Of gardens and gardening

Before the Atlanta condo, we lived in a 1930’s bungalow in Atlanta. We bought it almost on impulse - made an offer the same day we saw it – and like many an impulse buy, came to regret it.

What really sold us on that house was the garden. It had a really lovely garden (or backyard, as we say now that we’re Americans). And we love gardening! Or so we thought…

It turned out that we love gardens, but we didn’t really love gardening – a distinction the significance of which we soon learned and came to regret. The garden really was charming and lovely to look at, but… maybe it was the blistering Georgia summer heat and humidity… maybe it was the endless flood of leaves from all those beautiful mature trees… maybe it was the hordes of mosquitoes and other bugs… maybe it was the irrigation system that we could ever get the hang of… or maybe we were just too busy to give the garden the time it needed.

Since we could’t afford to pay for the degree of professional maintenance this compact but immaculate garden demanded, it quickly felt as though the garden owned us. So within just a few years, we sold up and moved to the condo. The most gardening we had to do there was watering a couple of planters on the balcony. And that suited us just fine for 16 years.

Warboys House has almost 5 acres of land. Some of it is a garden; mostly lawn and large quantities of garish orange daylilies. But most of it is grass, some fine mature trees, scrubby woodland, a marsh with a heavy cover of phragmites reeds, and two ponds.

Five acres – well, four and a half – is a lot of land to be responsible for. A far cry from a balcony on the eleventh floor. And of course, we’re making it into a garden. I guess we’ll discover whether we like gardening after all.

Catching up

It’s been over a year since I last wrote here – and not just any year! So much has happened… to us, to the house, to the world… it’s hard to know where to start.

The last entry here was right after Christmas 2019. Though the house was not completely finished, it was certainly habitable and the end was in sight (or so we thought, for of course, in reality there never is an end). When we returned to Atlanta, a lot of wheels started into motion, the most significant of which was our decision to leave Atlanta and move to Claverack permanently. This had been the plan all along, although we had only recently decided to pull the trigger.

As it turned out, the timing was fortuitous.

Our Buckhead condo went on the market and by February was under contract. After 16 years in the same home, the process of packing for a 1000-mile move was daunting. As with any move, the discarding was the most time-consuming part. How had we accumulated SO MUCH STUFF?

Our last couple of nights in Atlanta were spent in a hotel and the day after the closing, March 10th, we started the drive north. The news was full of reports of a novel coronavirus that was causing concern in Asia and now in the Pacific Northwest. At the hotel where we stayed to break the two-day journey, we were careful to use hand sanitizer. Nobody was wearing a mask at that point – the idea seemed overdramatic.

We got to Claverack late in the evening, and the next morning the two moving trucks arrived, with a cheerful and seemingly tireless crew of four. Two days later, they departed, leaving us with a hundred boxes (the books alone, oh the books!)… and the news that New York state was going into lockdown. We did a rather rushed and somewhat scary shop for a load of groceries, hunkered down at home, and focused on creating some order out of the chaos in the new house.

At this point, of course, nobody knew how long the situation was going to last.

(Off-)White Christmas

It’s been a while since the last update, and in the meantime, Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year have come and gone. And a great deal has happened at Warboys House.

We’d originally planned to visit the house for Thanksgiving. But although progress had been made, it was not enough for us to be able to stay there comfortably. By which I mean, there were no functioning bathrooms, nor a working kitchen sink. Everything takes longer than you, even when you think it’s going to take longer than you think. We decided to keep out of the way of the builders.

However, we were determined to spend Christmas in the house. And so it was that, only a few weeks later, we showed up to a snow-covered garden and an almost-but-not-quite-ready house. But this time, the bathrooms were functioning and the kitchen sink was working, and generally much progress had been made.

Between three and four inches of snow had fallen a couple of days earlier, and the back garden was carpeted in pristine white, with just a few animal tracks here and there. At the front of the house, a new addition had materialized – a fenced playpen for the whippet! We’ve added a solid fence to shield the side garden from the road, and within that there’s Barny’s enclosure. He was thrilled to be able to chase the ball all over, especially after two days’ car journey! But he was a little puzzled by the snow – something he has only seen once, for one day, in Atlanta.

I think he was trying to pick up the ball without get his snout in the snow – which proved rather hard to do!

The view at the back of the house, down to the pond and marsh. Even at this point, it was beginning to thaw.

Going in circles

Another odd thing about the house is the driveway. It’s off to the lefthand side and brings you in to the back door, the kitchen door. The front door, with its Greek columned entry porch, has no driveway access. There isn’t even a path to it. Consequently, it isn’t used at all, which is a shame.

We learned from neighbors that the driveway originally continued round from the back door to the front – which still seems odd – but that section was blocked and returned to lawn when the side porch was added by the previous owner. Besides marooning the front door, the other problem is that the drive is a dead-end and turning the car to get back out is tricky, especially if there’s more than one car.

After much discussion, and with some inspiration from friends, we decided to sort this out, by installing a new driveway that takes visitors to the front door, while keeping the existing driveway for access to the back door.

The process of installing the new driveway took a few days…

First you have to determine the center of the circle…

Which is easier said than done at this scale. Thankfully, these pros know their stuff.

Look carefully and you can see the outer and inner circles. At this point it was exciting!

A few days later they came back with the equipment. This was the “oh what have we done?” moment.

Looking from the entrance at the road into the driveway. The driveway is wide enough for a car to pass another, parked car.

The edges are finished in what’s called Belgian blocks. At this point the top layer of gravel has not been added.

The “landing strip” to the front door is made of local bluestone

Ta-da! The gray gravel is traditional in the area. Eventually we’ll put something in the center. Any suggestions… a sundial, a birdbath, an obelisk, an armillary sphere… or maybe a cheeky cherub?

What's going on upstairs?

The upstairs of the house has four bedrooms and two bathrooms. The master bedroom is huge and has a boarded-up fireplace (which we later discovered is entirely fake: there’s no fireplace and no flue!)

The bathrooms are small and dated. And their windows are set oddly low, almost at floor level.

Four bedrooms sounds spacious, but the way everything was configured was weird and made it feel pokey. On our second visit to the house we realized we needed to clean things up and reconfigure. And so began phase 2…

It doesn’t look that complicated – but this is just the demolition plan

A local architect helped us work out a new and better plan for upstairs. There were a few things we knew we had to work around – chimneys, plumbing etc. We decided we would not move the existing bathrooms but we would add a third: 4 bedrooms to 3 bathrooms is a better ratio. To do so, we would make the old master suite smaller and rechristen it a guest bedroom, turning the back bedroom into the master with an en-suite bath and walk-in closet. It took a few rounds of revision to get the plan where we wanted it. And then the work began.

Demolition is never pretty

We’re keeping the original bathtub. It will need to be refinished!

Apparently this is quite normal :-)

Framing in new walls for the master suite closet. Also a look at the custard-colored paint from 1985.

Looking into what will be the master bathroom

To create, you must first destroy

Well, they started work on replacing the roof. Demolition is (relatively speaking) the easy part and it’s gone quickly and smoothly. We could not have asked for a more tidy crew. They are really careful and clean. Still it’s little nerve-wracking to see this, especially from 1000 miles away.

The roof (or what’s left of it) coming off.

As you can see the old roof was in pretty poor shape. Though parts of it were OK, we decided to replace it all – a prime example of the four most expensive words in home renovation: “you might as well".”

Old houses

Every old house has “issues” of course. Having lived in a concrete highrise where someone else takes care of the maintenance, I’d forgotten what it’s like to have these “issues" myself! The first walk through with the inspector – even before we’d bought the house – revealed all sorts of things, large and small, that needed taking care of, much of them the result of deferred maintenance, or the previous owner having opted for the cheapest solution.

Here’s a sampling of what we found:

Something rotten in the state of New York

Pretty sure you’re not supposed to be able to put your hand underneath the wall

The gutter is supposed to catch the water coming off the roof

A hole. One of several.

A worse bulge than my tummy

Listing

These photos are from the real estate listing. They show the house in late summer 2018, looking at it finest.

Side view showing the kitchen door and side porch, which was added in the 2000s.

Looking out from the side porch to the garage and driveway

Looking up from the garden to the back of the house. The narrower extension of the house is a later addition.

Sunroom or breakfast room. I must confess it was this photo that pretty much sold me on the house.

From the front door you can see through the breakfast room to the kitchen

The master bedroom with fireplace (which turned out not to be operable)

Look at the curve in that floor… the joys of an old house!

Word to the wise: when the real estate listing doesn’t show many (or any) photos of the bathrooms, there’s a reason.