Tag Archives: house

November 20, 2012 · 1:53 PM

Moving at the Speed of Light

Cough cough.  It’s a little dusty in here, isn’t it?

Five weeks have come and gone since I hit the “publish” button, and an explanation is in order.

Shocking even ourselves, Mike and I decided to move over the last month.  This decision happened so quickly we could barely catch our bearings, much less document it.  I do not exaggerate (well I do, but not in this case); let the timeline speak for itself: we posted our condo on Craigslist on a Sunday evening, showed the place to potential renters on Monday, offered the place to one renter on Tuesday, and signed papers that Saturday.  On Sunday we toured a townhome to rent (the first place we looked at) and had our application in the next day.  The following Friday we signed papers.

Bing.  Bam.  Boom.

If you remember anything about our previous move, you know that it went nothing like this.  For instance, in our other move we actually discussed it for more than a day before pulling the trigger.  In this case, it was more like tossing a coin in the air and shouting “move!” or “don’t move!” before it hit the ground. 

At least that’s how it felt — the takeout pizza version.  The gourmet lobster dinner version is that we’re absolutely sure that this was God showing off all over the place.  He couldn’t be stopped.  He took our one little hopeful dream of being able to rent our condo so we could rent a larger home and save up to eventually buy a house, and threw in ribbon, glitter and ponies.  It was that extravagant.

Which is why we take credit for exactly none of it.  If we’d masterminded this entire ordeal, it would have been an unmitigated disaster.   Instead we just took a risk, prayedprayedprayed, watched closely for confirmations, and then saw it all come together.

Our tenant is a wonderful lady, a woman we are thrilled to have in our home.  Plus she has no pets or kids, which really moved things in her direction.  Our new home is in a location we love (still Kirkland) and has more space and features than we have any right having.  Our first month of rent was free.  Do you see where I’m going with this?  Total show-off territory for Jesus.

Now we are settling in, which based on previous accounts, takes us all of about an evening.  We’ve been in the new home just over a week, and everything is coming together.  It’s very, very odd having more than one bedroom.  It’s even odder having a staircase, and multiple doors that can separate us from each other.

“Mike?” I’ll say, fifteen times a day.  “Where are you?”

“I’m upstairs, about to take a shower.”

“Oh,” I’ll say.

“Do you need something?” he’ll ask.

“No,” I reply, slinking away, “I just couldn’t hear or see you, and it’s weird…”

This is an extremely adjustable problem, and everyone says that soon I’ll have filled the house and won’t be able to imagine our former 860 square feet.  But I never had a problem with our small condo; I loved it.  I miss it, but I am so sure on a cellular level that this is where we are supposed to be.  I’m excited, I’m decorating, I’m cooking, I’m shopping for home goods…it’s very strange when I can feel one phase of my life receding and another stepping forward. It’s even stranger when I like it.

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August 24, 2011 · 3:08 PM

El Hostel de Reph

For the past several weeks I’ve been haunted by the realization that I am not able to live up to my own standards.

Not ethically, thank God, but etiquette-ly, which might be worse.

Mike and I recently hosted Sarah and Casey in our home while they were in town for the other other royal wedding.  They booked one night at the hotel across the street, but the rest of the time they stayed on our floor.

I know, the horror.

To be fair, they have stayed with us before, so they know our square footage exactly.  But that doesn’t change the desperate feeling I encounter when I see my guests waking up after a night on an air mattress.

Look, I get that it’s normal to have people stay on one’s floor when there’s no other choice, and it helps out-of-towners save some cash, and it’s not the worst thing in the world.

Unless you write about etiquette on your blog all the time.

We tried to mitigate the situation and do what I would tell anyone else to do: let the guests sleep in our bed.  We even laid down on their air mattress in protest, insisting that they go sleep in our bed.  It turns out doing that is akin to the classic restaurant standoff, “I’m paying the bill,” “No, I’m paying the bill,” until both of you hates the situation enough that the only gracious thing to do is give in.

The chaos of being involved in a family wedding at the time didn’t help either.  We were all sharing one bathroom, and after three days we were out of fresh towels.  Due to the hectic schedule of out-of-towner dinners, the rehearsal dinner, and the wedding itself, I had no time to do a load of laundry.

It was an etiquette-obsessor’s nightmare.

Let me be clear: our guests never once complained.  They were gracious beyond description and even thanked us daily for the hospitality.  I told them hospitality was a loose term in this case, but they insisted.

Long after they’d departed, I was still consumed with thoughts of how I could possibly improve our situation without moving to a three bedroom home.  I continued to be at a loss until we spent the night at the home of two of our good friends.

Their entire home is 540 square feet.  It is a free-standing home, not a condo.  It is completely adorable and should be highlighted in a design magazine for optimizing small spaces.  When they invited us to spend the night, we could not imagine where we would be resting our heads.

We shouldn’t have worried; they invested in an air mattress that blew our minds.  It’s double layered, so when inflated it looks like it has a box spring and a mattress, and it is about two and a half feet high so when getting into or out of the mattress it feels like a normal bed.

The best part — the box spring covers only about two-thirds of the mattress, so the mattress portion rests over a couch.  The result looks like a fold out bed from a couch.  We slept great.

The next morning we were singing the mattress’s praises when they told us they were actually trying to sell it due to their upcoming move into a bigger place.  Would we be interested, they asked?

Sold.

Though this won’t totally alleviate my feelings of hostess failure, I’m convinced the Reph Hostel has just upgraded to bed-and-breakfast.

Now accepting reservations.

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May 13, 2011 · 3:17 PM

Designing Woman: Part Three

People may think of a number of descriptive words for me, but D0-It-Yourself is not among them.

One of my favorite blogs that I read all the time is Young House Love, and they are all about the DIY.  But they’re DIY on crack.  They knock down walls and paint brick and tear out concrete.  They do an incredible job of making it look accessible, but it still scares the junk out of me.

Enter our hideous bar stools that the previous owner of our home left us — and refused to pick up when we found she had left them (but we could hardly blame her — they’re hideous, after all):

Not only is the pattern like something from a Ringling Brother’s Circus, but one of them was actually stained:

How did we live with them for 16 months?  If I think about that question too long I will go into convulsions, so in the interest of time, let’s skip that question.

When Mike and I decided that we finally had to get rid them, naturally we planned to throw them away and buy new ones.  But then some DIY-type friends heard our plan and were aghast that we’d waste money and resources on “such a simple project.”

Sure.  Simple for you.  This coming from the people who carve their own dining room tables.

We promptly ignored their suggestion and proceeded to look for new bar stools.  However, upon finding that any decent bar stool was at least $150 a pop, we figured why not try to fix our current ones?  If we fail we can always throw the embarrassment in the garbage and THEN spend the $450.

Off to the fabric store we went.  We chose a fabric, bought a staple gun and some backing and headed home for the dirty work.

First we took the stools apart to determine if we’d need to strip the fabric.

We decided that the backing on our new fabric was thick enough to prevent any of the old fabric from showing through, so we left the seat fabric on.

The fabric on the back of the stool, however, had to come off.  That was not a fun process.


We then proceeded to iron our new fabric to ensure it was perfectly smooth.  When I say “we,” I mean “he.”  We all know I don’t know how to iron.

Isn’t it a beautiful pattern?

Everything worked like a charm until this point.  The next step was nothing short of maddening.  We had to align the fabric perfectly, staple it correctly and tightly, and make sure the corners didn’t look freaky.  We alternated between talking to each other through gritted teeth like seamstresses on Project Runway, and cheering each other on like we were at the Mathletes Finals.

After dozens of removed staples, we finally had it:

…and then we realized we had to do it again two more times, and we almost decided it would be easier if we just sold our house and left the new owners with two torn apart stools.  Let history repeat itself, we said.

But we motored through, and finished all three seats and one seat back.

Those of you paying attention realize this leaves two seat backs unfinished.  How long do you think it took Mr. and Mrs. Reph to finish those last two seat backs?  I’ll give you some hints:

  • it’s the same amount of time it takes to get five credits at a university
  • it’s the same amount of time it takes to grow 1/3 of a baby
  • it’s the same amount of time that Seattleites enjoy the weather each year

Three months, people.  Three months.  For three months, two of our chairs sat there without backs.  For three months, we told our guests we’d “just started” this project and that we were going to complete it “this weekend.”  It was sometimes the last thing one of us would say to the other before falling asleep, “You know, we really need to finish those bar stools.  No seriously.  It’s embarrassing.”  The other would always dutifully reply, “I know.  Totally.  Let’s do it this weekend.  Oh wait, we’re out-of-town.  Next weekend, then.  For sure.”

This went on for three months.

Until this week.  This week, in a fit of energy, we decided it had to come to an end.  We got home from a date, walked right into the dining room and started stapling like it was our jobs.

Ladies and gentlemen:

Victory!

Aren’t they pretty?  But really, the attractiveness doesn’t even matter to me at this point.  The point is that they are done, complete, finito.

And just as I hoped, they bring in the red from the family room behind them, and help add a little color and interest to the space.

The other side of the victory is that what should have cost $450 ended up only costing $35 ($20 for the fabric and backing, $15 for the staple gun).  Even though they aren’t perfectly done, I’ll take imperfect at $35 over perfect at $450…at least for now.

Instead of teaching us that we are DIY-capable, this certainly proved to us that we should never remodel a home.  It took us three months to do the backs of two stools; I don’t think we should be knocking down walls and replacing granite counter-tops.  For the sake of our marriage, obviously.

To read about other design projects we’ve conquered managed, see here and here.

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