Venetian blinds and Roman shades
The ballad of the no-show tradesmen continues, with the current chapter having Walt and Blaire get blown off by the tile setter, who was supposed to show up and give us an estimate on the bathroom and kitchen. This is the second time that this particular guy has failed to show, so I think we're taking him off our list. It's a shame, since he did the tile in my mom's place and it looks terrific, but we need someone who might actually show up to do the work. I think it's quite likely at this point that we'll end up moving in with no tile in the bathroom (and hence an inability to shower). I guess we'll have to walk down to the basement each day to shower (or maybe it will be a big incentive to spend a lot more time at the gym).
Devon was with Elaine today and having a grand time as usual. Walt and I needed to make yet another run to Home Depot (the EXPO branch this time), and it's quite clear to anyone who has ever shopped there that while HD is a horrible place at any time of day or night, it's a far more horrible place on the weekends than on the weekdays. So despite the fact that HD is in the East Bay, we decided that a Friday evening there would be far better than a Saturday day. We picked Devon up from Elaine's and rushed across the bridge -- meeting terrible traffic, of course, but at least with 3 people in the car we qualified for the carpool lane. My mom had delightfully volunteered to watch her for a couple of hours, since it's truly impossible to do anything that requires even a modicum of concentration with Devon around. This trip we needed to look at window treatments, and that definitely requires some concerted time around a table, flipping through fabric and style books.
I don't know if anyone else has ever spent much time looking at window treatments, but if you haven't (like me), you're in for quite a shock. We probably have about 20 windows in this apartment, and it seems almost impossible to put anything that doesn't look like it came from a dorm on the windows for less than $100/each. And some of the things we were looking at -- Roman shades, for instance -- can be truly stratospheric. Who knew?
As with just about everything else in the world, and certainly in the world of home improvement, the ratio of dross to decent stuff is about 100:1. I'm sure in the world of custom window treatments, fabrics are truly fabulous; but in the world of off-the-shelf treatments, fabrics are generally just passable (and some are downright hideous -- in the pull-down shade category, there are swathes of plastic shades that would make Liberace blush because of the tacky factor). Walt and I finally found a few things that we thought would work and got some prices on those. Since we're still milking our coupons, we're definitely going to get at least some things here, so we signed up to have Home Depot come out and measure the windows (and subsequently install) whatever we buy.
We're generally pretty hard-core do-it-yourselfers; but this building is quite old and has clearly settled, and not a single window is square with the floor. It's got quite an interesting fun house look to it when you compare the tilt of the floor with the tilt of the windows. We were worried that if we tried to install anything ourselves we'd only exacerbate the existing tilt -- and I'm also not sure if mounting outside the window frame (as opposed to mounting inside it) would help us visually correct the tilt. At any rate, we forked over our money for the measurement, and hopefully in the next few days we'll get on the measurement schedule.
When we got done with these house errands we went back to my mom's to pick up Devon. She was really chipper -- they had taken the stroller into Montclair village (stroller = fun) and when we arrived, Devon had a tennis ball and was playing catch with it. Her coordination is suprisingly good for a small child, and she does a good job of throwing the ball; we also showed her how to kick it, and she caught on right away. She really loves my mom's house, partly I'm sure because of the space -- there are a lot of places to run around, and since they're finishing up a remodel, it's also somewhat empty. That means extra space to play games like catch plus big rooms that have an exciting echo; she's really gotten excited about yelling in rooms and listening to how her voice is amplified in the room (not so fun for mom and dad, of course).
On the way back, we ran into traffic heading into San Francisco that was so bad we decided to stay and eat dinner in Berkeley. This was fun for Devon, since we practically live as shut-ins now and almost never go out to eat. We chose a restaurant that turned out to have a lot of kids in it, too, which was especially exciting. This place has a little station where a woman makes fresh tortillas, and when Devon and I went to watch her, Devon got a tortilla hot off the griddle to eat. As we stood there, I realized this was clearly a ritual -- all of the kids would come up to watch the tortilla woman, who would subsequently give them each a tortilla to eat. There was also a little garden patio with a fountain -- we only discovered this as we were about to leave, I'm afraid -- and Devon spent a good 10 minutes before leaving splashing her hands around in the fountain. I think that might have been the highlight of the meal for her.
On the way back, traffic was still hideous, and when we finally got to the bridge, it turned out there had been a huge accident on it. By the time we got there, it was down to 2 lanes of 5 blocked off, so I can only imagine how many lanes were blocked off when it happened. All of this, unfortunately, meant that we missed our neighbor's 60th birthday party. Our neighbor Barbara, who lives around the corner on Jones St., had invited the entire neighborhood to her party that had a live New Orleans-style band, food and drink, birthday cake, etc. By the time we got home and parked, the party was still going strong -- the band was playing, people were dancing and eating and it looked really fun. We had originally planned on going early with Devon, but by the time we got back, she was totally asleep and we ended up going straight home. As I'm writing this, though, I can hear the band still playing; I'm sure they'll be going well into the night.
Devon was with Elaine today and having a grand time as usual. Walt and I needed to make yet another run to Home Depot (the EXPO branch this time), and it's quite clear to anyone who has ever shopped there that while HD is a horrible place at any time of day or night, it's a far more horrible place on the weekends than on the weekdays. So despite the fact that HD is in the East Bay, we decided that a Friday evening there would be far better than a Saturday day. We picked Devon up from Elaine's and rushed across the bridge -- meeting terrible traffic, of course, but at least with 3 people in the car we qualified for the carpool lane. My mom had delightfully volunteered to watch her for a couple of hours, since it's truly impossible to do anything that requires even a modicum of concentration with Devon around. This trip we needed to look at window treatments, and that definitely requires some concerted time around a table, flipping through fabric and style books.
I don't know if anyone else has ever spent much time looking at window treatments, but if you haven't (like me), you're in for quite a shock. We probably have about 20 windows in this apartment, and it seems almost impossible to put anything that doesn't look like it came from a dorm on the windows for less than $100/each. And some of the things we were looking at -- Roman shades, for instance -- can be truly stratospheric. Who knew?
As with just about everything else in the world, and certainly in the world of home improvement, the ratio of dross to decent stuff is about 100:1. I'm sure in the world of custom window treatments, fabrics are truly fabulous; but in the world of off-the-shelf treatments, fabrics are generally just passable (and some are downright hideous -- in the pull-down shade category, there are swathes of plastic shades that would make Liberace blush because of the tacky factor). Walt and I finally found a few things that we thought would work and got some prices on those. Since we're still milking our coupons, we're definitely going to get at least some things here, so we signed up to have Home Depot come out and measure the windows (and subsequently install) whatever we buy.
We're generally pretty hard-core do-it-yourselfers; but this building is quite old and has clearly settled, and not a single window is square with the floor. It's got quite an interesting fun house look to it when you compare the tilt of the floor with the tilt of the windows. We were worried that if we tried to install anything ourselves we'd only exacerbate the existing tilt -- and I'm also not sure if mounting outside the window frame (as opposed to mounting inside it) would help us visually correct the tilt. At any rate, we forked over our money for the measurement, and hopefully in the next few days we'll get on the measurement schedule.
When we got done with these house errands we went back to my mom's to pick up Devon. She was really chipper -- they had taken the stroller into Montclair village (stroller = fun) and when we arrived, Devon had a tennis ball and was playing catch with it. Her coordination is suprisingly good for a small child, and she does a good job of throwing the ball; we also showed her how to kick it, and she caught on right away. She really loves my mom's house, partly I'm sure because of the space -- there are a lot of places to run around, and since they're finishing up a remodel, it's also somewhat empty. That means extra space to play games like catch plus big rooms that have an exciting echo; she's really gotten excited about yelling in rooms and listening to how her voice is amplified in the room (not so fun for mom and dad, of course).
On the way back, we ran into traffic heading into San Francisco that was so bad we decided to stay and eat dinner in Berkeley. This was fun for Devon, since we practically live as shut-ins now and almost never go out to eat. We chose a restaurant that turned out to have a lot of kids in it, too, which was especially exciting. This place has a little station where a woman makes fresh tortillas, and when Devon and I went to watch her, Devon got a tortilla hot off the griddle to eat. As we stood there, I realized this was clearly a ritual -- all of the kids would come up to watch the tortilla woman, who would subsequently give them each a tortilla to eat. There was also a little garden patio with a fountain -- we only discovered this as we were about to leave, I'm afraid -- and Devon spent a good 10 minutes before leaving splashing her hands around in the fountain. I think that might have been the highlight of the meal for her.
On the way back, traffic was still hideous, and when we finally got to the bridge, it turned out there had been a huge accident on it. By the time we got there, it was down to 2 lanes of 5 blocked off, so I can only imagine how many lanes were blocked off when it happened. All of this, unfortunately, meant that we missed our neighbor's 60th birthday party. Our neighbor Barbara, who lives around the corner on Jones St., had invited the entire neighborhood to her party that had a live New Orleans-style band, food and drink, birthday cake, etc. By the time we got home and parked, the party was still going strong -- the band was playing, people were dancing and eating and it looked really fun. We had originally planned on going early with Devon, but by the time we got back, she was totally asleep and we ended up going straight home. As I'm writing this, though, I can hear the band still playing; I'm sure they'll be going well into the night.
posted by Devon Szalva at
10:05 PM
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