Lost My Marbles

I have a terrible secret that I've been hiding from you.  Ready?

I've planned all along to use marble countertops in my kitchen.

I've likely left you shrieking in horror, I know.  Marble in a kitchen will STAIN!  It will ETCH with even the tiniest bit of acid exposure!  I'll have to forswear red wine forever!

So, I probably haven't actually left YOU horrified, I know, but there are plenty of folks on the internet with a serious case of the vapors at the mere mention of the teeniest thought of marble in a kitchen, for the above reasons.  I've read them all at this point, I think, and I still want marble countertops in my kitchen.  I'm clearly a madwoman.

I'm also a woman who wants a beautiful home, and folks, marble is achingly lovely.

Look at this and try not to cry at how pretty it is.

Here's what I think:  I use my kitchen, a lot, and marble seems delicate in some ways, but it's very durable, and apocryphally useful for a lady who likes to bake.  More than that, it's so classic--you can't get more classic, really, than the stuff Augustus Caesar used to renovate his capital.  I do love to emulate the Caesars, you know.  And because it's classic, all that stuff about etching and staining shouldn't really bother me.  If you walk through the Forum Romanum, all that marble on walls and floors and pillars and statues is etched by roughly a zillion years of rain and dust, and, let's be real, wine and blood and pee.  And not one bit of all of that goop mars for an instant the beauty of the stone that the Greeks called the "shining stone."  I think from this starting point, marble ends up being a very reasonable choice for someone who hopes her house will be her home forever.

So I spent the past week or so driving around to various stone places, looking at their slabs of marble, trying to figure out what the different kinds of marble are, and begging someone, anyone, to give me even a ballpark figure for what a piece of stone costs.  These stone guys, they aren't telling.  They don't even like to give prices to my contractor.  It's like a grown-up game of telephone--the salesperson can have their ordering manager call my contractor's fabricator, to whom they MIGHT indicate a price-per-square-foot.  That's not an exaggeration, that's just the actual facts.  It's silly, and infuriating, and given that it was finally Houston Hot this week and I had to drive pretty much out to Saturn to get to these places, I'm glad to tell you I picked a slab.  But how to choose?

These are some slabs of Carrarra marble.  This is the stuff that's been used for years, and I think it's still pretty darn lovely, but what they're quarrying now has much more grey in it than white, and that's not as in-demand, so it's also significantly less expensive than the others.  Pretty and pretty cheap--sounds good, right?

But then there's these pretties--the popular choice, and the priciest--Calacatta.  They're also from Italy, like the Carrarra (though a different place?), but they still have more white in them and have the "cloudy" patterns and movements in them that people are into.  That top one is Calacatta Oro, and is known for having golden or copper streaks in it, and the bottom was called Calacatta Luna.  I still don't know if that's a real thing or just a name that particular warehouse was using to charge an unknown but huge amount of money.  It looks like fluffy clouds, and I like it.  It's so pretty.

And this stuff, like the one at the top, is called statuary (or Statuario, if they're trying to charge you more money by convincing you it's extra fancy and reminding you it's from Italy).  The Internet has not really been successful in explaining to me exactly what Statuary marble is, but I gather it's from Carrarra but its more white and has little grey lines in it and it's somehow what sculptors have always used.  It's like having your own wee bit of Michaelangelo in your kitchen.

So picture me:  I'm driving out to edges of Houston that feel as far away as the rings of Saturn several days in a row, wandering through giant, un-airconditioned warehouses when it's about 100 degrees outside, looking at roughly 752 slabs of white and grey stone that probably cost a lot though I don't know how much, thinking, "Pretty.  Pretty.  Pretty."  And I took about a million pictures of different slabs, and when I got home I couldn't tell them apart.  And my contractor's designer emailed me pictures of more slabs.  I knew it was time for me to make a decision, and I didn't think I had the information I needed to make a decision, and if I chose wrong it would be something I had to live with until they bury me in my backyard, hopefully many, many years from now.  I just kept thinking about how they're all so darn pretty.

And that's how I decided, I guess.  I went back to the one place where they'd tell me a price, that conveniently was also the one place not located on Neptune's smallest moon, and I picked two slabs (one of them is that pretty guy at the top!) because they were pretty.  They put stickers on them with my name, and some day soon, I reckon, those slabs will show up, cut to size and honed, in my house.  And they'll look spectacular.  I had a couple of anxiety dreams about picking wrong, but in the end they're all pretty, and that's the point, isn't it?  I don't think I COULD choose wrong.  It's possible Augustus marked every stone he used to clad his new-old city with a sticker, but it's more likely he just decided, "Let's go with marble," and called it a day, and that's good enough for me, too.

Oathbreaker

I clearly can't keep a promise.  I got back from our little trip to the country, stopped by the house before we even went home to the apartment, and took pictures with the intention of updating you guys.  Then we got back to the apartment, and this happened:

We had been incubating some eggs from guinea hens that roam our neighborhood (guineas are terrible mothers), and we came home to find three chickies had popped themselves out of the egg!  Between finding a cozy spot for them and nurturing what was eventually seven keets (baby guineas) in a 1100 square-foot third-floor apartment until we gave them to a local farm, blogging fell by the wayside.  

Somebody had a very nice pool party, before we knew it school started, and here we are, a month later, rather than a few days.  I make no excuses!  But here's what's been going on:

Living room subfloor

Upstairs hall subfloor

New beadboard on the back porch ceiling

Floorboards

Living room floors in process

Kitchen floors and extra boards

KITCHEN FLOORS! (don't you think close-ups require all caps, too?)

Breakfast nook

Living room

Giant lumber-holder

LUMBER HOLDER!

Sample trim on a window

Beautiful, beautiful kitchen cabinets and island.

RECYCLING BIN DRAWER! (That's not because it's a close-up, I'm just excited.)

Mud room lockers (with shiplap behind)

Library in process

Laundry room

Master closet

There's been some amazing carpentry going on in the Houston Heights, you guys.  Some of those lovely, lovely floorboards are ours, saved from parts of the house that got demolished, and some are reclaimed boards of the same species (red pine).  They're not sanded and stained yet, but they are lovely, and totally non-creaky, which is a new experience for me.

The stacks of lumber in the living room contributed to the trim work that's been going in, making the house look more finished each day, and a master craftsman named Jesus has been in charge of building all the cabinets and shelves for the kitchen, bathrooms, laundry room, pantry, and library.  It's a lot of stuff.  It's all unspeakable beautiful.  It's poplar, which I didn't know was such a pretty wood, and like everything else, I'm going to hate to paint it (though that won't stop me).  They pretty much brought all the cabinets in in one day, and it has been amazing to see.  Coming soon:  countertops and paint!

Spicy Popcorn

I'll have another house update for you in a few days, I promise.  For now, I've mentioned a couple times (more?  Ok, more.) that my obsession this summer is spicy popcorn.  My friend Julie also blogs about her house (Follow this link!  It's a great read), which is in the woods in North Carolina and which she is spectacularly renovating, and she very politely asked about this spicy popcorn business.  Because I really enjoy and appreciate her blog and her general awesomeness, and because I thought you might all like to know, here's how to do spicy popcorn.

Really, my kids are pretty obsessed with popcorn.  I make a giant potful at least once a week, often more, and they destroy it utterly before we finish the movie we're watching.  I like good popcorn, but thought it would be fun to play with it.  I started first with just sprinkling a little paprika on top, and that was pretty nice.  I get smoked paprika from Penzey's, and that was even better, and regular chili powder was also ok.  All of these were missing some zing, though, and I couldn't figure out what to do until I had a snow cone from a stand downtown.

The stand makes Hawaiian style shave ice, and I ordered their fresh mango.  It was awesome, but what made it transformative was that they asked, "Chile on that?" and I was all, "Why not?"  They put some kind of chili-limey-salty stuff on top, and in between thoughts of , "MMMMM!" I also thought, "This is what I need on my popcorn."

So this is they key to spicy popcorn:

I do not know exactly what's in it, and I'm not sure I want to know.  It's chiles and spices and citric acid, though, and it's delicious.  It's easy to find in Texas at Fiesta grocery stores, but I bet in other places you can find it in whatever your Central American section/market is.  If not, I will gladly send you some.  PS--this stuff is generally awesome.  As the name suggests, you can sprinkle it on sweet juicy fruits (I really like it on mangos and watermelon), and I bet you could make some other-worldly chocolate stuff.  But for now, here's how I make spicy popcorn:

Start with a big, heavy pot and put it over medium-high-ish heat (about a 6, I guess).  

Put three tablespoons of coconut oil in the bottom.  If you don't have or want to use coconut oil, safflower and canola also work for me, but I like coconut the best.  

Put three kernels of popcorn in the bottom and let the whole thing get hot, giving it an occasional shake, until all three kernels pop.  Fish out the popped kernels, dump in 1/2 cup of fresh popcorn, and hold the pot by the handle and shake it for a few seconds until you hear some good sizzling in there.

Dump in 1/3 cup of sugar.  You can use unrefined or white sugar, but full-on brown sugar doesn't work that well, and I think succanat wouldn't really either.  Either shake the pot super vigorously to distribute the sugar, or give it a quick stir, but be careful to not destroy yourself with hot popcorn.  Quickly pop on a lid, leaving a little room for steam to escape, and let the popcorn pop, giving the pot a little shake every few minutes.

You'll know the popcorn is done when you've got two or three seconds between pops.  Take off the lid, dump the popcorn into a big bowl, and sprinkle your steaming hot popcorn with lots of chile para fruta.  Stir to distribute the spices, and keep sprinkling until it looks all spicy.  Then eat a bunch of it and share it with friends.  It is not called spicy popcorn for nothing, folks, so also grab a giant glass of limeade or a margarita to cool you off. 

So I don't believe in microwave popcorn; it's cool if you do, though.  I bet you could just sprinkle Chile Para Fruta on top of whatever popcorn you've got and it would rule, but this is how I like it, and I promise it's not hard.  I also think that if you can't get your hands on some chile para fruta, you could melt some butter, add some lime juice and zest, and dump that over the popcorn, then sprinkle some good chili powder and paprika on top, and that would be pretty awesome.

No, I didn't take a picture of the finished popcorn, I ate it all in about 3 seconds.  That's how good it is.  I bet you can't get a picture of it, either.  It's like the Loch Ness Monster of deliciousness.

Addenda

I realized today that I've taken several pictures of our new exterior back porch doors, but haven't shown them to you.

The top is the set of doors going into the house (through the mud room into the kitchen/family room), and the bottom is going into the garage.  We'll definitely stain them at some point, but for now they just have a sealant on them.  They're so pretty the way they are.  I love the way they bring light into the house, but still look substantial.

Item B:

This is clearly not an updated picture, but you can still see how fluid the transition is between the house and the back porch (I hope).  It would be nice if it works out for the back porch to be an extension of the living area of the house in a meaningful way.

Also, I went by the house today in hopes of getting some better pictures of our shiplapped areas.  Some of the pictures worked,

But some didn't.

I do NOT know why I'm totally unable to take a clear picture of that shiplapped wall.  Maybe I'm subconsciously wishing to have some kind of super-fabulous reveal.  Anyway, you get a good impression of it from this picture.  I love it.  Love love lovey love love.  

And the middle shiplap picture above is our mudroom area (note the lovely doors to the left, kitchen to the right).  That shiplap will be the back wall behind our cabinetry "lockers" and bench, and I'm super excited that it will be there first thing I see when I come downstairs each day.

Number 3:  One more update, and kind of a teaser.  I'm contemplating exterior colors real hard.

I may or may not have gone a little nuts getting paint chips at the store.  The swatches are just so pretty!  I've narrowed it down to five, and I'll show you those once we get samples up on the siding.  I will never not want to paint the house all of these colors, and I will never not have a secret (not so secret now) impulse to paint a house the color of a whole card--darkest color or the bottom, lightest color on the top, all the shades in between in the middle.  Perhaps when I am old and wear purple I will.

Moving on

Thank you so much for the blessings you sent.  Even though the drywall dudes were eight thousand times speedier than I expected, I've been able to add some scripture, verses, and bits of text here and there all over the house, and those I didn't have room to write I tucked into a mason jar and squirreled away in the walls.  Our friends and family are our greatest blessing, and the house knows it as well as we do. Hugs to you!

Those drywall guys--like I said, speedy.

By Monday afternoon, whole rooms smelled of freshly sweaty socks and looked like a modernist's dream of stark architectural purity (WHY does drywall smell so weird, you guys?  I'll try to find out, and I'll report back if I do).

The put extra-specially awesome boards in the bathrooms

SUPERIOR.

And they even wire-meshed and mudded the wet areas of the bathrooms.

I'm a big fan of niches right now.

Some rooms were still in progress, but it was pretty clear they wouldn't be for long.

Our hundred-year-old shiplap, both the wretched (see those old termite trails? UGH!) and the sublime, was slipping back into its hiding place behind easily paintable, functional gypsum boards.  The whole house almost instantly took on a different character; a drywalled house, even if unfinished, feels like a house.  Ours feels like home, to me, but now it is just a house.  When it was just old shiplap and framing, the house had a cathedral-like quality.  The openness and purity of the structure was art, and I can see that part of the cause of the doldrums of the drywall phase is the loss of that sense.

Fortunately for me and you, the previous week I sent and impulsive e-mail to our contractor.  I admitted that it might be too late, but I asked him if we could leave one wall of shiplap in the living room exposed.

I haven't gotten a good picture of it yet because it's at the eastern end of the house and by the time I go by in the evenings the light isn't good enough, but it looks beautiful already and I can't wait to show it to you.  Before we started our house project, I had visited houses in the neighborhood that had left shiplap exposed after a renovation, and I have to admit I scoffed.  I thought it was silly, and too dark.  But I've gotten used to all this delicious oldness being on display in our house, and when it came down to it, I didn't want to give it up.  We'll probably clean it up and leave it unpainted, and I think it will end up being almost an art piece in itself on that wall.

And because my architect believes in the rule of three (read this *RULE OF THREE* with stars and sparkles) like I do, here's a little more shiplap hanging out in the garage waiting to be put other places in small quantities.  CAN'T WAIT.

Blessings

I think I told you long ago that our contractor gave us a chart at the beginning of our project to warn us about the psychological process of renovating a home.

And my veiny hand.

We're about to enter the valley of the shadow, you guys.  They start hanging drywall this week.  I would have thought that I was unique in being super excited about roofing and windows, but it looks like that's pretty standard.  It's also pretty standard to increasingly float in a sea of "Meh" about mechanicals.  Since the chart has been right so far, I'm steeling myself for some pretty serious doldrums over the next six weeks.  I think I'll have some choosing to do (exterior paint?) in the interim, though, and there will be trim and tile when we're through, so I guess I can muddle through.

For now, I have some small progress news, and a request.  

Y'all know I'm bookish, and I'm a big believer in the power of words.  It's not that I believe in magic spells, but I think intention, especially spoken or written, has a power of its own, for good or ill (and yes, I talk to my plants).  So I've been thinking for a while that I'd like to kind of vacuum-seal the good things and good thoughts we have about the house inside the walls with a house blessing.  Our church has had a party when they're finishing a new building to have people write prayers and blessings on the walls, so I thought we'd do the same thing.

Tonight, our family wandered over to the house with some sharpies, admired the fresh fluffy insulation, and spent a while thinking about our hopes for our home and our future.  We sang a few songs, said a few prayers, and we wrote blessings on the walls of our house.  It was private and homey, and lovely, and I really hope and really believe that the love and happiness we shared tonight will nest in the walls and help our house continue to be the place it's been for us for nine years, and for others for ninety more.  None of these prayers will be visible when the drywall is up, but I think the Power behind our intentions doesn't need to be seen to have strength.

So this is a terribly awkward thing to ask, like I'm wanting you to give me more than just your attention with this blog, but I also believe that love is infinite and bottomless, and the more you give, the more you have, so I'll ask for more anyway (I will also demand a high-five if I see you in person and I do something I deem to be awesome, like arrive kind-of on time, because you can never have too many high-fives.  That's just the kind of person I am).  If you have a good thought, a blessing, or a prayer you'd like to share with my family and my home, I would value the heck out of that.  You can write it down and send it to me, or comment, or e-mail or Facebook-message me--whatever works for you.  I'll print it out, or write it on some wood, and your message will be part of the unseen fabric of our house forever (or until the bayou takes back civilization, you know, whatever comes first).  Thanks for reading, and thanks for the blessing of your friendship in spoken and unspoken ways.