Denouement

Yep. That's right. I studied French for four years, so I can throw out a word like denouement ... after double-checking Dictionary.com to make sure it means what I think it does!

Anyway, the resolution I'm talking about is the whole mirror saga. Turns out I don't like it after all. Whew! That makes it easy. So now we get to talk about other fun or creative things to do with the vast space above our mantel. It may still end up housing a mirror, or maybe it'll be the home for a funky red modern/grandfather clock Bob and I fell in love with at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. Who knows. Do you want to see the mirror?

Ok. Here it is. I appreciate all the detail, but I was expecting something simpler, with elaborate molding, but no carving.


And I'm going to post pictures from the farm, for the heck of it.

This is looking at the house and garage from the northeast, from the driveway as you pull in. I have always thought the garage was sweet. And there's a teeny tiny apartment above it where my Uncle Dick lived for a while.


Here's the view from the front. You can see that the part to the left was added on; that was my grandparents' bedroom, and I will never forget sneaking in and out of there, with my sister and my cousin John, while my grandfather was taking a nap, trying not to pee our pants laughing because he snored SO loud.

Ah. the kitchen windows. You can bet that the ivy would not have made it that far with my grandmother around. The little curtains are a small strawberry print, and my grandmother loved them, so though my mom didn't, for the year that they lived there, she didn't have the heart to change them. There was a kitchen table in front of those windows, and we could pack in a lot of grandkids back then.


Here's the cabin. I'm not sure I know why they built the cabin; it's right across the driveway from the house. But I think it has something to do with Grandpa wanting to host fish fries (is that the right pluralization for a fish fry?) for the Lions Club, of which he was a long-time member. At one point in my childhood, my family lived in the cabin for, I don't know, maybe a month or a couple of months, when Dad was trying to figure out whether to take a job there in Murfreesboro, or do mission work in Appalachia. He opted for Appalachia. But this cabin? One room. A wood stove, but no central heat. The bathroom (which I think was added on?) is accessed by going out the side door, into the screen porch, and then opening a door to the bathroom. It shared a wall with the cabin, but was definitely not part of the cabin. I remember it as full of spiders then, and I don't think you could pay me to go in it now.


And here's the lane. My grandmother used to walk this lane, lap after lap, for her daily exercise. Then my mom did it. I have really fun memories of arriving at the farm, after driving for a couple hours to get there, and Dad would stop the car and tell us to get out and run down to the house. In retrospect, what a good way to get two little kids to burn off some steam before bombarding their grandparents...

It's still weird to me that this lane empties onto a six-lane road, across from a huge State Farm complex. It's more than an office, but I'm not sure that it's their national headquarters. I have a funny story about that which I'll share sometime.

The Farm

Let me apologize upfront for the lack of pictures in this post. I should have taken pictures today ... but I didn't. I also apologize for the length of the post. I'm pregnant and emotional and overly reminiscent tonight.

Today, Mom, Caroline, Lucy & I went out to The Farm. The Farm is what we've taken to calling my grandparents' house here in Tennessee (the girls and I are visiting this week). My grandfather died in 2005, at age 96. A couple years ago, my parents moved here from Florida, and lived at The Farm for a year. It was really fun to bring Caroline back to my grandparents' house, which was then her grandparents' home.

So, as I said, they lived there for a year, until I found for them the perfect house in town. (Grandpa's farm is on the outskirts of town, with 20 acres.) They love old houses, cabins, bungalows. I found a log bungalow, right downtown. I guilt-tripped my mom for months before they FINALLY went to look at it ... and promptly fell in love. Once they moved, though, I never went back to The Farm. It's been over two years, I've been to Tennessee probably six times per year, and I've never been back. I think it seemed too sad.

Well, today, I went back. Mom needed to go over there, and so we went with her. Caroline and I looked around the cabin that's there on the property (where various family members, including my parents, are storing furniture and miscellany that they may or may not want in the future), and then we decided to go through the house. I love that house. It's a brick cape cod that is just FULL of memories. Though there aren't a whole lot of things I like about it (on the inside) aesthetically, I love that house.

It was heart-breaking to go inside. No one is living there, but the house hasn't been cleaned out. Some of my parents' stuff is still in there, plus there's a lot of stuff upstairs that's been there since my grandmother died in 1988 (or was it 1987?). There's ivy growing over the kitchen windows, so what used to be a bright room is now shady, with weirdly-filtered light. There are dead ladybugs everywhere, and cobwebs, and imprints in the carpet where furniture used to be. A pipe burst in what was my grandmother's sewing room but later became a laundry room, so the hardwood floors are a bit ripply/buckled.

I found my wedding dress in a closet upstairs, along with discarded clothing. That dress has been missing for years, and once, when my parents came to visit, they brought me "my dress"; except that when I unzipped the garment bag, it wasn't my dress, but was instead some of my dad's vestments (he's an Anglican priest). I just happened to find it today in a closet up there.

The lane leading back to the house is, I don't know, long. Let's say 1/3 of a mile. It used to be lined with trees, and honeysuckle grew on the fences. Now it's all overgrown, trees have fallen and lie where they fell, the grass is unmowed, nothing's been pruned. The fences are in disrepair and hang heavy with vines (mostly blackberries, but wildly unpruned ones). It seems to me that whipping that place back into shape would be a full-time job, and then some.

I was feeling positively glum about all of this, how such a happy, joyful home could become so forgotten and uncared for. It was good to have Caroline with me, exclaiming over all the positives. When we came back through the kitchen as we were leaving, she announced, "Nice kitchen, Momma!" I don't know what she saw in the green linoleum, ancient & dirty appliances, ragged curtains, etc., but I'm hoping she saw the beauty my grandmother saw in the room she loved so much, so long ago.

I want someone to live in that house and love it and take care of it and restore it to how it was. My grandmother was a good housekeeper, and the house used to just shine. The "grounds" were well cared-for. There was a pool, and fruit trees. I guess I want somebody to love it like we all loved it. But nobody wants to take it on. It belongs to the four kids (my dad, and his three siblings), and none of them need a house with twenty acres. And none of the grandchildren (I assume) can afford it.

I'm trying hard to not cry like a baby about it.

The Saga of the Mirror

I've really built up a desire for this mirror. I liked the shape of it (based on the paint outline on the wall) the first time I went through the house. "Matt" emailed me last night to say he was going to upload a picture of it, so I've been dying to see what it actually looks like. If he's uploaded it, I haven't found it yet. All of this communication is through Facebook, and I wonder if he added the picture as a wall photo or something ... and I haven't asked him to be my "friend", so I can't see his pictures.

But here's the bummer. I figured he would ask more money than I want to pay. I was expecting three figures. Turns out he paid (apparently) four figures. He's asking less than that, but more than four times what Bob had said he might be willing to pay. There's no way we'd pay what they're asking.

The mirror is made of oak, and (according to their description) complements all the woodwork in the house. It's five and a half feet high (taller than I am!), and weighs over 150 lbs (more than I weigh!). Part of me's thinking we should just go back to my original plan, which was to have Bob build something just like that mirror. Maybe we should. Or -- how much lower do you suppose they'd go? I do NOT want to offend them. But that's a buttload of money for a mirror.

Bob's never particularly cared, so after hearing the price, he is just pleased that it's out of the question. Me, I can't quite let it go yet.

House Colors

So when we went to Home Depot the other day to look at paint colors, we reached no consensus whatsoever for the exterior of our home.

Bob is adamant about not having a builder's neutral, and I told him I wanted to be able to say "we have the blue house on the right," or "we're the yellow house," etc. Yesterday, on our way out of town to the IMA, we took pictures of some house colors we liked. I took all these pictures, and you'll just have to prepare yourselves for the photographic excellence that follows:







I know. We have a huge range of colors, right? Wrong. Turns out I pretty much like the same colors, over and over. Should I bust out? Paint my house a bold color? Not like, hot pink or anything, but maybe a nice blue, or cheerful yellow?

The good news is, we're not to where we need to pick house colors yet. The roof color has been selected (it's a shade of gray), the new gutters will be white. The replacement siding for the hole in our exterior wall will come unpainted ... and then we need to paint. But we'll have the fireplace/chimney guys here all this week, and then two weeks after that, we'll have the roofing/siding/gutter guys here. So we have time.

But still: looking at these pictures makes me bored.

Chimney. Or not.

Today, the chimney guys arrived to set up scaffolding at deconstruct the chimney. They got here around 8:30 and were gone by 12:30. The chimney is gone. Well, what was above the roof is gone.

After he was done, the main guy working this morning informed me that his boss really had wanted him to come later in the week, since we're expecting rain the next couple of days and we have a gaping hole in the roof, now... His boss, the owner of the company (and a man we really like), is on vacation this week, taking his daughter to see the ocean. He's not starting the rebuilding of the chimney until next week, when he's back in town.

Seriously, the guy told me to keep an eye on things and call him if we have water pouring into the attic. Yeah, I think I will.

He covered the hole with plastic and "secured the plastic" with bricks, but the chimney (or lack thereof) is at the base of the roof, so I'm assuming any water would just run under the plastic on its way down the roof. I'm not too pleased about this.

Here's the before picture:


I'm also a little nervous about having scaffolding outside the house for a week or two. God forbid, what if someone climbs it and falls? Would that be covered by the chimney company's insurance, or our homeowner's insurance? I need to stop thinking about this, or I'll freak out. I mentioned my concern to the chimney guy, and he offered to put some yellow caution tape on the scaffolding. Yeah, that'll keep them out.

Roof Shingles, Paint Colors, Chimney Work

Yeehaw! We're about to see some forward progress (perhaps only because we're paying other people to do the work!).

Today, we signed and sent back the estimate for the chimney work that we're having done. The chimney needs to be rebuilt down to just below the roof-line; the firebox floor is not fire-ready (as in, it's just floor tile, not a fire-resistant fireblock), so it needs to be rebuilt; and the chimney itself needs a stainless steel liner, since the boiler and water heater vent into it, and that moisture causes damage to the masonry... When I saw the cost of the stainless steel liner, I immediately thought we'd just eliminate that part of the job -- until I rethought it and decided we've seen enough short-term fixes in this house and the last one. It's time to think about the long haul. That liner will significantly extend the life of the chimney. So anyway, they start next week! The scaffolding goes up, the chimney comes down, and then: a new, rebuilt chimney. We opted to go ahead and pay the extra to have the chimney replicated exactly (it requires special brick), since we have the original blueprints to the house and want to "honor the history"...

Tomorrow, our roofing/siding guy is coming over so we can pick shingle colors. (As a quick aside, he counseled Bob, "Let your wife pick the color!") Bob just called me from work to say, perhaps we should think about exterior paint colors before we wed ourselves to a shingle color? Since I was thinking the same thing, we agreed to go to Home Depot tonight after a quick dinner at Fazolis. I've been itching to go to Home Depot...

Anyway, once the chimney work is done, we'll start on the roof and siding, and I CAN'T WAIT. I really am tired of identifying our house as the one with 12 different paint colors on the outside, and plywood on the side of the house. Not to mention the fact that pieces of shingles seem to magically appear on the ground around the house all the time. That doesn't seem good.

House Updates

To tell the truth, there haven't been that many house updates since we moved in in December. I am not discouraged, though.

Yesterday, I saw a high-school-aged boy coming up our front steps and automatically assumed who it was: let's call him Matt*. Matt's the boy who used to live here. He was stopping by for the pictures Bob had found while cleaning closets when we first moved in. I've mentioned it before, but I was amazed at how gracious this kid is! (I've communicated with him via Facebook once or twice, re: the pictures.) Caroline met him, and then Lily, the Great Dane lumbered down the stairs. She is usually annoyingly friendly/curious/protective when someone comes to the door, but she glanced at him and just headed on into the kitchen (the opposite direction of the front door). I told Bob that it seemed like she just knew he was a good guy.

*Not his real name.

Anyway, enough about Matt's goodness. He glanced around and mentioned that it looked pretty much the same ... yep, we've not done much yet! I asked him about the spot over the fireplace; there was clearly a huge frame over the fireplace. It had been painted around more than once, and I have been assuming it was a mirror. He said, yes, it was a mirror, and he thought his dad still had it and was planning to sell it. Under normal circumstances, I'd be annoyed, because the mirror looked like it had been built-in, so it should stay with the house! I know these things; I'm a realtor! But... this family lost their house to foreclosure, had a $14,000 federal tax lien on the house, which we discovered when we had title work done, and recently, I discovered the sheriff had delivered a court summons (rubber-banded to our front door) for Matt's dad, due to failure to pay according to a credit card settlement.

The reason I can't get over Matt's "goodness" is that it seems to me he could be really bitter about all this. I'm sure their life has changed a lot in the last year; they lost their house, they can't pay their bills, they're getting sued by a credit card company... and Matt's wondering if I've met the neighbors yet, because they're so nice! Seriously, I'm impressed. Anyway, I told him I'd check with Bob, but we might be interested in buying the mirror from his dad. He told me it came from a bar in Chicago. I'm liking the sound of this more and more... we could maybe help them out a little, and end up with a cool (huge) mirror with a neat history. I've also realized that the mirror was not original to the house, and there's no reason to have expected it to stay with the house. All that to say that I emailed Matt this morning and told him we'd like to at least see the mirror, or a picture of it.

Bob and I hung the porch swing this morning. We've brought it with us from our first house, and we love it dearly. Caroline and I sat in it this morning and watched cars go by.

This is depressing. I really thought I had at least a couple of things to mention in this list of things we've done to the house, but nope. Nothing. Maybe we can change that soon. I'm itching to spend some time at Home Depot soon, looking at paint colors.

Oops-- I've got a baby waking up.