Going to Hogwarts

I fear that the HVAC, plumbing, and electrical wiring in our house are the Harry Potter in our muggle family.  It's all so useful, and special, but I just don't appreciate it enough.  And before you know it I'm going to lock it all under the stairs (or inside the walls, you know, whatever.  Don't spoil my analogy with your logic).

I know that this is the stuff that's really accomplishing what I wanted out of a home renovation, but I have to admit, I just keep looking at it and thinking, "Eh. Wires."

"Hm, more ducty things.  I wonder when something exciting will happen."

Really, I know, this is about as exciting as it's going to get.  Air Conditioning?! I'm not sure how they guy who brought that to Houston didn't get a Nobel Prize.  I'm also not sure how people lived here before he did.  I would have to lay around like a puddle, groaning in misery, if I had no A/C.

So I take art-y pictures of wires and pipes.  I'm not the greatest arty-picture-taker for sure, so making an image that I can find beauty in takes some doing.  And while I'm framing what I see, I lost a little of first-world ennui.

"There's the thing that's going to make my house NOT smell like fish for three days after I cook fish."

"Wow, insulated pipes! So THAT's how other people don't have to wash their hands in 35 degree water on 35 degree days!"

"That looks legit.  I may not have to worry about my house exploding due to a gas leak (as much)."

Everything is in order, inspected , permitted, and approved.

I'm not certain what all the wires are for, but they'll be covered in insulation and then walls before I know it, and I'll magically have a functioning house.

In the words of Dumbledore the Quotable, "It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live."  Here's my moment of pausing in my dreams of pretty tiles and paint colors and schoolhouse lights to find some joy in the stuff that will make my everyday awesome without getting any credit.  And I will hopefully not end up with a pig's tail for not appreciating it more.

Time to Sit Back and Unwind

We spent two years in the planning phase of renovating/expanding our house, as I've mentioned before, and after all that time, we certainly were able to work out pretty much everything with our architect to everyone's mutual satisfaction.  Everything except the front porch.  Our plan called to expand the porch beyond its original footprint and move the front door, and I'll admit that I just took a deep breath on this one.  For some reason all of the other changes to the house really seemed to make good sense, but I just couldn't be sure we were doing the right thing.

I think my hesitation came because a house's front porch is like its face.  Above all, I want our house to remain the home it's been to my family for the past 9 years.  All of the other addition and expansion is some pretty drastic plastic surgery, for sure, but I accepted it more easily because sculpting or changing a friend's figure doesn't seem to change who they are or how you engage with them.  If you change a person's face, though, they may seem like a different person, and I think I've been suspicious of this figurative nose job on my house's beloved face, even if I can be ok with some lipo and butt implants elsewhere.

Tell me that's not what this metaphorically is.  Really big implants.

 I couldn't imagine how I'd use this big porch, and I thought it might change my house's face too much, and you might remember that I was nonplussed when they took out my former master closet to start the expansion.  I'm not a person who reads the ends of books first, I swear, but I can tell you that they're substantively finished with the porch, and I am so pleased with the loving and skillful surgery that's been performed that my fears are dismissed.  When everything is done, my house's face may be different, but it's still right, you know?  It's still my house, new porch and all.

To start, the back wall of the porch was gone, and the floor was mostly gone.  It was not a good place for anyone but my children, who loved to give me extra gray hairs by sprinting along the springy lumber that bridged the gap in the floor.

When they put this siding on the wall, it helped.  One of the things I love about old houses (besides their awesome oldness) is how well made they are.  It doesn't seem like people put a lot of time or care into making anything anymore, so to get something well-made, it needs to be old.  But for this porch, the guys put in the time.  They took care to get things right.

This is some old siding from our house that was saved, stored, and carefully moved to make the siding on the side of the porch where the front door is (south wall) seamless and original.

I'm so sorry that I only have a poor-quality picture, but I promise that if you had looked at that wall in person you would be unable to tell that that siding was not originally in that place.  I had to remind my husband, even, who lived here, that the siding used to stop just to the left of the window, because that's where the right angle was to make the other wall of the porch.  They cut and moved and reinstalled that siding so seamlessly that it nearly wiped my memory of how the porch used to be.

And just look at how beautiful that new siding is.  Do I need to sing an ode to 117 profile lumber?  Better yet, should I write the epic ballad of the awesome carpenters who made sure the old siding and the new siding lined up at the corner so beautifully that the corner piece (another something that probably has an actual name, but I don't know what it is) looks like a sculpture?  Because I can.  I look at these pictures and pet the actual house and practically break into song a la The Sound of Music, but with less actual talent than Julie Andrews.  But this siding starts to make me feel like I'm  in a gazebo in the rain holding hands with this porch.  It's real.

Then, while I'm still weak-kneed over the walls, they took out the old floor and built a new one.  It's even prettier.

Shiny new pressure-treated joists resting on top of solid, 100-year-old-possibly cypress beams is art and music in itself.  You'd think that smooth tongue-in-groove planks lined up to make a diagonal between the post corner and the wall corner would be just gilding the lily, but it's not.  It's just extra pretty, like a cherry tree at sunset.  It might be so pretty it hurts, but it's not too much.  And they're not even done yet.

There's the beadboard ceiling, with the spot for the ceiling fan ready to go.

And rails, to fill in a gap where rails used to be, long ago, and to bridge the gap between old and new. 

Doesn't it often happen this way at least in movies?  You encounter a new acquaintance guardedly.  You don't plan to spend time where they are, but you keep running into them, and each time you notice something new about them, something interesting, something lovely.  Before you know it, you're totally in love. 

I am totally in love with this porch.  They've covered the floor to protect it, and it wants paint to make everything match, our porch swing is still in storage, and soon it will also have some porch lights and a pretty fan (and maybe a new vintage letter box door?), but it doesn't need those things for me to love this place and the face it will be for my house.  I almost can't believe I wasn't fully on board with this place from the beginning, and I look forward to spending many rainy afternoons together.

Summa Summa Summertime

There's clearly been a lot of spicy popcorn and World Cup in my days; it's been a while since I updated y'all about my house.  It's the nature of summer, I guess, that days slow down, and I honestly would have thought that I'd have more time to think about the house, and look at the house, and blog about the house.  In reality, I decided that this was the summer of YES in my house.  I feel like the kids and I have a lot of structure in our lives usually, and that's good for all of us, but it does lead to a lot of NO when the kids want me to play a game, or go to the pool, or just have a little adventure.  So this summer, unless there's a really good reason, I'm trying to say yes a lot more.

We only have 20 minutes before swim class but you'd like to go to the park?

Ah, why not?

It's really a great day for hanging out at home and playing MarioKart 8?

It's not that bad, I guess.

Want to rescue some tadpoles out of a ditch?

Maybe we can figure it out?

Want to go to the pool even though it might rain? 

Summer of YES.

Nothing is yes all the time, of course, but just making the attempt has been a relaxing exercise, I think.  It's been good for all of us here in real life, but admittedly bad for this blog.  You have my sincerest apologies for my slacking, and to make up for it, I'm going to serve you up a glut of update posts.  Summer of YES is also all about marathons of favorite TV shows, movies or blogs, after all, so ignore your responsibilities with me, get a cup of tea and some snacks (dare I suggest some freshly popped spicy popcorn?), and get comfy.

The Decider

This week it felt like house stuff shifted into 5th gear.  We were chugging along in second, purring past friendly cyclists at 20, maybe 25 miles an hour, down happy little residential streets.  You know, how I roll.  Then suddenly we're on the Autobahn, there's no speed limit, and I'm white-knuckling it as we blow past Maseratis and what-have-you.  And since that likely sounds like a fantastic situation to some of you, let me tell you, it was a little much for me.

Now to roll back on the hyperbole a bit, all I really had to do was make some decisions.

Plumbing, electrical, and HVAC rough-in started this week, so we needed to finalize decisions about plumbing fixtures, appliances, and other minor mechanical stuff.  Not really a big deal.  Unfortunately, even small decisions are not my thing.  When my husband wants to do something really nice for me, he chooses what we're going to have for dinner so I don't have to.  If I could be a character in a Wes Anderson movie and wear one outfit for the rest of my life, I would jump at the chance.  Additionally, I wasn't really informed enough to make some of the choices we needed to make, so I spent a lot of time googling LED can lights, water filtration systems, bathroom exhaust fans, and refrigerators.  Not that that did anything but give me too much information to ever possibly process.

I think refrigerators might show up in my nightmares for a while; there are just too many choices.  Go ahead, look at refrigerators at Best Buy, just to get started.  Let's say you think, "I'll only look at the ones on sale, so I get a good deal."  That narrows it down, right, to only FIVE HUNDRED AND FOURTEEN.  I even went so far as to take my two young children to a plumbing and appliance showroom, thinking maybe seeing them in person and the help of a knowledgeable saleslady could help; it's not really a good plan to take two small children to the grocery store, and produce doesn't cost several thousand dollars.  Yes, of course, my children are perfectly adorable and well-behaved and angelic, but they did tip over a grocery cart in the check-out line last summer, and I think I aged myself several years beaming the DON'T TOUCH THAT look over the saleslady's shoulder while she was showing me six more brands of fridge to consider.  I essentially picked one that was pretty and had a beverage dispenser, y'all.  Even the online reviews didn't help--for every positive "I love this fridge!" there was another, "This piece of junk has never worked right" for every model.  I'm going to need to invest in a dartboard to pick a washer and dryer.

They'll go here.

But because we had planned to do this project for pretty much most of my adult life, I did have almost all the plumbing fixtures already picked.  Except for drains; I didn't know that drains were a thing where there were choices.  A few good reviews online and a nice lady at the lights store helped me out picking basic light fixtures (though I still have to pick out the nice-looking ones--I CANT HEAR YOU LALALA!), and my nice spouse figured out bathroom exhaust fans, which, also, I would have thought didn't really come with options.  Some things should really only come as one kind; you should be able to go to the Home Depot, ask for a bathroom exhaust fan, and they bring you the one fan that's made because that's all anyone ever needs.  Let's not overthink it, you guys.

Thankfully, I did not have to make choices about pipe.

I'm looking forward to showing you all of our choices as they come in, and I think you'll be as excited to see the more fleshed out porch as I have been.  I'm not expecting a lot to happen this weekend; El Tri plays tomorrow and all of Houston will either completely shut down or totally explode.  The kids and I are going to watch at home and eat spicy popcorn.

100 Days

So tomorrow morning will be the 100th day of the renovation of our home that will be 100 years old probably some time this year.  I'm not an elementary school teacher, so unfortunately I don't have 100 awesome collections of 100 things to commemorate the milestone (I really regret that I don't.  It would be super fun to have counted every nail and 2x4 and cubic foot of concrete that's built the house so far and be able to whip out those figures now.  Alas.). It is still fun to take this occasion to see what can be accomplished in that period of time and look forward to what comes next, perhaps with the aid of an aptly celebratory cocktail (I suggest a Porch Swing), because tomorrow is also my birthday.

Seeing this house is an even better birthday present than a porch swing (or Mario Kart 8, which is my actual present, and really great one, at that).

Somehow, this week they have finished the roof, shingles and all, put in most of the windows, and made a lot of progress on the siding.

I'm returning to poetry looking at all these beautiful shingles.  I had no idea a roof was such a lovely thing.

I can't get over how beautiful the details are.  The rakes (new term for me--those are the boards that stick out like they're the rafters from the roof) are weather treated so they don't rot in our million-percent humidity, and the fascia has been put in to show those beautiful grooves.  

Here's my breakfast nook.

I always wanted a house with old, wavy-glass windows, but unfortunately in our house someone had replaced the original windows with "modern" aluminum single pane windows.  That turns out to be a blessing in disguise, because now we're replacing the old windows as well as adding new ones, and these are all double-pane, energy efficient, bells-and-whistles, what-have you.  They're pretty.

Here's my library again.  The windows make it, don't they?

 The siding going on has made me learn about two things this week.  I like the siding of my old house, and that profile, with the curved edge, is called 117.  It's only made from wood, and it's more expensive than ordinary clapboards.  The siding that builders really like these days, at least in Houston, is Hardie-plank, which is some kind of magical cement board that's impervious to rot and the termites that run rampant in my neighborhood, but I've always thought it's pretty boring, at best, and maybe straight-up homely.  So when deciding how to side our house, I had to decide between being practical and indulging in beauty, and though we went the practical route, I was a little sad about the loss of beauty.  Until I saw this siding.  It's so pretty, you guys.  Somehow, the proportion of how they're installing it is really nice and I don't mind a bit that it doesn't have that little curved edge.  And they're putting in all of these lovely details like that little lip in the picture above that separates the bottom board (whatever it's called) from the siding itself, and it's got such a nice little angle to it that I could just sing about it.  You're fortunate that next comes electrical and plumbing rough-ins, because surely not even I can wax rhapsodic about wires and pipes.

The other thing I learned this week from my house with the help of the Internet was that tar-paper is a thing, still, and it's a good thing.  If you know all about house-wraps, or don't care, please feel free to skip the next paragraph about my learning process.

I drove by the house this week, waving to the workers who think I'm totally nuts for driving by three times a day, and I kept wondering when the big sheets of Tyvek were going to go up.  I've been driving by new-construction houses as a hobby for most of my life, and I can't remember ever before noticing a house that didn't get some color or brand of house wrap before the siding or brick went up.  Of course you can always tell because every inch of that stuff is branded.  When they tacked some plain, black, unbranded tar-paper to the sheathing, I figured it was a preliminary step, and when they started installing the siding on top of that without ever putting any of the ubiquitous Tyvek up, I had to do some concerned Googling. It turns out that Tyvek and other house wraps are like Gore-Tex, and for most situations, they're the best high-tech solution, as well as being quick and easy to install because they come in big sheets.  House wraps let no water in, but let water vapor out, so your house stays dry but doesn't get moldy.  However, in super-wet, super-hot places like Houston, the bright sunlight can shine on saturated siding and actually drive water vapor from the outside in, so that water condenses inside your walls and turns everything into moldy goo, more or less.  Yet again, Houston, home of the anomaly.  Tar paper is kind of like your wool socks--it is mostly waterproof, but in extreme conditions, if it gets wet it wicks the moisture into itself and allows it to evaporate slowly.  So I'm not going to get water-bubbles inside my walls.  Thanks, random message boards, for explaining this to me.

Happy 100 days, everyone!  Lift your porch swings or sweet teas with me to the 100-or-so more that remain.

Humpalow?

Houstonians are opinionated folks, and, as a large and diverse city, we represent a multiplicity of ideas about many subjects.  That is, we like to argue a lot about almost everything.  If you have an afternoon you'd like to totally waste, Google "Houston No Zoning" and you can read about the city's lack of the traditional zoning codes that separate commercial, industrial, and residential areas in other cities, whether that actually constitutes "no zoning" due to the strict policies that many homeowners' associations adopt, and whether or not this schizophrenic approach to urban development is a good thing or a bad thing.  Lots of people, lots of opinions.

One tiny bit of this argumentativeness concerns my house.  Part of the discussion of how Houston approaches urban planning touches our use of old and even historic buildings; typically, we bring a bulldozer.  Of the 17 homes that were the first to be built in my neighborhood (around 1893), only 3 still stand.  My new-ish apartment building stands on the lot where Kaplan's Ben-Hur, an independent, family-owned department store, operated from 1913 until 2005 in their own art-deco building with 1960's expansion and renovation (until the bulldozers came).  And I'm not going to talk about the Astrodome again, I promise.

But this pattern isn't a universal truth.  Old buildings downtown are being used to make new, cooler-than-thou places to hang out and live, we do have a historic preservation ordinance, and a good chunk of the population is taking interest in Houston's old places.  Even our sides are divided into sides, though.  My house, for instance, was built before 1920 and is clearly in the original plat of the Houston Heights dating to 1891 but is less than a block outside the historic district.  I'm a little sad about this, yes, because I want a cool little marker on my street sign as recognition that my house is awesome and old, and I want it to be difficult to totally scrap the remaining bungalows on my street.

This is the house next door to mine.  A developer owns it and is going to bulldoze it to build this.

I'm THAT lady.  I'm mostly glad we're not in the historic district, though, because its sounds like the rules that the people on the Historical Commission enforce are arbitrary and difficult, and don't necessarily "preserve" the house as well as they might.

Here's what I mean:  readers of a local real-estate blog, Swamplot, gave the 2012 Award for "Favorite Houston Design Cliche" to "humper houses," or "humpalows," bungalows with an ugly, awkward hump on the back.  Go, read the comments.  People have, um, very strong feelings about these houses (FYI: It won because people HATE humpalows).  To be fair, this style is favored by the Historical Commission because it adds a lot of square footage to the house without changing the original facade.  Sound familiar?  Yeah, totally what I'm doing to my house.  The Commission also makes the argument that the "camelback" style IS in fact a historically accurate way of adding space to a shotgun or bungalow style of house, a reference to the days when you were taxed for the number of windows on the front of your house (this is a New Orleans thing, I think, though I can't find a reference for it and have possibly made it up).

Despite the opinions of my fellow Houstonians, I'd like to think that my house is NOT a "design atrocity" (as one commenter put it), and as the roof and sheathing get put on, I think I have strong evidence that it's not.

Here's the house that Swamplot used as their exemplar of the humper house style ; it's in the historic district, and actually, just down the street from me.  I do not like this house, and maybe, in my heart of hearts, I think it's a design atrocity and agree with the haters.  The addition is blocky and juts up abruptly from the old house--there's no flow to it at all.  Yes, the facade is intact, the original house still exists, and this is pretty true to the "camelback" silhouette.  Better than the bulldozer?

I'm not a fan of this one either--this addition is too busy.  It doesn't go with the rest of the house.  I've been inside this one when it was for sale, and the inside was weird and had no flow.  The old front part of the house was a long, gutted gallery, and it felt like the house actually started when you got to the addition.  It was truly two different houses stuck together.  But it might still look kind of like a bungalow from the street, and it's still one family home on one lot instead of three townhouses crammed into one lot (that happens a good bit in my neighborhood).  For Houston, that might be progress.

There are a lot of flavors of humpalow; some are grosser than others.

Yuk.

OK.

Bleh.

Our house is undeniably a giant addition crammed onto a little old house.

RAWR. Giant addition.  Where's the old house?

I'd like to think we're doing it "right."  Here's the same viewpoint from which I took the pictures of other houses (though I inexplicably failed to use the right lens):

For whatever reason, it doesn't seem to have the "mass" that other humpalows do.  I think that's in part because our nice trees hide what's going on back there, but I think our house also has a design that occupies that sweet spot between "giant cracker box" and "too silly/busy with gables and details and foolishness."  And when you're standing in front of the house, you can't see the addition at all.

At the end of the front walk. What giant addition?

From across the street.  Leetle bits of roof peeking out.

So you decide.  I know all of our neighbors and everyone driving by has an opinion about whether or not our house is an "atrocity" or pretty nice, so you're welcome to yours as well.  (Pretty nice!  Pretty nice!)  Coming soon--windows!