Uh Oh

The NY Times has an article about post-renovation depression. Once people finish their projects they find themselves depressed thinking about all the things they could have done and wondering what to do with all the free time they find themselves with.

For a split second I wondered whether I would be depressed when we finished our renovation. Then I remembered two things. One, we have four children that we homeschool. Filling empty time has never been a problem. Two, we'll never actually be done with our renovation.

Problem solved.

(The NYT article spotted by my buddy NBS.)

Munch, Munch

Apparently at some time in its past the Purple House had so many termites dining on it that it's a wonder nobody actually heard them gobbling away. Or maybe they did. Fortunately for us, we haven't found any active colonies. Unfortunately, every time we turn around, we find more old damage.

When we bought the house we knew one sill had some termite damage. We didn't know it how extensive, until we pulled the floor above it up. We've found a few other sills that also had extensive damage and the whole back of the house seems to have had a major infestation. The good news is that because we found termite damage to the old sheathing when we were taking off the siding on the back of the house, we're going to be able to insulate the kitchen from the outside without ripping down the plaster on the inside. Not the ideal method, but now the whole back of the house will be insulated, sheathed and Tyveked.

I think I'll be spending next winter in the kitchen, laundry room or master bathroom. I guess that means life won't really be changing much.

These are the People In My Neighborhood

Thanks to the Big Purple House, we've added a whole new assortment of acquaintances. First, there is the previous owner -- she was a stripper. The carpenters she stiffed on redoing the kitchen and whose tools she stole? -- they are identical twins, country musicians and excellent cabinet builders and carpenters. Thanks to the previous owner, we've had our first ever encounter with a repo-man. The neighbor across the street is a French interior decorator specializing in faux painting and fancy plasterwork. The guy who does most of the lawn care in the neighborhood and who we got to help us clear the jungle goes by the sole name of Junior. We got Crazy Billy to cut down our tree, and made another neighbor mad in the process.

We're sorry to be leaving the neighborhood we live in now, but we sure will have more interesting stories to tell about the people who came into our lives thanks to the Big Purple House.

House Cleaning and Packing

That's where I've been for the last week. Last Monday or Tuesday our real estate agent called and asked if, although our current house isn't on the market, if we'd be willing to show it over the weekend to a house-hunter coming in from out of town.

Of course we were, and what followed was a week of frantic house cleaning and packing. Fortunately, we'd gotten a Mobile Attic storage container delivered to the back yard a few days before, so we actually had a place to stick the stuff we packed up.

Our house has never been as clean as it was on Sunday when the buyer came through -- not even when we had it on the neighborhood home tour last April -- then I didn't let people look at my closets or bathrooms. But we didn't get an offer.

That would have been too good to be true, I suppose. I'm sorry to have not gotten the place sold without even having to list it and go through open houses and the like, but apparently the buyer wanted an old house she could muck up remodel into something modern. Our house is already not particularly pure and untouched, but it still maintains a lot of the character and feel of an older house and I would sort of hate to see someone come in and transform it into something really modernist. So I'm not particularly broken hearted that she didn't buy it.

The good news is that we're farther along towards being ready for listing the place than we would be otherwise. The bad news is we still have to paint.

Will It Stay Purple?

One of the first questions people ask when they hear we bought a purple house is whether or not we intend to change the color. In fact, all our neighbors asked the same thing. It's really more of a lavender than a Barney purple, with grey and black accents, but I can't say the colors were ones I would have chosen.

I can't say I love the colors and I don't really think they are historically right for the house, and the previous owner didn't even do a great job on the painting, but it is freshly painted. It's definitely better than nothing and gives the house some protection from the elements.

There are plenty of other things for us to spend money on, so until it absolutely needs repainting our neighbors are just going to have to get used to purple. I think it will look a lot better once I dig out some flower beds and get my hands dirty with some landscaping projects.

Laundry

Unsurprisingly with four children, I do a lot of laundry. So while we are planning the arrangement for our the laundry room, master bathroom and all, I asked that we find some way to put a pass-through door from the master suite into the laundry room-- sort of like a sideways laundry chute. So our architect added one to our plans. I'll be able to stick clothes from the master closet right into the laundry and send them back the other way.



Also dropping into the laundry room will be a laundry chute for the clothes from upstairs. We had one in the house I grew up in in Ohio and I loved being able to through my clothes down, although I confess to often stuffing too much down at once and having to find a broom to unjam the thing. Maybe it will encourage the kids to pick up their laundry, at least until the novelty wears off.

What Kind of House is It?

When we first started looking at the big purple house, we called it a Victorian. But it didn't really seem all that Victorian. It's almost perfectly symmetrical and the window and door casings really seemed more like those in a Craftsman house. It was also built in 1909. Some folk Victorians were still being built, but it was really the end of the era.

So we started researching the style. First, we went to the Metropolitan Historic Zoning Commission's website and pulled up their documents about guidelines for the area into which we were moving.

In their guidelines, they refer to the purple house's style simply as a "Turn-of-the-Century" which is an unsatisfying name, to say the least.

We wanted to find out more and see if another name existed. So we checked out A Field Guide to American Houses by by Virginia and Lee Mcalester. And there it was -- our house is an eclectic Neo-Classical cottage. Also, worth noting, it is essentially a one-story Foursquare.

So now we know.