My Favourite Tree

This is my favourite tree and it's not even in my yard. It's over a couple of roads in the historical Baycrest district of Huntington Bay. The Incorporated Village consists of smaller areas based around five private beach associations like Baycrest and some areas that don't have any affiliation to a beach club, thus increasing the opportunity for more rules and bureaucracy in this part of the Land of the Free. We belong to one beach club, Baycrest starts a hundred or so yards to the north-west of our property, and my neighbours opposite are unaffiliated. Go figure.
Anyway, back to the beauty of nature in the fall. I've been walking the dogs past this tree all week monitoring the changing colour. I think the reason I like it so much is the sculptural quality of the black trunk and branches, balanced with the soft round shape of the foliage and, of course, at this time of the year, the rich red and orange tones of the leaves. Enjoy.

Dining Room Update

Houseblogs.net, the community for those obsessed with home improvement, is running feature stories this month on four topics, one of which is the dining room. We loved the dining room when we first saw the house, it was large, lofty and had a great beamed ceiling but it was beige - beige ceiling, beige walls, beige carpet and beige vertical blinds. I could have lived with the beige while we tackled more urgent projects but when the previous owner removed her furniture she left behind those bright blue patches on the walls. A tad unsightly, no?



The off-white walls had grey grime where they met the ceiling. For a long time I worried that this was where the roof leaked but it proved to be just where dust from the heating system settled. There was a matching line around the edges of the carpet.



Not attractive, but at least it wasn't a major structural problem. Apart from this the room was dark because the rhododendrons and pine trees outside the windows totally blocked out the light,



and the dusty, vinyl vertical blinds had to go.



We hung framed museum prints we had from our last house over the blue rectangles and had the electrician rewire and hang our 1970s Tre Ci Luce Cesare Lacca "Alien" pendant lamp that we had lugged from Belgium. It had spent the last four years in a box because we didn't have a space in the last place for it but it goes perfectly here.



For three months we couldn't see out of the window



But eventually we chopped back the shrubbery elevating the light levels a gazillion times.

Originally I wanted a sand color on the walls and we pinned up lines of swatches from Benjamin Moore but nothing spoke to us. We progressed to buying try-out pots of paint in golds and shades of café au lait but they all seemed to make the room dingy. I'd been avoiding the greys because I didn't want the dining room to be cold or sad but when I came across Titanium I knew we had a winner. Titanium is such a bright modern-sounding word, isn't it? When we slapped the Titanium over 1968 beach blue it just looked right.



The Guy gave that wall two coats, I touched it up, and touched up the Navajo white on the adjoining walls as far as I could reach. We couldn't paint the rest of the room without buying a long ladder, and we didn't trust ourselves to paint the ceiling without dripping on the beams. We ended up living with this odd colour combination for over a year.



Meanwhile I had a "Eureka!" moment when we took out the built-ins from the boys' bedrooms.



I cannibalized the desk parts to make a new cabinet for the dining room.



Then I went to the local stone fabricator and had tops cut to fit in Carrara marble.



This worked so well we got over-confident and ordered a second top for the cabinet in the den. Unfortunately we failed to measure this accurately so we had a 4' piece of marble hanging around doing nothing. A few weeks of searching and we found this wrought iron wine table in Crate and Barrel that fitted perfectly. It's taller than the console so it's not too matchy-matchy.



The room was coming together but we knew that we had to replace the windows before long so we held off doing more.



In 2005 we put in new windows and I spent a couple of weekends getting the stain right on the frames. The first go at getting window coverings for the room was a bust. We ordered red dupioni silk roman shades from Smith & Noble but they came in with white splodges on the crimson.



We now had curtain rods but nothing to hang on them. While we searched we had the room professionally painted using the Titanium on the walls and BM Cloud White on the ceiling and baseboard. So much better than buying a ladder or scaffolding and they did a great job. In the end the wall with the prints on got a total of five coats of Titanium (two by Steven, one by me because I wasn't happy with his brushmanship, and two by the painters) and the other walls just got two coats.



In the end I found an even better solution than the roman shades, drapery panels in red silk, darker with an almost invisible pattern that gave a depth to the drapes. Even better, these were on sale at Pottery Barn.com and cost less for 6 panels than one of the wrought iron rods we had had to pay full price for at the Pottery Barn store.



Last year I found a great painting on ebay and had it framed at a local store. After some discussion we hung it in the dining room because we loved the way the colours in the painting complemented the grey, white and red of the room.



Three years after we started we consider this room "done". Well almost. Home improvement is never really finished, is it? At some point we want to change the carpet but that will have to wait until we are certain about the plans for the den and the kitchen floors.



Right now we have a dining room that we love, great colours, great light and warm enough to eat in even in winter.

USA and Canada not compatible

At least regarding Benjamin Moore paint. For reasons best known to themselves but I think it's to ensure I go stark, raving mad trying to pick out colo(u)rs for the kitchen, BM Canada has different names and a different numbering system for its paints. Why? Why would they do this? It's just cruel. Canadian paints have CC before the number as in the examples above. I did not know this. Armed with the numbers I wanted to get paint chips of I went to Aboffs, my local BM store. They had a paint fan with Classic Colours on it. CC- Classic Colors. Wouldn't you have assumed that was what the CC stood for? They even had a CC-700. It was called Enchanted Forest in American and is a dark greeny grey hue. Nothing like the Smoky Green that I was going for.
Likewise Lemon Grass CC-648 in Canada or 339 here.



Really, isn't there enough to divide us already without this?

Schmapped again

I've been Schmapped again, this time for the Brussels edition. It's great that my considerable ahem photographic skills are once again recognized, though I can't think why they didnit choose this one entitled "Man with Cell Phone and Strange Blue Dot"



or even this piece of art, "Girl with Cell Phone and Shopping Bag"



at least this one is in focus (almost)



Surreal Spring time on the Place St Catherine/Sint-Katelijneplaats, Brussels, May 2007.

A modern house makeover

A bout of fluey colds forced us to forgo our usual Friday evening cocktail and dinner and instead stay in to watch mindless TV. We didn't hold out much hope for entertainment but sometimes there are gems out there in Friday night TV land. Clinton Kelly the host of the US version of "What Not To Wear" was making over his house in the Connecticut hills.
A makeover show, decorating a house, critiquing someone else's taste - what's not to like? But wait it gets better - it's a modern house, better still a 1969 house with odd shaped rooms, wood ceilings and distinctive windows. It's like my house (although nowhere near as gorgeous of course).
The really great thing for me was that he used the elements that I've been toying with for the master bath: wood paneling around the tub; 24x17" tiles on the walls (that look remarkably like the Porcelanosa Ferroker tiles we used on the boys' bath floor) and mosaic on the shower floor, giving me an idea of the final look for our space without spending any money.
And we got to see someone else gagging in disbelief at the price of home renovation. Priceless. Watch the repaeat if you can, otherwise the Hartford Courant has photos and a Q&A session with Clinton.

Lighthouses: not just for keeping ships off rocks

Honestly how cute is this? These replicas of Huntington Lighthouse sit atop the street signs in the incorporated village. We were living here for about a year before I first noticed them, which gives you an idea of how aware of my surroundings I am. My excuse is that they are fairly high up and I know the roads so I don't need to look at the signs, but still...
They slightly bug me because they aren't functional in any way. I think they should have little doors at the back so birds can nest in them, but they are purely decorative. Not much use as foghorns either, rather like the original which is still silent since it's latest malfunction.

Manako Floor Lamp

For quite a while now we've been looking for a lamp to go in the corner of Steven's office. He is always complaining he never has enough light in there but he hasn't liked any of the obvious solutions, like better task lighting.
Then I got an email from Room & Board this morning that featured this beautiful Manako floor lamp made of mango wood. It seemed to be just what we were looking for. But a click on the "room views" made me think that the proportions would be wrong for the space. This thing is huge. It's also $699 + $79 delivery so it wouldn't be happening anytime soon, but I still think it's a gorgeous piece.

Not quite peak

We seem to be a lot later than usual getting to the real autumn leaves display. This year the season has been the warmest on record and despite the frost last night only some dogwoods and the oaks are changing color. The maple by the bridge is still vibrant green. Normally it would look like this:

.

I'm really interested to see how long we will go until we get to the peak, I don't really believe it's autumn until then. Of course a week later when all the trees are bare I think it's winter.

Auguste Heckscher's Winter Cottage Sold

Just gone "Under Contract" after months and months on the market, industrialist and real estate magnet Auguste Heckscher's winter cottage in Huntington Bay is a gem.
For all lovers of old houses here's a chance to peek at the original detail work. Check out the bridal staircase in the front entry of this piece of Huntington Bay history before it disappears from the listings.
A little extra family history is available courtesy of the NY TImes February 7, 1907.

A change from the usual autumn colours

White hydrangea bouquet in the foyer.



The fall color on the trees is just about at its peak here, so I got these gorgeous white hydrangeas that have just a hint of green in them. That way the cut flowers won't compete with the red, orange and gold in the yard. Pretty.

Schmap

You'll have to excuse my ignorance but I'd never heard of Schmap until this morning when I received an email letting me know that one of my Flickr photos had made it to the shortlist for the fourth edition of the Vancouver guide. Even if the photo doesn't make the final cut it's cool to know someone liked it.
We were in Vancouver, Canada in August 2006 for what proved to be the final trip out of the USA to renew our visas. The US Department of Immigration Services requires legal immigrants leave the country to get their visas renewed. Some people go back to their home countries, but we hadn't applied from our country of citizenship when we originally came here and that complicated things. The US Government has a pragmatic solution for people like us: a quick trip to Canada or Mexico.
We had only a few weeks to renew the visas and we intended to go to Montreal or Toronto or Quebec City to get the passports stamped but the wait time for an appointment at the US consulates there was 8-10 weeks. So we looked to see if there was an earlier slot anywhere else in Canada or Mexico. We were really lucky to get a 8AM slot the following Monday morning in Vancouver. We flew out at the weekend, made the appointment and eventually got the stamp. And we had one of the most enjoyable vacations in a great city to boot. I would move to Vancouver in a heartbeat, the scenery is unbelievable, the food is wonderful and Canadian people? It's a cliché but they are so nice.
Here's a link to my Vancouver slideshow. I won't spoil the possible surprise by singling out the submitted photo. But you can guess if you want to. Here's a hint: it's not this one



Enjoy.

Window Replacement: what I know now

The trauma that the owner of casacaudill (a fellow houseblogger) is going through with her windows reminds me of the months of anguish we went through three years ago when we were replacing our windows: sleepless nights, contractor bids, disbelief at the price, more sleepless nights.
Before we bought the house we knew that we would have to replace the failed double paned windows that were so fogged you couldn't tell if it was rainy or sunny outside and the huge single pane, single hung windows in the dining room, den, study and master bedroom if we were to keep warm in the winter.
We tried to get rough estimates before we bought the house but it proved impossible. My best guess, as everything had to be custom, was $40,000 for all the windows, triangular, square and rectangular. As soon as we moved in I had contractors come and quote. It turned out that no one likes to install windows - not enough profit. Most contractors walked in, looked around and disappeared, no quotes there. One only wanted to install vinyl, and I couldn't do that to this house. One told us we needed to get Marvin windows, but he would only install Andersen or Pella. One wanted to remove all the siding to install. I was seriously freaked out they would reduce my house to a pile of redwood planks.
Then there were the design problems. Marvin could do the custom sizes we needed cheaper than the other two big window manufacturers and their product seemed better but Town Code meant we couldn't put single hung windows in so we spent a lot of time coming up with a solution that would be the same on the exterior but would fit code. Having everything architecturally correct was very important to us.
In the end we did get a quote for everything and it was almost exactly my guestimate figure. But a few months in the house had opened our eyes to what else had to be done and the thought of spending that huge amount of money just on windows was making me sick. We decided that we would replace only those windows that absolutely needed it: 2 8"x3" fogged double paned windows over the garage, 2 4'x 3" in Steven's study that let water cascade in when it rained, a cracked 4'x4'window that a bird flew into the day we moved in and 8 6'x4' single pane, single hung windows.
We decided we would replace the other windows as and when we needed to. This year we put in a new tempered glass window in the boys' bath as we remodeled that space.


This seemed like a great solution at the time but three years on, I'm not so sure. We are still having window issues, a few of the old windows have started to fail: there are signs of moisture in the basement windows (above) and in the master bedroom; a couple of others had rot that was treated but they're now draughty and they don't operate well; we are still having trouble with design of the 6'x8' replacement window in the den (below). The cost of Marvin windows has gone up, as has the cost of labor. The fallback in real estate prices makes me nervous about return on investment so I'm reluctant to do more than I have to.



The price that originally made me feel sick now seems more like money well spent. Our heating and airco bills have been lower since we had the large windows replaced and I appreciate the quality of these windows. From the outside it's almost impossible to tell which are original windows and which are the replacements. Any issues we had with the windows were to do with the installation and not the windows themselves, so we will be even more careful about choosing a contractor in the future.
We will have to replace eight windows probably next year or the year after and I wish I had done them all at one go so I don't have to worry about them now. Hindsight, it's a wonderful thing.

$50 solution*

*Plus NY state tax
OK, Hands up. How many of you thought we'd spring for ceramic tile in the powder room? And hardwood flooring? Anyone for bamboo? Anyone?
Yep, you don't know us at all.
The problem is dependency. I would have loved to have spent $300 on slate-look porcelain tiles but that would have led to the whole "but the powder room and kitchen floor have different height/ different colour" discussion/argument.
Let me walk you through it: Eventually - schedule 2008, now possibly 2009, more realistically 2010, we will remodel the kitchen. The kitchen floor has a sub-floor of marine ply-wood that makes it higher than the the dining part of the kitchen and the powder room. If we replace the nasty carpet we have to ensure the two heights are the same when we remodel the kitchen, otherwise someone will not be happy. Plus, if we lay ceramic tile today, will the same tile be available in 2009 or 2010? Unlikely. Doing one project properly depends on another project.
So to avoid a costly "That looks like s**t mistake", we are making the best of it and going with a temporary or "band aid"* solution. That would be the cheapest fix we could find. And the winner is? Carpet. A remnant at $49. Who would have thought I would contemplate carpet in a bathroom?
I hate it, but I am going to have to live with it - hopefully only in the short term.

*The carpet remnant is beige and it looks like elastoplast/bandaid, too.

Rats

'Tis fall, and 'tis the season for wildlife. Some people hunt them, me I just try to keep out of their way. This autumn though I've had close encounters with raccoons, chipmunks and field mice but today topped all that. Waiting for me when I came into the drive with the dogs after our walk was a dead rat. A very large flat, dead rat. I tried to convince myself it was a squirrel but no, the tail was very unfluffy.
I knew we had had rats in the garage when we bought this house, there was a big hole in the wall and the smell of rat urine was overpowering, but I could see no droppings or other physical evidence that they were still there, certainly not an actual rat - alive or dead.
This corpse was about 75' from the house and had obviously been run over by a truck or possibly a steam roller. I didn't bother to take a photo but if you want to see one I can recommend this site where they invite you to CLICK ANY DEAD PHOTO BELOW FOR A LARGER IMAGE. Dead photos. Nice.
The kitties are doing their work to keep the local rodent population down but this rat was at least 8" long, plus tail and that's about the size of Maya. I hope they are up to the job because I don't want to meet any live rats around here. And I'd prefer not to see any more dead ones either.

Do months have colours?

They do in my twisted mind. November has always seemed like a grey month and in that spirit I decided to paint the downstairs powder room a steely grey. The problem is that there are so many shades out there, even if I confine it to Benjamin Moore colors. Another Shade of Grey even has links to gray paints on her website. I was wary of making it too dark because it's a tiny space, I don't like greys with lavender undertones and I thought the blue-toned greys might not go with the faux marble vanity top (I can't wait to replace that baby with the real thing). So in the end I used Benjamin Moore Titanium, a grey with a greenish hue. It's the same paint I put on the dining room walls. And when I say same paint, I mean the half gallon we had left over from that project. I know it says to use the paint within six months but it won't be the first time I've let paint sit for a couple of years before throwing it on the walls, and we have already established I am a cheap lady. It isn't really steely but it looks stylish enough.
The best thing about painting this house is the surprise I always get when I take off the heating grills. The original Las Vegas on Acid 1968 wallpaper will be revealed in a tantalising 8"x6" strip. The half-bath did not disappoint: grey foil wallpaper with black squiggles and beige blotches. Groovy.



And it's a good thing I didn't start this project in October - because that screams pumpkin orange.

Edited to add: I went back into the powder room after the walls dried and the are a great colour. Unfortunately the clean walls clashed with the filthy beige carpet. So I ripped it out. The plan is to redo that floor when we do the kitchen floor, which is looking further and further away and I am definitely not living with a disgusting carpet or with carpet tacks for the next year or two. Sooooo a solution will have to be found pronto.
At least it's Friday and we have all weekend to think of something.

Dwell's Kitchen Blog

For those of a modern persuasion who are contemplating a new kitchen there's a new resource on the internets. Dwell magazine has launched a kitchen blog. Posts in the past week include Porsche kitchens for guys (although I've never thought of a Porsche as a particularly manly car) and a list of showrooms where you can test drive appliances before you buy them. Now that's a good idea. Ideally, though I'd like to borrow them for a month to really see if they work. I have the feeling I will be spending way too much time on this site getting plenty of ideas for spending way to much money on our kitchen remodel.
Making it all about me, there's also a tech blog that features my new duvet cover from CB2.

Candy stash

What's the first thing you do on the morning of Hallowe'en? Throw out last year's candy rejects, that's what.
I found a stash of Necco wafers and nasty fake chocolate bars lurking behind a case of espresso pods in the pantry. Who eats Necco wafers anyway? The trick or treaters picked them up, shuddered and put them back saying "Not these, they're disgsuting". Maybe a little impolite, but I tried one and I had to agree. Yuk. Perhaps it's an acquired taste. I must have thrown the rejected candy into the drawer and just forgotten about it. Rather than risk mure disdain from the neighborhood kids I pitched the whole lot into the garbage. Man, I hate waste.
I wonder if there's anything interesting behind the case of coffee beans. Like money.

How $$$$$ much?

Here's a little segment I'll be calling "You have to be freakin' kidding me", subtitled "Denial: How some sellers are bucking the downturn in the housing market".
This pretty gatehouse went on the market this week. It's an "exclusive" which I've learnt means "Anyone else would be embarrassed to ask this much for this house, so let's keep it our little secret". People who really want to sell list their houses on the Multiple Listing Service (MLS) of Long Island so they can reach as many potential buyers as possible.
So anyway, it's gorgeous, but is it $3,000,000 gorgeous? $3,000,000 is a staggering amount for a house that is on a busy road. Right on the road- you can see it in the photo. It is technically a waterfront property but you have to dodge the traffic on that road to get to the water. And there's a lot of inventory in the Village right now. Although it isn't the most expensive or even the most ridiculously priced, the square footage per dollar ratio is pretty high. Zillow has it valued at $1,053,332, although their values don't necessarily sync with the real estate prices here. I mustn't forget either that the real estate market is local and the value of any house is what the buyer pays for it. So maybe while other sellers are dropping the asking price, this one is correctly positioned to attract buyers. Good Luck to them. I'll let you know if it sells.
And I have to give them props for going for the straight $3 million. None of that messing people around with a faux-bargain $2,999,000. Kudos.

My sofa on ebay: update

The live auction ended yesterday on the modular Harvey Probber sofa, the one that is just like mine, only orange not pink and vinyl not fabric. It sold for a whopping $7,500. That's more than twice the auction estimate. A few years ago you couldn't give 60s and 70s furniture away, now it's becoming prohibitive to collect. Oh well. I'm neither planning to get rid of my pink beauty nor buy another one.

Not that I'm cheap

But it's been so mild this October, and I had to run the air conditioning at the start of the month (that nearly killed me), that I'm trying to get into November before we put the heating on. It hasn't been a problem until today when the temperature inside dropped to 64F. The weather is set to get warmer again on Halloween so I'm just going to tough it out. After all, we didn't have central heating when we were kids and we survived. And it's environmentally friendly. Right?