• goodbadi

    The New Kitchen

    I’d forgotten to hope to find a bag full of $100 bills stashed in the walls until after I’d already taken all the insulation out and then happened to look behind a baseboard heater, where this was hiding:

    Oh well. Anyway, the room used to look like this, until Dad and I gutted it Friday night:
    No wood stove, no hearth, no drywall, no insulation. Introducing our new kitchen:

    Dad and my brother-in-law and I worked all day Saturday, too. These windows came out and will be replaced by three smaller windows spaced along the east wall:

    The new, south-facing window frame above the kitchen sink:

    The west wall’s window frame and new, wider door:

    When we were finished, I pulled a load of trash across town to the landfill–1,480 pounds. This picture shows the trailer still not filled to capacity:
    Modern, ripped-out-door-frame art:
  • goodbadi

    (Attempting) A Positive Spin on Our Lack of Progress

    No wonder we never get ahead, someone pointed out to me recently after I complained that our current income is limiting our house remodeling: we live slow lives.

    In fact by some standards we live very slow lives. I commute by bike when, during these cold months, I could drive home in the time it takes me to change into my warm biking clothes. I limit work-related tasks that cut into evenings at home. M takes only minimal out-of-home employment. I prefer to preserve my summers off. We resist too many evenings away from home. We’re trying to turn off the computer by 8:30 at night.

    Keeping things slow, however, hasn’t dissuaded me from running a List: Put in new windows in the space of our future kitchen; build the future kitchen; re-floor our downstairs (and hey, why not the upstairs, too); turn the old kitchen space into a study; renovate the downstairs bathroom; build a deck/balcony; add a porch roof or two; develop our own water supply system; install a central vacuum; buy a Subaru, Jeep, minivan, shotgun, miter saw, new computer; and I’m only getting started. It’s a hopeful yet depressing endeavor, the List, since just saving towards projects is a long-term project in itself.

    But while our pace of life is certainly stunting our financial growth and house metamorphicating, slowness allows a certain accepting of the “fierce urgency of now” (I Have a Dream): Playing with and reading to N (for weeks some afternoons, it seems); singing with ourselves and a band; occasional writing; gardening; going to bed at a reasonable hour; eating home-grown food made from scratch; sitting in front of the toasty wood stove. And there are always free projects to do around the house, for when I’m needing tangible productivity. 

    I can only try to keep my dreams balanced between the part of me that wants to fix up the house at gut-wrenching speed and the other parts of my rich life that do
     not afford financial progress yet are incontrovertibly priceless.

  • goodbadi

    The Power of Priorities

    I’m a big fan of Lynn Miller’s Power of Enough book and thoughts. They’re relevant.

    Just the other week I walked a friend through our house, describing the many grandiose dreams I have for the place: a balcony in front that wraps around to patio doors on the east side of our second-story guest room, a second-story hallway spanning a breezeway between the house and a two-car garage with a bedroom or studio above, a relocated kitchen, a compacted downstairs bathroom to make way for a coat closet…and I suppose there was more, too, like painted walls and nice floors.

    But I’m not so sure those things will be done in the near-sighted future. See, while the depressed housing market made it possible for us to purchase this house, it also very unfortunately caused our previous townhouse investment to turn into spongy, cash-absorbing nothingness that is now–thanks to the goodness of note holders willing to take it all back–not ours to worry about anymore. We may be cashlessened, but at least we’re not stressed.

    So I’ve realized something over the past months of projects dreaming: maybe not having cash to make home improvements can be more freeing than frustrating. Many times this summer I relaxed and enjoyed the free projects I could scrounge up–there was no need for my panties getting all in a ball over too little time and too much to do, since I couldn’t do more than freebies.

    And besides, isn’t a small house and simple lifestyle my ideal? Do I really want a huge garage? (Well, okay, yes, I do.) But a garage with an additional bedroom above it? (It would be nice…maybe I should rethink this post.)

    What I’ll do for now is bump the garage and balcony ideas a few more notches down the priorities list, and focus on making more necessary improvements (that’s where the moved kitchen will come into play, eventually).

    After all, tweaking lists doesn’t cost a dime.

  • goodbadi

    As God Intended

    Back in December, in a meeting with the previous owners to discuss buying our new house, one of them made an approving comment about our goal of one-income living so that M could stay home with N: “That’s the way God intended it to be.”

    I’ve added two other intentions to God’s list: owning just one car (with a hitch and access to a trailer, in lieu of a having a truck, too), and now owning just one home.

    Indeed, I am relishing our new-found freedom from owning our old townhouse. Our owner-financing lenders did agree to take it back and call it even, in spite of our being under water in what was essentially an act of debt forgiveness, and yesterday was the official day when we could cancel the property insurance and would have thrown away the keys if we hadn’t already mailed them off.

    Now we hope to start saving for remodeling projects around our One and Only Home Sweet Home–a hope not too dampened by a friend’s remark last evening: “We’ve started saving lots of times, but something always comes up!”

    Like a much-needed celebratory trip to my favorite restaurant, where the burgers and fries are as God intended.

  • goodbadi

    Cleaning My Bro’z New Pad

    It was the kind of place where after I took off my sweaty shirt I hung it in the third story, almost-floor-to-ceiling window in hopes of blocking the outside-in view through the lacy curtain while I showered, avoided the dirty floor by stepping only on my discarded socks or nearby sneakers until getting in the tub (after stowing my towel in the fire escape ladder box rather than on the as-yet-uncleaned towel rack), and waited patiently as the water pressure ebbed to a trickle for several minutes (someone in a lower apartment must have been getting a drink) but then resumed its fully moderate strength.

    Before I took that Tuesday evening shower, my brother and I had hauled all of his earthly possessions from his old digs the four hours to the new place, carried it all up two long flights of narrow stairs–with the help of the landlord, who accepts cash only and offers (upon request) handwritten lease agreements and receipts for the monthly payments–and then puttered through what looked like a bad part of town and down a steep hill with a hairpin curve to a really nice, down home grocery store where Z spent over $340 to stock his kitchen.

    For about a dollar a square foot, with utilities, the apartment will actually be a quaint place–once it’s cleaned. After shopping we scoured the refrigerator, several cupboards, and the bathroom fixtures; Z said he would work on the floors, furniture, walls, windows, and whatever else on the next day, after I’d taken off for home.

    When M called to say goodnight, Z told her that I was providing cleaning inspiration and “leadership.” He handed the phone to me, and she asked, “Are you being anal?”

    M’s question was–no doubt here–probably in reference to the countless times I’ve gotten carried away in our dwellings with cleaning projects. Sometimes when I start scrubbing, it’s hard to stop, since there’s always more. Several months–I’m ashamed of that long time span–after we moved into our new house, I realized that our own bathtub needed a good scratch. I thought about this because we’d let Drano sit around the drain and ended up with (besides better drainage) a clean spot. I spent nearly two hours that night with a scrub pad and Kaboom making that tub and our bathroom sinks look right sparkly, and loved every bit of the cleanliness.

    “It needs it,” I said.

    Not shown in this picture are the leveling two-by-fours under the fronts of the stove, sink, and counters:

    Nails and staples hold the shower curtain to the wall:

    Room with a view:

  • goodbadi

    Saving the Old

    I’m no interior designer nor am I overly sentimental, but using old parts of what we so uproariously have removed from our new old home makes me happy.

    Studs from the downstairs wall-no-longer act as bases for clothing hooks in several rooms:

    An old copper pipe–probably from within the same wall–is now my tie rod:

  • goodbadi

    New Friend

    The minuscule leak we’ve just not gotten around to fixing will be taken care of just as immediately as possible, we decided after finding this (click to enlarge) in our downstairs bathroom:

  • goodbadi

    Bottomless

    On Friday I rode bike to school for what I expect will be the last time before my commute is cut from 13.2 to seven miles by our move next weekend. I’m sure that the new ride will go much faster, except for the dirt road section.

    On Saturday, I–not by myself, mind you–completed everything and more than I’d hoped for the day, including putting in the new beams that will replace a supporting wall.

    The offending wall between the current dining and living rooms:

    Another wall, this one along the upstairs corridor and to be replaced with a banister:

    After 12:30 at night, long after my sister served up a gourmet pizza supper, I stumbled in our apartment door, filthy with drywall remnants, exhausted from swinging a hammer, and excited that our new house is, well, becoming.

    I was glad to have reserved today for not much besides church.

    “I feel like I’m a bottomless pit,” I told M this evening while we ate the two pounds of boneless, skinless chicken breasts that I’d fried in olive oil, corn flour, and salt and pepper, and served with buttered toast and boiled, chopped broccoli. “At supper last night I was full, but I felt like I could have eaten even more pizza, as in 20 minutes’ more.”

    I wiped up the stove’s grease spatters and we trekked upstairs to our landlord’s birthday party, where I had two big slices of ice cream cake, no eye batting required.

    I guess I’m just getting ready to jump back into that other bottomless pit: house projects.