It’s a beautiful morning

Matt and I started the day with a 6 a.m. dip in our cedar hot tub.

We got out just before sunrise, which is happening now, as Matt brews my cappuccino and makes me breakfast.

It’s a wonderful life!

So long skylights

In early 2006, we began talking to architects. In February 2007, the architect we hired was already letting us down. In February 2008, when it was time to get a new architect, I embraced the ranch house vernacular.

There was one key driver for this project and five months ago, the hated feature of this house was finally removed.

“I thought I’d miss the skylights,” Alison commented after walking into our great room on a January afternoon. “But I don’t. It is plenty bright in here.” Aunt Theresa said the same thing on Saturday, when it dawned on her that the 20 holes in the ceiling were now replaced with, well, ceiling.


Matt and I agreed that the room was plenty bright. So bright, in fact, we had to order window treatments (on sale, free shipping). We put up the GreenGuard Certified Solar shades from The Shade Store on Valentine’s Day.

When construction began in August 2008, we decided to turn off the air conditioner to protect the system from all the dust caused by jack hammering concrete and other related activities. We picked up a window fan at Target.

I’m a big fan of the environment and of open windows, but this was August. Although it is said that women don’t perspire, they “glow,” the heat captured in this terrarium of a house didn’t produce a glow, or even sweat, it covered me in a slime coat. That is right. You heard me. Slime coat.

We had tried to mitigate the terrarium factor earlier that summer. After submitting our permit, we figured it wouldn’t be long until construction starts. So we went down into the utility room and brought up a staple gun and the bin marked “fabric and scarves.” Three pieces looked like they would do the trick, a blue table cloth remnant with flowers, a chartreuse tablecloth remnant featuring fruit and a purple silk scare featuring the “ohm” symbol.

Each swatch was then used to cover a skylight over our couch. And it did give us peaceful feeling to be able to see our TV screen before the sun went down. The result was evocative of a circus tent. Or a trailer park. We honestly didn’t care.

When our personal trainer, Tiffiny, saw window treatments, she said, “Oh, I really like that—it looks so cozy.” This is from the same woman who reminds us, “There is no wrong in yoga.”

It helped, it really did. Yet it wasn’t enough. About a month later, during the mid-July heat wave, I obsessively kept checking the weather station in our kitchen to learn that the 84°F temperature indoors was only 10 degrees lower than outdoors.

On Sunday, September 28, chunks fell off of the ceiling. The previous Friday, we had to move the couch to save it from getting wet from the drips of rain.

But no more. No more skylights. No more holes in the ceiling for sun to beat through and rain to stream through. One of the best features of the renovation is the part of the house that is no longer with us.

Floored — x3

Once the railing was in place, we had to race to prepare for the next milestone of the remodel: carpeting.

Step 1 was to tile the entryway. We thought, Bigger Tiles = Smaller Time to install. As with all our “it won’t take that long” estimates on our do-it-yourself projects, we were wrong.


It took three full weekend days. On January 31, we prepped the area, including moving stacks of stuff yet again, trying to somewhat level the floor, screwing down HardieBacker® Cement Board, cutting tiles with our wet saw as needed, troweling on thinset mortar, “buttering” the tiles, placing the tiles, adding spacers…

After 10 hours, we had half the entry done. The next day, with more than six hours invested to finish the other side, we were able to watch Super Bowl. The tiles magically matched up with the poplar stair surround. The following Sunday, we added grout.


Last Saturday, we fixed the holes in the floor with metal plates, thinset and new plywood. Matt tore up and removed the remaining old carpet. Yuck! ...And a million other exhausting details.


Our reward? On the February 11, Tony’s crew expertly installed our Oceanside style GreenChoice carpet by Kraus—recycled content backing, recyclable and the Carpet & Rug Institute’s highest Indoor Air Quality rating. And it lined up perfectly with the tile. Perfectly. It is soft, beautiful and the Silver Star color changes hue depending on the light, sometimes greenish and sometimes grayish.

We seem to have become a “no shoes upstairs” family. Now I understand our Aunt Theresa’s mom and her disdain for seeing Matt’s footprints across her “sacred” carpet.

There is, of course, a Domino Effect to making improvements. Our terrible vinyl flooring in the kitchen was no longer going to be bearable. So before seeing the Devils win on January 30 with Frank and Diana, we ordered cork flooring in a store up the street from their home.


Yesterday, we spent another seven-plus hours on our hands and knees installing the Toledo style German-made UniClic Kork-Fußboden. In researching click system floating floors online, I read, “The laying of the cork panels is so easy that one almost regrets when the job is finished!” I do not concur. Not only doesn’t the flooring make a satisfying “click” sound when the planks come together, it takes a lot of pounding and wrestling the get boards into place. We also came dangerously close to being one board short. Matt made it work.

The result? Beautiful floors throughout the upstairs.