Tale of Toilet Triumph

And now in honor’s of Father’s Day: the Tale of Toilet Triumph Part II.

Which is actually very appropriate because after finally facing down the dire condition of our only bathroom and the necessity to swing into action (see previous post), the hero of our story rode into town: my Dad.

Yes, he rode into our quiet little town in his trusty Minivan capable of fitting a giant cartoned toilet into it along with large sheets of plywood...which had been our first obstacle. We hightailed it to Home Despot and I got the toilet I had picked out (eco friendly and water saving with two flush buttons...I’ll let you figure that out on your own) and whatever else was on the list Dad had composed of Things We Might Need. And then he scored me the extra 10% military discount at checkout...sweet.

Day One

Back at the homestead early the next morning, the Great Toilet Switch commenced under the steady eye of Dad, who had also filled the minivan with a trove of tools which were necessary for all aspects of the job. Including things which would never have occured to me...like when replacing a leaky toilet you need a box of disposable latex gloves. First step (after coffee) was to disconnect and remove the old toilet, a job I gracefully delegated to my hubby since I was busy documenting (photo above).

Stickdown tiles were removed adjacent to the big iron poop chute (not the technical term) to survey the extent of the damage...it was extensive. The subfloor in the immediate vicinity in front of the toilet was toast and needed demo. I gracefully delegated this job for myself, since I love ripping things up.
See the red blob? This is an excellent tip contributed by Dad (of course): most DIY sources will mention stuffing the poop chute with rags to reduce the gagging in the room and generally making the job site more pleasant...my Dad knows that putting the rags in a plastic bag first makes 1) the likelihood of one of the rags disappearing down the chute less probable and 2) it makes unstuffing the chute way easier.

After everyone had a bit of destructive fun we had uncovered the problem area:


The toilet had leaked in the past and instead of replacing the oldest rotten sub-subfloor, new subfloor had been thrown over it and then the toilet reinstalled...and voila! the toilet was still ultimately on squishy rotten wood which would exactly recreate the initial problem.....but not until someone else (us) lived in the house! Also, it should be pointed out that I personally didn’t construct this scenario from the telltale heart of stained flooring layers visible above...That’s my Dad on the left sitting on the edge of our bathtub sizing up the situation, coming to terms we were in for some pretty major carpentry, and secretly hoping that the floor joists were okay.

More ripping up:
during which my little girly oscillating tool came in way more handy than my dad thought it would!

Eventually we had a big honking hole in the bathroom floor:

with freshly reinforced edges. And it turned out the floor joists were okay. So on that note we joyfully decamped for Mom and Dad’s condo where a functional bathroom and Icy Adult Beverages awaited.

Day Two (of what was hoped to be a one day project)

First layer of subfloor fitting jigsaw fashion around chute and water line:

Then a second layer of flooring to make it evenly match up with the rest of the floor:


Now let me pull back here for a moment to show you the whole room...
....and my dad still patiently supervising and waiting as I hammer nails in that he knows would take him about 2 seconds flat. And I should really point out here that he also did alot of the nitty gritty work too (sawing, measuring, leveling, screwing, nailing, fitting, schmearing, bending, cursing, remeasuring...), I just don’t have photos of it for some reason.

So all level, we schmeared some putty stuff into the seams and nail holes to make it nice and level. Then a coat of tile adhesive. And then fitting and sticking down new tiles. And then, finally, installing the new toilet (remember the new toilet, this post was about a new toilet).

And Voila:
a water conserving new toilet affixed to the Floor of Gibraltar.

This post was about a toilet, but in the end I realized it was really about my Dad. If it wasn’t for him I’d still be there wringing my hands in front of what would by now have been a rotten hole in the floor. Or we might have tried to fix it ourselves and ended up with a poorly installed toilet and a floor which would have failed in mere months.

Instead my Dad worked his tail off doing it the right way and teaching us how to do stuff at the same time. My hubby really looks forward to doing projects with my Dad because he is the best teacher in the world: patient and good at explaining the steps, knowing when to let him run with the job and when to take over the reins and get the thing done. He also retains his cool when the project throws a curveball: a leak springs, the coupling doesn’t fit, or the floor all the way to the joists is rotten...and then sets an example to persevere because in the end it will be fixed, and fixed right. And that is something to be proud of and celebrate with an Icy Adult Beverage.

Thank you, Dad. Happy Father’s Day. I love you.

Back from the Beach

Now if your job sends you out of town for 3 weeks straight, there could be worse locations than this:


view from my hotel room balcony.

That being said, I’m glad to be home!

best and worst...

...and sometimes they are just the worst of times.

I'm not keyed up to elaborate but 2011 just has NOT been my year so far.

But I do feel bad for the bloglet, since its not her fault and I've left her alone to grow dusty with cobwebs in the corners. So I promise to spend more time with her. And to dust off myself too and remind myself of all the projects I wanted to get done!

Off to compose the ballad of American Standard...

what lurks below the bath mat....a prologue.

Sometimes owning an 80 year old house is a voyage of discovery...it can get to feel like every time you really take a couple of minutes to walk around the place you notice at least 10 things that are going amiss.

Sometimes, its a really bad time to notice something...like the week before your entire immediate family is coming to the small house for Christmas.

Plan of action? Throw a rug over it and ignore.

This plan of "action" has never really worked, like when I used it the day after a college party to hide the unreturned keg on the balcony from my visiting parents (voila, it looks like a side table, right? wrong.).

It started innocently enough, just a bit of a bump appearing in the stick down tile in the bathroom. Then the bump grew, got company in other bumps, which all gradually lengthened and then rose up into techtonic ridges. At this point you didn't even need to remove the bath mat to notice something awry. Then the ridges split and were moist leaving moldy lines on the poor bath mat's underside and smelling vaguely funky. At this point the dear husband noticed.

Eventually in life you have to deal with what's under the bath mat.

Next blog: the great Toilet Tribulation and Triumph of 2011.

we now return you...

*tap, tap, tap* ....ahem, testing one, two, three...

Apologies for the unscheduled programming interruption, by which I refer to the complete blank void that the bloglet fell into.

But things like this:





remind me that the bleak late winter terrain DOES in fact usually swell and burst out in spring renewal. Its hard not to be inspired and I’m feeling the ol’ creative force welling back up.

So much to catch up with and with new projects leaping forth, I’ll be a busy bloglet bee (no fooling!)!
Welcome Spring!

best laid floor o' nooks an' pantries

I had planned to post about a beautifully triumphant weekend in which we finally have a refinished breakfast nook floor...
After all, we did set aside an entire weekend for the endeavor. How long could it possibly take...we've already done the hard part (taking up 2 layers of vinyl and scraping up the majority of the black gooey mildewy mastic which was applied right over a nice pine foor), right?

*maybe*, whispered my ambitous optimistic and ultimately unrealistic project angel jumping up and down excitedly on my shoulder, *maybe we can even get to putting in the antique hutch and other furniture, after all we did get the fast dry polyurethane!*

Did I mention that our budget for this restoration job is about what a normal couple would spend going out to dinner? Not a special occasion type restaurant, more of a "its tuesday and I'm feeling oppressed by the task of cooking" type joint.
So we (I) made the amazing decision to save money by NOT renting the proper floor sander...we'll just use borrowed belt sanders (free)! After all, its a really small room!

UPDATE: As my aunt (and Robert Burns) observes about home DIY projects:
The best laid schemes o' mice an' men
Gang aft a-gley.
We are still sanding.

And we have busted both of the borrowed belt sanders (Hi Mom...tell Dad we owe him a trip to harbor freight...) So back to sanding this evening (decided to ignore the nook on my Monday birthday and yesterday flounced out to a concert).

In the mean time: I'll show off some really sweet porcelain bird napkin rings. Goodwill find which was half off...a whopping 75c for the whole flock.

and they also qualify me for joining in over at Faded Charm for White Wednesday!

new to me.

Before the frost set in I managed to score some green heirloom tomatoes. They looked really pretty sitting in my vintage lustre bowl but it was time to use them (instead of waiting too long and throwing them out). That great orange octagonal bowl, by the way, was a lucky recent score at a junk store in Roanoke ($4!). Not new (check out the chips and wear), but new to me and I love it...think of filling it with kumquats...it would glow!
I've never used green tomatoes before and couldn't even think of anything else besides "Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe".
So that's what I improvised. First I sliced them about 1/4" thick and then set up 3 bowls: 1. corn flour mixed with a little salt and pepper 2. milk and 3. stone ground cornmeal (bought at the state fair from people operating an old portable stone mill...it was fascinating to watch) mixed with a bit of cayenne. The slices were dredged and dipped and dredged in sucession and piled on a plate while a pan of oil was heating up. The slices were shallow fried on each side til golden (about 2-3 minutes).


I served them up with a thrown together remoulade (yogurt/sourcream, old bay seasoning, bubbies real relish, cayenne, pepper), sauteed kale with hot sauce and cornbread. The cornbread was baking and the kale was simmering while I prepared the tomatoes so everything was hot at the same time (for once)! The cornbread incorporated some more recent finds: blue cornmeal from the state fair, pink himalayan salt, a "limited edition" pastured organic butter and my pastured farmer's market eggs from Faith Farms.


This dinner turned out to be fabulous, filling, and frugal (about $1 per person excluding the pantry items). Perfect seasonal fare for vegetarian night on an early fall evening. And a successful expedition into uncharted culinary terrain.

I'm also attempting to link into my first linky carnival...we'll see how that goes considering my technical shortcomings...

Pennywise Platter Thursday at the Nourishing Gourmet.

the haunted small house.

I like my halloween decor as imagined through an Edward Gorey illustration. The porch of the small house was decorated in an attempt to lure...ahem, I mean, welcome...prospective trick-or-treaters. I wasn't overly hopeful considering the dearth of children in the population of our "town", but you never know...


First, you must pet our outside cat, Billy. She may look spooky, but she's really a sweety. And she comes in handy as a free source of haunted ambience.


Next, up the stairs past the pumpkins where you may enjoy our window memorial to Poe. Nothing says Halloween like Poe to me.

Happy skull votives (dollar store) sit on piles of books (collections of Poe, an early 20thc biography of Poe, The Poe Shadow, and a collection of Mrs Riddell Ghost stories because I couldn't find any more Poe books...). They also provide precarious perches for a small flock of (okay, two) black feathered ravens.


Then come up to the front door to be welcome by these little ghosties on the wreath by the knocker...if you still dare, knock on the door for your candy (butterfingers this year) or choose from the various glow-in-the dark beasties. (FYI my husband chose both.)




As you leave, you may see a haunted ghost in the side yard...I was inspired by "The Long Black Veil" and by the irresistable fact our side yard is enclosed by a white picket fence and features a willow tree.
The lady is dressed in my elizabethan collared linen smock cinched with a black ribbon and a long black (okay, grey...the dye didn't take properly)silk gauze veil that flutters in even the slightest breeze. The stones and sign are dollar tree. As someone who actually spent a semester in a cemetery doing research for a paper on gravestone iconography, I'm not exactly over-impressed by the dollar stones. Next year I might flip them over and repaint the backs...

Did we get trick-or-treaters? Well, after dark I gave up and just left the plastic pumpkin filled with treats on the porch whilst hubby and I went to the amusement park to scare ourselves silly and ride roller coasters. When we came back, most of the treats were gone. Trick-or-treaters....or something else?

the great basil harvest

End of last week, I saw that the temperature was predicted to swoop near the 30s...and that meant it was time to gather ye basil while ye may. We have a large potful on the back porch which yielded a large colander full. The stems and a few leaves were left to hopefully re-seed the pot once again (maintenance free herbs).

What to do with a couple hundred basil leaves? Make pesto! I grind it up with pignolis, salt, olive oil, parmesan, and garlic. Thats it! Then scoop it into a oil sprayed ice cube tray and save for a zippy punch of summer flavor in the middle of the winter. Pop out the cubes when frozen and store in a freezer bag. The size is perfect for pasta for two or a dollop for ratatouille or soup. It even retains its color.

And what do you have for dinner when you're too busy making pesto?

a fried egg with rooster hot sauce, pesto on toast, and the last tomato fried.
Mmmmmmmm.....

I love fall.

Fall is by far my favorite season. Crisp air, rustling leaves, and (down here) wisps of smoke on the air. I still remember the first time I saw someone burning their leaves...I thought it was an emergency situation. Where I grew up you weren't allowed to have big bonfires in your backyard. Thankfully these days I live in the country and this is acceptable behavior to get rid of unwanted brush and branches. Sitting around a fire, chatting and sharing a cider is the best after work activity ever. I think I have a plan for tonight.
This is my artwork inspiration for this week, one of my favorites by Millais.

The farmers market is also wonderful this time of year; I filled up on squash, red poblano peppers, napa cabbage, crispin apples, and radishes yesterday from my favorite vendor Victory Farm. New culinary adventures of trying apple sauce, pickled peppers (no, not a peck), and kimchi from scratch forthcoming. Maybe even cider, since I saw a fun instructables (do you know this website?...you should) on how to make a press with scrap lumber and a car jack.

I'm also pondering an idea for halloween decor, now that we cleaned the front beds...

nook of despair update

We have a breakfast nook in the small house. This 20s feature should be adorable. It is NOT, at the moment, a source of pride and contentment. No quiet bowls of maple scented oatmeal or gently steaming cups of herbal tea are enjoyed there.

Why? Because like most of the small house, it desperately needed renovation. The cabinets where crookedly hung home depot specials with bright gold knobs. The countertop was an unattached piece of emerald green faux marble formica. The chair rails were strangely attached and also crooked. The eating area was a raised platform of questionable construction and blanketed in an even more questionable damp carpet remnant. The dark wood and brass chandelier presiding over the platform was festooned with dusty plastic grapes and was wired so questionably that we had to remove it before the house inspection. There were peeling blue vinyl self-stick tiles over the rest of the floor with a strange overlap tongue of sheet vinyl sticking out from the threshold of the kitchen.
And it was swathed in recalcitrant wallpaper that was patterned with a pastel palette Monet nightmare...

...which was pasted onto the plaster walls with the Glue That Would Not Die.
We tried vinegar water, hot water, and fabric softener...nothing. Broke down and bought a paper tiger and the icky chemical gel...nothing. Anger had me tearing off the floral part, leaving wide tracts of paper backing clinging to the wall.

I decided to refocus attention to other, less maddening, areas to rehab. The nook sat silent and dark; grumpily collecting recent acquisitions, various stacks of papers and flyers, tools and home improvement materials. It sulked, became embarrassing when we had company, and despaired. Here is a glimpse of it during a bridal shower...I had actually hung a curtain over the doorway to conceal the shame.


Finally goaded into action by the stalwart can-do optimism of my mom, I returned to the battle. I brought out the "big Guns", renting an industrial wall steamer from home depot. My mom and I fought the good fight in 90 degree weather, hair curling from clouds of hot moisture, armed with scrapers of all sizes.




And prevailed victorious.



Riding the wave of energy we also tore out the upper cabinets, the platform, and the vinyl tiles.

ROAR.

at last, the beautiful...and the ugly

Here at last, is some visual entertainment for the little bloglet. Pictures are worth a thousand words.

Here is the garden in june:





for a month, crookneck summer squash was our friend. I'll do a post later on my favorite way of preparing it. here's our first harvest with some fresh thyme and a few nasturium leaves headed for a salad:



tommorrow, i'll post what the garden looks like now (brace yourself), and the plan for the fabulous fall garden. I got some ideas at the heritage harvest festival at Monticello this last saturday...

One Year

A small note, we have offically owned the small house for one year today.

I remember after signing all those papers walking out of the lawyer's office into the sunlight and thinking "what have we done?".
I am told this is normal.
We have had setbacks, improvements, ennui, cozy contentments, tantrums, and triumphs. We will have to spend some time this evening reviewing the video made of moving in weekend to review how far we've come.
Don't worry, we also have far to go (eg the breakfast nook of despair). And it will be documented here.

the first non-garden post.

Last week I learned new interesting things and practiced old ones. I am reenergized about some non-gardening activities that I will be posting on. Things learned included naalbinding and lampworking beads. And look forward to the installation of a shooting range near the large garden, since my target archery rounds last week went buckets better than anticipated. And a mural has been tentatively planned for the bath.

Also regarding visual stimulation: still no pictures, but they have been downloaded which is progress. So soon we will be able, together, to cry over how beautiful the garden was in july and be scandalized by what it looks like now.

back in action

Bad news after hiatus: the first garden has sadly succumbed under the combined forces of a small marauding army of hungry groundhogs, a prolonged drought, and a hectic schedule calling me elsewhere. It took me awhile before I felt like dwelling on this defeat here on the blog mainly dedicated to gushing on about how well my new garden was going. Things learned:

1. groundhogs are NOT cute, even the tiny ones. They are pillagers and destroyers. They waited for the weekend we were away for the fourth of july and swept through all of our nascent spaghetti squashes, the summer squashes, the green tomatoes, the kohlrabi, the cucumbers, and even all of the pumpkin flowers so they never did set fruit. I am generally a tree-hugging spca-card-carrying laid-back nature-lover, but with the groundhogs it wounded me and I took it personally. I now think of them as rascally varmint.
Lesson learned: we need a garden fence ala farmer mcgregor.

2. it seemed like for all of july and august it only rained twice, at the most inconveinent times; once when I was attempting to host 20 people at a bridal shower and once when we were at the amusement park with my visiting brother. The lawn browned and turned crunchy. Yet I still persisted in watering the garden....right up to the day our lame 1920s 30 foot well ran dry while watering the tomatoes. I had spent the morning weeding in 100 degree weather. I neither looked nor smelled socially respectable. And I was supposed to be in Williamburg to visit my parents in a few hours.
Lesson learned: need to make and install water barrels off the gutters of the little house for garden irrigation. and if we win the lottery we should sink a new modern deep well, preferably away from giant thirsty trees like the one the current well is parked under.

3. Even with all the natural disasters and my neglect due to time restraints, there are still some bright spots to the overrun garden. 3 in fact. We are still getting more eggplant from those stalwart 3 plants than we know what to do with. It is evidentially the only vegetable on earth that the groundhogs don't care for. Yet the plants have seen only minisule amounts of rain since mid-july, the flea beetles still occasionally range over the leaves, and weeds surround the bed. But still they grow and put out fruit in obstinate cheerfulness, as if in denial.
Lesson learned: nothing seems to daunt eggplants. I will adopt an eggplant mentality and get to planning the Fabulous Fall garden and starting seedlings of dark leafy greens and oriental cabbages.

so there

Some quick augmentations: added one new picture of the small house.
Pictures of the large garden still forthcoming.
Hoping that the first tomatoes will be perfectly ripe for fourth of july festivities.

who was i kidding?

I have finally come to the realization that if i waited until i had crafted a second post brimming with sparkly wit to explain my finely honed mission statement I would never post again and this little bloglet would wither away like the seedlings in that tray i forgot to water or move into the sun after germinating.
I realized this after over a week (or has it been more?) of taking pictures and yet, never downloading them (there is a missing camera cable involved, but that is just a scapegoat for not following through...another habit). I dearly wanted the second post to have a bonanza of pictures. Or one.
So here is my brain storming: raw, unfiltered, and brimming with enzymes:
This blog is meant to be about alot of things, but revolving around my Garden. the Garden is my new touchstone. It is one of the few things I dreamed about and planned, but then actually DID (with some help). and it worked (we've been eating squash regularly during the last week). I think i suprised some people who know me...not the least myself.
the Garden is also a symbol of what we've chosen; the move to a rural area and a townlet with a larger population of chickens than people, owning over an acre of constantly growing life, and rejuvenating an 80 year old house that was empty for 4 years. It is to remind me of all the adventures I wanted taking those choices: growing food, having chickens and bees, learning interior design, painting murals, walking fields, having bon fires, restoring the koi pond, practicing archery, reading in hammocks, learning to home can pickles, making cheese, sewing costumes, writing...and the blog to document the disasters and triumphs.
i promise pictures next post. they will be of the large garden.

a place holder

for my first post, I leap forward confidently onto the completely wrong foot trailing my oft repeated mantra "just a minute!".
I am posting this as a test for my utterly new blogger skills and a placeholder until time allows me to craft my mission and topic at which time I promise to explain myself in the true first post and we can forget this post ever existed...