Sleep, Creep, and Leap--How the Garden Grows

Johnny Jump-ups

There is an adage for gardeners that reminds us to be patient as a new garden gets underway, and it goes like this: The first year they sleep; the second year they creep; and the third year they leap. There are, of course, some plants that grow more quickly and others more slowly, but it is still a good rule of thumb.

Bad News/Good News

Uh...hello? Remember me? I'm the person who used to write a blog about building our dream house.

The bad news is that I haven't written for months even though we have continued to work on the house and have accomplished quite a bit.

The good news is that the reason I haven't written is because I've been busy having a life! You know, life beyond house construction? Yes, it really does exist! And that's also good news for any of you who may still be in the middle of your own project. Life does get back to normal.

How to Re-plumb a Vintage Sink

Vintage 1953 ad courtesy of retro renovation, my sink except in white!

They said it couldn’t be done.

All I wanted to do was find new faucets for a vintage sink. Who would have thought it would be so challenging?

Let me take you back, dear reader, to one day last fall. Ever since we realized that the lovely Kohler Memoirs pedestal sink we ordered would overpower the downstairs powder room, I had been struggling to find a replacement. Not only that, but I was also struggling with the design of the room overall. I had a few ideas, but nothing seemed to really click. So without a design concept to guide me, I really had no clue what I was looking for in a sink.

One day I happened to be wandering around the RE Store, and I spotted this amazing blue vintage bathroom sink.

A Room (or Desk) of My Own

I'm paraphrasing Virginia Woolf in this post, referring to her extended essay entitled "A Room of One's Own" first published in October 1929. The essay derived from a series of lectures she delivered at Cambridge University and was ostensibly written from the point of view of a fictional narrator exploring women as writers of, and characters in, fiction. It presents the argument that women need a space of their own--literally and figuratively--to write in order to be able to produce within the structure of society where women did not have a clear right to a role other than as wife and mother.

Embedded within the idea of a room of one's own is the implicit notion that a woman must also have the financial means to pay for that room (and secure it for life), and that women's relative poverty (contrasted with men in similar stations in life), legal rights (or lack of), and societal roles often prevented them from having that room where they could write, or otherwise create, freely.

Woolf herself was deprived of a formal education because her father, like many others of that era, did not believe in wasting education on girls. Only the boys were sent to school. Any learning that did occur was usually of the kind thought to be useful in attracting and holding a mate, but nothing along the lines of an actual career or profession.

So what does this have to do with our house?

First Party!

A little Christmas spirit(s)!

A few nights ago we officially christened the house with a dinner party, and put our new kitchen to the test in the process. 

When you design a kitchen, you try to plan for all the activities it will need to accommodate day to day as well as the occasional big event.

Can several cooks work in the kitchen at the same time without tripping over each other? Is the range up to the task of cooking multiple items at once? Is there room enough in the fridge to chill all the beverages and store the prepared items until serving time?

Miss K made the placecards
and did the flower arrangements

And the dining area; is there room to add all the leaves to the table plus a couple of card tables? Can you fit, in this case, 17 chairs around the tables without resorting to climbing over one another to get in and out?

Some Holiday Cheer!

It's a quick jump from Halloween to Christmas--on the blog AND in real life! How did December fly by so fast? I've managed to do a bit of holiday decorating and baking, and thought I would share it with you. (I'll be back to "real" blogging in January.)

For now, Merry Christmas, Joyeux Noel, Gladelig Jul, Feliz Navidad, and many more greetings to you and yours for a wonderful holiday, whatever you celebrate!

Some Christmas spirit on the buffet in our front entry

Feather tree close up--I'm so happy
with the wall color in the entry because everything looks good against it! 
Dylan Velvet by Valspar

"Snow" scene in the living room

A little tree in the sunroom

 

The living room--focal point for all things "holiday-ish"

And to all a good night!

 

  

Meanwhile back at the blog…

…nothing has been happening!

All the action the last two month has been in REAL life as we moved ourselves and my mom into the new, almost finished, house. 

Mom’s cottage is completely done, but the main house still requires a lot of work, largely in the area of moldings, built-ins, a few remaining light fixtures, etc.

Without really intending to, you can see that I took a long blog vacation. But I’m back and I intend to try and catch up on the story of designing and building our house starting with a few images from Halloween and Thanksgiving, inside and outside the house in the Sunset Hill neighborhood.

Master Bath: Vision and Reality

Man in search of a towel...

 Besides the kitchen, what other room carries as much weight design-wise as the master bath? In this busy world, it seems we all dream of a luxurious bath as the place to pamper oneself and recover from the stresses of life. It needs to offer privacy, serenity, and beauty. And, in the case of the master bath, it also needs to be practical and spacious enough to accommodate two people at once. There is a lot of pressure in designing a bath to meet all these expectations!

Although I don't have any statistics to back me up, I suspect many a house is sold based on buyers falling in love with either the master bath or the kitchen.

If you like to see the process by which a design becomes reality, I hope you'll enjoy this post where I share how our master bath evolved from just a few vague ideas into the final product. (Well, almost final product--nothing in the house is completely finished yet...)

Goodnight Moon

There is something wonderfully satisfying about walking in the neighborhood at night under a bright moon, seeing lights glowing inside houses.

Lessons Learned…A Baker’s Dozen of Things NOT to Do!

It wouldn’t be a construction project if something didn’t go as planned, right? Sure enough, as we reach the finish line there are some things that haven’t turned out quite as we had hoped. Read and heed!

Along the Garden Wall

Swedish rock wall

I love a garden wall!

Officially this house project is the third garden I will be creating from scratch. Even though neither of the other properties involved house construction, they were still "blank canvases" consisting of nothing but grass and a few tired rhododendrons around the edges.

With each design, I find myself drawn toward a more formal aesthetic and the use of geometry--straight lines and circles essentially--to provide structure to the garden. One of my favorite ways to express that geometry and to delineate spaces within a garden is with the use of hedges and rock walls.

1 + 1 = 2 Cute 4 Words!

New math, old math—however you calculate, it all adds up to one sweet space for Miss K.

Not to gloat too much, but I do think her bedroom is turning out well.

I’ve been aiming for something lighthearted, but a little bit sophisticated at the same time. Something that fits the preteen she is now and that can grow with her as she becomes a teenager. Here are the pieces, starting with the basics:

The Sideboard that Ate Sunset Hill

Yes folks, it’s a double-feature now playing here in Ballard!

The Sideboard that Ate Sunset Hill

along with

Attack of the Giant Kitchen Island 

We knew house construction could be scary, but I never thought it would veer into science fiction! Here’s the scoop.

Can This Marriage Be Saved?

One of my readers who has been through the construction process herself, gently urged me to tell the good, bad, AND the ugly about house-building. She said it might be helpful for others to understand the stress involved and how to handle it, in addition to sharing all the fun stuff.

So I dedicate this post, which is another installment on the subject of construction-related stress, to Cheryl in British Columbia. (Hi Cheryl—I hope you’re still reading!) In my February "Gaining  House, Losing a Life" post, I wrote about how stressful construction can be on an individual; in this post I talk about how stressful it is on a marriage.

Readers Around the World



The big, blue marble

Dear Readers,

Thank you for visiting once—or even twice or more!—to read about our house building adventure. When I started writing this blog, my intent was to keep family and friends informed of our progress. Thanks to the wonders of Sitemeter that tracks and counts the visitors to my blog, I have evidence of readers far beyond that circle of family and friends.

I am truly thrilled to see the range of countries and cities from which my readers come. I only wish I knew more about you and what brings you to read our story. Do drop me a note and tell me about yourself! I would love to know what interests you and whether you, too, are in the midst of building or remodeling a house—or even just dreaming about it!

So, thank you*…

Ode to a Tree

Our wood flooring is arriving in 3 days—yahoo! Not only am I excited to see it, but getting the flooring installed is critical to moving forward with cabinets, and then countertops, and then light fixtures, and then… Well, you get the idea.

Sequencing the work of building a house is one of the toughest parts of being your own general contractor, in my opinion. It reminds me of that old song “Dry Bones” (or Skeleton Bones). “The toe bone is connected to the foot bone, and the foot bone connected to the ankle bone…” Everything in its proper order and timing!

Pantries Past, Present, and Future

Swedish dish pantry

I am not a good cook. Sure, I can follow a recipe and even improvise a little; I can plan a dinner party and have everything ready to serve at the same time; and I’m told the dishes I serve are quite tasty.

But what I can’t do—or rather what I haven’t yet learned to do—is plan meals ahead of time, creatively use all the food I purchase, and whip up meals based on whatever is in the cupboard. Those skills, in my opinion, are the hallmarks of a good cook! And I feel quite sure that one of the keys to becoming a good cook is a well-stocked pantry.

Extreme Makeover! (Choosing Exterior Paint Colors)


 We’ve been so busy the last year with the basics of building the house, I hadn’t even given a thought yet to what the exterior paint scheme might be. Lots of rainy weather this spring had also put the exterior painting on the back burner—that is until two nights ago. A sunny and warm (or at least above 60 degrees) weather forecast prompted MTH into finalizing a contract with a painter to start painting the exterior RIGHT AWAY.

That evening, almost as an aside, MTH said to me “Oh, the painter wants to start tomorrow. Tell me what colors you’ve picked out so I can tell him what to buy.” Huh?? You’re kidding, right??

Life Imitates Art

Here is a pop quiz for you art lovers! Which of these two is a Mark Rothko painting, and which is a test patch of color for Miss K’s bedroom?

Nordic By Northwest

This post is ostensibly a continuation of the discussion from "Living Room Blues" about the Nordic-inspired living room I’m trying to create and how it fits here in the Northwest. But really it’s just an excuse to sneak in a reference to one of my favorite films—the Alfred Hitchcock 1959 thriller North by Northwest, starring Cary Grant!*

Beyond the fact that the film features a couple of beautiful houses, there is really no relationship to our house project. But isn’t it nice to just look at a picture of Cary Grant anyway? Sigh. They don’t make ‘em like they used to. 


Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint

Back to the subject at hand. So what is this Nordic element I’m trying to infuse into the living room?