This, Ladies and Gentlemen, is a pressure balance valve for a shower. It is the thing we are now going to have in our shower instead of the Barber Wilson exposed shower unit we had previously ordered. Luckily, it's still manufactured by a British company called Perrin & Rowe (the Brits seem to have the corner on the nice old fashioned looking plumbing) so it still feels high-end European. Plus this option is considerably less expensive, leaving us more $$ to blow on other things like Ted Muehling drawer pulls. (we probably won't get these, but they are truly things of beauty)

It seems that, awhile back, the building code expanded to include the requirement that all showers be fitted with an anti scalding device so as to protect us from being burned to death when a loved one flushes the toilet while we are in the shower. Which explains why all new buildings have those single valves rather than nice, simple hot and cold faucets. The one thing we are trying to avoid with all of our fixture choices is looking too much like a hotel. Even a nice one like the Mandarin Oriental. Which I love, by the way. For the upstairs bathroom, I'm hoping to avoid this issue altogether by putting my hands on the fixtures I used when the bathtub was in my studio in Brooklyn. If I can find that box.... Oh and speaking of bathtubs, anyboody have advice on where I can get mine re-enameled?

Just for those of you keeping track... here's what our house looks like today. And here's the still boarded up door to my parents' guest house:

Aside from the snow on the ground, nothing much has happened on either front, so it's still neck & neck. I'll keep you posted with all future developments. If anyone wants to place a bet on which project will be completed first, I'm all ears.

On the one hand, I feel like we've gotten SO much accomplished. Learned about what kind of plumbing not to buy, corrected mistakes in the electrical plan, ordered windows (we ALL know how much effort that takes), ordered appliances (yep, more on that later), dug a moat around the house to help protect the basement from flooding... and yet... when we come out to the house today, feeling all full of possibility, nothing is different. NOTHING. They moved the fridge that we're storing in the basement from one side to the other and swept, but that's about it. I am a decent person and as such will not type the kind of expletives that are going on in my head right about now. I'm sure there are all sorts of good reasons for this absence of visible progress that I will only begin to understand once we're done with this reno. Right now, I'm just trying to stay calm.

To feel better, I look at this photo that I shot last weekend. This is the lumber that will eventually become our downstairs floor. It had just been milled and was about to go into storage to wait for its moment to  shine and be installed. We bought it from a great company called The Antique Lumber Co in Water Mill, NY which is manned by an incredibly charming couple who live for all things wooden. They don't have a website, but here's their number: 631.726.7026. If you are in the area and looking to get salvaged wood for just about anything, give them a call. You will not be sorry.

Reality has finally hit us big time as we round the corner towards March and springtime... if we don't get cracking on ordering all of our appliances, etc, they won't be able to properly rough in the plumbing and electrical, which means the house justs sits there looking like a wooden shell late into the season, and we continue to pay a mortgage for a place we cannot use. So we got to work, measuring the bathroom and the kitchen for the thousandth time (see above) and spending hours on line trolling various sites searching for the perfect stuff.

And there, shining in the darkness, was the shower of our dreams.

Made by Barber Wilson, an English company that we'd only encountered when browsing the priciest spot for this stuff in the Hamptons,  exquisitely simple in design, the kind of plumbing Royal Families have probably had in their summer palaces for generations. Plus it was on sale (Presidents' Day, of course) at Insidestore.com, one of my new favorite destinations on the world wide web. Deadline was midnight Sunday night, so we held our breath and placed the order.

It wasn't until the next day, while visiting a showroom in Manhattan, that we discovered that the shower we'd just blown our wad to get is not to code. One is no longer allowed to have just hot and cold valves, one now needs to have all sorts of complex things that ensure one's safety from accidental scalding. Nothing like splurging on something that you actually can't use. AAAAARGHHHH!!

click below to find out what happened next...

Last August, some good friends came to stay at the little guest cottage behind my parents' place. They brought their dog, who over enthusiastically tore down the glass door to the porch. We boarded it up, and it was supposed to be replaced in due course.

Please admire a photograph of above mentioned door a week ago. Still broken.

Here's what our place looked like around the time of the busting of the door:

...and here's the same view, a couple of weeks ago:

I wonder which project is going to be completed first? Stay tuned for constant updates.

Last weekend was the big meeting to discuss where the electrical outlets, light switches and cable TV outlets will go. This takes quite a bit of imagination, as we are suddenly forced to imagine where we want to place our television, should we suddenly become people who actually are into owning one. Not to mention where the sconces should go in the bathrooms. But the really trying part was going over the plans and realizing how many of the switches were set to go into places that made no sense (like on the wall behind where the door opens, or down the hall from where you might actually want to turn on the light.) We ended up going through the entire place, sharpie in hand, marking in ink EXACTLY where we'd like all of those things to go. (see above photo of my husband Josh somewhat irritated as he completes this task in the freezing cold shell of our once and future home) The fact that this is a full time (or at least very active part time) job is beginning to hit home right about now. If we hadn't dealt with those discrepancies, we would have had all sorts of annoying light issues. And we still may, because Mercury is now in retrograde, so all bets are off.

After a few hours over at the construction site, we head back to my parents' place, which has just gotten a new thermostat. Exciting! Or so we think, till we can't get the heat to go higher than 60, which is fine for sleeping, but not much else. I was annoyed enough by this to photograph the evil thermostat, as if that would somehow help. We gave up, went to see Pan's Labyrinth, which is one of the most beautiful films to come out in years, and then hightailed it back to Brooklyn and our heated, furnished apt.

SO I may be crazy, but does this look like a electric meter that is attached to anything? If you were coming to read this, wouldn't you start to wonder if there were actually any electric currents running through this home? (lets not even take into consideration the fact that the building is just an empty shell) So then why does the electric company continue to send us not only bills for estimated usage, but angry notes demanding access to the meter???? Has anyone actually been there to check this out? The same BS is happening with the gas company as well (who, by the way, sent two of their own men out to 'retire' the line and seal the pipes before we started digging the basement.) We're dutifully writing them checks whilst hoping that they'll give us a big credit when all is said and done. Trying to explain the situation to the "people" on the phone is mind numbing... Anyone else had this kind of fun? It's a universal experience in our modern world, this frustrating banging-my-head-against-a-brick-wall feeling when dealing with utility companies.

AAARGH!!!!!!!!!!