Moving Day

On August 16th, 2023 we closed on our home eleven years and four months after we moved into it, closing out the chapter and book of what I’ve been writing about for all of these years.

Over the course of about four days we spent a lot of sweat and tears, hastily at times, getting everything moved out of the house. The hard work was a great distraction for me, as I didn’t want to ponder leaving, too much. The 15th really was the toughest day of my life. It was a really challenging and sad day. The hopes and dreams of this house, in contrast to the realities were a lot to think about during those days. The boys were really great in helping out during a tough situation for them.

When I was fourteen my family sold and moved out of the home I grew up in. So I thought about that and hope that the boys would be okay with a move. At least the house part. The separation of their mom and dad probably not as much.

Not much about life goes as planned. The truth is we checked all the boxes and there were lots of smiles over those eleven years. And there was a lot of falseness and loneliness that went unrecognized. My hope would be that this is for the better (or at least survival) and the boys will someday understand.

The house was everything I planned and wanted, but I never not felt alone there. Every night was reconciled alone, and every morning started alone. My best friend on my darkest days, my cat, I didn’t even get to bring with me when I left. Everything about that place was wrong where it mattered. We were way over extended and it wasn’t sustainable any way you look at it.

As we packed up, we did do a few things to say goodbye to the estate. The last photo we took was of me in my, less than stellar, apple orchard smiling and crying. Juju bee got to take the last shot at the basketball hoop as did his mother and I.

He made both shots he took.

I missed mine.

Having moved out of the house some eighteen months ago helped me a bit. The place barely felt like home when I lived there, it felt borderline foreign those last few days. Most if not all of my pain was focused on the boys and their discomfort in having to leave.

I don’t know if I’ll ever establish a good relationship with them. It would be great to go to therapy the three of us to work through our grief and maybe in time we will be able to. I know the last four years have helped me, having someone to process things with and work on how I show up in the world. The boys have only ever stayed at my house one night but I hope in time they will want to hang out with me. And maybe it’s what I deserve for being so alone in that old house.

Life is really hard.

I wish I could write something more profound, or smart in this situation. But I don’t know what to say. I really wish we were past all of this so the rebuilding and healing could truly begin. We, as people, really don’t do a good job of building a life conducive to honest nurturing, vulnerability, and communication. I am hopeful the future will be better and this will all make sense. I am working hard to model the behavior for my boys that I want them to see…calmness, presence, love, vulnerability, courage, listening…

So where does this leave this blog?

I’m not sure. There are plenty of DIY projects to continue to cover. I do like writing so I’d like to continue to do so. Maybe a little bit of DIY and a little bit of life. Maybe some talk of what’s next. I am working on a vision board, working on my budget and goals. Maybe I can share some of that adventure. Maybe the blog evolves into something else. As I approach fifty years next week, it’s probably the right time to pivot.

Ok, I’m rambling. Here are some photos from those last days. Stay tuned for what’s next.

Checking the cabinets one last time

I took an apple from the four trees that were bearing fruit

Our last sunset 8/15/23

That’s all folks! Me in my orchard for the last time.

Two Weeks

Two weeks until we hopefully hand over the keys to the next owners of the house we started building in 2011.

For years I’ve been worried about how I’d feel leaving for good. The house, land, and I have been connected for a long time. But the reality is I started moving on a long time ago. Magic gave way to reality. Fleeting highs could no longer infill increasingly vast lows. I lived in that house alone for a long time. Leaving means rebuilding, and rebuilding means not only survival but thriving.

So, yes it’ll be sad in a way to leave. But some good memories were built there. And a new family will hopefully make many more.

And I’ll be making many more great memories myself.

A house is just a place after all. It alone can’t make any of us happy, and it’s sad when it is shared alone in plain sight. I always was made to feel like an outsider there. In my little place I’m in now I’m doing well. And learning to be content and at peace. Finally.

I have a few things to pack up. I’m guessing there’s a lot of things that were once important that are being left behind for me to figure out what to do with. Oh well. I’ll figure it out, I always do (out of necessity).

I’ll take some pictures.

Walk around.

Visit my trees.

It’ll be okay. I’ve moved on and will remember the things worth remembering.

I’m proud of what I helped build and how the vision became a reality. It was under contract within two days, for more than was being asked. A testament to the vision. It’s a good place but it was time to move on a long time ago.

I’m so very glad to be where I am at, and the love I’ve found and am finding in so many places.

I am so hopeful for what is on the horizon.

Thriving is a wonderful place to live.

Zero Apple Trees

I think I need to write again.

It’s been a few weeks since I last checked in.

About a hundred and twenty weeks to be exact.

I’ve got a lot going on, and a lot has changed in that hundred and twenty weeks. But then I remembered why I started writing this blog in the first place. Writing kind of helped me out during the stress of building a new house. And despite everything that is different now, I am still fiddling around with household things like installing lights and painting things.

In that time since I last wrote and you last read (me), there was a pandemic. That was pretty stressful for us all, I bet. Also I made the decision to move into a new house. I bought a small box of a house, about 1,300 square feet in Akron, Ohio. It was built in 1959. It has three bedrooms, a family room, dining room, kitchen, basement, and one and one half bathrooms.

When I moved out I didn’t get to take my cat. So I adopted a new cat. The cat I adopted, his name was originally Mowgli, but his last owner named him Rex. I liked “Mowgli” better so I call him “Mowgli”. He was super affectionate at PetSmart, in his glass cage. I thought he liked me special and we had a bond. He would go up to the glass and meow and smile at me. Turns out he likes everyone that way. He’s super needy. Sometimes I’m super needy too, and he lets me hold him like a stuffed animal and we take naps. Mowgli loves wet cat food and wakes me up every morning at 4am to get wet cat food. We keep each other company.

I’ve lived in my new (to me) house for fifty-four of those one hundred and twenty weeks since I last wrote. This house has no apple trees. It has a big tree in the front yard, and really bad grass. The grass is so bad I only mowed it like four times last summer. I don’t have a lawn mower. I was allowed to borrow the electric one from the old house a few times. I planted two mums a friend got for me, and I bought a really nice basket of flowers for the front porch. It all looked nice.

Inside the kitchen and bathroom need to be remodeled. I got some estimates but I need to wait til I’m not broke to fix those up. The bathroom shower leaks but I think that’s because of the wall tiles. They were falling off. I fixed those with duct tape. I cut a big hole in the kitchen ceiling but the plumber and I couldn’t figure out where the leak was coming from.

I took the cabinet doors off the kitchen cabinets. I like the open shelf look and like seeing all my “stuff”. Keeps me company in the kitchen. Seeing my Tostitos and cans of soup. The cabinets are all painted green. I’ll probably get new cabinets. In the meantime I did get a refrigerator, range, and microwave. I’ve made several meals in the range over the last fifty-four weeks. I’d love to have a dishwasher but there is no hookup or space for one. I’ve washed a lot of dishes over the last fifty-four weeks.

When I first moved in, like night one, I went to turn on the hot water and figured out that the hot water tank didn’t work anymore. Some nice plumbers installed a new one that day. I like hot water. Mowgli doesn’t care either way, about water temperature.

There was mold in the attic, but I got that remediated for about two thousand dollars.

I got a washer and dryer, and built a little platform out of pressure treated boards to put them on. It was my first construction project at the house. Turned out pretty good. It makes the washer and dryer a bit tall, so if you’re a short friend, you’ll have trouble doing laundry. Mowgli doesn’t do laundry so he doesn’t see an issue here. I also demolished the original basement sink which weighed about 500 lbs. I broke it up with a sledgehammer. I’ve been throwing it out piece by piece for the last twenty-seven weeks. It was solid concrete. You see a one in every house built in the 1950’s.

I painted the dining room. All the trim in the house is not the greatest wood. It’s much fresher to paint this wood a solid paint color. I chose a new (to me) Sherwin Williams color collection called Urban Outlook. “Greek Villa” is an excellent off-white paint color. I painted the dining room trim Greek Villa; the chair rail and baseboard, and around the windows. The walls I painted Believable Buff which is one of my favorites from the old house. I’ll paint the rest of the rooms in time, including all of the trim. The floors could use refinishing too.

Hmmm….what else did we update…I had some new outlets installed. All the old outlets were the two prong types. So to be able plug in a TV or other three-prong things, I needed three-prong outlets. A few GFI outlets were installed in the family room and bedrooms. I also updated the porch lights to something new. They look nice.

One day the garage door fell off and tried to kill me. Mowgli was inside so he was okay. Anyway, I had to get that fixed too. The garage smells old, so I don’t go in there much.

Okay, this felt nice writing today. I had a tough day, and this helped. Thanks for reading. I’ll talk to ya soon.

This is Mowgli. He’s my cat and I’m his person. He’s a tuxedo cat, which is the best kind of cat (in my opinion).

Hanging Pictures

Hanging framed pictures is one of those things that seemingly never gets done. We still don’t know what to hang over the couch or to the side of the living room window. My bedroom is basically bare. All over the house we have bare walls because I never know what to hang, I’m too broke or cheap to buy anything, or I’m too lazy to get around to hanging anything.

Well that changed a bit today. On our vacation to the Pacific Northwest this year I collected a poster from each of the National Parks we visited (a couple posters I had to order online when we got home, to complete the set). I spent a pretty penny getting them all framed. Today was the day, I just went for it and hung them on the wall.

I selected the large blank wall leading from the first floor to the second floor. It’s a vast space and you’d need a super large piece of art to take up that amount of space. So instead of one piece I decided to do sort of a framed art collage on the wall. I have five framed posters so I somewhat arbitrarily hung them on the wall, according to the geographic locations of the park in the Pacific Northwest. Clever, right? I will infill around the posters with photos of our trip in various sizes and shapes. I think it will look nice.

And it feels good to get not have framed posters laying around, and it feels good having one less blank wall in the house. It makes it feel homey and is a nice reminder of our family vacation.

Visit https://scenichwys.com/product-category/posters to order posters for yourself. The ones we have all have old time cars…we wonder if the cars correlate to the year the parks were opened, but that would require research, blah.

House Hunters

We’ve been looking at new homes for the last month. It would be nice to downsize a bit and have more funds for travel, paying bills, projects, decorating and generally enjoying life while we’re still alive.

We started out looking at existing homes, and have spent several Sundays as a family visiting open houses in the area. There are some really nice neighborhoods, with really cool old houses, many of these homes were built in the 1920’s. But out of everything we’ve seen so far, there was really only one house that stood out to us. It’s a pretty neat Georgian colonial built during the first quarter of the 20th century. It was the first house we visited. And after several weeks we even went back a second time. It spoke to us in a way, but the reality is it doesn’t save us any money and we’d be in the same spot we are in now. Additionally we wouldn’t have any money to decorate it (it’s a larger house) or to fix up anything. We like its little quirks and it was beautifully decorated currently. Real nice neighborhood too. Great back yard.

Clean, relatively up to date kitchen in the house we looked at

Screen porch on house we looked at, looking over a great back yard

House we looked at, front hallway with awesome tile and old fashioned staircase. I could do without the wrought iron doors leading into the dining room.

I love the idea of servant’s quarters. They have their own staircase, sitting room and patio area. I love these old houses from the 1920’s that have cool features like this.

This would have been by office. French door leading out to porch and back yard. Decorated better than I ever could do.

So with that house off the list, we switched gears and looked at a couple developments where new homes were being built. Ha! the family of course was universal in our love of new construction. What’s not to love, everything is fresh, smells good and contemporary floor plans have come a long way. Builders are beginning to design home interiors to be more in line with how humans really live: more office space, less focus on wasted space or vaulted ceilings. We actually found a development or two that would work for us, and found a few floor plans, one in particular, that would be perfect for us. One thing I’m noticing is that in smaller floor plans, builders are finally getting rid of formal dining rooms, separate dinettes (and living rooms). Replacing them with offices or omitting them altogether. This is exactly what we did when we built our current house. We use our fancy dining room table EVERY day! The old dinette set actually sits in the basement. Also builders are adding lofts to the second floor that are PERFECT as a game room for the kids. It basically negates the need to finish off the basement of a new home, thus saving money. Or we could use the basement for a home theater someday. Other great features include larger mud rooms and laundry rooms on the second floor. All good stuff.

The thing we hate about new builder homes is the exteriors are awful. The put a ton of value into the interior at the expense of homogenizing the exterior. Builders have turned all these homes into big boxes with a bunch of tacked on details that neither make sense nor add interest. In fact one great neighborhood we looked at, with good floor plans, isn’t even an option because the home exteriors are so grossly fake and boxy, it was too depressing to look past them all. It was like a bunch of building for people waiting for death to rescue them. Depressing as f*ck.

Example of box house design trend we’re seeing. It saves cost but the aesthetics are so forced they look fake.

I’m not picking on anyone, but builders need to do better than this. Throw some money at the foundation to get some setbacks within the facade. Don’t build the box over the garage. Have dormers and details that make sense. It’s to the point where maybe get rid of the old colonial facades and if you’re going to build a box, accentuate it all and maybe go modern. We can do better than this as a society.

So I’m going to start doodling at night while we watch tv. We have a floor plan we like. I might tweak it a bit or explore alternatives. And I’ll play with the exterior a bit.  Additionally I’m going to look at vacant lots for sale in our neck part of the state. All we need is a small lot, and a small house. Once we kind of have an idea we can reach out to a builder and get an idea if we can do what we want in our budget. We’ll keep looking at existing homes too just in case.

 

 

Basement Update – Drywall

The basement has drywall! Happiness.

Once completed this will be our first finished basement as a family. In fact, the wife’s never really ever lived in a house with a finished basement. So getting the drywall installed is a big step towards that goal.

The space actually doesn’t look all that different, or at least not as different as I expected. It does look good though. You can get a feel for the large rooms down there. And as you look at the photos you can see how we left the sheet rock up about 8″ to mitigate against any potential future basement flooding. We’ll cover that gap with replaceable plywood baseboards that can be removed in event of water pooling in the basement as a result of sump pump issues.

I didn’t install the drywall myself, rather we contracted that out. It took about a week for one person to hang, tape, mud and sand. It installed with no problem onto our Superior Walls foundation, and the metal stud partitions I raised.

To a certain extent, installing sheet rock on the foundation walls, along with caulked baseboards, should insulate the basement even more, and make for a tighter envelop on our home. Maybe once the basement is complete, and I do a few other things (all LED light bulbs for example), I will have the house re-evaluated for energy efficiency and see if we’ve improved our HERS score.

Take a look at the photos and captions for more on the drywall.

Next up will be painting all the walls. We’re going to do this next because with the floor being bare cement, we won’t have to worry about paint spills. We can get at least a coat or two on the walls, then touch up later if necessary.

Speaking of the floors, we have tile on order from Lowe’s. We went with a distressed wood look porcelain tile, which is very trendy right now. The 6″ x 36″ tile is called ‘Sequoia Ballpark Tile’, and it is $2.99 a sq. ft. which is a bit pricey. In our search we did come across tiles that are upwards of $10 a sq. ft., so everything is relative. We like the look and will save some cash by installing it ourselves. We’ll cover all 948 square feet of the basement with the tile. This will give us a nice looking floor that will be impervious to any flooding or moisture in the basement. The distressed look, with brown, white and grey tones should be timeless aesthetically, and congruent with the style of the rest of our home.

It’s very exciting to well on our way to finally having a finished basement space for work and play. This will accomplish a major house goal for us. One that has been around for over fifteen years really.

The staircase before drywall.

Installing the drywall.

Superior Walls make installing drywall simple: just screw to the face of the foundation studs.

This shower pipe is too high, and I don’t feel like messing with it. I have the plumber relocate it when he comes out to install the bathroom fixtures.

The bathroom with its green mold resistant sheetrock installed. I had to put in a little access panel for various valves and dampers in the ceiling.

Drywalled room in basement.

Looks good with sheetrock on all the walls.

The stair case with new drywall bulkhead.

Here is the ‘Sequoia Ballpark’ tile we picked out. I really like the randomness and colors.

‘Sequoia Ballpark’ tile display at Lowe’s

In case you want to know what tile we got, here’s the info from Lowe’s.

I burned a bee box that had been colonized by moths. We left it out too long after the honey bees vacated it.

Crab apples the wife collected to make crab apple jelly later this week.

New antique rug we bought for the kitchen

This Rug in Studio: Yea or Nay

We need to know if this rug looks good or not in the wife’s studio, as soon as possibly preferably. (Don’t worry if we don’t like rug it was free and will go in the basement if we don’t use it in the studio).

Studio Decorating and Ottoman Storage Boxes

Today was kind of a waste. Frigid cold outside kept us inside. Being the indecisive twit that I am, I spent most of my Sunday arranging pictures on the wall of my studio. First off I hung up my mounted deer head, much to the chagrin of my wife, but I wanted it up in my studio. It had been sitting in the basement with all the other junk for some time now; in fact even at the old house it had been in storage when my office got turned into the nursery. It looks nice in the reading nook of my studio, and generally speaking only I can see it on any given day; which is to say it is not in plain sight of the general public, ‘less one looks though the porch window.

My deer head finally has a home, three years in storage.

I then spent the better part of the day turning the simple task of hanging a collage of pictures on the wall into an act of great labor and internal mental strife.  Just after lunch I had this, which was good except a lot of pictures didn’t make it on the wall:

The studio wall hallway through today.

So I decided “what the hell” and put more pictures up until I arrived at this, which is how it looks now:

The studio wall in its current state with my memorabilia on the wall. There is still more to come or rather not all of it is on the wall.

I don’t know if it’s good or bad. I still have more pictures to put up, but not too many.  I also have a mounted fish to hang above the door. I don’t know if guests will be taken aback by it all or not. I probably don’t really care. It’s my studio. I can do what I want, even if it meant to be for public consumption on an invited case by case basis.

This afternoon and evening I made three storage ottomans per the wife’s request. The lids come off so you can store crap inside, and put your feet up when not accessing your crap. I had the sheet of 3/4″ cabinet grade plywood sitting in the garage since July. I was able to cut all three 14″ x 14″ x 16″ units from one sheet, using the guidelines here on the sawdustgirl.com website. A glued, nailed and screwed everything together. I like that “Saw Dust Girl” recommends Spax screws, which I would have used anyway as they are the best wood screws known to mankind. The assembled ottomans look like this, waiting for the spousal unit to put fabric around them:

I made these nifty ottomans today out of a sheet of 3/4″ cabinet grade plywood.

I also took the time to put the last few pieces of trim and the two missing floor boards down in my office area. Some caulk and paint and the studio will be done, save for the track lighting, rug and my TBD conference table / chair solution.

Well tomorrow starts a new work week. Maybe I’ll start taking my redecorated studio for a test drive…painting, drawing or whatnot.  Hope your week starts off in grand fashion.

 

-Chris

 

Studio Decor And Half Bath Wallpaper

I’ve been steadily moving back into my studio. I’ve filled most of the shelves with my books, magazines and knick knacks.  With the help of the wife, I think we unloaded about a dozen boxes from the basement. While this isn’t much it does start to make a dent. I had been keeping all of my old car magazines, and now I have a fairly complete set of ‘Automobile’ and ‘Car & Driver’ issues form the last two and a half decades. I put a special set of ‘Road & Track’ issues in my reading nook, to look at next time I have some free time.  It was really nice to finally get these out of the box after so many years. I love looking at all of the cars from the 80’s and 90’s as well as the ads. Kind of like a time machine to escape from the realities of contemporary times. Even if it’s just for the turn of a page or two.

The over all look of the studio is cluttered again, not really like the clean orderly rendering, but it’s functional and that’s all one can ask for really.  As time passes I can work on streamlining the organization here and there as I live with the space. The key is boxes are getting unpacked and treasures are seeing the light of day again.  I need to get a rug for my reading space, some track lighting above and hang memorabilia on the wall. As for a meeting space, I think it will be interesting to say the least. The room will probably have more self-indulgent mementos that I would have thought necessary – I abhor going into offices that are temples to their owners – but in fact that’s what my studio will be most likely, if only because I have all this stuff that 1) I hate to throw out, and 2) the artifacts reflect my journey and share the story of who I am after 40 years. While I am not defined by the things around me, I am a visual person; maybe through the viewing of the artifacts we keep around us, one can glean more meaning of who the person is.

Yesterday we had the half bath wallpapered. It looks fantastic. The floral pattern makes us feel like grown-ups, or at least I do. We’ve never had wallpaper before, nor have we ever had a finished half bath in all of our years. The paper adds a touch of visual texture, and whimsy; which is a nice surprise in an otherwise subdued contemporary interior.  The only down side is that now my striped painting doesn’t fit in anymore in the front hall. We definitely need a large painting or pair of paintings there, just not stripes that clash with the floral pattern. If anyone wants to buy the stripe painting I’d love to sell it. Otherwise I think it will go in the basement when we finish that off.

Let us know what you think about the wallpaper.

It looks more cluttered than anticipated but it’s functional. Over time I’ll refine how things are kept to make it more visually appealing.

Knick knacks from the old library and various other areas of our collective lives find a home on my studio shelves.

My reading nook in my studio. I need a rug and some overhead track lighting, otherwise this is my new hide out spot.

Plenty of space for my paint.

My paint jars are on the shelves just as planned.

My magazines finally see the light of day. I always caught flak for storing and moving these heavy boxes of magazines. No more. They are free.

The wallpaper and my stripe painting clash. Sadness.

The half bath wallpaper pattern features florals that speak to the meadows and wildflowers on the property. The color scheme fits right into our Global Spice pallet. The pattern is from the “Eco Chic” book at Sherwin Williams

Fuzzy On My Door

Yesterday morning I awoke early to unlock the studio door in preparation for the workers finishing off my studio floor this week. I also needed to take the waste down to the curb so I slipped on my shoes. As I opened the studio door a small fuzzy body fell to my floor.

“What are you doing here?” concern in my voice as I bent over and slipped a car key under her legs. Most likely she was one of our bees and now she clung to the key as I pulled her closer to my eye. Her tired little body was covered in dew. For whatever reason she had spent the night clung to my door. Maybe she had been trying to get a hold of me and spent the night knocking our my door, only it’s virtually impossible to hear a bee when they’re knocking on one’s door I reckon. So there she sat, perched upon my key, near death. Bees need to be in their hive at night, not on my door.

I almost wanted to pet her, to provide some degree of comfort. The right thing to do would have been to put her out of her misery right there and then, but I didn’t have it in me.  So my bee, upon my key, and I took a stroll in the early morning sunlight. Through the garden gate, past the sunflowers, to the hive we went. I placed her worn out body at the hive entrance, transparent yellow rays of sun drying her wings and warming her body. I doubt she made it, and I probably put the greater hive at risk if there really was something wrong with her, but what am I to do. Anymore, I just don’t have it in me to always think with my brain. I let her be. One small part of a greater organism. A system where the individual gives their life for the survival of the hive. Something in me just thinks maybe she’d rather see her home, or at least a bee home, one last time.

Back inside our hive of a home we’ve had workers finishing the cement floor in my art studio. The stared yesterday morning by putting up plastic to keep dust out of the rest of the house, and they used a grinder to take off all the paint, drywall and stains in the floor; essentially removing the top layer of concrete. They then applied a semi-transparent stain from H&C Concrete Products. We selected Espresso color to match the cabinets and the bronze tile elsewhere in the house.

Today they applied a clear coat and tomorrow they will caulk all the expansion joints in the floor. In the end we’ll have a floor that can be cleaned more readily and look great.

Because they’re working in my studio I moved out of my office and relocated to the loft.  I really like it up here.  The view is incredible and the leather chairs are somewhat comfy (though the card table is an ergonomic disaster for my neck).  Much more inspiring up here than down in my hallway office, but that of course translates to more thinking and dreaming instead of working.  No one pays me to think or dream.  It’s pretty awesome up here though. You should be up here when it rains. Talk about not getting any work done; instead just stare out the window.

Only thing I wish we’d done was 1) had the time / money / patience to finish it off with a ceiling fan and bookcases (it was hot yesterday ’cause the windows were open to air out the house from my studio finishing…all the air in the house is meant to escape out the loft, that’s why it exists in the first place). Eventually the space will be a library thus the need for shelves. 2) A spiral staircase would be nice to have. The ship’s ladder worries me with our boys going up and down. My oldest joined me in the temporary “office”. He set up his own desk and the whole nine yards.  So cute. Anyway a spiral staircase would be nice and I think it would fill in the corner of the hallway below better. Not a big deal though.

Well I should get back to work, though it just started raining for the first time in weeks.

Maybe it’s time for a break….

A bee at the entrance to the hive. I found him on my studio door. Right or wrong I took him back home.

The hive in the early morning sunshine.

The new finish on my studio floor. Espresso to match the cabinets and tile throughout the house.

Early morning sunrise casts its rays upon a sunflower in our garden.

The view out of my temporary office. Sure beats a parking lot view or no window at all like most well off folks got.