A surfeit of cedars

If you're a fan of trees in general, and cedars in particular, may I recommend skipping this post?

No?

Very well. Then let's proceed to a post I like to subtitle, "In which we do horrible things to vegetation"...

One of the things we really like about living in Broadmead (as opposed to, for example, across the street from Victoria's largest mall) is how much greener and fresher and cleaner everything is. Broadmead has a real (and deserved) reputation as being somewhat dark and dank due to all the enormous evergreens growing all over the place, but our street doesn't have that problem: we live on one of the brightest streets in the entire neighbourhood. So bright, in fact, that there are certain times of the year that I really wish we could figure out a way to block off the high windows in the front hall so that the early morning sun wouldn't stream RIGHT into the master bedroom... but I digress.

Of course, the sunny exposure leads to another problem of sorts: all of the plants in the yard, including the ones we aren't that fond of, tend to grow rather large. Case in point, the voluminous, overbearing, pest-infested, overly-phallic cedar shrub monstrosities on either side of the window at the front of the house.

As near as I can tell, the only actual benefit to having these things in our yard is so that we can locate our house from six miles away.

"Oh, sure! Hang a left off the Pat Bay, and just look for the giant green penises. You can't miss it."



Please excuse the picture - for some reason I had no shots of the front of the house at all, and had to use the one from the original listing. Well, I have this one, but it doesn't really capture the majesty of the two of them together, towering over the house like a couple cast-off sex toys for the Jolly Green Giant (too far? Yeah, too far):



The downsides include the way they darken the living room to the point where we feel like we're trapped in an old, scratchy, disused sauna, and the way they provide a highway straight into our attic for any four- or six-legged critter looking for a way to escape the wind and wet. Oh, and the fact that they're growing too close to the house and ruining both the stucco on that side, and the shingles on top of the little roof along the top of the window. Needless to say, we're not exactly fond of them, and decided pretty much as soon as we moved in that we'd be taking them out.

Well, last Thursday was the day. While we were at work, some guys showed up and cut them all down.



Awesome. Well, apart from the way the stucco is so much darker where the trees were sheltering it from the weather. Still: awesome.

Another area where the cedars were starting to make us feel a little hemmed in was in the back yard. There's a sort of patio area (and when I say "Sort of", I mean it has some gravel and a pathetic attempt at a flower bed - it's GOING to be a patio some day, but it's only pretending right now) in the back that's surrounded by a cedar hedge with a wrought-iron arbor in the middle - yes, like everything else in this house, it's all very twee.

Anyway, because no one in their right mind would ever take a picture of a cedar hedge (read: I never took one), here's another picture from the original listing:



Yeah, you get the idea. Anyway, when I first mentioned to the War Department that I was really looking forward to getting rid of those hedges, she looked at me askance and wondered why I ever thought we were taking them out at all. It took less than an hour for her to go from not even thinking about it to being unable to wait a second longer, and so I found myself roaring away at them with a chainsaw one sunny Sunday afternoon.

Being somewhat smaller hedges, they came out with no difficulty at all, and there was soon nothing left but the roots. Which is where it gets weird. You see, our neighbor is retired AND crazy. Well, he came over to offer us some scrap wood and we were showing him around a bit and showed him where the hedge used to be.

Well, he was so all fired up that he came over the next day, while we were at work, and spent forty minutes ripping up all the roots from the hedge. He said he was only going to work at it for an hour, but they all came out like butter, so he wound up doing them all.

And then he came back the next day and fixed the sprinkler pipe he cut through the first day so it was all good.

And here we are now, no roots, no hedges:





Looks much better, eh? Of course, we now have to take out a few yards of soil so we can level it off and put in pavers or flagstones or something, but it's already so much nicer. I could be wrong, but I think that huge red azalea is a big fan of the change, too...

Right then. It's now time for a new feature on this blog. Given that we're not really doing as much construction on this house (and I really am getting much better at working with tools), I haven't had much occasion to be making updates to everyone's favorite feature, The Injury Report (also known as Don Hurts Himself). Well, I figured that, in the spirit of this house, I'd try something new. It is thus with great pleasure that I introduce the latest Don and Amy's Broadmead Reno blog innovation...

This Week in Mayonnaise

Now, I'm sure all of our regular readers are familiar with the strange substance left all over this house by the previous owner, and which we have decided (rather arbitrarily) to call mayonnaise. But as a recap, so far on this blog we have seen mayonnaise used to patch drywall, fill holes, and serve as extra insulation for doorbell wires. But really, we've only just begun to plumb the depths of the possible uses of mayonnaise.

That being said, listing and showing them all in the same post would be prohibitive, so I thought I'd make it a sometime feature where I can post photographic evidence of this remarkable stuff, and encourage people to comment on whether they felt our old friend Frank was making good use of his magical substance.

For this inaugural edition, I present to you this lovely piece of ... whatever, hanging right on the wall of the garage, on the wall nearest the front door (meaning, you have to walk right past it every time you come in):



Leaving aside the aesthetics of the piece, I urge you to take note of the double duty being performed by the mystical mayo: sealant AND adhesive! It's a two-fer!

I think that's pretty damn impressive. Butt sucking ugly, but impressive.



Tune in next time for the long-awaited saga of the floor in the master bedroom. And probably the floor in the living room, hall, kitchen, and dining room, too.

Yeah. We've done a lot of flooring.

Hello? Is this thing on? Hello?

Wow... I kinda forgot all about this here blog thingy.

Or I would have, were it not for people constantly asking me when the next post was coming. (Still can't believe people actually read this nonsense, let alone wait expectantly for it.)

Of course, we HAVE been kinda busy...

What with the


and then the


and then the


Wait, what?

Yeah. That's somebody's idea of a joke or something. That, or the damn statues have started breeding.

Seriously, that just kind of appeared there one morning. I have no idea why or how, but if the deranged person responsible is reading this, STOP IT. STOP IT RIGHT NOW!

It's so not funny. NOT FUNNY.


Regular updates will resume shortly, just as soon as I can lick this damn cold.

Vote or die!

According to certain members of the household, I was mistaken: there IS some debate over which light fixture is the ugliest.

It seems the War Department is under the impression (mistaken, as you shall no doubt see) that the ghastly light of roses in the front hall is the ugliest light in the house. I had dubbed it, perhaps prematurely, the second-ugliest, with an apparently ill-considered certainty that the light I had fingered as the ugliest was far and above anything remotely resembling even kitsch or camp value.

Not so, says the War Department. And not so, says another voter (who shall remain nameless): the four-globed monstrosity in the breakfast area is certainly in the running.

Well. There's really only one way to settle this, isn't there? It's time for the first-ever Don and Amy's Broadmead Reno POLL!

Bring on the contenders!

Contestant Number One: Pink Rose Monstrosity

This gets the War Department's vote as the ugliest light fixture in the house, and I can certainly appreciate her point-of-view (even if I don't agree). Whether the worst feature is the dusty pink ceramic roses, the cheap little crystals, or the badly gilded chain I have no idea, but this light is the complete package: an offensively ghastly package.

Contestant Number Two: The Four-Globed Nightmare

This abomination was my pick for the bronze medal in last week's post, but apparently some feel it deserves a shot at the title. So here it is in all its cobweb-infested-chain and badly-plated-bronze-bits glory crappitude. Kinda looks like it's made out of recycled aquarium parts and a bag of used hockey pucks, doesn't it? It really doesn't have a lot going for it, I must admit, but don't let the completely-exposed compact florescent bulbs sway you just yet - we've got more contenders..

Contestant Number Three: Three Plus One Equals Crap

This fine specimen from the kitchen ceiling illustrates yet again that having exposed florescent bulbs is just a bad idea. Granted, it wasn't exactly designed for them, but still.. The combination of smoked glass bowls, the faux-antique brass mount, and the etched flowers is just ... well, bad. But not that bad, really, in comparison to some of the other contestants, right?

But wait, what's this over here by the sink?



I guess this fellow isn't allowed to hang with the cool kids. Having one of these things in the kitchen is bad enough, but two? That MUST be enough to garner it a few votes, no?

Contestant Number Four: The Faux-Bling Chandeliers

This lovely cheap construction of delicate cheap brass-plated tin and fine cheap crystal plastic wouldn't look out of place in the classiest cheapest fine-dining establishment Denny's.

But wait! It ALSO has a friend:



(For what it's worth, both of those fixtures are already sitting in a cardboard box with the rest of the recycling, waiting for the next trip to Hartland.)

Contestant Number Five: Dear Sweet Jesus, What Is THAT?

There's a common misconception that the phrase "Oh, the humanity!" was spoken by a radio announcer upon witnessing the crash of the Hindenburg in 1937. This is only partly true: yes, the announcer was at the site of the Hindenburg, but he uttered the infamous phrase when he inadvertently caught a glimpse of this thing out of the corner of his eye:



Rumor has it that this exact light was used by the Caliph of Bujran to subdue overly-feisty concubines - just by threatening to turn it on.

Yes, that's a tension rod holding it in place - JUST IN CASE you thought another room in your house just wasn't quite horrifying enough, you could move this beast around whenever you wanted, and inflict it on a new location.

But wait, you say, this can't possibly be a real light - can we get a close up?

Hey, I say, they're your retinas, you wanna burn them right out of your head, who am I to stop you:



Shudder. That thing is made of sheer malevolence. It was also the only light fixture in the entire house that had regular incandescent bulbs in it - not even Frank was crazy enough to actually open it up and release the demon spirits trapped within.


I think you can probably guess what my pick is. So, what are you waiting for? Vote already!

What about happiness?

When you move into an older home, and as you explore the new house and get to know its quirks and foibles, I think you can't help but start to get a sense of the people who lived there before you.

Were they packrats? Did they tend to use some rooms more than others? Did they have a tendency to delay necessary maintenance? Did the neighbours like them? What sorts of things were important to them? What was their colour and design sense like? Were they consistent in their choices?

It's amazing how these and other questions (even the ones you didn't necessarily want to ask) can be answered by the little traces they leave behind.

As you start to construct the personalities of the previous owners, I think this process becomes significantly easier - despite how hard you may try NOT to learn any more than you have to - if the person who lived in your house before you was the kind of a person to leave a LOT of clues...

In our case, the previous owner left a whole slew of things (even besides the statues) that really make us wonder just what was going through his head. For one thing, the guy was obsessed - OBSESSED - with temperature. There were no fewer than six different thermometers mounted either on the outside of the house, hanging on the walls inside, or, in at least one particular case, hanging on the wall inside with a wire lead drilled through the wall to a sensor on the outside so it could display both temperatures at once. In addition to the many thermometers, almost all of the thermostats are marked up with liquid paper, pencil lines, or even Sharpie annotations.



The amount of time he must have spent fiddling with the thermostats and heaters and comparing them to all of his thermometers and whatnot is remarkable. It's especially noteworthy when you realize that despite all of the analyzing and double-checking, he never actually replaced any of the heaters or thermostats. He seemed to be content to just make his little marks with the liquid paper and pencils and trust in his dollar-store thermometers to let him know whether it was warm enough or not.

I think another facet of the temperature obsession was something of a fixation on energy. With the exception of the three bulbs in the ghastly lamp in the hall (two of which were burnt out when we moved in), every single light in and out of the house had a compact florescent bulb in it - including all TWELVE sockets in the gruesome bathroom fixtures. The ones in the garage are particularly irksome because a) they take a couple seconds to turn on when you flick the switch, and even then they take a couple more minutes to warm up to maximum brightness; and b) we need a ladder to change them out, but there's so much crap in the garage that there's nowhere to put the ladder so we're stuck with them.

Every time we go to Home Despot, we drop off a couple of the CF bulbs in their recycling bin and buy a few more incandescent bulbs - the CFs just don't give off any light!

Frank (I figure I might as well just use his name at this point) also seemed to dislike most colors. That, or he had a violent aversion to painting anything. When we moved in, there wasn't a wall in the house that wasn't white. Well, except for the enormous mural of the mountain valley on the back wall of the garage, but that's different, and the subject of another whole post, I'm sure. Everything that was painted was painted white. The untextured ceilings were white, the walls were white, the trim was white, the doors were...

Actually, the doors aren't white. Not exactly. They're all sort of this yellowy-off-white color that's singularly unattractive. It's like teeth-that-haven't-been-brushed-in-a-week non-white. A painful non-color. As a matter of fact, they all look like they've only ever been primed with builder's primer and have never actually been painted. Which, we realized when we started taking down the closet doors so we could start on the floor, is exactly the case. Every door in the house, with the exception of the front door was installed straight from the factory and never painted.



That picture really shows the difference between the nice white trim paint and whatever botched attempt at an actual color (sun-bleached-buzzard-skeleton-yellow?) builder's primer is supposed to be.

Now it should be mentioned that Frank is by no means solely responsible for all of this - or even any of it for all we can say for certain. After all, he wasn't the original owner of the house - he may not have even been the second for all we know. Then again, we know enough from talking to the neighbours that Frank had lived in the house for at least fifteen years, so we're fairly sure we can lay at least some of the blame on his shoulders.

We also know from talking to the neighbours that Frank had a bit of bad habit in terms of letting people take advantage of him. For instance, he once paid a guy to pressure-wash the driveway and, when the guy offered, to power-wash some of the moss off the roof. One of the neighbours had to run across the street and tell the workman to stop power-washing UP against the grain of the roof and taking the shingles off along with the moss. Frank had no idea.

So it may not have been Frank necessarily - it might have been a friend, or a hired handyman, or somebody else - that spread mayonnaise all over the walls in an attempt to patch the holes left by picture hooks or whatever.





Okay, so it might not be mayonnaise, but I'll be damned if I can say for sure what it REALLY is. I thought at first it was just unsanded drywall patching compound or PolyFilla, but it's not that. Someone else suggested it might be toothpaste, as they had heard somewhere that it was supposed to work for that kind of thing, but the stuff on our walls doesn't have a minty flavor. Then someone else pointed out that it looked a lot like shiny, dried-up mayonnaise and for want of a better suggestion, that's what I'm calling it. It even shares pride-of-place with the world's most forlorn valance on the wall above the bed in the master bedroom:



It's freaking EVERYWHERE in the house. Every wall, every room, every conceivable place you could find a hole, there is one - stuffed with mayonnaise. Hell, Frank (or somebody else) even used it to seal the wire for the doorbell to the inside of the door jamb where it comes in from outside.



Apparently, mayonnaise paints up pretty nice, too, as you can see from the outside portion of that same wire.



And while we're outside, it's not really clear what we should make of this sign hanging right by the front door:



I'm not going to tell you what Frank's last name is, but I will say that it is NOT Molldara. Which maybe tells us more about Frank than his real last name would... although perhaps not as much as the stuff he left in the drawer in the master bathroom:



No, we didn't inventory that. We dumped it out into a garbage bag and scrubbed the drawer out with bleach. Twice.

This house has two fireplaces: one with a wood stove insert in the family room and the other a normal, wood burning fireplace in the living room. Straightforward enough, except.... well, the wood stove in the family room cost us almost $2000 to have it brought up to code. The guys doing the work said it looked like the only thing ever burned in it was paper. And the one in the living room, well, it sort of had an insert of its own. Behind an over-sized, brass-plated fireplace screen with glass doors was this thing:



Huh, we thought. An electric fireplace. Then we flipped it over:



I... I'm at a loss for words. Really. You just have to look at it and figure it out for yourself. The truly odd thing? Aside from hosting that electric thingy (which is now resting comfortably at the bottom of the Hartland landfill) the fireplace had never been used. For anything.

When we moved in, Frank had helpfully left four remotes for the garage door sitting on the kitchen counter. The weird thing was that each remote had three buttons on it. Obviously, the biggest of the buttons was for the garage door, but we had no idea what the other three buttons were for, or if they even worked. One of the remotes had something written on the buttons (in Sharpie, of course), but aside from "gaRagE", I couldn't really decipher what they said. One looked like "ouslde lanB", and the other was simply labeled "Fp". After thinking about it some more, and wandering around the house clicking the buttons at random, I figured it out.

"Fp" stood for fireplace. The cord from that hideous contraption up there came out from the side of the screen and was plugged into a weird device that was, in turn, plugged into a wall socket. Sure enough, the button on the remote triggered the device, and I could turn the "fireplace" on and off from pretty much anywhere - even out in the driveway.

"ouslde lanB" was a little harder. It wasn't until I noticed this ungodly scar on the wall below the front window that I realized what it was for:



Yes, that is a piece of linoleum and a metric shit ton of mayonnaise used to patch the drywall, but whatever; the important thing is that "ouslde lanB" stood for outside lamp. The third button on the remote turned the carriage lamp at the side of the driveway on and off. Oh, and just in case you were wondering, the wiring for the lamp was run through a piece of irrigation tubing buried in the front yard. No, that's not up to code, or even remotely safe, and yes, there are at least two other places where he's done the same thing for electrical service for the pumps in the fountains. (Our home inspector noticed the switches and whatnot, but Frank assured him that all the wiring had been done by a professional electrician. Shyeah, right.) I'm not even going to go into how wobbly and just plain bad the carriage lamp is (which is too bad, because it's arguably the nicest light fixture on the whole property), but suffice to say we'll be either pulling it out or redoing it.

Speaking of light fixtures, I believe I mentioned in my first post that the ghastly thing in the hall was the second-ugliest light fixture in the house. While there's absolutely no question about which fixture is the ugliest, there's some debate about the third-ugliest. So how about we put it to a vote?

The War Department gives the bronze medal for ugliest to this pair of flying saucer-inspired pieces of shit in the family room:



The only light those bastards give off is straight down; they seem to be utterly incapable of illuminating a closet, let alone a family room.

That's a solid contender, I must admit, but I still say the bronze should go to this abomination from the design-hell that was the mid-eighties:



That thing wouldn't even look good with incandescent bulbs in it; with the CFs, it's enough to make you shut your eyes and wish it would just go away. It never does, though. Oh no, it's always still there.

Judges?

Oh, and while we're talking fixtures, let's discuss plumbing fixtures for a second. I've alluded to this several times, but it really does need to be seen to be believed. Without further ado, I present to you a master bath, inspired by Saddam Hussein himself:







Those accessories had to be put in purposefully and deliberately, by the way: the tiles by the window had to be replaced, and a hole cut into the ceiling of the family room underneath just to install the taps and drain for the tub. (And yes, that's the same master bath that had the carpeted floor.)

So what have we really learned about dear old Frank? I can't say; I'm too busy worrying about what the new owners of OUR old house have figured out about US.

Anyway, I could go on and on here, but this post is already in the running for most excessive ever, so I'll just close with one last thing. I'm not going to offer any comment on this; I'm presenting it merely as it is, a disturbingly existential pondering encapsulated on a clear plastic label, affixed firmly to a drawer in the kitchen: