The man behind the curtain

No, he's not the wizard of Oz, but you do have to be some sort of wizard to take a house from this...

...to this...

...while sticking to the timeline and the budget, and dealing with crazy clients talking about barn wood floors and jellyfish chandeliers without even batting an eye. I've had a lot of questions about who the mysterious GC is that has been running the show here, but I wanted to make sure to get his permission before using his name on the blog. Now that everything is said and done and we are beyond thrilled with the results, I want to give a huge shout-out to Jeff Clark of Giraffe Design Build.

The man behind the curtain stove

Jeff was a pleasure to work with. He's a true professional who did things right and didn't cut corners - something would bother him and he would fix it before we even noticed it. Moreover, he's an honest and ethical person who we came to trust and just genuinely like. I miss chatting with Jeff now that he's not stopping by anymore to take care of the punch list!


Other people we heart:

Of course I have already mentioned Steven Varnum of Caddis Design, the house genius who drew up the plans for Turtle House. Steven is an absolute gem. If you live in SE Michigan and need some design work done, I give him my highest recommendation times a skazillion billion. Just scroll up and look at those before and after pictures again, people.

We also had interior design help from Mandi Wise at Oyl Design, Ltd. Mandi has a great eye and picked up on our style/aesthetic tastes before we were even aware of them. She was a huge help with light fixtures and paint colors in particular, and if it weren't for budget constraints I would still be paying Mandi just so I could hang out with her at the paint store because she's rad.

There were other subcontractors we were impressed with, but many don't have a web presence so I can't provide links. In particular, we loved working with our carpenters, electrician (Jeff Grubbs at Jaaco Electric), and painters (Al Ayala and team). The flooring installers (David and Rick at Lakeland Hardwood Floors) deserve special mention for taking our insane pile of barnwood flooring and basically turning it into a work of art. Not to mention being super nice guys. If anyone reading is local and wants contact info for these folks, hit me up!

(This post has been sitting in "Drafts" for ages and is looong overdue!)

Black hole

Nearly a month without a post! I only have two words of explanation (and they aren't "black hole")... FIELD SEASON! This is what I'm up to for the foreseeable future:

Actually that is an old pic from a summer field season. I am currently much more bundled up (it's March in Michigan after all, even if it is unseasonably warm). But see how happy I am in a swamp? I know, I'm not right in the head.

Gratuitous yet adorable salamander photo from yesterday:

Hopefully back to report more progress on house projects once I rinse off the mud. Until then, happy spring!!!

And the little one said "roll over"

Let's just say you could fit a LOT of little monkeys in our bed... which finally arrived yesterday! We ordered this bed from Naked Furniture in Ann Arbor, and it took FOREVER to get here. As in, we ordered it December 10. We were told at the time that it should be ready in 5-6 weeks. So after 7 weeks with no news, I called... and was told it would be another 7-10 days. So after two more weeks, I called again... and was told it would be another week. Seriously?! The delay was extra annoying because we've had boxes of clothes shoved in our closets all this time, since the storage bed doubles as our dressers. It turned out some component of the bed was back-ordered - but it would have been nice to get a call informing us of this fact, instead of calling and calling and having no idea if the thing would ever actually show up. That said, it took so long that we just about have the credit card charge paid off, ha!

Oh plus, it's amazing.

I can't tell if I just got used to the "mattress on the floor" set-up, or if it really is ridiculously enormous... Now I walk into our room and it's WHOA BED in my face.

We spent a bunch of time yesterday getting the boxes of clothes unpacked into the drawers, but I figured no one really wanted to see photos of my sock drawer. We also mounted the bedside lamp/tables that I posted about a while back.

I think they look great on either side of the "window." Which, by the way, allows me to pop my head up in the morning and do some bird-watching from bed. This morning I spied some common mergansers by our dock.

Here's the other side of the room, where we've stashed a rocking chair that actually belongs to my sister. We still need to get a proper cushion for the little window seat between the closets.

Anyone who has known me for at least 25+ years will recognize the pair sitting in the window... Tigger and Erica! You can tell by the level of bedraggled-ness how much I loved these two as a kid.

And speaking of cute pairs, here's a gratuitous shot of the boys. Elmo apparently thinks the carpet is just as comfy as his bed...

...However, they both agree that we clearly need to order some Doggy Steps so they can enjoy that ridiculously large bed.

Road trips and dining room tables

What, those two things don't automatically go together in your mind? Just us? Haha.

I gave a talk yesterday morning at a conference way up north. (Being in Michigan, I have a state-mandated requirement to illustrate this by showing you my hand and pointing to my middle finger middle knuckle.) Brandon came along, and since we were kinda close to Traverse City (pinky fingernail... "close" was relative), we thought we'd head over there to check out dining room tables at Woodland Creek Furniture. I mentioned them in a previous post about our ongoing quest to be real grown-ups with dining room furniture. Specifically, I'd seen this barn wood farmhouse table that I was dying to check out in person.

(Photo from Woodland Creek Furniture)

Well we did check it out, and unfortunately I have to say... I wasn't in love. In person it is MUCH more rustic than it looks here - which maybe I should have guessed from the rest of the Woodland Creek website (seriously, check it out). They have very neat stuff, but it's much more log-cabin than our style, which definitely blends rustic with some more contemporary elements. I just wasn't sure that it would work with some of the other things we have going on in the space. </pretendingtobeaninteriordesigner>

Anyway, happily,Woodland Creek has an associated company/showroom for us non-log-cabin-dwellers. Hooray! It is called Ur Houzz and it was full of many things I wanted to buy. There were two potential tables, and I should have taken photos because I can't find a good representative photo on their site. The first one was another farmhouse style, made from reclaimed wood, and painted with a distressed finish (in whatever color you want!). This is the top, but I'd just get simple square legs instead of the trellis style:

(Photo from Ur Houzz)

Actually now that I look at that again, it may not really be the same at all - because I think the ones we saw had much wider planks on top. Blog fail! Anyway, this of course set my head to spinning about colors... I hadn't even considered a painted table as a possibility, but these were really beautiful. I'm pretty sure I woke up out of a dead sleep on the way home, snapped my head around to look all bug-eyed at Brandon (who was driving), and said "OMIGOD THE TABLE COULD BE PLUM." To Brandon's credit, he kept driving and didn't look at me like I was a psychopath.

The other possibility - which has been floating around in our heads since the beginning - would be a slab table. I just think these are ridiculously gorgeous. My main concern is that we already have so many different types of wood going on, with the floor, beams, counter... would it be too much? Oh also they are like a million dollars.

(Photo from Ur Houzz)

But seriously.

And just to add to the confusion, here is one additional possibility that my BFF Craig found for me on his list. This is an unfinished farmhouse table made by Amish Chic Furniture (I know, awesome).

(From the Amish Chic Furniture Photobucket site)

This particular one is sold, but they can build another one in a couple weeks and finish it however we'd want - and it is significantly less $$$ than any of the other options. In a sad little twist, their warehouse is about two and a half hours away from here in a town we drove through yesterday. But of course we didn't know that at the time. Sigh.

Here are a couple more photos of their tables that other people have bought - a natural finish, and a darker stain.

(Both photos from the Amish Chic Furniture Photobucket site.)

Super pretty, right? Not reclaimed wood (at least I don't think so), but local, so that's a plus.

I am still thinking that in any case I'd like to get a bench for one side, and then Parsons chairs for the other side and the ends. I'm still in love with these, but trying to decide on a table before I commit to ordering them...

(Photo from Overstock.com)

So what do you guys think? Painted farmhouse table? Or a dark stain to match the beams, counter, and chair legs? Or scrap the farmhouse table altogether and go with a slab? Decisions! As a reminder, here's what we're working with now... so any of these would be an exponential improvement.

Oh deer!

In the backyard this a.m... Don't tell Brandon, he's already worried enough about his as-yet-hypothetical garden!

I know they're wildly overpopulated and ecologically disastrous, but they're still darn purdy.

The stank

This may have been the longest break between blog posts since I started this darn thing back in July - but there hasn't been much to report! I've been buried in work (actual job work, not house work) and a little sick, so progress on projects has been minimal. And to be honest, it's been pretty fantastic to just be living in the house rather than working on it nonstop. Brandon did make some great progress today on organizing the spare bedroom (a.k.a. random junk room) upstairs, so I will have to get some photos of what is turning into a neat little music room. This may even motivate me to get the trim painted in there... maybe.

Anyway, none of this has to do with what was a monumental event this morning: I showered in non-stinky water. Why on earth was I showering in stinky water, you ask? Because that's what was coming out of the shower head. And the sink faucets. And into the washing machine and dishwasher. UGHHH. It didn't smell at all when we first moved in, but within a couple weeks it went pretty rapidly from "a little sulfury" to "gag-worthy rotten egg geyser farts." Let me tell you, a shower in Old Faithful does not leave you feeling so fresh and so clean clean.

So what's a girl to do? Obviously turn to the best research tool on the planet, Google (just kidding EMU undergraduates who may one day enroll in my classes! Haha! Funny joke!). Anyway, "the Google" told me that the stank could be emanating from one of two sources: either the well itself, or the hot water heater. Being the scientist that I am, I designed an experiment.

H₁: The stank is emanating from the well.
Prediction: The stank will be present in both hot and cold water.

H₂: The stank is emanating from the hot water heater.
Prediction: The stank will only be present in hot water.

Experimental Design 1: Sniff water of various temperatures.
Results: Cold water: NO STANK. Hot water: WICKED STANK.
Conclusion: H₁ rejected!

Peer reviewer: But what if the stank is indeed emanating from the well, but in such a form that it must be heat-activated??

Experimental Design 2 (follow up study): Obtain non-stanky cold water; place in tea kettle and heat on stove.
Results: Stove-heated water: NO STANK.
Conclusion: H₁ re-rejected! Take that, peer-reviewer!

So after I sent the results of my study to Science, I looked into how to fix stanky hot water heaters. Turns out that hot water heaters contain an element called a sacrificial anode, which is typically made of magnesium or aluminum and keeps the hot water heater from rusting (and is also a terrific name for a rock band). However, it also somehow provides excellent breeding conditions for a harmless but stank-producing species of bacteria that releases hydrogen sulfide gas as a waste product. Everything I read about this problem said something along these lines: DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES REMOVE THE SACRIFICIAL ANODE IT WILL VOID YOUR WARRANTY AND RUST RUST RUST OMGRUST YOUR HOT WATER HEATER WILL PROBABLY EXPLODE AND FIRE AND BRIMSTONE WILL RAIN DOWN AND YOUR HOUSE WILL COLLAPSE INTO A GIANT SINKHOLE OF DOOM AND SADNESS.

So then I called the guys who installed the hot water heater, and they say all nonchalantly "oh yeah, we see this all the time with well water - we'll just come out and remove the sacrificial anodes. No prob." ?!?!?!!!?  I expressed my concern to them about the rust and the brimstone and sinkholes and all, but they said that they would cover the warranty (instead of the manufacturer doing so) and that this was really the only guaranteed fix (they told me zinc-containing anodes, which some websites had recommended, only fix this problem about a third of the time). And I just could not handle the stank anymore, so over they came, and out went the sacrificial anodes. So here we are on Day 2 of flaunting the #1 rule of Fight Club hot water heater maintenance. But you guys, that shower? It was amaaaaaazing.

Brilliant ideas that weren't mine

When my parents visited a couple weeks ago, my mom mentioned that it would be really helpful to have some kind of shelf or storage unit by the pedestal sink in the guest bathroom. I had never thought of this, and while I love the sink, I subsequently noticed that guests' toiletry items were either balancing precariously on the narrow sink edge, or were migrating over to the windowsill. Not the most convenient arrangement for tooth brushing, face washing, makeup application, etc.!

I pondered this for a bit, because I thought something big and clunky on one side of the sink would make things look crowded.

Then the other night it popped into my head to see if I could find a glass shelf that would match the other bathroom accessories we'd picked out (as an aside, selecting things like towel bars, tp holders, and robe hooks may have been the ultimate "I have never given a single millisecond of thought as to what style of this item I would like in my house... and now I have to pick 'em out" moment in this whole process; see also: light switches, doorknobs).

Luckily for me, the bathroom stuff we ended up picking (the Gatco Jewel Collection for those who are curious or care more about tp holders than I do) has a matching glass shelf. Even more luckily, it fits perfectly on the wall by the sink! Sign me up.

The shelf arrived today, and I armed myself with a tape measure, level, and pencil to figure out where it should go. We just finished getting it installed, and I think it looks great! It is not too intrusive, matches everything else, and should make things a bit easier on guests.

Just for fun, here's the little nook you see as you enter the bathroom. Brandon's had this small wooden shelf his whole life, and it fits perfectly and is a great spot for guest towels, candles, and a few decorative items (the odd little bowl at right was a $5 treasure found on one of my Junk Hunts with Kit). Sorry for the odd angle - this nook is completely impossible to photograph without some kind of periscope camera attachment.

The second brilliant idea actually WAS mine, but someone beat me to it. I've posted previously about the fact that we're waiting for our new bed to arrive, and that it's a storage bed with drawers in the sides. It's going to be a great space-saver (not to mention that we won't have the dog-fur-tumbleweed problem going on underneath since it sits right on the floor). However, it means that we can't use regular bedside tables since they'd block the drawers. I'd considered using floating shelves (like these from IKEA) instead of tables, but thought they might be a bit crowded with lamps, cell phones, water, tissues, etc. Then I thought to myself, "self, wouldn't it be cool if there were such a thing as a combined wall-mounted swing-arm lamp plus shelf/table?" Well sad to say I am not the next Thomas Edison (although maybe I'm onto something with the periscope camera attachment??)... but happy to say that I found just thing thing I was looking for!

(image from Wayfair)

The ones I bought (with a gulp and a small apology to my credit card) have white lampshades instead of the dark color shown here, and were $107 a pop. They had great reviews though, and arrived today and seem very well made. They also look pretty cool! I'd love to get them up on the wall and share some photos, but we want to wait until the bed arrives so we can be sure to locate them in the right place for groggy snooze-button hitting. Once the bed comes (hopefully in the next week or so) I'll report back with photos!