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🏡 Second annual report
It was two years in the house last Thursday. If year one was "strange stewardship of Becca's house," year two was "passing the apogee of Tom's party house" - optimizing for a hypothetical dance, and then finally moving past that, toward a house idea more related to the actual days and nights I spend here, and what I learned at Judy's.
Black house challenge mode / Couch arc finale / Myth-science of trying to relax
As I recall it, I hired Sadie last June on the basis of her combination S-tier interior design sensibility & DIY abilities to a) give me a house consult & b) help me with a proj of her choosing. The consult resulted in her finding me a couch, and the project, per her painting dictum to "delete white," resulted in her painting much of the downstairs trim and ceiling black, pushing further toward an interior mode that began with the Guest Room setup. (The painting was extremely helpful, and the couch, from UniqueFloorSofa, was a totally accurate recommendation. Would strongly recommend hiring Sadie for a design consult or project management/execution of any kind, if/when she's next taking jobs.)
Painting everything black inadvertantly put the house onto challenge mode for much of the rest of the year by making lighting a real problem. There was a period of buying lamps online and returning them (broken; bad light; lamp looks dumb irl; not quite right; etc.) that constituted probably a full six weeks of "house stuff" time. Meanwhile, too dark for really any normal use, the room stayed mostly empty except for partying. I installed speakers in the corners (after driving them back to MN from Judy's last spring, finishing my deinstall there), and we had an extremely fun dance on my birthday. The room was also open a bit for GR season two, but that's really it.
Things didn't resolve until early spring, when I had an idea for a lamp I could build, and Natalie simultaneously found a second "reading" couch on "Marketplace." Now we sit on the couches, listen to music in surround, and soak in red LED light bounced off a cream rectangle painted into the ceiling; it's sort of a cozy Bladerunner feeling, which feels validly on the path toward what I'm trying to get to. (Nat also got me some nice incense for my birthday, burning it for that nice "strange movement seen through smoke in the dark" quality matches the energy exactly, plus obviously it smells good.)
The transition into it being a room that can be sat in by two people heralds the end of "version one," during which house decisions were built out from "dancing in the house" as the ideal/standard usage of the space. In "version two," post-pandemic priorities (and fantasies) are seen to be receding and "new normal" stuff is returning to the front, i.e., having nice spots to drink NA beers and weird NA cocktails more or less either alone or with Natalie in the dark.
Interesting (but also "classic stuff bureau, obvious wing, everything is connected department"), having this valid sitting area also made my studio in the weird room off the kitchen "feel" more accessible - as if by part of the house not being in complete unresolved chaos, there is now sufficient order to do higher-level activities here, like reading and painting. It's "studio" and not "house," but getting the lamp built and the second couch does feel like it resulted indirectly in Dexter's paintings getting done this year.
Outta sight outta mind
The basement went through three full rounds of cleaning/destruction. I deinstalled a large amount of built-in basement shelving that wasn't really working, set up a jam dungeon in order to rehearse for a gig that I ended up not playing via finally getting covid, and then broke the jam dungeon down in the course of various other cleaning and sorting. Situating my scrap wood, my tools, all my boxes of miscellaneous stuff... it takes a long time to unpack your life after moving.
I'm having a problem with laundry drainage that I opted to just not deal with for a while, after calling a plumber to fix it and then it just becoming a problem again two weeks later. The longer story is too boring, but suffice to say that the laundry's been out of commission for months; I'm just doing it at spahouse right now. (Bela was the last person to do laundry here; her stuff is still in the basement on the dryer where she left it.)
Spahouse stuff isn't really in the purview of this report, but I'll note that among other projects we began building the sauna there last summer, and that the run/bike from here to there we did in November was one of my favorite events of the year, hopefully sticky enough to do annually.
My plants (continued)
The biggest stuff at the house probably happened outside. Last year I finished the french drain (2023: the year of drainage), built/painted a fence all the way back from the street (in a stupefyingly inefficient way, but that's how I like to do it sometimes), and built the street-facing fence a few feet higher.
This spring, once it got nice out, I tore down the shed (which was disintegrating), and used the viable scrap wood to delineate what may become some beds. In those I planted arborvitae, false hydrangea, sweet pea vines, and pumpkins, tho I don't have high hopes for those.
I found a pagoda in somebody's large trash, and put that in my back yard; I'm going to paint it some color but haven't yet. I got rid of the bench in the courtyard in my large trash; still much large trash from the basement and shed to get rid of, this has really felt like "the spring of large trash."
My plants are otherwise looking good. I'm gonna move my signature cactus to spahouse where I think it'll do better in the light. My prickly pear bush has once again doubled, and my potted Texas prickly pear is still rocking too, after all these years. My home depot palm is doing bad, but my Becca palm (supposedly originally Allen's?!) is doing good. My tomatoes are in the ground, Romas this year, plus many volunteers from last year's cherries.
If you worked here, you'd already be in the kitchen
My work desk is a low counter in my kitchen, beneath which were shelves that I jigsawed a cutout from, so a chair can slide all the way in; this is where I'm sitting right now. (Not much else changed in this room other than that I framed a few photos and fixed the oven igniter.) The painting studio such as it is is three feet to my right, through a curtain (and wholly unchanged from last year, apart from the work itself). The couch under my lamp is about twenty feet behind me. The cooking area is five feet to my left. All my big activities (reading, painting, cooking, doing dishes, computer) happen inside this very small footprint. It's funny to need a lot of space, but also so little. The rooms themselves all feel like they expand and contract with use.
I just sleep here
Upstairs is still basically unchanged and at zero, except that we figured out that we can watch movies up there on the projector (which rocks), and that I've moved my books upstairs, now that I can read again. I kept one failed downstairs lamp for my bedroom, which I sorta like up there. Also installed a cabinet in the bathroom, reinstalled a wall so the bedroom can be closed off more reasonably when guests visit, and paid an insulation guy to do big insulation (before having a winter that mostly didn't go below freezing).
Future
Looking at the wishlist in last year's report, the results aren't too bad:
- [X] Some privacy-related planting along the fence, to go higher - [X] Figure out where/how exactly I project movies - [X] insulation guy - [X] Need to finish building the wooden slat fence - [X] Need to build beds on both sides in the back - [X] Upstairs lamps - [X] Upstairs wall - [ ] Upstairs repaint - [ ] Upstairs shelves - [ ] Figure out a/c - [ ] Build enclosure for my cactuses
To the rollovers I will add:
- [ ] Fully demo studio shelves - [ ] New usable studio shelves - [ ] Paint mud room - [ ] Paint bathroom - [ ] Retile bathroom floor - [ ] Build bookshelves upstairs - [ ] Figure out hanging clothes solution upstairs - [ ] Dishwasher - [ ] Build bed (to sleep in) - [ ] Fix basement drain - [ ] Fix kitchen sink hot water - [ ] Install/plant beds on sidewalk - [ ] Paint street-facing stucco
Bigger/dream projects list largely remains the same:
- Expand and add windows - Redo the bathroom - Upstairs deck over the kitchen - Second toilet for guests - Redo electrical
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