Category: House and Home

We have power now and I am able to post the photos I took Wednesday evening before the rain set in.

This is a reflection of the sunset on the thin layer of water sitting on the pool cover.  It was precisely this reflected light that prompted me to grab my camera and head outside.

Followed by a lovely effect in the clouds,

and the last glimmers of light above the trees.

Have you ever seen "Holmes on Homes"?  My contractor asked me this the second day he was on the job with my dec renovation and my heart leapt into my chest.  I looked at what he showed me and knew he was perfectly correct.  I felt so stupid.  I even said this to a friend.

But wait.

There is more to this story.  I knew this part of the deck had a problem.  I knew it while the contractor was building it, and I knew all along I would get to this point someday.  Why feel stupid now?  I made a decision; it was a good decision for me at the time and I stand by it today.    That momentary clutch of insecurity?  Gone.  Well, I wish I could have come up with some snappy response at the time rather than letting my sense of insecurity flap in the breeze.

This deck is only three years old.  It took three years from planning to finish (well, winter did get in the way).  I thought I did all the right things:  got quite a few quotes, talked to people who had worked with the various contractors, polled everyone I knew, got recommendations, narrowed it down to three who who all had quoted similar prices and then picked the one that seemed to have the best recommendations, who seemed to know what we wanted and seemed competent to do the job.  

Except it didn't quite work out that way.  I knew there were problems fairly early on.  The contractor seemed to read the plans with blinders, only looking at one little piece at a time, not relating the pieces to the whole. But my hands were full.  We had just learned G had lung cancer.  I was supervising the deck, closing the business, and trying to get G through chemotherapy and major depression.   Then there was more depression and heart surgery and a deep dive into dementia and frontal lobe impairment.  

At some point, after the concrete was poured and the foundations were solid and sound, somewhere between the third and fourth carpenter on the job, I just said to myself "its only money; I just want it over and done and I'll fix it later". I had stopped paying as much attention to how the job was going by that point.  I had too much on my mind but I knew the cost was running well over contract.  But I also knew the hard stuff was done.  The concrete pool was now reinforced and no longer tipping down the cliff.  I didn't have to worry about my pool falling down on the roof of the house below me.  The french drains were in place and the deck was no longer pitched toward the house so that all the rainwater ran into my foundation.  Those were problems left me by the contractor who built the house.  I knew the pool, for which a permit had never been issued to begin with, was now up to code.  

Lumber and labor are expensive, but they were the least parts of this job.  I could do them over.  I didn't want to pay for another extension on the building permit.  I didn't want a long legal battle and I knew the contractor was going to want all the money he could get.  I didn't want the distraction when I needed to apply all my energy to helping G. 

This spring I was ready.  I had two goals for the summer deck redo:  Fix the area immediately around the pool, which had some issues and would require some structural modification as well,  and replace the decking on the entire deck, as the material we originally requested has major mildew problems.  That second item was not the fault of the original contractor as that information came out after the deck was planned and under way and the company declared Chapter 11 rather than deal with the unhappy customers.    It was a necessary expense that falls into the general life category I call "suck up and deal".  I talked to a contractor I know and trust, and reserved a spot in his schedule.

In the end, we will only get the middle section of my decks done this year, the part around the pool.  I needed more structural work than I anticipated which means the job is taking longer and costing more than expected.  The good news is that I love the way it is turning out, and I love watching carpenters who take pride in their work and tackle a job with care and meticulous planning and workmanship.  The final results will be worth the effort.  Even now, before they have finished, the deck looks worlds better than it did before, as seen in this post.  This makes me very happy, happy enough that I don't mind having to put off replacing the deck surface on the other two-thirds of the deck, the parts that are structurally sound, until next spring.  

Everything is moving so fast now.

At first I was a little nervous; I was always afraid bluestone would be too stodgy and I wanted something a little quirky.  Well, it is not quirky, but I think this is going to be just perfect.  Finally we are going to have the front walk that the front door deserves.  Oh, and G designed the front door and had it custom made nearly 15 years ago; it will be 15 years in September.  Happy Birthday front door.

More photos of the walk in progress:

After 5 days of steady and fascinating work, it is finally beginning to look like a walkway is going in here, rather than a series of holes and trenches.

 The scale is way off here.  I can't get out the front door as I have wet cement there and walking up from here is tricky right now, but hopefully you get the idea.

It should be fairly exciting from here on out.  The mason is just fascinating to watch and does meticulous work.   G and the cats keep taking walks by the front windows to watch the work.  I'll admit that I love to take a look every time I walk by as well.

Oh, and G is doing better, still slower than last spring, but significantly improved from a few days ago.  Yesterday he was able to watch TV, only the tennis channel or the weather channel, as the news went too fast for him to process it, but today he is better yet and is working his way through the new New Yorker and I have managed to catch up with housework, which is boring but oh so necessary to my sanity.

This little boat has been anchored in the little cove just below my house for two days now and is still here this morning. 

Sometimes when I am out on the deck and see him there I wonder and I sit there and make up little stories…ah, the places the mind wanders.

And I have been out on the deck.  The pool is officially open and running, although I still need to add about an inch of water and there is a leak in one of the solar panels so we are not able to use the solar heater right now.  I've called about the solar panels, but this is busy season and we are really on the outer fringes of his territory so I don't expect an immediate response. 

In the meantime, I still have to scrub up the ring around the water
line of the pool — I'll do that before I add the last inch of water.  
This is my living reminder of air pollution, the grime that accumulates
is an oily residue from the trains that run multiple times a day on the
tracks along the Hudson River.  I get much less of a ring now that the
pool is covered most of the time.

Once I've scrubbed the pool there is still the deck, and power washing is not enough to do the trick, although it might work if I used a cleaning agent and a brush and just power rinsed.  I think I have a scrub pad that can be fitted onto a broomstick to save the backbreaking labor.  It certainly is worth a try.  It isn't worth the money to hire someone to do the power washing, they only get the easy stuff and I still have to do the work to get the tough stuff off.  I'd rather just do it right the first time myself.

That is always the tough question with pools and decks.  Is the pleasure of having it worth the trouble (or expense) of maintaining it?  I know tons of people who are eager for this or for that but never think about what is involved with maintaining it until after they've spent the money to get it installed. All they think of is the picture-perfect magazine view of the life they think they'd like to have.  But there is a grimier side to everything in life.

I knew what the deck would entail, and the pool, and I like the control of my money and my time that comes with doing it myself. In my experience, in the long run, I come out ahead because no one cares as much about my pool and deck as I do, so I am more likely to pay attention and catch things early.  And actually I've gotten my routine down to a simple series of steps.  As for the deck, someone would have to clean it every spring.  And I continue to have my issues with hiring people to do work I don't want to do just because I "can" hire them.

But then the pool came with the house, which came with the husband and I've long since made peace with its presence.

It seems that the birds are not the only local residents who have been building or renovating their nests this early spring.  My neighbors have also been busy.

Now I appreciate that the cantelevered decks are a problem.  Many such decks built by these same builders have proven to be unstable in recent years and it did need to be repaired and replaced with some kind of supporting structure.  And I fully understand that vinyl siding is so much easier for the homeowner than wood siding, and if one is going to really take the siding issue seriously, one needs to order the heavier grade of T1-11, (which took months for my own house).

 I wish the view from my window was of the house of my neighbor below.  I have heard the work going on down there as well but it wasn't until I was down the hill cleaning brush and directing some tree removal that I really got a chance to see what they were doing.    The downhill neighbor did a lovely job, and in fact I wish I had been that creative with the siding of my own house even as I acknowledge that the same treatment would not be suitable.

The deck and the path around the house are also new and these have really stuck in my imagination.  Partly because they fit so well with the house, and partly because I want a walk like that.

But what kind of walk?  G refuses to have brick.  And really there is no brick around our house except for the two chimneys.  Brick really wouldn't work with the house anyway.  Most of the people in the area who do walks prefer to use pavers, but neither one of has really seen pavers that we like that much either.  Last year, when we put bluestone around the corners of the pool, G commented that he would love a bluestone walk, even though for years he has said he only wants slate, despite the fact that slate is slippery and cracks easily.  And so it was decided.  Bluestone it would be.

Is there some way a walk inspired by the downhill neighbors path would work with our house, and still be easy to maintain?  Would it work with our house?

My original idea was for a concrete walk.  Yes I know boring, boring, boring.  And yet not.  I wanted concrete, in discrete sections, with cedar between the pieces perhaps, or something else I haven't gotten that far.  I wanted a stone aggregate for the top layer, with the concrete brushed away and perhaps glazed or polished; just rough enough that it wasn't smooth and yet still smooth enough I could shovel it and the remaining bits of snow would melt.  Into each rectangular piece of walk I wanted to place one square piece of the same Indian Slate that covers our front stoop.  This would give G his slate, and would provide some consistency as we eventually intend to have the same stone inside the house as well.  I didn't want the slate to be symmetrically placed in the center of each square, but more randomly, in a different place in each piece, flush with the polished gravel or stone, and a highly polished black or dark gray stone could work well here.  

But no decision has been made yet, and it isn't going to happen this year anyway.  As you can see, there is far too much to be done:  painting, patching the foundations, more painting, cleaning up junk and various detritus, landscaping, planting, and so much more.  

It seems that I have always been a person subject to whims and occasional flights of fancy.  I try to attack life in measured form, to adhere to a schedule and a plan, but my true nature is to lose myself in whatever I am doing, the rest of the world be damned and occasionally this tendency gets the better of me.  I may merely be lost in a book, head somewhere lost in the words and imaginary worlds, oblivious to the fact that other people count on me for dinner.  I might be lost in the rhythm of writing something, in the throws of some creative activity or out in the yard lost in the labors of paint and planting and building.  Or I might even be cleaning, although I am generally not a particularly obsessive housekeeper.

I had such plans.  There were merely a few small chores remaining:  clean the stove vent, clean under the refrigerator, straighten up the lower shelf in the pantry closet, the one which is at knee height from the floor and which I am least likely to keep in order.  Another hour perhaps and I would have the afternoon free to play.

And that was the end of my plans for the day.

And I did get everything done.  Although there were some containers that needed to be washed and repurposed.  Some of that had to wait until yesterday morning, after the dishwasher ran.  But I am happy with the pantry.  And it had been a long time since I had thoroughly cleaned everything out.  But of course that is really just an excuse to justify myself.  I really just wanted to create a mess and then clean it up.  I was in whirlwind mode.  And even though it was exhausting I was in my element.  

We drove down to Secaucus, NJ yesterday to look at sofas at the DWR Annex.  We weren’t really planning on buying one there, we just wanted to sit in a few to try them out, figuring we would just order one when we were ready.  Somehow it was a sunny day and we felt more like a drive to NJ than a train ride to NYC.

We ended up buying one of the twilight sofas  that was on the floor anyway.  It will be delivered on Wednesday.

It fits the modern look that we prefer, and G really wanted something like a futon for his office, but what we saw at our local "futon store" were very uninspiring.  We also both find it quite comfortable, as a sofa and as a bed. 

Of course the one we bought was heavily discounted: we paid half of the listed price because there were some scratches on two of the legs, which doesn’t bother us, and some staining on the upper cushion.  There is only one discreet stain that is visible when in sofa mode, and when it is taken apart and used as a bed we figure we will have sheets on it anyway.  Besides the covers are simple boxes with zippers that I could easily replace should we ever wish to do so.

This means that there is more moving of things that needs to be done before the sofa arrives but it is manageable.  We moved the old "bed" out.  It was really just a mattress on plywood and cinder blocks.  That is being listed on our local freecycle site.  We also moved in a contemporary Formica covered wooden dining table that has just been used a junk repository for a few years.  This will be G’s new desk with a pull out cart underneath for storage.  The cart has been recycled from his old office. 

The books that are currently in that room have to go out so that we can move G’s stereo and his books and journals in.  Some things will be eliminated as well.  I think we have agreed that the collection of 30 years worth of Scientific American magazines takes up valuable shelf space and neither one of us really refers to the old issues.  I used to refer back to previous articles when I was reading the magazine, but haven’t done so for years.  G just confessed that he doesn’t read it all anymore.  Perhaps it is time for a digital subscription next time around. 

I had an opportunity today to go through our photo albums and it was a very interesting activity.  Admittedly I am not really a photo person and I don’t usually look through the albums often.  Still I am finding that it was a rewarding experience.

Step-daughter M had asked for some photos of herself and her father when she was young, and also some pictures of her father and I so that she could add them to a photo-wall she was creating in her house.  That task was both easy and difficult.  I have pictures of her dad as a child and young adult and those were easily scanned into the computer for later printing.  I also have an album of pictures of the children when they were small, thoughtfully put together by M herself as a birthday gift to her dad, when at some point she realized that most of the photos had migrated with her mother at the great divorcement.

Pictures of her father and I together was a more complicated issue however and this required extensive poring over the albums.  Basically I am not a taker of photographs.  I have been on occasion.  G bought me a pocket sized camera soon after we were married and I dutifully carried it on trips and, under his encouragement, took pictures, usually because he was taking pictures too.  G was something of an amateur photographer.  Actually I got rather good.  But I don’t automatically think of taking pictures without encouragement, or without being under the tutelage of another photographer.

Even with two photographers there are few pictures of either one of us.  Neither G nor I are particularly eager photographic subjects.  There are more photos of me, primarily because G took far more pictures than I, lugging large cameras and lenses on all trips.  But G was mostly a photographer of landscapes and things, not people, and I shared some of the same propensities.

I loved looking through the photos of our trips and our days.  It has been very evocative, a trip down memory lane it is true, but some things have reminded me of things about myself I have forgotten.  Sometimes there would be just a page of pictures of the trees at home on a given day — those would be my photographs — whereas G would take wonderfully detailed pictures of scenery and architecture on our trips.  Looking at our pictures, even when there is nary a person in any one, reminds me of so much about who we were in those days.

But after about 2000 the pictures drop off.  G stopped carrying his camera and photographic duty more and more often fell to me.  I would take the pictures when I thought about it, or when pressed, which wasn’t very often.  Then when I had a digital camera I would upload them to the computer and never print them out.   I still rarely take pictures unless I need a photo for a blog post or to record something in the garden journal.  When I am someplace or doing something with friends, I am usually too busy being there, in that time and place,  to step out of the picture and think about recording the image.

So what happened?  Will there be photos of our future, or will there be only a 20 year snapshot of a portion of our lives?  I don’t know. 

I doubt I will become a photographer.  I am not sure that I have the temperament.  And unfortunately G’s photography days may be short lived.  He was having increasing difficulties making the camera work, even though he had operated a camera for years.  He was having increasingly difficulty getting chemicals to mix correctly, and the dark room was becoming a place of frustration.  It is easier to find excuses than admit that he is failing, that he can’t do it anymore.  He would never use a point and shoot camera.  He would feel that if he couldn’t control every aspect of the shot it wasn’t worth doing.

And you know, it is OK with me.