Monthly Archives: October 2020

Psycho Thriller: How renovating houses turned me into my own therapist

Posted in Architecture, Coastal Design, Uncategorized by
Break the rules or create your own.

I love the idea of being de-coded by someone. To be truly understood and seen by another should be a basic human right, it’s not, but it is a basic need. I won’t allow myself the luxury of lying on a sofa, or in a comfortable chair, and working through why I think or feel the way I do. I know I have the disease of being busy, too busy, so busy I can barely sit still, which is in part why I like house renovations so much. They are like little babies requiring constant care and attention. They can also try your patience and wear on your last nerve, making you feel as if you are going to go insane.

Making way for water – away from the home.

Here’s where Behavioral Activation Therapy comes in. I can’t believe that I didn’t study psychology because I love it so much. I had been employing this psychotherapy technique on myself without even knowing it. I’m so self-clever sometimes it astounds me, mainly because at turns I can be so clueless, and not in the cute and cool way that Alicia Silverstone was when she starred as Cher in the movie of the same name. I stumbled across the technique when I was renovating my second property, which had me crying a river – the last thing you want to do when your house is already full of water in all the wrong rooms and places.

The kitchen – heart of the home.

I found myself digging around in my closets looking for my suitcases and wondering to myself allowed what would be needed in the quiet padded cell of the insane asylum, when I thought, what if I just pretended that this wasn’t happening to me at all. What if, I was just a paid employee to the person that it was happening to, and my job was to figure it out – get the appropriate line-up of contractors, find the best prices and do it quickly. What if, when all of that was done, I got paid for it? What if indeed.

Keeping it together. The foundation for the retaining wall is in!

What I discovered is that it works. By removing the person that takes it personally – that would be me, and I suspect you too – from time to time, something amazing happens, you just get it done. It’s just a job. Imagine my surprise when I was listening to No Stupid Questions – the Angela Duckworth and Steven Dubner podcast I am currently obsessed with and Angela, the psychologist, was asked by Steven if pretending you weren’t depressed, by “acting” as if you were an non-depressed person could really work? I bet you can guess what she said. Now go out there and get renovating or taking your first steps toward running a marathon or whatever amazing thing you will do, because you can – unless it’s surgery. Please leave that to the surgeon.

Kitchen Scheme: Two Takes for Take II

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I do wish I had the Hollywood production crew to support this effort. I want to roll out set design after set design, approve, reject, refine, edit, explore, look for even more. Want that outrageously expensive light fixture, just find some obnoxiously rich finance person who wants to be a part of the fame to fund it. Does that sound too cynical of me. I can be cynical, when instead I should be celebrating, all the possibility that comes from ingenuity, a tireless search that results in an unexpected find. I can do that too.

Scheme I . Looking for a slightly more traditional take on this option.
Scheme 1 Take II

Last week I showed you four potential schemes for the kitchen. I thought for a moment I’d show you no more. We had a roller coaster of a week with a person of interest – to me, and my partners, as she showed serious interest in the property. Three visits. The first on her own, that I chalked up to curiosity. Who doesn’t love a construction site? The second started to get my attention, and resulted in the hatching of a plan, a sale price and serious consideration. The third visit with her builder and trusted friends showed even more promise, but was followed by crickets – and not the Disney character that provide comic relief from the backbreaking work of the demolition, the sad soliloquy of a solo violinist.

Scheme I . Take I
Scheme II . Take II

I did feel a little sad about leaving it unfinished and handing it over for cash money, but make no mistake our purpose in this endeavor is to make money, not to realize our grandest design desires – though we have fun with that too. If I learned anything from binge watching Selling Sunset, it was that you don’t need to take a project to completion to add value, and value we did add. She’s as bare as a babe on a nude beach in summer, though by next spring she’ll be adorned with more Hydrangea and sea grass, maybe a bushel of Montauk Daisies or a Tulip or two, a Butterfly Tree and plenty of mint scattered about. We hired the architect, are refining the design, lined up all the subs, have our application into historic…that’s all worth something.

Additional Circa Lighting Options: Left- Afton. Right – Lauceton.

While it might not have been right for OysterPondGal – it’ll be so very right for the right person. Forge ahead we must and I cannot wait to hear your opinion on this next iteration of kitchen designs. Please don’t hold back. Happy Sunday friends.

Left: HVL . Alamot. Right: HVL . Lauren – Mitzi

Demolition Derby: tales from the Willow Bend Flip

Posted in Flipping, Uncategorized by
Scheme I

I’m not an Olympic Athlete, in case you were wondering. I wonder if it’s because I don’t love the pain of the challenge as much as the other gal. I can do it, do make myself do it, languish in the rewards of being on the other side of doing it. The sore muscles, the camaraderie, the sense of accomplishment, of doing something that someone else simply won’t do. I can do that, but I am old enough to know that I’ll never love it. Not like Michael Jordan, not like Billie Jean King, not like Danika, but hard work shows up in so many different ways, and I love and hate them all, and feel as neutral as a scoop of vanilla ice cream on a cold winter’s day, which is to say, I love ice cream anytime of the year, but I hate being cold. I like to celebrate my complexity like a rainbow.

Scheme II

This flip required 4 hard – like a hard rain’s gonna fall kind of hard – demolition. When you embark on a renovation project there really is something for every skill-set, age, and interested person to contribute. When I was really little I used to pick the nails up around the construction site. Later I striped wallpaper, and lead paint from the walls – check that box. Not being allowed to use power tools of any kind, I worked my way around the site (the homes that we lived in and my father renovated), hauling, cleaning, organizing, and staying out from underfoot and being very, very quiet. I’d work for a #6 Mason Jar sandwich – roast turkey breast with cranberry sauce, romaine lettuce, muenster cheese, mayo on a bulky roll with a half sour pickle – no chips or a drink, we were conserving money for the renovation.

Scheme III

As I peeled back the vines, the dilapidated wood picket fence, then the chain link, for which I was forced to cede my show of strength. I couldn’t even unearth a single concrete encrusted steel post from the ground, and there were many. I have nothing on Mother Nature – I bow to your beauty and strength.

Scheme I – II

Days 3 and 4 were all about the upstairs bath. Boy there are lots of parts and pieces to that structure. I’m reminded that the thigh bone is connected to the hip bone, the hip bones connected to the …. I had to dissect the connections to find the weak points and disassemble what someone or two, at times very thoughtfully, and later, quite lackadaisically with a scrap here, and an almost long enough board there, had carefully put into place those many decades before. It all gave me a run for my money, but as money is the point of this flip, and I am motivated by it, I refused to wave the flag until all the plaster and drywall – yes both, all the 2 x 4 – the real kind – the one’s that actually measured 2 x 4, all the offensive aesthetic elements were dispensed with – the vanity – holy ugly, the glass block window – holy heavy, the Italian blue ceramic tile, and the toilet – holy – holy. I stripped that baby bare. She’s as fresh as a new born entering the world, full of possibility. The sore muscles were worth it.

Scheme IV

Now I need your help. Long lead items are longer than they ever were before – oh Covid. The kitchen must be ordered and we cannot order the kitchen without a plan for the color scheme, and this Cape home will flow from one room to the next so we need to really LOVE the kitchen becaus all tides will rise with it, or fall, with crashing finality over the clashing disaster of colors. Which of these options would say to you – I’m ready to move in?

Joint Venture: Let the Female-led Flip Begin

Posted in Flipping by
27 Willow Bend . Look for the listing Spring 2021

I’ve been working since I was eleven years old. I know what hard work is, and still, as I sit here on – not my sofa- I am fully steeped in the meaning of the phrase “a hard days work”. I’m so tired from the effort of wedging, pulling, bending, breaking, berating the board, and the brick, and the bad ass bush that got in the way of my de-shuttering extravaganza, that I can barely command my fingers to lift and type – something they are very facile at doing, under normal circumstances.

Before the brush attack. It’s all gone now.

I’ve been a Chamber Maid, and only slightly elevated my standing in life when I became a pot washer of a different sort, before graduating to sandwich maker. I am proud of the fact that I could make those sandwiches faster than the sandwich wrapper could wrap them. I was accused of gaming the system by setting up six to eight sandwiches for construction at a time. I was always thinking of ways in which I could change the work, make the work more fun – make it a game, win, compete, exceed, proceed. At that young age I didn’t give much consideration to the ways in which the work changed me, but it did, it has, its impression so deeply ingrained that I feel certain that the camaraderie, the laughter, the sweat, and the five gallon plastic pickle barrels that I would haul from the walk-in out to the kitchen and open with the sharp end of a French knife before sinking my hand into the frigid briny liquid to retrieve the spears, will never leave me. Just as surely as I could recite very word of Cat Stevens Greatest Hits album which we played day after day, after long summer day on the old cassette player.

Say good-bye to the dated kitchen.

It’s likely this early start, the experience of being around other people that also worked, that worked hard, that didn’t really understand hardly working, has given me the experience, or maybe it’s an understanding that I gave something to it, and in return it gives something to me. We might not be even. The scales tip in one direction, and then another, they vacillate in tiny dips and shudders, on that fulcrum of perfection, that represents sublime balance – if only for a moment. Those moments are worth the effort.

Don’t you love a little look back in time.

Today’s effort was the result of a full day’s demolition on my very first joint venture. A flip, which is my very favorite kind of real estate holding. Hard to get too precious over something you don’t plan to hold that long, and at the same time, I’ll do my best to take care of her, and so will my two female counter parts. It’s amazing to me that the women of ancient Egypt were allowed to acquire, own, and dispose of real property. How then did things get so off course for us. It wasn’t until 1855 in MA that women here reclaimed that right, but it’s woefully underutilized. I’m hoping I can change your mind about that. Nothing says real like real estate.