The Oasis!

Our backyard is done, minus a few hostas and some decorations. It took longer than I thought--I was predicting that we'd be relaxing on our patio by the 4th of July. No such luck, which is a shame as the 4th of July was exceedingly beautiful this year. Alas, as I did predict, the yard is done just in time for a horrendous heatwave.

The heat, it kills the grass. Have I mentioned how much I despise grass? It hates me back. Actually, in the pictures it looks a bit better than it does today--it wasn't as hot two days ago and the weeds in the middle of the yard have grown like 6 inches this week (not actually an exaggeration, because you can't see them in the pictures).

Next to the deck is a tumbled paver patio.  It is pretty big--roughly 15x20.  We have a 6-seat rectangle table that will probably sit down there, plus the grill and smoker.  And there may be room left over for a low seating set with a firepit (TBP -- to be purchased).  Along the wall on the right side of the picture, I need to find some large pots or something to soften the edge of the foundation and blankness of the siding. 

Around the concrete drain are six good-sized Rose of Sharon.  There are rocks around there too--I apparently grabbed a photo pre-rocks.  If you can't hide the darned thing, make a pedestal out of it.  With the brick edging, the rocks, and the bushes, it is crying out for a Grecian Urn or a birdbath or something.  I'm not actually kidding on that (though I'm pretty sure that a 3-5 foot statue would be heavy and expensive)..


The landscaper also added rocks under the deck, and a nice border of shrubs around the base of it to soften things.  Along the back of the yard are five good-sized white pine trees with clumps of the tall decorative grass between (they are almost visible in the shot of the patio...bad light in the evenings when I'm trying to snap photos).  They aren't a wall, but do distract the eye from the street beyond it.  And they will get bigger as time goes on.  The tree line doesn't completely cover the back border, because if you look toward the other corner, there's a lovely view of a lake and open greenspace. We want to emphasize the nice view and downplay the road.

Finally, the part that's not visible is all the drainage work.  The long straight line of dirt leading toward the concrete pedestal is where they buried a drain pipe that comes off a downspout and the sump pump.  Previously, those outlets left a swamp on the side of the house (and made the sump pump work overtime).  They ran the drains that were in between the patio and deck out underground as well. A swath through the middle of the yard has been smoothed to remove a rut formed by water runoff. The back of the yard behind the trees used to look jagged, as though the builder had pushed dirt back there and just stopped (which is probably exactly what they did). It now has a nice rounded shape that looks intentional and a fresh layer of grass seed that we can maintain easier than the weeds that we had before.

Our inground sprinkler system has been repaired and activated, and I might relent and have a lawncare company spray stuff on the grass to make it green (I'm tempted to just buy spray paint...do you think the neighbors would notice?)  I have finally come to realize that we are going to have to fertilize the grass to make it grow, as our dirt is more gravel than soil.  And it's way too expensive to just pave the whole yard.

Deck Done

The deck is finished. It looks great. Next up (possibly as soon as this week): yard digging shall commence.

I'm hoping my husband and I can heft the grill up to the deck tonight to actually grill in our back yard instead of our driveway out front. I'm sure the neighbors will appreciate the effort as well ;)

The only issue with the deck process involved the stairs.  There is quite a drop between the house and where the stairs land, so our landscaper had to come out to figure out at what level the patio will rest.  The first attempt at the stairs ended about 18" from ground level, which would have meant some sort of retaining wall around that corner of the patio.  They re-did the stairs, and the patio will be a bit lower than where the dirt currently meets the house.

Also, once the big muddy process is done, perhaps we will actually fertilize our yard and do some weed control. It looks...kinda bad. But it isn't worth spending money on the back right now because a large stretch will be removed when the grading is fixed.

It Starts

The splintery stairs are gone!  In their place, we have the beginnings of framing for the new deck, plus holes where the footings will be poured. I believe an inspector must OK the holes before the concrete is added.

I was surprised to see that the deck is only attached to the house in two small areas--both about 2 feet wide, on either side of the breakfast bay.  The deck will not be attached to the bay itself, likely because there is no foundation directly below it.  We now have two small (1ft x 2ft) pieces of cut away vinyl siding.

Also, as we are still home recuperating from surgery, T-man got a front-row seat for the building process. He is loving getting to observe the process.

Looking at the house from the back, the area to the right of the deck towards the second bay window is where the stairs and paver patio will go.  In the picture it doesm't look that tall, but the end of the deck is a good 4 1/2 feet off the ground, so there will be about 6 steps down to ground level.

The deck is not that large. At its depest, it will be about 12 feet, but from the kitchen door probably more like 9.  Deep enough for either one of our patio tables (our smaller round one is hanging out in one of the side shots, the bigger rectangle one is in the garage where it's been stored since we moved), or else a different seating group.

I have been window shopping patio furniture ideas, but want to wait and see the finished spaces before buying anything new.  We already have the two tables, though the round one would need new chairs. The old ones are the cheap plastic, two of which moved with us to the old house, and are neither attractive nor comfortable (though they may live on for extra temporary seats in case we have a big party).  The round table is wrought iron and while it wasn't expensive, seems to be holding up great. I can get matching chairs from any of several stores, just waiting for someplace to put them. Our bigger rectangle table needs a fresh coat of paint, but I still love the floral weave pattern that it and its chairs have. Ideally we will keep both, because together we can seat ten people for an outdoor dinner, or have extra buffet or prep space.

I also love the idea of low chairs around a fire pit, but that would probably have to sit down on the patio rather than up on a wood deck. Without fire, we could use the deck for a conversation area instead. I'm also not sure we can trust kiddos near fire, but they aren't babies. So it all just depends on how our existing furniture fits, what furniture we find, and how much we have left to spend after we're done paying for our landscaping adventure.

The Before Pictures

We have a plan!

Well, we have two plans. One for a low deck, another for a patio.  Plus trees, and fixes to drainage problems.  I'm kind of in denial about the final cost involved. It's going to be fine. Quite pretty, actually.  I think I had visions of a relatively inexpensive concrete patio (or of laying our own pavers). The reality is...not so inexpensive. Tumbled stone pavers. A composite deck with metal railing.  Watching nice strong men do all the digging. The reality will also fit the house better than concrete.

Now it's time for the deep breath. 

And even more patience.  Because it's likely to be two or more weeks before anything else is started, while the contractors work out permits and scheduling.  And it will probably be early-to-mid-June before both the patio and the deck are fully in and usable.  I'm kinda hopeful for the patio by Mother's Day. Once that is in, we can relocate the grill and our primary table and chairs from the garage. (I suspect July's housework will include re-organizing the garage and maybe assembling some shelves to replace the giant metal table that has been holding garage junk since we moved in....).

Before I forgot, I snapped some "before" pictures.  Here is a close-up of our temporary stairs, and a shot of the full back of the house.  There will be a small deck where the bump-out in the middle is, and the patio will go across the right-side of the house near the other bay window.

In case you can't appreciate the ugliness of the stairs, the hand-rail on the left hand side is actually two pieces of wood butt-joined together. They are sturdy, but land directly on the grass and the hand rails are a bit splintery. We didn't pay the builder anything extra for them, either, so I can't complain that they are made of scrap lumber.

Had we gone with just a patio, those wooden stairs would have been changed for solid stone or else decking. They would definitely have been a focal point, which is not what I wanted.  I don't have a good side-ways shot to show the depth of the bump-out where the kitchen is.  That bump-out plus the stairs take up about 10-12 feet from the rest of the house (those stairs jutt out about 6 feet from the house).

This won't be the last time I freak out a bit about the cost of the landscaping.  And I'm already wondering if we can go an entire month without eating out (and grilling instead) in order to make me feel better about the cost (and of course, to ensure I bond really well with the outdoor living space) :)

Project Backyard - Take 3

Being impatient, busy, and picky is not a good combination.

In round 2 of our patio/yard planning adventure, we had a very nice and seemingly very knowledgeable landscape designer come and draw a plan and give an estimate.  His plans for fixing drainage in the yard, for the plantings, and even somewhat for the patio itself.  But of course, there’s a catch.

Our yard has a couple of design challenges, and so far neither of the two contractors we’ve talked to have (in my opinion) adequately addressed one of those.  Our breakfast room is in the middle of the back of our house, and bumps back into the yard, with an additional bay-window-shaped bump. The glass door (currently a slider, though I’d like to swap it for a French door) is in the middle of the bay.  The threshold of the sliding door sits about 40” above the grass level.  That’s too high for a simple step or two down to a ground-level patio.  Our current, temporary, wood staircase required 5 steps down to the grass, and juts about 5-feet into the yard (remember that the whole breakfast room already juts into the yard).

In short, because of how our breakfast room sits on the back of the house, the stairs out of it to the yard cut the yard in two.  

The stamped-concrete contractor suggested we have a nicer set of decking steps built.  We could choose composite for the stairs, handrails that were vinyl or pvc (and these days those come in several colors that would coordinate nicely with the house). Great, except that what we end up with, looking down from above, is basically a 6ftx6ft square out of the middle of a section of patio that is approximately 12x12 (there would be another larger section of patio where we could actually put the table and grill). That’s a lot of concrete whose sole purpose seems to be making a focal point out of stairs, since the space around the stairs is too narrow to actually put furniture on.

The garden landscape designer basically suggested the same thing, except that he proposed to build the stairs themselves out of paver stones to match the proposed paver patio. So his 6ftx6ft chunk out of the middle of the 12x12 patio would be solid stone. And his way would leave this strange little 3 foot high by 3 foot wide by 7 foot long crawl tunnel under the bay window itself. (I'm sure the kids would be thrilled, but it's going to look silly from the side)

*sigh* With both guys, I told them that I hate the stairs and that I want something else. I didn’t mean just a different material. I don’t want to spend my money buying stairs and concrete for under the stairs. I want to actually sit there or grill there or have it look pretty. Patio with stairs taking up the middle doesn’t accomplish any of those objectives.

If we stick to the patio idea, the best option for "something else" is to make the patio in two levels. The higher level would be 2-3 steps down from the breakfast room, and would require building-up the space with fill dirt and a retaining wall. It would then step down 1-2 more steps to a lower patio off the side. Stairs would still be required, but would be split up, smaller, nothing quite so huge and dramatic and did-I-mention-huge. But building up a retaining wall and laying a patio on it is even more expensive than building giant stone monolithic stairs, and would trade the crawl-tunnel for a 4-5 foot ledge that the kids can jump off of (see, the door is 40" from ground level, but the yard slopes away from the house).  

On to plan C.  This time, a deck designer. If I’m going to give up a chunk out of the middle of our yard, I want it to be useful. I'm thinking a 12x12 deck off the breakfast room, with stairs off one side down to the patio (rather than toward the middle of the yard, further severing it in two).  The stairs would only need to be 36 or 48 inches wide, not 72, and that 12x12 foot space in the middle of the yard become seating area instead of a shrine to the stairs.

Then we call the garden landscaper back to re-work the stone patio at ground level (about 2/3 of the original patio, with no stairs), plus the rest of the grading, drainage, and trees that he proposed.  I am probably being overly optimistic that this will be the final iteration of our landscape design.

What I would really love at this point is for one of those tv shows to come in and make me a new yard in two days. The whole thing, start-to-finish, concept-to-bbq-party. Every communication with a contractor takes a full week—one week from initial contact to when they show up at your house, another week before you get a quote back, another week before they come back to discuss revising the plan. Maybe it would go faster if I didn’t work every day. But then, we wouldn’t be able to afford to pay for anything.

I should have started in January, and called everyone in the phone book at once. Maybe then we would have  hada nice yard in time for spring.  Because right now, I'm not sure we will get this pulled together before Memorial Day.

Patio - Step 2

Almost two weeks ago, we had a contractor give us a quote on a stamped concrete patio. I had called that company in part because their website advertised that they did both concrete and paver work. I love the look of paver patios, but I've seen nice-looking stamped concrete also, and I know the concrete is less expensive. Alas, the actualy company rep said that they were no longer doing the pavers. The quote on the concrete work, however, was fast and reasonable, and I am confident that they would produce a nice-looking space.

But, we need more than just a patio. We need help with drainage and trees and visual screening from the road and updates to our sprinkler system to support all of the above. Last night, a landscape designer from a local nursery came. That was fun. Way too much fun.

We walked around the yard, and he frequently pointed out problem areas that we want addressed before we could get to them--the bad runoff from our sump pump, the trench in the grass where uphill runoff pools instead of runs, the big concrete square catch basin where all that runoff is supposed to go (it's an eyesore), the ragged back edge of the raised side of our yard (there's a bit of a stream back there, so we want a big berm-like structure to stay, but what we've got looks half-finished). You could watch the options flitting through his mind.

His company does paver work, so the hardscape portion of his design will reflect that. He's also talking trees and boulders and fixing the drainage issues, and said that they work with the irrigation companies on the sprinkler systems. He will be coming back early next week to measure and sketch and will be presenting us with a nice color design. He also was respectful of potential budget limits (though we aren't exactly sure what our budget limit really is, and are probably willing to stretch it a fair amount for a comprehensive design). He easily talked through things in "phases" and mentioned options (i.e build the patio vs build patio with seating walls vs patio w/walls w/columns, opting for smaller trees or more mature ones depending on price, etc).

Interestingly, he never mentioned the word "fence". Given that our lot sits between a straight-line fence that borders the neighborhood, the next neighborhood's bordering fence, and our next-door neighbor's fence, ours almost looks like it is missing a few sections. And while I quite like a fence (clear limits are good for defining where we can put our stuff and where the kids can play), my husband shudders at the thought of a fence. (I don't quite understand why, but his immediate family shares the aversion...). Anyway, the f-word never came up, but various trees and boulders and knockout-roses all did. Maybe we shall get a nice plan that both defines our lot's limits and yet doesn't contain a row of metal pickets.

The process just got fun. I know it will get ugly when we have to start forking over real cash. And uglier when our yard turns into a dirtbowl more while they work. Then ugly again as we dig our pretty patio table out from a year's worth of accumulated junk in the garage (and probably have to stop and clean the garage). But I am feeling hopeful.

Project Backyard: The Beginning

Our house came with almost no landscaping. We have grass. A poorly done (and half-finished looking) raised garden bed on the front of the house.  A set of temporary stairs to get out of breakfast room and into the back  yard. There is a sprinkler system that has served to keep the grass alive, though one of the sprinkler heads was placed below the afore-mentioned breakfast room sliding door and therefore waters our temporary stairs as much as it waters as the yard. 

We did add a bunch of “trees” last year. By “tree” I mean “twig with roots”, most of which we lost to some combination of drought, excess water (ironically, from poor drainage around where the sump pump empties), and our lawn service’s mowers.  Guys on commercial mowers don’t recognize six-inch twigs as landscape features unless they are surrounded them with large patches of mulch or edging. Yes, we paid for mowers and not for trees—mowers were cheaper.

We have exactly  two trees that are bigger than a foot tall, and both are more bush-sized than tree size. Neither are in the front of the house. The raised garden bed and another small patch of yard between the driveway and the front steps both have some perennials, including irises that were divided from ones we grew at the old house (which in turn came from my mother-in-law’s garden in Iowa).  So the yard is not completely bare.

It is time for some landscape work. Actually, it’s way past time for some landscape work, but we finally have the financial resources to attempt something.

First up: the back yard. The temporary stairs need to go.  I would really like to move our patio table out of the garage (where it has been collecting random boxes of junk). I would like to grill in the backyard rather than the driveway. I’m sure our neighbors will appreciate that as well.

We don’t have a good idea what we want in the yard. Just a vague idea that it should look “nice” and “in keeping with the house”. We need trees. We need some privacy screening along one side of the house for noise and headlights from the nearby road. We need a place to sit, and a place to grill. We want to keep a large grassy area available.  We are not planning a large swing-set (as one kid doesn’t care to swing and the other will outgrow it all too soon), but do have one smaller climber to install and want room for the kids to play. We have kicked around the idea of someday putting in a pool, though we aren’t sure and the kids aren’t old enough for that yet. We love the idea of an outdoor kitchen or a screen room or a fire pit or any number of other fancy features, but kind of want  to take things in phases and not overspend right away.

We do not have a walk-out basement, but the breakfast room door is about four feet above the grade of the yard, and it is smack in the middle of the back of the house.  That makes part of the design harder. We could go with a low deck, or steps down to a patio, or some combination thereof. We could build it toward the street-side of the house so that the entertaining space is closer to the road (with some traffic sounds) and runs behind the family room. Or we could build it towards the opposite side of the house, farther from traffic but right next to our master bedroom windows. 

We are incapable of doing this job ourselves. Though at least one friend has told us how easy laying a paver patio is, we have neither the time off work, the brute strength and/or tools to dig and level that much sod, nor the inclination to spend our vacation time digging. We are definitely hiring this out.

Last night, we took our first baby step towards figuring this mess out: we had a concrete contractor come for an estimate. They do stamped and stained concrete work, which is a slightly less expensive alternative to pavers. We also like the look of pavers, but a poured concrete patio with a brick-or-stone look is a definite option, especially if it leaves room in the budget for more of the trees and possibly some drainage work, or a few new pieces of patio furniture. And it would take less time—only about two days rather than a week or more.

I was disappointed that the contractor expected us to know exactly where and how big and what shape we wanted—I wanted more design guidance and he wanted to measure.  I had no quarrel with the price that he quoted: the price-per-square foot was within what I had seen online, and though he quoted a much larger area than I had anticipated using, the price was reasonable.  Oddly, he was busy talking us away from more expensive options.  One of my biggest pet peeves among salespeople is ones who attempt to down-sell us.  Frankly, I want someone to let us dream big, and show us where we can maximize value (or where we can split a big job into pieces that can be spread across a couple of years so we aren’t financing everything).

Next up: calling an actual landscape designer or two. We probably should have started there.

It Runneth Over

Last week, our next door neighbor had a problem with their outside faucet. The kind of problem where a landscaper turns it on in order to water newly planted shrubs, and then fails to shut it off all the way, leaving it gushing water for some unknown amount of time during the day.

Our house has a (thankfully) unfinished basement, with a sump pump. Its proper functioning depends on its access to electricity. And a cord. That is plugged in about seven feet up the basement wall.

Did you know we have cats who like to jump and climb? I can't really blame them without proof, and we have none. Just a plug that came loose somehow and reminded us that we've been terribly lazy about sorting and storing a large number of cardboard boxes that are around the basement.

Most of the contents survived, for whatever that is worth. Which isn't much since we're talking about the boxes that we packed over twelve months ago and, by and large, have not opened. Clearly not our most treasured possessions. We did lose a leftover bag of grout--more like a bag-shaped concrete block.

Did you know that concrete boxes melt when they get wet? Just like the Wicked Witch, only swampy-smelling.

We now own half a dozen additional sets of plastic utility shelves and another dozen new plastic storage boxes. And of course, I forgot to ensure that the plastic storage boxes actually fit on the new plastic utility shelves. But we can start putting paper, fabric, cardboard, etc on the shelves. And stack the plastic boxes amongst themselves.

We never had a problem in our old house, but then, we lived at the top of a hill on the highest street of the neighborhood on one of the highest parts of the local area (what realtors like to say are Breathtaking Views). It also had a sump pump, but it would have taken quite an effort by the Power Above (aka rainclouds) and the Power Below (soil drainage) to get water into that basement.

If we ever finish our new basement, we are definitely looking into some sort of fail-safe for the sump pump.

A House With Character

Subtitle: Defending New Suburban Construction

When we first began toying with the idea of moving last year, there were three main possibilities:

1) find a home near to our existing neighborhood with the features we were looking for (a bigger, flatter lot, nicer kitchen or good "bones" in which to add a nicer kitchen, and a bigger garage and/or more storage for stuff like lawn mowers and bikes)

2) Look for a house roughly equivalent to what we already had (which was not really too small and did have plenty of good points) but in a much upgraded school district (for the STL-area readers, I mean something like Clayton or Ladue schools)

or

3) Get a nicer house, nicer yard and a school district upgrade by moving to St. Charles County.

When we decided on option 3, we got a few raised eyebrows from our college friends. We tend to run with a fairly progressive crowd, by far and large more Democrat than Republican, more liberal than conservative, more urban re-development than suburban settlement. And my husband and I tend to agree with most of those principles as well.

So why did we contribute to suburban sprawl?

1. Lot size. In the St. Louis inner-suburban areas that we would have considered, in general you get tiny houses on tiny lots. Or you spend a cool million or more on something more. Comfortable as our salaries are, we are nowhere near that "cool million" level. There are not-as-inner suburbs where a middle-class family can afford more than three blades of grass, and the ones that appealed most to us were in St. Charles County.

2. Patchwork houses.  Lovers of old houses call this "character". I looked at pictures of aqua carpet, green countertops, pink tile, and other assorted "character" as work to be done.

We had a very brief flirtation with a massive fixer-upper house near the border of U City and Clayton. Good square footage, all brick, double lot, "charm" and "character", a great asking price, a kitchen out of the 80's, bathrooms whose grout was well beyond cleanable, and a basement full of asbestos.

We looked at another one near our neighborhood that had the lot size and square footage we were looking for, plus the price was reasonable. And every room in the place had a different style/color/species of flooring and a different color of paint. The former owners had added on here, tacked on there, re-worked this into that.  The result? Franken-house.

A brand-new house is a blank slate. Walls do not need wallpaper stripped or multiple layers of primer to cover strange paint colors. Floors are level, free of stains and wear. Cabinetry has not been damaged. Basements have never been flooded. Walls do not have a million nail holes or patch marks. Maybe those things add character. But I like that I don't have to remove unwanted character prior to adding my own.

3. Funny smells.  Maybe I'm too picky.  Or maybe I have a thing with smells. But other people's houses smell funny. They smell like people, like pets, like sewer gasses, like cooking spices. Like sweaty feet. You can walk into a house and tell right away if a dog lives there, or if the occupants ever smoked in the house (it seeps into the paint and the ceilings and the ductwork and the dust.) You can tell if they eat a lot of curry, wear a lot of perfume, think fresh cut flowers liven up a place (cut flowers make me sad, and also make my nose run and my chest constrict).

 I'm sure my house smells funny too. But it smells like us. And a newly-built house is wonderfully strange-smell-free.

4. The "cookie cutter" myth. Why do anti-suburbanites claim that in the suburbs, all houses look alike? I've driven through streets in south St. Louis, Creve Coeur, Clayton, U.City, the Central West End, etc where every house looks alike. Not identical--there are variations in siding and landscaping, and over time the subtle differences get amplified with additions, outbuildings, screen porches, new window styles, etc. But anytime there is a neighborhood where houses were built at a similar time, by a similar group of builders, then the houses tend to resemble each other.  In some neighborhoods, you can guess by the outside what the inside layout looks like.

The same is true in planned subdivisions in the suburbs. I don't think its a bad thing. It is merely a predictable thing. Houses are single story, multiple stories, different colors, different yards. I don't actually want my house to stand out from the crowd.

5. Maturity of landscapes. Unless we move (again), my kids will never have a treehouse. We have no trees that large. Even in the 12-year-old house we moved out of, the largest tree on our lot would barely have supported any climbing. The new house has (half-dead) grass, and a few dozen seedling trees. Hopefully in the next year or two we will add some larger trees to that list. I do not consider our lack of mature landscaping to be a downside. In fact, it gives us a blank slate. If we want to keep the middle of our backyard free of obstacles for playing volleyball, we can.

There is a certain appeal to being the caretaker of towering trees. It also brings the risks of strong winds, messy cleanup, and extra expense for changing a home's outdoor spaces.  And we have hopes of at some point adding some solar power to our home. Had we bought a house shaded by mature trees, that would be an impossibility. This way, we can be smart about our planting.

6. Communities planned for the way we live. I have no desire to walk to a grocery store. I'd be limited to bringing home only what I could carry, and have to shop several times a week to keep the fridge stocked for the family. I do not have that kind of time.


And I do not care to live near where I work. If I had a community-focused career (something like a doctor or a teacher), then the idea would be great. But I have a career that supports working for large corporations. Large corporations do not make good neighbors, and I have no desire to move next door to an industrial park. I want to live in a nice residential area.


Maybe someday in the future, hubby and I will revisit the idea of a fixer-upper, or a down-sized house with lots of charm in a older, established neighborhood. But for our lives now, I'm pretty happy with our choice: a blank slate in the suburbs where we can add our own charm, plan our own landscape, make our own memories (and strange smells, lol). We got a good school district, a reasonable house payment, a nice community, and room to grow. 

Let there be lights

In general I love the color choices that were made by the builder in our new house. Dark wood floors, wrought iron, darker glazed cabinetry, warm-colored walls. Overall it was a refreshing change from the plain white walls, white carpets, and medium-toned maple of many of the newer houses that we looked at. 

There is room for improvement, though.  The day we first saw the house, I cringed a few light fixtures. There were three lights with yellow glass in one hallway, a matching fan in the master bedroom, and I swear the dining room chandelier is supposed to hang in the breakfast room.  We have been slow to make changes because we are still paying on the other house (yes still), so replacing brand new light fixtures with different brand new light fixtures is kinda low on the priority list.

When we were spiffing up the old house last year, we replaced a few lights and re-finished a couple more to change out some of the shiny brass that we put in when the house was originally built.(*) So recently we were at the other house for some errand (probably related to the baseball sized hail, or else the various bird attacks, not sure which), and I had a revelation.

We had, in that garage, three small round ceiling lights, completely unused. They're what I call "boob lights", because of the shape. Fairly normal lights, nice white frosted glass.  Despite their shiny brass, I actually like the lights. Hey, I did pick them out. And not only did we have three, but one was still brand-new-in-box. We managed to miscount when the house was being built and the builder had nowhere to install it.

Three lights. Whose glass and shape I like. I have three lights in my new house whose shape is OK but whose glass is a gawd-awful mottled yellow that makes the light look dim (my eyes and yellow light do NOT get along). And we know how to refinish light fixtures.

One $7 can of Rustoleum paint-plus-primer spray in Venetian Bronze, and we went from:

To:

Beautiful, if I do say so myself.  Which I shouldn't as my husband actually did all the hard work both painting them and installing them.  (My apologies if they are a bit hard to really see on the dark countertop--sorry. Photographing them installed on the ceiling is even harder--too much light with them turned on, too little with them off).
 


(*) When we were building our last house, I wanted antique brass light fixtures. I was very very sure that I wanted antique brass fixtures throughout the house. The builder's "lighting allowance" was all of $300 for 3300 square feet of house--4 ceiling fans, 5 bathroom vanity lights, kitchen island, kitchen sink, hallways, dining room chandelier, breakfast room fan, entry way, etc. That silly lighting allowance would not have afforded a single ceiling fan at the overpriced store they sent us to, let alone enough lights for the whole house. And asking for antique brass involved special order. As in, minimum $100 each for a basic "boob light".

Don't get me started on how they gouged us on light bulbs (seriously? $6 each? For a 50cent incandescent? Did I mention that the builder told us that we had no choice in the matter? I know better now...).

After the sticker shock wore off, I decided I could live with cutting our bill down to about a quarter of the original estimate by choosing shiny brass over the antique look (and by buying and installing our own ceiling fans after we moved in).  I never was happy with that color, and by the time we moved out, there were few original light fixtures left in the place. (I never got to changing out shiny brass door knobs, though I'd priced out new ones several times...)

Funny how that worked out so well for the new house.

Birds II and Birds III

We only thought our bird adventures were finished last month with the discovery (and subsequent removal of) a dead bird from our house-for-sale.

We were wrong.

About a week later, we got a phone call from our realtor, on a Friday evening. I got a little excited. I shouldn't have. She had just finished a showing of our house in which she and the show-ees found three more birds in our house. One was still alive.

So the nice couple helped to shoo the live bird out before resuming their tour. (They may have liked the house, but have a house of their own to sell and have not made us any offers. I'm not sure the presence of dead birds helped speed up the process.)

When my husband went to investigate and clean up (again), he found that the birds devised an alternate means of entry. The first one came in through the bathroom vent and pushed his way through the ceiling vent cover (it was hanging loose and the bathroom facilities had clearly been utilized by an avian visitor).

This time, the bathroom vent cover was intact. But they used the same outside vent entrance (my attempts at covering it had been pecked through and they had used some of the netting for a new nest). Instead of coming down the vent, they came through the side of the duct and into the unfinished side of our basement.

So that was fun. My husband did a much more extensive repair job than my attempt. He had to replace a section of vent tubing, and found a vent cover that should be more bird-proof than window screening. I had tried to buy a vent cover, but I couldn't fit a cover over the opening because of the deck ledger board. He used a Dremmel.

So far, so good. So on Thursday night, we were all in the car and kept hearing a funny chirping sound. When we got home, hubby checked his car, found his spare tire had been installed upside down, righted it, and thought all was good.

The car chirped again the next morning. You guessed it. Another bird. In the car.

You'd think these things would learn by now. We own cats. We barbeque chicken. We have power tools. When we talk about "nest eggs" in our house, we mean the financial type! (Or else scrambled).

Sheesh.

A bird in the hand is worth...

Every time my husband goes out of town, there is a minor family disaster. Last time, it involved back-to-back fevers by my kids that took me out of work for most of a week, using up more vacation and sick time than I could afford.

This time, instead of Mother Kristi, it was Mother Nature. Hail. Baseball sized hail fell on our old neighborhood last Saturday night. By "old neighborhood", I mean "location of our previous residence, which we still own and desperately wish to sell". Yeah, thinking that the holes in the roof, siding, deck, landscape lighting, and trees are not going to be highlights of the home tour.

Yes, we have insurance. No, we don't have contractors working yet. Yes, the insurance companies are massively overbooked with the damage. Yes, I could start setting up appointments before an adjuster gets a chance to total it up. No, I don't have time.

I do have a job. And two kids. And running drop-off and pickup singlehandedly all week, plus morning and evening routines, packing all the lunches, etc takes a lot of time when there aren't any extra credit assignments to complete. (Single parents, please stop throwing tomatoes. Yes, I'm whining. But most of you don't have to deal with a dead bird).

Yes, I said dead bird. Inside the house. Inside the hail-damaged house-for-sale. Dead. Inside. (All together now: eeewwwww!)

At least the thing had the presence of mind to keel over on the laminate floor instead of the carpet. Never fear, though, he did nail the carpet pretty good. And the bathroom. His method of entry: bathroom vent. I know this because the bathroom was by far the smelliest place in the house, because the vent cover was hanging down from the ceiling, and because we've had trouble with birds attempting to make nests in that vent before.

So Thursday I spend a precious "vacation" day (of which I have like 2 left, no exaggeration) to drive all over town, meeting with my son's speech pathologist about transitioning to Kindergarten, going to the eye doctor for new glasses, and doing a little yard cleanup at the old house. That's when I found the bird. If I had to guess, he got freaked by the storm and flew into the nice, safe-looking hidey-hole of the vent, found his way into the house, and wasn't smart enough to reverse course after the sirens stopped. And then died of some combination of starvation, dehydration, and banging his head desperately on the window in an attempt at escaping.

I have scrubbed the bathroom from top to bottom (most of a bottle of disinfectant), cleaned every window sill in the house (I think he checked them all), cleaned the kitchen (just in case), mopped the entire family/kitchen/breakfast room laminate floor, and steam cleaned the rest of the carpet in that house. I still need to go back and vacuum up the chunks of fuzz that the steam cleaner left behind (why does it always do that?)

I have also rigged up a bird-proofing system on the external vent cover that involved window screening and a staple gun. The hardware stores sell nice-looking plastic vent covers specifically for this purpose. Alas, the vent in question is in a tight spot under the deck and the pre-fabricated ones don't work without leaving a gap wide enough to keep out, say, a bird-who's-scared-sh*tless-by-killer-hail. (Engineering friends will not be impressed with my handiwork as I neglected to include duct tape in the final solution).

My husband is now home. My house-with-furniture is a mess. My tummy is full of a yummy steak dinner. And we have two yards to mow and a million errands to run. Plus the likelihood of arranging for new roof, gutters, siding, window screens, and deck railings and post caps.

I guess the minor family disaster is over and we are back to our regularly scheduled chaos.

The Cost of Custom Window Treatments

My husband and I had our first home "custom" built. By "custom", I mean that we chose the lot from a dozen or so available options in the neighborhood, chose the basic floor plan from a dozen or so available from the builder, and then paid through the nose for anything other than the cheapest-possible-finishes-and-fixtures.

Everything cost extra.

I think I lived through two or three months of constant sticker shock. I remember one moment in particular that nearly made me faint in horror. The helpful salesperson offered to set us up with an appointment with a local custom drapery shop. Any draperies we ordered through the custom shop could be added to the cost of the home, and paid for by the mortgage instead of out-of-pocket. I probably looked at him funny about the financing, because he patiently explained to me that it can cost $1000 or more per window for window treatments.

One thousand dollars to decorate a window.

Now, I'm not an idiot, and I'd been shopping before. Basic mini-blinds at the time cost about $25 a piece, maybe $100 for fancy wood-look ones. What the heck costs a grand? (I was also mentally calculating the number of windows in the house...19 altogether if memory serves...meaning curtains would cost more than my car).

Clearly, we declined to talk to the custom drapery service.

Now, more than a decade later, I am beginning to understand why custom drapes might require their own mortgage, or at least the surrender of a firstborn child. Not, mind you, that I've ever paid anywhere near ten Benjamins for some cloth and a couple of poles.

We only ever bought two sets of mini-blinds for that first house, one for a closet and one for the basement storage room. Everything else got fabric. The house had relatively common-sized windows, and I sew. Over the years I did and re-did several rooms, spending between $10 and $200 per window. Some windows, like the 48"x48" bathroom window, got a $5 café rod and about $5 of crushed voile yardage (plus about 20 minutes of sewing time, and butterfly-themed shower curtain holders that were a wedding gift). Truly custom drapes for $10, installed.

Some, like the old kitchen sliding door, got a more expensive setup with a ~$100 decorative traverse rod plus a ~$100 premade pinch-pleat patio-panel (the $100 was with a sale and a coupon). We later replaced that slider with a French door and ditched the drapes altogether, and were happier for the trade.

Our newer house is a bit more complex. Our window sizes vary widely, and we have some fancier ones. Half-rounds, bays, extra-tall windows in the 2-story family room (with a second pair of arch-topped ones above the first set). And we are spending a tad more upfront on the window hardware because changing that part later on can be very frustrating and generally bad for the integrity of drywall (holes can only take so much spackle). And some windows are just more of a challenge. The bay window rod "system" for the master bedroom alone was around $300 (after a series of coupons and a sale).

We have been able to re-use many of our non-neutral drapes from the old house (Purple! Red!), so I haven't needed to buy a lot of new fabric (kudos to my re-decorating-and-packrat habits). Still, I'm all about the sales, the coupons, the comparison shopping. And the DIY factor.

Ironically, we have recently installed a new decorative traverse rod over our new kitchen sliding door. Onto it, I hung our old premade pinch-pleat patio-panel. (I really want to change the new door for a French door too, but that would cost me a grand. Or more.). I have yet to make a new custom curtain for the new, 48"x48" window in our new master bathroom, but we have made do for the moment with a concoction that involves two shower curtain rods and a pair of sheer curtains tucked and excess fabric rolled around the rods (it looks better than it sounds).

Lucky for my husband, I decided to only coverthe two lower windows in the 2-story family room. Lucky because the 108" tall windows were more than enough of a challenge. They look lovely with (sale-priced) off-the-shelf sheers and the red fringed window scarves we removed from our previous living/dining room. Adding fabric to odd-shaped upper windows sixteen feet off the ground is not high on our priority list at the moment.

Including installation, with all of the trickiness of window sizes and heights, I can actually understand a $1000 price tag for complicated hardware, lots of fabrics, custom design and sewing, and the risk of installation mishaps. But armed with a ladder, a drill, a level, a sewing machine, and bargain hunting instincts, I didn't have to donate a limb in order to cover my windows.

Updates

After 5 months in the new house, I hereby announce that our decorating style is no longer "Neo-Cardboard with Touches of Dust and Bare Windows". Instead we are back to our "Neo-Traditional with Touches of Barbie and Zhu Zhu Pets".

It seriously took us until Christmas to unpack all the moving boxes (or carry them down to the basement and out of living areas). After Christmas, there was a secondary wave of box invaders from gift shipping and packaging (and the inevitable un-packing and re-packing in order to decorate). Cardboard is like an infection. It spreads if not treated aggressively.

Most of our windows now have window coverings. We were able to move a lot of drapes from our old house because red and deep purple are not considered to be "neutral" tones. I have a fondness for fabric window treatments, coupled with bargain-hunting instincts and sewing skills. What that means is that I left the old house properly-draped in neutral tones (primarily in sheers to allow for maximum light), and I also own at least two large storage tubs of drapes that did not find rods in the new house. The few windows that aren't yet dressed are odd-sizes (like the 2-story windows flanking the fireplace in the living room—those are gonna need a lot of fabric). I don't do blinds, except in very limited circumstances (namely, inside closets or other areas where I don't have to look at them).

The kids' rooms look properly kid-like. Charlotte is already lobbying to paint her room, but she has shelves and pictures hung, plus fuchsia curtains to brighten the place. Trystan's room got a brand-new bunk bed set that gives us a little extra sleeping space for guests. Since out-growing his crib, he had been sleeping on a queen-sized bed that I had dubbed the Once and Future Guest Bed. I could have let him keep it, but it's really hard to find kids bedding in queen size, and the bunks are a lot more fun to climb. The queen bed has resumed duty in the guest room. (We have a guest room!)

We haven't done a lot else to the new house. We have grand plans. And a second house payment. The old house is still on the market, and is annoying the crap out of me. We have had several offers to rent the place, but we really don't want to be landlords. We don't have the time, and I don't have the heart to see what kinds of horrors a renter could potentially inflict upon my former home.

The old house is looking pretty nice. We painted our dining room white (it had been a conversation- and appetite-stimulating golden color). We painted our laundry room white (it had been bubble-gum pink). We have removed additional nails and patched and painted the walls. The landscape is in its winter-dormant state, though some of the spring bulbs are starting to come up due to the warm weather. The price is about as good as it gets (less than what we paid for it, and we are throwing in a free deck, flooring upgrades, and appliance upgrades with purchase). We are just waiting on a buyer.

I hate the words "bad economy".

But I have a wealth of ideas for gardening, decorating, and basement finishing. As we frequently say, "When the house sells."

Thanksgiving Break - The Long Version

Thanksgiving is over, and once again I feel like I need a vacation to recover from my vacation. The kids had the entire week off school, and while I'd love to say that we had a fabulous time together, in reality I was grumpy.

I got no writing done. I failed to get much of the housecleaning done that I wanted (there are still cardboard boxes in annoying parts of the house). I didn't get Charlotte's ripped school bag sewn back together. I felt like I yelled at the kids more than played with them (to be fair, they are loud loud loud and don't seem to follow directions. And they whine. A lot).

Mother of the year, I am not.

We did a few fun things. Last Monday we found our local library and signed up for cards (it's a different county than where we lived before). That branch is pretty big, and had several computers and a train table (as well as books), so the three of us spent a happy two hours relaxing and came home with a dozen books (and two movies). That afternoon, we had the local YMCA pool nearly to ourselves during open swim time. Most of the local schools were in session, and I suppose swimming isn't top of the Thanksgiving week activity list for most people.

Tuesday we mostly shopped for our Thanksgiving dinner. Unlike my friend Bethany, who made hers from locally-sourced and home-grown ingredients, ours was pretty commercial. We did buy a hormone-free, fresh turkey from a local small grocery store (the turkey itself was probably not local). The rest came from Target.
The kitchen in our new house has double ovens. I love having two full-sized ovens. Yes, I'm showing off, but I really love love having two full-sized ovens. My husband dressed the turkey and had it roasting at the same time the kids and I were making pies. After the pies were done, we made green bean and sweet potato casseroles. Most years I have to practically make a spreadsheet to schedule oven time to make sure everything gets done. This year, no problems.

We saw The Muppets this weekend. I think I was more excited about it than the kids were. Fabulous movie, btw, especially if you grew up on the Muppet Show, The Muppet Movie, The Great Muppet Caper, The Muppets Take Manhatten, etc.

Let's see, what else...Trystan had a soccer game on Black Friday. I did some after-Thanksgiving shopping, but mainly online (I do not care to fight a crowd or stay up late..there will be more deals coming..there always are).

We picked up more drapery rods and one of the sets hung. Slowly we are whittling down the list of naked windows in our house. I have bought very few actual drapes, just hardware. I had a rather substantial stash of non-neutral fabric panels from the old house that work rather well in the new one (though I might need to buy more sheers to finish out the last few windows--those were neutral enough to leave in the old place).

We started decorating for the holidays. I am disappointed to say that I couldn't find a 9-12 foot pre-lit tree that was sufficiently discounted (we have high ceilings in our living room, and I was hoping for something really tall). Regardless of height, the cats love the Christmas tree. It is 1) a tree to climb 2) covered in toys (all with tails), and 3) has a soft velvet tree skirt to nap on. As long as they don't 1) knock it over 2) chew through the lights or 3) break any irreplaceable ornaments, we will all have a happy holiday season.

Opening Houses

There is such a thing as too much HGTV, people.

We had an open house last weekend, and one of the only negative comments that our realtor passed along to us was that our front porch was not as welcoming as it should be, because we have flower pots with some half-dead flowers in them.

To that comment, I roll my eyes.

The flower pots aren't for sale, dead or alive. Besides, we're talking max $50 of pots, dirt, and dead petunias (my 2nd or 3rd batch for the year...even watering them daily hasn't quite been enough in this heat). If that's a deal breaker, well, I don't really know what to say about that. It's like complaining that the comforter on my daughter's bed is too girly (The comforter is not for sale either!)

Now, the grass in the front of our house has taken a serious beating this summer, and that is something that a prospective buyer might keep an eye on. A month of 100-degree heat, no rain, and a professional lawn service (who cut the grass way, way, way too short) have sent it way into the "dormant" end of the spectrum. At the same time, our neighbors on both sides are in the same boat. And the ones across the street who have a sprinkler system timed to go off every morning aren't doing much better(!). That is, unfortunately, something we are unhappy with but can't do much about in a hurry. We are watering it. A lot. There is only so much you can do when it is 100 degrees (or even 90's and sunny) and you have a western exposure. Grass will neither be reasoned with nor bribed. My husband and I have joked about spray paint. (If only that were an option)

The grass may be unhappy, but my mums, sedum, and rose bushes that also adorn the front are doing nicely. Personally, I'd take pretty flowers over a maintenance-greedy water-sucking thatch of plain ol' grass any day. But, it's not up to me, it's up to some buyer who may have some ideal image of thick green turf on their "gotta-have-it" list.

*sigh* Selling a house is a pain in the petunias.

Floored

Looking for a house? I've got one for sale. Ok, so that's not exactly a surprise to anyone who's read my last few blog posts. No, I'm not posting the MLS link or the photos here. Go dig around realtor.com or coldwellbankergundaker.com and see what you can find. If it's nice, make an offer. Maybe it will be mine :)

Getting the house ready to list has been a huge chore. I never want to talk to another flooring contractor again, and I'm thrilled that our new house is brand-new with brand-new carpet that should last us many good years (at least long enough to forget the trauma). I have some advice for contractor-types:

Communicate with your potential customers. Frequently and honestly. It's not much to ask, I swear.

Two different contractor lost our business for communication problems. The first was an independent company recommended by our realtor. I'm not naming their name because I did get an apology phone call after the fact. But basically, the sales rep showed (an hour late) with two small squares of carpet (his "samples"), took measurements. And then we waited a week and heard nothing from him. This was in early July and we were aiming to get our house photographed and listed by the 21st of July (and he knew this).

When the president of the company called later to apologize (sort-of), he said that the rep had sent us email (he read off the email address...was typo-d so it never got to us...our email has our last name in the domain name and he spelled it wrong), and that the rep had called (he hadn't). Knowing that we were in a bit of a time crunch, you'd think that he might have followed up at least once (possibly more) to make sure that we got his estimate, or sent it by snail mail in addition to email, just in case. Whatever.

Next we went to our friendly neighborhood home improvement warehouse store, where they had nice-looking in-stock beige carpet (nothing fancy, but about the same color/quality as what we were replacing) and a big ol' sign advertising "72 hour install" on in-stock carpet. Perfect, right? Not so much. They hired a sub-contractor. The sub took 4 days (of their promised 2) to CALL us to set up the appointment to measure for the carpet (scheduled for 2 days later than that), then 3 more days to turn the numbers back to the store, then waited over a week (of their promised 2-day waiting period) to call and schedule the install (which they wanted to set for 2-3 weeks later, not 72 hours).

In the mean time, we'd gone back to the home-improvement warehouse store and complained. The store was very helpful and scrounged up a crew to get it done before the 28th of July (see how we'd already had to push the listing date back?). The crew was literally in our house until 10pm one Friday night finishing up.

Hooray for the store, and big hooray for that crew.

To the other sub: I hope that the store re-thinks how they work contracts with them. True, we were buying inexpensive carpet, but the install costs aren't tied to the cost of the carpet. And those time-frames are set by the store (with whom we'd signed the contracts and paid the money), and should have been respected. If they couldn't handle the job they should have called on day 1, not day 7. I would have forgiven them for saying that they couldn't do it. I can't forgive them for wasting my time.

All is well. We have all-new carpet in most of our house (we didn't do the bedrooms--there was no where to move all the furniture). Our house looks really nice. Thankfully. Now we just need a buyer.

Packing Packing Packing

Closets are scary, scary places. Every time I delve into one that really needs cleaning, I am both horrified and disgusted by what I find in them.

No, this isn't related to my joke about how the new garage floor coating will mask all the bloodstains, or how when we up-sized our fridge, we could fit a whole nother person in it.

We are packrats, but not of the insect-attracting, living-room-composting variety.  We are clean, and the visible parts of our house stay relatively uncluttered.

But oh, the closets.

My husband and I are also both masters at the video game Tetris. That's the one with the different-shaped pieces that drop from the sky and you have to quickly flip them around and scoot them into place at the bottom without leaving any gaps. I bet that we would be pretty darned good at a 3-d version of it also. Because our house is like that. Every square inch of space, every gap, every nook and cranny has been well utilized.

Packing items into fixed-sized boxes for temporary storage and their eventual joyride across town in a semi is very different than Tetris. It is more like eating a restaurant salad. I don't know how they fit so much stuff in those bowls, but no matter how many bites you take, the salad looks as full as ever.

I have to face the fact that we own too many of certain items. Dragons. Crayons. Chip and dip sets. Blenders. Cake pans. Unused glow-in-the-dark bracelets and wands. Dead computer parts. Books on how to write software for the ancestors of those dead computer parts (MS Dos from 1985? VB4? Anyone? Anyone?).

I filled an entire "extra-large" size box with fabric that I never got around to sewing. This is the box to donate. I have about a dresser drawer full of bits that I am keeping for now. We filled three or four large sweater-type storage boxes with college t-shirts. Several more with just sweaters. There are still sweaters in our closet. 

Books. Books. Books. We have purchased and filled 30 book-sized packing boxes from Uhaul. And used a few other smallish boxes. And we haven't packed anything. I own one e-reader, too, which after this will be seeing a lot more action.

The biggest lesson that I'm learning from our moving adventure is that we can't wait eleven years between closet cleanouts. We can't just buy new stuff without getting rid of the old. Even if we have the storage space for the overflow. Because the next house may not be our last house. In another eleven or fifteen or even thirty years, someone will have to clean out our closets again. We don't need to scare them.

The Girl Who Powerwashed the Hornet's Nest

Our house sparkles. Day-glow, iridescent, crystal-clear, shiny. Well, parts of it do. In order to show the house we need to get it to the "uncluttered and immaculate" stage. I believe we have achieved "uncluttered" in exactly two rooms (both of them bathrooms), and "immaculate" on a few select planar surfaces of the house, mainly outdoors.

This weekend, we successfully tackled the last* large-scale project in the great summer-fixup: the garage. Our garage floor now has a shiny new, waterproof epoxy coating, complete with colored sprinkles that looks far nicer than our formerly-stained and patched floor. And our neighbors got to view the entire contents of our garage spread across our lawn for a little over twenty-four hours while it dried. But, we sorted and packed (and purged!), and the inside of the garage now looks wonderfully neat and organized.

After helping with the garage floor, I played with our new toy. We spent some of our garage-sale earnings on a powerwasher. Why oh why didn't we buy one of these suckers (blowers?) years ago? I am a total convert. Our concrete patio used to look stained and ugly after eleven years of water and the sooty mess that I think comes from living a little too close to the airport. Our white-vinyl-and-trex deck also had a stained floor and general layer of dirt that made it look grimy and that was nearly impossible to clean, even with a scrub brush and a bottle of housewash.

No longer.

With nothing but high-powered water, I have magically transformed our concrete patio into...wait for it...a concrete patio. Ok, a new-looking concrete patio. And the deck is shiny and sparkly.
And I took my life into my hands in dispatching a hornet's nest with my magic water wand. Poor things were tending eggs, and kept coming back looking for them (every time they would fly back around, I would magically summon a tornado from a safe distance away.) The deck is now free of bird guano and all of its crevasses are free of accumulated dirt.

While I was on a roll, I discovered that our old gray-spotted plastic patio chairs (which moved with us from our last apartment 11 years ago), were actually white. The back of our house was the same gray as the front (and not brown). And we can now sit on the deck box/bench without turning the seat of our pants gray. I might have kept going, but I was getting sunburned and I really don't want to see next month's water bill.

Now that most of the projects are done, we have to do some massive furniture re-arranging (i.e. staging) and some more massive decluttering (holy smokes do we have a lot of junk in our house). And hopefully at least one of the various flooring places we have called will eventually find us worthy of their carpeting and actually agree to both measure *and* install in a timely fashion (seriously, how hard can it be for people to accept the money that we're offering them?)

The house looks pretty good (if you can see past our boxes). Not so good that I'm changing my mind about moving (did I mention the granite countertops in the new place? Double ovens? 9-foot ceilings and wood floors?). But good enough that I will be proud to offer it for sale and hope that it earns a fast bid (or maybe 3? I could totatlly go for a bidding war....don't laugh...)

*Technically, the ginormous-yet-badly-overcrowded office closet may be a bigger project than the garage. But it is air-conditioned.

Answering the question

As of Saturday, my husband and I have answered my question of whether we stay in our current house or move.

We move.

I suppose not all of the details are cast in stone yet, but we signed a contract on a new house in St. Charles County. Yes, that makes us contributors the St. Louis metro area suburban sprawl. But, we weren't exactly in the city, or even the inner-most ring of suburbs. And the move just makes sense for our family.

Well, it makes sense until I think about the fact that we made a non-contingent offer and haven't yet sold our current house. Details, details. Yes, it's a financial risk, but a calculated one. We think we are getting a tremendous value in the new house and, at first glance, it may even appraise higher than the sell price, based on the comparables in the neighborhood. This risk has been calculated and re-calculated in spreadsheet after spreadsheet after calculator app after spreadsheet.

The house is beautiful and had just about everything on our wishlist. Three bedrooms for the family, one for a dedicated guest bedroom, an office for me, another for my husband, a big kitchen with granite, gas stove, and stainless double ovens, a three car garage, and a Flat Back Yard! The basement is unfinished, so we can spend some time mulling over arrangements of rec rooms or media rooms or craft rooms or whatever (and in the mean time, have a ton of wide-open storage space to help us sort through our junk after the move). It was a builder's spec house and has a lot more bells and whistles than we had hoped to get. I am sure we will find projects as time goes on, but a lot of it is already done.

Now comes the hard part. The packing and moving while simultaneously making our house appear perfect and glowing for potential buyers. Oh, and do all that with two kids, two cats, and a work deadline conveniently timed around the week we should have movers showing up at our door.

The kids are spending the week with one of their grandmothers, happily going to the zoo and fireworks, museums and pools. My husband and I are spending the week painting and painting and painting some more. Plus as much packing and sorting as we can manage to squeeze in. Done so far are two formerly-purple bathrooms and the formerly-navy-blue-and-"cavelike" basement stairwell. The upstairs hallway has sported builders-bare-minimum-off-white until now (it is halfway to a creamy-but-neutral color). The ceilings of nearly the entire first floor will get a refresh too, due to spills on them from the floor above (one our fault, one from leaving the kids alone in the bath too long where they discovered the joys of water fights).

Outside, our shutters are getting a bright coat of paint to even out their color as they have faded over 11 years of south-western sun exposure, and the front porch gets a coat of fresh white paint. Also in the list are a new sealer on the garage floor, mulch all around our assortment of garden beds, and powerwashing of the rest of the house and deck.

Oh yeah, and we will be replacing a fair amount of carpet in the house (a task that is just due after 11 years of wear and tear).

We are exhausted already. But this should be worthwhile.

Did I mention that the new house is already painted in neutrals and spice colors that will coordinate well with our furniture? That means no painting. For a while anyway.