Beach House in the Burbs

All that's left of the chicken room, our room above the detached garage where Chris once raised chickens on the shag carpet, is a picture drawn on the floor in black Sharpie that says "Welcome: The Chicken Room." All wildlife, except my husband, has been evicted. The wall is repaired where the bees lived for a couple of years. No signs of the chickens remain, thank goodness! The room is supposed to be my husband's office. He's a remodeling contractor. But you see the pictures. It's every little boys dream office with musical instruments and musicians, (Chris is playing the drums) a couch, and a floor that nobody cares about. (We'll get floor covering one day, but given that it took seven years from the time the carpet came up in the main part of the house until the new flooring went down, I'm not holding my breath.) I'm afraid to ask how much work he's getting done up there. He moved his desk in last week. Then this weekend we moved a couple of...

Okay, so maybe calling the Miami Beach lifeguard huts architecture is a bit of a stretch, but I loved them! Given my inclination to move all things beachy into our suburban ranch house, I'm trying to figure out where to put one of these things. By the pool is probably the best spot. We could use it to store all of the pool junk--nets, vacuum, chemicals, floats, etc. But it can't be too close or some of the adreneline junkies who use the pool will be diving off the platform, and the deep end's just not deep enough for that! The Art Deco architecture was fun to see, too. But everybody talks/writes about that, leaving those cute little beach huts feeling completely ignored. I've included photos of my three favorites. I was in Miami Beach for Sleuthfest , a mystery writers conference sponsored by the Florida Chapter of Mystery Writers of America. I've written a mystery, Redneck Tarot, and was at the conference to pitch to agents and editors. I have one of each who woul...

This was the week of biology lessons in our chicken room. That room as been home to lots of wildlife, from the human to the non-human variety. First the chickens lived there. Then a hive of bees moved into the walls. This week we finally got the bees removed--and discovered the walls had become home to carpenter ants and these disgusting beetles that look like ticks, except when they're in the larval stage and look like maggots--blech! Thanks to Georgetown House who provided a tip about finding someone to take our bees alive! Chris, my husband, found Cindy Bee, a woman who has been ridding homes of bees for 11 years! She came out on Thursday and took ours away--and let me watch, take pictures and learn about the process. She doesn't need to worry that I'm planning to horn in on her business. It looks scary as hell! The first photo shows the outside wall of the chicken room. This is all we could see of the bee hive until Cindy exposed it all. We could occasionally see the ...

Honey bees have been living in the wall of our garage for several years now. They go dormant or hibernate or something in the winter, but spring has sprung in Georgia and they are back. One day--after the yellow-pollen haze is gone and I can safely leave the house--I'll take a picture of them to post. They mostly live inside the wall, but they also come out and huddle close together looking like a big, black blob on the side of the garage. So, they've been there several years. Chris has looked for a way to get rid of them without killing them--he's a nice guy, rescued a neighbor's dog that had fallen in another neighbor's pond at 1:30 yesterday morning and couldn't get out. But he's having a hard time finding one, that doesn't cost an arm and a bee wing! He's also cheap, so when the humanitarian side and the cheap side conflict, he just does nothing. And the bees haven't really been a problem. It's kind of cool to see them hanging out on the ...

When we bought our house, which looked nothing like a beach house 13 years ago, we decided that the woman who sold it to us had a strong streak of vanity in her. The house was full of mirrors. Full-length mirrors hung on backs of all the closet doors, every one in the whole house. Another full-length, double-wide mirror hung on the master bedroom wall, despite the one on the master closet door. And in the room above the detached garage, an 8-foot square mirror stretched from floor to ceiling and covered the space between two windows on one wall. She obviously didn't want to have to go more than 10 steps anywhere in the house without being able to see her reflection. We got rid of most of the other mirrors as we painted or moved closet doors. But we left the huge one. The tenants we had up there when we first moved into the house didn't seem to mind it. One was so stoned all the time he probably didn't notice it. After he left, we used the room for storage, then as a chicken...

So last year we made a little more money than in previous years. Which seems like a great thing, right? Now we can finish the chicken room into an office and I can stop having to write on the kitchen table (the only place to eat in our house). Except that the taxman is going to take all of the money we had budgeted for said chicken room. I knew we were making more money last year and thought I had sent enough in estimated payments to cover the difference. But since math is not what I do well. And, really, all I did was say to myself, "Oh, I think I'll send in a little more money this time. This should be plenty." Rather than try to find out exactly how much I should send in, like, if there's a formula or something, which apparently there is. So, now we have to pay, and I have to keep writing on the kitchen table, carting my work life around in a red plastic basket that threatens to break and spill out all of my work everytime I pick it up. And I can forget updating t...

Our new roof is on! The roofers were here most of last week, including one really, really cold day (for Georgia) anyway, when the very steep front half of the roof was slick with ice. Fortunately they didn't tell me that until the next day, when it was warmer and not slick at all. I'd have told them to go home had I known. Of course, the problem with getting work done is that it begats other work that needs to be done. Now, for example, we need to paint the new siding around the dormers--see photo. So, do we just paint that the same color as the rest of the house or do we figure out what color we want to change the house to--it's been this gray color for quite a long time and could use a paint job. And if we do decide to repaint, then do we get the rest of the work finished on the outside first? For example, we've never put in front steps. You have to leap over a good-sized crevice at the end of the driveway or else step up an impossibly tall three feet to reach our fro...