Not My Style

Twenty one years ago, we bought a "fixer-upper" house. We're still fixing.

The good news is that it's starting to show. We spent years with a house full of kids, and I'd rather send them to camp and take them on vacation than get new flooring. Now that the "baby" is halfway through high school, though, we have a bit more time and money to put into the house.

I've spent a lot of time in home improvement stores, furniture stores, thrift stores and between the pages of decorating magazines. There's always good ideas to be found, but there's also those things that, no matter how many times I see them or who recommends them, I just don't like.

Don't take offense if you like every one of these things. I'm not saying that you're wrong. I don't think there is a "wrong" except in matters of morality. And, I'm very clear that I'm the one out of step. Nevertheless, none of these things gets me excited in any way.

1. Throw Pillows

I know; I can tell you all the reasons that they "warm up a room," how easy it is to "switch out your look," why people like piles of them on their couches, beds, floors - I just don't like throw pillows. They're uncomfortable; the first thing I do when I'm on a piece of furniture that has them is take them off. They just don't serve any purpose for me. The family room set I own now came with co-ordinating pillows, and the only time I've ever used them is when I'm sleeping on the couch; they're big enough to be used for my head. Otherwise, I toss them on the floor.

I remember learning how to make throw pillows as a kid. I enthusiastically made a bunch of them - and gave them away. I liked making them, I liked how they looked - I just didn't want them.

And don't get me started on cost! Good gravy! I once said something very unpleasant out loud when I saw a $245 tag on an 8x8 pillow.

2. Carpet or Rugs

This is more an aversion to their upkeep than to their look. I hate vacuums. HATE them. They are roaring monsters marring the peace of my home. Plus, they usually kick up enough allergens to make me deeply miserable, even the expensive ones with HEPA filters. And carpet needs vacuumed all the time. You can barely breathe on a carpet or rug without needing to clean it. Yuck! From an allergy and asthma sufferer's viewpoint, there is no way to get all the irritants out of carpet, even shampooing it. More yuck.

My dislike of carpet probably solidified in my last house. It was a darling house with a great layout - except for one thing. The living room and dining room were combined (a "great room"), and carpeted. I had two toddlers when we moved in. There is NO WAY to keep carpeted dining room floors consistently clean with toddlers. Even ordinary foods like crackers were a nightmare. Don't get me started on yogurt. Yes, I tried plastic mats. Have you ever met a small child who keeps their mess on the mat?

When we bought our current house, we almost immediately started ripping out the carpets. There was no way in the world that I wanted over two thousand square feet of carpet.

People thought we were crazy. After we put vinyl floors in our children's bedrooms, they really thought it. My niece reported to her mother, in puzzlement, "They put kitchen floors in the bedrooms." We got lots of questions as to why. We heard lots of, "Won't it be loud?" After many years and accidents involving diapers, vomit, smashed fish tanks and spilled nail polish remover, I am happier than ever that we put in the vinyl. On carpet, it would have been a nightmare. On vinyl, we used paper towels and were done. The worst was actually the polish remover, which ate a few tiles. We took those out and put in new tiles - done.

I also heard lots of, "But you're laying down rugs, right?" No. I did not rip out carpet to put in rugs. "Won't it be cold?" and "Don't you want softness underfoot?" puzzled me. No and no.

We have vinyl, laminate and wood. Eventually, all the hated carpet will be gone. Hallelujah.

3. Candles

I like the theory of candles. I like making candles; when I was a kid, my mom bought several candle molds and big slabs of wax, and we made lots of candles. We kept some, and we gave a lot as gifts. I love the look of candles. I like having them for emergencies. I just don't like burning them.

My friend Linda explained this succinctly: "Of course. You're a parent. All you see is an open flame."

That sounds nice, of course, but I didn't burn them when I was a kid. When I was in my teens, my brother worked for a while at a candle factory. That Christmas, we all got candles. Mine was gorgeous; it had seashells embedded in it, and a scent with a name like "Windswept Seashore." When my brother came to visit about four years later, it was still on my shelf. "You're supposed to burn it!" he said.

My sister gave me taper candles and candlesticks for my first Thanksgiving with my husband. She was terribly disappointed to hear that I put them on the table, but didn't light them. "You were supposed to have a candlelight dinner!" she said.

My son just found an Advent candle, with 24 marks on it, that someone gave me as a gift years ago. I've had it so long that the side of it that faced the window has faded to a very pale pink from its original cardinal red. "You're supposed to burn it!" he said.

I like the look of it when I go to people's houses and they have masses of lit candles for a party. I would just never do it myself.

Maybe it's the fact that lovely candles end up as misshapen lumps after you burn them. Maybe it is the open flame. I don't know. I think they're great; I just don't burn them.

4. Artificial Scents

My youngest has never met an artificial scent that she doesn't like. Perfume, air freshener, incense, potpourri - she loves it all. She would live in a constant cloud of it if she could. When I told her over-scented self that no one should be able to smell her perfume unless they were hugging her, she said, "What would the point of that be?"

Even when I enjoy a scent - those cinnamon scented pinecones at Christmas, for instance - I don't want to live with it. It's too much. It's like having a favorite song playing 24 hours a day. Pretty soon, it's not your favorite any more.

"Mix it up!" "Get one of those fresheners that changes scent every two hours!" "Get the lighter, more natural scents." "You'll love this product!" I've heard it all. I do not want products with scent in my house. I don't like them.

I'm not crazed about it - I don't ban scented soap, cleaning products or my daughter's perfume - but I don't seek them out. I'm just not interested.

5. "Stylish" Anything

I cannot stand articles or individuals who tell me about the value of being stylish or "keeping it fresh" or "updating your look." If it is in style today, it will soon be out of style. I am not going to constantly replace my stuff because what's popular has changed.

Besides, why in the world would I decorate with someone else's taste? I do not understand what I call Conviction By Consensus - "Other people think this; therefore, I think this." It just looks like Groupthink to me, and I don't "get" it.

Of course, I was once told that it was "self centered" of me to make decorating and food decisions based on the idea that "I like it." To choose something merely because I enjoyed it was viewed as a very bad thing. "It's like you're saying that you're better than everyone else."

Um - NO. I'm saying that I'm living my own life - decorating my own house, eating my own food, and, while we're at it, choosing my own clothes, entertainment, etc. You are living yours. Do you ask me to choose your furniture? Your clothes? Do you ask me to decide on your meals? Movies? Anything? No? Then why in the world should I put what others think about that paint, sofa, book, meal or hairstyle over my own taste? I choose to have things, people, events in my life if they make me happy, not if they make you happy. You get to choose for you.

Just by chance, it appears that I've chosen trendy kitchen cabinets for my kitchen remodel. They're white, which the magazines tell me is in fashion. People with lovely hardwood cabinets are being urged to paint them white in the interest of updating and brightening their homes. I like white cabinets - I like white anything - but I also like wood.

The magazines also tell me, repeatedly, that clear acrylic chairs are perfect in a kitchen. They "visually open up the space" by not being bulky or heavy looking. This is true. Still, I hate them. I am not fond of anything sleek or futuristic looking. I generally do not like shiny, either.

The magazines also tell me that mismatched chairs, dishes or silverware are charming. I am fine with that; I don't mind matching, but I don't need it either. Those same publications, though, tell me that the fact that my refrigerator (white), dishwasher (stainless steel) and stove (black) do not match is tacky and makes things look disjointed. So, mismatched chairs = OK, mismatched appliances = bad? Sigh. I can't get into that mindset.

This is why I don't shop with other people.

Don't worry, I'm not thinking terrible things about you if you have throw pillows on your acrylic chairs in your white cabineted, carpeted, scented room. I probably admire a great deal about your rooms. And your clothes. And food.

Just please, don't get bent out of shape if we do things differently.

Renovation

Eighteen years ago, we bought a big, sprawling fixer upper house on a quiet street. It had six bedrooms, three bathrooms, and a family room. I hoped that, since most of the living would go on in the family room, the living room would always be company ready. HA HA HA HA! (Never happened.) It needed everything - paint, carpet, new windows, you name it.

Here's what it looked like at the beginning of this summer:

The original owner had added on to a house that was originally four bedrooms and two bathrooms, adding two more bedrooms, a bathroom and a family room. He was a building inspector who wrote his own permits and signed his own inspections; nothing in the addition was up to current building codes. The plumbing runs on the outside of the walls (as did the Romex cable for the bedroom light fixtures). The bedroom hallway has a little 1 1/2 inch step between the original house and the addition - just enough to be annoying. One bedroom no longer had a window, since the addition was added onto the wall where the original one had been. The studs are 24 inches apart. The joists run the opposite direction from those in the original half, so no ducting (for instance, for a furnace) can run from one half of the house to the other. The family room is paneled in plywood, with no drywall underneath, and the only source of heat was a wood stove. (The upstairs master bedroom also had a stove for heat.) The addition went 10 to 12 inches over the kitchen window and an upstairs bedroom window, so looking out of those windows, you looked at the wood used to construct the addition. There was just enough space - about half an inch - between the wood and the glass, so that it was constantly full of whatever blew in: grass, feathers, dust, just general crud. In the family room, the two large "windows" were made of sliding glass door panels, turned sideways and glued into the wall.

There's more, but you get the idea.

We bought it from the original owner's son and his wife. The wife hated the house. She actually tried fairly hard to talk us out of it. "What will you do about this?" she asked, dragging us through the house. "And this?" Pointing to the overhang over the windows, she demanded to know how I'd deal with it. I shrugged. "Right now," I said, "I'll hang curtains. Later, we'll replace the windows." All of our paperwork on the sale said "AS IS" in capital letters.

We didn't take any photos of that. We should have, but we hated it so much that we really didn't want to immortalize it.

"How long do you think it will take to fix all this?" people asked. "Twenty years or so," we'd say. They'd laugh, thinking we were kidding. We weren't.

We're fast approaching twenty years. We're not done yet, but oh, the progress.

The first thing we did was redo the children's rooms. We painted, made new curtains, and ripped out the carpet to replace it with vinyl. I hate carpet. I will happily sweep, daily, if needed, but I can't stand vacuuming. Plus, carpets get dirty far too easily. They're not recommended for asthmatics or people with allergies, and that's me and roughly half of the rest of my family. People thought we were crazy, but over the years those floors have seen diaper accidents, vomit, broken fish tanks and other incredible messes, and they all cleaned up with damp paper towels. On carpet, it would have been a total nightmare.

We started replacing the windows next, sometimes one or two at a time, once in a batch of 4. The old, single pane windows were so awful that the curtains blew in the wind even when the windows were closed. With the new ones, the house was warmer, less drafty and prettier. We replaced the front door and one of the sliding glass doors. We ripped out more carpet, replacing it with parquet and vinyl. We painted indoors, but not outdoors. We wanted to replace the siding, so why paint? When we replaced and resized the windows with the overhang, I did the happy dance. I was giddy for months. Frankly, I'm still giddy when I think about it. We replaced the sliding glass door panels glued into the walls with actual windows, and I was beyond giddy. They open! They close! They're amazing!

We installed a wall heater in the family room.

We replaced the roof, which was so bad that it had begun to leak. I was so delighted with my new roof, especially when it rained or snowed.

We had a small deck off of our bedroom, with stairs going down to the yard. It was made, nearly as I can tell, with untreated lumber, because the decay rate was tremendous. Plus, it grew moss - moss! In the desert! The last time anyone walked on it, years ago, their foot went straight through the wood. We barred anyone from even thinking of walking on it.

We had holes in our siding and our roof to accommodate the chimneys from the wood stoves (which we had to tear out, as they're now illegal in our county). We had flaking paint, peeling wood, birds nesting in the rafters... it was a mess.

One of the many incompatibilities between myself and my husband is in our decision making processes. For me, the only reason to contemplate any decision is to make it and act on it, preferably quickly. Why even consider something if you're not going to DO anything? For my husband, the entire point of a decision is to consider all the possibilities. He loves considering the possibilities, often for years (and years). Making and acting on a decision actually makes him quite stressed out. He worries that: 1. any decision might be the wrong one, and 2. once you act on something, you have "cut off all the possibilities." When we're done with something, I am always relieved and delighted. He always feels at least a bit let down.

Imagine trying to balance this dynamic while making home repair and remodel decisions. He cannot imagine why I spend all of my time trying to eliminate possibilities. I cannot imagine why he can't just DO something and stop endlessly discussing it with no action in sight. As long as a project remains undone, in progress or even in total chaos, he is soothed, knowing that he could, in theory, do any one of hundreds of things. As long as a project remains undone, in progress or in chaos, my anxiety level goes up and up.

We ran into this problem while making decisions about the outside of the house. We weighed doing things ourselves vs. hiring pros, vinyl siding vs. hardboard siding vs. stucco, chose contractors that went out of business, turned down outrageous bids, weighed varying options for financing such a large purchase... it took years. YEARS. And years.

I mean, come on. Does that look even habitable to you?

Finally, decisions were made, contractors hired, and we got our last window and two doors replaced, the deck rebuilt, and stucco put on the house. It was not a moment too soon, in my opinion.

(Yeah, that's the plywood. Eventually, it will be replaced. Right now, there are bigger fish to fry.)

It looks gorgeous. Our neighbors have all complimented us. "What are you doing to your guys's house?" one 20-something neighbor wanted to know. "Are you moving?"

"No," I said. "We just got tired of looking at it."

I cannot describe how delighted I am with the results.

We still have to paint our front door and garage door, but that's small potatoes.

And my deck! Look at my deck!

After having the yard covered in scaffolding for most of the summer, I'm now in serious outdoor improvement mode. By the time winter hits, the yard should look pretty amazing, too. Here's our new fire pit, and the new chairs my husband made. Yes, marshmallows have been roasted.

For 14 years, this fountain has had no, well, fountain attachment. The original one, a spitting fish, mysteriously walked out of our front yard. This little frog recently replaced him. I'm happy every time I walk out the door.

And just for good measure, here's a shot of my iris, shot this spring, and my daylilies, which are recovering from the trampling the stucco guys gave them.



Yes, indeed - life is good.

How Does Your Garden Grow?

     We have finally hired professionals to do some long overdue work on our house - trust me, there will be essays, with photos, devoted to all those details. Right now, though, I want to talk about my garden.

     I knew that my plants would be trampled by workmen. They were putting stucco on the house, which necessitated scaffolding, which was up for weeks, and a lot of foot traffic right next to the house. It was important enough that I was willing to sacrifice everything in the two beds next to the house. I didn't even plant my vegetable beds this year, since they're against the back of the house.

     I was right - those two beds were trampled almost to oblivion. My yucca and two worse-for-wear chamomile plants survived. There's no trace of my daylilies or of my yellow and gold lantana. My lamb's ears survived, but they're pretty matted down.

     I knew it was coming, so it wasn't excruciating to let go. It's sad, and I'm hoping that some roots survived to send up new shoots. If not, OK. I just planted some annuals, including portulaca, one of my favorites, so it doesn't look too naked.

     I was not prepared for the wear and tear on the rest of my yard.

     Before I say this, don't get me wrong. The work these men did on my home is beautiful. I am very glad; I would have the work done again if given a chance for a do-over. We're happy, the neighbors are happy, and as far as I know, the workmen are happy.

     But for crying out loud, is it that tough to walk on the paths? We have a lot of gravel, since my husband and I are both allergic to grass. We also have quartzite flagstone, surrounded by pebbles. You'd think that walking on, and piling your materials on, gravel and flagstone would be easy. We're not going to whine that your lumber is killing our lawn - we don't have one.

     Why, then, did wood end up in the flower bed, tossed right on top of my shrubs? SHRUBS - I mean, they're tall, they're lumpy - how convenient can it be to set your stuff on top of them? Now my shrubs are matted and broken.

     I don't know what these shrubs are; they're something that tolerate poor soil and low water and produce lots of blue flowers that attract bees. I bought them because they were on end of season clearance years ago, 2 for $5. (I bought 4.) Still, I love them, and they're clearly not a walkway.

     Areas that were clearly flower beds, filled with blooming things and edged in stone, became thoroughfares. I'm not talking "occasionally stepped in," I'm talking "the main walkway through the yard." My phlox are trampled into the ground.

     Some of my flagstones were broken, I'm assuming while bearing the weight of the scaffold. I'm OK with that. They're not set in concrete or in any pattern, so it's easy to move them around a bit and make it look OK.

     There's gobs of dripped and dropped cement all over everything, though. The workmen cleaned up a lot, I cleaned up a lot, and you can still find it in my flower beds, on my gravel and on my rocks. On the rocks is the worst - you can leave it, or you can expend considerable energy chipping it off. I'm peeling the cement and the plasticized final color coat of stucco off of my spiky yucca leaves.

     Still, there is much to be happy about in my garden.

     My entire theory of landscaping is to make it totally neglect proof. I'm not talking "benign neglect," I'm talking about, "I haven't even thought about you for weeks" neglect. I love masses of flowers (my favorite colors are purple, lavender, blue and white) spilling out of overcrowded beds. I love succulents, vines, veggies and trees. I do not, however, want to baby anything. I hand water once a week; it takes between 15 and 30 minutes. If something can't survive that, I don't want it.

     I know that there are places where you can plant anything, and expect Mother Nature to provide all the water it needs. I do not live in one of those places. I live in the high mountain desert, with snow and low temperatures in the winter and blistering heat and lack of rain in the summer.

     I have four different colors of bearded iris. I love how they look, I love how they smell, but most of all, I love that neglect makes them actually happy. I once had some in between two outbuildings, and I didn't water them for literally a year; they bloomed and multiplied happily.

     In the last house my daughter rented, the landlord wanted a nice looking yard, and my daughter wanted to avoid yard work. I got permission to plant things, and put transplanted iris from my yard in her front yard. My daughter hasn't lived there for years, and the house spent more than a year vacant. We still drive by occasionally, dropping my son off at work. Now, with new owners, little remains of much of the original landscaping. The lawn is gone, the tree is gone, even some of the weeds are gone. Most of the yard is dead. The iris are thriving. Even when the house was vacant, there they were, a bigger and bigger mass, flowering like there was no tomorrow. Their exuberance makes me happy.

     In my yard, we also have grapevines that we frequently have to cut back, Virginia Creeper that is spreading and raspberry bushes that are multiplying. We have fruit and shade trees. I do not water any of them, ever.

     Besides the iris, I have two kinds of sedum, a succulent called "hen and chicks," something blue that I got as a hand-me-down transplant, lilies, daylilies, lamb's ears, honeysuckle, roses, a burning bush, chamomile, phlox, yucca, those shrubs, lavender, several kinds of bulbs, a butterfly bush, yarrow, some corkscrew-looking plant whose name I don't know (the tag said "donkey tails), euonymous bushes, creeping myrtle, two kinds of mums, and strawberries. All those get watered once a week. I chose most not because I adore them, but because they're tough and look great in rough conditions. (My soil, for instance, is not great.)

     I did not count on my hoses being removed from my house during the stuccoing. I also did not count on having limited access to my yard, even away from the house. I am not about to try to cart out a watering can for my entire yard, even if I could reach it all. Nothing got a drop of water for over a solid month. Of course, it's summer, with temperatures in the 90s and 100s.

     Everything looks great. Except for the stuff that was crushed (and I pruned those), you'd never know that anything less than ideal had happened. Even strawberries that had only been transplanted three weeks before the process began are happy. Even the crushed stuff, inclding my poor phlox, is blooming. Not every plant, but certainly every variety that's normally in bloom right now.

     Success! I have mastered the neglect proof landscape! There is, alas, no trample proof landscape.

     To thank everything for looking so great with no water, I watered as soon as the stucco hardened and the hoses could be reattached.