What's with this product marketing?

I'm perusing the vinyl flooring options available on today's market. Get a load of some of these names:

• Saguaro Bermuda Sand
• Venice Warm Dawn
• Sedona Canyon Earth
• Chadds Ford Arabesque Beige
• Fiorelli Road Cashew

I'm not looking for something with the "impression" of slate, or wood, or tumbled rock. I don't think my friends would be fooled. Especially if they walked in the house and found me still in my pajamas at 3 p.m.

If I wanted my house to look like a Mediterranean getaway, wouldn't I be using tile, or at least Pergo? If I wanted my house to reflect the message, "I am stylish, modern and oh-so beautiful," I wouldn't be looking at vinyl.

I'm looking for a floor that says, "Look at me. I'm doing laundry. ... Hey, who left the caps off the markers!?! Oh look, Dori spilled grape juice. Again. And Addy, what's that smell?"

I made an actual decision!

I had to make the first actual purchasing decision for the house last night. I've been dreaming about countertops, moulding and the like for months. Now it's time to stop contemplating and start deciding.

At left will be the front and back entry doors. It's a pretty close match to what was already there, only in energy-efficient steel and glass combination that "closes like your refrigerator," or at least so says the manufacturer's product literature. And the grilles are inside the glass for easy cleaning. Music to my heart.

I tried hard to keep the original wood doors, at right. They're beautiful, but I got dumb looks (as in, I was the dumb one) when I proposed stripping and refinishing them, reglazing the windows, and adding weatherstripping to bring them up to today's standards. Yeah, I have to admit, they would still be energy suckers no matter what I did.

This is the entry lever. Can you see I'm planning ahead for carpal tunnel syndrome and arthritis? Sheesh, I'm only 34.

Bob and I bought three of these entry light sconces on a super deal at the outlet mall Smith & Hawken store. I'm in love with oil-rubbed bronze (or faux bronze, which is the case here). One will go by the backdoor and two by the front.

So why are we doing this again?

Flooded basement, sinking roof, cracked foundation ... so why are we renovating this house?


This is why.

This is where Grandma measured Daniel's height on a bedroom door. That particular doorway will be closed off as we expand the bathroom. Although we won't be hanging the door, I'm keeping it. No matter what.

Shifting wall!

The heavy load of snow on the roof, coupled with the rains we had a couple weeks ago, made for a big problem. The ice was too heavy for the roof, and it actually pushed out the front wall of the house a bit. It even snapped one of the upstairs ceiling joists.

Why has this never happened in the house's 125-year history? The house is unheated as Pat works on it. The house had never gone unheated in 125 years, and it also never had a speck of insulation in it. All the heat went right out through the roof and melted the snow, so there weren't heavy snow loads sitting on it.

Once the house is insulated and we're in it, we'll have snow on it most of the winter. Pat has been working away in the attic, bracing the roof and attemptening to straighten out what he can while up there.

Isn't this fun?

The dangers of a major home renovation

Danger #1: Big slivers. Bob got this doozie pulling the planks from the walls and heaving them out the windows.

Danger #2: The Great Flood. Only Noah wasn't there.

Bob took some family members to the house Dec. 27 to show them the progress. Thanks (?) to Addy's misbehavior — going down the new basement stairs even though she was told not to — he was alerted to lots and lots of standing water. He didn't think he should be hearing splash! under her feet, but it was as good a sign as an olive branch.

Thanks to Diane offering up their spare sump pump and Dick's help setting it up, they got the water pumped out. We're hoping there was no damage to the furnace and that the only damage to the doors we plan to reuse was cosmetic. (They'll be repainted anyway.)

We didn't even think to tell our contractor on Monday ... something about spending all afternoon with Dori at the hospital's urgent care clinic for another respiratory issue made our thinking fuzzy ... but by Tuesday evening Pat and Mark had installed a different pump and more effective piping. Whew.

Pardon me while I put on my wannabe meterologist hat and refer to an NOAA chart for explanation. See the tall blue bar circled above? That's a lot of snow. More than 10 inches, to be specific. Note the blue bar's friends, the other tallish blue bars and the tall green bars. Those are more snow ... and rain ... and all sat upon the ground with little melting in between.

Now see the red spike that's circled? That's a warm, 55-degree day. In December. Heat melts snow. Melted snow is water. Lots and lots of water makes floods.

You'd think we could have figured that out a few hours before the splash. But I was so relieved to see that the huge wind storm the night before hadn't torn shingles from the roof or dumped a tree branch on the porch that we didn't check the basement until after enjoying our lovely holiday dinner.