You are currently browsing the monthly archive for January, 2009.
Domino was truly one of my favorites. I’ve saved every single issue since its inception - with the occasional page(s) torn out to add to my ‘inspiration binder’.
How sad that 800,000 subscribers isn’t enough to keep the gem going.
What’s a magazine addict to do when her fix is gone? In one year, I lost House & Garden, O at Home, Cottage Living, and Domino.
Sorry bloggers, but the internet just doesn’t scratch the same itch.
It happened. Our pipes froze. Or, one pipe froze. And then burst. And then flooded our basement. The damage was minimal and everything’s okay now – but it was scary and messy for a while there.
We got to the house yesterday morning around 8:30am and turned on the pump, which is the first thing we do when we arrive (thank god we keep it off while we’re gone or we would’ve come home to a swimming pool). Our plan was to change into our ski clothes and hit a local resort when it opened to beat the crowds and get a full day of (downhill) skiing in. We had overnight guests arriving late-afternoon, so we were on a bit of a schedule. But the pump sounded louder than usual which worried me. I walked around house checking each of the bathrooms (my dad has told me that when you’re turning on your pump after a cold spell, check for frozen pipes by going through every room with plumbing and listen for water flowing in the walls). I definitely heard water moving – but this didn’t sound like water in the walls, it sounded like water rushing through the pipes. It was kinda loud. I turned on the sink and the water pressure was low. Anuj thought the pump was just low, so it was filling itself up which is why it was louder. He said it was fine and let’s get going. Let’s wait, I said. Twenty minutes later, the sounds hadn’t changed. Anuj was growing impatient. I said fine, we’ll go, but let’s turn off the pump, ’cause i don’t want it running like this all day while we’re gone. Anuj turned off the pump and the sounds stopped. We pulled on our boots, put on our hats and opened the garage door. My conscience was nagging me. ‘Let me just go check the laundry room’. Why I had a sudden urge to check the laundry room remains a mystery, but I went down to the basement and opened the laundry room door to find water rushing underneath the door on the opposite side of the room (thank you instinct). It was coming from the unfinished part of the basement. I screamed. Then crossed the room and opened the door the water was coming from. The entire back basement was under a few inches of water.
Here’s the part of the basement I’m referring to – we were too crazed to take many ‘before’ pics, but this is just after cleaning up.
Anuj ran downstairs and we walked through the water (thank you waterproof boots) to another door that leads to a storage room. The storage room is basically an exterior room with a roof and walls, kind of like a sun room, but ours is empty and feels like a shed attached to the house/basement. It was also covered with water. Anuj spotted the source of the flood: water was gushing from the corner of one of the walls. After a minute or two, it stopped. Was this melted snow coming from the storage room roof? Was it a pipe? How long had it been gushing?
Behind this wall was the burst pipe:
It took us a few minutes to piece it all together: it was probably a pipe, the flood probably started when we turned on the pump 45 minutes ago, and it just stopped because we had just turned off the pump. We grabbed towels and a mop and hit the laundry room first – the floors are linoleum and we didn’t want mold. Thankfully, there wasn’t a huge amount of water, so after we created a ‘bridge’ of bath towels in the doorway separating the laundry and unfinished part of the basement, we quickly mopped it up. Then we had to move into the flooded part on the other side of our bridge. My sister was storing a wet-dry vac in our basement (thank you wet vac), so Anuj plugged it in and put it right to work sucking up the water in the storage room and the unfinished basement. I got on the phone to find a plumber.
Here’s the wet vac – Anuj filled this thing 3 times with water from the basement and storage room.
About an hour later, a local plumber originally from Queens was in the exterior/storage room tearing the wall paneling down and revealing the culprit. Anuj went outside and walked around the house to the find a spigot on the other side of the wall. It was a garden hose pipe that had burst. Of course. Most people turn these pipes off in the winter. But we didn’t have a valve, and we didn’t realize there was a pipe running through this unheated, uninsulated, un-everything room. Last weekend it got down to -16, so that’s when we figured it burst. ‘There shouldn’t be any pipes in here’, the plumber said after replacing the pipe, ‘especially with no valve to turn it off in the winter.’ Great. Shoddy construction. This wouldn’t be the first time we were discovering structural deficiencies (the deck! the deck!) in our 1975 abode.
Here’s the storage room with our wet wood (post-cleanup):
The pipe post-plumber (temporary insulation until we put in the permanent solution):
After a few more hours of clean-up, we hit Home Depot for pipe insulation and new wall insulation. Our guests arrived just as Anuj was finishing up installing it. Having lost the day meant for skiing, we decided we’d go the next day. Meanwhile, my mind was reeling: are there other pipes that could burst? Are we leaving the house warm enough when we’re not here?
It doesn’t seem like we’re meant to ski this year. When we woke up this morning was -10 degrees. Yikes! There’s no way we’re flying down a mountain in that. Our guests braved the weather and hit the slopes. We’re here, keeping the house (and pipes) warm.
I’m not one for resolutions – I don’t make them, so I can’t break them. I do, however, keep a running home improvement to-do list in my head, and I figured getting it down on paper (or .php) might help me visualize the extent of the projects – and the reality of completing them in the next 11+ months.
Last weekend Anuj and I intended to go skiing. Downhill skiing, that is. But we suffered a night of loud pops from our deck (more on that saga another time), and as a result, woke up late on Saturday. It was beautiful outside, and we wanted to take advantage of it – but making the drive for only a few hours of skiing seemed expensive and we didn’t have the energy. So we tried to find a local place to go ice skating instead, but the only options we could find were indoor rinks, and that didn’t sound as fun. We did find a resort in Lenox that featured photos of a beautiful outdoor rink on their website, complete with a rinkside fireplace. We called and were informed that the rink was for guests only, however, they did have cross country skiing trails which we were welcome to enjoy, and their sports shop rented skis for a reasonable fee.
I’ve been fantasizing about reupholstering this set of antique oak (Queen Anne?) dining chairs I inherited from my mother when she moved to North Carolina this year. Here’s a couple of them – the rest are acting as bedroom furniture:
A few weeks ago, I came across the Calico Corners website (wasn’t that a country-cheesy catalog back in the 80’s? I think my parents ordered from it…). There I saw and fell in love with Annie Selke’s line of bright, India-inspired fabrics, so I ordered a few samples.
Anuj was concerned. Where did I think I was going to put this fabric? I’d never upholstered anything before. ‘I sewed in junior high school’, I replied in my defense. ‘I was a Future Homemaker of America.’ (I really was, for about half the school year. Let’s just say it didn’t exactly help in the popularity department). When I told him it was for the dining chairs, he let it go. See, Anuj doesn’t like the dining chairs: he thinks they’re country-cheesy, and the legs and seat are coming apart so they’re not even safe to sit in. As far as Anuj was concerned, there was no plan to feature them in the house. And my samples? They were yet another fantasy of mine that I would forget in two months.
I, however, am hatching a plan to transform them from their tired, wobbly status into chic, contemporary conversation-starters. I’m going to reupholster the seats (easy for newbies, right?), and either restain or paint the chairs. Then they might look something like this:
Now, I’m not crazy about the fabric-paint combo, but you get the idea.
Anyway, I got the opinions of Anuj and friends who were up for New Year’s Eve and the consensus was Annie Selke’s ‘Scramble’ in Slate:
No sooner than that was decided then my February issue of House Beautiful arrives in the mail. What’s on the cover?
Yep, a set of dining chairs upholstered in Annie Selke’s ‘Scramble’ in Slate. I take this as a sign. (I know, I know, I had a ’sign’ last month, too. I’m not going Shirley MacLaine or anything, I think the universe is just spinning in my direction lately). I won’t be stealing the whole look, but overall, this completely validates my choice and inspires me to tackle the project tout de suite.
Also: I now have a visual to help Anuj imagine our chairs in their new look. Now, if I can just get this fabric from Calico Corners before it sells out…
