Making heat

The dryer is not heating. Based on a prior experience and internet research, we ordered a new thermal cutoff and high-limit thermostat for $20 and installed them ourselves.

It didn't solve the problem. This is particularly a bummer because the clothes we took to dry at the neighborhood laundromat today came back reeking of cigarettes. Eew.

I did make heat in the kitchen today: my first-ever batch of chili sauce, from homegrown chilis. It is eye-poppingly hot.

Midcentury mismatch

We are in a heady money-spending place: we have bought many pieces of furniture in the last week. First was our bedroom, which needed a dresser. We found it at the same place we bought our bed when we lived here many years ago, a neighborhood store with great products and service, and while they don't match they kind of speak to each other, both very dark espresso brown/black with clean lines. While there Dale spotted a fantastic bamboo night table, half off because it had been marooned without the rest of its set. We loved it and snatched it up even though it is... bamboo colored. We are not much for matched furniture. There is an overall Asian thing going on in there now, in natural colors with strong black accents. It works.


We also got a futon from the same place for the big room upstairs, which is going to be in a family room formation of some kind. The smaller room will be the guest room. This is on the theory that guests need privacy more than they need space.

Today at last we found the piece that will let me finalize the systems in the kitchen: a sideboard/hutch combination at Scan Design. We have been searching for ages and it is a big relief to have found something good. (Can't find a photo, sorry.) While there we also fell hard for dining room chairs... currently we have two fading hand-me-downs and six folding chairs. The new ones have a wood seat unlike the one below, but are surprisingly comfy, and easy to clean. And last but not least, a loveseat, which our new larger living room has been asking for. Color! Whee!



Grandma would have loved Scan Design. She had good taste.

Clean steps

I have not really been keeping up with my daily improvement posting (or doing), but today I cleaned the front steps. I forgot to take a "before" picture, but here is "during" and "after." Better, no?



And I baked a pair of awesome challahs, and made hummus from dry beans. This sort of thing is actually quite easy when you have the option of working at home for a day; they both take a lot of time but not a lot of attention. Wholesome foods that Jordan will enthusiastically eat are few and far between, but hummus, cashews, and broccoli are a go. I think a person could live on those.

Boys' room

Well, it's working - I didn't do any improvements on Friday or Sunday, and I felt guilty because I couldn't blog about it. That's the intended effect of the blogging. (On me.)

On Saturday, however, it was all house all the time. In the morning we went to IKEA, which is a major undertaking, but we got enough loot to justify the trip, mostly kid stuff. Jordan chose a rug for their bedroom. It's quite eye-popping. He has a lot to say about the designs: he sees a crocodile, trucks with extra big wheels, and many other things. Aaron then sees them too. It's very entertaining, and you can't say it doesn't liven up the place.

We also hung mobiles and the wolf picture. Jordan loves that wolf; he says he watches over him at night and keeps him safe.

As if that weren't enough for a Saturday, I also emptied out pretty much every box in the basement. wow! Unfortunately, Dale was unable to buy the basement shelving that he went out to Target for, so a certain amount of that box stuff is just sort of organized on the floor. But it was still quite an accomplishment. Today's improvement was to empty two boxes in the bedroom. We are very nearly out of boxes.

Now that we know what all we have and have had a chance to think about how we want to use the space, it's time to buy some furniture. On the main level we need a buffet & hutch for the kitchen, a dresser, a loveseat, shelves for the boys' room, and a bathroom cabinet. There may also be smaller things like lamps and endtables. And, amazing as it seems, it won't be long until we need a second twin bed for Aaron. We have decided that regretfully, we can't get a bunk bed until Aaron is a more responsible climber.

The upstairs will need furniture too, but we don't have a clear vision for those rooms yet.

Easy entertaining

Nicole came over for dinner with Theo and Zoe (Andy is traveling), and it was so easy.  I think it's because the dining room is not in the kitchen, and the major playroom is not the living room (which is not the dining room or the kitchen).  We had sandwiches on homemade rolls, and smoothies, and cookies made of leftover hamentaschen dough.  It was downright relaxing... and that's with four kids five and under!  Then when it's all over, there is our marvelous dishwasher to clean it up.  We're having people over again tomorrow.  Why not?

Nicole asked Jordan what his favorite thing is about the new house, and he said "My bedroom.  Because I share it with Aaron."  Awwww.

Today's home improvement was to organize the kids' stored clothes.  There is now one bin for each size between Jordan and Aaron, plus a small collection of things that are still too big for Jordan, and an outgoing bag of stuff that Aaron has outgrown.

Jaguar

Yesterday's improvement was to get all the kitchen stuff out of boxes and onto those basement shelves - the stuff that you don't need every day but is still (probably?) worth having, like pitchers and baking pans and the wok.  Today's improvement was to put all the bathroom stuff in the bathroom closet and get everything else out.  

While both of those projects were highly worthwhile, I think Jordan is more photogenic.  Here he is getting ready to go to school on Tuesday, which was Purim.  Kind of the Jewish Mardi Gras.  I did the face painting - not bad, for a first attempt.  I got a great book.  I was hoping to do Aaron too, but there was no way.  Aaron says that himself sometimes -- "No way!"  He also says "Oh, yeah," with the most hilarious intonation, and many more spontaneous multi-word sentences.  His vocabulary is beyond counting at this point.  "Where Daddy go?  Where he go?  Potty!" - and he discovers Dale in the bathroom.  In response to "What did you do at school today, honey?" I got "Aaron paint!"  True, too.  He walks a toy turtle on the wall and says "He climb!  Turtle climb!"  His pronunciation is charmingly idiosyncratic - my current favorite is "Cacayaya" for "crocodile" - but we understand him.

The bread baking continues - the bread is awesome and the system is completely sustainable.  Maybe next I'll work on a whole-grain version.

Basement shelving

Today's improvement is the assembly of basement shelving. Just putting them together was enough for now.

We also decided on a conceptual scheme: Kid stuff on the west side of the basement, grownup stuff on the east side. This helps. It's easy to stand around amidst this and not know where to begin.

Dale has already begun by setting up his drum set, which gave him great joy.


The empty boxes are accumulating. And you know what? Now we have nothing to save them for. Isn't that wonderful?

Make Something Better

I seem to have been lacking a sense of blogging purpose, since I haven't been doing much of it. But I have a daily goal, which is to Make Something Better in the house, and it seems like a particularly good project for photo-documentation. The rules are, it has to be something beyond just keeping up with the daily business -- something that makes a lasting improvement. It doesn't have to be a big thing or take a long time. Two days ago, for example, I hung up the family calendar.


You'd be surprised how hard it can be to get such a simple thing done. I kept wanting to do it when the kids weren't around, but once they were in bed, I didn't want bang a nail in.

Today we cleaned out the carport. The Slattons (the former owners) used it for chopping wood and storing stuff. We use it to park one of the cars. So we cleared out the wood chips, scraps of boards and plywood, random recyclables that had piled up, that sort of stuff, and swept.


Yesterday, we finished installing the baby gate at the bottom of the stairs. This was a two-evening project. You wouldn't know to look at it (I hope), but these things are really complicated, at least for rubes like us. Find the studs, realize you have to saw off the end of the handrail to give the gate room to swing, almost saw through a screw in the process, try not to ding the wall while sawing at most two inches away from it, pray that the handrail doesn't split halfway through. (It didn't.) Arrange for all the parts to be level and square while compensating for the moulding. Wonder whether Jordan will be able to open it, and whether that is desirable. (He can.) Wonder whether Aaron will swng from it. (He does.)


We are hoping that the gate will give us a little more freedom from monitoring Aaron all the time. There's still plenty for him to get into, but this removes at least one major way for him to break his neck.

Things to improve

Dale and I agree that it's important to pay attention to the things that need improvement in a house right away, before they become invisible.  Here are some things we have noticed.

• The lighting in the kitchen is poor - when you go to wash the dishes you are washing in your own shadow.  We think we could extend the track so it goes over the sink.  I'm also looking into under-cabinet lighting.
• The kitchen really lacks storage space, but there is a good spot for a large freestanding cabinet.  We're in the market for a buffet with a hutch, something like this one. But maybe not oak.  Meanwhile we are making do with random open shelving that the sellers left in the basement.
• We could use some sheer curtains in our bedroom as well as the opaque ones that are there, for when we want both light and privacy.
• The curb is muddy in the parking zone.  We should probably put gravel there (and expect to refresh it regularly).  People on the street have done various things.
• There are some outlets that aren't functional that it would be good to have repaired. 
• We've still only found the one phone jack, in the basement.  Maybe there are others hiding behind boxes.
• There's a very drafty spot by the back door.  There are probably others - we should do a search and check the inspector's report.

While I'm at it:  Fabulous little luxuries that we are enjoying multiple times a day include the miraculously thorough, forgiving, and efficient dishwasher; the filtered water from the door of the fridge; the shining interior of the fridge in which everything is completely visible and accessible; the pot rack; the touch-screen programmable thermostat; and the very melodious doorbell.

Big enough house

So this is what it feels like to have a big enough house!  Sue is spending the night here, and even though both she and the boys have gone to bed, I can go back and forth to the basement freely, flipping on lights as I go, moving laundry, etc.  In our old house the basement was both Aaron's bedroom and the guest room.  Now the boys are together in the smaller main-floor bedroom, Sue is upstairs on a real bed in the larger upstairs room, and the smaller upstairs room has no current purpose.  How about that?!

This house is not excessive, but it has room enough to accommodate our family for the next couple of decades.  There's bedrooms for everyone when the boys are big enough to need their own, and even then there will be a room for guests and/or an office.  Someday we'll make the upstairs more full-fledged by adding a dormer, expanding the bathroom, and updating the insulation and wiring and so on, but for now, it's totally fine the way it is.  There's a good section of the basement that should do well for a music studio, with room for Dale's bandies too (whoever they may be) - and they won't even have to look at the washing machine.  That will leave plenty of room downstairs for repair projects, an art area, and well-organized storage (let me fantasize, all right?).

Sue spent the late afternoon outside in the yard with the boys, and they all loved that.  Jordan prefers not to get dirty but helped with the weeding anyway:  he told Grandma that he would use the shovel to scoop the dirt, but she should be the one to pull out the weeds where he had scooped.  Aaron doesn't mind at all being dirty; he dug with any available implement and said "Wormy, wormy, wormy!" every time they spotted an earthworm.  There were plenty - the soil is terrific in all the beds.  There's evidence of much successful gardening, including roses, blueberries, raspberries, peas, kale, broccoli, rhubarb, spinach, onions, and carrots.  We picked and ate some early arugula and admired the large rosemary bush.  The sellers let us know that there are lots of hummingbirds who would appreciate a feeder.  Sue is thrilled to have access to some garden space, and we are thrilled to have her go to town on our behalf -- she's an awesome gardener.  Dale is equally eager.  I'll play in the dirt too, but I expect my specialty to be cooking up all the fruits of their labor.

Sue had come not only to visit but also to free Dale and me to finish cleaning out the apartment.  We have now removed every item from there except the cleaning supplies, and 90% of the cleaning is done... I was disappointed not to get that last little bit done today, but it was better to just go home and have dinner with everyone at a normal time.  Scrub, scrub, scrub.  Every fingerprint on the matte white doorways, every mark on the beige carpet, every dusting of construction particles has to be cleaned up until the place is spic and span.  I feel like the Karate Kid washing all those cars.  

We're in!

We had a great moving day yesterday -- long, but we got all the big stuff (and a lot of little stuff) in just two trips, thanks to super generous help from Bob, Andy, and Hunter. The weather cooperated. And wow, the house! It's so wonderful, and it's our house! We love the layout, we love the fixtures, we are having fun with the luxurious appliances, we even love the paint. It feels like it was ours before we even saw it -- it just makes sense. Of course there are odd things here and there... as in, it took us two days to find even one phone jack (hence no blogging). But hey, who needs more than one phone jack anyway, in these wireless times.

Last night (Wed) was our first night in the house. Phil, who often has a hard time with transitions, made it something of a tough night with the yowling and the scratching at doors and stomping on our bodies. Eventually we figured out a way to enclose him far away from us. Then, after too short a time, we woke up to ... snow! lots of snow. School opened late, which was fine; it was a good day to have a relaxed schedule. Here are the boys waking up.

Cute family time aside, it's a relief to have the school day during which to tame the chaos of boxes, at least enough to enable minimal eating and self-care. Whenever Aaron is here, he has to be constantly monitored, because we are not as yet adequately babyproofed. It reminds me of our sojourn at the Glenway house, when you could not so much as toast a waffle without finding Aaron teetering at the top of the stairs. His balance has improved, but his confidence has grown even faster.

Our new home!

The inspection was today, and it's solid! This will be our new home! What a glorious feeling. We are totally delighted. It was so easy to hang out in there while the inspector looked at every little thing, and it was such a pleasure, after the Greenlake debacle, to have him turn up plenty of good news. The foundation is poured concrete, solid as a rock. The roof and the furnace are both great, new and high-quality, and those are big-ticket items. He was also impressed with the basement, which seems amazingly dry and fresh and has great headroom. The house is move-in ready -- there's not a thing we need to do to it to enjoy living there, and none of the work that needs doing is urgent. There are some systems that have not had the updates that are due to them, and we need to plan for that in the coming years. Probably half the plumbing is steel that is nearing the end of its lifespan; the wiring is mostly the old knob-and-tube stuff; the ventilation and insulation in the attic are not the best; and the deck is an amateur job that is not holding up very well. We hope to live in this house for a long time... we want to take good care of it (and hope we can find the funds to do so). It was good to feel like the inspection was about getting to know the house and its long-term needs, rather than finding out that it was a falling-down rathole.

Jordan and Aaron's school is just a few blocks away, so as the inspection was winding up, I went and picked Jordan up early and showed him around. He was nervous, which I think is to be expected; moving is a huge change, and hard to imagine. But this was a start.

Here are the walkthroughs, one inside and one out. Enjoy!

Year of the [Room]

If there is something to be learned from our adventures of the past few weeks (uh, months?) it's that redoing your whole house is ... not easy.  But just letting things age forever isn't great either.  And we plan to be in our next house a long time.

  

My bright idea is to do one room per year.  So if that year is (say) the Year of the Bathroom, you have a whole year to do everything you would want to do to the bathroom: declutter, repaint, get new fixtures or fix up the old ones, redecorate, the works.  The outside of the house would need to count as a room or rooms, too.  That way, you'd cycle through the house roughly once in a decade, which is probably about how often you should do a serious update.