Jarrett House NorthNow with 80% less politics!

I got a little carried away back in 2004. I assumed that when the clogged drain that backed up into our driveway got fixed, it stayed fixed.
Hah.
I found signs that it backed up again this morning, and proof this afternoon as a pool rose out of it when the washing machine drained. I called the [...]

Pick up the scraper, paint bucket, caulk gun, ladder. Walk up the driveway. Caulk is quick: push out, drag down, wipe. Let it dry, move on to the window sills. Pick up scraper and start to knock the paint, loosened by rain from a leaking gutter, from the sill.
And I’m back at the farm. I’m [...]

I’m not used to having time to myself on Columbus Day, but for whatever reason, my company has the day off, and Lisa’s doesn’t. So a fairly leisurely morning, a luxury bagel, a little blogging, spend half my eMusic subscription for the month, and then get outside and caulk and paint some places where the [...]

Shannon Worrell, an artist whom I developed a serious musical crush on in Charlottesville in the early ’90s, is recording again after an eight year hiatus and has a new album, The Honey Guide, coming out later this year. This is big news; her last album, released after the breakup of her band September 67, [...]

Here’s the after to Tuesday’s before, with my row of Bestå shelves from Ikea fully assembled. The doors went on Monday night, and the books went in the last few nights. I’m still waiting on one glass door and a few DVD organizers for the small shelf to the right, which will help with the [...]

A quick update on our basement project: it looks like we’ll make our deadline. The picture to the right shows a stage in the completion of the project, with the Bestå bookcases mostly assembled and the Flor carpet in.
I was able to finish the carpet with about an hours’ worth of work on Sunday. I [...]

We’re bound and determined to finish the basement project before the middle of next week. Why? Well, we’ll have both my parents and my sister visiting, and we only have one currently usable guest room… so it’s crunch time.
Fortunately, Lisa and Esta decluttered a lot of stuff and painted a lot of the basement last [...]

For various reasons, we’ve taken a good long break from home improvement, so the houseblog has been pretty dormant. That changed last week when Lisa and I started to look seriously at what it would take to reclaim our basement as a guest bedroom.
Right now it’s quite a project. Ever since the flood in 2006, [...]

While I was in Pennsylvania, I helped my uncle move some junk out of the storage unit where we put some of my grandfather’s things. A few items held memories for me (I never could get comfortable on that fold-up metal cot, and was glad to see it go), but others were remnants: the boxes [...]

Coral and green (dianthus and iris)
Originally uploaded by Tim Jarrett
Quite well at the moment, thanks. I just posted some photos of our early flowers this year (remember, those of you who live south of here, we only really got spring about three weeks ago here in Massachusetts). The iris are going great guns this year, [...]

I’ve spent the weekend so far mostly outside, which has been great. When I was at Fennell’s party last weekend I never got a chance to mow our lawn, and it took forever to get through this afternoon. Then grilling burgers afterwards, with errands in between.
There’s nothing more urgent or important that needs to be [...]

The Old House My House blog on the This Old House site broke the news of lead tile contractor Joe Ferrante’s death. Obviously any death from heart failure is tragic, but this one hits me for a variety of reasons. The tile work always seemed to me to be closest to a black art of [...]

I hadn’t planned to have any work done on the house this weekend—it’s been kind of a long week. But opportunity knocked—in the form of a paving contractor.
One of the things I haven’t liked about our house since we moved in is our road. Our neighbors are fine—it’s the actual pavement that is problematic. Like [...]

We got a bunch of rain with the Nor’easter that roared through Sunday and Monday. Did it bug us? Did it float our possessions, the way the rain last May did? Reader, it did not.
Instead, here’s what happened: Sunday was uneventful. Monday, Lisa went downstairs and reported that the sump pump had kicked on and [...]

We wrapped another kitchen/dining room project this weekend. Where prior projects had put cabinetry on the opening between the dining room and the kitchen, this new project put a wall + base cabinet combo around the corner, in the dining room. The placement echoes the corner cabinet directly opposite, but doesn’t try to be a [...]