I have decided to move on. Today, my husband Josh and I have spoken, between the two of us, to:

the police
the contractor
the Marvin window guy, Tim McCabe, at Perimeters
the security people
the floor guy
the insurance claims dept
and the plumber

Though I must admit to feeling pretty damned lucky to have such a good team working with us, I am getting a bit tired of explaining what happened to each new person and making provisional plans. I now choose to concentrate on the lovely flowers that are coming up all over my parents' yard (see above.)

And maybe on the fact that, despite the setbacks, we are still ahead of the door installation at the back house:

No pictures for this entry (actually, I wanted to post a photo of me giving the world the finger, but I think the grownups would take it down immediately, so I'm not going to bother.)

Those lovely French doors that I wrote so excitedly about in the last few entries? GONE. And the two fixed sidelights that we weren't going to use (but had found potential takers for?) ALSO GONE. That's right Ladies and Gentlemen. STOLEN. Some f*ing bastards decided that they needed to have nice custom French doors and windows for their place without paying. So they helped themselves. Broke open the newly installed doors, came into our place, such as it is, took out what they wanted, and then took the doors off the hinges as well. I am placing a curse on their families as I type this and secretly hope that they get their karmic due before their next life. Like maybe tomorrow or the next day.

Which forces us to move into high gear. We've already set up a rough alarm system which will be beefed up in the next 24 hours, plus we're paying a retarded sum (but less that the cost of new doors) to have the place patrolled at night until the security cameras are set up. SECURITY CAMERAS! This in a town where everyone knows each other and many folks leave their doors unlocked. Evidently, the police have some ideas about the perps as this has been happening to construction sites all over the area. May they be caught and brought to justice. May I somehow feel better about this and stop wondering why we're being cursed with this kind of thing ('cause did I mention that our car was broken into yesterday?)

AAAAAAAAARGHHHHH!!!!!!!! 

Here's a photo of our new old sink, upside down so that you can see the beautiful brackets that hold it up. It was actually the big selling point of the whole piece (that and it's diminutive size) and makes even my design snob of a husband reconsider going to salvage places for some of our fixtures. Now the challenge is to find a place that can refinish this baby, as well as my bathtub:

This tub has been with me for about 15 years, and it is particular not only because if its golden claw feet, but because of it's six foot length. When I started looking for one of these, I had no idea how rare these puppies were. I am tall, so the extra foot really matters to me. And when I finally found one, I swore I would never leave it. I've carried it (with help) up and down four flights of stairs in not one, but two lofts I have lived in and redone, plus it vacationed under my grandmother's porch for about 5 years. Right now it's hanging out in a storage room in Brooklyn and it has cracks in the enamel that need to be dealt with. Plus we need to find a shower for it as the hand shower is somewhat unsatisfying. Perhaps another trip to George Taylor Specialties is in order...

Inspired and motivated by last month's Domino "green" issue, we have made a new commitment to trying to use as many vintage items (ie recycle) as we can in the course of this renovation. With that in mind, we (my husband Josh and I) took a trip over the weekend to a marvelous and mysterious place called Olde Good Things. Thanks, Jesse, for the recommendation.This cavernous store, right in the middle of Manhattan, is two huge floors of every type of thing you could possibly imagine. Hundreds of light fixtures, architectural details, hooks, vintage screws, you name it, they have it there. And if it's not there, it's in one of the fields at their huge home base in Scranton, PA. I've put some photos of the types of things they have after the jump, if you care to check it out. We went in looking for a sink for our upstairs bathroom and came out with a beauty, though it needs a little TLC. It's the one with the little "sold" sticker on it:

What's especially nice about it, besides the sea shell soap dish which I love, are the brackets that attach it to the wall. I will add a photo of this feature later when I am reunited with the sink, now residing in the trunk of our car until we find someone to refinish it for us. Does anybody out there know of a good refinisher? We need to find someone who can do the job at their place, or who works out in the Hamptons, and can do the work once the sink and tub are installed.

This morning, we took the sink in to this great plumbing supply place called George Taylor, down in Tribeca, for a little consultation. Another amazing place full of super knowledgeable people. No website, of course, but no one we are working with seems to have one, so whatever. We were happy to discover that the sink doesn't need any specialty plumbing work, plus they helped us start to think about fixtures that will work with it. All in all, a good morning.

Click below to see some more pictures of the cool stuff at Olde Good Things...

I've gotten a little behind... my actual life is taking up far too much room and my virtual life is suffering a bit. I'll give you updates on what's been happening since last I wrote anything down in here.

Last week, I drove out to Sag Harbor for the day just to have a face to face meeting with Mark Rist, our contractor. It gets frustrating trying to do all of the communicating via fax and voice mail and I knew we were bound to have crossed wires, mixed signals, etc, if we kept it up. He likes to meet on weekdays, so out I went. Pulling up, I saw this lovely sight:

Nothing better than seeing evidence of work actually being done on your house. So cool. Of course, I had to reckon with my age when I went in and met the electrician, who looked to be about 10 years old (so was probably in his mid 20's...) But that's neither here nor there. The work looks to be great, and some of the issues we had (why are there ceiling lights being installed in the upstairs bedrooms?) turn out not to be mistakes at all (they're not lights, they're built in smoke detectors, required by code.)

The upstairs bedroom windows have gone from this:

to this:

which is beyond exciting. All of the windows are now in place, as are the French doors in the rear. The side lights (windows flanking the doors) are still to come. More on that next time. Here's what the back of the house looks like now...

It's starting to feel like a real house, with windows and doors that open and close. Who knew how miraculous this would feel! Supposedly, the house will be "livable" by the end of May, though there will still be work going on. I'm keeping my fingers crossed, because it'd be great to actually be able to start using the place we've sunk so much of our savings into. Of course, Mark's version of "livable" and mine might be completely different animals, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

Witness the return of the angry husband, who first appeared in this little weblog way back in November (and please excuse the horrible retouching job-- I tried to get rid of the rey-eye, but I fear he now looks like an alien.) Josh has reared his unhappy head again because of the horrible mistake we have made in ordering the windows to go on either side of our French doors. The original idea, which is a good one, was to have a virtual wall of glass looking out into our back yard. To preserve the old-school vibe of the place, we went with French doors and two "side lights" or large windows, one on either side of the doors. What we got, much to my husbands horror (and my disappointment, though my feelings are not as strong on the subject) were some very nice doors:

and then two pretend windows that are actually doors that don't open:

which, had they been from a lesser company, would probably be fine. But Marvin's doors are substantial and well constructed with weather strips and extra plastic and metal stuff that I don't even understand along the bottom... The thing is, at the end of the day, they are doors, not windows. And they look like doors. Not windows, which is what they are supposed to be. (Did I say that already?) They feel mid-80's suburban, which is something that I might have learned to live with, but my uncompromising husband (see photo above) could never stand for. Secretly, of course, I'm happy that he's so picky. The final result will be much nicer and I won't have to listen to him complain about the way the windows look for the rest of our lives. I'm less secretly annoyed at myself for not asking the right questions, and everyone involved for not making this clear before we placed the order.

Emergency drawings were made and we shot off to see Tim at Perimeters (where we bought the windows/doors in the first place) to see if we could remedy the situation. We are still waiting to see if our specs can be turned into the windows of our dreams, while we lick our wounds and realize that we now have two extra glass doors on our hands. If anybody out there in the general area wants to take them off of our hands, please comment below. I'll update you all as soon as I have more info from the Marvin folks.

Just got back out here and the windows are almost all in... Here's the kitchen, which is finally beginning to look like a real room. Things still seem to be going somewhat slowly, and I do kind of wish the windows were all in place, and maybe the siding or some other exciting such thing would be happening, but I suppose I shouldn't complain. Especially when thoughtful decisions were made that had nothing to do with me or my exacting husband. Look at the photo below to see what I mean:

OK, check this out. All of the windows on the first floor are new, while the ones on the second floor are all original. That was not the way the place had been up till now, and not what had been indicated in the plans. But someone was thinking, and realized that it would look much better (smoother, more uniform, more consistent, whatever) if like was close to like in the window department. And I have to admit, they are right. These are the things you never really think about (or at least, I never really think about) till it's too late. In this happy instance, someone else has done the thinking for us. Yay team. So maybe that's why the progress seems a bit slow-- there's more going on than meets the eye..

But then, lo and behold, I turn around in the kitchen and discover, to my delight, a switch plate!

And then we suddenly noticed that much electrical work had also been done, almost all of it to our specs! The key word here being almost. But whatever. We'll go through the whole place tomorrow with the plans and a marker, making a list of what needs to be changed or added and marking it down on the wall. Seems to be the best way to get one's message across. I'll let you all know how it goes (will the excitement ever cease?)

Actually, if you really want to be moved, please go and see The Lives of Others before it leaves the theaters. It's an unbelievably beautifully directed and acted portrait of life in East Germany, back when there was such a thing. Seeing a film like that kind of makes me wonder what I'm doing prattling on about new windows, but hey... lets not go there, shall we?

I cannot even begin to properly express my excitement about the arrival of our windows. Beautiful, double hung, 6 over 6 authentic divided lites and all. And in LESS than the 6 week time frame to boot! Thank you Marvin. My husband Josh and I drove out just for the day on Sunday to admire them. How fabulous are the natural wood frames? I'm trying to decide if we should just use tung oil on them, or if we should stain them. Any opinions would be appreciated. I think the floors will be a light-ish pine tone, so I'm thinking it'd be cool to have the windows match. Granted, it's a bit difficult to get a true feeling with all of the stickers and plastic still on them, but even so...

Here's what they look like on the outside:

Very much like the old windows, which is just what we were looking for. In fact, here's a photo of the back of the house where you can see one new window (upper right) and one of the original ones (upper left)

And, just in case anybody cares, here's what my parents' guest house door still looks like:

So it seems that we've taken the lead in the race towards a finished project.