Holly House Diaries - Stooges-esque Disaster Day

Stop helping.

Just stop.

No seriously. STOP. HELPING.

I know you are well-intentioned (Why, hello there shiny, gold-paved road to Hell!), but when you help chaos and destruction follow in your wake. You are like the Four Horsemen rolled up into a single individual. Minus the Famine. But give it time. It's probably just one of your superpowers that hasn't developed yet.

No, the universe is not responsible.

No, it is not just bad luck.

It is a matter of you not listening to anyone, no matter how loud they are screaming "LEFT!!! LEFT!! NO, YOUR OTHER LEFT!!! STOP!! OK, STOP!! APPLY THE BRAKE!! STOP THE F*CKING TRUCK!! OH FOR CHRISTSSAKE..."

CRASH! BOOM! Tinkle, tinkle, tickle, rattle...

This was a functioning water spigot until it was run over by a truck.

It also doesn't help that you always know best.

I get it. I do. It's nice to be right.

You do have a lot of experience, true.

Yes, you have probably forgotten more than I have ever known about anything at any point in time.

But that doesn't exclude everyone else from having an occasional correct statement that is contrary to your own. For instance, when I said, "I checked this out with a stud finder and there isn't anything but drywall behind here. Oh. Oh. You're going to drill anyway. Oh... um, OK. Well. Oh. You're going to try again in a different spot. Nothing? Um... Maybe I should get the studfinder and just... Oh, great. Random giant hole number four. Fantastic. You know that these have to be patched, right? So let's try again shall we? Huh. What a shock. Still nothing? REALLY??!! MAYBE IT WOULD HELP IF I JUST BANG MY FOREHEAD ALONG THE WALL UNTIL I FIND A STUD, SHALL I??!"

CRASH! BOOM! Tinkle, tinkle, tickle, rattle...



Just to satisfy my curiosity, where are these huge piles of dirt coming from? And why do you keep leaving them for me like gifts of dead birds left on the doorstep by my cat? I come home and there is another random pile of dirt. Please, no more dirt unless I can dig in it and find diamonds.

The neighbors think I'm shooting a remake of Close Encounters

Sadly, for most of the recent Holly House... let's just call them setbacks... I have not been home. Pulling up in the driveway after a brutal day at work to see the destruction at Ground Zero when everything was fine and functioning brilliantly when you left earlier that morning is decidedly worse than being present when it actually happens. 

As I got out of my vehicle in a state of shock and mutely waved a hand at what used to be my backyard, you sat on tractor/backhoe/Implement of Destruction, laughed, and said "Man, have I got a story to tell you..."

No jury in the world would have convicted me.



One of the many Implements of Destruction and another Random Pile of Dirt

It will go down in my memoirs as my proudest moment of self-restraint when I simply unlocked the back door, entered the house, went upstairs, laid down on the bed in my work clothes, and waited for you to leave. You cannot fight the Horsemen. You can only wait for them to pass over.

Or you can install an eight-foot, electrified, razor-wire topped fence around the property.

I'm considering it.



 

Holly House - Winter Hazards

I think the big icicle in the middle is stalking me. It's waiting for an unsuspecting person (me) to pass beneath it then it will lunge, breaking free of the gutter to skewer its prey (also me). I have named it Stabby.

Stabby Sickle and Friends.

Pictured below is a fossilized frozen femur of a brontosaurus. Actually, it's a portion of a giant icicle that crashed down onto my A/C unit in the middle of the night with a noise that sounded like my home was being invaded by a gang of Abominable Snowmen. 

The Holly House Diaries - My Plea

Kitchen.

As defined by Holly's Dictionary, "a room in a house that typically sees little to no activity except around the electric kettle, where bagged lettuce often converts to a liquid state in the crisper drawer, and the only beverages to be found are usually 13% alcohol or categorised as 'loose-leaf' or 'espresso grind'."

You never appreciate something until it's gone. I have been without a kitchen for a while now, and I never thought I'd say this, but I'm sick of take-out.



The Kitchen, Step 1 - Obviously, no expense was spared.
I expect those tinfoil and painter's tape window shades to be the next big thing in kitchen design.



Very soon there will be countertops, then I will have a place to set the kettle.

Please, please, please Universe, I promise to be good. I swear I am ready to cook. I have even purchased a brand spanking new set of pots and pans in anticipation of going all Martha the second the kitchen is completed. I have googled The Naked Chef and now know that he is not indeed nekkid (sorta disappointing), but that his name is Jamie Oliver, he's British, knows his way around the kitchen, talks with a slight lisp, and might actually be my soulmate. I even bought... *GASP*... a cookbook. OK, yes, it is a book filled only with cookie recipes, but it is a step in the right direction. Please, I'm begging you O Great Universe, let the installation of the countertops, sink and faucet, and the hooking up of the appliances go smoothly and be done by some time in February. I don't know how much Nutella and toast a person can ingest before it begins to do permanent damage to their intestinal tract and brain function, but I think I'm there.

The Holly House Diaries 1/11- 1/16/11

1/11/11

I am officially a home owner
.?.?.
   I'm still not sure how I feel about it
...
      My Gypsy itches.

1/12/11

Is it weird that I have numerous pieces of furniture with wheels on?
    That my first thought before purchase is "Can I add casters?"
         Like I am going to ride a coffee table to town?
              Where is the furniture going to go?
        
I should have built a vardo.
     
      
1/13/11

Guy with a lisp came to measure for a fence
    Even if the quote is outrageous, I will feel bad if I don't buy from him
        Stupid speech impediment


1/15/11

Bought a medicine cabinet
    Dad said he could install. No problem. Fifteen minutes.

He couldn't. It was. An hour.
    Torn all to hell and hanging by a thread.
          I wanted to scream.
       
I have to start over.


1/16/11

I love my little house. It isn't finished.
    It may never be. That's okay.
         I am a work-in-progress, too.

The bathtub is one of the best things about the house. It's as deep as a swimming pool (no diving!) and the edge is curved to cradle your back and neck like the palm of a hand. Filled with aqua-blue, endlessly hot and steaming, slightly earth-scented well water, it's the most relaxing place on the planet. One hour long soak in it is better than twenty trips to a therapist.

Putting the "Cor!" in Decorating

Now that I have the outside of the house done, I'm going to have to turn my attention to the inside. That, to me, is the hard part of this whole project. I do not have an eye for this sort of thing... this decorating. I know what I like when I see it (thus the source of the impulse buying issue I seem to have), but I have no idea how to put it all together. Most of the time I'm completely content with living out of boxes. Ask my friend, J9. We lived in a very cool townhouse in Boulder, Colorado, (I still miss that place) for several years and there were many, many boxes that I never bothered to unpacked.

I believe my official decorating style is "eclectic". Which is a nice way to say I have a hobo's collection of random crap. This year my efforts concerning Holly House are going to be geared toward making some sort of sense of it all. Also, getting rid of stuff that doesn't make sense and that I don't love/need because quarters at Holly House are limited where storage is concerned.

For instance, consider the main bathroom upstairs. It is SMALL, so everything that goes in there makes a BIG impact. (I what it lacks in size it makes up for in character with the light fixture, the floor tile, the subway wall tile, the swimming pool bathtub...) Take the shower curtain for instance. I could use some advice on this one.

To shower curtain...

OR

Not to shower curtain?

That is the question of the moment.

Now my first (cowardly) impulse, because I really admire the Scandinavian style of design and decorating, would be to leave it with the clear curtain or get a white fabric shower curtain with some kind of texture to it, then add some colorBAM with towels and things. That seems a little too safe though. The cityscape curtain that I have is fantastic. It makes me smile every time I look at it. Once you get use to it hanging up, it seems less overwhelming in the small space.

Yes, I did hang it up straight out of the package to get an idea of how it would look, so it's kind of wrinkly. I don't iron my bedsheets either. Sorry to disappoint the Marthas in the crowd.

Aren't these shower curtain hangers great?

I already tried a couple of other curtains, but their patterns and colors were waaaay too much. Let me know what you think. With? Without? Or Plan C (which you will have to provide, because I don't have a Plan C)?

Stairway to Heaven - The Saga Continues

Over the weekend, I got the stairs put in. Mostly. The hard parts, anyway. I now owe my sister and brother-in-law the equivalent of 143.7 years worth of babysitting duty for their assistance - which they will never let me repay, of course, because they are FREAKIN' AWESOME.



Second Floor Landing

Thank God for Joel and his instinctive knowledge of how things are supposed to be assembled and his innate Type-A need for everything to be perfect (which in most people is a trait that makes me inexplecably want to punch them in the head), otherwise I would be living my entire life on the first floor and trying to bathe out of a tiny sink in the downstairs bathroom. I helped out with the assembly where I could - tightened bolts, held posts, measured and assembled the spindles, general step and fetch, etc. - but these stairs were a multiple person project. Did I mention that I owe everyone who helped (including my 6 year old nephew who  kept me amused by dashing in and out of the house wearing various tools and cardboard boxes on his head and yelling "Come on! Let's go play!") a debt that can never be repaid?

Now all that needs to be done is installation of the handrail and the metal barrier upstairs that will keep me from falling off the landing in the middle of the night (see: photo above) and the oak landing and treads. NO MORE LADDER! Which decreases by 50% the likelihood that I become one of the statistics of people who are killed in household accidents.




Vertigo Much?



Don't worry, the stairs aren't crooked. It's my camera angle.

The last big project on the list is the kitchen. I ordered my cabinets on Sunday and they should be ready for installation on Jan. 10th-ish. I'm almost there! Soon my tiny Tumbleweed house and I will be united and remain together forever. And I do mean FOR. EH. VER. After everything I've been through to build this house over the last year and a half, when I die I have requested in my will that the house be burned down around me, a-la Viking funeral pyre.

Tumbleweed Tiny House Company, where I purchased my plans, specializes in very small (microhomes by American standards), very efficient houses. They run from the XS at 65sq. ft., up to the B-53, which is the house plan I purchased, at 874 sq. ft. Once the customizations that I wanted were in place, my house is just barely over 1,000 sq. ft. I probably would've gone smaller and built the Harbinger instead if there had been enough room for all my books. If you're interested in your own Tumbleweed home, check out their website here.


Holly House

Here's a picture of Holly House. The photo is a couple of months old (note the surroundings are actually green) and I've added side porch railings since this picture was taken.

I unpackaged my stairs last night, sat the components out on some mats to keep from scuffing the floor, and made sure all the parts were accounted for. Everything was there, thank goodness. It was a sunuvabitch to unload off the semi, so I would've hated to have to return it. It doesn't look like much now, but eventually this junk will be a beautiful spiral staircase.

I will have to paint the metal staircase and stain and polyurethane the wooden treads so they match the rest of the wood floors, but that's small stuff. Once it's installed at least I will have access to the upstairs that doesn't require me shimmying up a precariously positioned ladder like a monkey. Because, unlike a wee monkey, I am not quick and agile. Before several cups of A.M. coffee I can barely remember my name, much less remember not to step out into the void of the stairwell when there aren't any stairs.

Stairway to Heaven

YAR!!! The long awaited, anxiously anticipated spiral stairs arrived via semi-truck this afternoon. I am one step (actually, it would be 14 steps) closer to moving into my house. The contractor came to measure for the kitchen today as well. The kitchen and the stairs are the last two major items before I would be able to move into a fully functional house.

Of course, there are a lot of cosmetic bits that will need to be done, dings to be patched, paint to touch up, furniture to be purchased, etc., but those are items that can be done along the way. AFTER I'm in.

This house might finally happen, and I might actually retain my sanity. That's a big might. The stairs still have to be installed. If I can manage to get through that without throwing myself or anyone else through a second floor window, everything else will be easy-peasy.