Bees in my bonnet
Jul. 11th, 2006 12:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gwynOr, more accurately, yellowjackets in my eaves. I swear to god it never ends, this homeowner shitlist. On the 4th I found out my kitchen window was broken, and have been avoiding getting it fixed because I wanted to spend the couple hundred that will cost to repair on something I would actually like to buy for the house, like a new light fixture for the step-by-step relighting project of all the rooms in the house. Then the other day my neighbor called to tell me there were bees in the corner of my house, closest to them. I couldn't tell if they were really bees, in which case, fine, I love bees and have happily coexisted with bumble nests in my eaves before. But I looked more closely this morning, and they are yellowjackets -- which, not fine, as they are aggressive and on top of that, I'm allergic to their stings.
I don't even have any Benadryl in the house anymore, let alone an Epi-pen, I haven't been stung in so many years. Me and the insects get along just fine round here. But then this morning I heard this weird clicking sound coming from that corner, and figured it was them. When I called pest control, they said that yep, clicking is a distinct sign of yellowjackets. Sigh. So, a couple more hundred dollars down the tubes, on top of the $600 or so last year the rats required me to cough up. It just never stops. I know it's not fun to live in crappy apartments, but at least you have someone to blame and force into repairing things. You don't have to find $6,000 for a full copper repipe or a couple hundred every other week for stupid things going wrong with your house. I know having a house is a good thing, it's just easy to forget that when it's going to hell in a handbasket.
Anyways. On Saturday,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
alexfandra and I went to Snohomish, a little town out in the foothills of the north Cascades, and strolled around looking at the antiques and eating in a lovely little cafe and browsing the used bookstore. The weather was quite hot, but it was still a wonderful place to mosey along in.
I'd never been, even though Alex has many times, but my interest was piqued when I saw an ad in a local magazine for a store called Bungalow Basics, devoted to Arts and Crafts, and Mission-style, home furnishings and accessories. I'll never be able to afford a real Craftsman bungalow (oh, how I wish -- the Eppes home on Numb3rs is like my dream house), but my favorite design style is Arts and Crafts, and Charles Rennie Macintosh is my fave designer of that era. I spent hours happily looking at his stuff in the Glasgow Museum one Sunday afternoon, and my biggest regret was that the Macintosh house wasn't open when I was there, nor were the Tea Rooms. I really need to get back to Glasgow so I can visit all the sites. The things I've been buying for the house lately are a mix of '60s era stylings updated for today, and Mission and A&C-style, very early 20th century designs. I think mixing eras can be really cool and doesn't make a style seem too uniform, gives a room unexpected pop.
They probably don't fit with my little tiny shoebox house, but I don't care. I like the styles, and I love the new popularity of oil-rubbed bronze, so I'm accumulating things that I like and trying to design around them. I even bought a beautiful tile of the famous Macintosh rose that I want to have the kitchen remodel designed around, whenever that happens.
My shameful truth: A few months ago, when I started repainting the interior and redoing all the window treatments, I became addicted to HGTV (Home and Garden television). I can't stop watching shows like Get Color, My First Place, Design on a Dime, Sensible Chic, reDesign, Designed to Sell... and most of all, Curb Appeal. I want to be on Curb Appeal more than anything in the world -- the outside of my house sucks, and I don't know what to do to make it better, and they bring in a designer and they help you spruce up the facade and front landscape of your house, and OMG I want that so bad. But every time I click on the "Be on HGTV" they are not taking people for that show -- I'm not even sure the show is still in production. Nonetheless, I can't stop watching this channel, and it has given me so many ideas and so much more knowledge about things I can do.
This was why I had to go to Bungalow Basics, and check out the things I could plan to buy at some point. I regaled poor Alex with all my HGTV-learned ideas and the things I want to do, and am trying to encourage her to tackle some rework on her house so I can live vicariously. I have so many things to do and that I want to do, I sometimes can't sleep at night. I know part of it is a reaction my sister's death: if I obsess about this stuff, I won't obsess about her. And she would have loved all this, which makes it both comforting and also really, really sad, because I have no one to tell about all this stuff. We could talk home furnishings for *hours*, literally. But at least Alex likes house stuff too.
We also got to go to a lot of stores that the people she usually goes with won't let her go into, and eat at a place she's always wanted to try. One of the places has a lot of old gas station pumps and product signs, as well as new reproductions, which is totally my kind of thing (anyone who's seen my kitchen knows this). So, I bought a frivolous, silly purchase of a Ford Mustang clock with a blue neon ring around it for my garage. Sis_r and I had a Mustang when we were young, and the pony car has always been my favorite, so... it seemed fun. I know it was wasted money in a lot of ways, not to mention the cost of electricity to have the neon on all the time, but I love the eerie blue glow emanating from the garage at night.
And today, I have vowed that I will try to write at least 100 words every other day on Measure of a Man. I don't feel like writing, it's very hard for me to do, but if I make myself at least do one tiny thing a day, maybe I can finish the damn thing.
I don't even have any Benadryl in the house anymore, let alone an Epi-pen, I haven't been stung in so many years. Me and the insects get along just fine round here. But then this morning I heard this weird clicking sound coming from that corner, and figured it was them. When I called pest control, they said that yep, clicking is a distinct sign of yellowjackets. Sigh. So, a couple more hundred dollars down the tubes, on top of the $600 or so last year the rats required me to cough up. It just never stops. I know it's not fun to live in crappy apartments, but at least you have someone to blame and force into repairing things. You don't have to find $6,000 for a full copper repipe or a couple hundred every other week for stupid things going wrong with your house. I know having a house is a good thing, it's just easy to forget that when it's going to hell in a handbasket.
Anyways. On Saturday,
alexfandra and I went to Snohomish, a little town out in the foothills of the north Cascades, and strolled around looking at the antiques and eating in a lovely little cafe and browsing the used bookstore. The weather was quite hot, but it was still a wonderful place to mosey along in.I'd never been, even though Alex has many times, but my interest was piqued when I saw an ad in a local magazine for a store called Bungalow Basics, devoted to Arts and Crafts, and Mission-style, home furnishings and accessories. I'll never be able to afford a real Craftsman bungalow (oh, how I wish -- the Eppes home on Numb3rs is like my dream house), but my favorite design style is Arts and Crafts, and Charles Rennie Macintosh is my fave designer of that era. I spent hours happily looking at his stuff in the Glasgow Museum one Sunday afternoon, and my biggest regret was that the Macintosh house wasn't open when I was there, nor were the Tea Rooms. I really need to get back to Glasgow so I can visit all the sites. The things I've been buying for the house lately are a mix of '60s era stylings updated for today, and Mission and A&C-style, very early 20th century designs. I think mixing eras can be really cool and doesn't make a style seem too uniform, gives a room unexpected pop.
They probably don't fit with my little tiny shoebox house, but I don't care. I like the styles, and I love the new popularity of oil-rubbed bronze, so I'm accumulating things that I like and trying to design around them. I even bought a beautiful tile of the famous Macintosh rose that I want to have the kitchen remodel designed around, whenever that happens.
My shameful truth: A few months ago, when I started repainting the interior and redoing all the window treatments, I became addicted to HGTV (Home and Garden television). I can't stop watching shows like Get Color, My First Place, Design on a Dime, Sensible Chic, reDesign, Designed to Sell... and most of all, Curb Appeal. I want to be on Curb Appeal more than anything in the world -- the outside of my house sucks, and I don't know what to do to make it better, and they bring in a designer and they help you spruce up the facade and front landscape of your house, and OMG I want that so bad. But every time I click on the "Be on HGTV" they are not taking people for that show -- I'm not even sure the show is still in production. Nonetheless, I can't stop watching this channel, and it has given me so many ideas and so much more knowledge about things I can do.
This was why I had to go to Bungalow Basics, and check out the things I could plan to buy at some point. I regaled poor Alex with all my HGTV-learned ideas and the things I want to do, and am trying to encourage her to tackle some rework on her house so I can live vicariously. I have so many things to do and that I want to do, I sometimes can't sleep at night. I know part of it is a reaction my sister's death: if I obsess about this stuff, I won't obsess about her. And she would have loved all this, which makes it both comforting and also really, really sad, because I have no one to tell about all this stuff. We could talk home furnishings for *hours*, literally. But at least Alex likes house stuff too.
We also got to go to a lot of stores that the people she usually goes with won't let her go into, and eat at a place she's always wanted to try. One of the places has a lot of old gas station pumps and product signs, as well as new reproductions, which is totally my kind of thing (anyone who's seen my kitchen knows this). So, I bought a frivolous, silly purchase of a Ford Mustang clock with a blue neon ring around it for my garage. Sis_r and I had a Mustang when we were young, and the pony car has always been my favorite, so... it seemed fun. I know it was wasted money in a lot of ways, not to mention the cost of electricity to have the neon on all the time, but I love the eerie blue glow emanating from the garage at night.
And today, I have vowed that I will try to write at least 100 words every other day on Measure of a Man. I don't feel like writing, it's very hard for me to do, but if I make myself at least do one tiny thing a day, maybe I can finish the damn thing.
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no subject
Date: 2006-07-11 08:24 pm (UTC)And fie on the yellowjackets! It's true, owning a house generates an astonishing amount of busywork (and a mighty lot of bills, to boot.)
no subject
Date: 2006-07-12 05:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-11 08:28 pm (UTC)savedfixed and some new problem always seems to be right around the corner waiting to mug you. (I wanted to be on Ground Force America in the worst way, but no such luck.)no subject
Date: 2006-07-12 05:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-11 08:35 pm (UTC)I can't wait to see the clock. Alex had told me about it, and it sounded very cool.
And definite good luck with the yellowjacket. I will say that it took forEVER for my landlord to do anything about the nest that was in the eaves of the roof right over my balcony a few years ago--but at least I didn't have to pay to get rid of them.
no subject
Date: 2006-07-11 08:44 pm (UTC)Is your broken window single or doublepane?
no subject
Date: 2006-07-12 05:16 pm (UTC)OTOH, I know I could never go back to renting, at least an apartment, anyway. Having people around me like that... not sure I could handle it again.
no subject
Date: 2006-07-12 05:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-11 09:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-12 05:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-11 09:42 pm (UTC)However, I do mitigate my costs by buying Lowes and Home Depot gift cards off of ebay at a reduced rate as well as 10% and 20% off coupons for those two stores (being mindful of the scammers with no/low feedback, of course). I spent over $2,000 last month at Home Depot, and it was nice to walk away with the $400 savings in my pocket from a 20% off coupon which cost me $5. Not to mention using a $500 gift card that cost me $465, putting another $35 in my pocket.
Can't help you with pest control, though. I'd imagine that having 3 dogs in my house and 2 cats outside helps to keep the critters at bay.
Your garage is stunning, though. And the color blue you chose is very striking.
no subject
Date: 2006-07-12 05:22 pm (UTC)Sometimes I just want a break -- but I've got the yellowjackets, the plumbing, and then a remodel/addition ahead of me. And I'm sure something else will break in the meantime!
no subject
Date: 2006-07-12 12:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-12 05:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-12 05:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-12 07:04 pm (UTC)http://www.signindustry.com/neon/articles/2003-03-01-RC_ThreeNeonMythsDispelled.php3
Yay, me!
Date: 2006-07-12 07:12 pm (UTC)Of course neon's become more popular in the last few years, but we'd stopped going shopping just for the sake of shopping by that time.
no subject
Date: 2006-07-12 04:04 am (UTC)*makes me mildly "ex-homesick"* =D
no subject
Date: 2006-07-12 05:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-12 06:06 am (UTC)My house is 13-years-old and I feel as if I'm *constantly* plunking down money to repair something. Just last week it was the water line where it taps off the meter. Naturally this happened while I was out of town for two weeks. The leak was small enough to remain underground and unnoticed, but big enough to more than triple my usual water bill. Nice.
But I will admit, the things I loved most about the house when I first bought it are the things I love most about it still: the garage (with its automatic garage door opener), the kitchen and the fireplace. I've contemplated moving, but I'd hate to give them up.-g-
Good luck with the yellowjackets.
no subject
Date: 2006-07-12 05:33 pm (UTC)Yeah, i would have a hard time moving. There's a house near here that I fantasize about buying if it ever goes up for sale again, but it would be impossible now, with the new garage and the backyard work.