Beach House in the Burbs

Nine years ago--I can remember it so specifically because it was the same summer we had my dad's 60th birthday party here--we put a green standing-seam metal roof on our house. It's been great! It looks good, it isn't too loud when it storms--lots of insulation in the attic--but if you want the noise of rain on a metal roof, we have a screened porch. Just don't go out in a hail storm, you'll go deaf. Anyway, we also have this detached garage and for reasons I'm not sure of now--probably lack of money--we didn't reroof the garage when we did the house. So for 9 years it's had the old brown shingles. Well, two years ago it started to leak pretty badly, water running down the back wall everytime it rained. We started talking seriously about getting the roof then. But Chris put up a blue tarp--which looks really good with the brown roof, gray-sided garage and green-roofed house--and that was as far as we got. (Chris has completion issues--only around here, n

Well, we bought a new couch, chair & ottoman for the living room as our Christmas present this year. They just arrived and we love them. However, Chris says they aren't really very beachy, though the chair and ottoman are great for napping. You can see for yourself in the photos. When I look at our old furniture, though, all I see is old furniture. Not anything beachy either. It's more the whole atmosphere of the place, as far as I'm concerned. Anyway, beachy or not, the furniture we replaced had to go. The off-white leather sectional sofa had been bought 12 years ago at a garage sale. It officially entered the "got-to-go" category when Prissy, our giant (10 pound) Pomeranian, puked a river from one end of it to the other last summer. I didn't know such a small dog could throw up so much. I discovered that cleaning leather with bleach cleaner, which seemed like such a good idea in the face of all that stuff, didn't really do it much good. The scratche

Once again I have resolved to get and stay more organized. And if only we would stop bringing so much crap into the house, it wouldn't be that hard. We don't have kids--only a small dog and smaller cat, and, really, they don't require much in the way of possessions, the ocassional bone and fishing-rod-feather toy, but that's it. So, it's Chris and me. But this holiday we brought home a piano. It was my piano as a kid--I was the one who took lessons--and my parents have been trying to get us to take it for, like, three years. But everytime we'd go to Alabama it would be raining or we couldn't get anybody to help load it or we just didn't want to deal with it. But this last trip, the weather was good, we took the trailer and we found help. Now, bringing home a piano isn't like bringing home another shirt. You can't just fold it up and put it in a drawer or hand it in the closet with the other shirts. No, it requires a lot of space. Space that we do

Well, it's been too long since the last post--I blame some on being too busy during the holidays and some on a lack of work in the chicken room. But, part of being busy included getting some work done! The new beam and posts are up--which means the ceiling and roof won't fall down on anyone--a good thing by any standard. Also, the new closet has been framed up. After much discussion, we've decided against a tongue-and-groove wooden ceiling. (Chris, who is not as in love with the beach as I am, has declared he wants a "lodge" theme for the chicken room--I swear, I'm trying to stop calling it that, but old habits die hard!) The frugal part of Chris, always in competition with the "what do I want" part, won this fight and we're going with drywall for now. It will still be pricey--it's a vaulted ceiling, with several nooks and crannies due to dormer windows, the new beam and a weird little flat space in the center. But, cheaper than wood. He'