girl at large

Boxes and Baskets

A few tips for that week between when you packed up all your belongings and the day you actually move:

Un-used diapers make handy pot holders. Coffee can be filtered with paper towel. One lightbulb can be moved from fixture to fixture.

If the pizzas are ordered from a different place each time, that means you did not "just order pizza" three times in one week.

Beer is just as important a packing staple as tape.

There is no good, space-saving way to pack lamp shades, curtain rods or pillows.

Somewhere in this house is the bottle of asperin. Just not in this box, not in that box, not those boxes I opened over there...

A rough day can be made better by sneaking a Peep from the baby's Easter basket!

 

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The First Before and After

The refinished floors are gorgeous! They make all the trim and doors look like crap! Such is the domino effect of renovation.

Big Difference, Little Touches

The floors! What a great decision---refinishing the wood floors on the ground floor BEFORE we move in. Time and money is tight, but this is worth it. Our Contractor Don Patzke (www.cutwell.net) came through despite a dramatically reduced time line. We moved our move in date up by a month to next week Saturday. The photos above are Before and During---the oil finish goes down on Monday. I can't wait to see the result. And yes, this means we will want to put wood floors in the upper level now too.

While the crew got started on the floors, I puttered around changing outlet and switch plate covers to these new metal ones in a copper finish. My favorite thing to do in a new place right away is to change the covers (and toilet seats!). It's a small change, but it makes a big difference.

 

 

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Home Is Where The Hammer Is

I'm sitting in a folding camp chair in my empty dining room.

Eight years ago, I was doing the same thing. In Portland, in a tiny one bedroom apartment that had once been a Stumptown brothel. Now, it's MY dining room. As in MY mortgage. And it's in Milwaukee. Ok, Shorewood if you want to be a stickler.

I walked to get a cup of coffee this morning---out my front door and down just one sunny block to the coffee shop. I love this neighborhood. Like all my favorites before (Monroe St Madison, Historic Savannah, NorthWest Portland), it's lively without being loud, warm and walkable. The gourmet grocery, coffee shop, and pharmacy are all within a comfortable strolling distance.

It's a great house. Not the house I was looking for, or the house I dreamt of, it wasn't even on my radar. It's not the modern glass box I've always wanted, it's not even the retro ranch that would have been fun to make mine. It's everything I said I didn't want---"traditional", a detached garage, two stories, no space for a studio/shop, and so on. I had looked at so many houses that were perfect on paper (sound familiar?) but fell flat in person. Many were foreclosure nightmares---frozen pipes, bombed out kitchens, water damaged walls. Others weren't architecturally interesting enough to overcome location problems like train tracks in the back yard or suburban isolation.

But Kenmore Place has the things I didn't realize were so important until I walked in (and said to myself--"Finally, a real house!")---warmth and quality. That's Quality with a capital Q. The original construction is solid, and so immediately apparent. The woodwork, the windows, the dry solid basement walls, the coved ceilings. What's the point of renovating things that weren't good construction to begin with? That's not renovation, that's replacement. This little tank of a house will be a joy to bring back to life.

Which brings me to the next topic...all the work to be done! Stay tuned for many renovation updates as we dig into the giant project that will no doubt occupy our next decade.

 

 

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Baby Two Point Oh!

Little "Chee Chee", as everyone (except myself) calls her, is five months old now. Though she's been doing it for two weeks, I still am shocked every time I see her sitting up. It's a different baby there, surrounded by pillows, looking at me horizontally. Sitting up, she looks even more like Paulie. I think it's the way the light catches those ears.

I gave her a little liquified banana this weekend. She let it rest in her mouth, then pushed it out with all the usual drool. Her first taste of food was very exciting for her Papa---I think he envisions her merrily chowing down on lasagna next week. I don't want to disappoint him with the truth of the very long series of baby steps until that point. And the diapers! Oh, the solid food diapers!

 

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Count Down

Less than a week now until we close on Kenmore Place. Every piece of paper has been signed, every document copied, all our accounts verified. The numbers are frightening---does anyone really look at the final number they will pay for a house after 30 years? Even at 3.875%? And that doesn't even touch the cost of insurance, taxes, maintainance, repairs and emergency funds. Add renovations to that and the idea that a house is an "investment" is nuts.

It is, I will accept, an "investment" in lifestyle. In community, in family, in comfort. And in activity--Paulie and I listed 10 years of projects in just ten minutes of "what if we did..." discussion. We will never again be without something to do on nights and weekends.

 

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