Gulf-blood

My favorite thing to do in Biloxi was ride down 90 with my nose pressed against the glass, sighing over the old homes and the massive live oaks. Now I'm afraid the place will never look the same again.

Hurricane Camille is legend around here and mentioned often, always the benchmark for comparison. I figured if these old houses made it through Camille, they'd make it through Katrina. But the news reports say 90 percent of Biloxi and the other coastal towns - many even more picturesque - are destroyed.

The Gulf Coast is like part of the family to me. My father's side of the family moved to Mobile County in the 1830s, only a decade after Alabama became a state. Dad was raised outside Mobile, and I have relatives still living there and in Orange Beach. My parents bought the little house on the bay in Biloxi because the gulf is in Dad's blood. You should see him come alive when he gets near there, when he talks about seafood and Mardi Gras.

Dad passed on some gulf-blood to me. I've always loved driving into Mobile and smelling that weird paper-mill odor in the air, and I feel a little shiver when I pass near Citronelle, where my ancestors are buried. Though I've never lived on the coast (we're about three hours north), going there always feels like going home.

I've been watching the hurricane coverage almost non-stop, always waiting for more footage of the places I know, trying to recognize something in all the destruction. Searching for clues to the fate of my parents' little piece of the coast, their little house 10 feet above sea level. One guy from the back bay said his house only flooded a few feet; another said his house was swept away. It's still a great big question mark.

I am grateful because my family is safe. We still have homes to live in and jobs to go to. Electricity, water, air conditioning. We still have our family photos and mementos, if not the furniture and the new riding lawn mower and the curtains Mom made.

But still I hurt because the coast hurts. It's that gulf-blood that does it.

Katrina, Katrina

Compared to the folks on the Mississipi and Louisiana coasts, we are doing just fine. We lost power but only for 11 hours (we live on the same block as a hospital so always get our power back up quickly). We had fierce winds from about 4:30 p.m. till midnight, the hardest wind I've ever experienced. I can't even imagine what it must've been like closer to the coast.



Our house and property are surprisingly unscathed. We forgot to take down our little flag, and the wind bent the metal pole. We tipped the rocking chairs on their sides, and one of them got moved several feet. Several big trees are down in town, but we only lost a lot of branches and leaves. We even had one branch and some kind of antenna sticking straight up out of the ground.

But it's my parents' house we're worried about. They have a second home in Biloxi, Miss., on the back bay. The house is on a slab, not on stilts, because it's about 40 years old. It flooded up to 7 feet in Camille, so we expect similar if not worse damage with Katrina. They just had several thousand dollars of repairs on it in Ivan.

And this morning at their house up here, a giant oak tree toppled over and crushed their new wood privacy fence. My dad's timber near Mobile is also reportedly damaged.

So it's not a good week for my parents.

We were planning a trip down to the Biloxi house for Labor Day weekend, but that obviously won't happen now. Mom and Dad hope to get down there as soon as possible to check out the damage.

Curtains Transformed

Why is it that the perfect kitchen is so important? Even to people like me who couldn't cook to save themselves from getting thrown into a tank full of sharks with lasers on their heads?

For us, convenience was the main reason the kitchen was the first major project we tackled. We had to have a microwave and a dishwasher. HAD TO.

And the kitchen is now in its 10th month of renovation. I'm even to the point of re-doing things we already finished. Like the curtains. Months ago, we put up perfectly reasonable curtains, and I was glad to check that item off the list.

Then the green and white curtains from Anthropologie arrived. I bought them for the bathroom, I swear. But somehow they made their way into the kitchen.

The curtains started out as 96-inch-long drapes with green grosgrain ribbon ties at the top and a ruffle at the bottom. But the ruffle - the cutest part - was hidden behind the table, so I decided to cut it off of each curtain and turn it into a valance for the top of the window. Then I'd convert the top half - with the ribbon ties - into cafe curtains.

I stopped daydreaming about this project and finally did it today while Darwin was gone for a few hours. I took the sheers that were in the kitchen before and moved them to the half bathroom (it's much brighter and less '70s in there now) and to the window in the entry hall that looks out onto the front porch. The 30-year-old sheer curtain that was there before had dry-rotted at the top and was hanging on by a thread. Not a good look.

Then I did some nipping and tucking on the green curtains. I haven't hemmed the cafe curtains yet because I don't have proper rods/rod for them yet, and I want to make sure I get the length right.



Though I liked the curtains we had before, I adore these new ones. They make the kitchen really pop, and they still let in plenty of light. I even have extra fabric if I want to make chair cushions or something.

Maybe I can't cook, but at least now I can look at pretty curtains while I make a tuna sandwich.

Bull Busting

I'm still in Dallas. Last night our company sponsored a party at Gilly's (the mechanical bull bar from Urban Cowboy). No, I did not ride the bull. There were free drinks, but it would take about 100 of them to make me ride a bucking mechanical beast.

I'll probably get home around midnight tomorrow and will doubtless be too beat the next day to work on the house. Darnit! Another weekend lost. But Darwin is halfway through his two weeks of night shift, so maybe I can get some work done in the evenings next week.

I'm eager to start on the countertop tiling. Darwin's friend/tiling expert told us to install cement backerboard, so that's the next project in line, I guess.

We still have some tile-bashing to do. Since I tested out the curved shower curtain rod here in Dallas, I'm wishing I could have a tub that used one. But we'll only have the clawfoot. Oh well, the clawfoot will be worth it.

Hotel Test

I'm in Dallas, Texas, on a business trip, and my hotel room has a subway-tiled shower with one of those curved shower curtain rods that provide additional space in the shower. I love them both! This is at the Hyatt near the convention center if anybody else wants to test it out before committing to a purchase.

Unhealthy Weekend

We managed to do zero work on the house this weekend. I was busy playing with my new camera and baking. Our Eutaw friends planned an "Unhealthy Dinner," and I made a caramel cake for it. I love caramel cake, but my mother always discouraged me from making it because you have to cook the icing. Take that, Mom - I made it, and it was delicious!

Of course, the cake-baking wasn't uneventful. As I was taking the cooling caramel mixture stuff out of the refrigerator, I dropped the bowl and spilled about 1/3 of it all over the inside of the fridge. That was fun to clean up.

Other yummy unhealthy dishes were sausage/brat thingies, spinach-sour cream casserole, green beans with ham, TWO dishes of my personal favorite macaroni and cheese, Sister Schubert rolls, creamed corn, and of course, booze. Yum, it was fun.

On Sunday we attended our nephew's 4th birthday party, where we ate more cake and I took 118 pictures. Have I mentioned I love digital?

The Tile Has Arrived!

True to my word, my picture-happy blogging days are back. I feel like myself again!

Last night, the hex tiles from American Universal arrived. Though we won't be tiling for another couple of weeks (Darwin wants to wait till his tiling buddy is available, but I think we could do it ourselves), I insisted on opening up the two boxes of tiles. I had to check and make sure the order was correct, right? Right?

Once the boxes were open, I couldn't just let the tiles sit there, looking all shiny and appealing. So I extracted a sheet of black and one of white to give myself (and you guys watching at home) a sneak preview of what the countertops will look like.

Voila!



Of course, we don't plan to lay a sheet of black next to a sheet of white. We'll intersperse black tiles in the white and do a black border. I'm undecided on how random I want the black tiles to be. I could do one in the center of each "flower" of white tiles, or I could do them more randomly. Darwin votes for random because the centers would be more black than we'd initially planned.

What do you think, bloggy buddies?

Picture Day

I've been in withdrawal since my digital camera rolled over and died. To get my photo fix, I've been using my film camera (Nikon N60), and I just got back a CD of photos of our recent reno projects. So today let's have a slide show.

The famous dining room project

My test colors, Billiard Green, Dark Mustard and Empire Gold:


The winning color, Dark Mustard:


I like the way it turned out, though the right wall really needs some art. I'll get to that later.

The master bathroom tile-bashing fiesta

Henry likes to help. Don't worry, once we got started in earnest, we shut the cats out of the bathroom, so they wouldn't slice up their little paws like I did my feet and hands.



So far, so good:


A discovery

When Darwin was edging the front sidewalk, he found that the bricks along one side extend further, and he uncovered bricks on the other side, too. Nice!


And now that I've pictured you to death, I have some news. Last night when I went to pick up said photo CD, I got sucked in by the shiny camera display cabinet. My sister, a newspaper photographer, had recommended the digital Canon Rebel, since it's quite a bit cheaper than the Nikon version. I was all ready to buy it until I asked the fatal question, "Why is the Canon cheaper?"

Then the salesperson (a very nice lady) showed me the differences between the heavier, sturdier Nikon with the awesome lens and the Canon. And, being a sucker and an impulse-buyer, I bought the Nikon D70.

I wouldn't have bought it, except they had a 0% for 12 months thing, and I LOVE 0% for 12 months, which is a great deal if you actually pay it off in 12 months (we always do).

I feel a little (ok, a lot) guilty for spending so much money, but it is a terrific camera. And my sister has the same one, so she can teach me all its nuances. And it's the same one the magazine I work for owns, so I'm already familiar with it, and I can borrow the flash and telephoto lens if I need them.

Expect to see photos on my blog again often. And, now that I have a higher-megapixel camera, I hope to take some photos and frame them for my walls. No more empty, artless expanses of Dark Mustard.

Come on, 8 O'clock!

We wore ourselves out this weekend. Saturday we painted the dining room (I took pics with the film camera and am getting them put on CD, so I can show off soon) until we were about ready to collapse.

I spilled paint on the dining room rug on two separate occasions - Darwin was thrilled with me - but fortunately we're planning to replace it with an antique rug anyway. Darwin the obsessive spill-cleaner kept trying to scrub at it without success, and I kept saying, "Stop that! Get back to painting!"

On Sunday, my parents and sister - and friend S - came to lunch, so we spent the morning cleaning mildew off the hall walls and ceiling (mildew, not mold - duh, me), vacuuming and sweeping and Clorox ReadyMopping, folding an enormous backlog of clean clothes, grocery shopping and cooking. We even made the bed.

Then my sis spent the night, so I stayed up late talking.

Today, I am wearing down. For once, I will probably go to bed at 8 o'clock with Darwin. Sleepy time ... ahhhhh. Only four and a half hours to go.

Hex Decision

One decision down, 8 million to go. The second hexagon tile sample for the kitchen countertops arrived yesterday, and the choice was clear. The non-cushioned, thicker 3-inch hex tile from SubwayTile.com was lovely, but when the much-cheaper, cushioned 1.5 x 1.75-inch tile from American Universal arrived, we (and three of our neighbors) agreed that we actually liked it better. The cushioned vs. non-cushioned is such a teeny tiny difference that we don't think it will matter much in the grout-cleaning.



I heard back from the stone people this week also, and the soapstone was going to cost around $2,000. So that's out. In spite of the potential grout issues, I'm happy with the hex tile decision. It's going to look awesome!

So I'm placing an order today. Hurray!

Learn from my Mistakes

I wish I'd known before this weekend what a good workout demolishing ceramic tile is; I could've saved myself the $39 a month for a gym membership. In fact, I'm thinking of hanging a sign on my front porch and charging people to help with the demolition. Learn real-world skills while buffing up your bod! A great workout for the glutes! Yeah!

Okay, maybe not. But I am willing to share my newfound tile-bashing expertise FREE OF CHARGE right here on the Internet. You can learn from my mistakes and have an excellent tile-bashing experience with these easy steps:

1. If you can afford it, hire somebody else to do the work.
2. Oh, you're not that kind of person? Me neither. Guess you better do it yourself.
3. Wait till your husband is outside doing something with a chainsaw, so he won't stand over you and critique your work.
4. Wear safety glasses. Darwin made me wear them, and I'm glad he did because I felt many shards of tile ping off my face.
5. Wear appropriate footwear. House slippers do not count. I've got a bloody shard of ceramic to prove it.
6. Long pants would help, too, if you plan to sit down (I always plan to sit down).
7. Don't try to just bang on the tile with a hammer, like your husband suggests. Pull up the air conditioning vent and begin there or at some other edge area. If you don't have an edge area, well ... maybe a sledgehammer would work? I wouldn't know because Darwin won't let me have one.
8. Use the appropriate tools, which I guess would be a chisel or crowbar of some kind. I decided to do this project on the spur of the moment (I know you're shocked), so after some trial and error we figured out that if you wedge the nail-puller end of one hammer against the edge of the tile and hit the hammer head with the head of another, heavier hammer, the tile will usually break loose. Sometimes you have to bash it about a thousand times.
9. Work on one square-foot area for about an hour because you really suck at this.
10. Take frequent water breaks when you get all trembly from the physical exertion because you are a giant wuss ... oh, is that just me?
11. Finally get into a rhythm and begin bashing out tiles with a fiendish energy.
12. Slice open foot and two fingers with shards of tile.
13. Feel elation every time a tile breaks free.
14. Look at the mess of a floor and try to picture how gorgeous it will be with the new pinwheel tile.
15. Wake up the next day with sore arms and legs (and thumbs and foot), just like after a good workout.

Sounds fun right?

The Seabiscuit of Paint Colors

No one thought he could do it, but he did it! He came from behind, beating out top-ranked contenders Empire Gold and Billiard Green! And who is this surprise high-achieving paint color?

DARK MUSTARD!



All lame horse racing jokes aside, we finally found a color we both (and our neighbor D, who I called in for a conference) liked. On my computer screen, the color is coming across more brown than it is in real life. Here on my dining room wall, it's a pumpkiny color, very nice and spicy and warm.

We determined that the Empire Gold was just too bland next to the red living room and was too matchy-matchy with the furniture, and the Billiard Green was too dark. But this Dark Mustard is just right! Uh-oh, I'm mixing metaphors. Is it horse racing or Goldilocks?

Oh well, the point is we love this color! The only trouble is we didn't know we loved it until I got home and tried the sample on the wall, so we still have no paint to work with tomorrow. Still, I feel joy knowing that the color is chosen.

And since I don't have a working digital camera at the moment, the next best thing (courtesy of the Benjamin Moore Color Viewer 2.0):



In other possibly good news, the guy at the paint store directed me to a company in town that may be able to order soapstone for our kitchen counters! Even if they do have it, we'll have to wait and see about the price. We may still go with the 3-inch or 1.5-inch hex tile on the counters if it's too expensive. By the way, I got a sample of the 3-inch hex in the mail, and I'm waiting on the 1.5-inch to compare.

OK, I'm off to enjoy my Friday night. Hmm, what to do on Saturday now?

Go for the Gold?

This is why you don't make decisions based on Internet color samples. The colors are pretty different on the wall. The gold - the unanimous choice of blog-readers everywhere - turned out to be less rich, less yellow and the green turned out to be darker and bluer, more like a peacock than a green.

I put the gold on the wall first and loved it. Then I put the green on the wall, and suddenly the gold looked bland. But the green is too dark. The red living room is a pretty dark space, so I don't one one giant black hole of darkness.

Or is it too dark? The Victorians believed more important rooms deserved darker colors. So technically it would make sense to go with the green in the dining room and the gold in the hall.

I loved the commenters' suggestion of stripes, but I wonder if that would look too busy in a room with 12-foot ceilings. Those would be some seriously long stripes. Not to mention the added difficulty in painting them. But maybe if it was subtle ... gold and beige, as I think Gary suggested.

When the sample painting didn't produce an automatic winner, I went back to my old Benjamin Moore historic color palettes, and there were some lovely green contenders. Gold seems to be a more difficult color to nail down for the paint-concocters of the world. It can so easily look oogly.

I wanted to buy the paint today so this could be my weekend project, but now I'm thinking I should call the Eutaw Tribunal to come and give their opinions. Then again, maybe I should just "go for the gold."

Dining Room Dilemma

The time has come to decide on a dining room color. I want the dining room to be my weekend project. I warned you I'd need advice on this, and surprise surprise, I do.

Normally, I'm fairly decent at choosing colors. Some might even call me brave because I like 'em bold, and I usually don't hem and haw too much. I've even finally chosen a paint color for my master bedroom (a purpley mauvey grayish color ... clear as mud, right?) when we ever get the closet ripped out.

But this darned dining room is giving me fits. Adjoining the dining room with pocket doors is the lovely dark red living room. So naturally I'd like the dining room color to coordinate with that. But there are other factors to consider, too. Like the dragon green (that's what I call them anyway) fireplace tiles and the curtains that have olive green in them.



The curtains and the tiles don't make a puke-worthy combo because the green in the curtains is small bits, and they're all the way across the room from the tiles. But slap a lovely olive all over the walls, and you'd get some serious clashin' action.

The curtains also contain red (hence the red in the living room) and a lovely gold color that's also found in the upholstery of my new/old parlor set.



I'm considering this palette of colors from the Sherwin Williams Victorian collection:



The rusty red ("Cajun Red") is the color we painted the living room. The gold looks great with green and red, but would it be too much on the wall? The dark green would look fabulous with the fireplace tiles (maybe even tone down the poor things a bit), but would it be too dark and/or with the red look too much like Christmas at the Waltons?

As you can see, I'm quite conflicted. My plan is to buy a quart of Billiard Green and of Empire Gold this afternoon and see what happens when I douse the wall with them. Okay, I might try a little more precision than that.

Anybody got some pre-action predictions?

Checks and Balances

Hurray! In spite of our action-packed weekend, we managed to follow Greg's advice and check off two items on our "to do" list.

Darwin braved a swarm of red wasps to fix the cornice board that fell off a month ago, and I finished painting the kitchen cabinet trim. Okay, I have to say it again - hurray! Now that the trim painting is finished, Darwin can install the rest of the cabinet knobs, and then that will be another notch on the Finished belt.

Also, my lovely green and white curtain from Anthropologie arrived. I intended to use it for the half bathroom, but once I saw it in person I thought it might be too pretty to relegate to a bathroom. Besides, the green kind of coordinates with the two other shades of green in my kitchen (on the cabinets and my shamrock Fiestaware).

I persuaded Darwin to tie the curtain on the rod in the kitchen so we can think about it for a while. We better think fast, though, because these curtains are on sale and might not last much longer.

One concern is that a whole wall of this busy fabric might be a little too ... well, busy. And it would be darker than the sheers we have now, which wouldn't be a good thing. The natural light in the kitchen is one of my favorite things about it. So now I'm thinking a valance in a similar fabric - or maybe even made from the Anthropologie curtain - might be better. A bit of color and interest without blocking the light.

And all this talk about curtains is a stall tactic because I'm afraid to confess what I did at the antique auction. Somebody take away my checkbook, please. I can't control myself. If I went to Willy Wonka's chocolate factory, I would be the one the squirrels dragged to the garbage chute (or the one who the "eggdicator" declared a bad egg ... depending on which film version you prefer).



Shhhh. I bought a matching Eastlake bed, marble-topped dresser with mirror, and marble-topped wash stand. They're beautiful, but the guilt at spending UNDISCLOSED AMOUNT is eating away at me ... especially since I've spent the morning wrangling with the gym people to get out of my contract and in the end still having to watch $90 slip down the drain (p.s. Cory Everson's Fitness for Women is the DEVIL).