Since my last story (with its laundry list of “things still to do”), we have managed to finish at least a few of the projects.

But let us start with what happened in the spring. A really tall tree suddenly snapped and fell on our garage. Even though we want the garage to eventually go away, we weren’t planning on having it “go away” that way without a plan in place to replace it. Luckily, the way the tree fell, ever so lightly across the roof of the garage, and with a somewhat artistic flourish too (it was hanging off the side of the garage which gave a little piece of the property a sudden Italian trellis look), it caused no damage what so ever.

What prompted me to remember the tree falling on the house back in mid-April was the fact that now that 85% of the house is finished, we have had a slew of visitors (including Mom and Dad) which gives me lots of people with big ears (McCoys’ have big ears) to listen to “Red House” stories.

Apparently, I had never told them about “Bowling Bob.” But first let me get back to the tree.  The tree fell down in mid-April. In mid-May (yes, four weeks later), I finally got my “Tree Guy” to remove the tree from the garage and also cut down a bigger tree that we thought could possibly fall on the house (the kitchen, of course) which would be devastating.  I hate cutting down trees but we really had no choice.

The fact that it took the “Tree Guy” four weeks from my initial phone call to him removing the tree from the garage, is well, in my world, UNACCEPTABLE.

So let me now tell you the story of “Bowling Bob.” Back in 2011 when we didn’t have a furnace yet, we ordered one from Sears (I know, I know but they had a great financing plan). When the furnace was installed (incorrectly I may add) and water was pouring out of EVERY SINGLE PIPE IN THE BASEMENT, we called the guy, Bob, who had put in the new furnace (AKA “Sears Furnace Guy”) to apprise him of the problem. “Sears Furnace Guy” when told of our dilemma says he absolutely cannot come deal with our flood that weekend because his middle school age son was in a bowling tournament and that took precedence over our flood.  What????

Hence the moniker “Bowling Bob.” “Bowling Bob” has also come to represent many of the contractors we have been forced, cough, cough, I mean had the pleasure of working with in the Mohawk Valley.

Our current contractor Ron (who I do like a lot), understood that I wanted bathroom #3 renovated before Memorial Day weekend. He and I met early February to go over all the specifications and by April I was texting and calling him weekly asking for an estimate. When Memorial Day weekend rolled around, with still no estimate or bathroom renovation on the horizon, I started to get seriously pissed.  Since I mentioned that I had people visiting all summer, coupled with Lynn and I doing some much needed traveling, if it couldn’t be done by early June, it wouldn’t happen until mid-September since I didn’t want any of our guests to not have a bathroom. (Yes, I do want to make sure everyone has a place to pee, poop and even shower!) .

Guess what, he really didn’t care.

Back to our “Tree Guy.” When he did remove the tree from the garage roof and had a “Stump Guy” come and grind down all the stumps, he also promised us he would dig out a deeper trench in the back to deal with any possible flooding this summer might bring.  We had the conversation in May and after at least 10 text messages (maybe more) about when this could be accomplished, we set a Saturday date.

Saturday morning after assuming incorrectly he would be at the Red House at the crack of dawn, I finally texted him around 9:30. An hour later this was his response: “Who is this?”

I reminded him we had set up a “trench digging appointment” that morning which apparently he forgot about. Long story short, he showed up a day later with a back hoe and less than an hour later I had a trench.

It’s definitely not pretty, but we bought some of that landscape fabric that’s supposed to prevent weeds and new grass growth and once we line the trench with it we hope to throw in a couple of bags of rocks. In a funky color of course.

Before I move on to my current “Bowling Bob” story, let me show you what we have accomplished.

Escutcheons are up! Yes, I buckled and paid nearly $100 (!) for a box of them. And guess what they are not even real metal but plastic that’s been spray painted silver!  But in fairness, it does complete the look of the hot water pipes running through the house.

We bought the last four windows we needed for the attic and had them installed.

We painted the Bentwood chairs (and even a rocker) that had been lying around for some time in the bright colors we had wanted. I think they look pretty cool.

Notice how we somehow missed putting on a baseboard since it had been “hidden” by a really big picture we simply plopped there. (Big picture has been moved to another room, not yet hung up either.)

Luckily, we have been dealing with a heat wave with no chance of rain which has made perfect spray painting weather in the driveway with quick drying times to boot.

We also did some waterproofing of the foundation on a really hot day back in June (boy was that fun!). We decided to do the front of the house first primarily because we thought by now we would have a couple of stairs and some simple landscaping and didn’t want to worry about a foundation that wasn’t “waterproofed” when everything had been planted.

However, while our contractor Ron thought he could tackle this project too, he simply was swamped with work and gave us the name of yet another “Bowling Bob.” In fairness, this landscaper who also builds things was quick to meet with us, but then his father took ill and he simply couldn’t put an estimate together or commit to an install date. (Update: we now have an estimate, which I had to negotiate down, but the install date is still pending.) Which is why the front of the house still looks like this.

Meanwhile back on the farm, I mean the garden, we were proactive this year in putting up at least 1/2 of some rabbit-proof fencing material in hopes that “evil bunny” wouldn’t be able to get into the garden and eat all the veggies we had planted.

That’s when we discovered the fox. We have to assume the fox has “taken care” of the bunny so to speak since we have vegetables that are finally growing. We have peas and more beans than I know what to do with. Our tomatoes are starting and the lettuce is absolutely amazing. (It really is.)

I’m having the same problem I had with the zucchini as last year (all blossoms and no bodies, even after trying to help fertilize) but my beets are growing strong and I planted radishes that remind me of the spicy ones we would eat at many a Munich beer garden.

And we have the flowers, the day lilies and Stella D’Oro are particularly pretty this time of year.

We also discovered tiny clusters of raspberries that we had never seen growing before (thank you birds for dropping berry seeds there), and the sumac which had been golden yellow has finally turned red.

Meanwhile, we have definitely started to make the Red House a “real” home and threw out most of our old furniture (most of which we “appropriated” for free from the streets of Long Island). Thank you neighbors for hauling away all the furniture we put on the curb (including the church pews) within two hours, we love you! We bought some new stuff and even added some artwork from a local artist in Syracuse.

To say we have made tremendous progress this year is an understatement. So, even with all the “Bowling Bobs” out there who give me “agita” when it comes to trying to finish the Red House in a timely manner, I know eventually they do show up and do a pretty good job.

We are thankful for them.

And so begins the season. Enjoy the summer. I know we will.

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!

The lettuce grew so high it looked like I threw some really bad non-organic fertilizer (think: toxic) to make it grow. I didn’t. My mother says the leaves are bitter when they are that big but I don’t mind the taste at all.

Unfortunately the carrots and beets were mangled by a bunny rabbit or two or three or four. No worries, since we are surrounded by lots of farmer’s markets and quite a few Amish farm stands too which resulted in some very picturesque carrots! Perhaps it was the way the Amish farm wife wrapped the carrot tops in pretty red yarn.

Because when I unwrapped the carrots to prepare them for dinner, one of them decided to have some fun with me and “pose” for their fall carrot-themed jean line.

Since our first summer at the Red House Lynn has tried a couple of times to do pizza on the grill. The first time we simply threw the dough on the grill rack (big mistake), then scraped off the burnt but still raw (never could quite figure out how that could be) dough and threw it away.

I think we tried at least one other time, too but ended up using dough that wasn’t 100% and the pizza itself wasn’t worth writing home about let alone photographing.

When we moved out of the house on Long Island and into an apartment, I chucked a lot of stuff that I didn’t think we would ever use – a French coffee press and not one but THREE Italian espresso pots, ramekins of every shape and size and chipped dishes, cake pans, and pie plates, etc., etc.  Apparently I also threw out our stone pizza board, a wooden pizza paddle and an extra large spatula — all of course which I needed now even if we wanted to make pizza on the grill again.

I went to Walmart (I know, I know) but they had pizza “pans” for a mere 99 cents and I figured I would rather waste a buck than 10 bucks if the “pans” melted on top of the grill.

Lynn loves to roll out dough. My reaction to this is: BE MY GUEST. He also loves to hand grate cheese. My reaction to this is: GRATE AWAY. (Although for this pizza he just sliced up the mozzarella). I managed to open a container of pizza “sauce” that we picked up at the “fancy” supermarket in Syracuse even though I could have made my own for about $3.00 less. As you may have deduced by now I’m really big on making things myself rather than buying them. But suddenly I’ve changed. (Don’t believe those who say people can’t change, they can and do.)

He rolled out the dough on the new pans and this time  decided to “cook” the dough a bit on the grill first.

About 10 minutes later, he put on the sauce, the cheese and some fresh basil from the garden.

They did take a bit longer to cook on the grill than I expected but they turned out pretty darn good – thin crust that I like with blobs of fresh mozzarella and basil from the garden.

Back to the garden, I found a zucchini hiding underneath the leaves that was a monster!

Even when I cut him in half and filled the “boats” with tomatoes from the garden, I still had to figure out what to do with the rest. (Half went into a pasta dish and the other half was grated and made into zucchini pancakes!)

Unfortunately by the end of August when we came back up to the Red House, nearly all our tomatoes were gone, the weeds took up most of our garden and something is growing in one corner that may be squash or pumpkins or both.

In the meantime, I have to fight my way through the weeds and dig up the garlic. Yes, it’s that time again.

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.

While we are still struggling to put the rest of the house together, here are some pictures to show everyone how far we’ve come.

Back in April of 2010, this is how the kitchen looked after we ripped out the walls. As you can see, the “sink” was barely standing on what the previous owners thought were perfectly acceptable kitchen cabinets that were held together with duct tape.

There came a day shortly thereafter in 2010 when the sink, unfortunately, had to go too.

So we ended up with no sink and were forced to carry dishes and pots and pans up to the second floor bathroom to scrub them after cooking. Yes, we occasionally did use paper plates but more often than not we didn’t.

After the drywall was put up, we temporarily used a “scrub” sink which was better than hauling everything up to the second floor. We also had a small table next to the sink to let everything dry after rinsing.

We also ripped out the ceiling in the kitchen (thereby losing a 6th bedroom) and by doing so instantly transformed the kitchen from a dismal dark scary space into a light and airy room.

When we started putting in the cabinets, we put in a sink with a make-shift plywood counter that felt like almost a real kitchen was in the works. Ironically, we decided that we needed a dishwasher before we needed a new fridge! (For those who really cook and use lots of knives, bowls, pans, and ultimately platters to create a meal you will understand why this was priority#1 and not #21.).

A fun fact that I don’t think Red House readers are aware of is that when we bought this house back in April of 2010, it had 2 kitchens! Both in the back of the house but in different wings. Here’s what the back kitchen looked like before we had to rip it out.

Since the back of the house unfortunately was falling down we not only lost the kitchen but a bathroom, too. Here’s what the back of the house (along with a separate entry way) looked like along with the unfinished addition that STILL LOOKS EXACTLY THE SAME SIX YEARS LATER. (Actually the Weatherguard wrap at this point has quite a bit of green moss on it!).

We also, as you can see, got rid of the door and put in a window instead.

I have written stories about the process of putting the kitchen together and Lynn and I have often struggled with everything that had to be done but most people don’t know that we also hauled up all the kitchen cabinets for the Red House. That means that whatever would fit in our VW – box by box by box – would be the project for the weekend. I wish now that I had counted all the boxes we brought up but I didn’t.

Meanwhile, we still have a bit more to do. We are in the process of finding someone to finish some of the electrical work including installing a kitchen exhaust hood over the stove.

We have also started to put together a kitchen “island” in the center of the room.  I never thought I would have a kitchen big enough to accommodate an island comfortably but now I do!

So while we’re nearly 90% done with renovating the kitchen, I actually think quite fondly of how far we’ve come. (Confession: I cleared that percentage with Lynn to make sure he thought we were that far along!)

Cooking back in 2010 revolved around our handy Proctor Silex and usually something simple (and manageable in one pot or pan) like scrambled eggs with fresh chives from the garden or chili.

We also ate a lot of fondue and in the summer months grilled everything we could outside.

In the summer there was the bounty from our garden and local farmer’s markets as well as things we managed to forage on our own (ramps for example up in the woods).

There was also many a roasted supermarket chicken and on occasion expensive stuff (lobster, burrata and smoked salmon) we’d bring up from Long Island.

Then there was the baking. When Lynn and I lived in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, we didn’t have an oven (see how history does repeat itself?) but somehow I managed to bake everything in a tiny toaster oven including even holiday cookie baking! Who knew that nearly 20 years later toaster oven baking would be replicated up at the Red House too before we got a “real” oven!

Here’s a picture from November 2010 of homemade little fruit pies!

So while our kitchen is nearly complete I will admit there hasn’t been as much cooking going on as I’d like. It seems we are forever having to put up drywall or paint or hammer something together.

This month alone we’ve put up a bookcase, had our tree guy rip out the ugly cement porch in the front of the house and had a chimney cap finally put on our chimney (we had none).

We’ve also rediscovered my vinyl collection and like to spend evenings listening to music (and dancing) rather than painting!

PS I love this new portable turntable we just got although the sound could be louder!

So coming up this spring and into summer we’ll be adding a new roof, hopefully finishing a master bathroom and bedroom, building a walk-in closet and above all cooking in our new kitchen!

First and foremost, although we did spend an enormous amount of time and some money planting a variety of vegetables and flowers in the spring, in the end only the flowers seemed to do well this year. Maybe it was the lack of rain even though we did have the sprinkler on a timer running every other day. Or perhaps it was the rabbits or the squirrels or even the occasional neighborhood cat that got into the garden and ate everything in sight. When we would arrive on a Thursday night for long weekends up at the Red House, we were initially very happy with what was growing in the garden. There were zucchini blossoms, cauliflower, broccoli and beets.

Most Friday or Saturday mornings I could be found weeding the garden, admiring the veggies that were growing as well as noting how pretty the flowers and sumac trees looked. But I was also worrying about how very dry the back meadow seemed.

However, as the days of summer grew longer and hotter (especially if we missed a weekend or two up at the Red House), we would come back to find that the lack of rain coupled with the heat had literally “roasted” the cauliflower on the stalk. And while some of the green beans grew, most of my tomatoes did not.

With very few vegetables to pick, we started visiting more farmer’s markets around the area to make up for our own feeble growing results. What’s even more disappointing this growing season is that this year not only did we till the soil first and both fertilize and try to water, we were also spending an enormous amount of time weeding the garden. (The weeds won.)

Speaking of winning (and losing, too), I had been thinking of getting a ping pong table for the Red House for a while. Maybe it’s because I grew up in Munich playing ping pong on a fairly regular basis coupled with the fact that my parents still have a ping pong table in their basement and many a grandchild was raised playing a game or two before a family meal. I researched buying tables online (too expensive!) and then started scouring Craigslist ads for garage sales. Low and behold, one Friday morning I saw an ad for a garage sale listing the exact ping pong table I was looking for up the road from the Red House!

It was in four pieces with a stand and a complete set of paddles and balls. I won’t mention how long it took Lynn to put it together (hint: nearly two days) but finally when it was assembled, we had a ping pong table to play on! (Eventually, it will be moved into our attic but for now it’s in the room next to the TV.)

Little did I know that Lynn grew up playing ping pong, too, and was EXTREMELY competitive playing ball with me. Even though I was usually the one who had to coax him into playing a game or two after dinner, inevitably he won. Here’s our scorecard to date – LOL.

Since our ping pong table also looks out onto the back meadow, I realized we had a dead tree in the backyard, in addition to two very large dead trees in the front of the house. I was seriously worried that one if not both trees in the front could possibly fall on someone driving or walking by the house so we had to get an estimate to have the trees taken down ASAP.

Another reason to have the trees taken down right away was that we were also in the process of getting estimates to have the main roof of the house redone.  I’m not one to cut down trees ever but unfortunately these two had to go.

So the day before the tree guys were going to take down the trees, they parked their “toys” in the driveway.

Let’s just say when they came to do the work Friday morning shortly after 7 a.m., they started up both the truck and the Bobcat at the same time in addition to revving up their chainsaws. Regardless of the incredible noise they were making, they did manage to get all three trees down in under 3 hours.

Trees down, we are trying to get the money together to get a new roof before the winter sets in, followed by much needed siding in the spring.

In the meantime, even the little projects are coming along. For example, Lynn put up some solar stair lights so now that it’s getting darker earlier, we are not fumbling in the dark to walk up the Red House steps.

Granted, they don’t shed a lot of light, but enough so I’m not tripping in the dark carrying bags and trying to find the house key. (A problem we wanted to rectify before going into the winter especially since I broke my wrist last March slipping on some ice in my driveway on Long Island after taking out the trash!)

Lynn has also taped around some of the ceiling light fixtures in anticipation of someday spray painting them.

Wow, Lynn what’s up with all that blue painter’s tape? Just kidding!

And even though some may be confused about labeling the purchase of a grill cover as a “project,” the fact is we have been grilling in the driveway for 5+ years. This may not be a big deal to some but our driveway (like everything else on the property) slopes which means when we want to grill we have to lift up the grill (which is pretty heavy) and place it on a part of the driveway that’s fairly even. This past weekend, I decided the purchase of a grill cover in addition to a grill “mat,” would enable us to place the grill on the deck and leave it there permanently.

Other projects include Lynn buying a bunch of clamps to try and get our kitchen cabinets to hang properly which is a really big problem since the kitchen walls and floor (like our driveway) lean more than slightly to one side.

Meanwhile, even though our kitchen is slowly coming together, we keep making more and more work for ourselves! While we originally were going to buy more cabinets to fit next to the stove, Ikea discontinued the cabinets we already had and the replacement cabinets were an entirely different size. So we talked about putting an eating area near the stove, a “Stube” as the Germans like to say, but had to build it first.

So back to Ikea we went after seeing a picture of someone who had built such a “Stube” by using a couple of kids benches. Lynn put the benches together in an “L” shape but then realized there was still space between the two so he used a piece of wood from an old desk to bring the whole thing together.

And here’s how it’s going to look with cushions although I’m going to recover the cushions at some point with a different fabric. And, of course, we need a table, too.

The biggest news at the end of this Red House summer is that nearly 13 months after thinking about getting a kitchen counter – we finally have one. Here are the before and after shots!

It came out pretty nice – a sturdy black laminate with a grain pattern that actually gives the counter a wood look. We also were finally able to put the remaining drawers into the cabinets and Lynn spent nearly an afternoon attaching the handles, too.

Unfortunately, to make room for the counter installation we had to move everything out of the kitchen into the dining room.

So while one project is seemingly done in one room, we often create a bigger project in another room.

And even though it’s nearly the end of September, the flowers are still blooming and we are still putting shrimp on the grill with lots and lots of homemade pesto with basil and garlic we grew here.

We always enjoy these last few days before the leaves turn and the cold weather sets in. There will be more projects to do inside since everyone knows an old house renovation is never ever done.

On a final note, two weekends ago we spent a few days in Manhattan celebrating Lynn’s birthday and our anniversary. We had lunch at Bouley (!) and one of the dishes was fresh asparagus. I was bewildered since normally asparagus herald in the start of spring. Up at the Red House however, I realized that we, too, had a second crop growing and we weren’t here to reap the benefits of one of my favorite vegetables.

Here’s a shot of one of my many asparagus plants! So in addition to an overabundance of asparagus (which we’ll definitely be looking forward to when spring arrives once again), the fall will bring us a ton of brussels sprouts to eat with many holiday meals.

But for now, it’s the bees that grabbed my attention as we were about to leave the Red House this weekend. They are still drawing the sweet nectar from the flowers in the garden – enjoying every last minute of this very lovely summer.

And the deer, who love to walk down from the waterfall and roam the property, also still had plenty to nibble on.

So imagine our surprise a mere 2 weeks later when we drove up to the Red House after Thanksgiving to find icicles hanging from the roof and the back meadow covered in snow!

So, even though our intentions last time had been good by leaving our shovel “ready for action” on the deck by the side of the house, we had to get through the snow to get up to the deck in order to get to the shovel!

Luckily, our contractor had driven his truck over our driveway enough times that there was a path (albeit icy) for us to follow so we managed to pull the car in just far enough to unload everything.

But as we were walking through the snow I couldn’t help but think of the vegetables I had just picked from the garden. Hadn’t I just made a big batch of tomato sauce from the last of the season’s tomatoes? Washing them and chopping them up until they boiled down to a rich goodness?

While I was still contemplating that activity, Lynn managed to reach the shovel and shoveled some of the driveway and the sidewalk. I went inside and pondered lunch and thought about our last visit to the house.

Two weeks prior, he decided that the project on my list that was nearly dead last (that would be replacing all the door handles) became his #1 priority!

Remember the photo of my bag of handles from (gulp!) the spring of 2013! Yep, here it is again. Well, suddenly he was reaching into this bag and pulling out handle after handle.

So while my #1 priority was to WORK ON THE MASTER BEDROOM…

Lynn’s priority was to do this:

I won’t even go into how long it takes to cut a round circle in a door to put a new handle a couple of inches above the old one but let’s just say it takes a lot longer than you think it should!

In fairness, he did build a new entry way into what will one day be my office.

And since neither the opening or the wall existed prior to this, I have to say he did a really nice job. (Thank you Lynn, it’s okay you spent 2 days doing 3 door handles – only 300 more to go – just kidding!)

Meanwhile, I guess the snow surprised me because just two weeks ago we had put away all the outdoor furniture (which means we carry it inside and put it in an empty room).

Notice the leftover pieces of sheetrock placed on the table so the metal chairs don’t crack the glass? Really, if you are ever in need of tablepads for a dinner party, this works just as well!

We also picked out additional tile for our bathroom (please don’t ask how the bathroom is coming – it’s just coming) – choosing a simple white “subway” tile for the inside of the shower floor and walls.

And while we still have yet to get a countertop for the kitchen, I’m just really happy that none of the upper cabinets have fallen down (even though Lynn assured me they wouldn’t.) Truthfully, finding things in one of the lower kitchen cabinets is a lot simpler without a countertop because I can just reach into a cabinet and pull out the pan I need! (Getting a countertop will hopefully happen early in 2015.)

Meanwhile, the town itself has gone into full blown Christmas mode and seems to have made an effort to decorate the downtown by hanging up festive kissing balls and angels tooting horns from the light posts. My reaction? At least there’s no awful Christmas music blaring, too!

A few blocks from the town’s main drag, the gazebo in the park was also decorated with lights. When I saw it and looked at all the pretty houses nearby, I almost expected George Bailey to come running out of one them on his way to save the Bailey Building and Loan Association! (Yes, there is a certain It’s A Wonderful Life quality to living here.)

Dinner at the Red House (and lunches, too) this post-Thanksgiving weekend consisted of  generous slices of turkey with nearly every side dish you can think of, omelets filled with pieces of the leftover Thanksgiving ham, and finally overstuffed turkey sandwiches topped with lettuce and tomato.

I was a bit concerned for the deer on the back meadow, especially since I saw one trying  to push away the snow with a hoof, hoping I guess for a couple of inches of grass that he or she could eat.

But here’s the thing, the first snow regardless of where Lynn and I have lived is still kind of exciting. There were tons of kids sledding on the hill next to our house (even though it was a brisk 28 degrees outside) and even our crappy old Colonial lamp post that’s in the driveway managed to transform itself into something quite pretty.

So even though winter has come a bit early to the Red House, it will not conquer us (we hope).

Happy Thanksgiving and Merry Christmas, too.

P.S. I promised Lynn Santa would bring him a snow blower in 2015. His response: “Make sure it has heated handles!”

I wish I could report that we’ve made progress in renovating the Red House but unfortunately at this stage in the game (meaning the complicated stuff), we’re very dependent on our contractor to finish our upstairs bathroom. This means while most of the plumbing has been installed, the insulation needs to be put in the walls before the sheetrock and then tile are applied. As you can see not much has changed in this room since the last time I photographed it!

Apparently since our contractor has a lot of outdoor jobs that he’s scrambling to get finished before the weather takes a turn for the worse, I do have to give him some slack. He has assured me that I’m #1 on the top of his list when he finishes with everyone else. Being me (frighteningly straightforward and to the point), I also reminded him that last winter he complained that he couldn’t get into the house without shoveling a path to the door because of all the snow. (I don’t have anyone who plows for us and don’t intend to incur that expense either!)  I also suggested since he obviously didn’t want to spend half of his day shoveling when he could be inside working on a room, he may need to speed things up a bit.

I would also love to start working on the dining room. But since all the materials he needs to complete the bathroom are sitting in the dining room, this room, too, has to wait.

While the leaves are turning, the marigolds seems to be thriving in the garden, the weeds even more so and with all the asparagus ferns cropping up, I’m thinking I’ll have a very nice asparagus harvest in the spring indeed. I’ve decided however, after planting two seasons of garlic in the fall, I’m going to wait until the spring to do it this year and see how that turns out. Reason being: Lynn is busy trying to finish our master bedroom (that means even though he took off all the moulding around the room and put everything back up, there is still a lot of patching that needs to be done as well as taping, spackling and finally painting.

To pull him away from this to get out the tiller (I’m afraid of the tiller it kind of drags me across the field) to plant some garlic seemed dumb. So the garlic will wait until the spring to be planted along with whatever else we can manage to grow in hopes that the deer, rabbits, squirrels and even a local cat or two won’t devour everything we’ve planted.

What is particularly nice about living up here especially in the fall are all the farmer’s markets as well as field after field filled with pumpkins in lovely shades of orange.

Last year I was lucky enough to grow a couple of pumpkins. This year I had to buy one.

Since the weather is turning colder (it was barely 55 degrees when we arrived this Columbus Day weekend), I’m also thinking of food that will warm us. That would be soups (pea and lentil), stews (goulash and chicken paprikash in particular) and lots of carbs like mashed potatoes and macaroni and cheese! And while I do try to stay away from sweets as much as possible – I have been thinking of making cinnamon rolls (no, not the kind you bang out from those icky cardboard containers in the refrigerated section of the supermarket) but cinnamon rolls made from scratch.

For those readers who have children or other instances where your household size shrinks from 4 to 1 or 2, I can say that I’ve finally mastered cooking for just the two of us without a huge amount of leftovers. And if we do have have leftovers, it’s because I’m usually trying to make sure at least one of us has something to take to work for lunch the next day.  The problem with this cooking for 2 instead of 4 (or more) thing though is that there are simply dishes (particularly desserts) that just don’t get made anymore. Why bake a batch of brownies or oatmeal raisin cookies if there aren’t any teenagers around to eat them all in a single sitting? Did I mention I’ve been craving cinnamon rolls?

In the meantime, I picked the last of the tomatoes (still green) from the Red House garden.

And admired not only the meadow but how pretty the marigolds still looked in the garden.

And since it was rather chilly, I also decided to make some Braciole stuffing the meat with slices of mozzarella and some smokey ham.

I managed to find a few (albeit slightly bruised) leaves of basil still growing in the garden and found a bag of potato gnocchi we buy at a little Italian deli near the Red House for under $3 a bag that was still in the freezer from the summer.

Did I mention even as I was cooking the gnocchi and Braciole I was craving cinnamon rolls?

On a completely different note. We have a neighborhood cat who shows up like clockwork between 5 and 5:30 on the weekends we are here. He or she slowly meanders to the back of the property seemingly looking around for maybe a tasty little mouse or some other morsel to eat. Now, this cat is really the slowest cat I’ve ever seen so it was particularly funny when I tried to take a picture of the cat and suddenly the cat took off at an amazingly fast pace.

I followed the cat as it walked the length of the property and found myself staring at the stainless steel rolling cart we’ve been using in the kitchen as a table/work counter since we still don’t have countertops for the kitchen cabinets. Wouldn’t that surface be just fine for rolling out dough?

Since I also don’t have any cookbooks up at the Red House (I know that’s old school but I still use them!), I dragged out my laptop and followed a recipe from the Pioneer Woman for Cinnamon Rolls 101 online.

And yes, I already did have all the ingredients on hand so this was a really easy recipe.  I mixed everything together and tried to follow the instructions but the dough just seemed a little bit too wet so I added more flour than called for. The dough rose, I rolled it out, layered it with melted butter, sprinkled on some sugar and lots of cinnamon just like the picture online.

Except I wanted to add some apples to my cinnamon rolls so I did just that.

Really, doesn’t this just look yummy?

I rolled the dough into a log shape, cut the log into slices, and arranged them in a pie pan. The dough seemed a bit wetter than it probably should have been but I figured it would “correct” itself when baking.

I’ve always had a problem with every oven I’ve ever owned and this one is no different. I read a recipe and it suggests a cooking time of say 15-18 minutes and when I peek at what I’m baking, 9 times out of 10 I need double the amount of baking time indicated. Since I was convinced that the thermostat in this new oven wasn’t working properly, I actually went out and bought an oven thermometer. I’d like to say the oven was off, but actually the temperature was exactly what it was supposed to be.

So back to the cinnamon rolls. The recipe called for adding “maple flavoring” to make the frosting. Ha Ha Ha. Living in Upstate New York, I don’t need “maple flavoring,” I can use the real stuff. So I did, mixing maple syrup together with some powdered sugar and milk.

The rolls came out of the oven, I frosted them, and here’s what they looked like.

Yes, they looked delicious but when we ate them in the morning for breakfast (after sticking them back in the oven to warm up a bit), they were a tad too gooey inside! So even after following the recipe and adjusting the baking time and having for the first time ever a second thermometer inside my oven to make sure the temperature was correct – these rolls needed to be baked a bit longer. (We ate most of them anyway, no worries!) So like the cat that prowls our property looking for tasty tidbits, I got mine too this weekend.

Finally, knowing that winter is literally around the corner up here, it’s awesome to drive a mere 5 minutes from the Red House and see the leaves changing, some late summer flowers still blooming and the water in the creek flowing so beautifully. What we’ve learned up here the last 4.5 years is to enjoy every minute of it.

And even though Lynn was really cursing the entire time he was putting everything together, in the end he said it was “easy.” Go figure.

I feel I have to share once again how the original kitchen looked in 2010 just to give this story some perspective.

We also have two amazing hardwood floors in Guest Bedroom #1 and Guest Bedroom #2.

Originally I was going to get a laminate floor to save some money but the guy installing the floor (who came to do the initial estimate, too) advised us against it. Also we have hardwood floors throughout our teeny, tiny Long Island house and even 12 years later the floors still look great and are really easy to clean.

So in case you don’t remember what the floors looked like, here’s a shot:

Unfortunately, our master bathroom and bedroom are nowhere near completion…

So right now we are bunking in Guest Bedroom #2 (the larger of the two).

We also finally got some of the electrical work done – so no more fixtures literally dangling over our heads.

Lynn and I always have a problem finding products that we like (ceiling lights and bathroom fixtures are our two biggest challenges) so we decided to try and salvage the existing light fixtures. A can of silver spray paint on one of the bedroom light fixtures and some rewiring on a decorative living room fixture therefore were a good compromise.

And yes, we cheated a bit, too and picked up a really inexpensive Ikea light that looks like a spaceship!

With my kitchen nearly done (I’m having an issue with ordering the countertop I want but more on that in a later blog post), and my parents coming up to visit, I also baked. I know I complain about baking over and over again but not only did I make zucchini bread but I made a cheesecake, too! Originally the plan had been to make zucchini bread using the zucchini that was growing in my garden. Obviously, that didn’t happen but I can say I did get two huge zucchini from the farmer’s market – one went into the cake, the other went into some homemade ratatouille.

Originally I thought when we came up to the Red House our garden would be brimming with vegetables. I had planted zucchini, beans, peas, carrots, tomatoes and tons of basil. Unfortunately, we now have a very large family of bunny rabbits living on the property.

While they did leave me with some basil and a few tomatoes, they ate nearly all the peas and all the zucchini! (The carrots are still in the ground so I’m not sure of their status yet.)

I did start to harvest some of the garlic since this time last summer I had dug it up. I was particularly happy that I managed to grow a crop from some of the cloves I harvested last year. After digging up about 30 garlic heads though, I decided to let them be for another week since some of the heads were rather small.

One interesting side note to our time up at the Red House this summer has to do with a reunion we attended. Most people know I lived in Munich, Germany, for 10 years but some may not realize I graduated from high school there, too.

Since this was my 35th (gulp!) high school reunion and Lynn and I hadn’t been to  Munich since 2007, I decided it was definitely time to go back (especially since I had also somehow missed every single reunion prior to this one as well). Dare I mention that Lynn and I will be celebrating 35 years together, too, this October?

Consequently, while most summers are spent exclusively up at the Red House, this year we spent 10 days in Germany and 5 days in Italy. As usual we did a lot of driving and eating and gushing at all the beautiful architecture, vistas and of course food.  And while I love the Red House even in it’s unfinished state, I do want to share some pictures of the trip.

There were farmer’s markets brimming with fresh radishes, artichokes, beans, tomatoes and lettuce, as well as flowers in nearly every hue imaginable.

There were shots of castles on the Rhine as well as picturesque vineyards (even on a gray day), and too many pictures of Italian art and architecture to share but a handful.

And then there was the food. Bread and cheese, homemade pasta, beer and pretzels the size of basketballs, Apfelstrudel and pizza!

Of course after the Europe trip (particularly with nearly a week in Italy) and with a “real” kitchen, I had no excuse but to make my first Red House pizza in my new oven, too!

Truthfully, the oven could have been hotter since the crust came out soggy. (The leftover pizza that we warmed up and kind of burnt the next day actually tasted better.)

What I realized after this trip however, was how very similar the area around Munich (particularly Garmisch-Partenkirchen) was to upstate New York. Undoubtedly, it’s why I always liked being up here. Granted, the mountains are not as high, but we have very pretty lakes and streams, rolling hills, and gorgeous forests a mere hour’s drive from the Red House.

On a different and not so bucolic note, we came home from our journey to find bats in the Red House. Our contractor has been working diligently to replace all of the plumbing in the house primarily to put a bathroom in the master bedroom and in doing so has unfortunately created a few “holes” in the walls.

This has resulted in at least two bats trying to take up residence inside the house! We noticed this one night when we were watching a DVD. Suddenly one of us saw something fly by out of the corner of one eye with what looked like very dark wings. Lynn and I are not good with bats or any other type of scary monster-like animal for that matter. Consequently, we quickly exited the room, shut the door and ran upstairs.

The next morning, our contractor showed up and found the bat sleeping by the basement door. He put on a pair of gloves and simply picked up the bat and put him inside a plastic supermarket bag. Once in the bag, he took him outside and released him back into the wild! Since the bat slept through the entire experience, I can only conclude it was a “teenage” bat.

We thought the bat episode was over, until the next night we were watching another DVD and sure enough once again there was something dark flying around in the next room. So, we repeated our previous night’s performance by quickly exiting the room, closing the door and going upstairs. This night however, Lynn also decided he was going to “seal” us in the room – so underneath the doors he wadded up some placemats and a kitchen towel.

This didn’t bring me any great amount of comfort and truthfully, I woke up at 4 a.m. thinking I heard and saw something flying around the bedroom. Plus, I was really really hot since the room was probably around 300 degrees since we had put in new windows, insulation and now a new floor! (Okay, it wasn’t really that warm but it felt like it.) Plus, now that I was hot and annoyed, I really had to pee but was afraid to go into the bathroom. Note to self: this is why you’ve never been camping – you hate bugs, creepy crawlies, bats and other things that are generally scary.

Finally it was morning. Our contractor showed up again (in itself always a good thing) and he found the hole in the wall that he thinks the bats were flying through. He grabbed some insulation and filled up the hole. We have not had any bat sightings for about 24 hours now so I’m hoping this method worked.

I was also hoping that similar to Shakespeare’s play, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” our very own “Puck” would emerge from the forest behind the Red House and tell us that the bats were only just a dream! Unfortunately, he did not, they were in fact very, very real!

I will leave you with this thought and image. We started our trip this year in Frankfurt, Germany, a city Lynn and I had never visited. We walked through the old town and came upon a pedestrian bridge called the “Eiserner Steg.” There on the bridge, similar to many bridges we’ve seen in Paris and Florence, were locks that had been affixed not only to the structure but to other locks, too.  As romantic history buffs will know, the padlocks when locked with a key, symbolize a love that can’t be broken especially since the key to that lock is thrown away.

Since I, too, am a hopeless romantic, I spent a lot of time looking at the engravings thinking I would find a couple who had the same initials as we do. Perhaps, instead, I should have been looking for a lock with the initials “RH.” After all, I think our relationship is pretty darn good after 35 years (especially since this is our THIRD house renovation). The Red House still needs a lot of work and love put into it – somehow I know we can do it.

Meanwhile, our contractor had installed our very expensive kitchen faucet to then tell us that while it might have been given an “A” in “Design World,” in fact it was a piece of crap and he decided it warranted an “F.”  Apparently, it came with an integrated supply line that was too narrow. (Trust me, I didn’t know what that was either until about 2 weeks ago – it’s the hot and cold supply lines that are permanently attached to the faucet.) Since the lines weren’t the proper size, if we wanted a drink of water, let’s just say it took a really, really long time to fill up an 8 ounce glass. Want to fill a pot with water to make pasta? Forget it, that’s at least a 20 minute task.

So while it looked good…

It needed to be replaced. So we went out and bought a new faucet that was half the price with two separate supply lines that would hopefully give us something that resembled a steady flow of water and not the trickle we were dealing with.

We also managed (I say we but Lynn did all the work) to put up one wall of kitchen cabinets with doors!

And while I had written in my last article about having a dishwasher that was useless because it wasn’t bolted to anything (an “F” in my book), Lynn did manage to screw it into our temporary plywood countertop which meant it was instantly usable and thus quickly became an “A.”

Meanwhile, the bird that had been creeping me out in my last post (she gets a “D” for scary) was really just sitting around waiting for her little birdies to hatch. They now spend a lot of time poking their little heads out of their nest while they wait for another bird to come and give them a worm or two to eat! I desperately tried to get a photograph of this happening in action but the bigger bird start flipping out at me when my camera kept “clicking” (no dumb ass it’s not a gun). Plus, Lynn was yelling at me that the bird was going to attack me! Geez! So this is the only shot I got.

The other Herculean task we managed to accomplish last Memorial Day weekend was some of the planting. Problem was there were so many weeds, it took us nearly 5 hours to dig them up before we could even start to plant! Which means by the time we got ready to plant, I could barely move. (I know that’s an “F” for being out of shape!)

Still this year, I put in at least 4 different kinds of tomatoes, green beans, zucchini, acorn squash, basil, carrots, spinach, Romaine lettuce, plus seeds that promise to sprout pumpkins and sunflowers!

I also planted a fair amount of marigolds hoping like last year that they will in fact keep the animals away. It obviously wasn’t going to work instantly though since last weekend we saw an “abbondanza” (as the Italians say) of animals with glimpses of at least 2 bunnies, 3 deer, a chipmunk and a very large snake hiding in the garage.

One of the bunnies immediately went for the carrots and when I tried to “shoo” him out of the garden, he freaked out and started hurling himself against the fence! Really, it was quite a sight to see. Luckily, he did manage to find a big enough hole in the fence to squeeze himself through. We’re hoping he was so traumatized by this experience that perhaps he’ll think of the garden as an evil place? (I’m kidding.)

This weekend we found new connectors (elbows and such) sitting on the floor waiting to be somehow hooked together so we have new PVC that will directly feed into our sewer line. (Yes, it does in fact look like a installation piece at a museum!)

Right now we have an old cast iron pipe that our contractor revealed was actually leaking in several places. This means since we’ve discovered this that when we flush the upstairs toilet, it leaks into a small hallway. (That’s a definite “F.”) So we try to flush as little as possible (when it’s yellow, let it mellow, when it’s brown, flush it down), but sometimes we forget.

Meanwhile, back outside, the meadow and the wildflowers this time of year are simply stunning. (That’s an “A.”)

My only concerns are that while I seem to technically have plenty of strawberries, (green leaves and little white flowers), I have yet to see one berry or even the beginnings of one.

The garlic however, seems about less than half the size that it was last year but perhaps I’m rushing things? When I did, in fact, check my pictures of garlic scapes from summers past, they actually came to maturity in early August.

I’m not going to grade my gardening skills or give a letter grade to what may or may not grow this season. Summer break is nearly upon us and with enough weed pulling, watering and good old sunshine, hopefully everything will bear fruit.

Oh yeah, on the drive home, even the gas station wanted me to do a survey to give them a grade! I “opted out.”