fingernail clippings, congealed pig blood, fossilized dog bones, fish scales, moss, wheat berries, cracker crumbs, crushed taco shells, and my favorite - texturized horse dung. I have decided on Corian. Why do I feel like there is a chorus of groans to my decision? Oh yeah because that is what my sister does every time I tell her. But Corian it is. Here is why...our cabinet maker installs it and it is affordable. I don't have to drive to Kansas City or fly to Chicago, or take a subway to Liberia to get it. I just have to stop by the cabinet shop, look at the choices and pick one. It doesn't cost nearly as much as that stone stuff does, it is durable and comes in a lot of colors. So there!

Here are the three I am currently deciding between...

Leaning pretty heavily to "earth" or the darker one.

Mixing Your Own Stain

2008-03-03T10:06:00.002-06:00

We mixed our own stain for our trim and our kitchen cabinets. Why did we do this? Because we are insane.

I was just not happy with any of the stains I found in every hardware store within a twenty mile radius. I wanted something deeper, something a little more red, something a little more black, more heft, more bravado, more vitality! Less gray, more ochre, less yellow, more copper - and on and on and on - until I grabbed three cans and mixed them together. Jack will demonstrate...

Ingredients

Recipe

Close-up of recipe

Apply stain with paper towel, to wood species you intend to use (ours is quarter sawn oak)। Wait ten minutes and then wipe off.

And wa la - we have stain. Stain that is not too red or black or brown or yellow or quiet, or loud, or spirited or youthful. A stain that is refined yet says bring it on! A stain that says Farmhouse with quirky people living inside. A stain that reflects peace and joy while simultaneously dancing chaotically about the room. My stain - my genuis, my gift to the world. I call it La Rechelle!

The Vanity of Boys

2008-03-03T10:04:00.001-06:00

I have boys. Four boys. In their current bathroom, they have four drawers. Two of them are completely empty. They do not need curling irons, barettes, ribbons, clippies, head bands, lip gloss, eye shadow, hairspray, self tanning lotion, mirrors, moisturizer, loofahs, nail polish, jewelry, or hot wax. Their morning routine requires only a comb and a toothbrush. Thus the empty drawers.

I grew up in a house of women. Our bathroom was very different. Between my sister and I we probably had twelve different kinds of avon perfume in collector ceramic figurines. The bride was my favorite. We also had a vast collection of Mary Kay cosmetics in pink plastic cases. Our bright yellow vanity was littered with hot rollers, a regular curling iron, a brush curling iron, a blow dryer, combs, brushes, and a pink plastic pick.

We fought a lot in that bathroom. I learned later that the color yellow can stimulate aggression, so I blame the bright yellow vanity on which our hot curling irons rested. We often picked them up and used them as battering rams agains each other. My boys fight in the bathroom too, but thankfully all they've got are toothbrushes, and hot water.

This is the cabinetry color and the possible choices for the boys vanity top where no hot curling irons will ever be used as branding irons during their lucky little childhoods.

Feel free to vote - I don't know how many more of these type of decision I can make before I short circuit and throw myself on the mercy of my mom and sister who will gladly come in and decorate my entire house for me. With little to no regard for my opinions.

Paint Chip Paradise

2008-03-03T10:01:00.003-06:00

Is there anything more wonderful than a paint chip? Okay maybe a few things, but right now I am really loving paint chips. For one thing, they are free! You can walk into any local lumber yard, Home Depot, Lowes, Ace, True Value, and fill you pockets and your purse, and stuff some in your bra, and your socks and then roll up the brochures and tuck them up the legs of your pants,and down your sleeves and slide a few xtras in your shoes, and walk out of the store waving to the hidden video camera on your way out and NO ONE can do anything about it!

I do try and be discreet. I pull one color out of the display, turn it over, and then put it back. I step back from the display and pretend to mull. When the clerk comes over to ask if I need help, I say, " Oh I am just looking." as I pick up a chip, shake my head and PUT IT BACK.

As soon as the clerk walks away, I grab huge handfuls of colors. Sometimes, I even take three or four of the SAME color so I can get a better idea of what it will look like when I get home.

My paint chip binges are always accompanied with a blue tinge of sadness. I think back to my new mom/first home phase, when Martha Stewart was the queen of paint chip displays. Her displays in K-Mart were my mantra and she was my spiritual decorating Zen goddess. Martha and I painted many a bedroom, kitchen, hallway, bathroom, nursery, living room, book case, chair, and garage sale treasure. Her paint chips were large, her colors were luscious. Her paint made me feel important, useful, smart, and like I belonged. Then it disappeared. I couldn't find her paint anywhere. I guess the jail stint did in the paint division. Too bad - her recipes are too freaking complicated for me, and I don't sew or craft, but I could relate to that girl's paint.

These days I am looking to Ralph to lead the way. Ralph Lauren has some great colors and interesting techniques on display at Home Depot. Even though Sherwin Williams is currently the reigning king of the BIGGEST PAINT CHIP EVER!

I have been thoroughly seduced by Ralph - mostly because it is Ralph, and I succumbed to that particular brand years ago (though I am somewhat bothered by one of the brochures which shows a blond painting a wall in a lacy blouse). However, I am willing to overlook a few bizarre personality traits, for a big paint chip and a hoity toity paint brochure.

P.S. - I drove to Topeka and popped in Lowe's to look at tile and who did I find there? Martha! Her paint has moved to Lowe's But alas - it was not the same...

She is now a part of a snooty clique that includes Eddie Bauer and Laura Ashely and Waverly. They were nice to me, but I knew they were talking about me behind my back. Martha and I tried to rekindle the old spark. I mulled over her display. I tentatively reached for a color chip. But it was too late. My heart had already fled into the arms of another. And his name is Ralph and it is not because Martha and I didn't have something real and true - it is just that people change...evolve...it is not anybody's fault. Plus,long distance relationships are hard to maintain in the paint department. It is difficult to drive to Topeka to pick up an extra gallon or two. So Martha and I had to go our separate ways. I will always look back fondly at our time together. She threw a wine bottle at my head as I walked away.

Interior Door Choices

2008-03-03T09:59:00.001-06:00

It took a while to make up our minds. We stood in front of the door display in Home Depot flipping through the various door profiles for what seemed like an eternity, Our four boys entertained themselves by having shopping cart races, building forts in the lumber section, playing hide and seek in the insulation display, and opening and shutting every kitchen cabinet in Home Depot 4000 times. We pretended that we did not know them.

While there, several good friends stopped by and gave us their opinions. And though sound, we eventually chose otherwise. In fact we chose a door that I fell in love with years ago. A door that I saw, and thought, the country doctor will hate that door. He will think that door is too contrived. He will think that door is pretentious. He will think it is just a little too spiffy. But he didn't. He liked it as much as I did.

Then we had to decide if it was too busy of a door to go on all the room doors and all the closets. So while our children knocked down old ladies with their shopping carts we debated and debated and debated. Finally we just decided to do every door the same.

Here they are. They just seemed to scream farmhouse with quirky people living inside.

JELD-WEN : Molded - Molded Interior Doors - Passage - Door Designs

On the main floor we are going to do solid wood doors from Koch and Company - a Seneca Kansas Company.

Koch

Cabinet Agony

2008-03-03T09:58:00.001-06:00

I am in complete and utter agony. Torture torture torture. There are two sides to my misbegotten, bizarre, giant weirdo personality. The first half of my personality likes for things to be nice, well made, pretty, interesting, and somehow right. I am not a perfectionist. I can live with flaws and mistakes, but I can't live with outright ugly. Outright ugly must be fixed as soon as possible with a can of paint, a piece of fabric, a glue gun, paperclips... whatever it takes.

Now the other half of my personality hates to tell people what to do. HATES it! Unless it is my own kids. And even then, I prefer for them to figure things out on their own. But because I don't want to raise misbegotten, bizarre, giant weirdo kids like myself, I try to shape them somewhat with a few orders sent their way now and then. Everyone else in the world is on their own. I don't want to tell you how to do things, what to do, and especially to do something over again.

So today - I had to mix these two ends of my personality - the end that likes pretty things and the end that hates to tell people to do something over again. And it was awful and I still fell like crap and I think I will for quite a while.

The cabinets didn't turn out quite like I had imagined - actually it is just the drawer fronts in the kitchen. I ordered plain slab drawer fronts because I am deranged and didn't want to have to clean out little grooves. So I thought what difference does it make... a few drawers will be plain... the rest of the cabinets will be fancy and just the drawers plain. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. The rest of the cabinets are gorgeous. But the drawer fronts which were built exactly to MY specifications look ALL WRONG! They turned out big and slabby, and square, and like evil robot drawers! It is my fault - mine mine mine - but it has to be fixed and I had to ask for it to be fixed and it was very very hard.

Over the course of this construction process I have had to do this more than once. Not a lot, but enough to get a teensy bit better at it. I am still terrible, but not as terrible. So - I asked for the change and said I am sorry ten thousand times and then I got down on my belly and slunk out of the cabinet shop. I feel like I murdered someone. Is their a drug out there to make this go away... Can someone suggest a good psychiatrist?... Maybe I'll just go get a frozen Dr. Pepper...

After I slunk off, I came home and talked to the country doctor. And may I just say that if the country doctor was a psychiatrist, all of his patients would have shot themselves long ago. His "PLEASE make me feel better about myself please" skills are TERRIBLE. He makes me feel WORSE. However, he did agree to go back out to the cabinet shop with me to see what the best remedy would be.

When we arrived, I was sure that all the men who work there would be stationed in the bushes with a rifle pointed at my head. At best, I figured they would all fall silent and look away when I walked in. But they didn't. They actually were very nice. One came up and said - you know you are going to stare at these cabinets a long time - you might as well get something you like. They they all took turns making fun of me for changing things this late in the game INCLUDING THE COUNTRY DOCTOR!!! - But at least they were laughing with... I mean at... me and not tossing me out on the streets.

I feel I need to remind everyone that I live in a small town. Those of you who live in big cities might think it is absurd to worry about how the cabinet makers feel - but the thing is that I will see these men downtown, at school functions, at parades, in the grocery store, and at ball games, for the rest of my life. So maintaining a decent relationship is kind of important. It is probably wise even if you live in L.A. or N.Y.C. You never know when you might have to work with someone again. OH NO - I think I just told you what to do! Now I will have to slink off and go get another frozen Dr. Pepper.

Hardware

2008-03-03T09:54:00.001-06:00

Is there anything more fun than shopping for hardware? Sink hardware, tub hardware, door hardware, cabinet hardware, the end must surely be in site, if I find myself shopping for these particular items.

Our plumber, a man of infinite patience and wisdom has a preference for Delta, so most of our plumbing hardware is coming from that company. Our kitchen sink is a massive old farmhouse sink that I bought on E-bay. Then I bought another old sink on E-bay. Then I bought another old sink from Architectural Salvage in Kansas City. (A fabulous shop to which I plan to take you all on a little outing someday. We will then take a trolley ride and buy peanuts from the man with the monkey.) Then I joined Old Sinks Anonymous and switched from buying old sinks to buying old light fixtures.

I was worried that finding hardware for these old sinks would be difficult, but they are all standard 8 inch on centers. Doesn't that make me sound impressive, like I actually KNOW something useful? Here were my top two choices

Faucet #1

Faucet #2

I actually didn't pick my favorite one (the first one) because I just didn't think it suited the sink as much. So I went with faucet #2. In the shiniest, chromiest most glaring finish they offered - which was plain old standard chrome. Aren't you all relieved!

We are also doing that Victorian faucet in the master bath, but for they boys I chose this faucet.

Seemed a little simpler to operate for my little simpletons.

Paint Update

2008-03-03T09:53:00.001-06:00

My entire body is speckled in paint. My shoulders hurt so bad I am in agony just sitting still. My shin splints have come back from climbing up and down the ladder twelve thousand times. I have paint caked in my hair. My eyes have gone twitchy. My fingers are rubbery. My brain is whacked. I have no feeling in my tongue. My eyelashes are falling out. Both of my ears are sagging and my left quadrant exosocometer is drooping out. My toes are bungled. Hydroceph is cockeyed. Nails are grim. Nostrils linty. Overall feeling of please say I never have to pick up a paint brush again.

Unfortunately I am only about... maybe... almost... but not quite... half way there.

If there is a good thing about this hellish predicament I find myself in - of having to paint an entire house - it is that I can drink as much REAL coca cola and eat as much ice cream as I want. Painting burns it all off. Plus, I don't pee anymore. I just sweat. Sweat and sweat and sweat. Or maybe that means my kidneys are shutting down. Add kidneys shutting down or trickleometers broken to above list.

Toilet Shopping

2008-03-03T09:48:00.001-06:00

Oh yeah - that's right - it's my birthday - toilet shopping today...

I made our selection from the Toto Co. - or as I like to say totoco. And now for a few very important factoids regarding toilet purchasing.

1. Universal height is just about an inch shorter than official ADA. So go with universal and save

2. Universal is nice for people with handicaps and people who are tall - like me and mine.

3. G-Max flushing is what you want if you have people in your home or on holiday visits, who tend to plug things up.

4. There's other more serious flushing available if you need even more power, but it can be noisy. You may want to think twice before adding the power flush in the bathroom adjacent to the dining room.

5. Don't put bathrooms adjacent to dining rooms.

6. I grew up with a bathroom right by the dining room. I don't know how many times I was forced to listen to various people "using" the bathroom during dinner. My sister and I never used that bathroom.

7. My mother rarely shuts the door when she uses the bathroom. Especially the one by the dining room. This was very embarrassing for me growing up, and has resulted in various bathroom psychoseseseses.

8. I think a pretty toilet is worth the extra cash. I mean hey - why not? It is one of the most important seats in the house. It should be nice.

9. Can't think of anything else.

10. Goodbye.

Old Tub, New Occupant

2008-03-02T22:58:00.001-06:00

The Play of Light

2008-03-02T22:41:00.002-06:00

One of my favorite interior design subjects is the play of light. Which as far as I know, is not an interior design subject, at least I have never seen a show on HGTV that mentioned the play of light. Then again, I don't have cable and rarely get to watch HGTV, but they do seem to be more concerned with the putting of the frames on the walls and the placing of the knick knacks on the shelves. I am poorly skilled in these areas, and would rather focus on something I have little to no control over at all - natural light.

Whatever happened to natural light? How come people have stopped talking about it and using it, and designing their lives around it? What could possibly mean more when it comes to the living of life than to maximize your opportunities to bask in, and enjoy the warm golden light of the sun streaming into your home?

Early house builders understood this need for sunlight perfectly, yet today's builders seem not to grasp it at all. More and more homes are built with fewer and fewer windows. I see new homes going up all the time with one tiny window in each bedroom, no windows in the bathrooms, and smaller and fewer windows in all the living areas. I realize windows are not cheap, but I think stupidity and dumbness are just as much to blame for the lack and improper placement of windows as economics are. The same people that refuse to spend a thousand bucks on a big window will go out and spend twice that on a massive flat screen TV to put in their dark, depressing living rooms. Did I just say that out loud??? I predict that in 20 years humans will evolve into rat like creatures with tiny eyes unable to tolerate sunlight, soothed only by the blue light of a televison or computer screen. Oh my GOSH somebody better slap me down before I start saying what I really think! Back to sunshine and daisies...

Not only does sunlight warm and brighten a room. It also brings a less obvious, but I believe just as vital component to any room. It brings magic. That's right I said MAGIC. Fairy dust, herb of miracle, eau de potion. Sunlight brings a room to life. Which is why I think it is necessary to not only have one wall with a window or two or three or FOUR but to have two walls in every well-used room with a nice sized window. The resulting play of light will pour into your room causing a lively, shimmery elegance, a golden glow, a sparkle, a sheen, as if Tinkerbell herself, stopped by for a cup of tea and splattered herself tirelessly all over the place before she left. This mystical play of light ALSO stimulates the hypoetrythalmus gland allowing one to TURN OFF THE DADBLAMED TV and sense the wonders of the universe.

So forget the family room addition or shelves in the bedroom. You don't really need a bigger deck or a swimming pool. You can live without that storage shed, whirlpool tub, entertainment center or that extra bathroom. What you really need are a few more windows. So go grab the chainsaw and cut you some. Before your husband gets home. Quick! Go ahead...well...get on it!

Lowered Baking Center

2008-03-02T22:30:00.003-06:00

This is my lowered baking center.

Because I am such a baker.

So it is a very very good thing that I went to all the trouble of devoting about one fourth of my counter space to a lowered baking center.

This is my foot pointing out some spilled flour on the floor.

When the Country Doctor saw our lowered baking center...

He was less than thrilled.

And his less than thrilling response...

Sent me into a tail spin that lasted for weeks.

During which I doubted every single decision I had ever made in my life.

Because clearly - if I am stupid enough to put a lowered baking center in my house.

When I literally bake about two times a year.

I must be way too dumb to have ever done anything else right.

Then one day as I was sitting, in a sodden anguished slump, on the counter of my lowered baking center.

Because the lowered baking center happens to be the perfect height for sitting in a sodden slump...

I realized something...

I realized that the Country Doctor has made exactly one meal since the day I married him.

And therefore doesn't really get a VOTE on the lowered baking center...

DOES HE!!!...

And this is my goofball sister...

Demonstrating how to eat...

One of my freshly baked butterhorn rolls...

In the traditional Christmas butterhorn roll eating fashion.

And this is Jack sitting on the lowered baking center...

Which is how we use it...

Most of the time...

Loft Bedroom

2008-03-02T22:27:00.002-06:00

Hex Tile Grout Guide

2008-03-02T22:13:00.004-06:00

It sure would have helped me if I had been able to find a resource to show me the difference between grout colors for our tile flooring. The tiny slivers that display the grout color options at Home Depot are grossly inadequate. Finally after seven entire minutes of frustration, I threw up my hands, closed my eyes and pointed and chose the grout color closest to my index finger.

However, after a recent trip to the Brookville Hotel, I am at least able to offer a few pictures comparing a hex tile with black grout and a hex tile with white grout, so that maybe a few people in the world will not have to endure the seven minutes of agony that I did. I hope you appreciate this! I am just trying to make EVERYONE else's life easier than my own. That is what I do best!

Black and white one inch hex tile with black grout as seen in the Brookville Hotel.

Black and white one inch hex tile with white grout as seen in the mudroom bath at my house.

White two inch hex tile with gray grout as seen in the master bath at my house.

White two inch hex tile with no grout, but it kind of looks like black grout if you want an idea of what that would look like.

Now maybe...just maybe...I have made someone in the world's life a little easier. That is all I could ever hope for.

Subway Tile Patterns

2008-03-02T22:11:00.004-06:00

I recently spent some time trying to find a tile pattern for the master bath shower. Here are a few things to consider before laying out your tile pattern.

First, I think it is important to be dizzy from hunger and also to be panicky because the tile guy is due to show up any minute.

It is always good to have the phone ring every four seconds and the children fighting with each other in the background.

I would also highly suggest working in a muggy hot room with a horsefly buzzing around your ears and to have a massive mountain of un-folded laundry in direct view.

These are the only circumstances under which tile should ever be laid out. Anything less is just not going to satisfy in the long run.

After I found a pattern I liked, I moved on to the main floor bathroom tub/shower tile layout.

Same hunger pangs, same children fighting, same phone ringing, same time crunch panic, different horsefly.

I am using subway tile in the main floor bath. Because I love subway tile.

Subway tile is my ideal life mate.

Its simplicity, its classic good looks, its quiet presence. We were meant to be together.

I picked out a bunch of trim pieces to try and dress the subway tile up.

But the subway tile resented the fact that I was trying to change him. The subway tile wanted me to accept him for who he was. The subway tile wanted to make it clear that he was never false with me, he never lied. He is just who he said he was, and I might have to learn to live with it.

So I started crying and said," I was sorry and that I lost my head and he is so right and I am so wrong and I hope you can forgive me!"

Then the subway tile let out a deep sigh and said, " dear, dear, never mind." Then he said, "I guess I don't really mind the blue stripe and a little of that crown...but THAT IS IT!!". And we are both very happy with the results.

Kitchens Are Overrated

2008-03-02T19:42:00.001-06:00

Week two of house with no kitchen and I have learned a few things.

1. It is possible to survive on diet pepsi and powdered donuts for days at a time.

2. All lunchmeat tastes pretty much the same

3. No one will touch the bag of carrots or the chunks of pineapple in the fridge if there is a box of powdered donuts around.

4. Ice Cream sandwiches count for meals

5. I can eat chips and salsa three meals a day and it doesn't seem to bother me

6. I sure don't miss loading and unloading the dishwasher.

7. Sure don't miss kitchen clean-up.

8. I like to cook, but I think I equally like NOT to cook.

9. I have decided to found a movement AGAINST kitchens and FOR laundromats. I can wash and dry SEVEN loads of laundry at the local laundromat in AN HOUR!!!

10. I am calling this new movement Women Against Clean Kitchens of Slavery or WACKOS.

11. Anyone care to join?

Seriously though - think how much money we pour into kitchens and I have come to the conclusion that they are not only unneccesary, but they creat LOADS of work. Sure, I like a home cooked meal. I am just not sure how much anymore. Just a little food for thought. Ha ha ha ha ha. Get it FOOD FOR THOUGHT!!! hardee hardee ha ha. Then again perhaps I am a little malnourished...

Harry and I Face Deathly Hallows Together

2008-03-02T19:40:00.003-06:00

The country doctor and I love old houses. And we would have given our eyetooth (whatever that is) to buy one and re-hab it. There were a few stipulations. It had to be in the country but not more than three miles out of town. It had to come with a pond. It had to have a sort of intrinsic charm, but we could handle some re-hab. We wanted neighbors, but not too many and not too close. (This was actually a compromise as the country doctor wanted to live in a commune and I wanted to live in Siberia.) We were looking for a magic place that would beckon to us mystically, as if we belonged to the house and the house belonged to us.

As you can imagine - in five years of looking, we did not find this particular piece of real estate. So we decided to build. Or rather - I spent about a year crying, screaming, pouting, packing a bag and threatening to leave, begging, pleading, and then doing all these things again, only louder and with more tears, until finally the country doctor said - ALRIGHT ALREADY!! let's build a house.

So we did. We went thru the process - drawing plans, finding a builder, siting the house, digging a hole, blah blah blah. The process kept me pretty entertained for the past nine months. And overall, it has been an enjoyable process. But I am not sure I wouldn't scrap it all right this exact moment, for a decent trailer on a lot with some grass. It's starting to get to me. I am staring to feel chunks of my resilience break off and dissolve in a puddle at my feet.

Today I just wanted to read the new Harry Potter book. I just wanted to sit on my couch and read The Deathly Hallows. I mean hey, it is summer and my kids are all entertaining themselves in various ways. Everyone is fed and bathed and wrapped and swaddled and contented. I have no kitchen to clean and no urgent laundry to do. I could sweep or dust, but why? The saw if going to churn up more dust in the next seventeen seconds to make that a completely inane task. Why can't I just lay here and read my book?

Because my house if full of men who are WORKING - and that makes me feel like a worthless slug to lay on my couch and read. I guess I could slink off to my bedroom and read, but then I would feel like a sneaky worthless slug.

But I did it anyway. I sat on the couch and read. Then I started to doze off. SO I reclined on the couch and read. Every time I heard a worker's boots draw near, I pretended to be awake and concentrating, but I was really napping. And no one hurled insults at me or said "Get a JOB!!" or demanded to know why I wasn't painting the millions of things that needed to be painted or pointing out that the clothes in the dryer needed to be folded. And so Harry and I made some progress. In a house full of working men. And so far, we are both still hanging on.

Vintage Farmhouse Sink

2008-03-02T19:26:00.002-06:00

We have a kitchen sink...in our kitchen...installed...

and you can turn it on and water comes out!

Right here in our kitchen!

And we can also wash our hands at the sink and fill up the coffee pot and wash fruits and veggies, and wash dishes, and get wet wash cloths and wipe the table and the countertops and fill up pots and pans and make spaghetti...no wait I can't make spaghetti. I don't have a stove. But I could soak spaghetti. I wonder if you soaked spaghetti long enough, would it be the same as cooking it?

And look - the world's cutest drain strainer thingy. This drain strainer thingy is so cute and so beautifully precious that it makes me feel like a movie star! I never knew a drain strainer could make you feel like a movie star, but I do.

I am going to go get a drink of water now...

from my kitchen sink.

Camp Bathroom

2008-03-02T19:15:00.003-06:00

Throughout my childhood summers I spent at least a week or two at various church camps. Later, I worked at a few camps, as both a lifeguard and a counsellor. I think I can safely say I am something of an expert in camp bathrooms.

Camp bathrooms - are well...campy. Bugs, tiny sinks, poorly placed or old useless mirrors, lack of proper outlets, dimly lit, doors that don't lock or "curtains" for doors, or doors that refuse to stay closed unless you elongate yourself to clutch the bottom of door with one had while clutching yourself to the toilet with the other. Or my favorite - no doors.

Camp bathrooms tend to be in bad places - like off in the middle of the woods or a dark rainy jog from the cabin. Or RIGHT OFF the DINING HALL!

One summer, I worked at Camp Soaring Hawk in Purdy Missouri (that's right Purdy). I was using the loo when the male custodian came in to clean. I had to clear my throat and cough to get him out. He felt the need to talk to me through the door and tell me he was sorry and blah blah blah. I just wanted him to leave!

Another time at Kerrville - a famous folk festival in Kerrville, Texas - I opened up a loo only to find a board with six or seven holes running down both sides of a small shed so that the occupants of the various "seats" sat knee to knee AND thigh to thigh as they emptied their various contents.

The first "spot" was occupied by a large scary woman with a cigar and a newspaper. I quickly joined the party, left my deposit, and fled. I found other facilities to use after that!

ANYWAY!! We have four bathrooms in our new house. But the only one that is usable at this point is the basement bathroom. It was quickly assembled by our wise plumber who had a feeling that the other bathrooms would not be ready in time. (We are waiting on tile floors to be finished.) We have no plans to finish our basement bathroom any tme soon - so there are only studs and no walls. Thus we have a usable bathroom with no walls...

Relying on my camp bathroom experience - I built a few flimsy walls.

Hung an inadequate mirror.

Found a shower curtain for a door.

I am so clever!

Thank God I went to camp.

Who knew it would prepare me for the future so well!

The Grass is Always Blah, Blah, Blah

2008-03-02T19:04:00.002-06:00

Is there a way to make a post on grass interesting? Because that is how I have been occupying myself these last few weeks. Growing grass. An acre of it. All around the house and the barn. And I'll be darned if it ain't coming up! All over the place! I feel like a freakin' farmer!

I can't take credit for all of it. The Country Doctor planted it and spread the fertilizer. He also did all the worrying. He knew that watering was going to be my job... and well, I don't think he had much faith in me. But if there is one thing I can do, it is move hoses.

Some kids grow up raising pigs and cows, some kids grow up memorizing bus and subway routes, and some kids move hoses. I moved hoses... trying to keep trees and grass alive on the barren windswept high plains.

You may wonder why we did not install an underground sprinkler system. Uh yeah...uh ...er...um...that would be because the because the budget for this house is busted. Wayyyyy busted. Busted on things like um electric wiring and um stone, and uh treads and risers for the uh staircase not to mention a last minute loft.

Besides, what else have I got to do? Moving the hoses has given my life meaning and purpose. Since my youngest has gone off and betrayed his mother by going to kindergarten, at least I have something to do to keep my mind off how much I miss him. And look - we have grass - everywhere! And it keeps coming up - more and more everyday!

All my shoes are muddy from moving sprinklers and hoses around on muddy ground. I had to run an errand a few days ago and could not find a single pair of shoes that were not caked with hardened clay. I saw my twelve year old son's tennis shoes and slipped them on. They fit perfectly. Great! My baby is in kindergarten and my oldest son is so big now that we wear the same size of shoes! What is going to happen next? Are the two middle boys going to run off and join the merchant marines?

I bought the last two tractor sprinklers on the shelves at our local hardware store. One is a John Deere and One is an Ace True Value. The John Deere was ten bucks more than the Ace. Can you guess which one works about a jillion times better?

Christmas Au Naturale

2008-03-02T19:02:00.001-06:00

There are a few spots around this house that are presenting new "Christmas dilemmas" that I feel compelled to try and solve. I have a banister, where before there was none. I have a porch with a railing where before there was only an primeval aching emptiness. I have these sort of stone pillar rail stoppers that are crying pitifully for some sort of ornamentation where before...yeah, I didn't have these things before. So I did what I had to do. I drove to Target.

On the way to Target, I passed Horticultural Services, which despite the really stupid name choice, is a fabulous, full service greenhouse. I mean I can think of a few worse names for a green house like maybe "Complicated Lawn Care" or "Biological Root, Leaf and Plant Engineers", or maybe "Clinical Specialists In The Cold Damp Earth", but Horticultural Services is also pretty bad. It sure doesn't inspire dreams of a dewey garden or irresistible birdbaths does it? But it is a great store and I made a mental note to stop by on my way home and look at their urns to hopefully find something to put on top of those stone pillars.

I wandered around Target for some time and did find a few wreaths that were very plain which I felt suited the house. They also had some completely natural items like pinecones, dried fruit, colorful dried berries and nuts, but they were really expensive (six bucks for a plastic box of pinecones?) so I passed it up.

I eventually landed back at the greenhouse and as soon as I pulled up I regretted every second I had spent in Target searching for new Christmas decs. Horticultural Services had everything I wanted, fresh evergreens, bright red and green fruits, swirly gold sticks, fresh wreaths, gorgeous natural arrangements and a great selection of urns.

I gathered huge armfulls of their evergreens and twigs and watched as they wrapped it all up in brown paper with a bit of twine. A bit of twine! Brown paper! I love twine! I love brown paper! This lovely, simple packaging more than compensates for the less than thrilling name - Horticultural Services. When I got home I unloaded everything on my table and arranged my new urns. You wanna see how I did it???

Here we have forlorn urn.

Here we have fresh ever green branches tied in neat little bundle with twine. Be still my heart (flutter flutter).

I just started jamming...I mean uh artfully arranging the evergreens in the urn.

I put the more "bushy" evergreen in the bottom to sort of fill up the pot and then I added the more "drapey" greens on top.

The intersections of all the stems created a sort of "web" for the...

...real live sticks. These red sticks are a dogwood.

These twisty yellow sticks are um...er... catwood?

I jammed in uh...I mean I...artfully arranged the sticks.

And threw in some fruit.

The second urn was even better.

Until I discovered that I only had one apple left.

First I tried this big green rubber ball, but it seemed slightly out of proportion to the urn.

Next I tried this smaller KU Jayhawks basketball, but the color wasn't right.

So I found this old, crappy wiffle ball under the couch, but somehow... it made me feel depressed.

These limes will have to do.

Winter Wonderland

2008-03-02T19:01:00.002-06:00

She was beautiful, but somewhat, frigid...

2008-03-02T19:00:00.002-06:00

Vintage Sinks and Footed Tub

2008-03-01T15:25:00.001-06:00

I have a thing for old sinks. I have tried all sorts of new age therapies, homemade herbal remedies and straight up chemical detox and I still have a thing for old sinks. I just think they are soooooo beautiful. Why did they stop making them?

Oh! Maybe because they weight 17 tons. People must have been tougher in the old sink days. Because I can't fathom why they would even bother installing these things when instead, they could just wait until it rains to wash their dishes. That is how heavy these things are! What were the shipping costs? Plumbers must have been former professional weight lifters!

I bought the kitchen sink on E-bay. I looked for a long time trying to find one that I could afford and that had two bowls, at least one side which had to be fairly deep. I was hoping for both an apron front and a backsplash, but the price on this one was hard to beat. This one was listed under "old sinks" instead of "vintage" or "antique" sinks - so it did not get nearly the bids that some of the sinks I was going for received. As a result it was truly a bargain. Until you ADD THE SHIPPING!!!

And above is pictured our lovely laundry room sink which I also got on EBay, for 10 bucks. It was located close by, so I picked it up and paid zero shipping. It is in pretty rough shape. I may have to get it re-surfaced. Which will make it not such a bargain anymore.

Above is pictured our main floor bathroom sink. It was originally a wall sink. When I bought it , it was in almost perfect condition. The large chip happened while at the cabinet shop. They are going to pay for the repair. I decided to have the sink placed on a base. I think a longer "skirt board" is needed as well as a shelf on the lower half to sort of break up those very long legs. I am going to paint the wood when it is all done. Trust me - this is going to look great. You just have to believe.

And here is our free footed tub. Eric, our plumber salvaged it out of a rental house he owns. He told us if we got it out of the house, we could have it. It will also have to be re-finished. I was under the impression we could get it re-finished on site, so we hauled it up the stairs to the master bath. However, since I would like both the inside and the outside of the tub re-finished, it has to be done in the re-finisher's shop. So now, we have to haul it back down the stairs. A task I will probably try and accomplish today. So if I never post again, you will know that I have perished - crushed beneath a twenty ton tub.

Decorating the Dining Room

2008-03-01T14:58:00.001-06:00

It really is time for me to start turning this house into a home, yet for some reason, I just can't seem to get up for it. What I really need to do is to staple a paint brush to my hand and finish the four or five paint projects that taunt me every day, all day long, as I mindlessly shuffle around the house. But before I paint, I need to finish unpacking and attempt to organize the two dozen boxes full of crap still in the basement. But before I organize the crap, I need to catch up on the laundry. But before I do laundry I need to pay bills, clean bathrooms, get groceries, return phone calls, check e-mail and blog. Wait... no...I think I'll blog first. Anyway, I feel like I am about three years behind, and with Thanksgiving approaching, I'd better get my act together. So I hitched up my sagging lame ass pants and started with the dining room.

My father-in-law Joe made these plate racks for me several years ago. They used to flank a large window in our dining room two houses ago, when the country doctor was in residency. When we moved, there was no spot for them, so they have been in storage for six years. Sorry plate racks - but I have a spot for you now.

Speaking of plate racks, I chose this chandelier from all the other chandeliers in the entire universe for one reason and one reason only.

So that I could bedeck it with seasonal flora and fauna throughout the year. Well maybe not fauna, that might be a little weird...even for me. Hmmmm...worth considering though.

So here we have bedecked chandelier, and empty plate racks.

Time to dig out all my old plates. Oh dear! - it would appear that the old house had a lot of green and pink going on. I am more into golds and reds these days. May have to do some old plate shopping in the near future.

But these will do for now.

Halfway House

2008-02-29T11:01:00.004-06:00

We seem to be stuck in this strange in between place. A half finished house. A house with three almost, but not quite, finished rooms. All bedrooms.

A house where the end seems to be in site and yet is not arriving.

I have unpacked everything I can and there are still boxes everywhere full of things I can't unpack because there is no place to put things. No cabinets, no closets, no pantry, no shelves. It is deflating. For three weeks there was so much hub bub. So many spasmodical spasms. Painting and packing and cleaning, and moving, and now there is just wait. Wait wait wait wait. It has made me question the entire project. Why did we do this? Why didn't we just stay in our old house?

I have started to wonder if we could sell this house. Maybe we should buy a house in town. There are a few really neat old houses in town for sale. Houses I would have loved to buy two years ago. One of them is my favorite house in town. And it going up for auction in two weeks. I could move in and put all my stuff away immediately! I wonder if I could sell this house in two weeks?

I mean hey it is 5:20 in the morning and I have been up since 3:20 am. I can't sleep. Surely there is a name for this disorder. Post traumatic construction spastic little miss whiney whine whine seizure disorder.

I just want to make some curtains! And buy a new bedside lamp! I just want to hang some pictures and figure out how to solve the troubling hall paint color.

But I am stuck in this weird purgatory of stuckness. I can not proceed until others proceed. So I linger. Every day fading a little more. Everyday dying a little more. Every day a little less untill...until...untill... Does untill have one "l's" or two?

P.S. please do not try to cheer me up you all too chipper blog readers of the universe. I am happy in my bleakness. I prefer it this way. Bleak is my favorite color. Maybe I should re-paint the hallway in bleak.

A switch from boring to bleak.

I would much rather be bleak than boring.

PPSS

After writing the above post - I wearily climbed the stairs around 6 am to try and go back to sleep for a few hours. It was then I noticed this strange reddish haze coming thru the windows. What in the world...? Aliens? Terrorist attack? Pesticide? Fungicide? Armageddon???

Holy Crap - Sunrise!!! I haven't seen one of these in years. Gosh maybe we should hang around a while. It might be worth the trouble.

Stairway To Heaven

2008-02-29T10:51:00.002-06:00

Dennis has been working on the railing for the stairs that go to the loft in the boy's back bedroom.

It is turning out better than I ever could have imagined.

I say that not because I am some sort of puffed up over confident egotist. Although at times... well...nevermind. I say it because the loft and subsequent stairs were a last minute addition to the house. We have such a ridiculously steep roof and there was all this left over space. So we decided to put a loft up there for a playroom. Then we had to decide how to access it. We thought about a sort of secret ladder in the closet (which I still think would have been fun) but it seemed sort of difficult to access and hard to come down, which makes you wonder if it would ever actually get used - so eventually we decided to put in the stairs.

Staircases, as you may know, come with an enormous bill. The treads, the risers, the labor, the wood, the railing, the newels, the balusters, the posts. It goes on and on - so for a last minute addition it doesn't come cheap.

As a result, I tried to make these stairs as cheap as I could. The cheapest way would have been to carpet them. But I just didn't want carpeted stairs in this spot. Therefore, we thought we might just paint the risers and treads and Dennis thought he would trim out the space where the stairs meet the sheet rock. But finally we decided to cover the "rough" stairs in pine boards and let them overhang the sheet rock a bit and trim out the cricks and cracks that are left behind.

I bought paint grade balusters and newels from L.J. Smith. The paint grade option has a much lower price tag than a hardwood species like oak or walnut. The newels are nicely primed so we probably won't need to add another coat. The hand rail and balusters however will need to either be painted or stained. I am really leaning to paint - even though stain would be much less maintenance.

Bleeding Kansas... Barn

2008-02-29T10:42:00.002-06:00

The country doctor has been working on the roof of the barn since he came home from work on Friday night. This particular man may occasionally frustrate me for a multitude of reasons, but laziness is not among them.

He has been hauling both the long sheets of metal roofing and the pieces that fit over the peak, one at a time, up the ladder, caulking them together, and then screwing them down.

It is a monster of a job and I have not even been here to help him. Instead, I drove back out to western Kansas to pick up the boys from camp.

There are a lot of stories I need to tell you about that trip, the most important being how grumpy April gets on long car trips. Her normally tolerable level of bossiness, becomes practically unbearable.

This is a picture of her probably saying something like - Rechelle move your knees to the right, hand me some licorice, don't drink so loudly, turn down the radio, lean further back in your seat, give me my chapstick, where do I turn, etc, etc etc... She is not a good choice for a road buddy. She also does not tolerate crumbs in her car very well.

I felt obligated to try and teach her some tolerance by sprinkling a few crumbs in the driver's seat and elsewhere.

You can see by the way she is angrily wiping down her van, that my little experiment failed.

She is just not ready to admit that she has a problem. Only then can the healing begin.

Oh and by the way, our barn is not bleeding to death. The country doctor sprayed three coats of barn red paint around the top edge, to keep the roof from getting splattered when we paint the rest of the barn.

I didn't want you to lay awake all night worrying about it.

Barn Sills

2008-02-29T10:39:00.004-06:00

Thanks you God for my in-laws, who are always willing to come for a visit, leaving behind their garden, and their comfortable home, to sleep in our lumpy guest bed, in our noisy house full of rowdy grand and help us with our crazy projects, bringing homemade bread and a helpful hand to do a load of laundry, cook a meal and babysit. What would we do without them?

Their most recent visit was to help us work on the barn. The Country Doctor and his dad built the barn sills and trimmed out the barn windows.

Here is a brief account of what the Country Doctor and his dad did to create these beautiful sills.

Snap a chalk line on the siding to create a guide of where you want to cut the window out. The window is already framed up on the inside of the barn, but the country doctor brought the siding all the way down over the window openings to save a little time.

Next - cut the opening.

Joe stood on the inside and yelled to the country doctor when he was off course.

Then place the sill in the opening. This step takes FOREVER!!! There is a lot of fussin', and cussin', and whittlin' and fiddlin' to make it fit just right.

Then cut the remaining trim pieces to size.

Now look at those sills! Have you ever seen anything prettier than that? It's like we are Amish or something. Thanks Joe and Rita for coming down and helping us out. Now...next weekend - we were thinking about putting on that barn roof...

Barn Raising

2008-02-29T10:36:00.003-06:00

Little Bit of Building...

Little Bit of Jigging...

Little bit more building...

Little Bit of Partying on the Porch

A Barn is Born

2008-02-29T10:33:00.003-06:00

We decided to save some money and build the garage ourselves. Except that we aren't calling it a garage - we call it the barn. I guess it is because it is as big as a barn.

And no, we didn't build all of it ourselves. Dennis and his crew framed it. But the country doctor and I and the country doctor's brother Jed - but mostly the country doctor have been doing everything else - which includes the siding and the roof and a lot of other things I would never have imagined. Like nailing up these super long 2X4s on the gabled ends.

The siding consists of twelve inch wide boards of cottonwood, a tree native to our area. You put the boards up tight together and after a few days they start to shrink and "cracks" appear between the boards. Then you take a long thin board and nail this over the "cracks" - thus you have board and batten siding.

The design for our barn was inspired by the barns at Country Carpenters They build beautiful post and beam barns with a real classic look. Hopefully when we are finished we will have something similar.

The Library Arrives

2008-02-29T10:29:00.005-06:00

Our library has arrived.

I was at first, somewhat mystified.

Evidently, I overlooked the small box at the end of the order form that said...complete library.

Though everything seems to be in very good order, with plenty of nooks and whatnots, and bins and cubbies, and higglyjoints and sputknacks...it seems that it did not have any...

BOOKS!!

I sprang into action!

Searching for the perfect book, the exact right one, to bless this humble library. The perfect book to first grace the shelves. To set the tone. To determine the character of this space for all time memorial!

I knew exactly where to go. A book of immense wisdom...unerring moral fiber. A book that nurtured me as I grew and taught me right from wrong. A book... actually many books...assembled into a flawless, seamless, whole. Where I still look for guidance and support and courage and fortitude. And I am never disappointed.

Nancy Drew

Of course.

This is my favorite cover.

Now that I have the sacred texts in place, I can move onto the lesser titles.

Vintage Medicine Cabinet

2008-02-28T15:38:00.000-06:00

For the past year, Dennis and Jordan have shown up just about everyday to work on this house.

Aside from electric, plumbing, foundation, interior paint and some dirt work, they have done the work themselves. Framing, roofing, trimming, staining, siding, stairs, windows, doors, and the trillions of tasks in between.

Did I ever mention that Jordan is Dennis's grandson?

Jordan usually calls Dennis, "Boss" or "Bossman" or sometimes "D". Every once in a while though...

He calls him "grandpa."

They make a great team.

The mantle is installed

2008-02-16T20:59:00.002-06:00

Quarter sawn oak kitchen island with center stove

2008-02-16T20:51:00.003-06:00

Main floor bath subway tile

2008-02-16T20:42:00.004-06:00

Main floor bath subway tile layout patterns

2008-02-16T15:09:00.005-06:00

Building a New House with a Detached Garage

2008-02-15T11:15:00.010-06:00

We have our own ice rink right outside our mudroom door. Lucky Us! It starts at the bottom step of our stoop and stretches all the way to the barn where we park our cars. Every morning we carefully pick our way across the frozen landscape trying to find a brave lonely patch of mud or grass to step on, as the traction keeps you upright far better than the ice does. Every member of our family has fallen at least once on this ice rink,and myself and the "groundskeeper" have fallen several times. Visits from our parents and other slightly older adults sets our teeth on edge as we watch them cross the frozen path.

This has been a very harsh winter for our part of the country. The harshest in several years, maybe even a decade. If had known that the potential for an outdoor ice rink existed, I may have planned things a bit differently, but I was lulled into the belief that I was living in a temperate climate with mild winters. That has all changed. I am sure a few people wonder why we did not attach our garage to our new house. And trust me - MANY MANY mornings I have wondered the exact same thing. So in an attempt to remind myself why we did not attach a garage, I am typing out a list of our brilliant hard thought over reasons. I plan to read this list everyday until the first sign of spring, break through the icy pool outside my door. Then I will burn the list in celebration - warming my icy fingers over the flames.

Rechelle's list of why we do not have an attached garage. And why it was a good idea in spite of falling on my butt on the ice outside my door more times than I want to ever think about again...

1. I wanted to build a very Classic American Farmhouse. Farmhouses tend to be comprised of trim exterior lines which a detached garage would disturb. They are also often surrounded by outbuildings which are a part of their charm. An attached garage would have swollen the proportions of the house taking away from it's exterior character and taken away fro an opportunity to build a very sweet outbuilding - our barn.

2. I also wanted lots of natural light flooding the house. An attached garage often shuts off an entire direction of light taking up an entire north, south, east or western exposure of a house. I was not interested in losing any of my light exposures. Also, in new houses, an attached garage is directly adjacent to the kitchen creating what I call, interior kitchens - or kitchens with little to no natural light, I wanted to avoid this as well.

3. Building a farmhouse in the countryside seemed to demand opportunities to step outside and breathe in the fresh air, smell the flowers, hear the birds, etc, etc.... Entering and exiting our new home from the dark depths of an attached garage would have lessened those opportunities. A short hike every day to a rustic barn, housing our cars would give us a chance to celebrate the outdoors in a small way every day.

4. I have seen lots of homes built in classic styles that found clever ways to incorporate an attached garage. Swinging the garage around behind the house is one way - but if light is important to you, you will be closing off light to your back yard and to a large part of your house. Most people wouldn't mind, but it would kill me.

Attaching a garage through a breezeway is also often done today and I think this option is often handsome and has the potential to create another outdoor area to enjoy or you can enclose the breezeway as a mudroom or a sun room. This is a good option, and if I ever build again it is one I may consider.

But for now, we hike the ice patch every morning. We hope to lay down a layer of asphalt this spring. The black material spongy will absorb more heat and melt the snow before it can turn into ice next winter as well as giving our four sons a place to play basketball. The asphalt will also make clearing off the driveway easier as it is very difficult to shovel off a gravel driveway. Your shovel tears into the rocks and you bring up a half shovel full of mud with every shovel full of snow. It is frustrating and back breaking.

3. Garage Schmarage - we were tought enough to take a short hike to our cars every day. so we walk across our ice rink every morning. Saying a silent prayer that we make it to our cars without injury. Hoping for an early spring so that those birds and flowers and fresh air will remind us of why we so crazily built a house with a detached garage.

Like the ice-rink that formed in November on the north side of our home which we must cross every day to get to our cars, because I insisted on having a detached garage to keep our home looking like a true old farmhouse. This being one of the harshest winters in recent history, getting to our cars every morning has become a treacherous death defying act. We have all slipped and fallen more than once. We hope to correct this in the near future by having a layer of black asphalt placed on the driveway and parking spaces. We hope the black will absorb more heat and help in melting the snow before it turns into ice. But that project is a ways off, until then we tread very carefully back an forth from the barn to the car. Praying that we make it to the warmth of our cozy house without breaking a bone on the way.