Brooke here: As deadlines approach (and sadly, we do not have the option of listening to their delightful whooshing sound), our friend Elizabeth has signed on as a Hired Dude Extraordinaire. She’s fairly terrifying: she works as a general contractor and within the space of five hours she had pressure-washed the entire pool deck, cleaned […]
Brooke here: If “busy” means “four hours of sleep,” then we’ve been rather busy. There are a few deadlines looming on many of the house projects and those have to be completed on schedule or we are screwed. However, we are finally entering the sunlit lands of Hiring People To Do Stuff, which is awesome. […]
Brooke here with a brief progress report on the pool: The day after the Great Tadpole Wrangle, Brown got out the pressure washer and went nuts on the stairs. I shoveled out buckets of gunk*and the rocky debris that had fallen in during the brick haul. The plan is to work backwards towards the deep […]
Brooke here: The Great Tadpole Wrangle was held today with much fanfare and little results. In fact, if you count the cricket frog I accidentially smooshed to death, the net sum of frogs/pollywogs saved is zero. Over the weekend, Brown drained the pool down to (what we thought was) two feet of water in the […]
Q: What are we tired of hearing from contractors? Brooke here. We’ve gotten one estimate on pool repair and another on the cost to replace the deck. Neither are what we anticipated, mainly as the contractors keep pointing out a couple of small structural problems. Like so… After seeing what was hidden under six tons […]
Brooke here: The house continues to offer up surprises. Some are not-so-pleasant, like the drowned mouse. The Vomiting Fountain is among the enjoyable as it’s amazing to discover a wonderful but forgotten thing. While showing our friends Steve and Allison the house, Brown discovered a cherub’s head in the ivy. We poked at it for […]
Brooke here: It’s roasting hot this week and summer sluggishness has rolled over the house projects. Here, have some photos. This is my study, which is still a work in progress. The first layer of blue has been applied with a flat brush. The color will be more vivid once it’s been rolled with a […]
Brooke here: It struck me this morning that I had yet to mention the Labyrinth (well, as it’s more of a tunnel than a maze, it’s more of a La than a Labyrinth, but Labyrinth sounds cooler and has 80% more David Bowie). The house has this amazing wide, covered front porch, complete with swing. […]
Preparing a wall for painting… sometimes not as easy as it sounds.
Brooke here: Brick removal is done. There’s just the slightest, teeny-tiny, eeeensiest smidgen of cleanup ahead of us, but the tear up is finished. Our friends Elizabeth and Jo came over to help Brown with the heavy lifting on Saturday, and Elizabeth and I knocked out the last fifty square feet or so this morning. […]
Flying by night 