March 2003

March 5, 2003: When last you left us in February, we were busily working in the studio trying to finish it up and get our filing in order before the tax man comes banging on our door. Ehh, don't get all excited... we're still there.

But... the midwinter blahs have set in, and we figured you might be sick of the inside of our house by this time (and more importantly, we fear you think we have no life outside our house) and so, in the spirit of our grade school years when we were all itching to get out of the daily rut, we've engineered something different:

A FIELD TRIP!

For today's field trip, boys and girls, we're going to visit our daughter's preschool classroom:

Huh, you say? Don't go away, this'll be a fun diversion, we promise...

Anyway, the preschool our daughter attends requires a significant amount of parent volunteer hours. Last year, to satisfy the volunteer requirement, we built a loft for her classroom:

Here's a photo detail of the center panel. We used acrylic paint to outline and paint the design on one side of a lucite panel, and sandwiched it with another clear lucite panel to create a stained glass look that'll stand up to a room full of preschoolers:

This year, even though our daughter has moved to the classroom across the hall, we agreed to continued the ocean theme in her old classroom with a handpainted border around the entire classroom:

It took several-hour blocks of time over four months to do the border, but we had fun doing it, and the kids love it! Lest you think we're neglecting our daughter's current classroom, never fear. We're working on the project for the classroom she's in now, and look out... that may be the destination for our next field trip in a few months.

Ok now... back to business.

Picture this...

The studio is all but done. We've got a few trim pieces and some razor blade scraping around the doors to do, but we're essentially ready for furniture, which is now, a problem.

Whaaaaa... did you say a problem? After all the work we put into it, we should have, like, heraldic banners of the kingdom unfurled after royal trumpet blasts to introduce... the royaaal l l l l... studio!

Eh... not.

So what really happens hours before we're supposed to move furniture into a spit shiny clean, newly renovated studio? Frankly... we dunno:

So we've got the almost finished 16x22ish space, with pristine white walls, high gloss white trim, spit-shiny prefinished beech hardwoods that would make any second-rate mohhdernartiste who's selling excluuuusive pieces on eeehBay just die-eye, and the conversation goes like this:

"Studlymaninakilt, we have to go to IKEA this weekend to get some tables."

"Tables for wha'?"

"Tables for to lay out crafts, of course, sewing, painting, scrapbooking... all the things you use large tables in a craft room for."

"Craft room? I thought this was going to be the family library... with the bookcases for our books, and a fireplace and cozy places to sit and read."

"Nooooooooo, studlymaninakilt, I thought we agreed the library is going to be upstairs in what's now the second guest bedroom."

"Well, but we can't turn the bedroom into a library until we convert the attic into a master bedroom suite, and turn the current master bedroom into a guest suite, and that won't happen for a couple of years!"

Sigh. You get the picture, right? So now we've got this empty room just waiting to be furnished and used, and we have no clue what we're going to furnish it with and use it for. Please, please tell us this happens to other people...

So, we're still going to IKEA this weekend, though what we're going to come home with is currently up for serious debate.

March 9, 2003: Well, we completed our trip to IKEA without bloodshed, either directed toward each other or toward the other five million people that decided to visit IKEA at the exact same day and time we did. (Note to self: Never, EVER visit an IKEA on a Saturday afternoon again as long as you walk on the face of this earth.)

Despite the massive throngs of people, we had an extremely productive day. First, we came back with a truck full of furniture, all neatly flat-packed with Swedish efficiency in dense boxes, just so we can spend the entire evening unpacking them from their efficient boxes and assemblihg them. Second, we ate meatballs... a big huge plate of them. We're sure it's the Swedish version of McDonalds or something, but there's something about a whole pile of meatballs with a side of lingonberry jam that makes the world turn just right. Well, at the very least, it kept us from gleefully murdering the lady that kept sideswiping our ankles with her cart through the entire kitchen section.

So we know you're just dying to know... what did we decide on? Well, in the name of domestic harmony (aided by the fact that the room's big enough to do whatever we da** well please), we struck a compromise. Part of the room has a loveseat, chair and endtables with a bookcase mostly reserved for books. The other part has a looooooooong table with wheeled, height-adjustable stools that will scoot us anywhere in the room we want:

Here's the seating area. We already had an IKEA loveseat with cream slipcovers from our old master bedroom, so we just bought slipcovers for the same loveseat in white duck. We pulled in an armchair we already had, which we'll slipcover in the same white duck as the love seat. Then we bought three cube "things" with different covers. They're great, because we can push them together to make a coffee table to work on, or split them apart for a smaller coffee table, end tables, footstools, whatever we want:

You can see work area in the photo below. The dark wood desk to the left of the photo is a big ol' parson's desk we picked up at a church auction. Once the weather gets warm enough to work outside, that puppy's getting a couple of coats of glossy, bright white paint to spruce it up. Then there's the long work table, with the wheeled stools painted wonga bright enamel green:

Why bright green? We dunno. We just liked it. What color is "wonga bright green?" Go buy a package of M&M's, and come back to us if you have any questions.

So we spent the entire day dragging cartons of stuff from the kitchen, garage, attic and basement that we thought comprised all the stuff from our old house that was in the library and basement, and have determined that it just. won't. fit. Yes, we've come square against the laws of physics, and have to concede that good ol' Sir Isaac was right... matter cannot, indeed, occupy the same space at the same time. Da**, we hate when physicists are smarter than we are, though it happens regularly.

The room absolutely can be a home office, craft room, library... but just not all at the same time. We're facing the hard reality that we can only pick two uses, and right now it's looking like it wants to be an office and craft room.

But then, just where are we going to put the library? Well, the prime candidate has always been the second guest room, which we were going to convert to a formal library once we built the third floor master suite. But the third floor master ain't gonna happen for a couple of years, because we've got some butt-ugly bathrooms and a kitchen to tackle first. So now we're wondering how our guests would feel about sleeping amongst a room full of books...

Anyway, we've spent the rest of the post-Swedish meatball weekend sifting and dumping clutter and figuring out where the stuff that made the cut belongs. The studio's still got a pile of cartons, but we're typing this update from the parson's desk, and clutter or not, it still feels pretty good! And we think we've got some lingonberry jam tucked away in the fridge. Even if we don't have meatballs, we 're thinking we can make do with some toasted whole grain bread and sweet butter...

March 17, 2003: We've spent the last week and a half sorting, filing, shelving and pitching, but all the books we can fit are cozily ensconced in one of the studio bookcases, and all the craft supplies we can fit are cozily ensconced in the other. Most importantly, the file cabinet drawer that met its demise during the move has been resurrected with the help of some "Goop" (we swear, that's what it's called!) adhesive, and all the filing and paperwork has been duly sweated... oops, sorted... through, and tax time can swoop upon us with abandon-- we're ready.

We've also gotten photos of the parlor up... check them out! We finally were able to dig the poor room out from all the stuff we put in there while we were renovating the studio. You know how it goes-- you start work on one room, and two others become instant disasters filled with all the stuff you've put in there from the room you're working on.

March 21, 2003: The snow has finally melted, and though we can't say the weather's gotten much cheerier, it has gotten a bit warmer and we've traded the incessant snow for incessant rain.

We'll take the gamble on whether Mother Nature agrees, but here at Brickman House, we've decided that it is, indeed, SPRING. Of course, we herald the coming of spring around here, not with Maypoles or crocus, but with... DUMPSTERS!

We welcomed our new arrival this morning... our fifth 30 cubic yard dumpster, accompanied by a wicked big chipper, in order to begin clearing the long-neglected west side of the property. We figured we just had to bite the bullet and roll the dice on the temperamental weather, gambling on the payoff of clearing the mess before it started leafing out, and most importantly, before poison ivy begins its annual campaign to dominate the entire State of Delaware.

Well, this time we bet on black, and scored. It ended up being a beautiful weekend, crystal clear and mid-60's, and we got a lot of clearing done. This is what we started with:

Ugh, what a mess-- there were briars, brambles, and all manner of vegetation in there, all with thorns big enough and sharp enough to perform an impromptu organ transplant.

Scary.

That mess was waaaay too much to be dealt with in a single weekend, even for Bob the Builder. "Can we clear it? YES we can!" Umm, no Bob, you can't, you obnoxious little animated shi*...

Oops, sorry, musn't bash the cheery little cartoons. Anyway, we decided to break down the project into manageable chunks, and this weekend was set aside to concentrate on the worst of it, and decided to devote 48 hours to "Operation Free the Trees." At the very least, we figured we'd save the noble, majestic mature trees from being choked out and suffocated by a mess of insolent vines and scrub brush. Eh, whatever... don't know about "noble," but those huge buggers go a long way towards making our property look like "Tara," and give us a big break on the A/C bills. The scrub brush, on the other hand, makes us look like an episode of Bonanza gone horribly wrong.

Well, Operation Free the Trees didn't do so bad. We hit the nasty, thorny stuff with every piece of machinery we could rustle up in the garage-- bush whacker, chain saw, you name it... we used it:

Oooh baby... any man that can wield a chain saw like that is a friend o' mine. The war's nowhere near won, we assure you, but we think we won, at least, this battle (roll your mouse over the photos below for before and after views, or click any photo for a larger view):

We're currently working on a plan for beating the rest of the overgrowth on this part of the property. As it stands, the plan's current incarnation involves a lot more heavy machinery, and Bob the Builder has been sidelined for his uselessness, much to his chagrin. But stay tuned, because you know, someone's got to win the war.

We've been trying to convince Intertops to take odds on us against Mother Nature and Bob...

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