The Cool House–Final Chapter

The Cool House has been our home for seventeen years now, that’s hard to believe as we’d lived in many houses in various countries on two continents before I spotted it on the MLSLI website back in 2003. I fell instantly, head over heels in love from that moment. I swear the hairs on the back of my neck stood up and tingles ran down my spine. My love for it has only deepened over the years, for its unique architecture and the warm, inviting design of the original Andrew Geller plans, through all the renovations–really gentle updates–we did over the years to bring it up to today’s codes. 

We always said that when we felt we were rattling around in it, though, it would be time to leave and pass it on to someone who would appreciate as much as we have. This past year of lockdown and quarantine has made us realize the time has come. In normal times visitors, friends and family, would come and go, filling the house with life and laughter. But for the past twelve months it's been just us, and even using both offices full-time and enjoying that luxury, we realized that we don't need all this space; it’s time to look for something smaller. 

I know we’ll never find anything as special as the Cool House but we have so many memories from our time as caretakers of the house. The one that stands out in the forefront is when Andrew Geller came with his wife Shirley and family for his first visit in over forty years, stood on the balcony over the great room, looked around and said “I did good work”! He truly did, not good work but great work, unique–a work of art.

For information on the listing contact Maria & Donna at Compass Real Estate

Landscaping or revealing the Cool House

Yard after landscaping

Those Cool House readers who follow me on instagram, Facebook or the twitters will be aware that the past month has involved a lot of heavy work around the yard. Six months after the big tree came down we lost a couple of large branches of the plum tree in the front. This was a sad and a shock but it did open up the view to the south west. We saw dogwoods beginning to bloom, pretty specimens that we hadn't appreciated before. We also noticed how forlorn and frankly tatty the border in front of the kitchen patio had become.  The Guy spoke to the landscaper and before I knew what was happening they had decided to demolish half the front yard.

Front yard after landscaping

I had my own issues with the landscaping but they were round the back. I'd never felt the bridge fitted in with the architecture of the house, and although we'd had it mended three times it was again in serious need of repair and I was ready to see it gone. I also hated the mess of a pool and collection of debris that ran along the dry bed that was supposed to be a gentle bubbling waterfall and stream. If the front yard was getting a facelift I was determined the back would have a boost, too.

Backyard after landscaping

The process was not without out its challenges. You cannot imagine my face when I realized that I'd be without a privacy screen of plants for at least two weeks. Staring at soil is not at all therapeutic, plus most of the work was done in sweltering temperatures. The removal of the old barbecue base involved some serious power tools and moving the stones atop the waterfall drew blood from at least one landscaper. But at last it was done, the new lawn grew, the plants-mostly hollies, azaleas and rhododendrons-went in and the sprinkler guys added new zones so everything would be happily watered and ready to grow.

Yard before

Let's look at where we were a month or so ago . Above is a collection of photos taken in the yard over the past 12 years. Below is the front yard on demolition day. The house was hidden and lots of  trees had passed their best. At least one was completely fried. Although I lost some of the layers of privacy in the short term, in the long term we gained so much more.

Yard awaiting demolition

Of course the greatest benefit of all this yard renovation is that we can now appreciate the
unique Andrew Geller architecture of the house.  Remembering what it was like when we first viewed the house in 2003, when there were so many trees enclosing the house that we thought we had been misled by the realtor's flyer, it's a completely different reality.  Now the house can shine in all its glory, for us and every passer-by to enjoy.  This little video below encompasses how I feel now I can relax and kick back, reveling in this glorious Indian summer in the yard. Total and absolute bliss.

The upside

Last week I was in mourning for the magnificent spruce tree that has been the focal point of the property since the lots were divided in the sixties. I couldn't imagine what the house would look like without the tree it was designed around. Being a glass half-full person so I knew there would be more light both inside the kitchen and the bedroom above as well as in the yard. What I hadn't understood was how the removal of the tree would allow us to see for the first time the design of the house from the north-west dining room to the southern garage side.

It's possible to stand on the far side of the front lawn and truly appreciate how the house nestles into its surroundings, a testament to Andrew Geller's unique architecture. At last we can fully compare this side with the backyard facing east side. Definitely the upside of losing the tree.

Loss

We are in mourning today for a part of the landscape, for what the tree surgeon described in April as the best tree in the Incorporated Village and for the core of our view every day for the past eleven years. When we moved in to the Cool House the previous owner explained the house's unusual design was conceived in part around this enormous mountain spruce tree in the front yard. Its beautiful fringed, dark green arms seemed to offer our home an enveloping hug, protecting it from the harsh Long Island winters, providing shade from the relentless summer sun. Each morning we have stood in front of the kitchen windows, sipping coffee, watching the birds and squirrels among the branches, marveling at its magnificence.

We took every opportunity of good weather in Spring, Summer and Fall to enjoy lunch al fresco on the patio beneath its branches until, sometime after the Fourth of July celebrations, we noticed the needles on the bottom branches were falling off, even though they were still green. Over the course of the next couple of weeks the phenomenon worsened. We googled, consulted the landscape and the tree experts and came up with a diagnosis of severe needle drop. We crossed our fingers and hoped it would be a temporary problem but the needle drop persisted, leaving only brown fronds; some days it seemed as though it was raining pine needles. 

While we still had tiny, green pinecones on the ends of the branches we could still hope for a recovery but when these too started falling and the branches turned brown and bare farther and farther up the tree we knew we were facing a dying tree. By mid-September it was all over. Even the uppermost tip was dry and the ground beneath covered in a couple of inches or more of desiccated needles.

For the last month we haven't been able to sit outside on the patio, everything has been covered in pine needles. We couldn't bear to drink our coffee looking at the tree, it was too depressing, and most telling, the birds and squirrels abandoned it. Finally, we knew it could no longer be saved and made a called the tree guys to remove it. Today they spent 8 hours taking down its 150' skeletal remains. 

I'm trying to look on the bright side, the west facing rooms will have more light, the front lawn will have less stress, we can replant the dell but all I can see is negative space, a pivotal part of the landscape gone. It's still a shock that it happened so quickly: two months from the first sign to complete failure. All that remains is a stump, a truck load of wood chips and an aching heart. 

Spucing Up

Hard to believe that it's been almost a year since I last posted anything on this blog. It's not that we haven't been tending to The Cool House rather that social media has changed a lot about the way I document my life and that goes for the house too.  I'm more likely to take a thousand word snap of something we've done and post it right there to Facebook or twitter. One click and I've saved all that tedious typing. You could say instagram killed this blog.

But it would be unfair to ask you to search through all the hundreds of photos of sunsets and kittens to find one that shows the renovated pool, or the color we ended up with in the sitting room after several, expensive redoes.  So, here, in no particular order, are the projects we undertook in the first ten months of 2014.

Pool renovation: all the pipes, skimmers and reruns were replaced. This job entailed digging up and replacing half the brick patio but it mbas meant no more leaks. Also the pool light works again and we have a new, quieter energy saving pump. The pool housing is screened off with a nicer replacement for the termite eaten fence and next Spring a gas heater will be installed.

We lost a couple of trees and big rhododendrons to last year's severe winter, which Neal the Landscaper said was an opportunity, especially as the pool guys had to rip through the shrubbery to lay new pipes so hey presto one May weekend we got a new awesome shrubbery. well, almost new, The Guy insisted on keeping a dog wood because it looks spectacular from the master window for one week in May. It will probably come crashing down this winter!

The kitchen patio, front path and steps were re-grouted and broken bluestone slabs were replaced. We also installed four Marvin windows in the den, downstairs bath and basement where the rot or weather had damaged them beyond repair.

While all that was going on we started the BIG PAINT JOB, which kept getting bigger as we progressed form room to room. I'd taken three months to narrow down the fifty odd shades of gray and gold to half a dozen. We used Benjamin Moore Aura paint on all the walls and baseboards, which has no off gases and dries to a tough knock resist finish; the painters replaced moldings as needed. Eventually after much trial and error, we chose Collingwood for the kitchen and second and fourth bedrooms, Moonshine for the great room, stairs, hall and balcony and one bath, Camouflage for the third bedroom & the den. My office ended up Golden Tan, the third bedroom Buena Vista Gold, the laundry Metropolitan and we matched the original dusky pink tiles in the downstairs bath to Peau de Soie. The painters took advantage of the cool, dry summer and stained the house Mission Brown, with doors in Marvin Bronze to match the windows.

Last but certainly most significantly, we converted from oil to gas. This was prompted when our oil guy telling us he couldn't keep the monster burner going much longer coincided with an oil bill that cost more than our first new car. I won't bore you with the details of the 6 month saga of no heat or no hot water, repairs, work-arounds and crossing our fingers it took to get us to October 8 when National Grid finally turned the gas on. It's also not the prettiest project, and it took one guy an entire 8AM-4PM day to get the monster out of the basement but it did finally get done. We worried about an ugly gas meter outside our beautiful house but we managed to hide it behind an estate rhododendron. Can you see it in the photo above? No? Neither can anyone else! More importantly we can take showers without screaming and the air coming out of the vents is toasty so it's probably the project that impacts our comfort level the most.

10 years later

Finally, 10 years after we moved in, thirteen years after the last coat of Navajo white, we summoned up the courage to have the space painted. As this room is open to so many spaces, we envisioned chaos, with scaffolding everywhere and paint-splattered animals leaving tacky trails on the furniture and furnishings.

And the color? I had major issues here. The eastern light and huge windows played havoc with the hues. Each wall looked a different hue, a different color even. I'd love a color on one wall at 9 am and hate it by 1. Another would look great on one wall, be subtle on another and disappear on a third. It became a process of elimination and I know I drove the painters crazy, though they were much to polite to say so, even when I changed my mind in the middle of the night and emailed them with the new choice.

What do you know? Turns out the whole process was drama free. Even though some cats love the no-smell BM Aura paint and snuggled up to it at every opportunity, they managed to keep their paws out of the paint trays. Scaffolding? Not necessary. Three men with rollers accomplished the whole job in two days.

The wall color we finally landed upon is Benjamin Moore moonshine. On this wall, and only this wall it looks a watery green, That lasts an hour or so when the north eastern light hits the wall. The same color is on the balcony walls, which look off-white and the double height wall that looks gray. Later in the day all the walls fade to the neutral color in the first photo above, which is a very relaxing shade that showcases the art.

When it was all clean and fresh The Guy decided he had to have this bright and vibrant piece by Long Island artist Stanko, which was framed by rockstar framer Cherie Via Rexer of Ripe Art Gallery. It has a mid-century vibe that really sits well in the space. The only regret I have about this room is that we didn't have it painted four years ago when we renovated the kitchen. On the other had the paint color I had in mind for this room wouldn't have worked nearly as well and i would be repainting right about now...

Wet & Dry

It has rained so much this month that residents are hallucinating they have replaced their sedans with motor cruisers, and are rudely awakened when they try to gun the ever deepening floods, stalling out in 2' of water. I've interpreted Areal Flood Warning to mean A REAL FLOOD WARNING and I'm taking appropriate measures to avoid waiting 90 minutes for a tow truck to haul me out of the embarrassing and expensive situation that driving through flooded roadways could bring. In any case it's been an unforgettable start to summer!

As water from Tropical Storm Andrea poured down the road, swirled around the driveway, gushed past the newly planted hostas to fill the dell outside the dining room, we contemplated going with the flow by turning the dell into a giant pond; simply replacing the hostas with waterlilies. Which led me to remember I hadn't posted about a recent successful project in the backyard that turned the dank, smelly pond by the bridge into a dry water feature.

Firstly, a little background. For years I've been running interference with the dogs, trying to keep them from drinking out of the pond. We tried a cover but it was too cumbersome to move when we needed to get at the pump and mesh kept the dogs off but allowed decomposed leaves, garden debris and the balls off the damn linden tree to fall through the holes and fill the pond. Honestly, who would build a pond under a conifer and plant a bunch of fast-growing shrubs around it? I wanted the pond part gone but still needed a way to keep the water flowing to the rocks and along the stream.

I came across this low maintenance water feature on familyhandyman.com that looked perfect for our purposes. We already had most of the structure in place, it seemed easy-peasy to drain the pond and swap the mucky water for stone chips and gravel. The instructions indicated it could be completed within a couple of days so we began by buying six bags of pea gravel. These sat for a month on the patio while we dealt with a bunch of non-house related crises and some too wet/cold weekends

Finally, on Mothers' Day weekend in May when three consecutive days of sunshine were forecast The Guy set to scooping out the pond. He hauled six garden refuse bags of dirt out of there, at which point we knew those six bags of gravel were not going to make much of an impact. We used those bags as a base for the buckets that would act as miniature reservoirs and went back to Home Depot for another 10 bags of pea gravel. Two more trips to the HD later we were 18 bags in and almost to the top of the pond. We turned on the water and tested the pump and were suitably impressed when the heard water gurgling from the fountain. We still had a few damming issues along the stream (anther two bags of crap were filled) but in the end we had a dry water feature that works - it's a very quiet, soothing sound which adds to the ambience out back.

The project cost approximately $250 for a new pump, piping, buckets and gravel. Even though we had most of the construction already in place it took considerably longer than the projected week-end but it was worth the effort and at least one part of the yard stays dry no matter how much rain pours down on us.

Snowstorm Winter 2012/2013

Pretty, no?

Every beach should have a shell

Bought at an estate sale of a wonderful old house in our old neighborhood and lovingly placed*, thanks to The Guy, in a sandy, stony part of the yard. Just the perfect addition to the back driveway.

*Luckily the ideal spot for the shell was close to the garage, this garden ornament must weigh 100lb.

Fencing

Ready to install

Again. The front fence was a casualty of Superstorm Sandy. Thank goodness the east fence and the back fence made it through.

Capped

Next job is to stain the fences to match the house but that will be done next year in one mammoth house painting session. Looking forward to it.

Fall Snow

Nine days after Sandy, while a lot of neighbors were still without power, a nor'easter rolled around and dumped a pack of snow on Long Island. Freaking crazy weather...

Sandy

How fortuitous was it that we had the trees trimmed earlier this month? Hurricane, or by the time it hit us, superstorm Sandy blew in yesterday and when I opened the blinds this morning I was amazed and pleased that we had escaped relatively unscathed; no trees down, not even limbs. The property was full of leaves and twigs, on the steps lay the corpse of a woodpecker that had probably been blown into the siding and the front fence was down, but apart from being without power it looked as though we had suffered no real damage.

Going out to explore the neighborhood it soon became clear others were not so fortunate. The Incorporated Village was actually cut off for a few hours, tress blocked every road to town, one tree had taken out a neighbor's kitchen, another had ripped the electricity panel from a house, everywhere power lines were hanging loose or lying across the roads.

The moon had been full, the tide high when the storm stuck and the water rose up and over the seawall.

Tons of sand washed onto the beach huts, flooding the parking lot

and twisting the pier of its piles. A monster storm, a Frankenstorm that will takes weeks if it months to clear up but we were prudent to get the trees trimmed and lucky that we hadn't waited until next Spring to get it done. We will have a lot to be thankful for this November 22nd.

Cool House Panorama

Dining Room

Great Room

Kitchen

Playing with the Panoramic feature on the phone.

Tree trimming

You probably wouldn't know it unless you live in the neighborhood and had to listen to the noise of the chainsaws for six hours, but we had the trees thinned this week. It's been five years since we did  it last and they had really thickened up. I'd prefer not to have an oak or beech tree branch take out a wing of the house or the maples pull the power lines down during an ice storm. The LIPA tree guys were out in August clearing the lines on the road, which was a good reminder for us to trim on the rest of the property. The fantastic landscaper removed the hideous junipers from the back drive and pruned back anything ornamental, the professional tree guys took care of the tall trees including the damned linden, not to protect the house because that thing is balsa wood and limbs weigh the same as a bag of cotton wool balls but to protect ourselves from the rock hard seed balls that rain down on us from late April to June, the time when, obviously, we want to enjoy the outdoors and eat on the patio. I swear one year I'm gonna take a chainsaw to that tree just below its canopy...

Late Summer Storms

We got ourselves a lake...

Picked from the yard: Casual Hydrangea arrangements in the dining room

Surprise Visit

Eight years ago, June 29 2004, a day not quite as hot nor as humid as today we loaded up beach car and a pantechnicon of furniture and drove the twenty miles from Port Washington to our new home. We had one set of keys that we didn't need because the house was unlocked and a seven year plan to renovate this house.

I wanted to celebrate this anniversary but it's been a trying couple of weeks and I couldn't think of anything suitable to do. Then, just before six o'clock there was a knock on the front door. I opened it expecting to see a neighbour but a stranger stood on the bluestone step. "I hope you don't mind but we were passing. I used to live here. I just wanted to see the house and the property."

I was thrilled and a little trepidatious (would she approve of the changes we'd made?) to show her and her husband over the house. She seemed pleased with what we'd done and what we'd kept in place. She recognised her pink sectional we had recovered and the sandstone tile wall that her father had installed himself and she LOVED the kitchen. She was surprised that I knew which had been her bedroom and laughed when I showed her why. Inside the desk drawer is a sticker that bears her name. A tiny, trivial piece of 70s history that has survived forty-four years; removal, redecoration and remodel.

Her husband mentioned he read this blog and that I don't update it regularly anymore. It's true, after eight years most of the work is finished (although the pool is demanding serious attention) so there isn't as much to write about. But just in case he checks in, here's a photo from 2004 - a photo of the original owner's youngest daughter's bedroom to bring back some more memories. Bright green shag carpet! Thanks for dropping by, making this day special and marking the anniversary for me.

Dedicated to Mrs Diane Lipman RIP