And although we have been spending much more time up at the Red House (weeks off for vacation and multiple weekends), it’s the seemingly endless small projects that just constantly slow us down.

Take for example the following list of “small” projects.

1. Door Knobs. Even though we started replacing most of the glass door knobs with “fancy” metal ones, the fact is, we still have 3 or 4 left to do. While it may seem like a quick and easy task, inevitably there is drilling involved (removing the old door knob), spackling over what was drilled because the new doorknob is higher, and finally painting around the new one.

2. Radiators. Since we first painted the radiators nearly EIGHT YEARS AGO, some of the radiators are already peeling and look like crap.  So until we can get radiator covers, quite a few of the radiators need to be redone.

3. Escutcheons. (I do love that word!) Besides the old radiators, we also have old plumbing pipes in every room on the first floor of the house that bring hot and cold water to the upstairs. They are all badly in need of being “finished” off with escutcheons, also known as split flanges in the plumbing world. And after repeated attempts to find them online as well as roaming the aisles at two different big box stores, we haven’t been able to locate the exact size we need.  Plus they are ridiculous expensive. See here we kind of finagled one at the top, but are missing the second one.

4. Door Hinges. Another thing that took a lot of time was trying to get the moulding to fit around the patio door because of the hinges. Lynn had to painstakingly cut the moulding to fit but even with the help of at least three power tools and a handsaw, the cut still came out kind of messy. He tried to spackle around it but still has to paint. (This “little” project by the way took nearly 6 hours.)

5. Moulding And More Moulding. All of the moulding around the entry ways and doorways in the dining room has yet to be completed.

And even though the moulding around the front door to the house was finished YEARS AGO, (well at least two if not more) it was never painted.

Speaking of the front door let’s go outside for a bit.

6.  Steps. A couple of steps would be nice if anyone actually ever wanted to come through the front door. We are still waiting for a contractor to connect us with a mason who can build us a set of stairs. This year.

7.  Attic Windows. We also need at least four new attic windows since those were never replaced.

I particularly like the old vent on the left and the duct-tape-held-together screen on the right. (As in not.)  But let’s continue.

8.  Siding. Remember the siding that was done last year? A piece already fell off.  Luckily it was still under “warranty” and the siding contractor came out to fix it.  Yesterday. This is what it looked like before that happened.

Granted, it was not a big deal, but a piece was missing! But let’s go back inside the house.

9. Threshold. Going back into the dining room, wouldn’t some sort of threshold be nice leading into the kitchen? Unless you, unlike myself, like the idea of a trip and fall every time you are going from one room to the other.

We’ve also started to bring up some furniture that had been in our Long Island house in the hopes of renovating (or at least painting) them too.

10. Chairs. We have a lot of chairs. These green ones we picked up at a garage sale for $25.00. (That price was for all four, not each!)

And then these Bentwood-style ones that we recently had re-caned (the seats that is) but now want to paint the frames.

In funky, hip colors, of course.

11. Pictures. We have also started to hang up some pictures! Hip Hip Hooray! But with Lynn you don’t just hang a picture on a wall and hope it’s centered. You measure the wall (at least 3 or 4 times), then the picture (at least 5 or 6 times), and then hope to find a stud that will support the picture. Then you try to find a pencil that has a point so you can mark EXACTLY where the picture will go, and then when the pencil breaks you spend a really, really long time trying to find a pencil sharpener. (Ours just happens to be in the shape of Big Ben.)

These are just some of the smaller pictures, photographs and postcards that need to be hung up most of which we’ve collected over the years from traveling together. And yes, since quite a few of them are laid out on the ping pong table, this has curtailed our “tisch tennis” playing indefinitely.

Here is one piece that was successfully hung! And a shout out to my Uncle John for letting us buy his artwork at a reasonable price.

But let’s continue the list, this time noting the bigger projects.

12.  Guest Bathroom. We have one last bathroom to remodel. This means the tub is being replaced with a shower, and a new vanity, mirror, lighting, and walls need to be installed. We are still waiting for an estimate on this project from our contractor and need to decide on what kind of tile we want on the floor.

But let’s go back outside.

13.  Dead Tree. In addition to the “last bathroom,” we also have one last big tree that needs to unfortunately be cut down. Every time the wind blows, we are afraid it’s going to fall on the house; it’s been dead for years and at one point was one of two trees that held a  hammock between them that was ideal for napping and listening to the sound of the wind and the birds.

14. Stump Grinding. And although we have a “tree guy” who has cut down other trees on the property, he does not in fact cut the stumps down, so we have to get a “stump guy” to do that. (We have four stumps the last time I counted that need to be “stumped” so to speak.)

15. Foundation. We also need to chistle off the spray foam we put into the holes in the masonry a couple of years ago (yes, it does in fact look like orange vomit spilling out of the house), and figure out how to patch the stone foundation. (That’s a really fun project I’m so not looking forward to but it absolutely has to be done.)

16. Garden Fence. We also need a totally new fence around my garden to keep the rabbits and deer out so they don’t eat everything I plant in the summer! This will be a very big expensive project unless I veto some of Lynn’s very lovely but overly ambitious design ideas.

Did I mention the crappy weather we’ve been having? So absolutely nothing outside can get started until it stops snowing and turns warmer.

Let’s go back inside.

17. Staircase. In my last post in January, I had thought we were going to redo the stairs with a vinyl floor tile that looked like wood. When we discovered however, that EVERY SINGLE STAIR TRED WAS A SLIGHTLY DIFFERENT SIZE (and would need to be cut accordingly), we realized we would have been working on this one project probably for the rest of our lives.  Therefore, we quickly switched gears and decided (for now at least), to just paint them, add some moulding on three sides, and have them professionally redone down the road.

So, at least we have one down and one staircase to go. (Lynn informs me that on the second staircase (shown below) he is definitely not taping them first – way too time consuming. )

18. The Deck. Yes, we do in fact want to extend the deck and wrap it around the back of the house. And add a gazebo. And maybe a giraffe or two. Just kidding.

When our son Nicholas was small, I would always make him a chocolate cake for his birthday and put a plastic train (complete with a track) on top that you could wind up and it would circle the cake. Both he and I thought it was pretty cool. Our daughter, Rachel, got the same cake but her cake topping of choice were usually those little paper umbrellas (in pink of course.)  If I had to compare the Red House to my favorite kind of cake, it would probably be fairly simply (although the renovations we’ve endured have indeed been kind of complex.) Perhaps a lemon or orange-zest flavored pound cake with tiny strawberries and some delicious whipped cream?

So, friends, the Red House like any cake, is still “baking”. And yes, all my cakes were always made from “scratch.”

The goal this past fall was to have contractor #3 do “indoor” work during the cold snowy winter months. It wasn’t like there was a huge amount of work that needed to be done in the kitchen but it was the annoying little projects (many of which required a very large ladder) that Lynn and I were simply not capable of doing. (#1 we don’t have a ladder that long and #2, I hate heights. More than that I hate being the girl that holds the ladder for the boy to go up and hope he doesn’t fall.)

So we had a “stop sign” window that had been installed roughly 6 years ago that was never finished or painted.

It was annoying to look at and even more so since no one could reach it!

Because we couldn’t just have one annoyance in the kitchen, on the other side of the wall, same height but different shape, we had another window that was also unfinished! This we named the “Juliet window” because technically if you stood in that room (a bedroom that will hopefully morph into a closet), one could lean out and look down into the kitchen.  No one knows why we named it the “Juliet window” other than it kind of reminded us of Juliet’s balcony in Verona.

Consequently, a few weeks ago, both these windows had proper moulding installed around them and were painted as well.

We also had the proper high hats finally installed in the ceiling (you can see one above the stop sign window).

Last but not least, we had a range hood installed above the stove which required yet another trip to Ikea to get one last kitchen cabinet. The range hood we originally bought was high end with a fancy glass top which our contractor told us would need to be ducted outside thus costing millions of dollars to put up (well not millions but you get the idea). It’s sitting somewhere in the garage if anyone wants it.

We also bizarrely now have a light above the kitchen stove. I know that’s not strange but truthfully it’s taking me longer than I expected to acclimate to actually being able to see the food I’m cooking!

Besides the kitchen, the other major project this winter was to paint the “pink” staircase.  I’m assuming the previous owner was trying to match a pink bedroom that was on the second floor because the color was exactly the same. One summer, I attempted to paint some of the aforementioned staircase.  This resulted in a staircase that basically looked like this for nearly 7 years because neither Lynn nor I wanted to tackle it.  Yep, it was pretty ugly.

I particularly like the couple of pieces of duct tape I must have stuck on many years ago trying to cover the holes in the wall.

Besides the pink staircase, the walls were also a mess as was the ceiling on the landing.

OK, so apparently we have a problem with lead paint in an old house. Really? Our contractor was hemming and hawing about it but I went into denial mode even though I understood EXACTLY what our contractor was telling us. This resulted in an up-charge for all new sheetrock and special paint that would somehow magically “contain” the lead.

Let me just say, it cost me as much to paint this one frigging staircase as it does for me to pay the landscaper to mow our back 4 acres FOR THE ENTIRE SUMMER SEASON.

Yes, thank you I will take a deep breath.

So, in the end the staircase came out quite nice and contractor #3 did in fact even paint the doors.

Really now that I look at the before and after, it turned out very nice!

Right now that both staircases are done we need to figure out what to do with the steps. These stairs, like the stairs we had when we owned a house on Long Island, are in pretty bad shape and were simply painted over and over again.  A few weeks ago we tried to sand one of them. 20 minutes later we gave up realizing it was a project that A) wasn’t the worth the time and B) would come out crappy whether we painted or sanded. So, basically a lose-lose scenario.

Because we’re trying to save some money (we still need the guest bathroom totally renovated by next summer and hope to expand the deck), we thought we’d try putting down some vinyl floor planks ourselves over the existing treads and see how that looks.

Truthfully I can’t tell the difference between the vinyl and the “real” floor below. Between both staircases (14 stairs each), I’m thinking this might be an affordable alternative.

On the weather front, we drove up to the Red House Friday night in 59 degree weather, hit some rain and a 20 degree drop in temperature, only to wake up to about 6 inches of snow (if not more). Luckily, our neighbors across the street and next door were extremely kind and snow plowed the sidewalk and lower part of our driveway so we could get out. And yes, come the spring, we’re finally going to buy our own snowblower and hope to snag a discount for an end-of season sale. (Thank you guys, you know who you are!)

Finally, we are still winding down after a whirlwind Christmas holiday with our kids and family and a week-long FOODIE road trip to SC and NC. (Note to young chefs we met, we appreciated everything you cooked for us but NOT EVERYTHING NEEDS TO BE GRILLED.)

I’m hoping 2018 will be a good year for us and the Red House. So to my readers I send  best wishes for good health, much happiness and love, no parking or speeding tickets, great wine, real farm to table food and lots and lots of money.

PS Our daughter Rachel, gave us this cutting board for Christmas and we LOVE it!

Yes, thank you for asking, I do, in fact, have a headache…

It’s Thursday, the day we’ve been waiting for nearly 3 months to get our bedroom floor installed.

Three months prior, this is the image that greeted us early in the morning. Boxes of wood flooring that had simply been dumped in our driveway. How they were getting up to the second floor bedroom appeared to be a mystery.

When we had two other bedroom floors done 3 summers ago, I don’t remember it being such a big deal. All the supplies and the wood got delivered IN THE SAME DAY and the installer came and did BOTH rooms in 2 days.

Now, we have one room, a narrow hallway and two small landings and it’s become a project that became impossible to schedule let alone have all the required materials delivered. Did I mention that this one room and above mentioned spaces is also costing roughly $500 more than both bedrooms combined?

Three guys and 8 hours later, we had half a bedroom and the hallway done. In fairness, they actually weren’t able to start until 10:30 a.m. even after showing up by 9:15 a.m. because even though the wood has been here for nearly three months, everything else they needed (plywood, matching wood thresholds and tar-like paper that is making the whole house smell like we put in a new driveway) was not and one of the installers had to go pick  everything else up himself at the BIG BOX store.

Obviously, this is no way to run a business!

The installers were concerned they were not going to be able to finish the job in 2 days so I had to give them the reality check that they might have to work on a Saturday (imagine that)! Christmas Eve I said would work for us too. (A small lie as to when we would next be back up at the house, but effective.)  Their response was they would be here by 9 a.m. tomorrow and bring a “fourth” guy.

In case you’re wondering, this is what the bedroom floor looked like prior to the installation.

Plus a hallway that was still covered in what looked like old snake skin patterned linoleum circa 1964.

And two very dreary landings. Here’s one of them.

Day 2.

8:56 a.m. The two original guys show up. No word on third guy (the boss) and the mystery “fourth” guy. The compressor goes on right away as does the radio where they’ve managed to find a station that’s playing Lynyrd Skynyrd. I can live with that.

9:59 a.m. Third guy (boss) shows up by himself.

10:20 a.m. “Fourth” guy shows up. He’s actually the guy who came out in JUNE to do the original estimate. We spend a lot of time complaining about BIG BOX store and how they don’t have anyone working there in flooring who knows anything about flooring. Really? I remind myself they are subcontractors and tell him this is our very last project with BIG BOX store.  Well, at least I hope so.

1:34 p.m. “Fourth” guy leaves to go do paperwork for another job and says he just came to “help,” and make sure they would finish today. We tell each other that we hope to never see one another again (in a nice way) but then I mention we were thinking about putting some carpet in one room and bingo – he does that too.

Meanwhile, when they’re working upstairs, I go outside to look at the garden.  This summer weather (oops, I forgot today is the first day of autumn) has resulted in very colorful wild flowers, lots of peppers and jalapenos and marigolds that look like they are just starting the summer season not ending it.

After the garden, I walk around the house and look at all the new gutters that we had installed Labor Day weekend which seem to be holding up so far.  Of course, it has barely rained in the past 3 weeks and even this weekend the temps are in the high 80’s!

One of the gutters is ridiculously long but we are hoping that the “pond” that collected on the side of the house after the last heavy rain storm won’t have a chance to form again if we try and divert the water as far away from the house (and down the driveway) as possible. The bonus feature of this gutter is that it actually flips up (so you can mow under it) which I thought was pretty clever.

Geez, it looks even longer in this shot!

2:55 p.m. One of the two original installers has to leave to go get a “haircut” since he has a second job bartending at a banquet hall that night. My reaction is why not just sweep your hair up in a”man bun.” He was already in his car before I could suggest that to him or even hand him a pony tail holder.

Now we’re down to two guys. I go back to the garden and look at the last remaining tomato still clinging to the vine, decide to leave it alone but cut the pumpkin since I figure evil bunny might eat it before I could at least admire it.  The pumpkin is heavier than I thought but I love its “wrinkles” and the vibrant shade of orange.

3:21 p.m. They claim they’re done and start packing up all their things. I go upstairs to look and yes, I am impressed, the floors came out really nice! But then I realize we didn’t pay for them to install any quarter round moulding around the baseboards so Lynn has yet another project to add to his very long “to do list.”

I happened to catch the sun shining in the windows after they left which made a pretty pattern on the bedroom floor.

The landing came out really nice, too.

But wait, why do we have so many boxes of wood left? FIVE BOXES to be precise. Did they totally overestimate the job? Yes, they did, Yes, indeed. We decide to put four of them in the car (the fifth box is broken and impossible to carry down the stairs) and return them to the store in the morning. Then, I think, we can relax for the rest of the day.

Relax? Oh yeah, I forgot, we need to put the bed back in the room so we can sleep tonight which means setting up the frame and dragging in the box spring and mattress and making up the bed. But before this can be done, everything in the room has to be swept, then mopped. Including the landing with windows and window sills that hadn’t been washed since we got new windows 6 years ago!

But wait, suddenly we realized that the installers had taken off all the doors – doors to the bathroom and bedroom and hallway – in order to install the floor, but hadn’t put them back up. And guess what, when we tried to put one of them back up, we realized it wouldn’t fit because now the floor was higher! So while we thought about taking the doors outside and shaving a bit off (as we have done for other doors in the past), the thought  of carrying 3 doors down the stairs, outside, and then back up again was daunting.

So Lynn brought the saw horses upstairs and we cut two of the three down so they’d fit. Then I made the bed – sheets, blanket and comforter – only to realize I had forgotten the mattress pad (!) so I stripped the bed and started all over again.

This final floor in our bedroom was our last project for the summer. Hip Hip Hooray!

I’ll leave you with a summery flower arrangement I put together from the Red House garden and hope everyone has a lovely fall and not too dreary a winter.

PS I just realized our new dining room table almost exactly matches the oak floors we put in the bedroom! Trust, me this was purely accidental.

Along with the massive siding project, we finally broke down and hired an electrician to put up every light we had purchased in the last seven years for the Red House as well as a new fan for the ping pong room. Oh yeah, maybe someone who could even put real covers on all the exposed switches?

Yes, you can live like that for years and years when you no longer have any young children running around.

First to be capped were the exposed wires in the kitchen we had been looking at for at least three years.

Next was the dangling light bulb that was replaced with a soft glow “sputnik” and a funky new fan whose glass cover broke so we have to try and find one that size. (Initial research has revealed that this, however, will not be an easy task since it’s not a “standard” size. )

I was just happy I wasn’t the one who had to stand on a step stool (or more likely a paint-splattered chair) holding up a light fixture while Lynn attempted to install it and not electrocute himself.  There are just some things we refuse to do anymore and this has become one of those things.

Besides the new lights throughout the house, we have finally finished all the siding. The installers said it would take one week which I was skeptical about considering the size of the house and hence I took off 2.5 weeks from work to be here to make sure that all went according to plan. When all was said and done, it took them 8 days – they lost one day to rain, one day to “camping,” and one other day to do a window installation at another property.

Here are some pictures of the process.  We even got to see the original color of the house (dark brown) when they tore off some of the old shingles.

And yes, the Red House is still RED! And while I was skeptical about the color of the siding when I saw it online, I have to say the Red House looks really really nice. I was worried that the vinyl would look really plastic-y but it doesn’t.  It looks exactly like the color it should be. Watching people drive by the house, it’s been amusing to see people do double takes when they see the sudden transformation. Not so amusing is that someone from the post office took it upon themselves to stop delivering our mail because they thought someone else had bought the house and finally made it look “pretty”!) Can you even imagine that?  It took me two phone calls over two days along with a trip downtown to chat with the postmaster in charge to have this corrected.

Meanwhile the other morning, there was an older gentleman taking pictures of the Red House while his wife was sitting in the car.  I politely inquired what he was doing and it turns out they are friends with one of the early owners of the house (that would be 1950’s not 1850’s!). They were going to visit this elderly couple and wanted to show them the “progress” of the house. When the wife got out of the car and joined in our conversation, she was eager to know if we had kept the third staircase in the kitchen. (I politely told her we did not.) But “what about those wonderful wood floors?” she asked. I told her they were still there but were in pretty bad shape and we were wondering what to do – refinish or totally redo.

It’s difficult to try and convey to people what the house looked like both inside and outside and now with the new siding it will be even more of a challenge.  Although I don’t think this blog and the tale of the Red House is quite over yet, ironically I am missing the look of the old beaten up Red House a bit.

So here’s her new look! (Of course the Red House is a she.)

And yes, we absolutely still need some front stairs, a new garage, a mason to redo the foundation and last but not least landscaping please!

Imagine then if you can that after a quick dinner and a bottle of wine, all I really wanted to do was jump in the shower and go to sleep.  Except when I turned on the hot water in the new bathroom, the water was barely luke warm. Ditto for the kitchen, the guest bathroom and the downstairs bathroom. I sucked it up to “old” pipes and figured we would deal with it in the morning. (Except most of the pipes have been replaced and therefore not “old.” )

In the morning, Lynn and I went down to the scary basement where we proceeded to stand and stare at the old water heater. Yep, there it stood.  Ironically, this is the first hot water heater we’ve ever had in any home we’ve lived in (not that it made an iota of difference in this situation) but the fact that there was this gizmo that made hot water like magic was impressive considering our history of being hot water heater-less for over 30 years.

After a suitable amount of time staring at the darn thing, we went upstairs and I started to call plumbers. Plumber #1 was on vacation. Plumber #2 was retired. Plumber #3 had to go to a wedding and a funeral in the same day and didn’t think he could swing by the house.  I called our contractor who said he would come out and “take a look,” but he had to cook a birthday/graduation meal for like 300 people (well maybe 30 but you get the idea) so could we just shower cold until Monday?

Since the sole purpose of visiting the Red House that weekend was to deal with all the  weeds and the vines that were growing around and up the side of the house (meaning we had to cut them down), in order to prepare for the siding installation, we figured lots of hot sweaty work outdoors would be just fine when faced with our cold shower conundrum.

We had lots of vines growing up one side of the house in particular that had the Red House been a stone cottage somewhere in the south of France or even Tuscany it might have been particularly pretty but here it just didn’t work.

So we pulled and we tugged until we noticed a big part of the vines had attached themselves semi-permanently to a heavy black electrical wire going out to the street. Deciding that we didn’t want to risk electrocution or take down the power lines for the entire neighborhood with a too hard tug to try and dislodge the feisty plant, we left it as is.

Then we moved onto the weeds. There were weeds that were nearly as tall as I am (that would be 5 foot 8 inches). Some were easy to simply pull out of the ground, others needed to be cut down with a knife and some really stubborn ones needed the weed wacker.

This was an incredible amount of hard work on a really HOT DAY which is exactly what we needed given our hot water situation.  It took us about 5 hours (who says Upstate isn’t fun?) but we did get it all done and while I did take a cold shower, I will admit that I washed my hair in the sink (less traumatic that way.)

Meanwhile a quick garden update. The tomatoes are bountiful this year, but the zucchini is just revealing blossoms no fruit.  But I’m excited we have our first ever acorn squash! I haven’t seen the evil bunny in a while, so I’m hoping he/she has left the property!

TEN DAYS LATER

We arrived Wednesday night (8:30! No traffic!) to find our new hot water heater installed AND WORKING.  Look how pretty it looks!

Yes, the water is sufficiently hot although it does take a while to get up to the second floor from the basement. (I’m not complaining.)

In the morning, the first of many boxes of siding and insulation and wood appeared in our driveway – the start of a very difficult and large job.

So far so good. The siding is nearly a perfect match for the exact color red we wanted. After all, the Red House couldn’t suddenly become yellow or green or grey!

Stay tuned.

First and foremost, if you buy something in the beginning and then decide further down the road you don’t like it or it simply doesn’t work, you can change your mind and replace it with something you think will work better. This, in my mind, is a plus.  The downside of this lengthy renovation is since you’ve had so much time to change your mind and do it differently, it inevitably will cost you more money than you originally anticipated.

Case in point. I’m afraid to even mention the upstairs master bathroom (recently renamed the “million dollar bathroom”) but I will. Okay, I know it REALLY didn’t cost that much but the fact that I paid a previous contractor a large sum of money to do the bathroom, but ultimately had to pay another contractor THE EXACT SAME AMOUNT to rip it out and redo it is why it has definitely earned that title.

Consequently, because I had to come up with double the amount of money I had budgeted for the bathroom, I had to eliminate something from our very lengthy “TO DO” list and that was (drum roll please), finish the kitchen.  I know, I know, it pisses me off, too.  I mean really, I would love for all the electrical work in the kitchen to be completed, the exhaust fan/hood above the stove to be installed as well as the “stop sign” window to be spackled, sanded and painted! Hopefully, by the end of the summer, this will move back up to the top of the list.

This is where the exhaust fan needs to go! Look the outlet is already there and waiting!

I guess the fact that we put up a decent looking metal back splash is a lot better than what we had before (that would be a very ugly black garbage bag and not even a good one, a crappy one) like you see below. This of course was before we got cabinets, and counters, etc., etc., etc. Wait is the stove on? Am I cooking something and taking pictures at the same time? Do you see the flame? I do! Obviously I’m just boiling water since there doesn’t appear to be anything in either of the other pans.

Besides having the exhaust fan installed, the “stop sign” window needs to be finished!Trust me, it looks a lot worse on the outside. Technically, it is centered so we’ll see how this really looks once the siding is done. In the meantime, we are almost finished with the upstairs master bathroom! Hip Hip Hooray! Yes, it looks much better than we ultimately thought it would and it’s the biggest bathroom we’ve ever had in any apartment or house we’ve lived in so I guess it was worth the wait and the money. We have to still install the shower door, hook up the faucet for the vanity and simply put the drawers in. I’ll let you know how that goes.

Remember, this is what we started with – a former nursery with no plumbing that managed to become a bathroom. The original thought was to put subway tiles on the shower walls and a simple gray tile for the bathroom floor. In hindsight, the subway tile looked a lot better when we laid it on the floor than the wall.

This was Round 1 of the bathroom. Yeah, it just didn’t work.

Ultimately the subway tile had to be ripped out and a whole new unit needed to be put in. And yes, they did throw out the piece of marble that cost us a pretty penny on the step you see here that I hoped could be saved! (Case in point: when you tell someone to demo a room and throw everything out and start again, that’s what they do!)

And this is Round 2.

Okay, in hindsight this looks a lot “neater.” And I do love the shelves although they will probably make me crazy trying to keep them clean.

And I think the floor tile came out nicely although Lynn is complaining the grout lines are too thick! REALLY?

Besides the master bath near completion, we also managed to convert a bedroom into what will eventually be a walk-in closet but more probably some sort of office. (I don’t really have that many clothes and would rather have a room to work and/or write in.) Remember we originally had six bedrooms (!) and are now down to three. Here are some before and after shots.

This shot actually looks a lot nicer than the space really was.  I hated walking into that room, it was really scary. We also originally had planned to have a skylight in the room (notice the plywood frame in the upper right hand corner where the skylight was going to go) but since then the wall has totally been dry walled.  Here are two pictures to show the process.

I think the track lighting to replace the single hanging light bulb is a huge improvement! The walk in closet also leads to the attic but a portion of the attic stairs had to be ripped out to put in the plumbing for the master bath.

Now that the plumbing is finished, the stairs have been put back.  This means I can finally start putting some of the many boxes we brought up from our old house up there in storage. Somehow, I just couldn’t bring myself to throw out all the kid’s old toys and books and school certificates just yet.

Once that’s done, I can also focus on putting a new wood floor in the bedroom as well as new flooring for both landings. (Yes, we have two landings because we have two staircases.) Unfortunately, with all this construction going on (think dust and more dust), there’s a lot of clean up we have to do. Really, how is this going to become a bedroom one can comfortably be in! Courage!

Okay, I know the table saw, shop vac and garbage can, coupled with leftover drywall, plywood and tubs of spackle will all go away but really – this is a huge room to clean up.  Let me segue here briefly.  When my current contractor started the job and one of the stipulations was to throw out all the old iron radiators, he actually asked me if he could just throw them out the window.

See this radiator (yes, of course we did save some), well imagine this times 4 and you get the picture –  they’re old and weigh a ton. So no, throwing them out the window was not an option. My luck, they’d bounce back and break a window!

But back to the landings. Here’s one of the landings that’s big enough to perhaps accommodate a reading nook in the future. When I get rid of all the boxes and put a bookcase I bought the first year someplace else (along with numerous dictionaries), I think this will be a pleasant little space.  In case you missed the dictionary in the picture, it’s the big white paper thing with black tabs on it. Side note: Before anyone had an app that would help you spell and define a word, there were dictionaries! Besides English, I also have dictionaries in German, French and Italian! And they’re all really big and heavy! But more confusing is why exactly do we have so many blinds lying around? What rooms are missing blinds? Are there rooms in the house we haven’t discovered yet?  Just kidding!

Our biggest project this summer (money-wise, too) is that we are finally ready to do the siding. We also hope to install some much needed gutters over the porch. This should help to alleviate the “shower effect” we so often get when we’re trying to get into the house when it’s raining.  Yes, indeed the water just pours off the roof! And with new siding we’ll need new outdoor lighting since the ones on the porch are no longer a complete working pair since one particularly bad winter a heavy duty icicle smashed one of them.

We also have been working on the dining room. I say “we” but really Lynn has been doing all the work.  He ripped off some weird moulding and other strange material that had been put on the walls only to find some old floral green, white and gray wallpaper and what I can only describe as an attempt to stencil huge bows on the wall.  I do wonder if there were any family portraits at one point that had been put in these ornate “frames.”

Here’s a before and after shot.

Gearing up for the summer planting season, our garden took a beating this winter even though we were told it was a “mild” one.  “Mild” compared to what I wonder? This weekend I spent a few hours tilling the soil, thinking about what I would plant, trying to remember what worked last year (zucchini, beans, beets and peas), what the rabbits ate (zucchini, beans, beets and peas) and what didn’t grow at all (sage, eggplant and peppers).

We had luck growing basil in containers when we had our house on Long Island so Lynn suggested we try that this year. Luckily, we seem to have a nice crop of asparagus that seems pretty hearty (here’s a shot of a few very tall stalks early in the season).

The strawberries appear to be doing well, too, provided the birds and aforementioned rabbits don’t eat all of them. Dare I mention I saw a couple rabbits the other day and they looked really BIG! Maybe they’ll be too full to venture into the garden? Or maybe they’re large because they’re about to birth little bunnies! Hopefully they won’t eat a new rose bush I was just about to plant in the ground.

On that note, if you’re planting any veggies or flowers this Memorial Day weekend, think of me! And, don’t worry, I’ll have lots of follow-up photos and a story or two about the Red House and its new “look.”

And so our 7th summer at the Red House begins.

Yes, there is still some painting to be done and insulation needs to be put around the skylight and we need a towel rack or two and a toilet paper roll holder would be awesome but the toilet flushes, the sink works (HOT WATER TOO), and no one drowned in the Jacuzzi.

Considering that we started this project on June 19, 2016 and it’s now September, the only thing I can say is that luckily it’s not our only bathroom!

Here are a few shots of the transformation.

And the finished tub!

We also did the floor in what looks like “distressed” wood but is in fact simply tile. I didn’t think it would look as good as it does so I’m quite pleased with how it turned out.

When we sold our Long Island house earlier this year, we also gave up access to a convenient washer/dryer. (Our apartment has neither.) Which means one of us (usually me because I have a shorter commute and thus home earlier) is doing laundry at the laundromat. Not the worse case scenario actually. What I didn’t realize with these new machines (ours in our previous house were really old) is that 1) they do laundry in half the time and 2) they do laundry in half the time!

So to take you back, this is what the “laundry room” looked like.

And this is what we have now! (I know it IS very exciting!)

Yeah, they’re not fancy front-loaders in designer colors. They are simple white. They were mid-range in price and they will probably last forever.

Since we have TWO other bathrooms to renovate going forward (the one that I dare not mention again until somehow magically it’s done), and the icky white bathroom we are using now, I can say I’m feeling most optimistic since this one turned out so well.

Bathroom done we are moving into the fall season with a huge list of projects.

1. We still have NO dining room. Exhibit 1A.2. We still have NO bedroom. Exhibit 2A.

3.  One of our staircases is still HALF PINK/HALF WHITE! Exhibit 3A.

4. What should be the “living” room is filled with “boy toys” to help do all the renovations! Exhibit 4A.

5. What should be the “family” aka TV room is filled with boxes from our old house. We can’t store anything in our basement since it has a tendency to flood (!) which leaves us with the attic. Unfortunately, we have some stairs missing so can’t physically get up to the attic until the stairs are put back. Until that happens, all the stuff that’s here will unfortunately have to stay here. Exhibit 5A.

6. We are most definitely not hoarders but even the staircase landing is filled with stuff! Exhibit 6A.

7. Did I mention the driveway is totally ripped up and an eyesore, too? Exhibit 7A.

8. We still have NO siding. Exhibit 8A!

9. Not to mention we need a new garage! Exhibit 9A.

I know at this point everyone is thinking  – WHAT THE HELL HAVE YOU GUYS BEEN DOING THE LAST 6 YEARS!!! The answer is fixing everything else!

But let me continue.

10. We also don’t have any stairs to get into the front of the house. Yep, we need some landscaping, too! Exhibit 10A.

Compounding the lack of stairs and siding is the problem we face every winter in that the rain simply pours off the roof when we are going through the side entryway. (Shower anyone?) Also when it gets really cold we have very large icicles that form and drip off the roof onto the deck making an entrance into the house somewhat perilous.

To end this story on a happy gardening note, (yes, the thought of the cold and pictures of the icicles did frighten me), we did manage to harvest most of the garlic (we think) that was growing. The cloves were especially large this year and most likely the German Red variety. (Truthfully can’t really remember what we planted!)

Our bamboo is flowering and growing so well it has managed to create a “privacy” fence for a good portion of the property.

Our marigolds also did much better than any veggies I planted (except for the aforementioned garlic). Ditto for the geraniums.

So for now, summer may nearly be over but somehow when I look at our garden gnome I don’t see a smirk on his cute little face but rather a really really happy smile! Perhaps he knows there might be a cold spell but then an Indian summer that will grace our garden or better yet, at least maybe one of the ten projects we want accomplished will happen BEFORE next summer.

Well, okay in full disclosure, I also have a luggage rack that’s stuck in a corner. Why? Because I simply cannot stand having suitcases or bags on the floor in any hotel room or temporary abode I’m staying in. (I get really cranky.) Two years ago I stayed at a Hilton in Munich and they simply couldn’t provide me with a luggage rack. I asked various hotel employees where I could find one and some of them had no idea what I was talking about.  It got so bad that I even considered TAKING UP SMOKING to relieve the stress of the no-luggage-rack room but decided to simply keep asking every time I saw an hotel employee. This resulted in me kind of performing a strange SNL skit asking every single employee this, “excuse me do you have a luggage rack, excuse me…” along with a crude sketch of what I thought a luggage rack should look like that I carried around in my purse to show any hotel worker I encountered for the duration of my stay.

But I’m getting away from the story. Perhaps you will remember (I can’t remember if I told you actually!) but our contractor (that would be contractor #2) left us last October with a bathroom that was not finished. This is how he “resigned.”

He placed a set of keys (kitchen door, garage door) and a Lowe’s gift card I had given him if he needed supplies on our temporary dining room table. (PS – There was still $32.17 left on the gift card.) Remember, this is what the upstairs unfinished bathroom still looks like!

At first I was in disbelief, but in fairness, he had been ill and would occasionally say something about going “south” for the winter. I was dreading having to find someone new but I had no choice. I had 3 other people come in to do estimates. One refused to even give me an estimate, the second one said he could do it but then his boss said no he couldn’t because they couldn’t be responsible for someone else’s work and the third, well, the third contractor would only do it if the downstairs bathroom/laundry room could be done first. (Hint: downstairs room was going to be way more expensive to do.)

So, Lynn and I took vacation days from work which resulted in us having over 2 weeks of uninterrupted time up at the Red House. This was the most consecutive amount of time we’ve spent up here since the summer of 2010 when we bought the house. So, third contractor got hired through Big Box Store, contracts were signed and money was paid.  The plan was to start in two weeks.

Day 1. Everyone shows up. Yeah! Debris is hauled away. Old sewer pipe is taken out piece by piece. Plumbing and electrical are installed. This was all done in less than six hours. To say I was extremely encouraged and this new turn (and speed) of events is putting it mildly.

Here’s how the room looked before they hauled all the icky stuff away.

Day 2. Sheetrock is brought in on the back of a pick-up truck and a “helper” is there to put up the rock. It actually takes the “helper” less than 6 hours (including lunch breaks, pee breaks and every half hour cigarette breaks) to drywall AND spackle the laundry room. At this rate I was thinking could I possibly have a new bathroom by the end of the first week?

Day 3. “Helper” rocks entire bathroom before 2:30 p.m. after arriving at 8 a.m. Above mentioned breaks are ditto for day 3. I’m actually quite fond of the purple colored drywall. Maybe we should rethink our preferred color choice of all-white walls?

Day 4. We get a phone call that no one is coming to work today because they have to work on another house. Lucky them.

Day 5. Apparently today is camping day for every contractor in upstate New York. (I just thought it was Friday but apparently I was mistaken.) There is also a very loud and non-stop stream of RV’s, campers and Monster trucks on flatbeds driving past our house and heading up the hill to some sort of Monster Mud Truck Fest 17 miles further north.

Day 6 & 7. (Saturday and Sunday). Lynn and I decide to go up to Vermont.  After all it is the weekend! And the Monster Truck Mud Fest had something to do with it, too. Plus I finally got a reservation at a restaurant I’ve been wanting to try.

Once again, I need to diverge here. Some people seem to think that being up at the Red House is like BEING ON VACATION ALL THE TIME. That is absolutely not the case. While we’re up at the Red House, Lynn is constantly trying to finish some moulding or wainscoting or spackling or painting himself into a corner and I’m inevitably sitting in front of my laptop and working Job #2. (Job #2 pays a portion of the home renovation expenses.)

Day 8. Monday morning. 8 a.m. rolls around with no contractor in sight. By 8:30 a.m. I’m on the phone with the contractor who says we need to go to the Big Box Store with him because he doesn’t want to use most of the items the sales person included on the installation sheet (that would be cement board, mortar, grout, etc., etc.)  We meet at 2 p.m., get the new stuff plus insist on delivery of the tile for the floor, the washer, dryer and very important – the toilet that has no exterior curvy lines. (Remember this is the ONLY toilet Lynn says we are allowed to have in the Red House.)

Day 9. Subcontractor of contractor shows up to tape and spackle bathroom side of room. By noon, we have to suddenly leave to go to Albany to put a down payment on a car* we bought in Syracuse. I’m prepared to leave subcontractor a house key but he’s already finished!  Could I possibly still be in the running to have the bathroom finished by the end of the week? He tells us to leave the fans on in the room to “speed” up the drying process and we even open the skylight for the first time in 6 years.

*We had to go buy a used car ASAP because our VW TDI is part of the diesel emissions scandal and we don’t want to drive it anymore seeing how EVENTUALLY (think late fall) VW is going to buy back our vehicle.

Day 10. Subcontractor and sub-subcontractor both show up at 7:50 a.m. to tell us spackle is not dry and to get another fan in the room if possible. We keep both fans on high for the next 24 hours.

At 2:00 p.m. Big Box Store shows up with a delivery of the tile for the bathroom, a bag of grout and two bags of mortar.

Basically stuff we could have fit into the back of our new (used) car. I inquire about the “big” stuff – mainly the washer/dryer and toilet and they have no “record” of that having to be delivered. I convince delivery guys that they need to call whoever they need to call to have washer/dryer and toilet delivered by tomorrow (that would be Day 11). They tell me my wish is their command. No they don’t but they do manage to arrange for another delivery same time tomorrow and then they just get in their truck and drive away.

Before they left however, I did offer to make them cookies if they returned with the missing items in the morning. Luckily, they didn’t take me up on the offer since as you know I detest baking but before we get to Day 11, the delivery guys and I had to have a conversation about chocolate chip cookies with or without nuts. (They prefer without.)

Day 11. Subcontractor and sub-subcontractor have an early morning job and can’t get here until 3:00 p.m. I realize while we may have had an excellent start to this summer bathroom  project we will most definitely NOT have a completed bathroom by Day 12. That would be tomorrow. They did however install hot and cold water pipes for the washer/dryer that I’m still waiting to have delivered.

Finally, right before lunch, I also got the washer/dryer and toilet delivered. I really should go out and play the Lottery at this point.

Day 12. It’s Friday. We’ve been here exactly 2 weeks. We have to drive back to Long Island today. Contractor showed up to go over the “plan,” and to do some touch-up work. A wall he built is going to be torn down because he realized the Jacuzzi I want to put in wouldn’t fit. I kind of liked the wall, oh well.

They rip out the wall and we exchange phone numbers to  monitor the progress of the renovation. Lynn and I are in a rush to get back to Long Island because we need to grab a plane out of JFK in 2 days and need to do silly things like laundry (too bad I couldn’t do the laundry at the Red House, hint, hint) and repack. Thing is as mentioned in Day #6-7 when we drove up to Vermont, we were gone for a mere 24 hours. Since we haven’t been on a “real” vacation since our aforementioned luggage-rack barren trip to Europe in 2014, we decide to go to the Charleston, SC area for an entire week! (It’s also my birthday.)

Let me segue back shortly to the night of Day #11. The night before we left the Red House we saw a moth that landed right by our patio door. He or she had a yellow and brown coat with what looked like some sort of King Arthur sword tattoo.

Seeing how King Arthur’s very famous Excaliber sword was bequeathed upon him to give him an unbreakable blade as well as magical powers, I can only assume this was a sign that we, too, shall need some sort of magical intervention to finish this bathroom!

Stay Tuned.

PS. I had luggage racks in EVERY SINGLE HOTEL ROOM we stayed in in South Carolina!

Above the door was also an old transom with what originally might have been delicately etched glass but over time simply looked dirty. On the outside of the French doors were some screen doors that wouldn’t properly close and during quite a few wind storms would rattle and bang about.

We knew we wanted to get rid of the French doors and the screen but really tried to save the transom. This didn’t happen. First and foremost, we couldn’t find anyone to build us a custom door in this size. Why I don’t know but it wasn’t an option. Second, even with ripping the doors and the transom out, a new door and two new side panels cost nearly as much as a couple of used cars I’ve seen for sale in the area.

So we ordered a new door May 30th and nearly 7 weeks later it arrived and was ready to be installed.

Here’s what the outside of the house looked like before the new door.

Here’s what the front of the house looks like now with our new door installed.

We hope to have new siding by the end of the year and plan to get rid of the ugly white shutters and replace them with a few black ones on the first floor. This I think should bring the look of the house together.

We also need to figure out how one would get into the front of the house if one had too.  Obviously we need some stairs but is it stupid to think about having a porch or small deck built especially when we just ripped one out?

Inside the house, with the transom gone, the installers left us with some plywood that needs to be drywalled and painted and moulding needs to be added as well. Since Lynn is still working on the wainscoting on the other side of the staircase, this area will probably be his “office” for the next week or so.

While I know some people might have attempted to try and salvage the appearance of the house as it was forever and ever, I’m glad that we are totally changing the way the Red House looks both on the inside and the outside. There were too many families before us that neglected this wonderful old house and at this point I think we can do whatever we want to in order to make the house reflect us.

While I do miss the original columns that were in the front of the house (even though one of the columns at the end didn’t match), I definitely don’t miss the broken concrete, the peeling paint and the strange oversized pediment the columns were supporting.

I saved two of the columns anyway – maybe one day they can be artistically “arranged” for a Red House sculpture garden!

The meadow (freshly mowed no less) is just waiting for them…

I have quite a list of projects I would like to be completed by the end of the year. Not being a total pessimist, I’m hoping we get at least half of them accomplished.

This past spring we finally got a new roof for the main part of the house. The shingles on the house were so old that while I thought they would simply have flown off at the touch of the tool the roofing guys were using to remove them, instead they held on as tight as can be so stripping the roof down to the rafters was a struggle.

Here’s our shingle delivery as well as the start of the project.

There was a ton more debris than I anticipated but then again the main part of the house has a huge roof so what did I expect?

And then of course it started to rain.  It took about 1.5 weeks to finally finish the roof because of the rain delay but now that’s its done, the roof looks quite nice.

We also ordered a granite counter top to finish our kitchen island. I’m reluctant to admit that the one piece of granite cost more than it did to install all of our kitchen counter tops! Even before we got our kitchen counters installed last summer, we survived nearly 4 years with a handy metal cart we inherited from our son.  It served us well.

In the meantime, leftover backer board comes in very handy to cover up the kitchen island until the counter gets here.

We also covered some kid’s cushions we got at Ikea with some red fabric to make the benches and backs of the benches pop a little more in a kitchen that’s primarily black and white. While neither of us can sew, we figured out a way to wrap the fabric around the foam cushion with some heavy cardboard. For now the fabric is in place although Lynn swears whenever he sits on the bench a staple is pinching his ass! (I think he’s imagining being pinched but whatever.)

This is what the cushions looked like before and our finished dining nook. (We had originally wanted a German “Stube” and even bought some church pews to try and make benches but the pews were too long and curved and simply didn’t fit.)

I’m reluctant to admit that we are currently in the process of hiring contractor #3. I promised myself that he will be the last one we work with and since he’s affiliated with a big box store that will replace him if he fails or bows out of the project, I’m pretty confident that at least this way the house renovation will eventually be finished.

Ironically, the project he is working on first was at the bottom of the list. What happened is as follows. If you remember, last fall we were left with a master bathroom that wasn’t finished, ditto for some odds and ends in the kitchen and a room that is totally gutted that I want to turn into a closet. These were the three projects I wanted to be finished ASAP.

As a reminder here’s a shot of the bathroom that can’t seem to get done!

But, big box store management wasn’t keen on finishing a project that someone else had started citing liability issues. They did, however, offer to work on the downstairs bathroom/laundry room since nothing had been started there.  That is how the last Red House renovation project suddenly got bumped up to be the first Red House renovation project for the summer of 2016.

We start in less than 3 weeks.

Lynn has spent the past few days working on the main staircase into the house. The plaster was torn off (actually it looked like someone at one point simply put their fist through it – the previous owners perhaps knowing they were being foreclosed on?).  He thought about sheet-rocking the wall but the angle was so strange and the moulding a bit weird, too, that we decided to try and put up some wainscoting.

We bought some panels that have a “wainscot” look. Was it easier than putting up drywall? Probably not since each panel had to be cut to size and then each of the primed 1×4’s had to be cut, too.

In the end, I think it came out really nice – it just needs to be painted, and the other side of the stair done too!

In the meantime, I’ve had a family of rabbits on the property who have managed to get into my garden and have eaten all of my green beans, peas and even my broccoli! They were good natured enough to leave me the Romaine, beets, carrots, cauliflower as well as the tomatoes. They also apparently don’t like garlic since my scapes were quite pretty and artistically shaped.

Although the weather has been beautiful, both the field and the garden desperately need some rain. We have a timer set up in the house that waters the garden every two days for about 20 minutes and that seems to be enough to keep my flowers looking particularly colorful this year.

Food-wise – I will be grilling this summer and frequenting as many farmer’s markets as possible. I’ve already made some delicious salads from the lettuce in the garden and pick the asparagus to throw in a pasta dish whenever I see a stalk peeking out from the ground. When the tomatoes are ready, I know they will be perfect with some burrata or oven roasted with a piece of fish.

Oh yeah, just as I was finishing this story, our counter arrived. It’s absolutely gorgeous! And perfect to roll out dough if I want to make pizza or Christmas cookies or Hungarian Kolach! Hint: Kids time to come visit Mom and Dad! Even though I hate baking, I love that they eat everything I bake.