Beach House in the Burbs

Once upon a time, many, many years ago, there was a King. When he died , as even Kings must, it was in a bathroom. This unfortunate demise seemed worth commemorating in a shower curtain. A decision with which I heartily agree. A while back, this shower curtain was the inspiration for our bathroom decorating scheme . Check out this post about it from 2009. As you can imagine after a bunch of years in the bathroom, Elvis was looking a little tired. But he was NOT ready to leave the building. So, we're still loving him tender in a clean, bright, updated room he'd be proud to call to home. It's a guest bathroom, so the shower curtain is in remarkably good shape. A new window brightens up the room, so much so that for days after we installed it, I kept thinking someone had left the light on in there, it was so light when I'd wake up in the mornings. The paint is clean. The wall colors lighter versions of the pink and green in the shower curtain. The mi...

My plan had been to enter the story of this remodeling disaster in a contest, but I missed the deadline. So, I’ll just post it here. This is a story about our old house, so it happened more years ago than I want to think about. Before I married Chris I had never held a paintbrush and barely knew which was the business end of a screwdriver. But Chris was a remodeling contractor and out of economic necessity, I became his assistant. It turns out that one of the things I’m good at is painting—and I like it. I slip into a sort of mindless, meditative state, while I’m working. And then I get to see big changes in a hurry—painting satisfies the contemplative side of me and the short-attention span side as well. Little did I know how important my new-found painting skills would be. We bought a house with a kitchen with lots of dark brown cabinets. We avoided the kitchen at night because the dark cabinets soaked up all attempts at lighting the room, and we stumbled around nearly blind no mat...

Chris and I are home remodelers from way back. We've lived in three works-in-progress (still do) and fixed up and sold several other houses, back when the market would let you do that. When we're not actually in the throes of some remodeling project, we read about other projects, we look at magazines for inspiration--we wouldn't want to run out of things to do to our house, after all--and we visit Web sites, sometimes for inspiration and sometimes to remind ourselves that we're not the only ones crazy enough to live without flooring for seven years or without an oven for five years or even crazy enough to keep thinking this is fun! Houseblogs is a collection of people who blog about remodeling projects. You can find helpful hints, hilarious predicaments, and celebrations of a job well done--or at least finished. And if you're lucky--like I was last week--you can win one of their contests--this one for stories of home-remodeling drama. Thanks Houseblogs and True V...

Fifteen years ago we spent all of our money (and all the bank would lend us) on two acres, a pool and a house that was dark as a cave and nearly as dirty—especially the ancient gold-brown carpet. We knew as we moved in that we’d have to live in the dark for a long while as we saved our money to begin renovations. But when after about six months the washing machine overflowed (during the disgusting-water wash cycle) into the carpeted hall, living room and two bedrooms, I thought I could move our new-floor covering schedule up a bit. Chris came home to find me sitting on the living room floor with a box cutter and a screwdriver, cutting the carpet apart, pulling it and the padding up, and popping staples out of the sub-flooring. “Insurance is going to cover the new floor covering for us. Isn’t that great?” It was partially great. We got new carpet and padding put down in the two bedrooms quick like a bunny, thanks to the insurance money. But we wanted to knock some walls down in the livi...