January 1, 2008 at 7:47 pm · Filed under Home base
About 11 years ago I wrote a long series of web pages about the building of our house in Vermont. (They are now long gone from the Internet.) The pages detailed the process of building a timber frame house from months before we turned the first spade of earth through the eventual move-in nearly two years later. What I wrote was, in effect, a blog, before blogs became known as such.
As I write this, I find that a lot of the thoughts I have had lately are identical to those of 11 years before, and to the vintage trailer restorations I have been involved with. There are certain commonalities to house renovations or building projects. One is the “punch list”, which is basically just a big roll-up of all those little things that need to get done before the project can be called done.
We’re approaching the “punch list” phase of this project, which is really great. It means things are proceeding rapidly. The list is not all that long either. When Brett and I were working on Project Vintage Thunder (a 1977 Argosy restoration) in 2004, the punch list ran to several pages. Our current punch list is just one page. Of course some of the items on the list can’t be accomplished until later in January or early February, when the cabinetry is in, but we can definitely see the end coming. We may well be done with the bulk of work by Valentine’s Day, a couple of weeks ahead of our initial estimates.
The bad news is that we’ve had to add some items to the list that we were planning to postpone. The windows in this house are awful, much worse than we had originally thought (and our opinion of them was not great to begin with!) They are el-cheapo 1970s-era aluminum framed single pane windows. They leak air like crazy. They jam instead of opening. They provide no soundproofing at all, and the glass is permanently etched & fogged near the bottom of several of the larger windows. I have been sitting in the dining room to work on the table during the last few days and it is freezing even with the heat on because there’s a huge window nearby. So we’re going to replace six windows and eliminate another with glass block.
Today Eleanor wanted to finalize her kitchen plan, so she marked the plan out on the floors and walls with blue tape. Seems like it will work. We’ll make just a few changes before the cabinet order goes in later this week.
In the next two weeks we’ll complete the really ugly parts of this renovation: stripping the old “popcorn” ceilings, adding some new natural gas lines, and repainting the interior. I say “ugly” because these projects will cause utter havoc inside the house, forcing me back into the Airstream to work for a week. I’ve gotten used to spreading out on the dining room table to do my work, leaving the dinette table available for home schooling.
Since most of the big tasks are scheduled already, I’ve been turning my attention to the next phase of small installation projects. That includes things like window treatments, dimmer switches, vent fans, faucets, and under-cabinet lighting. I’ll do a little of this myself, but we are lucky to have two really good handymen on call, Randy and Jerry, who will pitch in. Mostly our job will be to shop for all the bits & pieces they need, everything from faucets to outlet covers.
Gunny called me yesterday while I was driving back through New Mexico, and laughed at me for being in the middle of a house renovation. He knew better than to get into this process. A new Airstream comes with all the decisions made for you, and all you have to do is tweak to suit your taste. It’s a lot easier. But at least this time we are completing the process in a matter of weeks, rather than years. We’re headed in the right direction.
December 31, 2007 at 7:41 pm · Filed under Home base, Roadtrips
When I was preparing to leave Denver, Fred gave me directions home: left onto Monaco, right to I-25, left ramp, then right on I-10 and right to Tucson. That’s basically it if you want the fast route, I-25 for about six hundred miles, then I-10 for another 220 miles. Not much chance to see the back roads and “blue highways”, except for one spot where the best route is to cut the corner between I-25 and I-10 on NM-26.
That’s where I found the town of Hatch, which is known as the “chile capital of the world”. I had no idea it was here, but of course a stop was called for. See the chiles on the roof?
Via phone Eleanor put in her order for a bunch of chipotle chiles, which are smoky and fantastic (and are really jalapenos, not chiles). I picked up a quart-sized baggie of them, and I am sure to be rewarded for this minor effort with something really delicious.
Hatch has a chile festival in September that we’d like to attend. I’m not sure if we will be here in September, however. Our long-term planning only extends through August at this point.
At long last I am home again. I’m not sure what constitutes “home”, either Airstream or house. I think it’s really just Eleanor & Emma. In any case, our family is once again reunited. The little Fit is tucked into the carport next to the Airstream and it looks happy to be here too — or at least, it will once I get it to a car wash to remove the gray splatters (souvenirs of the Denver slush).
With all the traveling rush I had forgotten that today is New Year’s Eve. A lot of Airstream friends of ours are up at Picacho Peak State Park (about 40 miles from Tucson). We had planned to be there too, until my Thursday flight got canceled. Instead tonight we will make a fire and eat pizza on the rug of the living room (because there is no furniture), and perhaps watch a movie. It will be a quiet New Year’s Eve, but a memorable one. We are settling into our new house, Emma is seven years old, and never again will this moment happen. It’s good to be home.
December 30, 2007 at 7:48 pm · Filed under Roadtrips
It’s always hard when I have to be dropped at the airport early in the morning. The whole family has to get up in the dark with me. This morning Emma was a sport about being woken up at 6 a.m., but I was less happy about it. Actually, I would have been OK with 6 a.m., but Eleanor mis-read her watch at 4:20 a.m. and woke me up then, thinking that it was nearly time to get up anyway.
That wasn’t the most glorious start, but at least the flight was uneventful and nobody sneezed on me. I may yet survive this flight without a cold. From the jetway, it was three moving walkways, three escalators, and an underground train ride just to get from Concourse B at DIA to the Main Terminal. Huge place, and yet it looks just like every other modern airport in the continental US.
Fred Coldwell met me at the airport. Fred writes the “Old Aluminum” column for Airstream Life magazine, and he also writes the “From The Archives” photo spread that we run every issue. He has been storing our car in his garage since September, so I took him out for lunch before hitting the highway.
Since the lunch was long and included discussion of business (IRS take note), I didn’t get on the road until 1 p.m. Fortunately, the speed limit along most of I-25 is 75 MPH, so the Fit and I were able to make some good time and wound up in Las Vegas NM by 6 p.m. That’s 300 miles from Denver, a reasonable start on my 900 mile roadtrip.
I have been wanting to drive I-25 for a while. It passes through a section of southern Colorado and northern New Mexico that we never visited in the Airstream. As I suspected, from the interstate highway there’s not a lot to be seen (other than a range of mountains to the west all day, and a lot of grassland) but there are a lot of hidden things to investigate on a future trip. The historic Santa Fe trail passes by here, and there’s quite a bit of old railroad history too. Some summer we will check it all out with the Airstream. Right now it’s too cold for me, and there’s snow on the ground, which is my cue to keep heading south.
December 29, 2007 at 10:00 pm · Filed under Home base
I’m starting to look at this phase as a sort of journey in itself. We really have to, in order to avoid being intimidated by the scope of the work to be done. As the proverb goes, “The journey of a thousand miles begins with just a single step.” Every day we take another step and we try not to think too much about the hundreds of miles ahead.
And we are making good progress. We nailed down a few of the appliances. We’ve bought a refrigerator, cooktop, vent hood, dishwasher and toilets. We’ve settled on the kitchen cabinetry design. I’ve sealed the tile in all of the house (two coats) except for the living room and dining room where all of our boxes are. We’ve turned the corner from demolishing to rebuilding, which is an important milestone.
Our good friend Rob Super has advised us to take breaks from this process once in a while and enjoy the “pleasures of civilization”. He’s right, of course, and in a few days we’ll slow down our frenzied pace. The initial sprint was just to get the ball rolling. Now that we’ve got the contractors lined up and the materials purchased for the first couple of weeks, we’ll be able to do some exploring of Tucson.
We’re also aware of the risk of burnout in a house renovation. It’s easy to go over budget, overwork yourself, get frustrated, and lose the joy. This is our third house renovation, so we’re working together very well. We’ve done this hike before.
Tomorrow I get another hike … from Denver to Tucson. It’s time to get that Honda Fit that we left up there. I’m flying up in the morning and will drive the car back over the next day or so. 900 miles. Can you say, “ROADTRIP”? Oh yeah. I’m all packed and ready: iPod, overnight bag, snacks, camera, roadmap. Once I’m done with this blog entry, the laptop goes in the bag too. Hey, we’ve been stationary a whole week now. It will be good to hit the road again, even if it is just a ferry job.
December 28, 2007 at 7:35 pm · Filed under Home base
When we were first walking through this house last March, we noticed only one living thing in the otherwise desolate back yard: a small lemon tree. The poor thing was so dry that its leaves were curled and it had borne just a pair of pathetic lemons. Since the house was vacant, we took pity on the tree and watered it.
Every time we came back to the house after that, we watered the tree, and it began to respond. So we asked Jerry the caretaker to keep it happy while we were gone all summer. Now, in December, the “lemon” tree is lush and green, twice the size it was last May, and bearing fruit — grapefruit. I was a little surprised to find out that it was really a grapefruit tree, but can’t complain. The fruit is delicious and juicy, and there’s something inspiring to me — a lifelong northerner — to have an actual citrus tree growing in my yard. I may plant an variety of orange too, when we get to landscaping next fall.
Last night I flipped on the TV to to catch Colin Ferguson doing the Late Late Show and there, crawling along the bottom of the screen was a SEVERE WEATHER WARNING. Eleanor and I both perked up, because we’re used to those things containing scary news like tornadoes, flash flood warnings, destructive thunderstorms, etc.
The crawl said, “HARD FREEZE POSSIBLE”.
Uh-huh. I suppose in southern Arizona that’s cause for fear and anxiety, but to us Vermonters a hard freeze is something that comes every October and continues until roughly May. We don’t even get interested until it dips below 10 degrees during the daytime, which happens every January. But in a place without hurricanes, tornadoes, levees to break, heavy snow, earthquakes, and only about 12 inches of rain a year, a hard freeze for a few hours may be the scariest phenomenon the TV weatherman has to work with during winter.
So I snorted in derision (try it sometime; the trick is snorting loud enough that other people can hear and yet not blowing anything rude out of your nose) and was about to flip the channel to see what Conan O’Brien was up to. But then a horrible thought occurred to me: What about my new friend the grapefruit tree?
Images of Florida citrus farmers spraying their crops with water to protect them flashed through my head. Would our lovely grapefruit all be destroyed by freezing? Did I need to dash out of the Airstream in my pajamas like a deranged version of “The Night Before Christmas” to collect all the fruit?
Reason won out. It was already in the 30s, and I was not anxious to go pick grapefruit by headlamp. They’d have to fend for themselves. I like my grapefruit but it’s also a fact that the Fry’s supermarket down the street has more if ours freezes. Besides, Colin was pretty funny last night.
Today I moved the office into the house so I could crank up the new Bose SoundDock while working, and spread out on the dining room table. I sent Emma out to collect all the grapefruit, and now sitting on the floor next to me is a grocery bag holding a dozen yellow softballs. During the day I can grab one, peel it, and munch on sweet grapefruit while working. I also turned the furnace up to 68 degrees. With that, I think we’re prepared for the long hard winter ahead — all four hours of it.
11 days to the next Airstream trip …
December 27, 2007 at 11:00 pm · Filed under Home base
I was supposed to fly to Denver early this morning but United canceled my flight. So I found myself with a free day on the schedule. I should have stayed put and gotten some work done on the Spring magazine, which is currently in layout, but instead we went out shopping for appliances. What a nightmare.
I don’t even want to talk about the joys of shopping for the house. Suffice to say that we visited a plumbing supply store, two big box stores, Sears, a window supply store, a “scratch and dent” appliance store, and a few miscellaneous places. We looked at fixtures, sinks, refrigerators, dishwashers, cooktops, hoods, washers, dryers, laminates, vanities, and replacement windows. What did we buy? Nothing. We ended up at 7 p.m. with a notepad full of scribbled model numbers, prices, rebates, delivery fees, colors, and confusion — but not a single sales receipt to show we’d actually accomplished something.
But hey, at least I bought two toilets online. Can’t wait for that big box to arrive. “Oh look! Quick! Everyone come round! It’s the toilets!” Then we’ll gleefully install them and stand, holding hands in a semi-circle, to watch the First Flush. Such are the joys of a renovation.
Sorry if I’m too sarcastic. I would prefer to wave a magic wand and have the house done. How can it be that we can see 27 different dishwashers and still not find the “right” one? Who is responsible for the dysfunctional design of gas cooktops that causes the ones with good flame control to be the hardest to clean? Why was the highlight of our day the burritos at Nico’s?
The low point was when I reluctantly turned over my beloved Nikon to the repair shop for cleaning and repair. It was almost emasculating. I am like a gunslinger with no six-shooter now. The world’s most interesting photo may pop up in front of me tomorrow, the equivalent of having the bad guys right in my sights, and I’ll be powerless to take a shot. The Nikon won’t be back until late next week, due to the holiday, so for a while the blog will be somewhat devoid of photos. I’ll borrow Eleanor’s camera for a few days to help bridge the gap, but it won’t be the same.
There’s one bright spot in the day. My father sent me a Bose SoundDock for the iPod, so now we have tunes in the house. If you’ve ever worked on a house, you know how essential it is to have a little music to work by. It makes everything go faster. Tomorrow, once I get a few things done for the magazine, I’ll be back on the floors again, so the SoundDock will get a good workout. It’s also portable enough to travel with the Airstream, which is a major reason why I wanted something like this rather than a typical large stereo.
Notice a common thread to my ramblings lately? It’s all about things now. That’s what the house is doing to me. I want to talk about experiences but instead my experiences seem to be related to the acquisition, disposition, or maintenance of things. This is why the burritos were the more memorable thing we did today — they were the only positive learning experience we had. I learned that Nico’s makes a truly awesome al pastor burrito for $4. It’s a little thing but if that’s all the day yielded, I’ll take it.
12 days to our next Airstream trip …
December 26, 2007 at 11:53 pm · Filed under Home base
Our last house took eight years to complete. Actually, we never completed it. What I should say is that when we sold it after eight years of on-and-off work, it was 90% complete. To get there we spent many a night and weekend painting, cutting trim, nailing, sanding, staining, and tweaking. So when we started this project, my motto was “I’m not doing it myself.”
Doing it yourself can be a source of pride. You can learn new skills and save money. You can also learn expensive lessons, as we did many times. I’m not against DIY projects in general — I think they’re fine for people who want to do them — but in this case neither Eleanor nor I have anything to prove. We just want it done and we’re OK with the concept of writing checks to get there, if it means we don’t have to spend hours on our knees with a brush or a pneumatic nailer again.
But there I was today, on my knees, mopping the floor with a big yellow sponge saturated with sealant. I could have had the painter’s crew do it but it would have caused delays (floors always do). Each coat of the floor requires a drying time and that means people standing around waiting instead of working efficiently. And, without some protection the new slate was likely to get stained. So it made sense for me to do as much of it as possible today, before the dusty-booted crew shows up.
Little resolutions like “I’m not doing it myself” keep falling prey to the house’s demands. I was planning to take Christmas off entirely but then in the afternoon I found myself browsing online for appliance sales. How much lower can I sink? Well, late that night when ordinary people are doing online chat or hunting for nude celebrity pictures, I was shopping for toilets online. On Christmas. That is not how the classic holiday tales usually end up.
At least my little effort helped show what the house will look like when it is done. With the sealant on, the colors have “popped” and there’s a satin sheen. It’s full of rusty orange-red and blue-greens. Now that we have seen the final product in day and night lighting, we are able to finalize our paint colors.
Again, the colors in the picture are not quite accurate. At some point I’ll have to take a carefully calibrated photo to show the true colors of everything, but right now all the paint chips are just ideas and not final choices.
One valuable lesson of our last house experience was that we should avoid “analysis paralysis.” We spent weeks agonizing over cabinetry and countertops, months testing paint colors in big swatches on the walls, and it was literally years before we finalized the layout of parts of the interior. Every decision was questioned and re-examined a dozen times, mostly because we had no idea what we were doing.
On this house, we’ll have the colors picked in a week, the appliances ordered by Friday, the cabinets ordered by Saturday, and the other details (countertops, faucets, knobs, a couple of light fixtures) hopefully wrapped up by Sunday. We might get something wrong but we’re not going to worry about it. We’ve got other things that are more worth worrying about than whether we picked the perfect countertop. The sooner we get this done, the sooner we can go explore something new.
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