Home, Sweet (and not-so-sweet) Home

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: We’ve all been spending a LOT more time in our houses recently, even for writers who usually work from home. I know several of us have, like so many others, been sorting, cleaning out and organizing. But there’s another thing I’ve noticed after being in my house for approximately 130 of the last 150 days. It’s imperfections. Like spending just a leetle too much time with your spouse, a beloved residence starts to reveal all sorts of annoying quirks when you can’t get away one in a while.

For me, it started with my desk, which I’ve been using for literally years with no complaint. In the past, of course, I’ve also been able to work at the dining room table, in the kitchen, at the university or at our local library. The last two are obviously right out, and the accommodations we made for having four people working and attending classes at home meant everyone got his or her own space. So I’m 100% at my desk. Which, I discovered, is too damn small for me. Papers piled up on my computer tower. Reference books and notebooks slid from the desk to a small table I dragged in, and spread across the parlour. And then of course, there’s Neko, who feels beholden to sit at my left hand while I work, making it impossible to put anything else on that side of the desk (she’ll just knock it on the floor.)

I solved this issue with the generous help of my friend Victor Wakefield, who cut a furniture grade piece of plywood to perfectly fit between the bay windows where my desk resides. I gained an extra two feet of surface, and now the cat and I can both use the space. Hurrah!

Another irritation I twigged to was the back door, which screeched like a banshee whenever it was opened - and as soon as the weather gets warm, it’s opened a lot. It also stuck against the door jamb, probably due to a century plus of slightly uneven settling. (We can all relate to that, I’m sure.) After a month or so of screech-stick-screech, my dear Guest Son took matters in his own hands, and I opened the door one morning to discover it swung freely and silently. He had taken it off the hinged, planed down the bottom a few millimeters, and oiled all the metal bits up before reassembling it. Brilliant!

Lately, it’s been the front porch. Why didn’t I notice the paint was so old and so boring? Wouldn’t it look great in a checkerboard pattern? We’ll see if I can find some kindly Samaritan (or shanghai’d child) to upgrade it for me.

How about you, Reds? Have you experienced any non-House Beautiful Hmmmm moments while sheltering (and sheltering and sheltering) at home?

LUCY BURDETTE: For me it’s our screened-in porch. We’ve been living out there since bringing Lottie the Havanese puppy home. House-training rules mean you’re supposed to reduce the space a new dog  lives in so she begins to realize it’s her den too, and thus doesn't pee and poop everywhere. Since we’ve been out of the house (all four of us often!), I have also noticed the most annoying sticking of the porch door. And the smell of toxic mothballs wafting up from underneath--John put them there to discourage woodchucks and skunks moving in. So yesterday we had a nice man come and fix both of those issues--wheee! I don’t want to look around too hard at anything else for fear we need more repair people…

JENN McKINLAY: I don’t even know where to start! I live in a frat house with three man-boys. There is not one room in my petite 1959 ranch house that doesn’t bug me on some level. Some need painting, others need upgraded doors, and several need new furniture. I stick to my writing corner and ignore everything but the newly remodeled kitchen (ignore the dishes in the sink!) and the swimming pool - my two bright spots. I have a feeling it won’t be a fully realized pretty house until we get ready to sell it. (sigh)

HALLIE EPHRON: Sticking sliding door to our garden was driving us all nuts… I scored a can of WD-40 at the supermarket. Jerry applied it and wiggled the door back into its proper rut in the track, and voila. Smooth gliding and silent. 

What drives me nuts is the bushes in my garden. I can only trim them as far as I can reach. So they’re fat round balls with cowlicks sticking up the top. Hoping I can get our local tree service come and do a major all-the-bushes trim in the fall. 

My happy place is my little office which is the only room with a/c. 

RHYS BOWEN: No complaints really, apart from my garage which is full of STUFF. I try not to go there: bags for Goodwill, boxes of books for the Friends of the library, shelves stocked with paper towels, toilet paper (even before the pandemic), canned food etc that John can’t resist stocking up on. When I sent my son in law a picture of our pristine garage in Arizona he texted back “Who are you and what have you done with my in-laws?”

NOT actually Rhys and John's garage.

I’d love to do more to my garden, have bright pots of flowers within the enclosed patio area but I’m not going to risk Home Depot. 

We rarely use that patio down under the balcony but now it’s the perfect place to entertain in the shade where visitors can be suitably distanced. Normally it just has a swing on it. But I located our old patio table and chairs, scrubbed them all down with bleach until they look good, found a round table cloth and voila: nice little area to sit and eat.

I’d love to put a gazebo up on our hillside, but for now I’ve sent for a wooden bench to put up there: another place we don’t think of during our usual busy summers but now looks really inviting. I’m hoping to persuade Dominic to build me some kind of shelter up there.

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN:  On day 2 of the pandemic, we bought a new freezer and put it in the basement. (I actually give it a love pat every time I walk by. Good going, I say. You stay cool.) On day 5 or so, I ordered barn red Adirondack chairs for our front porch, and two weathered gray tables. We’d never sat out there before, preferring to stay around the pool in the back, but now it seems like seeing the world go by (or not) is more important. We have breakfast out there, sometimes and also go out late, every night, with the last of the wine, and look at the stars. (And then I saw an article in the WSJ that said something like :Front porches are back.)

Hank's office in The Before Time

My office is a crazy place. It used to be perfect. Now it’s an insane maze of wires and lights and plugged in stuff. Two Ipads and a phone and a laptop, plus my desktop.  And a little basket of lipstick and earrings and mirrors  for last minute Zooms. Gah.

DEBORAH CROMBIE: The first week of the pandemic, we cleaned out our stairwell closet. I tackled a few cabinets in the kitchen, the main thing being my big corner double lazy Susan, which was HORRIBLE.  And in May, I did venture out with my mask a couple of times to the garden centers, and was really enjoying the patio and deck and porch. But, now, meh. It's just two big watering stints a day, and hoping the plants make it through August so we can enjoy the autumn.

As for the big fix-it projects, we desperately need a new downstairs central A/C unit, solar film on the sun porch windows (that's TEN big windows), and ditto all new blinds with blackout lining. (All due to neighbor taking down the huge tree that shaded our backyard.) But these are all big ticket items and I don't really want to tackle them in a pandemic--not to mention that two of the three require having people in the house, still a big no-no here.

JULIA: All right, dear readers, it's your turn. What new or old thing about your house has started working your last nerve over the last five months?

Does size matter? Relax, we're talking houses.

JENN MCKINLAY

Rainbow over my house!

Hub and I bought our starter home, well, when we started eighteen years ago. We picked it because it was in a good school district, although, at this point the hooligans were still a theory and not a reality, and it had a pool, which was critical for this New Englander in the desert. It's a modest three bedroom home with a good sized yard, but if I need someone I can pretty much yell and be heard on the other side of the house. Yes, this is a plus point for me.

After ten years, we fully intended to sell and move into something larger, not much bigger but with an office for me since I was a paid writer at this point, but then the recession hit. The newspaper where Hub was a music editor folded, and the library where I worked part-time as a children's librarian slashed everyone's hours. Good times. Not. We decided to hunker down and ride it out.

The hooligans thrived and life got crazy busy, hectic with activities for them, deadlines for me, and gigs for Hub. Years passed. We debated moving on and off but something always came up and, quite frankly, Hub and I are both kind of lazy in the whole sorting and packing -- ye gad, we own a lot of stuff! -- department, so here we sit.

But now, we know it's time to get ready to do...something. In a few years, the nest will be empty. Since we move with the speed of a glacier (the ones that cruise at one meter/day not the swiftly melting ones), we figure we need to start fixing up the abode now and we might be ready to sell and make a change when the youngest one escapes us. Why the change? Well, we're both longing to live near water, so we're hoping for an oceanside or lakeside location. But here's the new dilemma - what do we buy next? We have no idea.

Darth Vader bathroom.

We like to rent VRBOs when we travel because you can try on different houses for size, like hats but with beds and junk. On our recent trip to Oregon, we rented a riverside house that was, frankly, ginormous because I got a smokin' good deal on it and we wanted a river view. We're talking three car garage, vaulted ceilings, a hot tub, three decks, a master bath that included a lounge chair, jacuzzi, and a ceiling of skylights that was pretty rad. Oh, and it had another bathroom that looked like it came right out of Star Wars so we made everyone hum Darth Vader's march when they went to the can because why not?

View of the Deschutes River from the deck.

There was a lot to love about the house, like the windows overlooking the river, but there was a feeling that whoever owned it had their self-esteem tied up in it. You know what I mean, those houses that say "look at me I have pots of money" instead of "welcome home". Personally, I will take light and airy, cozy and comfy, over showy and ostentatious every time. Truly, just the thought of walking up and down two flights of stairs to do laundry makes me tired. Needless to say, Hub and I knew right away that while this was a fun house to play in, we have no interest in owning anything this cumbersome. I think deep down we might be Hobbits.


While we fix up our house and get ready to launch the hooligans, we'll keep renting houses to check out places we think we might want to live. So far, Maine and Oregon are in the lead even as we'd like to keep a foot in Arizona. After this last rental, I think the size of the house will have to remain simple, environmentally friendly, and without a toilet that requires a sing-along.

What about you, Reds? What are your thoughts on house size? Are you a the-bigger-the-better type of dweller or a just-enough-space-to-get-away-from-my-people-when-necessary sort?