Just A Moment

I was having a moment tonight, a moment in which I just needed to stop the world for a second and be still. 
Two cases of strep throat, fevers so high that his little hand seared my leg through my jeans, sad little whimpers in the dead of night that jolted me from my bed.  One case of diverticulitis and an entirely different sort of pain and fear.  A week’s worth of nights without sleep, listening to him hurt beside me while I kept my other ear trained on the doors down the hall, torn.
One kitchen in a state of progress, but looking more like despair.  With everything out of place, piled in the corner: boards full of nails, half of a cupboard, a desk drawer, school papers everywhere.  We move the construction pile to the garage between his pains and there is still an enormous pile of whatnot.  This morning, a slight reprieve from the heat and humidity (can I even complain about this yet?) and I want to mow down the lawn that is now a good 12” deep.  The mower starts, then stalls.  Starts, then stalls.  I wanted to kick it, but turn and walk away instead.
In my email box, happy reports from a couple of families with our adoption agency: they received updated pictures and reports on their children in the mail today.  We did not.  Our pictures and information are now seven months old and our hearts ache just a little more.
This had been our week and tonight I just wanted to cook dinner.  I wanted them all to eat something, to take care of them in the most basic way, but with a fridge being emptied out and dietary needs changed due to new doctor’s orders, there just wasn’t much to work with.  The kitchen was too hot, the kids were overly hungry and tired, each wanted to sit next to the parent they were not next to, and I started to feel myself sink. 
When they all scattered off to various new activities, I grabbed a box fan, climbed over the mound of junk to the banquette, and lay down with the coolest of breezes blasting over me.  Amazing, how a fan can drown out all of the noises in your house, the fears in your head.  I lay there and looked up at the clouds like a little kid on a lazy summer afternoon and I swear to you, every cloud shape was a face, and every face was smiling.  Then a robin, harbinger of spring and late-winter beacon of hope, landed on the wire above my head and turned his plucky head this way and that.
Somehow in the space of what amounted to four minutes, peace was restored to my world; my moment was over.  Calm and patient, I went upstairs, read stories about kindergarten and sea turtles and  tucked my little strep-free sweethearts into their beds.  Tomorrow holds new appliances, an abdominal CT scan, and a lawn mower oil/sparkplug change but tonight, tonight I am ok.  And Brendan will be ok, too.  And someday our littlest boy will come home.

You Look Like A Leg Lamp

My husband, he’s a funny funny guy.

This is the ugly side of progress:

Observe, an island that had to be removed due to poor functionality and because it was built after the placement of the fridge, thus making removal and replacement of said fridge impossible without major demolition.  The holes in the floor lived under our stove, which is being replaced because we were down to two burners and an oven door that had to be propped shut with a stick wedged between the stove and an opposite cupboard.  I cannot fathom why they stopped the sheetrock at a foot and a half in on each side of the fridge hole, leaving an odd exposed gap of brick chimney and plaster and lathe.  Actually, the things I cannot fathom about this kitchen would make a pretty long list, but there is no time for that today.

We are making progress, a small dent in a large kitchen that was poorly planned and pieced together with mismatched parts.  At the end of this phase there will be a new kitchen island with butcher block top, a new refrigerator, and a new stove (sans stick this time, thank goodness).   There will be more storage and less stupid, and stupid in this case is a noun.  We will also saw off a portion of the existing countertop and remove the non-functioning lazy Susan cupboard that lies beneath it.  A new, smaller cupboard will go there and then we’ll move on to the “lipstick on a pig” portion of our program.  With adoption expenses eating a large portion of our current budget, we cannot afford to rip everything out and  start over, but we can make what we have look nicer and so for now that is what we’ll do.  Paint, paint and more paint!  The guys at The Home Depot love me.

And for the fun of it, here is what we started with:



This is from the listing picture, so before we bought the house.  Island is now gone, fridge is out, floor has been thoroughly cleaned beneath the former appliances(Eew!) and desk thing to the left is gone.  We will remove the peninsula (behind the desk).  We already have new windows (fall 2009) and we’ve begun painting.  And we took out the faux Tiffany lights, which were plastic.  And yes, covering up that mustard yellow was soul soothing in a way that is difficult to describe.

Yay, progress!

Curtains!

The dining/living room is getting there!  The curtains are finished and hung and the furniture is more or less where we want it now.  We still would like to tweak things here and there: different artwork on the walls, perhaps someday a new sofa, like this one.  But the room is livable, the perfect place to snuggle up with tea and a good book.  We love it!

Before:

After:

Before:

 

After:

Before:

After:

    

Sneak Peek: Living Room

 

64 yards of fabric, lots of time spent with iron, pins, and thread, and the living room curtains are nearly complete! 

Editing

The problem with having lived in seven different places over an eleven year marriage (I even left out a few of the shorter stops in our adventure) is that when you finally settle down into the house that you believe with all your heart is “the one”, your furniture, acquired among four states for houses and apartments that span the styles of at least ten decades, might not fit.  And when I say it might not fit, I mean it both literally and figuratively, as in the sectional sofa that would be perfect for our den/family room in the attic, but won’t budge up even the first half of two flights of stairs, or the mid-century modern swivel chairs that are just all wrong in your Victorian era house.  I think we have an eclectic style and we’re able to make many, if not most, pieces work somewhere in our home, but there are pieces that we treasure and adore that just do not make a good fit in this house, in this space.  And if this space is “the one”, then maybe those pieces aren’t the ones.

My beloved swivel chairs that came from my Grandmother and Grandfather’s house have been sent along for a new life at my brother’s new house, along with a table my Grandfather made to go with them.  They are fantastic chairs, but they will have to be fantastic over there, rather than here.  The sectional sofa is also going to have to find some new fannies to enjoy its comforting folds,   since it eats up all of the light and space in our formal dining room turned family room.  I dream of a white slip-covered, apartment sized sofa and a spindly rocking chair for that space.  Also on the potential chopping block are three armoires, an extra twin bed, a red vinyl wing-backed chair, and a sideboard.  I am not convinced that any needs to go - yet - but I am learning that it is ok to edit, to scale back what we have so that our house continues to feel airy, with breathing room and space in which to dance with our little ones.  While I believe that our living spaces are meant to evolve around our lives, I also know that we cannot hold onto everything forever.  For the first time I am trying not to stow pieces in the garage and basement for the future perfect house in which to use them,  because I think we are here, in our perfect house, already.

Progress Report

“The great thing about getting older is that you don’t lose all the other ages you’ve been.”  -Madeleine L’Engle

How true is that?  And it goes for houses, too.  I know, because I spent my day up close and personal with the trim in our kitchen, painting  over 110 years’ worth of paint, dings, puppy claw marks, shoe scuffs, nail holes, and various other indentations and marks from the lives lived between these walls.  A fresh coast of white paint (over the blue paint that was there - I did not paint over any wood trim…yet) gives the old a new look, but keeps the character intact.  Perfect! 

We’ve been a year in this house, in the this little city, and we’re a wee bit tired.  Sometimes I feel as though we’ve accomplished nothing, but then why so tired?  Ah, then I remember all of the little things that add up to make one year’s worth of work on an old house and I am justified in my exhaustion.  My happy exhaustion, mind you.  I'm going to go put my feet up in my ever-so-calming living room with a glass of wine, and leave you to peruse our list of accomplishments.  It seems we have gotten something done, after all.

• Refinished second story hardwood floors
• Installed high efficiency gas powered furnace
• Painted H’s room (patched walls, painted ceiling)
• Painted E’s room (patched walls, painted ceiling)
• Painted formal living room (removed ugly/not original chair rail, patched walls, painted ceiling)
• Repaired floor of third story bathroom, installed new vinyl flooring
• 1/2 painted third story bathroom (needs one more coat)
• Painted powder room (removed wallpaper and chair rail, patched walls, painted ceiling)
• Attempted to have ducts cleaned (shall we all have a laugh over this one?)  Then vacuumed them out ourselves and dislodged many years’' worth of accumulation from previous owners’ triplets’ duct.
• 1/2 painted kitchen walls, trim, and ceiling (we’re getting there, slowly but…slowly).
• Chopped down one of the apple trees.
• Moved five hydrangea bushes from the front landscaping to the backyard
• Removed wood plank landscaping border
• Installed new landscaping (perennials) and re-shaped the front garden beds. 
• Removed old screen door and installed a new screen/glass door at front door. 
• Had roof re-slated as needed and had all metal roof parts painted red…which will go with whatever color we paint the house in the future.
• Removed the awful, old television antennae.  Hooray!
• Installed new garage doors in a carriage style, more in-keeping with the age of the house.
• Re-stained the Rainbow System playground.  It seems lame to include this but it took an entire week of steady work.
• 1/2 painted the master bedroom and attached office
• Installed a new pool fence and pool cover (stretchy kind with an elephant in the ad)

Balloons!

There is nothing quite so neat, so special, so completely cool, as watching a hot air balloon go from fabric on the ground to a fully inflated, fire breathing bauble in the sky. 
One of our favorite parts of living here is being so close the Adirondack Balloon Festival’s annual kick-off event.  Just a quick walk through our neighborhood and we’re in the park, so close to the inflating balloons that we can touch them.  The crowd parts as the inflating balloons begin to eat up the grassy real estate, and suddenly the lawn is empty again as the balloon goes upright.  Children squeal in delight as the sun lights up the fabric, and the oldest in the crowd are young again as they wave to the passengers tucked carefully into each balloon basket for lift-off.  Up, up, and away!  They rise quickly, becoming mere specs in the sunset in a few moments time.  I don’t care what physics are involved, that moment is pure magic!
We had a blast at last night’s event, especially with the addition of the Tubby Tubes slide…for free! 

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Wanted: Fairy Godmother

Some days, living in an old house, I wish I wish I wish I had a magic wand. Or a great deal of money-that would work, too. I would love it if we could be the people who moved in and instantly got to work gutting the kitchen, putting up a pretty new privacy fence, installing the beautiful landscaping that I can so clearly picture in my mind, putting in windows that actually open and close, building a lovely pergola for a shade room behind the garage, and completely starting over with each bathroom. Brendan and I know both know how this house should be, should look, should function. Getting from point A to point B on the roadmap to awesome house is not as easy as one would hope.

What we do have is love, determination, and a lot of sweat equity. We are our own free labor and we have learned over the years (this is our fourth house, after all) that we can learn to do anything. We also have an acute appreciation for the age and character of our home; we want to keep all of the quirky details that make it cool while updating the "improvements" that others made over the years, many of which simply do not do the house justice.

I have been working on the kitchen for a few weeks now. We replaced hardware on the cabinetry earlier in the spring and that alone made an incredible difference in the overall appeal of the room. Now I am painting the walls and trim, covering up the blue and gold that predominated the room and reminded me of a high school pep rally (go Spartans!). It has not been easy, nor fun, but the results are a soothing reminder of what will one day be the "heart" of our home. We're using Behr's Green Tea for the walls and Ultra Pure White for the trim, doors, and banquette.

While the room is going to feel a whole lot better just with paint, we're also saving for new appliances and lighting. Have we mentioned our stove? It's an old school JennAire with a grill on one side and two electric burners on the other, and no hope of buying more burners because it is so old. We plan our meals around how many pots it will take to cook each dish...I am serious. The oven door doesn't close so when we want to bake something we have to jam an old wrapping paper tube between it and the opposing cabinetry. Have we mentioned our fridge? It's a reasonable appliance, though oversized for the allotted space such that the trim was ripped off so it could be shoved into position. It is a double door monstrosity that emits the lovely aroma of cigarette smoke when the door is opened and sports the largest rust spot I have ever seen on an indoor appliance.

We make it work. We have dinner parties and laugh about the state of our kitchen; we live, eat, breathe, dance, and play in this room and it works, whether it looks pretty or not. And though I wish we had that magic wand, and often, I still know beyond a doubt that the true heart of our home lies not within cabinetry and walls, but within the family that lives together beneath this old slate roof.

One of the great things about living here is convenience. The Memorial Day parade was last week. We only had to walk a few houses away to see it!

Making some improvements a little at a time. Some touch up paint and the garage will be great.

Seven Months

I think it takes a year.

One whole year in any new place is about the length of time it takes to feel settled, to feel as though you are a part of place, rather than a visitor just occupying a space. We have been here nearly seven months and I am starting , just now, to feel the twinges of belonging, of ownership, of a sense of "this is my home". It feels good, as if something really, really great is just around the corner and all of this hard work we have been setting forth to do will be so very worth it in the future.

I believe that you must witness the change of all four seasons in a place before it can feel like home. You have to know where the day lilies push through the soil in order to know where to expect them the next spring. You have to know the order in which the fruit trees will bloom and you have to know when the maple trees will drop their spring flowers so that you don't open the pool too soon. You have to dig your bare hands into the soil, pulling out years' worth of garbage left behind by previous owners, before you feel the sense of ownership that allows you to scold the schoolboy who shamelessly litters on your front lawn right in front of you. "This is my front yard, not your garbage can!" you will yell, feeling a sense of pride and indignance that has not been there before.

In five months' time I expect to be there, all the way there. Right now we are building the attachments and relationships with neighbors, our house, and our community, that will help make this place really and truly our home. Every day that we spend working around the house and the yard, walking to the library and school and work, and chatting with our own series of Wilsons* over the top of the fence, bring us closer to home.

*Please tell me you get this reference! From the t.v. show Home Improvement...

Six months in and the bottom fell out.

We were playing outside a few days ago, the weather having turned so very nice that we just could not continue with indoor projects for another minute and had spent the day, instead, running around in the backyard sunshine. After stepping inside briefly to gather refreshments for the children, I tried to close the back door behind me on my way back out and found that it would not close. Like every person who finds a door stuck, I tried again and again to close it, looking all around the opening to see if there was something blocking its progress, but nothing could be seen from outside. When I poked my head in a perplexing sight met my eyes: the bottom had, quite literally, fallen out of the door.

The door I speak of is a metal, insulated exterior door, relatively new compared to the rest of the house. Such doors have wooden spacers at the top, bottom, and sides to hold the insulation in and give the door framework upon which to place the metal. It was the bottom piece of wood that we found on the floor. Why had it fallen out? Ah, funny you should ask! It fell out because the duct tape that was holding it up inside of the door finally gave out. We didn't even know the duct tape was there because the previous owners had painted it to match the door. So many things in this house are just this way: a cob job to hold things together just long enough. It is frustrating, but we knew when we bought the house that there would likely be many offenses of this nature. As Brendan so aptly put it, "I don't like it when the house chooses the projects for me".

Truthfully, we knew the back door was messed up or at least improperly installed, because there was a giant gust of air spewing from it each cold winter night. It was, most definitely, "on the list". This week it got moved up a few notches in priority. You cannot simply go buy a new door and install it the same day, or at least we cannot, so for the time being we have used our stash of packing tape to shore up the bottom which looks pretty terrible. And embarrassing. But we are learning that this old house ownership is a process, that things do not get done in one week, one month, or one year. We are learning to pace ourselves and that is a valuable lesson learned.

Out and About

While we do not have much to report on the home front - most progress being stalled by the pseudo-hibernation we northerners all tend to succumb to this time of year - we have discovered perhaps the greatest joy of Little City Living: the City itself. Glens Falls is alive and well, I am happy to report!

Last weekend we attended a Phantoms hockey game, my first hockey game at the Glens Falls Civic Center since I was in high school. I will admit that it still felt a little like being in high school, since we ran into a million people we have known since then, but it was really, really fun. Brendan and I both entertain the idea of season passes for next year and we hope the excitement for this new team continues!

We have spent a few lazy mornings and afternoons playing lizard-in-the-sun at Ridge Street Coffee, where the windows are large, the Fat Jerry's are smooth and delicious, and the artwork is ever-changing. What a respite from the cold that place is! Time seems to stand still for a little while when I sit in their sunlit red chair with my kids snuggled close. I kind of wish I was there right now...

The owner of Baker's Dream, Likling Khoo, is nearly personally responsible for that extra cushion around my middle. I mean, I know she didn't force-feed me any of those delicious baked goods, but if they weren't so darned good I would not have felt the need to stop in several times per week! Did I mention our entire family is on a first-name basis with Ms. Khoo? That's how you know you have a problem. Do they have Baked Goods Anonymous? In all seriousness, if you find yourself in a cannoli emergency or if you need an eclair - stat!, then do stop by. Tell them Sara, Harrison, and Emma sent you, and you will be well taken care of.

We have also spent a great deal of time at Crandall Public Library, whose recent renovation has created a welcoming mix of both airy modern and historic spaces. I love that I can still climb the old staircase to the second floor, tracing my fingers along the marble just the way I did when I was a little girl, only these days I am teaching my little boy and girl to enjoy the feel of the cool marble, to appreciate the history in such a place. I love that my children are growing up knowing the value of such an incredible resource. We spend hours in the stacks looking at art books, discovering new favorite children's authors, and sitting in the quiet reading room with piles of pages. When I was little I loved to sit in one particular window in the library, the one that was deep-set and overlooked city park's lovely old trees, and I have recently had the particular delight of watching my children sit in that very window to gaze upon the world beyond. We visit Crandall a few times a week and this is a habit that I am happy to have fallen into.

Crandall Park! How could I have forgotten to mention it? One of the big trade-offs in moving to the city was losing our big yard in the suburbs. I do miss our yard, but the next best thing to having a big yard is having a huge park only a short walk from home. Despite the cold of winter, the park is an active hub in this community, with sledding hills and great fields for snowman-building, lighted trails for snowshoes and cross country skiing, and a pond for hockey and skating. We find it hard not to get out and enjoy the winter when we see so many other families doing just that each day as we pass by the park. I truly think we've been outdoors more this winter than any other winter spent in NY as adults. Hooray for the park!

This has been my happiest winter since coming back to New York and I know it has a lot to do with location, location, location. I love looking out of our windows and seeing other people. Living so close by our neighbors doesn't bother me at all, surprisingly. I thought I cherished the privacy of a country-sized lot, but in reality I like the idea of living like bees in a hive. There is comfort in seeing other chimneys emitting puffs of smoke, in chatting with neighbors while I shovel the walk, in meeting new families while playing at the park...the feeling of community seems to outweigh any feelings of winter isolation. I just don't have those winter blues this year, probably because we are so often out and about.

Super Cute

Christmas Decor in Photos

The tree went up!

The stockings were hung!

The mantle was set with glass and lights!

And Santa delivered!

Powder Room, After

   The ‘before” shots again, just to refresh your memory:

And the almost finished “after” shots (we still plan to darken the trim a bit…previous owners stripped off old paint and coated with poly, but the wood is lighter in here than in the rest of the house…we’ll fix that soon):

 

Framed prints came from a children’s book, Brian Wildsmith’s Birds, a garage sale find that was a tiny bit too musty to read through bu the artwork was too fun to part with…voila!  Wall art!

A Peach

“When are we getting another dog?” my son asked. 

His question seared my heart because we had lost Riley only two days before and losing a beloved companion, a dog with such presence, had left me reeling.  It wasn’t that I had not thought of having another dog; when you have a dog whose health is as precarious as Riley’s was, you consider the idea of what you will do when she finally loses her life’s battle and there was never a question, or even a doubt, about getting another dog.  But not yet.  I explained gently to my sad four-year-old that we needed to spend time thinking about the dog we had loved and lost before we could welcome a new life to our home. 

“But Mom, we are a two dog, one rabbit family.  We need to get another dog.” 

Time went by, and by some people’s standards it wasn’t much time, only weeks.  But this is what I knew for sure about Riley: She was a shelter dog.  She and her littermates were found next to a dumpster in Virginia, six weeks old, alone, without their mother.  Someone had left them with the garbage, had thrown them away, and this puppy who had once been so unwanted and unloved became one of our best friends.  In my mind, there is no better way to honor her life and the impact she made on our lives than to find another shelter dog for our family.  We understood that any new dog would not fill the hole that Riley left, but we also understood that the grief we feel over the death of a loved one can be tempered by new life, by new adventures. 

So it is in loving memory of Riley that we introduce another shelter dog to our family circle.  This is Ginger, or “Ginny”, who hails from Georgia, where her mom and littermates were due to be euthanized, but instead will all find homes in New York this holiday season.   I think Riley would approve.

Riley

Rest in peace, pretty girl.

A Few "Before" Pictures

It is always good to have a point of reference from which to see how far you have come. These are the bathroom "before":

These were taken before we bought the house, so all decorative accents are from the previous owners. The room is slightly odd-shaped, with one small section of wall that is set on a diagonal to the others, and the ceiling is quite high.

Brendan and the kids actually started the makeover project back in September, when they installed a new faucet, towel holder, and toilet paper holder. They are such good little helpers!

I hope to have my "after" pictures ready by the end of the weekend. Next up: the living room gets an overhaul. If you'll remember, it looks like this:

The wallpaper border has already come down, the thermostat has been moved (updated to programmable and removed from it's cage/lockbox), and remember, the decor belongs to the previous owners.

The fireplace has really pretty tile that we spent days scrubbing back to its former shine. We discovered the tile has a lot of light blue in it, so we're pulling the color for the living room from the tile.

The chair rail is not original and wasn't installed with supberb attention to detail: it was hung to high for any artwork to be displayed at the proper level for good viewing and the style of the trim itself does not blend well with the trim in the rest of the house. It feels like a belt cinched too tightly around the room's waist, if you can bend your imagination a little. I cannot wait to rip it out, repaint the walls, and polish the rich woodwork to a high gloss. Adding curtains and new light fixtures will really make it feel like the space we imagined when we first looked at the house.