What's in a Name?

A Greenbriar by any other name would be a Devil's Thorn.

We've been fighting this thing that we called "Thorny Vine" for the entire 6 years we've owned the property that we're going to build on. This stuff is all tangled up, along with wisteria and honeysuckle vines, in the low-voltage lines running on the utility poles, as well as growing in the gingers and in the fence lines.

It is a vicious beast, wiry, twining in and out of the chain link fence, attaching itself with tendrils and  pushing its way between wooden fence slats, popping up every few inches between the chain link and wooden privacy fences, where you can't dig it out or cut it completely down to the ground. (Although, one kind of wonders what the point of digging it up is, since it is nearly impossible to dig all of it up - and miss any part of the root and it will happily send up numerous new shoots all along it.)

It had gotten completely out of hand once again, so this past weekend, we worked on pulling it down from the lines, cutting it out of the fence lines, and digging it up where we could. Again.

By the time we finished Saturday evening, Roy's arms looked like he'd stuck both of them in a gunny sack with a couple of cats. In other words...baaaaaad. We showered and pretty much slathered antibiotic ointment on his two arms as if it were body lotion. His arms had some long scratches, some short scratches, and a whole lot of vicious-looking deeply-gouged pin-pricks. Some he couldn't even see were across his tri-ceps and elbows.

(I lucked out this time, only hooking a thorn at my heel that I had some difficulty in dislodging. I had the substantially safer job of cutting up the vines into small, foot-long-ish pieces to put in the trash can for automated pick-up.)

On Sunday, at Home Depot, we ran into Noreen, a former colleague of Shelly's from her employment days at Rice. Noreen is a native plant expert among many other things, and when we showed her Roy's arms, her first reaction was "what cat did you get in a fight with?!?!?" When we described Thorny Vine to her, she exclaimed, "oh, you're talking about greenbriar! I hate that stuff! It might be a native, but oooh, it's a miserable plant!"

And therein lies the story behind where the street name of Greenbriar comes from -  it's named after a native plant, vicious in its tenacity. (For those of you who don't live in the Houston area, Greenbriar is a the name of at least two local streets, one that runs along the west side of Rice University and another that is out in the Sugar Land-Missouri City area.)

Amusingly, greenbriar is, of course, a wild edible. We don't intend to try it any time soon.  (Roy poisoned them, again, so we don't recommend you try ours, either.)

On the website, Dave's Garden, a number of folks talk about their personal experiences with greenbriar:

• "A thorny woody climber that must be a close relative of razor wire."
• "I live in the Piney Woods area of Texas, near Woodville. I, too, will probably spend the rest of my life trying to dig the "sticker taters" out of my yard. I hate that blankety-blank vine! I've dug into huge colonies and a few huge individuals, as big as a man's arm."
• "The first time I encountered this plant was several years ago in the Florida Keys. It was like vinyl coated wire with needle-sharp thorns. I had never seen it before, and a neighbor called it "Devil's Bit"."
• "This thing feels like pure evil, it's freaking me out. The vines are super thorny and painful even when they're the diameter of a sewing needle, and the roots have hard spindly curved growths that look very much like claws digging into the earth."

You probably get the point (ha-ha) by now, even if you've never had the misfortune of experiencing greenbriar first hand. 

Bag of pine needles, 1, Shelly, 0

As a college classmate said of his parents to Roy once, "they had a house to live in and a house for junk".


We, unfortunately, resemble that remark. We are, at least, down to just two houses and two two-car garages now. (From July 2010-July 2014, we also had a 10x15 ft climate-controlled storage unit a couple miles away....)

As you can see from the pictures, there is miscellaneous lumber stored on shelves and in the rafters, Elfa shelving, lawn chairs, a dis-assembled 1/2-inch copper pipe trellis/cage we built, etc. You name it, and there was probably some of it in the garage at 5127. 

This past holiday weekend, we worked most of Saturday on sorting through the garage so that it can ultimately be torn down. We shredded the nice bags of leaves down into just a couple bags (good for gardening and our vermiculture bins), sorted things into move to other house and apply (various soil amendments — a whole mini-van's worth!), trash, recycle, or give to Habitat for Humanity's ReStore donation center. Good work was accomplished, and I should have had us quit while we were ahead.

But ... I could see either a bag of leaves or, most likely, pine needles hiding on the floor in the far back corner, behind the decorative door sitting up on bricks (Roy is immediately in front of that door in the picture to the left) and the old utility shelves (on the right wall), and the bikes hanging from the joists (to the left of Roy). And I wanted that bag out of there, and stored with the other bags of pine needles or shredded leaves, wherever it belonged.

Thus began my tug-of-war with that bag, with my arm extended as far as I can reach, while I'm standing side-wise between the door and the shelves, and I'm trying not to knock the door over, which could start a whole lot of bad (see above pictures for different angles of lots of stuff I can knock over if I'm not careful).

Roy pretty quickly said to leave the bag alone, but I was playing at being a stubborn Chicken that day, and I gave it one tug too many. The door wobbled, I grabbed it, but didn't let go of the bag... and in the process, dislodged a piece of the 1/2-inch copper pipe cage that we had built that was up on a shelf above my head and above that bag.

Said piece of copper pipe cage is flung down onto my fully outstretched forearm, with one of the rough-cut ends smacking into that fully-engaged muscle. To say it hurt, well, it's been a long time since something hurt so bad that I couldn't actually say anything. I was stunned. It immediately began to swell, and we can see the complete imprint of the end of the pipe. We figure we are now finished for the day, but we still have to pick up everything from the driveway and put it away, then go home and get showered. As a reward for not screaming bloody murder, I wanted to try out the new ice cream shop in the shopping strip around the corner (La Monarcha for anyone in the 'hood). That's a nice scoop of pistachio ice cream I have there, by the way. We recommend the place (next to Peru Gourmet).

I iced my arm, and iced it some more, taking ibuprofen along the way. All told, I wound up icing it on and off for 3 nights because of pain and swelling. Tuesday night, I braced that wrist, as my arm had throbbed mercilessly all afternoon at work. (Flex your wrist toward your arm and/or type, and you'll see quickly which muscle I'm talking about.)

It looks pretty good today (Wednesday) - the swelling is almost completely gone and I can physically brush across the injury with my fingers and not flinch. Once the scab finally goes away, I'll put Mederma on it for the next 6 weeks or so, since I'm not really excited about having a perfect half-pipe scar on my forearm.

Have I learned my lesson? Oh, probably not. But I will be more cautious for a while, at least.

Raking in the Signups (and How Arcbazar works)

On Arcbazar, a designer is awarded points for signing up for a competition, submitting an entry, and the receiving one of the top 3 places (and perhaps honorable mentions). They lose points if they sign up and do not submit. Plus there is the prize money (our stated award pot), split 60% for 1st place, 30% for 2nd, and 10% for 3rd.

We learned in our first experience with Arcbazar in 2013 that a lot more designers will sign up than will submit, so we're not overly excited (ok, so yes we are) that at only 4 days in, we have 12 official sign-ups and an additional 12 folks who have saved our competition. The 12 "savers" may choose to sign up and submit an entry towards the end of the contest or they may just want to watch this play out.

Not only do you, the client, upload surveys and other measurements, you also upload a specification document(s). We tried to make ours as loose as we could, having learned from our first contest that giving the designers as much leeway as you can will yield you more varied results that might offer you very different and creative solutions.

You can also upload images of styles or rooms you like, so that the designer can get a better feel for what will visually appeal to you and craft their entry to draw you to their submission.

Another neat aspect of Arcbazar is the Wall, where the designers (architects and other designer types) ask you questions that either you neglected to address in your specification or they want further guidance. This Wall is public for all of the designers (and everyone else on Arcbazar) to see during the contest.

So far, we have 3 wall questions: one about materials for the exterior and roof, the next about how we envision the pool room (natatorium) interacting with the outdoors, and the third was just crazy (is there a rear set-back line). The first two were great questions, because we didn't really address them in the spec, other than 51% brick or stone (required by deed restrictions). The reason the third question is crazy is if you have ever seen that property, you know just how deep it is - 160 ft on the east and 186 feet on the west. No way should any building structure get anywhere near the rear line!

The breakdown of sign-ups is all over the world so far: Egypt, India, Montenegro, Nigeria, Philippines, Romania, and the USA. Watchers are in Egypt, India, Italy,  Romania, Saudi Arabia, Slovenia, and the USA.

A New Day Finally Dawns in Our Remodel Saga

The past 2.5 years have been quite the ride for our family. We moved into the remodeled 5206 on May 17, 2014, exactly 20 years to the day after we purchased it as our first home in 1994. We have loved living in the home we always knew it had the potential to be.

It's comfortable, and we've been happy here, but, it doesn't have the Endless Pool.

In June 2015, we celebrated our 25th anniversary with a trip to Alaska, followed within weeks by Roy's layoff from Bluware in July after more than 25 years with them. That fall, we both found new jobs. Roy has loved his, I have hated mine.

In August 2016, with my job again in limbo, we finally decided to just sell 5127 (the 1/3 acre property) as-is and walk away. The foundation of 5127 is very bad and the structures both sit below the surrounding grade on all sides (imagine living in the middle of a pond when it rains hard - where the water has no path to drain as it is in a bowl!). Even the garage takes on water.

However, the market isn't really moving any homes at all right now, and we didn't try very hard to sell....

After some discussion over the Christmas holidays, we decided to resurrect our idea of building a new home at 5127. It has way more land than we currently have - 75% more, to be exact. That allows us ample room for additional fruit trees and larger gardens (both flower and vegetable) as well as a comfortable space for an Endless Pool, and we can have some fun with the home's design.

5127 is an opportunity that is unlikely to come our way again given the scarcity of parcels of land that size in our area. The 1/3 acre to the east of 5127 has never gone on the market in 60 years, as the same family has owned it the entire time. The 1/3 acre to the west has changed hands once.

Which brings you up to current day, February 2017, where we just put the design for our new, two-story home with natatorium up for competition on Arcbazar. We used the crowd-sourcing architecture design website back in 2013 for the potential remodel of 5127 and had fun with it - our previous competition is how we learned about the cat doors that read their microchips, allowing only them into the house and not every cat and possum in the area to come inside. We're hoping for some similar fun and inspiration this time around.

You can watch the 4-week competition as it evolves, but you do have to either sign up for a free Arcbazar account or login via Facebook or LinkedIn.

This is our competition page at Arcbazar: Two-story home with Natatorium in Houston, Texas. 

So buckle your seat-belts, everyone, we're in for a ride for the next couple of years. Once this competition for a design ends, we will likely have to modify the design elements somewhat and take it to an architect/designer locally for all of the actual blueprints needed to build - structural, plumbing, electrical, HVAC, product selection, etc.

We've been through the electrical in detail on 5206, so we're comfortable there, plus the plumbing and HVAC spec will largely be a familiar process to us as well. Whoever we select as the architect in Houston will likely find us with firm opinions on where things get placed-and what those things are. The structural is the biggest unknown, as that plat needs to have its grade corrected and a firm foundation created. We will be heavily relying on experts there.

If you have personal experience with a custom builder in Houston, let us know. There's a custom home going up just two blocks away and we liked our previous builder for 5206. With a project this size, we're definitely putting it out for several bids.

Delays

Although this past week was supposed to be all wood floor finishing, in reality, that did not happen. The weather was so humid last weekend, then it got cold and then it got rainy. They are trying to acclimate the floors to the proper percentage moisture (whatever that may be) and the floors aren't there yet.

So...we don't know how many more days have slipped. An email was sent on Tuesday officially adding a day, but then nothing happened with floors the next 2 days, either, so...not really sure. They know we want to move on May 10. Or, I guess I should say, they know we want to be back in the house by May 17  (which marks 20 years ago that we purchased that house).

Cabinet hardware arrived and has been stationed with each item in the house, but the finish carpenter has moved on to another job...but he met with us yesterday, so he knows what goes where (there are a few oddities in the kitchen - a smaller handle on a base cabinet and horizontal handles on pull-outs). He should be back before the project end date, so no worries there (yet).

The cabinet-maker also met with us yesterday to take a base cabinet that is too big for the island and remake it into a bookcase, since all of the "parts" we ordered from KraftMaid to make a bookcase had finally arrived. All of the replacement parts for the damaged KM cabinets have also shown up, so the final cabinet install (with different contractor) is scheduled for April 28.

Then the granite fabricator will need to develop a template for the island top and get it made and installed. I don't know whether we will make the May 2 handover of keys. We're still hoping.

For those in the neighborhood, sometime in the next few weeks, the exterior will get painted, too. We gave Steven the colors yesterday, and no, neither is any shade of TAUPE (or baby-poop, either)!

On a Moving Forward note: 
We happened to be at the Home Depot Pin Oak store a couple of weekends ago when they were having their annual Rug Event in the parking lot. Having discovered a few days earlier that the Ten Thousand Villages 100% hand-knotted wool Pak-Persian rugs we have are too small for the dining room space (the colors of which were planned around one of the rugs), we decided to look through the appropriately-sized rugs to see if we found anything that we liked - which we did. Here is our new (shh! machine-made, polyester) dining room rug. That is a dining room chair and a leaf from the dining room table on it.

T minus 3 weeks!

As you might well imagine, we have been very busy lately. Jobs, yards, gardens, house remodel.

While the remodel of 5206 was originally scheduled to be completed this coming Good Friday, various delays (weather, damaged product, back-ordered product, delayed ordering of product, expansion of scope, change in island plans) mean that we are about two weeks behind. The latest schedule has us tentatively getting keys back around 5/2.

The first coat of paint is on all of the walls and we are pretty happy with how the colors have turned out overall, once we got the correct Kelvin temperature light bulbs in each location to show off the colors correctly (once light fixtures were installed). All paints are Behr Ultra Premium Plus, though some colors were color-matched from others' paint lines.

Entry way in progress (Biscuit and Rich Navy):

Laundry room in progress, and, yes, those walls are all different colors - laundry should have something to make you smile-the 4 walls are the 3 bedroom colors plus the study color (the wall you don't see in the picture):

Front bedroom (guest room) aka the Garden Room or "Go soak up some happy in your happy green room" (60% Bonsai Tint). This room overlooks the front garden:

The kitchen cabinets are installed, the granite countertops are mostly installed (one section needs to be replaced yet), we have light fixtures every where finally, the appliances were installed last week, and the bathrooms are mostly completed and have plumbing trim outs finished, etc.

This week, April 14-20, they will sand, stain, and top coat the wood floors. We added painting the exterior of the house to the scope once we decided that we were close enough to knowing what color we wanted it painted. So exterior painting will commence the week of April 21 while they finish up inside (and hopefully the kitchen island and granite can get done this week, too) and clean everything up and have final inspections.

Then they will finish coat the room walls, install the washer and dryer, and we can move back in! We're planning to move around May 10, though we haven't yet done any packing. We'll move somethings ourselves (clothes, dishes, etc.) as those are easier to toss in a car and drive down the block that box up.

But, that's where we're at these days.

Timeline update and selecting paint colors

I am obviously pretty far behind on the weekly chronolog of activities and pictures. I've been quite busy, despite not having a client (aka income) since mid-January (thank God I haven't had a client since mid-January!). Anyway, I thought I'd write a "here is where we're at today" post.

The current week of March 3rd is Week 9 of the 14 active weeks of the remodel. (Week 15 is final cleaning.)

Things continue to progress, sometimes several steps forward and a half-step or two backwards. The weather hasn't been exactly cooperative these days - can't lay tile and grout in freezing/near-freezing temperatures in an unconditioned house in the rain, for example.

That said, we have drywall; we have wood and tile floors, with grout applied in several locations even; we have a bathtub and a shower base and much of the tub and shower surround tile has been set; we have interior doors; and we have floor and door trim. It looks like a real house again!

Painting is scheduled to commence next week. We have been struggling with selecting paint colors for the past 2+ weeks. We were held up when my favorite paint lady (the only one who knows how to mix samples at Home Depot on this side of town, apparently) went on vacation for 10 days or so.

While she was out, I tried 3 different Home Depots in an effort to find anyone else who can mix samples properly!! The guy at the store down on Hillcroft at the Beltway actually had colorant running down the sides of the sample jar -- and expected me to want them. (I spoke with a supervisor and explained the myriad problems with the 4 paint samples I had just had made, and no, I didn't buy any of them. At that point, I was pretty livid, explained why they were wholly inadequate as color samples, and left.)

The good news is, we have managed to get colors selected for most of the rooms in the house, though we did go through numerous candidates to get there. I have gone through a number of "touch-up" kits, which are perfect for applying paint to foam-core boards from Hobby Lobby, which is how we evaluate colors. Here is a glimpse into the past several weeks' purchased paint color candidates, though there may have been additional colors that were so awful as to have been tossed almost immediately into the trash. Of course, the picture doesn't include the half-dozen plus recently purchased candidates.

The rooms we struggled with the longest were:

1. the front bedroom, which has a 6x6 foot south-facing window through which you see the parterre garden, and which I want to be a shade of green
2. the study, which faces the neighbor's house to the west and now opens east to the kitchen, and which Roy wants to be a shade of mauve
3. the laundry room, which I want to have some fun with - Roy describes my desire to have it "be something that makes me smile" as "whimsical" (he's one to speak, what with trying to find a color he likes for the study!) - ooh! I just had an idea...we'll see what Roy thinks of it (he agreed to it! you'll just have to wait to see what we decided to do in there)

Plus, heaven help us, we actually managed to select a trim color that will coordinates with, ahem, all 10 wall colors! I bought 3 potential trim colors and we went with the one we initially had chosen from the color cards (that is Polar Bear). Yay!

So that's where we are at - about two-thirds of the way through the remodel and finishing up our time in color selection purgatory.

 
The big news of the week is that someone literally bought every slab (all 10 of them) of our chosen granite for the kitchen less than 24 hours before we were to go out and choose a mere 2 slabs. That created a multi-day panic that isn't over quite yet. I have spent the better part of the past 2 days in the granite yard haunting the aisles looking for solutions.

The good news is, we have a potential work-around that may cost us more, but should still get us the desired countertops, as we cannibalize pre-fabricated countertops and island tops that are broken and/or stained to get the linear feet that we need. At least for the main kitchen countertops. The island might have to come out of a different piece (color) of granite, so I spent today ferreting out candidates for an island top.

We'll be back at the granite yard in the morning for more perusing and weighing of options. Then I'll meet the fabricator at the yard next week to look over what we've been able to cobble together and see if he thinks it will work.