We do not want for pine trees

The sunset a week ago was sensational and golden – the light hummed.

Pictures are a meager reminder, but pretty enough to post. From the driveway, looking west across the cul de sac:



And looking north up the street:




I love our house, neighbourhood, and proximity to everything (especially work), but every time I try to take pictures of the sky I understand why I sometimes feel so hemmed in here. Quite the change from our apartment up on the hill overlooking the lake. Generally it just feels cozy, but man are those trees tall.

We're faced with a particular challenge regarding the trees now that football season is nigh. We've been essentially living without a TV since we moved in, mid-October. We have internet and cable through Comcast. No love lost there, both for endless billing snafus and general quality of service. In our old apartment, Kevin actually bought an HD antenna and connected it straight to his computer, and we used Media Center piped through to the TV to watch our shows on the networks in HD. No ESPN or Fox Sports, but otherwise everything that we wanted. Meanwhile, we kept calling Comcast to cancel our cable tv altogether, and they'd give us a six-month package analog cable package that was cheaper than internet alone. So we went from a $125/month cable+internet package to a $50 analog-tv+internet package. Nice.

When we moved to our new house and for the first four months, our TV room was in total disarray – no walls, the storage dumping-ground of the house, etc. The TV was occasionally plugged in, but we found that when the TV was connected our precious internet was spotty. (I may have some of these details wrong – Kevin is the wiring expert – but this is the gist of the situation.) The Comcast guys came out to test the line into the house, which seems to be functioning perfectly, so it's likely the house wiring that's the problem. Kevin did some analysis and there were several splitters (which degrade signal strength), plus signal gets weaker over longer lines, plus he suspects that the coax cables that run through the house are damaged/inferior. Back in March or so, Kevin unscrewed the TV connection where it entered the house to boost our all-important internet stability. So no TV until we reconnected for the Olympics, and now we're mere moments away from football and needing a solution. Kevin just bought a spool of coax cable, and he's been researching roof-mounted HD antennas which he could wire down to the utility closet that holds all of the house networking. My understanding is that the cable could go to the closet, which connects to his computer via the cable he ran last winter, which connects back through the closet to the XBOX 360 (a Media Center Extender) and so we could watch TV in the family room. (I sometimes feel like I should make an effort to understand this better, but he's so good at it that I just trust his judgment and wait for the TV to turn on.)

The only hitch in the plan is that we are surrounded by enormous trees. Kevin bought a compass (on sale at REI!) and spent a good while up on the roof scoping out the visibility in the appropriate directions. It *might* work. We also had a tree guy out to give us estimates for removing some of the behemoths around the house, so that also might help further the plan. (In terms of feeling hemmed in, I felt very justified by his evaluation – our trees are between 65 and 100 feet tall. Wow!) We're a bit conflicted about priorities for tree removal . We can only take out four per calendar year, so which goes first? The ones that block the southern sun? The ones dumping pine needles onto the roof? The ones preventing football happiness? We should get quotes back in the next few days, which should help narrow the options considerably. :-)

More closet voyeurism

One of the shelves from our closet had this little waffle insert thing. I’m not sure what it’s intended use was (tie storage? Socks?), but I didn’t just want to toss it. I mulled it over while I was unscrewing and rescrewing the doors, the bars and the sliding tracks, and then inspiration hit.




It’s a three bedroom house, which means that for the time being Kevin and I each have our own room, and our own double closet. His is filled with old electronics equipment and mine is filled with yarn and fabric, and now thread. :-) I’ve been still trying to keep all of my thread in my old sewing kit, but it’s been getting more and more crowded in there. I was sort of amused when storing it away to realize that 18 of those spools are from 1990 or earlier, and 19 are from the last three years... apparently middle school, high school and college were NOT the thread-buying years.

PS. I can’t tell you how happy the closet keeps making me. Wide open spaces!!

Feeling more like homeowners!

With Spring seeming like an ever-more-likely prospect, we decided to get our acts together and work on figuring out a lawnmower. Especially with only little teeny bits of lawn, we both like the idea of a reel mower. I was particularly enthusiastic, since they take up less space in the garage and you don’t have to worry about storing gas (two major advantages!!). Plus, I could see myself using a reel mower, whereas anything gas-powered would only belong to Kevin.

Seems like now must be the time to buy, since we found a great option on sale for $99 on Amazon, and free shipping! Nice! It arrived on Wednesday, and Kevin assembled it today. All of the online compaints that there were a million pieces turned out to be overdramatc. Six bolts, done. Then we took turns taking it out for a test run.



Kevin was laughing at me and my random walk style of mowing – no neat lines here, and it cuts faster if you attack the tall tufts from all angles. It’s perfect, and the yard looks so much shorter – actually even! I’ve never mowed before. It’s always been either my dad’s or my brother’s job. But I’m all excited about how easy and non-intimidating this is. It’s nice to have a 10 minute task outside when you get home from work (especially with daylight savings only a week away!)


PS. Like our gorgeous pink flowers? They keep getting showier. Here’s a closeup:



I still haven’t figured out what they are, but I’ve totally lost my resolve on tearing them out. Too pretty, especially for the end of February when you need the color.

Snow

We’ve essentially lost all credibility with our former claim that it never snows in Seattle. I’m really quite sure that in the first three years we lived here, we saw flurries five times. But we’ve had real snow that many times just this winter. The new house is only four miles from the old one, so I doubt that’s the difference...?

In any case, I was so happy that the first day of my parents’ visit was all blue and mountains, and that the third day brought snow that lasted through the night. My mom misses winter now that they’re in Florida, and I thought it was unusually decent of the weather to cooperate.
From her camera, here’s the backyard seen through the living room windows (with tulips in the foreground!):



And she took a picture of the snowy driveway that I just love. Doesn’t it look like it’s black and white? Until you see the headlights, and the brick on the front of the house, and realize that the light out here is just so dim in the winter when it’s cloudy that the color just disappears.

Yay for company

My parents left a series of email and phone messages on Tuesday asking if we had any big plans for the weekend and if it would be alright if they flew out from Florida to visit. So spur of the moment and wonderful. I love looking forward to our visits with family, but having the chance to just make plans on a whim was an unaccustomed treat.

We spent a good portion of the time eating, talking, watching the fish, looking at wedding photos, showing off wedding gifts, and for Kevin and I, enjoying their satisfaction in the new house. I think all four of us are quite proud of it.

Unfortunately, most of the group shots came out blurry. I’m posting some anyway because I love how happy everyone looks. This was dinner at home after strawberry basil martinis and a great conversation that lasted several hours and spanned too many topics to mention. Blurry Dad, Me and Kevin:



And blurry Mom, Kevin and Dad.

Photos

Kevin and I lack photos of us together. Other than the wedding, I only have a handful of us over the last few years, and most of those are special occasions (our first new years in Seattle, the day we got the deed to our house) when we gave up and set up the camera timer. My mom did a good job rectifying that problem while they were here visiting.

The two of us in the kitchen with the pretty tulips (flowers have been SO cheap recently! A great pick-me-up!)



And sitting on the new couch, waiting for Ratatouille to begin...



And in the backyard under the tree...



And finally, sitting in the folding chairs, watching the new little tang acclimate:

Still in the Season

A few degrees off kilter, but I wanted to get a photo of the Christmas lights up on the blog.




Pretty! We wanted icicle lights (check) and the new LEDs (check), but we didn’t realize that the resulting light would be quite so blue. They probably look even odder because at a slight distance, the ones above the green garage look blue, while the denser ones against the brick on the house look almost-white. I’ve been a fan since they first went up: the color reminds me unshakably of our fishtank, which I love (Merry Christmas, from the fish!)and they use next to no electricity, and it’s our new house, so.

We’ll probably reevaluate next year, though I could definitely see using them on the back of the house. (They’re actually prettier from the inside looking out than from the outside in, I think.) Kevin was really disappointed with the color at first, but they’ve grown on him too. In any case, a post for the blog before they finally come down.

Two afternoons of work well done

I’ve been wanting to post this for the last two weeks, and the weather keeps being crummy, and I can’t take pictures (either it pours, or there is NO light – those held hostage under the deep, dark Seattle clouds will understand). So pretend this was posted back on 12/27.

When we bought the house, I also bought a pruning book, read it, tried out a few things, and then gave up and decided to wait for better instruction. Kevin’s dad is an arborist, and both of his parents are gardeners, and so we and our yard have been waiting with high hopes for their visit. We weren’t disappointed. Our three fruit trees were massively pruned (and did they ever need it!), five pine trees and the half-rotten enormous leaf-producing monster tree outside the kitchen window were de-limbed, and our shrubs have been taken from unwieldy monsters into much more manageable creatures.

Kevin’s dad was impressed (to put it mildly) by all of our moss, but once he adjusted to see past it, it was a treat to watch him work. As gifts, his parents brought out a handsaw, many yards worth of screw-together poles, a saw attachment, and a neat little pulley-operated clipper attachment. In two full afternoons, we learned a lot about what to cut and how to go about it, but the best part was watching Kevin Sr. confront the branches on a tree.



The tree on the side of the house, for example, stands in the 3 yards between our neighbor’s fence and our house, looming over the plate glass window and the kitchen garden window. (photo from early November)



Working from a ladder and then from the room, he gradually took down about 2/3 of the tree, dropping all of the limbs down onto the same 2’ stretch of walkway. (after-photo from the opposite vantage point):



Same with the fruit trees – 20’ branches consistently avoided the two fences, the neighbours’ yards, and the squashable surrounding shrubs.




Kevin got to “raise the skirts” on the back five pine trees, though with slightly less grace. :-)

I spent more time on the fruit trees and the shrubs, and cutting up enormous falling limbs with the handsaw. We amassed QUITE the brush piles. The main one is on the back patio



and the auxiliary one is by the six-foot-tall side fence.



The plan is to try to get rid of the side pile via our semiweekly yard waste collection, and then possible rent a chipper for the enormous guy out back. Good luck, us.

The two biggest successes were the tree out front by the driveway, and the fruit tree right out back. Before, the pine by the driveway hid the house almost completely from the street.



Whereas now, you can see the roofline! Kevin’s dad took the branches up the trunk about 8 feet (and it seems like more from the ground, since the limbs drooped so much). The front yard is so much lighter!



For comic relief feel free to ponder the mass of the branches removed vs the two 96-gallon, black yard waste bins to the right of the garage. Ha, ha...

You can see all of the cuts on one side of the trunk from this photo:




The backyard tree is another joy to me. The poor thing was hacked within an inch of its life and then abandoned, and the suckers had almost entirely taken over. (Picture, with snow for contrast, from a few weeks ago.)



Now, there’s a defined center-top, very few suckers (the two that were left have some of the only branches that are growing at the back of the tree, so they stayed), no more hacked-off knobs, and much sparser, healthier-looking branches. We’re delighted.



It’s still probably in its twilight years, but it looks so much less abused and dreadful.
Next step: convincing them all that we want them to visit for more than tree work. :-)

An hour before everyone arrives for the holidays

Our couches are here!!

Before (note that the drywall is finally gone! Yay!)



And after:



And loaded up with XBox players. :-)




Now we just need to figure out how to place them so that you can see both the TV and fireplace…?

Family Room

Kevin somehow convinced Shawn to help him hang the drywall in the family room, and now we not only have walls all the way around (woot!!), but the rooms’ a step closer to complete.

To summarize the process, Kevin ripped down the ugly, ugly wood paneling in that room on about day two. Once it became clear that the drywall didn’t cover ANY insulation on the lower half of the wall, he ripped down the drywall too.

(I’m still a bit mystified how the old owners lived in this house without freezing. When the furnace is on, it’s a bit too hot for comfort, but the heat just vanishes as soon as the thing turns off, and I spent most of my evenings in hats. I suspect that if you had some sort of infrared scanner, it would illuminate a neat pillar of extremely hot air rising out of our roof every 40 min or so. There’s a saying that a boat is a hole in the water that you throw money into – until we get the new insulation installed in the roof and crawlspace, I feel like our roof is the comparable hole in the sky.)

So, Kevin put up a new foam moister barrier over the exposed foundation...



... and then packs of fiberglass insulation.



You don’t generally say that the insulation looks "pretty", but the new bottom row in the bump out at least looks neat and well installed. :-)




Once those steps were done, then Shawn and Kevin measured and cut drywall, and got all of the walls up in an evening. I was impressed both at the speed and at how nice it looks. Both of them were chagrined by how unfailingly non-standard the walls were. Drywall comes in 4’ widths, and 8’, 12’, and 16’ lengths, all of which were always a touch too long or too short.




The next step will be to put up a second layer of drywall and green glue adhesive on our long wall – the goal is to dampen sound more so that the XBox won’t be quite so audible from the master bedroom and the rest of the house.




(You'll have to excuse the mess. Until the remainder of the drywall is up off the floor, we’re sort of helpless to fix it. Someday, someday...)

Bedroom

I finally have pictures to post of my finished bedroom/office! Since the house has three bedrooms, Kevin and I each get our own room for the time being. Mine’s a smidge bigger, but we’re also using it as a guest room. When our parents or other family members come to visit, we’ve been giving them our bed and retreating to the futon or a mélange of couches. But now, since we have more space, it made sense to find a comfy daybed/trundle combination for the two of us.

In my mind’s eye, I’d been picturing a pretty, sturdy wood set like my parents had in New Hampshire, but they bought those almost a decade ago and either they were regional or no longer exist. After lots of wading through ugly, expensive options, both online and in stores, we decided to buy a Good Trading Company bed through a local wood furniture store (which, unfortunately, I can’t recommend. It’s been all delays, mistakes, and reorders.). The only catch was that in order to get matched head- and foot-boards (which seems to me to be a major style indicator of daybed as opposed to normal twin bed), we actually needed to buy bunk beds, since they don’t sell the components separately. It wasn’t too much more money than a twin bed, and it was way cheaper than custom furniture, so now we’re the (proud?) owners of two extra headboards and the accompanying connective pieces and hardware. The furniture turns out to be quite sturdy and lovely, and a decade or whenever from now, I’m sure we’ll be quite pleased not to have to buy any of this. Since it can either be constructed as bunk beds or two matching twin beds, they’ll certainly be used. And for now, the extra headboards, ladder, and parts can all just slumber in the garage.

So, on to pictures! Our mattresses were delivered in the first week, so here’s the room all blue-taped and with plastic down, ready for me to prime over the cartoon characters.



After two coats of primer, the disneyfication was blissfully removed. I was actually, surprisingly, a fan of the green, but the extra décor just didn’t suit me and it was amazing how soothing that coarse, flat, bright white was.



I painted the walls a light pink/mauve, which (three weeks later) continues to delight me when I walk in the room. The color is Behr’s Phantom Mist (720A-1) in a satin finish. The window faces north-east, and though there are two overhead lights, they’re currently the only illumination in the room. It’s relatively dark, and yet the new paint color seems to lighten things considerably. I also enjoy the contrast of the white baseboard, window and door trim with the pink. My room in middle school and high school had two pink walls, which I always loved, and this just seems like an improvement on the theme. It’s a pleasant room to be in.

Here are all of the day bed parts, unpacked and ready to be used. (We ordered two mattresses, but the trundle bed frame was ordered improperly and the correct pieces won’t show up until mid-December. Aggravating. Consider all of the bed pictures a work in progress.



Once everything was in place, here’s the view of the room from the door. The 11’7”x10’ space holds the new daybed, three bookshelves (a la Target), and my desk. I’ve been thinking about adding a new second desk so that I can quilt and sew without having to move around the computer...



From the desk, here’s the view to the door. The room juts in a bit so that I’m almost entirely blocked from the hallway view. So far, the only art on the walls is the Birches painting that my grandparents gave me. So beautiful.



And with the closet doors opened...



The closet is pretty awesome. The shelves can’t hold too much weight, but I have a few tiny fiberboard bookcases that packed in to hold the heavier things (mostly books and notes from college), and the rest is all crafts and ribbon and old CD cases. All of my elementary/middle/high school things went into three rubbermaid files that are now destined to live in the garage.

RIP Kevin's desk

Kevin finally made the decision to give up the increasingly dillapidated desk that he’s had since starting college. He kept it with the best of intentions (ie. paying down student debt and now the mortgage), but the thing hasn’t been a 90-degrees sort of structure for years, and enough dust has blown out so that it just sways around its screws, rather than holding firm. For a circa-1999 structure built of particle board, and disassembled and reassembed so many times, it’s really done remarkably well, but all things come to an end.




We’ve had a dumpster in the driveway for a few days (thanks to home depot’s rent-a-dumpster thing – we got it for all of the drywall scrap in the family room, and it was so, so much more reasonable than going through the normal trash pickup options), and on the eve of the dumpster getting picked up, Kevin found a new desk and trashed the old.

One last photo for posterity:



Farewell, college furniture, you served him well...

Brown dinner

I don’t generally post much about Brown dinners (aka our alum potlucks) but we hosted on Friday (theme: garnishes) and it was a fun night full of firsts to accompany the normal fun. We made drinks (streetcars and strawberry-basil martinis) and a cheese tray, and everyone else brought borsht, salad, awesome grilled steak, and pretty gorgeous cupcakes.



Here’s everyone prepping in the kitchen...



... and then munching in the kitchen...



And eating (or laughing):



And then we decided to light the fireplace! At first tentatively…



.. and then rambunctiously (photo taken from the fishroom, which shares the gas fireplace with the livingroom).

We have a yard!!

:-)

Happy Halloween!

I bought pumpkins for the new house!



So festive. :-) This picture is actually a little bit amusing, as it was taken after realizing that we had to move the pumpkins left about a foot and a half. The garage door kicks out when it opens, and so the first time we went to hit the switch post-pumpkin-purchase, it neatly booted the backs of the things and sent them rolling down the driveway. Oops!! (I’m sure we could make some sort of great suburban sport out of that if we tried... driveway pumpkin bowling, anyone?) They’ve been relocated out of the line of fire and don’t seem any the worse for wear.

We’re almost, almost done moving the apartment – just some last fish tank things and cleaning supplies remain. I had to document the nth trip, since my car has earned countless points for usefulness in the last few weeks. It’s 3.1 miles from apartment to house, and I think I’ve done just under 20 loads in that time. Not too bad, especially since that meant we could just reuse all of the packing supplies that we kept from the wedding and unpack in between trips.



The best part of all these trips has to be the sunsets – the mountains have been out a surprising number of the days. I took a slight detour to see the prettiness from the 405 pedestrian overpass.




Too lovely.