Stones in the Road

I'm a hopeless romantic. I live for colorful memories and the hopeful "what ifs." My entire life has spent imagining, dreaming. This house was no exception. I've already told you that I had the wall colors picked before we even knocked our the first wall, that the gold in the dining room was dreamed up somewhere between my cheap gold jewelry and the a number of flea market mirrors I've admired. But the kitchen? Those ideas have been flowing long since this project even began. Some girls dream about the man they'll marry or the kids they'll have. Some girls dream for years about their weddings. Me? I've been dreaming about a kitchen.

Last year, I committed to a gray kitchen, and in the process of picking a particular cabinet color (aka 50,000 shades of gray), Todd and I visited a local granite yard to chose our counter tops or at least get some ideas flowing. We thought when we left that day that we had it all figured out. But, my friends, when you live with someone who is as pathetically romantic and indecisive as me, it's never that easy.

Now, I've always loved marble. Who doesn't love marble? It's historic, timeless, beautiful, shimmery, classic. But before I even stepped foot into that stone yard, I gave up marble. You see, I have two geologists in my family. Marble, they will tell me time and time again, is soft, marble is porous. Marble stains, marble scratches, marble etches. Marble is bad for a kitchen counter, they say.

So when we visited that day, I adverted my eyes from the carrara, the calacatta. I tried so, so hard to ignore my desires and looked for all the prettiest quartzite and granite instead, but then, there amongst the granite was the most beautiful gray stone. It was dark grey with craggy circular patches and deep white veins and unlike all the granite we had seen, it was truly beautiful. When the saleswoman told us it was a particularly hard marble/quartzite blend that "acted just like granite," I was sold. So I called my sister. She took one look at the photo I sent her and told me, "it's just marble. It may be dolomitic marble, but it's still marble. It's still going to etch." I returned to the yard disheartened and settled on a particulary lovely slab of Typhoon White Granite. It was...well, fine.

Typhoon White Granite

I returned to the yard nearly a year later with a painted cabinet door sample in hand to settle on a slab with my mom, this time for real. When we stumbled across the same dolomitic marble, the sales lady gave us her pitch again to which my mom replied, "So it might etch. Just be careful." And then she uttered my favorite phrase, "Just ignore your sister." It was done. The marble of my dreams would be mine! I spent the remainder of the day randomly breaking out into happy dances.

Vermont White Marble - The winner for a day

Arabascato Vagli marble (GORGEOUS, but a little pricey for my budget)

But like I said, it's never that easy. Mom called the next day at while I was at work. Dad said the marble would etch. She'd done research, talked with Kelsey (ie Kelsey sent at least 43 pages of information on how bad marble is for counter), and that counter just was not happening. I considering for a brief moment crying into the vial drawer, but kept it together and decided to vent to my co-worker instead.

So we visited more yards, we looked online, we compared and contrasted and did the research (testing samples of materials with acids at home). Everything in my practical self said to go for granite. It's pretty, durable, and will last in a home where your husband assumes that Lyle will also lick messes off the counter.

I tried to be practical, people, I really did.

I spent all week debating, but in the end my heart won out. After reading this particular article and then the follow up, I realized that it's not just the marble now that I want to love, but the marble of my future. Those etches, those stains, those scratches - will I even care? Honed marble is just gorgeous. Does anyone look at the statue of David and think, "Wow, he's really scratched up over there...." - really? Do you ever go into a historic house and think about how the marble floors need a "touch up?" Worn marble is just as stunning (albeit in its own way) as brand new marble.

So that's that. Marble it is. And now that I've settled into the idea that my countertops will not be perfectly smooth and unused, I can move away from the more dense White Vermont into the whole range of glittery white stones. Carrara, Calacutta, who knows!

So yeah, granite is practical, sure, but marble is romantic. 

Married?!

WE'RE MARRIED.

I could sit here and relive every precious moment for you. I could tell you about the chilly morning coffee around a campfire, describe Uncle Howard's sent-from-heaven breakfast tacos with dear family and friends, or share the warmth from the endless supply of the hugs and laughs and support. I want to tell you about the colors of the mountains, their jagged edges, their impossible grace and simultaneous grandeur, or the how amazing it feels to have nearly ninety of your biggest supporters watching you make the biggest commitment you will ever make, to feel their hopes and praise and love while never taking your eyes off the man you love. And the company. The family and friends that traveled hundreds and thousands of miles to share these moments with us, that canceled work and rescheduled plans, that put their own life on hold to watch us read our teary vows, to share a dance or a drink or a laugh - those folks made everything magical.

I want to tell you everything. I want to tell you about the endless hugs from my many cousins' amazing kids (we'll be calling you all for parenting lessons in a few years!), the rush of the whitewater, or a thrill just from sharing an evening with family at the top of the gondola. I wish I could describe the closeness you feel with a horse when you've traveled to the peak of a mountain on its back, or the overwhelming feeling of seeing a moose in the wild. I want to tell you about our family and our friends and how kind and generous and supportive they were not only to us but to each other. I want to tell you everything, but I will spare you (many more house details to share!). This is what all you need to know:

I've always been a big believer in imperfection. I been a supporter of the underdog, the curator of oddities, praiser of the things which make us both unique and undeniably human.

But our wedding? It was PERFECT.

And now, I extend the most enormous THANK YOU to everyone that celebrated with us either in person or in spirit. Love is an amazing thing. We're lucky we have each other, but we're only who we are because of the places we've come from. To the amazing family and friends that show us what love means every day. Cheers!

Someday After a [Tile]

If you didn't already know, I'm not the do-er in this project. I show up, physically, yeah, but not always mentally. I may go to the house 90% of the days I have off work, but 90% of that time, I couldn't tell you what I was doing while I was there. I must say, it's a little frustrating to spend so much of your time someplace just to turn up rather unproductive (but hmmm maybe that sounds like my life in general...?).

For instance, while I spent two whole afternoons installing and adjusting light switches and wall plates this week (intermixed of course with some singing, dancing, having soul-searching conversations with Lyle, and wandering eerily around, imaging myself in our house 100 years ago), Dad was installing tile. A lot of tile, to be more precise.

So sometimes, because I don't actually write this blog to tell you about all the imaginary conversations I've had with our house's previous occupants in my head, I have to check Dad's blog for the details of the real work being done. This was especially true during the framing, plumbing, and electrical when my perceptions of what Dad was working on would have sounded like, "Dad spent all day holding heavy boards above his head and, most likely, trying to avoided hitting his head on a nail." This was also true this month.

Fortunately for me, it's easy to find Dad's blog online. All I ever have to do is visit the Owner-Builder Book website because it's almost always the most recently updated blog page. This is fortunate for you too, if you enjoy fine details, more frequent posts, and actually learning about home renovation. (If you've lost the link, here it is again: https://www.ownerbuilderbook.com/blogs/users/Mutton-Busting.aspx)

ANYWAY....

A picture's worth a thousand words, right?

MASTER BATH FLOOR

 For the master bath, we picked varies shades of white in classic styles to keep the room both historic and easy to live with for years. The tile above has a clean white marble look to it. Here, Dad has placed a piece of waterproofing material covered with a layer of thinset. Those red stopper things help level the tiles respectively to each other. Sadly, they don't do much for leveling against the waviness of the floor (or as we say, its "character").

The tile after grouting...and with a toilet!

 The photo above could be its own blog post: THE DAY WE GOT A TOILET!!!!

I, as the one who drinks the most water, was obviously the first to use it. THANK GOODNESS....for us and our neighbors who had to avoid looking out their upstairs window in fear of seeing us peeing in the corner of our yard for the past year.

MASTER SHOWER.

 In the showers we repeated the process of waterproofing, applying thinset, "back-buttering" the tiles, and then placing the tiles them on the wall. Dad, of course, did most of the tiling on the master shower as well, but Mom and I teamed together for part of the process one evening.

For the guest room, we went a little crazier, mixing up the neutrals with some fun textures. This was the idea palette we created at the tiles store:

This week we got the guest bathroom floor set and grouted.

We'll use the large white subway tiles again for the shower walls to brighten the room up, and the reflective metal penny tiles for a fun twist on the floor. More photos to come!

After all those months of staring at 100 year-old studs and the mess of wires and piping (not to mention DIRT!) they contained, it sure is nice to see this place looking like a house. I certainly haven't given up my love for all things historic, but I have to admit, these shiny new things are pretty attractive at this point. But then again, who knows, maybe I'm just excited to stop breathing dust and old spider-remains...

When I Paint My Masterpiece

So we got sheetrock. Then what?

Well...

Mom dove right into painting. I'm telling you, the woman loves to paint. She claims that she finds the activity "meditative," which I guess is what happens when the stresses of own your own business become "normal" daily activity. But hey, I ain't complaining. My whole house got painted in less than a week, and I was only there to help one day!

Oh, but let's talk colors! So last May or June, I'm talking 2014 here, before we nailed a single nail, before we even dug a single hole, I went to what would soon become our second home (that is, Home Depot) and picked out the paint color of my dreams. I mean literally. It was this soft, pearly shade of gray that looked not unlike a little slice of heaven. It was as though someone had taken a cloud at sunset, when the sky begins its deepening, when the cool indigos and navys of the night are softened by the last remaining rays of sunlight into that mystical purplely hue, and had, with one dreamy fistful, taken that a fluffy cotton-candy chunk of that cloud to turn into a very lovely shade of Behr paint.

We each were assigned jobs at the beginning of this house task, and luckily (I mean, seriously thank goodness for us all because can you imagine ME as project manager? We'd all still be in the park gazing at the sky. Heck, we'd probably have just removed the roof and decided to live in the house's bare walls at this point), I was assigned "lead designer." Yeah, ok, I could handle that. BUT that doesn't mean that all my ideas were taken without hesitation (which is often fine because I certainly need to be reigned back in sometimes). Case in point: the paint color.

I bought the sample one day after work (along with two other options because I was already getting some negative feedback on just the 2 inch slice) and splashed a good square foot section on the wall. I also added the other two color options for good measure. Nobody, I mean, nobody liked the color. Mom thought it was pink, Todd thought it was too feminine, and Dad, well he's colorblind so he thought it was some olive green I suppose.

So one early morning, Mom, in her attempt to thwart the pink overhaul, bought a number of samples and swatches of her own and called me over on my way to work to examine the options.  This is what I saw:

What's your favorite? That brilliant, soft, purplely gray in the center?  That one that looks like the chunk of sunset cloud? Mmhmm. That's what I thought.

In the end, we decided to go with the original color I picked (aka Behr's Oyster Shell Grey) plus the one of the other color options I picked that first day (Behr's Urban Gray). It's amazing to watch the colors change throughout the day with all the abundance of natural light, especially in the downstairs. The first few days, Mom and I played "name the color," chasing the light around rooms and attempting to name the shades as they morphed. It's rather entertaining, and you know what? Everyone likes it.

I knew when I was dreaming about the inside of this house that I wanted it to be airy and bright, an ethereal surround to inspire and awaken thoughts, and I'd say at this point we're definitely on the right track. I mean, hey, who doesn't love clouds....?

The house's main color, so airy that it's barely visible without white trim.

Behr Urban Gray for the side rooms, including the band room.

The dining room in Urban Gray with gold leaf stenciling.

Kudos to Mom for allowing me to have my way with the paint colors (and trusting me even when she had her doubts!), letting me stencil the dining room with this shimmery gold leafing paint, and for doing such an amazing job painting!

Did I mention she did all the priming (55 GALLONS WORTH!!) and painting in one week? The woman is a legend....

The Moment We've All Been Waiting For

SHEETROCK!!!!!!!!!!

There are nearly no words to describe how excited I am (I say nearly because there are in fact words because hello, this is me, and I will find words for everything).

This is what happened.

Todd left at the end of April for another round of touring in Europe (see ya Todder!), while the rest of us got to work with insulation. In our minds, we thought sheetrock would be in by the time Todd arrived home at the end of May, but in reality everything between sheetrock and the end of May gulped up more time than seemed necessary. That is to say, insulation took a long time. But then again, hasn't everything we've done up to this point taken forreeeevveerrr?

In science, they call this the "rate limiting step." That means the total measurable rate of chemical reaction (or overall time it takes to build a house) is largely dependent on this one slice of pie if you will, and that is a fact I can largely attest to. Everything up to here was largely dependent upon a single thing happening before it, i.e. framing lead to plumbing, lead to electrical, lead to a trillion other random tasks that couldn't be finished until another project was or at least until Dad was free to start again.

And in the end? Those tasks collectively became "the work behind the walls," six months of tedious and tireless work quickly covered and forgotten.

[An aside: My mother described the process like childbirth: once you see the beautiful child you made you forget how much awful work it took to get there and end up making that crazy mistake again. Hmm...Who was the second child in this family...?]

But now? It's game on because instead of waiting on Dad's work, we're free to busy about like little ants, and now almost everything we do will be visible and...dare I say fun...? Yeah, I won't go that far. But - just like in a chemical reaction where the final step to end product that you might actually see is in fact not usually the reaction's rate limiting step - the final steps are the most pronounced.

And now, the moment you've all been waiting for....pictures!

For most of the walls we used snow-like spray insulation. First we hung netting by stapling it to the framing and then we used a giant machine to blow insulation into the walls.

Only one of us was NOT made terribly itchy by the insulation.

For the ceilings, we used the old pink stuff to fill in.

Being inside the house during insulation was not unlike being trapped inside a giant, pink stuffed animal.

You know, one thing I didn't mention about sheetrock is that we didn't do it. Uh huh. Pick your jaw up off the floor. When we started the house, we knew that the one thing we hoped to outsource was the sheetrock and luckily we were able to budget for labor.

So without further ado, I present:

THE TRANSFORMATION (Oooo Ahhh)

Looking in from the kitchen. Taking out the walls in this area totally opened the floorplan of our house without taking away any of the historic design from the entryway rooms.

Check out that tray ceiling in the kitchen! LOVE how that turned out.

The formal living room at the front of the house.

Looking from the formal living room to the back of the house.

Back to front: kitchen to the left, music room, stairs, den, and formal dining on the right.

Yeah, it's pretty stinking amazing. Next up: painting like crazy. Stay tuned...

History, [Her]story

I am not a very religious person. I never grew up with the church, never sang hymns on Sunday morning, never said prayers at night. Nor am I the most political, flag waving, foot stomping, change-making kind. You may think then, that I've had little to hold on to, little to stand for, to turn to in times of trouble during these near three decades that I've lived, but you'd be wrong. What I've always believed in is love.

It's become clear to me during the past 10 months that we've been sawing, nailing, glueing, and caulking (and I know I said I don't usually pray, but when you've spent a few hours making a window frame and then need to fit the existing window in it, you've got to do a little praying that it will fit!), that our house has experienced so much love during the past 100 years. Honestly, even without the insulation and sheetrock, the house is so warm, so inviting. It's like a cocoon (the natural kind, not the creepy 80's movie).

This became even more clear yesterday. Now, I wasn't lucky enough to be there when they stopped by because I was working, but Judy, the woman who grew up in this house, stopped by yesterday with her three sisters, and according to my mother (whose opinion I hold highly), these women were the closest family she had ever seen. Judy grew up in this house with her 7 siblings (4 boys, 4 girls) and the many other children throughout the years that her parents fostered. Judy has told me time and again just how much her parents loved children, and other neighbors have told us stories too. When we had some dead branches off trimmed off our large trees last year, Jimmy aka "Tree Man" told us about growing up in the neighborhood and remembering Judy's father who once brought Jimmy and his brother bikes when his own parents couldn't afford to.

The fabulous Raymers. Thanks, Judy for all the loving memories you've shared and of course, the most wonderful bread I have ever eaten!

I just love hearing the stories about our house's history, especially Judy's memories of her childhood, like how she and her siblings used to save their lunch money under the loose floor boards upstairs or how when Wendy eloped with the boy across the street, the sisters threw her shoes from the upstairs window as she was driving off.

It's all kinds of love that shapes our lives. It's love for our (sometimes literal) neighbors, our friends, and that deeply woven, uncompromising love for our families - And I'm thrilled to know that our house has seen them all.

Deck the [House]

Once you start a house project, it's quite easy to forget what your life was like before. I wrote music? WHAT?! I read books?! Maybe it sounds pathetic and maybe it is, but when you've got a list of home things to do that if actually written down could quite possibly squash you, the need to stay busy becomes an addiction. When I'm not forced to be at the house, it's still on the forefront of my mind - paint colors, wood floors, lighting, wallpaper. I've done so many google searches on wallpaper alone, that my mind has more than once gone into a sort of system failure where everything becomes so characteristically different and yet potentially the same - not unlike the blue/black, white/gold dress situation. Is the wallpaper purple and metallic? Wait, no that's gray/silver. Wait...

Unfortunately, it's hard to stay busy during the mechanical when you're not Dad. So this week, when a I had a number of consecutive days of work and both of the parents were out of town, Todd and I decided to test our building knowledge and take on a short project of our own - the back deck!

Our current back deck at the time was a smallish, square structure that we were planning to expand on at some point down the road, but hey, no time like the present right?

Here's the deck before. It wasn't terrible, but not exactly the best deck for entertaining and enjoying the summer.

Mom gave us the idea to move the stairs, so we started by removing those to allow for better "flow." Thanks to a little phone guidance from Dad, we were able to draw out and measure our plans before setting the posts that first afternoon.

We had a successful first day setting the posts, and when we came back the next day, we set straight out attaching and leveling the outer rim of 2x8's. At some point in, Todd asked, "Should we measure again just to make sure it's square?" to which I responded, "Nah. Looks great to me!" We proceeded to attached the remaining 2x8's to the outside, and then I began measuring the 16 inch centers for the inter support 2x8's.

Only the measurements didn't match up...exactly. One side? Four inches longer than the other side. I remeasured both to make sure. How could it be? We measured the diagonals before we left last night, I thought. So I measured the shorter sides. Two inches off. If that deck was square, I was drunk.

You know those oh-shit moments? Yeah, that was one of those.

So we weighed our solutions. Move the posts? We'd spend all day just getting back to the start and by that time, Mom and Dad would be back and we'd be back to the inside. Lay the decking diagonally? Not a bad option, but we'd use way more deck boards that we planned and we'd spend more time getting the cuts perfect. We even considered leaving it as it was, but the longer I knew it wasn't square, the more and more I begin to think it looked rather like a kidney bean.

So we employed a couple two by fours and a number of notching techniques to push and pull the sides until we had that thing pretty close to perfect. I say this like it was easy, but it took a good 8 hours and a small pizza to get the thing just to the point where we could begin the 2x8s once more.

Todd notching one of the posts during our tedious correction process.

More notching. Five out of the six beams required some adjusting to get the deck sides square.

BUT we made it through. And you know what? Despite the urge to point fingers (YOU put that post there, YOU took that faulty measurement), we found a solid solution without killing each other in the process. It's a tiny step, I know, but I can't help but to feel a little proud, especially in these months before our marriage.

I mean, hell, if we can make a kidney bean shaped deck and then turn it into a decent rectangle in three days, I doubt a little tiff over loading the dishwasher will be the end of us.