LegalMama

I have giant holes in my brick walls

I got home from work at an ungodly hour last night.  Couldn't wait to see the windows, but there are no lights in my kitchen, so I stumbled around in the half light to see.

I'm so glad we did this.  Now, when I stand at the sink, I will be able to see my kids playing in the backyard. 

Kitchens at the time my house was built served such a different function than they do now.  Sure there was a window.  Maybe the sink was even under this window.  But the window was so high that you couldn't see into the backyard well unless you stood on tippy toes, and not so well even then.  It didn't look weirdly high.  It was only noticeable when you tried to see if the kids were still there and alive, or if the car was parked in the driveway.  (The giant circular driveway, which takes up most of my backyard, is the subject of another post.  It was clearly designed for a horse and buggy to turn around.  Lots of houses had them, I think mine is the only one in the neighborhood that still has it.) 

I guess the lady of the house didn't stand at the window much. I assume that there was a cook.  Or maybe the kids (or kid, in the case of my house) didn't play in the backyard.  Or if she did, no one felt the need to be able to see her.  The horse that would have been parked back there is taller than a car, so it would not have been hard to see the horse from that window.  I'd love to know more about how that all worked.   

My first contractor, who did some work on the house for us, practically refused to lower the window.  He said that the giant block of stone that is the base of the window was too big.  (This has a name, I just can't remember it.  Not the sill, something else.  No time to google.)  Anyway, he seemed to think it was immovable, unbreakable.  He implied that it would be a hugely expensive task. Clearly, it was just too much of a pain in the ass for him.  This contractor said "pshaw" to that, and my KD said "you HAVE to lower the window."  I honestly don't know how much we paid for this project, I don't know if it was even a line item.  But it is done.  And apparently, based on reports of earthquakes in the house yesterday, it was a huge pain in the ass.  But it is wonderful.  I stood where someday I will have a sink, and could see the whole backyard.  The house suddenly feels so much less oppressive.  I never want to let the kids play outside unless I am actually out there with them.  (My husband does not feel so constrained.  I'm surprised he's never lost one out there.)  Now, I can imagine them playing on the swings, while I putter around, a simple glance out the window telling me that they are just fine.

When I inspected my new window in the dark last night, the kitchen felt really cold, like there was a door open somewhere, but the giant piece of plywood was nailed across what will someday be a doorway, so I just went to bed.  It was surprisingly cold in the house this a.m.  No wonder.  When I went into the kitchen in the light, I saw that there is a large hole in the brick wall where the gas range will be vented.  I knew the range had to be vented.  Just never really thought about the fact that that would require cutting a hole in the 15-inch brick walls.  I think that had a lot to do with the noise and dust yesterday.  I hope it doesn't look really ugly from the outside.  My poor neighbors. 

We're making progress.

   

I think I'll come back and hang out in the kitchen for while

I stopped blogging last summer because I found myself feeling very constrained in writing about the things that were on my mind, for fear of being "found out."  I tried when I first started doing this to "disguise" myself, but I had a hard time keeping it up, and anyone who knows me and read this blog would know this is "me" very quickly. This started to become a problem for me.  The biggest things going on in my life, that I wanted to muse about, were related to my job, my firm, and my career, and I just didn't feel comfortable blogging about them.  Blogging about your job is always fraught with peril. 

You don't necessarily want your boss to read about how much you hate your job, or your boss, or how much you are goofing off.  Dooce, a mommy blogger, famously lost her job because of things she wrote on her blog.  And airing internal politics is especially dangerous.  There were very big things afoot careerwise in the fall last year, much of which was truly confidential, and it would have been wrong, even a breach of my fiduciarly duties, to write about it on a public forum.  Even trying to leave out the names to protect the innocent didn't feel safe.  So last summer and fall I wrote many posts about my life, and my career, and how I felt about it all, but I could never seem to hit "publish," so I just stopped, kept those as my private diary.  And because I couldn't write about the things that were occupying my mind most of the day, I just stopped writing. 

The culmination of all the turmoil is that I have a new job, at a new firm that is about 10 times the size of my old firm.  I came to this new firm with lots of people from my old firm.  It was a painful break for many of us.  I'm commuting to NY on a daily basis now.  It is different, in some ways that are good and some ways that are bad, and I think I'll leave it at that.

What brings me back now is my latest obsession -- my kitchen.  And my porch.  And my driveway, and my basement, and my vesitbule, and my stairs.  And light fixtures.  Paint colors.  Porch roof.  All of it. My description of this blog includes restoring my Victorian house, but I haven't written about it much. But the house is such a force in my life that it deserves commentary.  In fact, it is occupying so much of my energy and emotion right now think I need to write about it.  No one reads this anyway, so it is really like talking to myself, and I don't have to feel so stupid for obsessing so much.  It is like going to therapy.  Therapy is so great because it is the one place you don't have to feel bad about spending all your time talking about yourself. 

I was inspired to do this by a blog written by Susan Serra, a very talented kitchen designer, www.thekitchendesigner.org (oh how I wish I had found her blog sooner). She recently had a couple of posts about the Dream House Diaries, a "blog" by a couple building their supposed "dream house" in a town in Florida.  One could hardly call it a blog, there was no give and take, it was incredibly impersonal, etc.  But it had a pretty big following, lots of comments, mostly by people who seemed to hate what this couple was doing with their house.  When I first read it, I thought that people were just so nasty, and I found it almost offensive, but after reading more, I realized that these folks were shouting into the wind, which I think made it easier for them to be brutally honest.  There were no retorts from the bloggers, no protests of hurt feelings, so people just fired away.  Pictures of the end result of this house prove that the negative comments were mostly warranted.  It is an okay house.  But it has so many mistakes, blatant, ugly, unfixable mistakes.  Anyway, reading this "blog," made me wish that I had been blogging the process of renovating our house, designing the kitchen, etc.  I know that I could not bear all the criticism the Dream House Diaries couple got, but I've never had more than a handful of commenters, and those mostly from mommy bloggers, so there' s not much danger of that happening anyway. 

We're actually pretty far along in our renovation now.  We've had our plumbing, building and electrical inspections (and passed, thank goodness!).  A new subfloor has been installed.  Insulation is going in later this week.  Windows are being installed today.  Pretty exciting, the first time something new and pretty will actually go in. 

I think I'll go back and talk about how we got here, a bit at a time.  It may help someone, if anyone ever reads this.  And it will definitely help me.  I've been going slightly insane, worrying about how it will all turn out, having second thoughts about so many decisions, feeling paralyzed about other decisions. 

As I said on another blog, this has been such a long process, it feels like I am about to give birth, and I'm so worried that my baby won't be healthy, that there will be something wrong.  I think I also felt this way before my wedding.  There was so much planning, so much money spent, so many details.  I tried not to think of it as "THE MOST IMPORTANT DAY OF MY LIFE" but it was the biggest party I had ever thrown, and I was a wreck.  I didn't need everything to be perfect, but I didn't want to have any regrets.      

Because of my increasing insanity, we asked our kitchen designer to meet with us this weekend.  I had been feeling very worried about how things were going to turn out, and felt that the process was getting away from us, so we met with him on Sunday morning, to go over all the details of the design again, the timetable for completion, etc.  I had mis-remembered some things, and in going over all the details, there were some things I wished we'd done differently, but it is too late now, so I won't dwell. 

Overall, I feel much better now than I did a week or so ago, when I left a bit of a vent on Susan Serra's blog about my kitchen and where it was headed.   Our KD brought two of our actual cabinet doors with him, and they looked really nice, to my relief.  Our main kitchen cabinet color is a creamy white with a charcoal glaze, and our island and butler's pantry are natural cherry.  The doors looked beautiful, especially the cherry doors, which made me happy.  We made some choices based on cost, and I was beginning to worry that, with all the money we are spending, our cabinets would look cheap, but they really looked good.  Our designer also brought one of our actual floor tiles, which also looked very nice, if browner than I remembered.  We are doing a terra cotta floor, which has me a bit worried in terms of maintenance and durability, but I love the look.  The sample we saw in the store had a shiny glaze, and we asked for a more satin glaze, and it looked great.   

I have to actually do some work, so I can't go back in time now.  But maybe later tonight, I will try and go back and start from the beginning. 

Once upon a time, a very long time ago, there was a very old house, with a very small and unattractive kitchen, and a family who dreamed of something better. . . .

Sometimes I just know it when I see it

I have spent countless hours looking for sconces for our butler's pantry.  There is a swinging door between the butler's pantry and the dining room, and there is only 5 inches of clearance for a sconce, so it has been a fairly arduous search for a sconce that I like and that won't project from the wall too much.  This sconce projects only 4 inches from the wall, so it should be okay. 

I like this because it is a nice mix of classic and modern.  And it is 22 inches tall, which is pretty dramatic.  Of course, I'm not exactly sure if that is going to look way too big and silly, so I ordered an alternate selection in case I don't end up liking this in person.