strike that: 03.08

3.31.2008

learnding

One step at a time, seemed like the logical way to approach fixing my fixer. That’s how I got through the buying process. When it all seemed huge and foreign I would open up my little notebook and write a list of tiny manageable Things To Do Next. Call three places for insurance. Find old W-2’s.

The fixing, however, has turned out to be more… iterative. Sure, I can make a list that starts with (1) repair gutters (2) get quotes for electrical, because these seem like the most pressing projects. But then I go out to examine the gutter and I see that I will have to move it when the new main water line comes in, so there’s no use repairing it. But since gutter repair should happen without further delay, that means the new water line slides into first position. And when I do the main water line, that’s when I should do the sewer. So suddenly the list is (1) main water line (2) sewer (3) gutters. Except by then the rainy season will be over, and gutters won’t be key again till fall.

And then I realize that to get quotes for electrical – which started as (2) but is all of a sudden (4) or maybe (3), I need a map of where the wiring will go. But to properly place outlets, I have to think about things like furniture and fixtures – things I wasn’t planning on considering for months. And I have to decide where big appliances will go, which means I have to start planning how my kitchen will get used, and if my washer and dryer will stack, and if the current laundry area in the basement might years from now become a third bedroom. And before I know it I am picking out lamps, which should really be more like (437). Except that I need to do that for (4) electrical.

Not to mention how doorknobs and faucets fall off unexpectedly, demanding immediate (1) regardless of any fine-tuned list.

So what I learned this weekend about Fixing Your Fixer is this: you can only do things one at a time, but you have to plan every last one of them before you start the first. So I spent all of Saturday at the Better Living Show, an annual expo center event on sustainable living. I learned about cork floors and recycled glass tiles and low-E windows and tankless water heaters. And then on Sunday I drank coffee on Mississippi and sketched out notes for each room, what the floors and walls and ceilings would look like, what kind of light it would need, what might get plugged in.

And last night I paced around with my notebook and my measuring tape, and I sketched out furniture that doesn’t exist, and I ripped apart magazines for pictures of windows and random blocks of color. And my fingers got numb and I could see my breath and I didn’t want to stop. It was pretty fun. Somehow, all at once and little by little, I guess this is what happens next.

3.28.2008

truth in advertising

“You’ll find that replacing a faucet is an easy project that takes about an hour,” said my DIY Book of Lies. It doesn’t mention that your old sink’s shutoff valves are broken. It doesn’t mention that the guy at the hardware store will convince you to get much longer supply tubes than necessary, making it near impossible to secure them properly. It doesn’t mention that to get where you need to, you will literally have to crawl, completely, into the mildewy cabinet under your sink, and then get on your back, with a flashlight between your teeth. It doesn’t mention debris falling in your face.

It doesn’t mention how the awkward angles and heavy wrenches will cause your arms to shake, and how the tools will cut your hands, which will bleed, and how unspeakably repulsive under-sink-grime will seep into the cuts, causing them to sting, and how you won’t be able to wash them because you’ve turned off the main water line.

In the DIY Book of Lies picture spread on faucet installation, the coupling nuts come right off the tailpieces. Because in the pictures, there is no rust. In the pictures, the new faucet and associated parts look like basic, standard items that can be cheaply procured.

In the pictures, the cast iron pipe that drains the sink is not a hundred years old, and so it does not crumble like tissue paper when touched, spilling corroded metal bits and curry-laden dishwater down your arms.

But five hours and ninety dollars later, I have a new kitchen faucet. And I know just how it works.

3.25.2008

Good sign or bad?

Tonight I have a date with Alaska, the good looking outdoorsy musician I picked up on Valentine’s Day. We’re going to dinner at a hidden little Thai place with a garden patio covered in fairy lights, and then we’re going to hear some indie rock band.

But last night I fell asleep reading my favorite home improvement manual, reading all the parts about different kinds of sinks and how to fix them if they leak (which mine does) and if they are missing handles (which mine is), and all the parts about the various other things in your bathroom that might drip and sputter and run when they shouldn’t (which mine do). And really? If it were up to me? If I hadn’t already said yes to Alaska? What I’d most want to do tonight is go home and take apart my toilet.

3.24.2008

get this party started

I realized, after one week in the new house, that I adapt quickly to all kinds of living situations. And this could be a problem.

Because if I don’t mind living in an unfixed fixer – if I don’t mind the falling ceiling tiles and the bare bulbs and the quirky shower – I could just live this way indefinitely. The furnace quit yesterday and I just thought, Good thing I like it cold.

But the truth is that the house needs some love, and it needs it now. Entropy already has a head start of several years. If I don’t get going I’m going to wake up one morning in a mossy glen that was once my living room.

So Saturday morning I turned a wall of the back porch into a giant calendar, and I plotted out projects from now through May. For each week I have Indoor Projects and Outdoor Projects and Things To Get And Learn, and each week has a project in green that’s the Big Weekend Project. Each project is on a little card held up with a tack so they can all move around.

The first project chose itself. Early last week I was rushing out to work when I discovered that I was locked in. Not a typo: locked in. The front door catch just spun and spun. Since then I’ve kept the door unlocked whenever I’m home – which, let me tell you, is not really what my particular flavor of Home Alone Paranoia needs.

First I had to choose door hardware. Door hardware is one of those things I’ve interacted with every day of my life but never given second thought to. It comes in a lot of finishes and styles. I knew that I needed a new main latch set – because that’s what was broken. And I soon figured out that I needed a deadbolt – because my door didn’t have one, and because I’d told my home insurance company that it did. I had not meant to lie: at the beginning of the door adventure, I actually knew so little about door hardware that I thought I did have a deadbolt.

Door hardware comes in two varieties: Cheap N’ Weak, and Expensive & Sturdy. I tried to find something at the lower end of the second type. This meant it wasn’t in a finish I particularly liked (but was, at least, not the mysteriously predominant Polished Brass), and it wasn’t the style I liked - the vertical-bar handles that look good on old houses but that are, apparently, some sort of door status symbol, and priced accordingly.

Being new to the world of home improvement, and therefore dangerously naive, I first removed all of the old door hardware even though this was not necessary for installing the deadbolt. In my pitifully optimistic brain, the plan went like this. (1) Remove old latch. (2) Install deadbolt. (3) Install new latch. (4) Dust hands off on jeans and go out for a drink to celebrate completion of Official First Home Improvement Project.

Then I realized that I’d purchased the wrong sized hole saw for the new deadbolt. (You won’t need to do any drilling, the very nice and very wrong man at the store had assured me.) So I left my house – not only unlocked, but with three gaping holes in the door where the locks might have been – to run to the store.

Except it was Sunday afternoon. Easter Sunday. Half an hour and three hardware stores later, I was ready to proceed. I drilled a big hole through the solid oak door. Half way the saw started binding, so I had to come from the other direction. The resulting two-part hole was what I like to call “close enough.”

Then I drilled the smaller hole for the bolt. Then I drilled the hole the bolt goes into. Then I chiseled out the depression for the strike plate. Then I chiseled out the depression for the back plate. Then, fumbling with half a dozen greasy unlabeled nearly-identical metal discs that absolutely must be lined up in the appropriate order and orientation, I snapped together the mechanism. And then it was dark. So I slapped duct tape over the lingering holes and called it a day.

And it took about eight times longer than I’d estimated, and probably a locksmith could have done it in fifteen minutes. But it was awesome. Now I not only have a deadbolt, but know exactly how it works, and what it looks like inside. And every time I unlock my door I get to think about it.

And if this project is any indication, this is exactly the sort of meaningful connection I will have with my whole house, when it’s all finished, in approximately twenty six years.

3.21.2008

sprung

I left late for work today – partly because of March Madness recovery, and partly because the door to my garage, where I store my bike, is a riddle wrapped in a mystery wrapped in a network of rotting timbers. But the late leaving meant I got a whole different look at my neighborhood: the start of the school day.

My new house’s good location is mostly about the short commute and about the nearby entertainment and eateries, but it’s also about the school that’s basically across the street. It’s an environmental charter school with a butterfly garden and a ball field and a swingset I can see from my front window. And in the morning many of the kids are walked or biked in by their parents. Being in the middle of that was kind of an awesome, perfect way to kick off the first full day of spring. I got to hear the bell ring.

Then I pedaled west to the river, a fast and easy trip thanks to the fact that I’m on a bike boulevard. Bike boulevards are a fabulous transportation planning feature designed to give bike commuters a direct and speedy route that is separate from the main automobile route. The trick is giving bikers what they want – good visibility, for example, and no stop signs – while using traffic calming measures to discourage cars. So I zip towards town for nearly a mile without stopping, leaning now and then around traffic circles on a quiet tree lined street.

And now here I am at the office, and I’m working diligently on our next piece of p.r., which is coming together rather well actually. But in the back of my head I’m making a list for the weekend. Plane down the garage door so it closes. Get my head around the gutter situation. Take samples for asbestos testing. Draw up a measured floorplan.

Make use of the swings.

3.18.2008

before

I had a dream that I was going camping with the previous owners of my house. I woke up feeling reassured in that way a good dream can make you feel, and I couldn’t recall the details. Brushing my teeth I realized that just before I woke up I was in a gas station convenience store selecting soy jerky from a shelf of clear plastic jerky tubs, and then I remembered that the gas station was a stop on our way to the forest. The owners were still an older couple like in real life, but they were happy and fit and full of enthusiasm. In real life I don’t know about any of these things. I wish that going camping together was the way a house sale worked.

Instead, in real life, I saw the couple only once, for less than ten minutes. My agent brought me by to see the house when there was already an accepted bid on it. The owners would have assumed I was irrelevant. The husband, whom I will call Leonard, sat in a chair watching tv the whole time, never looking up. I got the feeling he had been sitting in that chair every night for many years. The wife, whom I will call May, guided me efficiently but politely through the rooms. This is my pedestal sink, she said in the bathroom. There’s the garden, and it’s all organic, I’ve never used any pesticides on there.

This had been Leonard’s childhood home, and he and May then spent decades there after they got married. During the inspection their photos were still on the wall and so I know they raised a son in the house as well. The rooms had been brimming with things only a week before the sale, but only a few were left behind. There’s a forgotten drawer of cutlery and a child's drawing of a dragon in the closet. There’s a small cross ornament in the bedroom, which perhaps they left on purpose.

And so I think that May and Leonard were full of faith, and I hope that it helped them with their move. I like to think that they were ready for what is next – for not dusting and not going up and down stairs. But I worry that leaving a house you’ve made a life in for so long can only come with terrible sadness. And I wish, if camping is unrealistic, that we could at least have had tea, that I could have heard some stories of the house and that I could have asked Leonard to leave behind any tools he was going to get rid of. He used to have a lot of tools – I can tell by the handmade workbench he left in the garage – and I wonder if he sold them or gave them away. Now here I am buying new tools, which feels foolish. Your tools will be put to good use right here in this house, I could have told him.

One thing I know for sure is that they found out I bought the house to live in – not to fix up and sell for a profit, and not to rent out. They know I am a young woman and that this is my first house and that I’m excited for it, and I hope that this made them pleased. And I am thankful that they left a house that feels so blessed – from the cross tiled into the kitchen floor to the tiny stamp on the entry room threshold that says believe in miracles to the daffodils blooming by the porch.

3.13.2008

littlehouse

3.11.2008

progress

The first three hundred dollars I’m sinking into my new house is all going towards books. When I do something, I like to read about it. I hiked around the Balkans with a backpack full of everything that had ever been translated from Serbo-Croatian into English, and now – against all common sense – I am hauling book after book into the house I am trying to move out of. It started during the search with Jane Smiley’s In Good Faith, a novel about a realtor. Now that I have a real place it’s graduated to real stories: essays and memoirs and lots of how-to.

There are even more kinds of home improvement books than there are home improvement shows on cable. Many of them are not for me. There are a lot of books about building a new house, for example, which I am not doing. And at the other extreme are the books that claim to be about renovation but are actually about selecting some nice new vases. I’m looking for the ones right in the middle: the foundation and the roof stay; the stuff in between is reinvented.

I’ve also been looking for books about sustainable home improvement, but these are harder to come by than I’d hoped. If I were building a straw bale house or moving to the country to live off the land, there would be a mountain of resources at my disposal. But as far as sustainable renovation for my existing urban home, I’ve been pretty disappointed.

So this is the list so far. For recreational diversion and commiseration while this goes on, I chose The Walls Around Us (Dave Barry style) and Gutted (subtitled Down to the Studs in My House, My Marriage, My Entire Life), and a book called simply House. For general how-to I picked up Black & Decker Complete Home Repair and Home Depot Home Improvement 1-2-3 and, because I couldn’t resist, Bob Vila’s This Old House from 1980. For environmental philosophy I got Green Remodeling and for decorating philosophy I got Time Life Book of Repair and Restoration, and for getting ahead of myself I found Good Green Kitchens and Plan Your Bathroom. The latter has a three-part section like those flipbooks for kids where you match one person’s head to another’s torso to another’s legs. Now I can do that with tile.

I am realizing rather quickly that this project is not going to happen in slow easy phases as I’d imagined. If I’m doing new electrical I’m taking down the walls, and if I’m taking down the walls I’m doing new plumbing, and when I do new electrical and new plumbing I need to know where the sinks and outlets and lights are going to go. So I have to set out with the finished product in mind. And while I do all of these things I have to fix the more egregious shortcomings of the house. Its lack of gutters, for example, and its collapsing chimney, and its leaking furnace. Sometime in my future I foresee a large and multicolored flowchart.

In the mean time, fair reader, I have a feeling this is about to become a house blog. I usually move blogs for new subjects, but since the whole house undertaking is about staying put, perhaps I’ll give that a virtual go as well. Half of strike that’s name came from hitting nails, anyway (in New Orleans) – and the other half came from throwing in the towel on plans with a boy. What is it they say about the more things change?

Probably nothing relevant.

crazy

3.07.2008

and THEN

…I signed a whole bunch of papers and bought a house.

It was awesome, actually. My broker Erica came and my lending agent Kat came and we were all three of us in dark blue jeans and different styles of black sweater and it felt kind of kickass, it felt like Sex in the City but with a really big check handed over at the end.

There was a time, you know, when women couldn’t own property. And to be honest it was strange to me at the beginning, buying a house by myself. But something about this little circle of strong professionals in sexy shoes made me really pleased, even when I had to sign – in three places – next to parts of the contract that had been auto filled in with the phrase “Jane Doe, an unmarried woman.” Like that’s my primary designator. What do you do? I’m an Unmarried Woman.

But I signed and signed and handed the pages over one by one to escrow officer Stormi, the fourth woman in our little real estate coven (whose sweater was pink). And then Erica gave me a hug and Kat gave me a box with seeds and organic cleanser and a compact fluorescent bulb. And I love Portland. And I own a house in Portland, so I guess I’ll stay here a while.

3.06.2008

hija unica

Being an only child has its perks. Your parents are more likely to be able to help you with a downpayment on a house, for example. But it also comes with a mountain of difficulties, which any of you who have met (or, God forbid, dated) an only child may be familiar with: we have trouble sharing, and we can be a little sensitive (from not being teased into toughness), and we’re not always convinced that anyone else actually exists at all.

And, most relevant here, we’re not the best advocates for ourselves. Because we never had to compete with other, possibly cuter, children for time or attention or the bigger half of the cookie. And as adults, we continue to assume that everyone is looking out for us. Though eight years in New York disavowed me of my belief that each stranger on the street has my best interest in mind, I still tend to hope for it in my heart of hearts. When people say I love you or Let me know if I can help or Trust me, I generally take them at their word. And when I say these things I mean them – and am constantly frustrated at how rarely they are believed.

Overall I think this works in my favor. It’s made dating a little messy with unrealistic expectations, but I have friends I’d sell my soul for and I do mighty good with strangers, because with new people you often get what you look for. The one place it all falls apart is in relationships that are linked to financial transactions. Getting my car fixed, finding a new laptop – these things fill me with dread because I know that salespeople are telling me things in order to get something for themselves. And I don’t resent them for that – I understand that it’s their job. But it’s not what I’m used to so it’s not intuitive to navigate. I can’t help thinking Why are you making me negotiate? Why can’t we be in this together?

In this regard buying a house has been a bit… let’s go with the diplomatic word challenging. Because everyone makes more money if I spend more money, and if I spend it soon. Not just the sellers, but also “my” agent and “my” lender – both of whom are cool and kickass women whom I think I’d like quite a lot in any other setting. But this process is designed so that trusting them feels naïve.

Which was all ok, more or less, until last night, when my lender called to tell me that the documents I’ll be signing this afternoon would not be available in advance for me to read. I had requested them a week ago and she said she could get them to me the day before the signing. But they came in late and then there were scanning problems or blah blah whatever and she’s really sorry but they’re just what we talked about and that’s it. Don’t worry, she said, because the escrow agent will explain them all as I sign them.

And I fucking hate this. Because I have learned, as an adult, that this friendly woman who has been nothing but helpful and kind on the phone for weeks is maybe not actually doing what’s best for me. But the only child part of me just held the receiver thinking Ok, I’m sure she tried really hard to get me these documents, and there’s no reason to suspect they’re going to say anything different than what we agreed.

Which, to be honest, doesn’t help anyone. Even if it’s true, it’s not my role in this. My role is to take a deep breath and say, Thanks for trying so hard to get them to me today. I’m sorry it didn’t work out, since we were really hoping to sign tomorrow. But let’s just go ahead and reschedule the signing.

Of course that’s not what I said. I don’t know exactly what I said because I was so flustered and unsure of what to trust, but it more closely resembled No Problem.

And then about nine hours later I got the right words together. But nine hours later was too late for her to be able to amp things up and pull through. That’s the whole advantage of being a good advocate for yourself: you give people a chance to get you what you need instead of taking what they first offer while resenting and judging them. Not being an advocate for yourself initially feels more generous, but it’s not.

Late is better than never, though, and it’s how I’m learning. So this morning I picked up the phone and called my lender and told her I wasn’t comfortable signing documents I hadn’t read. And then I called my agent and rescheduled. My appointment is tomorrow morning. The world continues to turn.

3.05.2008

tease

I love what the sun does to people. After a rainy gray winter the sun pokes out and suddenly everyone is sweet and easy. Portlanders are pushovers when the sun comes out in March.

I just took lunch – a long walk up the park to the food cart where the vendor chatted to me for fifteen minutes about hamsters, and a warm brick balustrade in the square where a guy filmed me saying the phrase under-the-sofa-cushion money into his phone camera, “for a video project.” Somehow these things seem like a good idea with this weather.

Before lunch I went to the bank to find out about getting a cashier’s check for a very large sum of money, which in the next couple of days I will be handing over to an escrow agent in exchange for a cute and crumbling little house. This would feel negligent in November. But here on this scarfless day in March there is a tangible will to optimism, a collective wink, an unspoken agreement to forget that the rain will be back. When I smile, passers by smile back fast and full. A crossing guard this morning literally danced me forward in my Smartcar. And everyone is making eye contact: lingering, loaded eye contact.

I often wonder if residents of warmer climates live this way all the time. When I visited a SoCal friend over winter break a few years back it was jarring how undressed the girls in the bars were – skirts hovering lightly around their hips and tops falling off their shoulders. This is not how we dress in the northwest, and it was lovely. All those white teeth and tan skin. And it's surely tied to mood.

But I believe it’s the change that gets us going in Oregon, the way we get to disappear and then break out each year all new. Not yet, I keep telling myself. Plenty of short days yet to go. But I’m revving up. One little taste, months early as it is, gets us all to the edges of our seats. Last minute preparations. Finishing touches on the best-laid plans for the long stretch of blue sky ahead.

3.04.2008

sneak preview

These are some of the home improvement shows you can watch.

The one where neighbors swap houses for two days to redecorate each others’ rooms. The one where a designer redoes a room in someone’s house inspired by the house of a moviestar or athlete. The one where a designer redoes a room in someone’s house inspired by the house of a moviestar or athlete, but for $1000. The one where an old grumpy contractor goes to the tragically flawed house of a person in need to fix a tiny leak, and ends up ripping out miles of faulty plumbing. The one where a strapping handyman comes to grant fix-it wishes. The one where a house gets a makeover in order to be sold for more money. The one where rooms are redecorated entirely based on color. The one where an annoying woman assigns you a “style” with a cheesy name like “Tuscan contemporary” or “Mediterranean modern.”

There are more, but you get the idea. I know about them because I watched them all. I watched them all between the hours of seven p.m. on Friday and five p.m. on Saturday, because you can watch one flavor or another of home improvement show at any hour of the day, and sometimes more than three at a time. I turned the first one on to unwind from work and I didn’t stop flipping until I realized that I’d wasted half my weekend, neglected the dog I was supposed to be dogsitting, and blown a perfectly good leap night. But I was helpless. The friends I was housesitting for have a cozy couch in front of a wide flatscreen tv with approximately eight hundred channels, and I am defenseless in the face of such Tools of the Devil. It’s why I can’t have a television myself.

Usually when I dogsit for these friends I watch cooking shows or movies, but this weekend in their big beautiful house felt like a dress rehearsal for homeownership. The home improvement shows were just the beginning. I studied their appliances and their outlet placement. I flipped through their back issues of Real Simple and Martha Stewart Living. I considered their wainscoting.

And when I woke up Sunday to a sunny Portland morning, I leashed up Dog and went for a long walk in a new neighborhood. I bought a New York Times and sat at an outdoor table drinking a latte with the pup curled at my feet. People walking by stopped to say good morning. One of them informed us It’s dog-o-rama at the park so we headed off that way, and spent a while socializing on the lawn.

Back at home, warm and tired and pleasantly muddy, I cranked up Tito Puente and baked oatmeal chocolate chip cookies in the sunny kitchen.

I could get used to this.

: Name: tortaluga; Location: Wallis & Futuna

hi. i'm not really from wallis OR futuna. in fact, i don't even know where those places are. isn't that remarkable? the world isn't so big, that a person should be able to not know the whereabouts of wallis and/or futuna. i'm living in oregon right now. before that i lived in amsterdam. before that i lived in new york. when people say, "where are you from?" i still say new york. everyone knows where new york is. but new yorkers didn't go camping enough for me. alas. i sure miss the bagels.

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strike that