MAR-A-10
March 13---14, 2004
This has been my last weekend in Derwood before a number of big changes will be taking place, during most of which I will be on the far side of the world. A number of those changes might have involved me if there were places for me to move stuff to, since a number of the change orders involve my renting another dumpster and clearing out the basement and attic into dumpster so that there might be further progress on the space thus cleared. My biggest assignment for this weekend would have been to move all the stuff out of the two storage bedrooms, and to do that, I should have found a space somewhere to store the stuff to be moved. Since there are no spaces that are finished, there could be no move and I will have to pay for the labor of others to move the stuff in a way that does not accord with the organization each had when I had first stacked the books and organized and labeled the boxes, back in the Fourth of July week last year before I left for India. The master bedroom is going to be carpeted, and then the finished space represented by the completed master bedroom and walk-in closet would be the repository of all the stuff stacked in the two guest rooms (the westward one doubling as an office) that can be moved out to begin the process of carpeting and painting each. But, until we clear one spot, we cannot move stuff to it and from the other places to be done next. I had suggested the cedar closet upstairs, but it is not finished either, and the attic would require an entire summer lest it be simply a matter of moving what may later be junked anyway into another part of the already fully packed attic.
The next place to be cleared out is the basement and its central storage area under the new set of plans Dale had drawn up for a corridor to the garage with an all dry walled and renovated central space so there would be no residual at all of the “old house”. The last major appliance there is the water pressure tank, and it is being replaced by the plumbers under the assumption that it would be needing replacement within “Four to forty years” based in the single cast iron pipe that is still part of the well and the pressure tank that is still the original—so I had said to replace all that too. But, another big project, all of it done before my departure and in order to avoid having all the stuff from the basement moved out to the garage with a new door built to have a straight and open corridor to the garage may be too much just now in time, effort and costs, so it may have to await my being in the house and recognizing the difference in this last residual space of the old house that will need bringing up to the modernization of the rest of the sparkling new house.
IMPROVEMENTS ON THE ALREADY TOTALLY
RE-DONE HOUSE
What IS being added includes the following: carpeting in all the upstairs master bedroom, walk-in closet, hallways, and both guest rooms (taupe canvas in color); new chimney caps, flashing the chimney, stripping the vines from the house and power washing all the brick, the gutter guards I had originally balked at adding since they were too expensive (they still are), special consideration of the downspouts and where they will conduct the water from the rain run off and through what. I will postpone the attic work and the gate under the deck, since the resolution of the new gas tank and the plumbing lines that conduct the gas to the cook stove top are inserted. I am meeting with the landscape gardener on a very busy day at Derwood on Thursday to talk about the re-design of the front of the house, and may have to postpone the major gardening and other plans until later much after I have moved in.
What else is coming on Thursday is
a very large and all pre-paid shipment of all the customized furniture. All the “white glove delivery treatment” and
deployment of the furniture in the places she has envisioned the major pieces
going will be done when
All of the appliances must then be
installed, which were supposed to be inserted on last Thursday when the glitch
of the oversizes on appliances due to the raised floor from the Mexican tile,
and the undersize of the kitchen cabinetry to hold the double oven and the
green granite cutout for the new cookstove top.
The new cabinets to be replacing those undersized for the appliances are
already parked in their packing boxes out on the landing and deck near the
Breakfast Room. The plumbers are
supposed to get the gas line rigged and take out the old electric water heater
and the former water pressure tank and replace it with a new bladder tank. How all this happens before all the furniture
and curtains, etc, arrive on Thursday, I don to know, but I also know that
should be the end of the dust-flying era of further demolition, sawing,
hammering and other rough treatment with the high finish Harden, leather chairs
and Ottomans, end tables and desks with British Colony finish, china hutches
with mirrors, and Kravet lighting and lamps and other high-styled pieces coming
in. I also know that the morning after
all this, I should be gone, from the West Coast to the
DERWOOD
VISITORS
One visitor who has been here several times already, and needs to see that the house is ready for occupancy, (which for him means a functioning bathroom and a kitchen) is the appraiser, whop needs to approve it as something worthy of an occupancy permit before it becomes a “salable house” for which a mortgage loan can be approved. Whatever he finds on his review, I am booked at ten o’clock on Tuesday morning, in my attorney Dan Kennedy’s office, to sign the “closure” on the mortgage loan, an hour after I meet with Dale to pass the checks for the change orders and just before I meet with Sandy Shelor to pass along the final payments for the furniture and to send a deposit on the wallpaper and other finishing items for the other rooms.
I had called Paul Shorb to arrange a visit and lunch with him before the first o of the year, when he was schedule to have his hip replaced, and then when my Horn of Africa trip intervened, we re-booked for Friday. We had lunch and toured his house where he is doing wood-working and Tina is doing refinishing of small tables, with both of them planning to go up to Rockland Maine just after Memorial Day. He walked around the Derwood improvements which he can scarcely remember from the days he had dinner here now two decades ago.
Craig and Carol Schaefer came over
with Craig’s parents who have been following the house progress from a
distance, since the elder Schafer used to teach the industrial arts at
So, I have many more last-minute
things to do before I pack my way out of Derwood to set in motion the final
component parts before it is ready to be
moved into , essentially at the time I will be gone, this time for three weeks
in the West Coast and Far East, and the next trip, a day after I return, and
two days after I spend April 12 hanging the heads of all the trophies according
to plan, including two deer and one full mounted fox from Parker’s Taxidermy
that will be ready for perhaps Bill Webster to pick up and bring to Derwood
next month as I have just sent him my last three computers in the trunk of
Craig Schaefer’s Mercedes. I will then
be gone for over two weeks on the Amazon from
And, so it is, life goes on.