Happy Holidays!

Whether your preference is Merry Christmas, Reason’s Greetings, Happy Hanukkah or some other variation of the winter celebration theme, I wish you and your friends and family a warm, dry, cozy and safe home in which to live, love, party and thrive!

To help overcome my typical “Bah Humbug” attitude, Matt brought home a renovation-appropriate tree. Keeping our household holiday tradition alive, this morning Brak left me something under this symbol of pre-Christian Germanic paganism. It goes like this: I buy stuff and an item disappears. It reappears wrapped, with love from Brak. Hoping for a chocolate bar, I started singing Christmas carols (in German, of course, making up words where I forgot the lyrics and giggling at the results). Now that is the spirit!


Pricier gifts were delivered at 6:45 a.m. yesterday: Tiles for the house. Poor Craig from Standard Tile had to hand-carry each heavy box from his truck on the street, down through the snow and ice to the front of the house. Matt took it from there. (Yes, we tipped well! ’Tis the Season, after all.) Also on Tuesday, Alex’s team delivered the correct sliders for the great room (now we just need them installed).

Other packages came earlier in the month, containing paint. Gallons of the stuff from our local Sherwin-Williams. (Karen let us know they have good-quality low-VOC paint). Priming has already begun. What a difference! And somehow, Matt was able to prime the peak of the great room’s cathedral ceiling using just his arms and a roller on a stick! (In case anyone wondered why I married a man 1’1” taller than me, may I offer this as yet another reason.)

I’ll be home for Christmas—and what a nice home it is turning out to be!

Cedar point

Since beginning this home renovation journey, we wanted a water feature in which to submerge ourselves. Our original architect, Jimmy, fueled our ridiculous desire for a lap pool we couldn’t afford. We also investigated the feasibility of a stainless steel hot tub or conventional spa and even went so far as to visit the SwimEx facility in Massachusetts. (If you can buy a SwimEx, do it. We were able to try it out—was like swimming in a happy river. Wonderful!)

All these options had one problem in common: No way to get the water feature from the front of the house where it would be delivered to the back of the house where it would be needed.

Then my Google addiction bore fruit: I found SeaOtter WoodWorks natural handcrafted cedar hot tubs.

With the dumpster finally gone, on Sunday, Matt and I unpacked the crate that Chris packed for us in Haines, Alaska, on April 25. The contents were in pristine condition after all those weeks of sitting under a torn blue tarp in our driveway.

Early on in the planning process, we mapped out where the hot tub would be located; Steve’s crew reinforced that section of deck.

When I placed the order in February, Bill asked me about our plans for the tub and I told him about our lakefront view—and our wild birds.

We hand carried all the hot tub parts down and around our house to the new lower deck. When we got to the last four staves (of 45), the carvings stopped us in our tracks: A Swan! A Mallard! A Great Blue Heron! And a Kingfisher! Four of my favorite birds—on my hot tub!

Building the hot tub was a three-person job. Like a couple of amateur coopers, the two of us got as far as assembly. Putting the last stave in place was challenging and frustrating—a bit like a segment of America’s Funnies Home Videos—but we managed to git er dun. Next up is electrical and plumbing.

On Saturday, Matt and I had put together a key feature of the deck skirting: A barn door on a bullet track with carefully aligned cedar planks. Stepping back, we saw how nicely it all came together: The wide cedar planks anchoring the house, the narrow cedar planks providing privacy and the cedar staves of our gorgeous hot tub.

My house is hydrophilic

Getting ready to dash to work, I stopped short to answer the little voice inside my head.

“Perhaps I ought to give the house a once-over,” I thought. Areas of New Jersey were under a flood advisory given the relentless build-an-arc rain we had all day Wednesday and Thursday and into this morning.

Good thing I did—I found four leaks. Two in the new downstairs bathroom and one in each corner of the great room bump out, right and left of the temporary sliding glass doors.

As so yet again, I was snapping photos with my iPhone and sending them to my contractors.

This was not our first “rain coming into the house” experience. And it was not our second experience, either. In fact, keeping rain from penetrating our home was the main driver for this renovation project.

“This frakin’ house is hydrophilic,” I muttered to myself while driving to work with a stress-induced stomach ache.

Alex sent me an e-mail that said, “I had Joe diagnose the problem and he found the water was coming in from your bedroom. This morning he’s pitching the deck board away and sealing the underside. Don’t be alarmed or nervous your home will be water tight when we are done with it.”

Now I need another torrential downpour to test whether they solved the problem… Gutters will be nice, too.

Epilogue: Be careful what you wish for

We found moisture in the ultility room under the interior stairs on Saturday morning. Granted, much of the neighborhood was pumping water out of their basements (and onto the road, where it froze).

This morning (December 16), after a night of rain, the left side of the bump out was again leaking, just not as extensively as before. One day, my home will be warm and dry.

Horrible Stuff

We took off Monday through today because our contractor lead us to believe we would be able to use our vacation days to prime, paint and tile. This is difficult to do if Igor is still applying ProForm® joint compound to the 1/2” ToughRock® gypsum boards.

To speed up the process, we removed the drywall from the exterior-facing wall in our bedroom ourselves. In addition to water damage, the wall had several holes because Willy added interior and exterior electrical and the plumber added an exterior faucet.

In doing the demo, we found yet another surprise... The flooring for the bedroom bump out constructed by the previous owner was not level. We already knew that. Until we pulled up the carpet, we did not know why. Mystery solved: layers of badly applied so-called leveling compound is the problem. We are still trying to figure out a solution.


As a method of mitigating the sound of Smilin’ Mike’s sociopathic wind bell (hung two yards down from us on a tree branch over the lake), Igor applied two layers of the already-purchased drywall. Reducing the cranium-piercing sound was also part of the reason we removed a window from the bedroom (the other reason was to reduce light trespass from neighboring properties). Filling every gap and hole with insulation was an important part of this project. The result? Deep sleep—the first full night’s sleep in a very long time—during the middle of a heavy rain storm!

Renovation tip: If you use Great Stuff, be sure to follow directions. (Do as I say, not as I do.) Better yet, do not use Great Stuff. Even the minimally expanding version expands relentlessly. And if you get it on your hands, nothing takes it off. Not paint thinner, not nail polish remover, not acetone, not scrubbing, not nail files. Nothing. This horrible stuff does not come off of surfaces, either. Thankfully, we learned from the previous owner that trim hides all sins.

Things I won't miss...

As I left for work this morning, the house began to fill up with workers. Alex was there with Igor, the head of the drywall crew, a couple stucco guys arrived and it felt like people kept on heading in as I was heading out.

“I sure won’t miss the house being filled with strangers,” I thought to myself, hopeful the day would be so productive that it marked the beginning of the end of this phase of the renovation.

There are several elements of the renovation I won’t miss at all. Like the Port-o-Potty. Or the dumpster—and the obstacle course it creates. Speaking of mazes: it will be great not to be crawling over and around a variety of tools and home parts scattered through the interior.

I also won’t miss the weekly clean-up session in the yard to pick up the variety of detritus left by various sub-contractors.

Also on the “won’t miss” list is writing yet another check for yet another unexpected expense, none of which ever seem to be for a sum less than a grand. When the project is done, will nocturnal fretting become a thing of the past?

Going from a ranch house to a one-bedroom apartment is a lifestyle I’m more than ready to reverse. The master bedroom has become our version of the Axiom featured in Wall•E. Our bed is like one of the “why get up” loungers used by the humans on the starliner; as a result, the passengers lose bone density and muscle mass. Speaking of which: not doing our weekly in-house yoga session with Tiffiny is its own form of torture.

Is there any part of the renovation process I will miss? Ahhh... let me ponder that question... um... No!

On the other hand, has it really been a bad experience? No! And is it (already) worth it? YES!