F E B R U A R Y
Though you wouldn’t know it from various Trumpian outrages erupting each day (Elon Musk is going to gut the Federal government, Canada will be our 51st state, Greenland must be ours, etc), February was a rather quiet month for us. We had a brief overnight visit from niece Meg and her new husband Ryan as a waystation on their transition from Brooklyn yuppie paradise to we’re-going-to-have-children-so-we’re-moving-to-suburban-Greenville, SC. It was great to visit with them as they completed their geographic and cultural transition.
The main event of the month was that carpentry work quickly wound down on the upstairs guest bedrooms. Everything was all in place and cleaned up. Now all the mouldings, trim, and wainscoting needed to be caulked sanded, primed, and painted. Normally, I’m game to do all of this myself and save some $$. I’m actually pretty good at it. But…. the sheer scope of caulking and puttying miles of crown moulding and wainscoting was a bit overwhelming, and we had a self imposed drop-dead date to have these rooms done by mid-April. So, digging under the cushions we found enough $$$ to pay the painters and, really, I’m so glad we did! The prep work alone took a three man crew 2 weeks to accomplish. The painting was a breeze in comparison. The paint crew turned out to be a blessing in another way too. The new ‘advance’ paint by Benjamin Moore is very comparable to the fancy Italian paints I had my eye on, but at 1/3 of the price, and when applied with a sprayer by an expert painter the finish is absolutely superb. I was well pleased and quickly realized I’m going to need to hire them for the rest of the house as well. Not cheap, but well worth it when viewing the final results.
After the painters were done it was time for wallpaper in the Green Bedroom. Or in our case, fabric stuck to the walls. Now, here’s the thing – my idea for this house was to basically pretend that it wasn’t a 21st century construction, but rather a solid 18th century manor house that had seen the accretion of two centuries worth of collecting and careful re-editing over the years. I wanted it to look very “Virginian” (which, if you know anything about the Virginia countryside, that means ‘more English than the English’). I wanted to do so old school that stuffy old ladies of either sex would find it ‘dated.’ Or at least that’s what I kept telling myself. To play off the severity of the wainscotting and moulding I wanted the walls covered in a Toile du Jouy. I remember poking around some old houses with this kind of wallpaper and matching upholstery. The whole effect is a bit overwhelming, but also deeply charming. However, in the intervening years century, the whole effect fell out of favor and they no longer make wallpaper with matching fabric (well, they still do in England, but it was horribly expensive and the wrong color). So, in one of my manic internet rabbit hole searches lasting several days, I found a fabric that was perfect for the room. Actually I found three, and ordered samples. When they arrived, I tacked them to the walls (over the protests of the carpenters working on the room) and stared at them for a day or two. But there was a clear winner (even the carpenters agreed) and so I ordered enough to wallpaper the entire room, make a foofy bedspread and canopy awnings, and upholster several chairs. When the huge bolt of the stuff arrived from Turkey it was so heavy that it sat in the entry way for a couple of weeks before I got a crew strong enough (the painters) to lift it upstairs.
The next step proved to be the hardest and, oddly the easiest. Who was going to hang this fabric like wallpaper? It’s not very difficult, but it’s a pretty rare skill. Luckily it helps to live in a very tradition-bound area where craftsmen can still make a living doing esoteric trades. A recommendation from the paint store was followed up by a completely independent referral by the carpenters, and thus I met Christophe Michaux of “French Touch Design.” Despite being Belgian by birth, he won me over completely when he went through exactly how the fabric would be applied, and reiterated all the pros and cons and ins and out. He took a sample home with him to wash in vinegar (a key step, it turns out. Who knew?) to analyze color fastness and shrinkage. When that was completed he came back and slathered it with cornstarch and stuck it on the wall. I was a bit dubious at first, but it worked like a charm, and I really liked the feel of it on the wall. After that test, he ordered industrial vats of cornstarch and started working. I was (surprise), a total pain in the ass about getting the seams straight and making sure the pattern was perfectly aligned from panel to panel, but Christophe dealt with me with some practiced finesse, and he got it done to my satisfaction by the end of the month. So at least one room in the house is (almost) complete.
Despite real estate being in the doldrums (see Trump reference at the beginning of this entry), we had some progress on other fronts as well. We finally found a female (pen) swan for our lonely male (cob) Hans. “Hermoine” was living a quiet life with her sister in spinster quietude on a farm in Pennsylvania. But when the sister swan died a month after the new owners of the farm took over, they were at a loss as to how to deal with a grieving lonely swan……
Luckily this country is replete with a vast cadre of “rescue” organizations for various critters and breeds of critters. They’re inevitably run by maniacal women whose only soft spot is for the type of critter involved, the rest of us are viewed through a rather sour lens. This is completely the case with the Swan Rescue Service. I’d been hooked up with Linda Sweger via the Pennsylvania Avicultural Society several months ago. After intensive grilling and analyzing our pond set-up she declared us as fit adoptees of an adult female swan. But that was only the first step. As Linda warned, it might take several months or years to track down such a bird. In the end it took her about 7 months to hook us up with a lonely female for our lonely male. On paper it was a match made in heaven. The owners of the farm in PA volunteered to bring her down to VA on a Friday afternoon. Timing was perfect and we offloaded Hermoine into a pen on our new pond and watched her settle in. Hans was away over at the old pond out of sight, and we intended to keep it that way to give her time to get adjusted before dealing with his advances (FYI, Hans can be a bit of a jerk sometimes). But of course, best laid plans….. The next day Hans had wandered over to the new pond and discovered her. He was making goo-goo eyes at her through the wire mesh of her pen. And low and behold, she was doing the same to him. I was very relieved. Since she’d grown up without exposure to male ‘attention’ and I wasn’t sure how she’d respond. But all was good and within a day they were doing the synchronized head dipping and turning that swan pairs do and making little piggy grunts at each other. So, it was just a question of when to let her out. Keith was determined to be around when that happened, so we set it for the Tuesday after her arrival when he was off work. But that Monday she kinda went a bit nuts and started ramming the edges of pen trying to get out. I was afraid she’d injure herself in the process, so I texted Keith and said it’s got to happen now. I let her out. When she left the pen she took off like a shot across the pond. “Uh oh,” I thought. But after a half hour or so of wild swimming she calmed down and actually swam back to Hans (who seemed a bit bewildered by her outburst) and then started billing and cooing, and the rest is history. It was nice to see him calmer and with a mate after losing Greta some 7 years prior.
Crown moulding, trim, and wainscoting complete
