Bronze Anniversary

To celebrate eight wonderful years in Casa de Roo, Matt and I thumbed through our scrapbook capturing highlights from the first two years. It begins:

We discovered the home in mid-December ’99 and put in an offer right away.

The Weichart Realtors’ listing stated (and I quote):

True pleasure to show contemp lakefront with aal new + custom, very open, light & dramatic panaramic lakefront views, new top of the line kit…

I’m not sure what line the kitchen was at the top of, particularly since “Captain Stupid” (the previous owner) looted the dishwasher and stove, along with the washer and dryer, from what was about to become our home. He admitted as much when he finally arrived at the June 30, 2000, closing—four hours late. He also ’fessed up to abandoning several of his unwanted belongings, including an enormous rear-projection TV that Matt had to dismantle with a sledge hammer in order to get it out of the walk-out basement.

So we charged him several hundred dollars for the inconvenience. Our real estate agent had sent a sub-junior associate as her proxy; his real estate agent never showed up. The Captain’s lawyer was so mad at his client, he gleefully accepted our terms.

Drama aside, the house was now ours. We sped home and a local cop pulled us over for speeding. Explaining the situation got us off with a stern finger wagging. Finally, we arrived at the house to find the movers, my Mother-in-Law Jean and “Aunt” Theresa waiting (which they’d been doing for hours—after helping us move out of our condo that same day).

I was able to see the sun rise over the lake at 5:30 a.m. the next morning, July 1, 2000, because:

We learned that nature is noisy. Thump! Thump! Thump! And out we ran to find a huge crow hopping on our roof.

We learned a lot of other things, too. Such as:

• Headless flowers lack charm. Thanks to the deer, stems are still a common feature in our garden. I was excited that our yard was a blank slate and after the July 2 maiden voyage of the orange mower (see top image, among the 2000 photos from the scrapbook; click to enlarge), I couldn’t wait to fill it with flowers. We’d wake up only to find the yard was once again a blank slate. We’re slowly learning to make wiser planting choices instead of annually adding to the deer salad bar.



• We learned that Captain Stupid invited all his fishing buddies to use his dock and pee in his poison ivy infested arborvitae bushes at the shore line. So we spent our first several weeks chasing people off what was now our land. (Did ya meet the new neighbors? What a couple of A$$h013$!)



• We learned that calling the house a three-bedroom was a misnomer. The 10’x10’ space downstairs, three steps up from the walk-out basement, next to all the noisy utilities, over the dirt floor crawl space and under the master bedroom, was better for storage than sleeping. Our two nights there while repainting the upstairs in January 2001 due to ice damming damage were likely to have been the only time that room ever served as a bedroom. The space is destined to become our second bathroom.



• We learned that a fireplace insert doesn’t work if your chimney is installed incorrectly using materials that aren’t fire rated. (The Italian masons were cursing the Captain like mad, crossing themselves and gesturing wildly when they came down from the roof to tell me that if we had been able to light a fire, we’d have likely burned the house down.) Our first successful and safe fire crackled on December 1, 2000. Woodworker Michael Juras installed the custom mantle in May 2002, along with our kitchen island.



• We learned that having 20 skylights is a really bad idea, even in a room that is 26’x16’. So we added the Unico System A/C and heating in May 2001. Still not enough. On August 2001, we added 3M Scotchtint Plus window film to the skylights. It still isn’t enough.



• And we learned that, be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home!