The Home Improver

Last night, Caedmon and I began listing aloud all the improvements Derek has made to this house since we moved in last June, because list-making is a fun pastime.  Our youngest was born with this truism etched on his heart.  That, or he's seen me making one bajillion lists over the course of his lifetime and it rubbed off.  The former sounds nicer.

I don't feel bad writing out the list here the way I would if I forced you to listen to my recitation; you're free to skim the list at will and it will likely take you seconds.  If I did this verbally, I would no doubt pause periodically to wander down myriad rabbit trails with side stories and side-side stories.  I am not brief when writing and even less brief when I story-tell aloud.  At least in this format, you have a choice and don't have to find a polite way out of the conversation.

• Tore down kitchen cabinets
• Installed open kitchen shelves
• Hung bucket-things
• Replaced knob and lock on back door
• Installed storm door
• Installed new kitchen lighting
• Installed new basement lighting
• Installing new outdoor shutters (in progress!)
• Installed new front outdoor light
• Installed new living room sconce
• Created built-in bookcases
• Installed new bedroom lighting
• Installed new bedroom closet shelving
• Tore down cabinets in kid's bedroom
• Caulked and insulated around five outdoor windows
• Built storage shelving under stairs
• Built shelving for storage in basement
• Built and installed sliding barn door for kid's room
• Shaved down bathroom door so it would close
• Did scary plumbing stuff
• Installed new coat closet door 

This isn't even going into building a few Ikea storage pieces and aaaallllll the electrical work he's done throughout the house.  This place was a deathtrap, I swear, with its knob and tube wiring and non-grounded outlets and who knows what else.  (Derek does.)  We've also had a few things professionally installed because Husband knows his limits.  As do I.  Our limits for home improvement projects are just very different.  Joanna Gaines, I am not- but if you need book recommendations, I'm your gal!  (Laughs weakly.)

I've been combing through our various before, during, and after photos for some of these projects Derek has accomplished and plan on writing a few posts describing them.  I'll try to avoid excruciating detail, but that's really not something I can realistically promise.  Actually, wait- yes, I can!  Since I was at work while 90% of the labor involved in these things was done, I don't even really know what all went into most of it, just that I would arrive home and a new light fixture would be up, or I could see progress on the bookcases, or whatever.  I will also be sure to tell you the one minor service I provided with each one, often involving paint, in the same way a child will wave their hand in the air and cry, "I halped!"


Also:  we've been in the house just a few days shy of nine months.  It's like all this drilling and sawing and hammering and measuring and on and on is Derek's version of gestation.  He's been gestating DeWalt tools.  Or hang on, I feel like I'm using this metaphor imperfectly- is it the projects that he's been gestating?  Is the book case I'm currently looking at his project baby?  Since he worked alone, was it immaculate conception?  (Did things just get weird?  I think things just got weird.)


Look here:  in the time since I wrote all the previous words early this morning and right now, Derek began and finished another dang project.  He says he loves switching out light fixtures because it's "quick and easy and such a drastic change."  I would call him a liar but he does make it look easy, even with the decrepit wiring in this house that he's slowly bringing into the 21st century.  And so:  behold!  One fewer boob light in this house!

Full disclosure:  this isn't the actual light he took down.  He began this project before I could take a "before" picture, so I walked ten feet to the side and took a picture of another light that will someday be replaced.

Tadaaaaa!  Look how happy he looks.

I wanted to get a picture of the new light fixture without the light bulbs on, but as it turns out when you turn the light off it gets darker in the room and I was too impatient to wait until morning when we had some natural light, so the coloring on this is wonky because I edited the daylights (haha) out of it on my phone.  But... behold!  Our new fixture, wavy glass, Edison bulbs, and all, and Derek's newest product of gestation!

I promise I'll come back with a better term.

Like One of Those Epic Sagas but with a Bathroom

The problem with home improvement is that if you improve one thing, it makes all the other things immediately adjacent to that thing look... less than improved.  In fact, they can look downright dreadful, especially, as it turns out, if you're looking through Derek's eyes, which are terrific at seeing What Could Be.  To get to What Could Be, however, you have to destroy What Already Is.

I have a knack for living with What Already Is. Sure, the peel-and-stick tile is coming up off the bathroom floor, but so what?  It's a matter of seconds to slip it back into place with your foot.  And the finish flaking off the medicine cabinet?  It's not ideal, but neither is the reflection in the mirror right next to it.  Both speak to the second law of thermodynamics, in that everything eventually degrades and decays, so to do away with the medicine cabinet is to do away with our children's grasp of science!  Or something!  Anything that makes it so that we don't have to embark on another home improvement project immediately after finishing the last one!



I am not an optimist by nature.  I wouldn't say Derek is, either, except when it comes to this house, specifically projects undertaken on this house.  All he really wanted was to get the bead board off the bathroom walls and to lay the new floor.  The work of a day, he thought.

The house had other ideas.

As it turns out, the previous owners (rather brilliantly, I have to admit) covered half the bathroom walls in bead board so that they wouldn't have to properly finish those walls:  drywall, tape, spackle, etc.  So what was awaiting us once that bead board had been removed?

That's right:  more plaster.  More lathe.  More crazily uneven walls and problem solving and work, work, work.

Caedmon, our child who either wants to be "a professional football player, a professional soccer player, or if I can't do those things, a construction worker," was eager to get in there and help.

If you look closely, you'll see the dimple that pops out when he's hard at work.  His dad's does the same thing.  This is incredibly sweet.

Added in to all this was the fact that Derek saw a mirror a while back that had the lighting built in to the mirror.  Fact:  people who work in video are semi-obsessive about good lighting.  Mirrors with built-in lights apparently make for good lighting.  So while we didn't have to have towel warmers or a wifi toilet or fake old fixtures (you know- those new fixtures that they purposely mess with to make them appear old?), we did have to have a lit mirror.  This meant that Derek had to put in a new outlet and new light switch, which involved wiring, which is always always a good time in an old house.  And by "good time" I mean trying not to burn down the house as you discover that none of the outlets are grounded or follow any kind of modern safety protocol.

Fun fact:  Derek says the same kinds of things whether things are going well or have jumped in to a handbasket and are heading straight south.   The other day as he was yet again working on electrical stuff I had to scooch around the bathroom so that I could peer into his face in order to correctly interpret the chuckle he'd just emitted.  And don't even get me started on the monosyllable "huh."  "Huh" can mean "Yes!  It fits!  I just fixed this nagging problem," or it can equally mean, "Well, that's definitely not supposed to look like that."

But!  A million "huh"s and a few dark chuckles later, he's got the wiring done.  Did I worry about him being electrocuted at some point? Especially after he attempted to assure me yesterday by saying not to worry, he'd already "gotten a little juice" from the outlet he was working on, and that it wasn't that bad?  Yes.  Yes I did.  Is it likewise done, though?  Yes.  Yes it is.

Please ignore my poor framing of this shot and focus on that beautiful mirror.  It is so dang purdy.  And if ever you feel the need to be mirror twins with us (sounds like the premise of a ghost story... I may have just ruined this mirror for myself), let us know because the company we bought it from is third generation family-owned- just the type of thing I'm a big old sucker for; we'll happily share all the particulars.

Now, brace yourself, because I wanted to show you how well this mirror actually lights its subjects, but to do that I had to take a for-real picture of myself.

The overhead light is not on; that's all from the mirror.

Somewhere in this timeline Derek replaced the flooring.  This consisted of me laying down the moisture barrier (a sheet of a kind of foam material that had to be connected at the seams with no overlapping but also no gaps), while Derek did everything else, including cutting the flooring to fit around a large pipe that randomly runs from the ceiling to the floor right next to one of the bathroom walls.  Derek suggested taking it out but I meekly said NO NO NO WAY NOTHING GOOD CAN COME OF THIS.  So he didn't.
If that workload sounds unfair to you, it's only because it is.  Now, I wasn't reclining on the couch, idly thumbing through a novel while he toiled away upstairs; we do still have those three children who require care and keeping.  I also handed Derek things as he needed them.  Please hold your applause.

After flooring came replacing the vanity, a journey which was made up of a series of small catastrophes.  First we picked out a vanity, muscled it into the van, squishing the kids into the back bench of the van, hoisted it into the house, opened up the box... only to find that the vanity inside did not match the picture on the outside, nor the model we had chosen.

Whatever, we can return it, and that one was probably too big, anyway.  Let's try this other one!

It was pretty!  The top was sleek marble!  The base color was "cloud," which was somehow important to me!

This one we managed to get all the way up the staircase- which includes three turns and two landings- and into the bathroom, where we swore up and down it worked and looked great.  Derek cut a hole in the bottom and we carefully lowered it down over the plumbing.  At that point we realized that it looked just a tad big.  Not terrible, we told ourselves.  We even lived with it for a day before we were both forced to admit that any bathroom fixture that forces you to close the door before you can squeeze past it to get to the other side of the room- well, it probably doesn't fit.  Somehow we managed to sell it on a Facebook swap shop- couldn't take it back to the store since we'd already cut into it- which included (not a little bitterly) maneuvering it back down the stairs, into its box, and out into a storm to meet the seller, who ended up being delightful, by the way.

Oh, and I forgot the drawer pulls, so I had to mail those afterward.  She was very understanding.

A bunch of other things happened- imagine a series of things going wrong, one after another, and you'll pretty much have it- but we finally got the right vanity and sink into the there.  Did it weigh hundreds of pounds and take three of us to get it up the stairs?  Does it fit perfectly in our space, as it is long but narrow, like our weird old-house bathroom?  Is it the first one Derek suggested but I poo-poo'd at the beginning of this saga?

Add baseboards, paint, wrangling a faucet into place, and a million other details, some of which are still unfinished, and we're done.  Nearly done.  Will this bathroom ever be done?

Close enough.





I'll get up a post up with more "we are so done" pictures (I like that term better than "after") soon, but for now, reward yourself for making it all the way to end of this long post by making these amazing chicken tinga tacos for your culinary pleasure and sit down with Listen, Slowly by Thanhha Lai, one of my favorite books I've read so far this year.

The Last Time I Ever Tile Something. I Mean It This Time.

I know it's been an age and a day since I last posted, but I have some feelings to process, and what better place to do so than the internet?

Never fear, we're not going through any serious family turmoil or anything; no one is dying or even majorly ill.

We are, however, in the process of some semi-major home renovations, which I know many would greet with the feelings appropriate to the situation:  excitement!  anticipation!  gratitude!

Because I am me, however, a decidedly non-Joanna Gaines kind of girl in an HGTV-obsessed country (no offense to the Magnolia empire.  Please don't have me smothered in my sleep with a perfectly on-trend designer pillow.), I am not feeling any of the emotions listed above.  I am instead cranky and teary and overwhelmed and even sending some not-so-loving thoughts to our beloved old house.  (I don't really mean it, House.  It's those Suspicious Previous Owners and their utter lack of regard to bringing ANYTHING up to code in their tenure here.)


It all started, as these things do, with a nasty old shower.  Our nasty old shower.

Because I am also apparently, um, nasty and old (?) I was more than happy to continue on with this shower of ours, as long as I had the thought of a someday-new shower to sustain me.  Emphasis on someday, which is evidently where I prefer our home improvement projects to remain.

Derek, however, is a go-getter, a doer, a today kind of home owner.  This is the kind of person every house deserves, especially a charming old dear such as ours that just needs a thing or two (OR ONE MILLION) done to keep standing well into its second century of life.

This meant a new shower.  Yahoo!  Huzzah!  Hoo-to-the-ray!

I can say with no false modesty that Derek and I are experienced tilers. You may remember that we tiled our kitchen backsplash a few years ago, and prior to that we'd tiled the floors of several rooms in a previous house. This was our first time tiling a shower, however, and that meant all kinds of waterproofing and sealing and fun, fun, fun.

Before any of that could happen, though, we had to tear out the old shower walls.

Do you remember that horror film that came out years ago called What Lies Beneath?  I don't really, either, but those are words that come to mind and I certainly get that horror movie feeling every time we set out to reveal anything that's been covered up in our house.  Hard experience has taught Derek and I that if there was a shortcut to be had, the previous owners of our house took it.  So I knew that when Derek went to rip out those shower walls,

we would not be greeted only by well-preserved, modern drywall.  And lo!  I was right!

We did find other things, though.  Like mold.  And a senseless mix of old insulation and new.

That's warm, cozy, no doubt terrible for the earth modern insulation on the left, and planet-friendly but barely-keeps-our-shower-warm lathe, plaster, and lambswool on the right.  Golly, old houses are fun.  (Okay, so they really are.  I found the lambswool as charming as I did maddening.  No wonder I flinch every time my arm accidentally brushes against the freezing walls of our shower!)

 Let's just take a quick moment and thank God for Derek's constant willingness to learn new things, and for YouTube.  After watching the appropriate instructional videos, Derek has rewired parts of our vehicles, fixed busted pipes in our basement, and now ripped out, rewired, and installed all new everything in our bathroom.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

So:  DensShield went in (oh, you don't know what DensShield is?  Neither did I, a few happy months ago), and then we got to tiling.  Derek cut the tiles in the basement, I did most of the mortaring.  I couldn't very well take a picture of myself doing that, though, and didn't care enough to try and set up a shot of myself doing it, so here's a picture of Derek doing one of the sections he completed, because I know this is terribly important to you:

We went with gray glass subway tile.  You may notice we kept the tub, because it's in good shape and we don't generally replace things unless they're already halfway dead.  The fact that it likely weighs half a ton also factors in here.

We put it in shelf holder thingies, and a tile mosaic.

Better

Then we grouted, which I did take a picture of myself doing,

and then we took a break to go to church and do an Easter egg hunt, because we did all of this Easter weekend!  Jesus is risen!  He is risen indeed!  Time to undertake a home improvement project so you can question His decision not to just forego the cross and relegate us all to the fiery depths because that's starting to sound preferable to spending another minute in this Godforsaken shower!

I think this is the closest we got to family photo this Easter, or as it will no doubt be known in the future:  "2018:  The Lost Easter."

That final sentence in the previous paragraph rather precisely communicates my attitude on the down slope of any DIY project, by the way.  Derek speaks very carefully and gently to me, reminding me that we do still care about this, and that it does matter where this tile goes or how we go about finishing this row.  The Bible is full of verses about finishing strong and not giving up but I think God may have decided to withhold those traits in me because two days in to these kinds of things and all I can say to any question Derek asks me is, "I mean, fine.  Whatever.  I'm sure whatever is fine.  Yep, that looks good.  Or that way.  Any way it gets done is fine because I no longer care about anything."  

Thankfully Derek is good about keeping end goals in mind, or our entire house would be in shambles.  I did get it together long enough to do things like caulking (a duty of which I have since been relieved because it turns out one can be almost comically bad at caulking) and sealing the grout- something I wasn't exactly bad at but certainly wasn't smart about.  All I remember is lying on the floor of the bathroom, ceiling swirling above me as Adelaide reads the instructions on the bottle in a scolding manner:  "Mom, it says right here that you should work in a well-ventilated area, that there MUST be a cross-breeze, that you should be wearing a mask and gloves and to remove contact lenses before use!  DID YOU DO ANY OF THESE THINGS?"  

No.  No, I did not.  In fact, I ducked under the plastic sheeting we had up so that we could still shower but not get the tile wet while it cured for a couple days, so it was just me and my sealant fumes occupying those few inches of space, which is how I ended up dizzy and swaying and pawing my way out of my chemical tent, then laid out flat and in trouble with our then-11 year old.  But the grout is now waterproof!

And look!  We have a grown-up shower!

In the next edition of "Kristy is a Terrible Person to Work With," Derek decides the rest of the bathroom looks like comparative garbage, and something must be done about it!  Kristy wails in anguish!  Do their children even still exist?  Who knows?

Plans

We're on the cusp of soccer season, which means my meal planning is about to go down the drain and I'll be even worse about responding to texts and other messages than usual.  I don't understand those parents whose children are involved in every activity under the sun.  How do they cope?  Or, possibly the more accurate question, what are they on?  Because the soccer season is pretty darn short, I know, and it almost does me in every time.  Plus I show up at half the games eating a bowl of chili or bierocks or whatever because Caedmon's games are always at suppertime and very little can successfully come between me and my food.

Now that we have practices and games and such on the schedule it's time for me to break out the giant, color-coded family calendar again so that we all have half a prayer of showing up to the right place on the right day- but when I went to to put it in its appointed place on the desk, I remembered the latest thing Derek and I have signed ourselves up for that will no doubt be great long-term, but short-term?  It simultaneously fills me with excitement and makes me want to cry tears of self-pity.

That's right. Those are boxes of tile.  Eight of them, because either a) our current shower is old and gross, b) as a couple Derek and I enjoy punishing ourselves, or c) all of the above.  

If you were a student of dubious ambition whose test-taking strategy was "when in doubt, 'c' out," then congratulations, it's worked for you again.  Our current shower is both significantly past its prime and in need of replacing, and we hate ourselves.  You may remember the last time we tiled a surface in our house, our still-loved kitchen backsplash, the memories of which have developed a gentle patina in my mind to the extent that I'm willing to shrug and take on a "once more unto the breach" attitude.  At least I was before searching out that old tiling blog post.  That was a lot of bloodshed on Derek's part and sleep-deprived, half-maniacal laughter on mine.  But those boxes are heavy, and I really hate returning things, so...  

Productive Procrastination

We've started the welcome process of taking down all our Christmas stuff.  I can say "we" because I recruited Daughter to help gather all the holiday stuff and place it in a designated location, so I'm not finding things my eyes apparently slide right past throughout the spring and summer.

She promptly broke the "flame" off of one of the battery-operated candles we place in each window, rendering it non-functioning.  She has been relieved of her duties.

This was one of the first things to go:

It's a bundle of pine boughs I cut from our giant pine and looped with a buffalo-check scarf, hung on the front door.  From the outside, it's festive and charming; from the inside, I startled every time my peripheral vision caught sight of what was surely a large, hulking man peering in at our family goings-on.

We are also evidently building shelves for our pantry today.  We went and bought the lumber for it yesterday, and Derek keeps talking about measurements and notching and other things my brain glosses right over.  What this brain does understand is that while Derek does mystical things with the wood in the freezing basement, I will be painting the pantry a nice, bright white, all the better to see the truly alarming number of cans of Ro-Tel we apparently possess. Why do we have so much Ro-Tel??

Although, if we're being honest, it's not Ro-Tel, it's Casa Mamita Diced Tomatoes and Chiles, which is the Aldi version of Ro-Tel.  Also we have so many cans of the stuff because I buy it.  Mystery solved. 

We hauled the crappy wire shelves that came with the house and that we've lived with for 8 1/2 years out of the pantry last night, and the floor underneath got a proper scrubbing for the first time since I was pregnant with Caedmon and had to chisel a dead mouse embalmed in Karo Syrup that had tipped over at some point during the night and embalmed the mousy corpse in sugary goodness.

It's a laugh a minute around here, is what I'm saying. 

So now the pantry is scrubbed and awaiting paint, which I suppose I have put off for long enough in writing this post.  Blogging is good for so very many things.

The Thing That Lives in Our Chimney

Note:  Please excuse the abundance of the word "thingy" in this post, and feel free to replace it in your own mind with the proper term.  My vocabulary of plumbing/ventilation/construction-related items is abysmal.


When Derek was installing our (beautiful, glorious, spectacular) new hot water heater recently, he had to pry off a metal thingy that was covering a hole in the old chimney that goes from the roof, through the center of our house, and on down to the basement.  This was because he had to connect this silver tube thingy from the top of the water heater to that hole in the chimney for... ventilation?  I do know we majorly sweated over whether there was the proper amount of rise- I think it was a quarter inch per foot of tubing- from the water heater to this ventilation(?) hole; our new water heater is much taller than the old one, and for a while there was some question as to whether we were going to be able to make this work.  Derek's dad threw around fun words like "carbon monoxide poisoning" just to make sure we grasped how important this whole proper ventilation thing was.


After Derek opened up that hole in the chimney but before he attached the new tube thingy, we took a moment to peer into the hole.  I suggested a picture be taken, but that Derek be the one to stick his hand in there to do so.  There was absolutely no question whatsoever that if I were to attempt the picture taking, I would have somehow dropped my phone in the chimney, never to be retrieved.

Picture my phone at the bottom of that chimney, wailing and gnashing of teeth from Derek, and yours truly sputtering, "What- But- I don't- How- I WAS HOLDING ON TO IT!"


So, yeah.  Derek took the pictures.

He first took the previous one, looking down, then the next pic, looking up.  Hello, 117-year-old chimney!  Hello, daylight!

When I looked at this photo later, though... what the heck?  What is that?  That thing?

Bird's nest?  Wasp's nest?  Alien cell waiting for the signal from the mother ship to activate and whir into action?

Clearly it could be any of those three things, but a word to the wise, friends:  do not google "nest in chimney."  Most of the results are fairly benign, but a few will serve to further your belief that Australia is not, in fact, fit for human habitation.  Just trust me on this.

Old House, New Things

The thing about owning a home is you are always fixing something.  That goes double if you live in an old home.

Don't get me wrong, I love our old house.  I love the woodwork, the built-in bench and window seat, the pocket doors and newel posts.  I love the big windows and egg-and-dart molding.  It is a charming home, and I didn't have to do a thing to make it that way.

The things that I don't love about living in an old house?  Oh, you know.  There are a few.

Bats.  Poorly insulated sections in the walls.  Finding rusty nails and other pieces of metal every time I turn over a piece of earth in the yard.  No garage, as there was little need for one when you were building a house in town in 1900.  Limited storage space.  Previous owners who took every shortcut in the book with little things like the wiring, plumbing, etc.  Did I mention bats?

We are lucky in many ways, in that at least a couple of those previous owners made big improvements to the house.  The old plaster walls and ceilings have been covered with nice, textured sheet rock.  (I know there are some old house purists who are reading that and gasping, but really, the only time I need to see plaster walls are when I'm touring something that's been made into a museum.)  There is one small triangle of plaster remaining in the stairwell, in between bits of woodwork, and man, am I glad that stuff is gone.  What a nightmare.

The bathrooms had been redone by the time we moved in.  It had a new roof, and a laundry room and half bath had been added.  Someone had added in-house access to the basement; I'm thankful not to have to exit the house to enter the basement.

They had also done away with the back half of the double staircase.  I'm thankful for the big kitchen this created, even if I grieve a bit over the fact that we could have had a double staircase.  I'm so glad no one ever painted all this woodwork with whatever the color de rigueur was at each family's time of ownership.  I like that we have small bedrooms upstairs and a big living space downstairs as it forces the kids out of their rooms and into family time.  I sometimes despise having small bedrooms and a big living space as it forces the kids out of their rooms and into family time.


I like to think that we have been conscientious owners of this house.  We added gutters where before there had been none (so.much.water. in our basement before the gutters).  We've replaced the air conditioner and kitchen cabinets, and added tons of insulation, not to mention storm doors, tiling the kitchen backsplash, and so many other things.

For every thing we've added or replaced, though, we have five more yet to do.  Built-in bookcases in the living room.  Finish the built-in dressers Derek's grandpa constructed and installed for us before he passed away.  Possible future garage.

You know how it is.


All that to say:  we got a new Thing.  An exciting Thing.  A Thing for our house.

WE GOT A...

*drumroll*

...NEW HOT WATER HEATER!  (Go back and read that in the voice of Rod Roddy on The Price is Right if you didn't the first time.  Please and thank you.)

A new hot water heater sounds like the least exciting thing on the planet, unless you've ever lived with an old hot water heater.  Think short showers.  Very short showers.  Forget about soaking your sore muscles in the occasional bath, unless you are able to soak in just a few inches of water.  And remember:  inform everyone in the family that I Am Going to Take a Shower, DO NOT Run the Dishwasher, Washing Machine, or Even Wash Your Hands in Warm Water Until I Exit the Bathroom, On Pain of Death.

We're not sure when the old hot water heater- the one on the right in the photo up there- was installed, but Derek did find a date on it:  1988.  The average lifespan of a hot water heater is 12-14 years.  Just in case you lose track of time the way I do, it is not the year 2000.  It is, in fact, the year 2017.  That old water heater has been begging to be put out of its misery for quite some time now.  Last Saturday, Derek and his band of merry helpers obliged the poor old thing.

At 7:30 AM, Derek and I trooped down the stairs.  We disconnected the (corroded, rusted, stiff, STUBBORN) pipes at the top of the old heater.  Derek did... other things, I don't know what.  I struggled to be more of a help than a hindrance, something that's always a crapshoot for me in these types of situations.  I said, "Good job, Husband!" a lot- I really wanted a new hot water heater.

Atticus helped, too.

At one point Derek's dad arrived, and I gratefully scampered back up the stairs, out of the way and into the warmth.  All of Derek's helpers were in and out of the basement throughout the day, but Derek himself was down there for the better part of 7:30 AM to 3:30 PM, in a space where he has trouble standing up straight thanks to being an unusually tall man and old, low, spider-webby ceilings.  

Sunday morning I took a shower, and didn't have to do my old routine of turn the handle to about 70%, shower for a minute, turn it to 80% as it's already started to lose its warmth, turn the handle to 90%, shower for a minute, turn the handle to 100% and try to pump my arms and move around as much as possible because my hair has been washed but I haven't shaved and I'm already getting goosebumps.

No, instead I turned the handle to 60%, and there it stayed. I don't take particularly long showers (due to years of training, no doubt- thanks, aging hot water heater!), but it was astonishing to realize that you could set the handle at a certain spot and have the hot water last for all seven minutes of your shower.  What extravagance!  What luxury!

Three cheers for Derek!

Crocuses and Edison Lights

The kids and I made our triumphant return to Iowa yesterday; "triumphant" because as a recovering procrastinator, one of two things tends to happen after I travel:  Either I unpack immediately, putting things away and starting the laundry and keeping the kids on task, harnessing all that energy sizzling out of them after seven straight hours in the car, OR I do nothing and spend the next week ignoring the pile of bags sitting in the corner, acknowledging its presence only by gesturing vaguely at it when the children ask where certain necessary items are.

This time I suppressed my natural inclinations, pretended to be a high-functioning grown-up, and did all the necessary post-road trip chores, which means today I was free to enjoy the March snowfall,

Uuuuuugh.

and rejoice over my crocuses, which, yes, have bloomed!

Remember, I planted those bulbs two autumns ago, then lamented over the zero blooms that emerged last spring.  Foliage, yes, but flowers?  None.  The day before we left a single crocus bloom had opened up, which made me feel elated and victorious and vindicated as a gardener.

Now I'm wondering if all those crocuses and daffodils just needed a milder winter to help them out.  I'll try and remember these spring flowers when we're drowning in Japanese beetles this summer.

Other than snow, today involved Derek proposing we perform a mastectomy on one of the boob lights in our house.  This is what has been watching us eat for the past six years:

Thankfully Menard's had the fixture we've had our eye on for a solid year now (had they no longer stocked it, no doubt it would have been a least another year before we could find another one we both agreed upon) and it was on sale.  Then there was fun stuff like Derek removing the boob and making an additional trip to the hardware store and doing things with wires while I took pictures.

At that point an actual contribution was required on my part:  I held the light fixture up while Derek worked on connecting stuff up in the ceiling... or something.  Astonishing news!  My upper body strength still sucks.  Thanks for nothing, yoga.  

But now- ta daaaaa!

Ooooooo!

Aaaaaaah!

Much better.

Light On, Light Off

It's always funny to me how home improvement projects not only, well, improve the home, but even more so, highlight the differences between the two people living in this home and engaging in the improvement.

Case in point:  Light bulbs.

Now, when I hear "Wifi light bulbs" I think "I bet that has something to do with the internet," because I am a veritable wizard when it comes to technology.  I have no idea what Derek thinks (I've written before on the differences between his brain and my brain; they are varied and vast), but based on his level of excitement when he first called me about these Wifi light bulbs he'd found at the store while benignly searching for dimmable LEDs, it's something like, "Wow!  Brilliant!  Smashing!"  (That is how foreign the interior of his mind is to me:  It could speak in a British accent, for all I know.)

First of all, I was right about the "something to do with internet" thing, because we do control these light bulbs from our phones via the Wifi, but what's so fun about these bulbs, as Derek explained to me, is that you can dim or brighten them from your phone, you can adjust the relative warmth or coolness of the light, and you can create "Scenes," such as the one called "Movie Lighting" Derek set up, where if I select that scene, the lights will adjust to a certain warmth and brightness optimal for movie-watching.  You can also set up a schedule for your lights, and they'll do whatever it is you've told them to do whenever it is you've told them to do it.

Another difference between Derek and me:  That he would even think of labeling the sconces in this way.

East sconce and West sconce?  What, I asked him, is wrong with Left sconce and Right sconce?!  East and West assumes I know which one is more Easterly and which one is more Westerly, and unless the sun is just rising over one and just setting over the other, this is something I never know!  

I once read an article about how geese are able to navigate their yearly migrations so successfully each year, and it has something to do with magnets.  Like, in their brains.  These magnets somehow work with the magnetic fields of earth, which is fascinating and also terribly vague, I know.  Help a girl out, sciencey people?

Anywho, Derek must have these same magnets in spades in his own head, because he can travel somewhere once, and he will ever after know that route, and how to get to this place and that place and oh you just have to head north to get to this other place, all of which is useless to me, because there are no magnets in my head, or whatever it is that he has to thank for his reliable internal compass.  I need directions that sound like, "Next, you're gonna look for a crazy-big statue of a guy with a sword.  Turn LEFT at the sword-guy.  Go two more blocks, and turn RIGHT at the wrought-iron fence topped with fleurs-de-lis."  Now those?  Those are useful directions.

And yes, I know Right sconce and Left sconce could be confusing, as they change depending on whether you're looking at them or sitting on the couch under them.  (Derek says.)  Still.

Another neato thing about these lights are these settings:

Have we used any of these settings?  No.  But, see, we could if we wanted to!

Now, it's possible you're more like me, and you're reading this thinking, "Hmm, that sounds kind of neat.  Interesting.  Good to know."  However, if you're like Derek and all this Wifi light bulb business makes you go, "Holy cow- this is the most amazing thing since Midsomer Murders Season 17 finally showed up on Netflix- this makes my skirt blow up so much I feel like Marilyn Monroe over a subway vent except hopefully without the associated drug use/mental illness/poor life choices!"  If that is you, then here's what the box looks like for this little system that we are, indeed, satisfied with, at least one week into use:

I should also note that Derek got these at Lowe's, and they were 50% off, although I have no idea whether or not they're still on sale.  Oh, and another big plus is that because these are LEDs, they're energy-savers, and you know how I feel about all that.  (Hint:  Very strongly in favor of.)

And now I'll leave you with this photo of Caedmon with his Papa.  Derek's parents walked in on Saturday to help us with these sconces with their fancy light bulbs, and as soon as Caedmon saw that Dennis was dressed to work with tools (one of our youngest son's very favorite things), he scurried up the stairs and quickly returned proudly sporting similar accoutrements.

Here a Sconce, There a Sconce

A couple years ago, Derek and I agreed that the lighting in our living room sucked.  Last weekend, we finally did something about it.  This is generally how long it takes for our home decorating ideas to go from concept to fruition.

Our house came with a number of questionable light fixtures that I'm guessing were chosen for price rather than style.  They're not ugly, per se, but they don't knock my socks off, although the ones in the living room and kitchen would knock Derek's head off if he didn't either go around them or duck every time he has to pass directly underneath.  Old houses weren't built for the very tall among us, and I'm guessing the suspicious previous owners can't have been much over six feet, judging from their fixture choices.  To be fair, if you're on the shorter side, you tend not to consider such things as, "Can I easily walk under this ceiling fan?" and "Will I have to fold my body into itself just to get into this car?" and I know that taller people do much the same thing, as I've lost count of the number of times Derek and I have had the "I don't know if it's up there, as I can't see the top of the fridge, remember?  I can't even begin to see it until I'm on the top step of our step stool!" conversation.

Want to see some of these "That just doesn't make sense!" fixtures for yourself?  Of course you do!

This is our living room fixture.  First of all, at eight feet high, we don't enjoy ceilings tall enough to warrant fixtures that from top to bottom hang two feet down, so why on earth wouldn't you get one of those handy dandy ceiling-hugging fans?  I know those remodelers were aware of their existence, as they put the exact same fixture in the kitchen, where the ceiling is equal in height, except this one doesn't hang down as far.

I'm also not crazy about the flower-shaped light shades, but I'm willing to admit that that is a matter of taste.  Even in the kitchen, however, this fixture is a poor choice, as the pull chain is a mere six feet off the ground.  Why would you put such a low-hanging fixture in a space like this?  We won't even go into the fact that these produce the most glaring, harsh light available on the market.  It's less "Welcome to our comfortable, warmly-lit home" and more "Welcome to Guantanamo Bay, hope you're not particularly attached to those teeth."  It just doesn't make sense.

And then there are the abundance of boob lights.

I call them boob lights because they look like, well, boobs.  Again, a matter of taste as to whether or not you want these things looming over your head.

Anyway.

A couple years ago, Husband and I agreed:  This lighting is terrible, and we spend a ton of time in this terrible lighting.  What to do?  Derek had the idea that sconces would solve all of our problems, I concurred, and then we turned to the internet, only to find that we have widely differing ideas on what constitutes a visually appealing sconce.  It was like picking out baby names all over again, for not since then had I heard the word "veto" repeated so often and so quickly.  He didn't like what I liked.  I didn't like what he liked.  Stalemate.

Then, somehow, right around a year ago, we found a sconce at Menards that neither one of us hated!  And they were on clearance! And yes, there were two boxes left!

Then those boxes sat on top of our deep freezer for a year.  This is normal home improvement behavior, right?

Finally, Derek arranged for his dad to come over last Saturday so they could do mysterious lighting things.  Loud sounds were made.  Multiple trips to the hardware store were undertaken.  Other things happened, like Dennis cutting into the wall to discover that the first layer was thick sheet rock,

Before, couch pulled out, sheet rock not yet cut through to reveal its secrets.

under that was thick plaster,

Why, hello, plaster

under that was wood lath,

Why, hello, wood lath

under that was wool used as insulation(!),

and then he said something about how it looked like the outside of the house used to be stucco?  Or, you know.  Something.  Aren't old houses fun/exasperating?

It ended up taking most of Saturday and then involved a return trip by Dennis on Monday to finish hooking everything up (again, normal home improvement behavior, right?), but finally, we had our sconces.  So exciting.  Such an improvement.

Please note the pillows that Atticus likes to have placed just so.

Better!

Why, hello, post-workout Husband.

Much better!

Tomorrow I'll tell you about Derek's favorite part:  The new lightbulbs.  He has lost his mind over those things.  I am not even a little bit kidding.  (WHAT A CLIFFHANGER, RIGHT?)