The Plans

Sorry it has taken me so long since the last post. All this construction work is making it hard to have the strength to blog when I finally get a moment in the evening.

So, here is the before and (planned) after pictures for our house:

The house as it is now

Planned after drawing- including the new stone screened porch and dining room

We are adding lots of new windows/skylights for extra light and warmth in the winter when the sun is lower in the sky and will shine directly in the windows (it snows here). The eves on the roof will be extra deep (18 inches) for added shade in the summer months when the sun is higher in the sky to keep the house naturally cooler. The new windows will be double hung so they will open from the bottom and top for air flow in the mornings and evenings to keep the house naturally cool. We added a new duel-fuel Train HVAC system (made in the USA) last fall that is both gas and electric. It has a brain that switches back and forth to use the most efficient fuel depending on the temp outside (we are already saving money with it). We will use closed cell expandable foam insulation in our new vaulted ceilings, nearly 100% efficient. There will be ceiling fans throughout the house to keep the air moving. The limestone for the porch will come from less than 50 miles away. None of that Drywall from China. Ours comes from local gypsum mines in Shoals, Indiana. We will use local red oak (a renewable resource) for the new dining room floor to match the rest of the house. We are very lucky to have had a LEED certified architect (and also our good friend) Kris do the drawings for us.

Fingers crossed, our finished product will come out performing and looking as great as the drawings.

Steve and I continue to work on the back of the house. We have been busy replacing windows and finishing up the pocket door installation. We hope to be moving back into the master bedroom the first week of August. The cats would love that more than anyone!

Here is a photo of our current bedroom in the basement. Two single foam beds on the floor. It's kinda like camping in a dark, cool cave (about 68-70 degrees. Great at this time of year when it is 90+ outside). We keep trying to look at the positive side of living through this :o)

Giant holes are being cut in the walls in the bedrooms to install new larger windows. We are excited about more light in the house and are looking forward to adding an extra window in the master bedroom.

A video of Steve cutting a hole for a new window. Notice the shop-vac hose he is holding between his legs to catch some of the plaster dust from the saw. I thought he was going to smack me when I took this picture of him in that wonderful position. He has seen the blog, so he knows how hilarious it will be. At least he isn't giving me any plumber butt too! :o)

So, you can imagine after hearing that noise in the video, how much fun our cats are having when they think the sky is constantly falling. Here is how Lulu deals with it. Not a bad idea as it also keeps the dust off of her.

Here are the new master bedroom windows. We are keeping with the original 1953 trim work and then building out new sills (there were none before), so we have salvaged what original trim we can and then will have more milled at Indiana Lumber (yes, we still do have a mill that can actually fabricate stuff for you). We are using the original douglas fir and pine. LET THERE BE LIGHT!

Here are a few photos of Rowan and I putting the room back together. She is taking down the ceiling fan to clean the thick sheet rock/plaster dust off of it. Notice how her face is covered in dust. I'm not sure, but I think the look on her face is not one of delight :o)

Jenni is painting the newly textured wall. We re-painted the entire bedroom just to freshen it up after 10 years.

We have also had to do some extended patching of our VCT (vinyl composition tile) floor in- between the kitchen and Rowan's office, where the new pocket door is being installed. We will do more of this once the kitchen is expanded too.

OK, so this is just a picture of me and a big giant fiberglass rooster. We found this really bizarre fiberglass figure manufacturing shed out in the country the other day when we went out for a drive after being at the gym, and I just HAD to pull over and take some pictures because it was so surreal. I mean how many times in your life do you come across this stuff? Comic relief............that's what it is, and what we need right about now :o)

It was like a petrified zoo!

I want the rooster to put in our front yard!

Go here to see why I am attracted to these kinds of things:

http://mythmuseum.wordpress.com/

I used to hang out at these places when I lived in the SF Bay Area. The little things that make life interesting.

More soon (I promise!)........

Time for a change

Hello dearest family and friends!

You-all must think that we have dropped off the face of the earth! It has been a few months since we've shared anything with all of you after our return from our sabbatical adventures in Philly, California and India earlier this year. Well, let me tellya.......just recovering from the India part of our trip has taken some serious getting back down to earth time. For those of you that have followed our travel blog, you can imagine what the adjustment back to midwestern life was like. Being thrown back into a culture of excess isn't easy.......Not to mention the fact that soon after our return to the states in the beginning of April, we went right into the planning of the remodel of our house! Rowan would tell you it's the best thing for Jenni to keep her mind moving forward, so forward we go..............best for me not to dwell on my mid life adjustment to hormonal chaos..... So, this is the perfect segway into the change that is starting to happen at our house too! :o) Our architect has delivered the plans, we are collecting estimates (Jenni is acting as the general contractor) and we have now begun the preliminary work on the back of the house where we will try to live once ALL HELL BREAKS LOOSE on the entire front of the house the first week of September. We will be adding photos and stories about our addition process as we go along. We hope you will enjoy following us as we go through this new adventure.
I find myself looking with renewed interest at the little brass Ganesha that sits above my kitchen sink, stopping to ask him for his power of removing obstacles from my life (a valuable lesson learned from Hinduism while in India). Fingers crossed, he will hear me (doesn't hurt to have the back-up of JC as well! Hmmmm, I'll even give Buddha a shot too!). As everyone who has done this kind of work says, if your relationship can survive a remodel on your house, you can survive anything.........we will hold on to that! :o) Thank god we both have a really good sense of humor.

So, here are some photos from the beginning of our remodel work.

The house as it is now, before we start ripping it apart

And, here is the new garage we built in fall 2008, in preparation for our current project.

The rest of the house will look similar to the new garage in no time (fingers crossed).

This is where the new pocket door will go between Rowan's office and the kitchen. Don't you love the sexy plastic curtain?

Demo of the plaster walls between the master and guest bedrooms to make the master closet bigger (a dream come true! :o). What everyone says about 1950's era plaster wall dust is true. Aaaaaaa-chooooo!

Here is our carpenter, the FABULOUS Steve Neuenschwander (say that fast 3 times! :o) exiting into the guest closet from the master bedroom closet. Cough, hack, cough! He told me if I keep taking pictures of him, he's going to take his circular saw to my camera. Of course, that means I'll just keep taking pictures :o)

Here is a photo of the master bedroom covered in plastic. Of course this will keep the dust off of everything. Yeah, right!

And, here is the extremely wonderful new 3x's-the-size opening for the bedroom closet. Rowan is filling the nail holes in the trim. Sorry guests, yours is now tiny, exactly 10-day stay size closet! :o)

The guest room closet showing Jenni's fabulous plaster matching texture method. It really is hard to tell the difference between the original 1953 plaster texture and the contemporary gypsum board and mud/texture method. It was like being back in art school discovering how to do it. What a blast! And to think I get to do this around all of the new windows too :o)

OK, so not to disappoint those of you who expect some sort of food item within our blogs, here is a special treat. Our carpenter, Steve (say-his-last-name-fast-3x's Neuenschwander :o) just happens to be a fungi fan. He hunts for wild mushrooms in the forest. Lucky us! He brought us the most ENORMOUS bag of wild chanterelles and cinnabar chanterelles that we just HAD to make into some wild mushroom pasta. Here are the photos: YUM!

Shiitakie, porccini, cinnabar chanterelles, chanterelles

So the fact that we are still alive makes us really happy! :o) Steve does know what he is doing with carpentry and wild mushrooms.

The best wild mushroom pasta we have ever tasted!

Back to construction.........Here is the antique douglas fir 5 panel pocket door Jenni restored. Stripped/sanded 3x's/steel wooled 2x's for Rowan's office. Only five more doors to go. Ugh! This one is hand rubbed with danish oil and tung oil (brushed on and hand rubbed 2x's then hand rubbed 2x's with tung oil). The history of the door just speaks to you when done this way.

The almost finished door.

And, the start of the next door.........notice the fabulous shop space in our new garage-mahal. Makes the job more enjoyable especially since my daddy and I made the table I am doing all of this work on :o)

OK, so the biggest trauma for us in the project so far (and we are just at the very beginning!) is that we are closing up one of the doorways from the kitchen to the main hallway that goes to the bathroom and the bedrooms. Call us crazy, but if we want more cabinet space in the kitchen we must close the doorway. We have had it closed off with plastic for about a month already to get used to not having it. Our architect suggested we do this so I won't bitch about it when it actually happens. Well......... it is now closed up and I must confess I bitch about it every other day, but will get over it once I have more cabinet space in the kitchen :o) We decided to add the most wonderful cabinet on the hallway side of the enclosure, so it all has turned out great. Once the cats stop slamming into the new wall that was their favorite 'chase each other into the kitchen path', the whole family will be very happy. It is all extremely funny.

The cabinet taking form

Making the cabinet doors

The fabulous finished product. It looks like it has always been there.

Stay tuned for more construction news in a couple of days...................

Back in the Saddle

Dear Friends and Family,

It has been a couple of months now since our return home from our big sabbatical adventure on the east and west coasts of America and half way around the world to India. We have had time to adjust back into our way of life here in the mid west and back to our daily work lives (ugh!). It is now time to move on to our next adventure - remodeling our house! In the next coming months we will be adding new photos and stories to the blog, so don't forget to check us out every now and then. Living in a house that is being torn from pillar to post won't be easy.

Lets hope we survive this!

Now..........everyone grab a tool.............

The Last 10 Days

March 15-24, 2010

This morning we traveled back to Jaipur by train and spent a few hours at our favorite hotel, the Arya Niwas. We had a wonderful breakfast while sitting in the garden and took some time to freshen up in the business center lounge before getting to our afternoon flight back to Hyderabad. As we sat in the garden we reflected on the amazing time we have had here in northern India. Rajasthan is so very different from Kerala in the south and Hyderabad in the central region. We are glad we made the decision to venture this far north even though there seemed to be some mystery danger the US wanted us to be afraid of.

We arrived back in Hyderabad to our apartment and were very happy to see our houseboys Das, Ramesh and Manuj. It was hilarious when they saw me, the tall white lady, coming at them to give them a hug. Their eyes were as big as softballs! Hugging is just not as common here as in the US, so I constantly scare people as I come at them with my open arms ready to swallow them whole :o) They helped us get our luggage upstairs and into the apartment. Our first task was to get to our computers and check out what has been happening in the world as we have been away for the last week. We highly recommend not looking at a computer for news or email for an entire week. Very liberating and refreshing to be able to think about where you are and who you are with instead of depressing news and information from the rest of the world. As we dug into our backlog of emails, etc., we foraged in the cupboard for a box or can of something to eat.

The next morning Rowan went right off to the eye institute to continue working on the lab equipment with Shrikant. I got right to doing laundry by hand using the bucket method. Between loads I worked on trying to get the next blog posts together and planning the next few days of dinner parties that our friends here want to have before we go back to the US. Oh, the full time schedule of a faculty wife!

Shrikant, Charanya and Shubha in the lab with the 'mini beast' equipment.

Our friend Sandhya and her daughter Anusha helping to test the equipment.

We will leave our apartment in just a few days to return to Shrikant & Charanya’s place for the remainder of our stay here in India. Our time here has been fantastic and the house staff a dream come true. They have been so helpful, polite and engaging. I told them we will invite our Indian friends here for a dinner party before we leave and they insisted we let them help in any way they can. I really do want to bring these three boys home with me. :o) Here are photos of our last party in the apartment:

Our Indian friends requested we make pasta for dinner. They seldom get this kind of food, so we went off to the American grocery, Q-Mart, to find things like zucchini, yellow squash, canned tomatoes, parsley and other veggies to make a vegetable pasta.

The very tasty Indian wine the chef used to cook with and sip on as she cooked (just like Julia taught me!)

Here we are with our fantastic group of Indian friends. Suresh, Shrikant, Charanya, Sumit, Rowan, Jenni, Saritha, Shubha and Sandhya.

So, don't think for a minute we stopped at one dinner party. Remember, we are into having food comas! :o) Our next event was at Shubha and Sumit's apartment. This time Sumit pulled out the grill (he is really getting into the grilling thing) so we could have another kabob adventure.

Sumit whipped up the most fantastic spicy east Indian marinade for the meat and veggies.

Here is a little video of the rooftop patio where we had our gathering at Sumit & Shubha's place in Hi-Tech City, Hyderabad.

We were all up there on the roof of this new high-rise apartment building and, being who I am, I was interested in finding out what sort of HVAC/equipment they had on the roof (don't forget, I am my father's daughter). To my pleasant surprise, half of the roof was covered with solar panels. Solar! So, here is one of the reasons the Indians may pass the US up on innovation. They are building their new buildings with green energy applications, built here in India!! Hello? Wake up the rest of the world! India is obviously applying important technology the rest of us continue to fight and bicker about. DUH! Another reason the rest of the world will be behind India and China in the next 5 years!

Here is a small portion of the solar panels on the roof.

So, anyone that knows me, knows that I will chase a lizard anywhere. Here is my Gecko friend I found when I was checking out the solar panels.

And, this is why the Gecko was hiding. He saw Sumit with the Red Bull!! Yikes!

Shrikant removing the grilled veg like a bullfighter. OLE'!

The Hookha roundabout :o) From left- Suresh, Trey (the American), Sumit, Charanya and Sandhya.

All the girls. From left- Charanya, Saritha, Rowan, Jenni, Shubha and Sandhya.

So.......this is what Sumit looked like after his redbull and my Hookha :o) (it's only tobacco).

OK, so my friends back in the US won't be surprised. Here I am being so ME! I think this must have been Shubha's fault. She makes me laugh!!!! Teehee.......

I can't possibly leave this post without including a couple of photos from our last party at Suresh & Sandhya's place. Now, don't think that all we did was goof off and eat and have a food coma.
We did serious things like eat, do stupid human tricks (oh dear!), watch the Lion King with Anusha and drink our farewell beer ( we leave the day after tomorrow).

No, this is not a turd. It is a very tasty Indian dessert called Kala Jamun. I instantly called it poop in sugar (again, you can dress me up, but you can't take me out!). It's just too much for my brain to imagine that this is something to eat. But, I did it! It was delicious! Don't quiz me about the texture, I held my breath through the first bite. However, it ended up being very tasty. They are basically made from paneer (Indian cheese), cottage cheese and flour. They are deep fried in Ghee (butter) and float around in sugar water. Interesting. Hysterical at a party where you have folks who have never seen a food item like this. The fun never stopped!
And yes, I suggested we start sharing stupid human tricks. Things only Americans can share with the rest of the world due to popular demand. Thank you Fox TV!!! It would be embarrassing if these were not our friends :o) Thank goodness they have accepted us after knowing us for a short two months! A testimony to true friendship.

Rowan is trying to show Shubha how to do the 'spin the spoon' trick. Something Rowan learned back in grad school at Berkeley in the 90's!

Once Shubha learned the spinning spoon trick she attempted to teach her husband Sumit. It was hysterical.

Next, Jenni attempted to teach everyone the 'hang-the-spoon-on-the-nose' trick. It really is amazing how much fun one can have with a simple kitchen spoon.

Oh Dear!

The whole gang, minus Sumit, who is taking the picture!

What fun! What fun! What fun! We have had the most fantastic time with our new friends and can't wait to come back to India to see them in the future. Shrikant and Rowan need to get busy and finish writing that grant so we can! :o)

I still do have a couple of special interest blog postings about India, so keep checking the blog for those. Stay tuned.........