Mabel & Galusha

Mabel has all her stairs now, and it's amazing. I can't get enough of climbing up through the stairwell and entering that wide-open first floor. Everything is where it should be, and more stylish and comfortable than imagined. It's possible my house is too cool for me.

Just when I was starting to get worried about the landscape architect, he surfaced. Relief. We have already met twice to tweak the plans, fitting in enough hardscape to make both humans and cars comfortable. It ain't easy. Plus, I have to think of all the maintenance issues and property rights involved down the road. Right now it's easy owning everything (ha), but once I let go of these houses, they're on their own with new owners. I can't wait.

So I start musing, trying to keep a lid on expanding the project while daydreaming big. For instance: Wouldn't flowerbeds parallel to the driveway at Construction HQ look awesome? Maybe I could treat my neighbors, too ...

By all accounts -- and especially the multistate, multiprofessional color committee -- Galusha's paint looks awesome. Now the pressure's on to make Mabel as eye-pleasing, but different.

It's crazy, but as I realize I'm over the hump with the minidevelopment, I've actually caught myself thinking, What will I do with myself when this is done? Look at how much free time I'll have! Look at all the $ I'll have freed up ... for ... what? For once in a long time, I don't have a Next Thing lined up (unless you count Operation Boyfriend, over which a temporary chill has settled, but that's a whole other blog).

Helping me explore this quandary is the fact and fruition of the bindery space, which already feels like a perfect spot for classes, workshops, slide shows, lectures, or whatever. It looks like a space from which the next dream could be launched.

Further digression, tho tangential: Looking in the mirror, I notice this newer layer of age. Grok God and I joked about the "Berth Announcement" we sent out for the groundbreaking last August, when I laughed that I would be having twins. Houses, that is. Now it occurs to me -- with all due respect to hardship of pregnancy, labor, and parenthood in general -- that this process is indeed a birthing. And then I think of all my friends who've had children; with their first one, you can see how the features in their faces seem to cement into place.

Don't get me wrong: I love cement, having just seen a creamy palette of it poured into the first floor of Mabel. The wrinkles will come; the only worry now is making sure they turn up in the right places.

In the meantime, I go a little nuts with the multitasking. On Sunday on the massage table, I couldn't quiet the running stream of must-dos: Call the cabinetmaker to give OK on bamboo, get lighting designer lined up for the challenge of bindery lighting, where can I get samples of ebony stain? and what if the landscape architect's gone AWOL?

The cool thing about building 2 houses is that if you missed one step the first time around -- dang the day job -- you just might catch it the second time. For instance, I looked into the back yard this morning and thought, Oh, there's the radiant-heating guys! They weren't so radiant, tho, looking up at me while coiling up the lines with equal parts caution and pity, thinking, "That poor renter lives here."

The daily construction routine starts thus, when the foreman's truck rumbles past the side of the house about 7:30. He's followed by a few workers who arrive by foot and bicycle. Then the street itself fills with trucks of all shapes, colors, and vintages for the rest of the crew and the odd sub. And then I hear the spigot turning on in back, so the coffeepot can get going. The tent has become a regular little hangout place, and we've all gotten comfy there.

Then the hammers start swinging, the machines start whirring for another day in Mabel & Galusha Land.

It's kind of a charming routine, but I still can't sleep through the arrival of the huge trucks, the cement spinners, say, or the lumber semis, that shake the glass shade askew in the dining room fixture. I just pray I never hear stucco cracking.

Never mind what I said about the colors, this weekend's Color Summit changed all that. The Grok God, the architect, and I stood in the grey Saturday morning light considering Galusha in all his glory -- and dozens of 1-x-1-inch color chips, finally arriving at the glorious combo of Steel and Blue Symphony (with a bit of Anubis and Wild Cherry thrown in for fun). Phew. GG and I went back to the paint store and collected yet another batch of the bigger swatches to make sure of the choices.

Two days later, we still like them, so all bodes well. Of course, we haven't even re-considered Mabel yet, but there's some time.

I plan to add more pictures shortly, but suffice to say Galusha steams along, with sheetrock and mud going up last week, and the painter due any day.

I finally got up to the second and third floors of Mabel, via ladder, last week, and she is beautiful. Everything I expected, but more. I love how you enter into the atriumlike space on the second floor. The kitchen window opens like an enormous eye into tree and sky. And Friday the foreman put in the stairs between the tower and the kitchen and the guest room and what the crew calls the "grow room." Of course, silly us -- we always thought of it as laundry.

I can't wait to get proper stairs in from the first to second floors, altho I'm grateful it keeps riffraff stopped on the ground. Sometimes I'll be fixing breakfast and see a couple joggers lope past my window, after a little look-see. Last night, while doing the yardwork, I stopped to give a couple tours, one to a group of about 8, some of whom even seemed like they could be house buyers. To these, I give my extra-special spiel, which gets smoother with each retelling. I should be real estate-agent suave by September, when Galusha is expected to go to market. Actually, I hope not.

It might be time for the Authorized Personnel Only Past This Point sign in the dining room window of Construction HQ.