house

My Nemesis, Or Why My Next House Will Be a Tent

November 20, 2009 By heather 4 Comments

My Twitter friends may remember that sometime in September (or was it August?) I began degrouting our shower. The grout is original, which, while a high status in the art and fashion world, here means it’s sometimes missing and sometimes moldy. I felt I had to shower after stepping out of my shower.

And my Twitter friends may recall that this project may indeed be the death of me (see–I can pick up a good southern phrase). Classic tweets regarding the project include:

off to de-grout my shower! (2:20 PM Sep 16th)

wow. degrouting
so much faster after Chris fixed the tool and showed me I could be
rougher with it than I was. This is almost fun now! (10:49 AM Sep 18th)

my hands won’t stop vibrating after using Dremel. I feel like a cartoon. (12:47 PM Sep 18th)

they ask me how I knew . . . grout gets in my eyes (1:28 PM Sep 18th)

guess I’m done
today’s grout work. Dremel not working again. At this rate, I’ll finish
by New Year’s in time for resolution to never do this (2:19 PM Sep 21st)

Dremel bit snapped in half. Then my piano student stood me up. Lovely. (4:59 PM Sep 28th)

Today’s
Cervantes’ b-day (or what they think is his b-day). It’s fitting I work
on the grout in honor of Quixote. It’s my personal windmill. (10:24 AM Sep 29th)

You see the deterioration–from optimism, joking, even song (and, yes, dance) to suspicions of insanity. Yesterday, after over a month of absence (due in part to legitimate reason–travel), I returned to the degrouting project.

To find the Dremel tool, once again, inoperable.

Okay, I can make lemonade (especially since we recently learned that our lime tree may be, indeed, a lemon tree). I’ll work on getting out the caulk with the hand saw.

Uh-huh.

And this is where I met my nemesis.

Some of the caulk–the caulk my husband added to the shower a few years ago, stripped away, no problem. Some of the caulk, which must be decades old, held firm. The saw doesn’t cut through it because the caulk is too putty-like. But neither can I peel it out because in that sense the caulk is too petrified (meaning hard, not scared).

You see my dilemna.

Removing the old caulk is harder than containing the blob in a thimble.

Which is why I’ve decided that I’m moving into a tent.

Indeed, the new earth cannot have mansions. Mansions mean upkeep, and who wants to regrout the showers?

Filed Under: grouting, grr, house, housework, showers

Why my house is trendy

May 13, 2008 By heather 4 Comments

I realized the other day that against my better judgment, I’ve become fashionable.

I have a lot of original artwork in my house. Back in the day, Chris painted. He’s done some pretty cool stuff, too. A lot of it hangs on our walls, including the piece he proposed to me with. Unfortunately, he pours his creative energy into graphic design stuff now, and alas, no more paintings.
My house is vintage. People spend loads of money for vintage stuff. I didn’t have to. I have vintage cabinet handles, vintage shower tiles, vintage grout, vintage carpeting…
It’s eclectic. No two doorknobs match. (Said doorknobs are also vintage, so they’re pulling double duty.)
It’s imaginative. I have fairy dust on my counter and snow on my ceiling. That’s right, my house snows on the inside. And it doesn’t have to be cold. (Of course, some might call this a popcorn ceiling, but I’m convinced it’s snow.)
I have a gnome. Okay, so maybe this isn’t as much trendy as guilty-pleasure. But I love this guy. He’s in my garden playing leap-frog with a frog (who else would you play leap-frog with?).
I’m growing tomatoes, peppers, artichoke, strawberries, cilantro, basil, and rosemary. My mom’s done this for years and years, but I’m learning that this is now the in thing to do. Who knew?

If only I could learn to smoke a pipe…

Filed Under: garden, giggles, house

Of Washing Machines and Wellington's Overture

January 10, 2008 By heather 2 Comments

"Do you smell something burning?" I felt my nose crinkle.

"Yeah. I do." My husband got up and searched the house. "I think I see smoke."

All I could think about was the piano. My baby.

Then it occurred to me. For the past few months, the washing machine’s sounded like a jet taking off. I’ve been waiting for this day.

Or waiting for the day when I’d discover a missing washer, a hole in my roof, and reports of UFOs.

Sure enough. The laundry room smelled of burnt rubber.

So began our search for a new machine. This is the first time I’ve ever bought a washing machine. At first, Chris didn’t understand why I wanted to go with him to pick a new one out. Until I explained that I’m usually the one who does the laundry.

Men.

If you haven’t been shopping for washing machines lately, let me tell you. They have gadgets and gizmos galore. You can get one designed in the fourteen hundreds for about $300, or you can look at the new models.

I couldn’t help myself. We looked at the new models.

High energy. The thing uses less water than what would drown a mouse.

Not that I drown mice.

They had models that steamed and pressed and danced with the stars. They even had a red model.

"Oh, honey," I said. "Red." Something wet dribbled down my chin. "It’s red. I would walk in the laundry room and be happy."

"Happy? We can spend the extra money for you to be happy doing laundry."

I’m not sure if I should attribute such altruism to his desire to make me happy or his desire to minimize my complaints.

But the red thing with all the buttons cost over twice as much as the one we bought.

It came today, my new washing machine. And for one time, one time only, I was excited to do laundry. I even washed it spin for a little bit. It’s a front loader, which I’ve never used before. It only uses 7 gallons of water! (Compared to the 40 of our previous monster.) Plus, I had to watch it to make sure it’s working. I can’t hear the darned thing. It’s motto: silence is golden.

I can even leave the laundry room door open.

Wait a second! I’ve talked for an entire post about laundry! Quick. Say something bookish. Kierkegaard and his either/or. E=mc2. Beethoven’s music stretched the forms of the day, replacing menuets and trios with the raucuous scherzo, taking the development section far beyond where it had ever gone before.

Wshoo. I feel better now.

Updated: And it plays a song to let me know when the cycle’s done! Was this machine made for me or what?

Filed Under: house

A Very, Very, Very Fine House

June 21, 2007 By heather Leave a Comment

Our house is 30 years old, which for Texas, where the sun wears you and your house down, giving you both wrinkles before your time, is old. Don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of things to love about our house: the concrete floors my husband stained before I met him (man, love those floors), the patio out back that looks out into our rosemary, aloe, basil, strawberry, tomato and other sundry plants, my new flower garden in the front yard, the wall painting my husband did in our bedroom. But there are also things not so great. Like the 30-year-old mildew in the shower grout. It’s not so bad, but it’s not great. So we had a guy come out to give us an estimate in redoing our master shower only. Which turned into an estimate for re-tiling the floors, replacing vanities, new toilets, new onyx showers for two bathrooms. He gave us a price. We spewed our drinks. Needless to say, for a man working in full-time ministry and a woman who is a writer/speaker/flute and piano teacher (snap, snap, snap), it was about $16000 out of our price range. So we went back to our original: acryllic in one shower. That was still, oh, about $5000-$6000 out of our range. Yes, I’m the master of under-estimation, time, money, you name it. It won’t ever take me long to do something or cost much. Uh-huh. (Erin, writing pre-coffee! Danger, Will Robinson!)
So I did something for which Barkat would diatribe, and, honestly, for which I myself hate. I bought bleach, sprayed it over the tile, and waited (with windows open). I hate using bleach, but it worked.
But what I really want to tell you about is my vanity counter top. I’m so glad we decided to not get them replaced because I discovered the other night that the gold glitter laced throughout the ivory marble is actually fairy dust waiting to take me to far, far away places.

Filed Under: house

Composting

February 27, 2007 By heather Leave a Comment

This past weekend I learned that my husband’s packrat tendencies come from his father, who gets it from his father. It’s a stagnant gene pool collecting everything.
Scared me to death.
Confession: I used to be a packrat. I thought everything had sentimental value and was worthy of putting away. No longer. Now I want to throw away everything except for leftovers in the fridge.
Chris: But I might need that someday.
Not if you don’t even remember that you have it because it’s in a pile with three million other unknown objects.
To be fair, he has done a lot this past year to clean up. He cleaned the office and threw away a lot. He cleaned the garage. Again, threw away a lot. We can now fit two cars in there! Yay! I really can’t hold this against him.
In our visit, his father said, hey, go through all this and take what you want.
Be afraid, be very afraid.
I have to say, though, that Chris limited himself. We came away with a stack of records (which I wanted more than he did – I’m a sucker for records), a working phonograph player (again, we both wanted it), old pictures, some paintings his grandmothers and great grandmothers did (none were really any good, to be honest), these blue glass telephone cap things (I don’t know, but I have to admit that they look cool), some random silver pieces that need some love, and a compost. So, I can’t complain. I can’t wait to set up the compost. I want to set it up right on the other side of the window above the sink so that I can just open the window and throw. And one of the records is an unopened Elvis record. I already have Abbey Road. (I stole it from my parents, although I’ve told them a dozen times I took it along with their Steppenwolf and Frank Sinatra. They get upset every time they “discover” this fact, which is about once every few years, though they don’t have a working record player.)
So I guess a little packratedness is good, but don’t tell Chris I said that. I’ll never hear the end or be able to throw anything out again.

Filed Under: gardening, house