Two Phases of the Swoon

The makeover of the Roediger House has two distinct phases, and so far the blog has been focused on the first part of this, which was the demolition of the old kitchen and bathrooms and the construction of the addition. For that job, Pete LaRoque has served as the General Contractor, with the charge of bringing into being the design that my architect Sam Binkley worked up. Now, I can keep trying to find ways to describe for you how much I love the new space: the kitchen and master bath are particularly incredible to me. Suffice it to say that it's pretty doggone awesome to now be inhabiting these spaces, enjoying them in the quiet times and reveling in the better ways they accommodate friends for fun times.

Next up: renovation and improvement of the existing or original house. Part of this has begun: replacement of a lot of light fixtures, about which I've already written. Pete's part of the project also involved elements of "renovation," in addition to the addition: things like replacing the HVAC system, putting on a new roof, insulating the attic and crawl space, and painting the exterior of the house. But what happens from here is up to me to schedule and arrange, which means it's likely to be more haphazard.

Essentially, what it boils down to is this: there is a fair amount of plaster repair needed in the south parlour, master bedroom, and dining room downstairs; and in the four rooms and hallway upstairs. After that, I'll have Gary Hudson in to repaint those walls and ceilings. Then, the floors upstairs can be refinished. Beyond that, I need to get shutters and storm windows and tackle landscaping.

In the meantime, I guess the Roediger House blog will become a bit more all-purpose: notes about events and happenings, mostly, and a few other random things here and there. Stay tuned, if you can stand it.

Tuesday Tattler

I'm feeling pretty yawn-y, thanks to a couple of nights of showings of the Roediger Theatre and an early start to today. Last night, there were about 20 folks on hand for The Empire Strikes Back, and Sunday night a few more than that came out for Drop Dead Gorgeous. I love these summer nights and it's fun to hang out and enjoy shows on the big screen. I'm hoping the chocolate fudge with walnuts, and the cinnamon chip cookies, were suitable snacks for the crew. Monica Alonso brought over some of her famous mac-n-cheese, and that cleared out half the audience to run inside and wait for it to be served up hot.


The night began with grilling out: burgers on the grill with Bradley, Trevor, Chris, Shane, Beau, Brian, Stephen, and Danny (Meal No. 11 in the new kitchen). In some ways, we think it's our last hurrah with Trevor, before he moves out to San Diego to undertake a masters program, and probably to fall into habits of grave sin and debauchery. You can see he was visibly moved by the finality of it all. And hey: those burgers were pretty good. And the company for the evening was great.

Preceding Sunday night's film, there was also some grilling out, for Meal No. 10: filet mignon, company mashed potatoes, Caesar salad, and poppy seed rolls. Fudge for dessert, too. It made me mighty happy to have a thick medium-rare steak in the new kitchen. It's been a long time coming.

In the next few hours, the final inspection by the City should occur. Pete had to come and address two issues related to insulation over the new kitchen space; otherwise, we were looking pretty good. Pete and I met Saturday and did a sort of final "walk-through" of our own, noting the things that still need to be addressed or tidied up. Another sign that things are just about done.

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Late-Day Update: I prepped enough burgers last night such that there were some leftover but ungrilled, so that became Meal No. 12 this evening.

Latest Meals

I suppose it's the novelty of having this great new kitchen, or maybe it's the part of me that used to be a history teacher, but there is an undeniable need to document the meals cooked. The good thing about a blog is that you guys don't have to read what doesn't interest you. Being able to cook again interests me a great deal, so this is what I'm thinking about with this latest entry.

There's already been a repeated meal: Bama Chicken (No. 7 in the new kitchen). That was last Sunday before I took off for part of the week in Pinehurst, working. Once I got home again, I could get back to trying out recipes, and last night (Friday) was Meal No. 8: grilled parmesan-crusted salmon with a port wine reduction based buerre rouge. It was pretty darned tasty. Tonight was sesame-crusted seared tuna with a ginger cream sauce and stir-fried glass noodles (Meal No. 9). Not as good and way too much trouble for the results.

Fan Mail

Dear People,

Seems I'm making, at best, trickling efforts to give you more photos showing the new electrical fixtures here and there. So here's another: the new fan with lights that Jason mounted in the corner of the porch coming up from the parking area. This is a favorite spot for sitting and drinking coffee and watching birds in the side-yard grove; or for grilling; or for hanging out when movie nights get rained out. Needed breezes to be available on command, but also needed enough light to tell me if the meat is grilling properly.

Sincerely,
Ray at the Roediger House

Front Porch Sconces

I've already talked about a number of inside light fixtures that have been replaced, but it was also necessary to do this on the porch on either side of those massive front doors. Here is the photo from the online catalogue from which I ordered them, and below is an actual picture now that the fixtures have been mounted. I'm very happy with their look, and what they replaced should probably have never been on this house anyway. They've got a good old-fashioned gaslight look to them and really look snappy at night.

Since Jason Lanier, our electrician, also got sconce lights installed on the upstairs porch balcony, there is a pretty cool nighttime look to the place. It's yet another step in the right direction.

Trivia Night No. 2

It was another intense competition around the new eating nook table for the second round of Trivial Pursuit in the new addition. It was a repeat match-up of three teams, with Beau, Bradley, Ray, Shane, and Trevor bringing their best minds and memories to the task at hand. As can probably be discerned from the furrowed brows in this photo, the team of Bradley and Trevor (proud graduates of the social studies education program at Wake Forest) concentrate pretty deeply on the exact number of teams in the NFL after merger with the AFL. Their 38 minutes of contemplation led them to arrive at the right answer: 26.

Starry Night Cinema at the Roediger Theatre

Here's a little bit of fun and a diversion for you: a newly-created website focused just on the outdoor movies nights here at the Roediger House. It goes by the name of Starry Night Cinema, and you can read more about it here:

http://people.virginia.edu/~rcj6t/rohotheatre/Roediger_Theatre.html

Railing Reality

Whilst I was away in beautiful New Mexico, where the unusually prolific rains have made things a lovely sage instead of the usual brownish tan, Pete had the bannister installed for the bathroom on the upstairs landing. He says I have expensive tastes, and I guess I'd best not run from that indictment. The end result looks terrific. Still to be done: applying clearcoat and installing one last missing picket (the company shorted him one when it shipped the materials to him).

It's a Taos-Up

Hi there. I'm in Taos, New Mexico, enjoying a chance to be here again and to work with teachers in a local school. Taos is a rather cool little artists' hamlet surrounded by beautiful scenery, dotted with cool restaurants and libations locales, and home to a lot of neat people. But I sure missing being at home. It was a pretty long travel day Sunday to get here: three flights and almost three hours in a rental car from Albuquerque to Taos, although I like the driving part because of all the great views.

Saturday night was Screening #2 in this third season of Starry Night Cinema at the Roediger Theatre. The film was Alfred Hitchcock's "North By Northwest," which is always a great film to see. This was a much smaller gathering--must've chosen an awful time for many people--but the weather was about as perfect as it could be and it was still a terrific night. More movie nights to come this summer...just have to work them around the traveling that I've got coming up.

I don't have confirmation on it yet, but I think the plan was for Pete and Robert to come on Sunday and seal the counterflashing on the chimney so there won't be any more leaking up there. (I left for the airport Sunday morning at 6 am.) Today I understand Pete was back to finish installing the supply lines for the pedestal tub in the landing bathroom and to fix the toilet that cracked last week. If I understood correctly, the bannister to go around that bathroom's sunken entry and steps should be installed tomorrow morning, so I'll enjoy seeing that when I return home late Thursday night.

Friday's Fun Stuff

Can you tell I like my kitchen? This shot was from this morning. The grapes had been washed and drained overnight and this seemed picture-perfect.

Wow. My belly is full. Just had Meal #6 tonight for a small dinner gathering of four. Tonight's menu: center cut pork loin with a ginger shiitake cream sauce, stewed tomatoes, green beans with a dijon vinaigrette, company mashed potatoes, and fresh-made golden potato bread. Dessert was a dense chocolate cake that came out as a disaster, but man-o-man the flavor was still intense.

But wait, you careful readers say: when was Meal #5? That was back on Tuesday...I think I forgot to blog about it. Main dish was spaghetti carbonara. That meal was tasty but problematic...didn't come out structurally like it should. But hey: when getting to cook in as cool a kitchen as this, who am I to fret? Tuesday's meal also involved my first huge disaster with a pot boiling over, and gracious it was a mess on that beautiful new cooktop. The ceramic cooktop cleaner took it right off, though. I was in the midst of all that prep for dinner, else I'd've given you poor souls a before and after shot of it.

As noted earlier this week, the electricians did a lot of installation of new fixtures in the existing house. Here's a shot looking from the second floor hallway back towards the stairwell. There's a new center light where a yucky unuseful fan used to be, and on the left you can see one of the four new sconces up there.

More HVAC Problems: Let's see: Barnette Heating & A/C, Inc. of Mocksville, NC was back yet again today to try to figure out why the system is still not quite operating as it should. One problem they had to resolve: the outside unit was running constantly even when the cooling system was not activated. They ended up finding that one wire had been misdirected or wrongly connected. While hanging around for them to get all this done, I managed to make cookies: milk chocolate oatmeal, the third round of cookie-making in the new kitchen.

The kitchen remains awesome but I'm going to abandon it now to go watch episode 7 of the first season of "True Blood." I'm going to leave dinner clean-up for later.

I'm Just A-Lighted to Meet You

It took a two full days of work by Jason Lanier and his fellow electrician Cory, but the long list of electrical needs and wants for the existing house have now been tackled. And I'm very pleased with the results. This is not the best most glorious picture to share, but I wanted to at least get one shot up this evening. This is the new fixture in the bedroom, replacing a cheap $15 flush-mount fixture that was installed by the folks who had the house before. I like this one even though its size and lower hang are taking some getting used to. It reminds me very much of the kind of lights that were installed during the renovation of The Mimslyn Inn (1931) in Luray, VA. It's pretty cool.

Also taken care of by the electricians: new front porch sconces, an outdoor ceiling fan in the corner of the porch where I do my grilling, new light fixtures for the South Parlour and the dining room, a stairwell light to replace a filthy ceiling fan I never used, four new sconces in the upstairs hallway, new balcony sconces and an outdoor outlet for the balcony, and a couple of outlets here and there. They guys worked long and hard but I think my Monster Chip cookies were appreciated.

Mighty heavy downpours this evening. Looks like the water from the neighboring lot is getting channeled away properly but I've still got to do something about the front yard and the backed-up drain there.

Meal No. 5: Spaghetti Carbonara

What has long been a favorite meal when good friends from my Leesville Road Middle School teaching days got together showed up as one of the early meals in the new Roediger House kitchen: spaghetti carbonara. Delicious stuff, that.

Movie Night - Rescheduled

After making a Sunday afternoon check of the Monday night forecast, it seemed like it would be safe to reschedule the rained-out showing of The Transporter. That happened last night and there was a terrific turn-out. I think folks had a good time. The air was a bit close--it felt pretty humid--but the large array of citronella candles seemed to keep the pesky beasts away. The opening cartoon was Baby Bottleneck, a Looney Tunes classic, and the trailer was 10 Things I Hate about Commandments. The movie itself was a fun flick that flew by. There was the usual supply of roasted peanuts in the shell, and a couple of platters of Monster Chip cookies, which were delicious (if I may say so).

Meal No. 4: Hamburger Supreme

Meal No. 4: Hamburger Supreme. Had to be something that was quick to whip up, because a crew of us (Chris, Shane, Beau, Lindsey, Standish, Amy, and I) caught Sam Raimi's "Drag Me to Hell" this evening, and then four of us ended up in the new kitchen eating nook for that meal of comfort food afterwards. Pretty darned good. Table talk centered on all things Dr. Who, Star Trek, and a host of other shows I've seen or know little of, but it was a good time.

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"Hamburger Supreme," from the late Mrs. John T. (Glynn) Johnson of Buies Creek, North Carolina, via Janice Jones Bodenhamer.

Saturday Night Special

It was a good day today in the Roediger House. Got to sleep in, rather late, and got up in time to welcome in Pete and his wife Esther and their boy Jake, stopping by on their way to Lowe's but also so that Pete could take care of a small leak from the powder room toilet.

Tonight was officially the third cooked meal in the new kitchen: pork tenderloin medallions in a dijon mushroom cream sauce, with lima beans and company mashed potatoes, and a Hawaiian bread loaf in the bread machine. Still had some key lime pie on hand, which made a refreshing dessert. You should've been here.

The way the bay is lit at night, with the recessed exterior cans that Pete wanted to make sure we included, is pretty impressive. Thought you should see a couple of those shots:

Eveningtide in the Kitchen Space

I'll just have to hope that this picture gives some sense of how warm and inviting the new kitchen is. I'm loving it.

Pipe Down! More Plumbing Updates

Imagine that: I seem to be under the impression the people want to know what's happening with the plumbing. Well, take a gander first of all at the small but serviceable new powder room, with its vessel sink:

This picture shows the vessel sink in place but not yet secured. It was necessary to have the BloomDay Granite folks recut the countertop to get that sink to sit down a bit lower...now it's really just right and looks rather spiffy.

Progress has also been made with the main upstairs bathroom, often referred to as the "landing bathroom" because one must access it from the landing where the stairs take a turn, so it is not quite at 2nd floor level. A primary feature of it, and perhaps the reason for the whole design of that space, is the pedestal tub that was part of the original house. Inside it's in pretty good shape, but the exterior was pretty rough looking. Pete's guys sanded it down, cleaned it up, and repainted it, which allowed it finally to be positioned in the bathroom and faucet fixtures attached. That job is still not quite completed--the plumbers will have to come back to finish it up--but it's looking good.

And apparently Pete was happy to see it in place, too:

We're In Hot Water Now

When the house had a small kitchen, a half-bath for the master, and really only one working shower, it didn't require a heavy-duty hot water heater. The one that was in the house when I bought it pooped out about three years ago and its replacement was only a 40-gallon capacity and was also starting to act up. With the addition, my architect had already planned for an electric hot water heater to service the three upstairs bathrooms. But now the downstairs plumbing needs had grown immensely: a kitchen with two sinks, a dishwasher, a more usable laundry room, a powder room, and a master bath with three shower heads and an immense new soaking tub. So it was necessary to upgrade, seriously, the hot water heater. And because of venting issues, it was best to go with a 75-gallon gas hot water heater with a power vent, so it got pricey fast.

But man-o-man, is the water now wonderfully hot. Although this transition was not without a hitch: there was a problem with the power vent and so the unit would not cook, meaning the first morning it was online, the water was a sultry 90 degrees, instead of the 120 I'd been looking forward to. But that's all taken care of and the water is nice. C'mon in.

The Second Meal

What a gorgeous kitchen! And I'm feeling a bit gushy about how cool it is to finally have it up and running and to get back to cooking. So tonight was another great meal: 'Bama Chicken, Caesar salad, Brussels sprouts, warmed up heartland sunflower bread, and more crisp white wine on the side.

It was too filling a meal to go for more key lime pie, so that has been left for another time. Instead, you might say dessert was composed of two helpings of episodes from the first season of Star Trek.

Huge downpour tonight after dinner, by the way. Gave me a chance to survey how the gutters and drainage system are doing. Looks like we'll need to bolster the water shields in a couple of corners, and I've got a stopped up drain at the southwest corner of the house to take care of.

It's almost 11:30 pm and drinks out at Rec Billiards will be commencing momentarily, as soon as the crew gets off from 6th & Vine.

The First Meal

Since the crux of this whole project was really the kitchen, this evening marks a very, very special step in the project: I cooked the first meal in the new culinary palace. This afternoon gave me a chance to move a lot of the foodstuffs from the "General Store" of the temporary kitchen in the dining room. It also helped that the new and much bigger hot water heater has been installed and is up and running (there'll be another blog entry on that later). It was a fantastic dinner of Not-So-Cajun Chicken, Brussels sprouts, Caesar salad, homemade hearty sunflower bread, and a crisp cool glass of Riesling. After a while, dessert will be had: some freshly-made key lime pie.

First Movie Night Tonight

To help celebrate Beau Ward's birthday, tonight will be the opening screening of the 3rd Season of the Roediger House Theatre Starry Night Cinema. This evening's film will be The Transporter. It's awesome to see the spring and summer roll around, because this great large parking area beside the house is perfect for outdoor movie nights. While last year had slim pickings (only three movie nights total), the first year was really awesome, with probably nine or ten showings. My original website for the house, the static RoedigerHouse.com, has shots from that first summer of movie nights, with the screen and all.


Post-Movie Night Update [added Tue 05-26-09]:
The screen was up, the speakers taken outside, the projector warming up, the computer ready to play the movie...and the rains came. So the opening screening in the 3rd Season of Starry Night Cinema has been postponed. But there was a great, great turn-out, with lots of awesome people. And about half of them had not seen what was going on with the house, so there were quite a few tours given, which was great fun. Guest list included Ray, Shane, Beau, Stacey, Michelle "Moves," Jeremy & Connie & Emma and a couple of their friends, Kristin, Sarah, Chris & Kathleen, Josh, Danny, Ashley, Stephanie, Standish, Amy, Kerri & Corey, Jaime & Brian & Sammy, Jen & Jen, Bradley, Trevor, and Monica & Lisa. We all ended up with our lawn chairs up on the porch, hanging out and talking and eating cookies and popcorn and drinking. Then Monica brought in some tasty ribs and her award-winning mac-n-cheese, and many of us feasted. All in all, a pretty good alternative to the rained-out flick.

Memorial Day Events

Two items of note so far this weekend: I've now made my first batch of cookies in the new kitchen and with the new double oven.

And the table and chairs for the eating bay nook in the kitchen arrived this afternoon. So did the dining room table and eight of the chairs, but there's a lot of work to be done before I can set up the dining room.

Pre-Wolverine Grilling

The good spring weather of early May was a good excuse to do a bit of pre-movie grilling on the front porch. Here are shots of our happy gathering.

Additional Visitations

A couple more visits and tours of the house, of late. My oldest friend in the world, Jay Brown, who grew up across the street from me in Buies Creek and whom I've known since he was in his mother's womb, stayed over one night. Unfortunately, the reason for his visit to Winston-Salem was his ailing grandmother, who did pass away earlier this week. But they had a great last visit with one another.

The other visitor was my UVA co-conspirator and fellow PhD student in Social Studies back in the late 90s: Ken Watson. He's also a JD, which means he knows a lot about a little and is paid to win any argument with you over it.

Happy Rails to You

Another finishing touch as we wind things up: putting up new railings on the exposed parts of each end of the wrap-around porch. On the south side, where you come up from the parking area, the whole porch was redone; on the north side, the old rails were in bad shape and weren't really designed for being out in the open. Kevin and Larry knocked these out Friday. We'll let the wood cure a bit longer, and then Pete is hoping to get some solid-color stain to match the painting of the other rails, as it will hold up better than regular paint. Since there needs to be enough space coming up the steps from the parking area, putting a brick peer to match the other side of the house was not an option, and Pete was not going to be happy unless he was certain that the end post was solid, sturdy, and immovable. They bolted a steel post and then built the wood casing around it, and that puppy don't budge a bit. They also did a nice job of capping off that end post.

Because we had rain on and off Friday, the porch was a perfect place for them to set up their equipment to work, and it turned into quite a busy woodshop:

Gutter Snipes

More evidence that we're getting to the finishing touches: gutters were installed on the addition on Friday, and we've already had our first rain test of them. It wasn't a lot of rain--not a gully-washer, by any means--but enough to see that water channels into them and down the downspouts and out to where the water must go. Since it was a night-time rain, I already find myself wishing for a slight change, but I'll live with it: there's a downspout right outside my bedroom window, and the dripping is noisy. This also puts water out where we've had problems with leaking in the old foundation into the cellar, so we probably should have re-thought it. Oh well. If it becomes enough of a problem, I'll tackle it later. I'm glad they're up and that they have a leaf-guard system on them; we'll see how they perform given that they're not what was originally promised. I think they may have missed sealing one corner joint because there's dripping from it up against the fascia board, but that'll be easy to solve. Too bad it's on the upper roof, though! Somebody'll be climbing up mighty high.

Here's an updated shot of the house, looking up from the parking area on the south side of the property:

Step Up the Updates

OK, fell off the job there a bit and neglected to bring the following developments to your attention. First off, steps have been built to the two exterior doors in the kitchen complex: the one from the parking area that comes into the back hallway outside the laundry room; and the "courtyard" door that's beside the fireplace at the eating nook. The pair from James Masonry knocked these out pretty quickly, so now there's no more leaping up into the house when I come home with groceries.




Tilework is mostly completed in all bath areas, which means that there are now three usable showers (although I've not gotten the shower doors yet). The tub/shower in one guest room is also workable, but there will be no waterworks in there till there's a shower door, for sure. The second hot water heater has not been installed yet, so the hot water is only temporarily routed to those upstairs showers. Eventually, they'll run only off the second hot water heater. Now, the dilemma with the upstairs showers is: either the showerheads are lowsy or the water pressure is. The spray just sort of trickles out, so that's very unsatisfactory. The vanity cabinets for the powder room and two back guest bathrooms came in last week, as well as the cabinets for the laundry room.

All is not completely rosy, though. The spring weather and rains have brought a deluge of ants, coming in beside the fireplace and tracking along the counter over to the kitchen sink area. I've gone aggressive in trying to get rid of them and am enjoying watching them feast on the poison peanut butter traps that (supposedly) they take back to their antholes and wipe out everybody. I hope so. The ant battalions are all the more surprising given that Wilson Pest Defense just came and treated the outside on Wednesday. I'm pretty sure their service is a huge waste of money.

Speaking of deluges, we've sure had a heavy downpour this afternoon, and it highlights a major shortcoming of the new retaining wall. For some reason, it was built to stop about 2 feet short of the existing retaining wall, so I had to jump out there in the downpour and lightning to quickly build a berm to stop the run-off from the neighboring parking lots from washing out the foundation on the north side of the house.



And speaking of water, there's some left standing in the master shower instead of properly draining away. Pete had his guys try to alleviate the pooling problem last week, but it is not resolved, and that's unfortunate.


I've started putting up towel rods and such, but I'm kind of slow at this. I've got to order the countertops for the three vanities that just came in. And I'm still completely paralytically overwhelmed by the cleaning that needs to be done. This has made me hesitant about taking full occupation of the kitchen yet, even though it's move-in ready...there's still just too much dust and grime and yuck settling everywhere.

We've Got Water 'Round the Chimney Again

The General Contractor, Peter LaRoque of LaRoque Construction of Mocksville, NC, was here to see about connecting the supply lines to the pedestal tub in the upstairs landing bathroom. When he decided to tighten up the toilet tank while he was here, he got the surprising result of a broken bowl. That paled in comparison to my pointing out to him that the flashing around the chimney was still leaking--we've had a heckuva lot of rain this week. Turns out that the counterflashing was installed (that was the reason it had leaked when we had that weird March snowfall) but it had not been sealed. We'll be hoping that the sheetrock isn't compromised, of course, but he quickly said he'll replace it if so.

Sign of the End Times

Here's more proof that we're almost done with the project: the lime-green porta-potty was picked up Friday. Bye-bye.