A set of lovely painted scrolls from Balinese painter, Ida Bagus Rai?

Our basement is still chugging along. In fact, we've made some great progress since our last update.

Here are a few photos of where we're at...

Grace's new obsession is Alvin and the Chipmunks (sigh).  I have to admit to a certain fondness for the Chipmunks when I was her age and begged my parents to play that crazy Christmas song over and over and over again.  Now that I am a parent, I feel their pain.

The only thing that has made watching this movie more than once even slightly bearable is a powerful, sexy presence in the film.  Every time this presence comes on screen, I perk up and squirm to the edge of my seat, my eyes fixed on the screen.

I'm talking about Dave's bungalow neighborhood.

After six years, we feel like we've reached the tipping point.  As of this winter, every single room in our house has had SOMETHING done to it.  They may not be finished, but we have messed with every room in one way or another.  Including....

...the basement.

The basement was really a last frontier of sorts, the repository for everything we didn't want to deal with or wanted to keep away from Grace.  We used to make it the last stop on house tours so we could say, "And HERE is what the house looked like BEFORE we did anything."  It was effective in eliciting gasps of amazement from visitors who congratulated us on our bravery/masochism/stupidity for taking on such a crazy project.

No more, my friends, no more.

Regular readers of the blog already know that I am a big, BIG fan of Fine Homebuilding. (And that I have fantasies of baking them muffins and showing up at their headquarters as a ploy to get them to autograph my Sawzall in silvery ink. Yeah, I'm crushing bad.)

Why are they so awesome? Practical and easy-to-read technical information on a well-designed website. A healthy respect for homeowners who like to use quality materials and who are interested in value over trendiness. Writers who got their hands dirty as craftspeople BEFORE they became writers. One of the best moderated and helpful forums (Breaktime) on the 'net to turn to for help and advice. Yeah, Fine Homebuilding is the gold standard in my opinion.

They've reorganized their Remodeling content into one clean and sleek section, which is happy news for those of us who are more about remodeling than building from the ground up.

They've also incorporated excellent guides for:

• Volunteering Your Homebuilding/Remodeling Skills
• How to Go Green at Home
• Advice for Small Homes!
• And more!

Just like last year's holiday gingerbread project, our little cookie house has become a metaphor for what is happening in our real house.

Right now, the top floor and front of the first floor are toasty warm and lovely.  But the back two rooms on the first floor?  Since we are still smack dab in the middle of the porch and basement project?




Big gaps in the walls.  Freezing.  Enter at your own risk.

Earlier this week, I began a scanning project for the ephemera left behind in the house. I would love to post the results both here and on the LifeInProgress blog, but can't. The software for the LifeInProgress blog is better suited to entries with multiple photos and is more efficient. So, if you are interested in that project, you might want to keep checking in over there or on our Flickr feed. Thanks all!

It was exciting to open up my email this morning and get a note from Beth in Chicago (researcher par excellence, obvs) who has tracked down the identity of our vintage baby announcement family.  And the story, as it unfolds, is pretty cool.  I've omitted some of the more personal information she found.

After receiving Beth's note, I did a little digging around regarding Paul M. Ressinger.  Here's what I found:

Wow.  I haven't used the word "boredom" for a looooooong time.  I believe that the last time I used it was before we bought this house, and it was certainly before Grace was born.  Therefore, after four days of an enjoyable stay-cation, after having finished scrubbing the basement floor on my hands and knees, and after having purged BOTH bathroom built-ins of expired over-the-counter medications, I was at a loss for how to entertain myself when Aaron offered to take Grace to an indoor playground.  Leaving me all alone.  Alone.  Alone without any work (that needed to be done indoors or could be done in weather colder than 43 degrees Fahrenheit.) 

What's a Type A girl to do?  I had already caught up on all of my episodes of Glee.

This is one of my Design for America students, Mert Hilmi Iseri, and his solution for getting kids to clean up their rooms.

Forget kids!  I WANT TO DO THIS!!!

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Over Thanksgiving, we had to quarantine ourselves because we all came down with the respiratory virus from hell.  Grace recovered faster than her miserable parents, so we were desperate to keep her entertained while we tried to catch up.

Enter:  the simple machine.  Phooey on all those fancy, schmancy newfangled plastic toys.  When we were young, we played with pulleys, inclines, levers, wheels and gears, AND WE LIKED IT.  No, actually, we liked it.  Simple machines are fun!

I was reminded of my pulley playing childhood in a barn in Ohio when we got back from visiting friends in Woodstock.  They have pulleys in their playhouse for lifting things from the floor to the loft.  Since we just finished the back porch, perfect for a new pulley!

Materials:

- 1 pulley from a hardware store
- 1 ceiling hook
- Some clothesline
- A bucket
- A small carabiner (optional)

Total cost: approximately $10 (we got all of this stuff cheaper at our local hardware store)

It is actually amazing how entertaining this is to kids of all ages.  Before the weather got cold, Grace wanted to be on the porch all of the time, putting toys and animals in the bucket, sending them up and down, taking them out again.  If she is anything like I was as a child, she will graduate to trading secret messages with friends, taking orders and delivering snacks, and sending her future hamster for an elevator ride (sorry in advance, future hamster!)  Later on, we'll use it to lower a beer to Dad after he mows the lawn.  That was all the encouragement Aaron needed to rig it up.

Voila!

(cross-posted at Life in Progress)