Amber found a number of great blogs by young first-time homeowners doing work on interesting projects, like putting in wood stoves (we’re planning on it), owning chickens (we’re planning on that too), and how to decorate in an all-orchid color palette (I’m planning on it). I figured, heck, I can right reel good-like to, so I’m going to (try to) document similar endeavors at HOMESTEAD. And when the posts stop coming, you’ll know we finally set it all on fire and you can claim your office pool.

The first “project” wasn’t actually done by us, but it was definitely the first big investment: the floors. We’ve both always wanted dark brown flooring in our house and flooring HOMESTEAD has in spades. But it looked like this:

Which isn’t bad by any means, but it’s not what we wanted. Also, we were going to have to have a few spots redone by pros anyway, so we figured we should execute on both plans at once, before we moved in (this took a lot of convincing on Amber’s part, but in the end her logic beat my miser-dom), and be done with it.

After about 45 minutes of testing out colors with the floor guys, we decided on this:

Despite the overall gloomy-toned picture above, we love the final product. It pops when the light hits it stays nicely matted. It never gets black and the planks play off one another to show the wood’s natural variations. We couldn’t be happier.

TAKEAWAY: To get the exact color you see on a stain chip, according to our floor guys, you need to not only stain but also dye. This was painfully clear as I held Minwax’ dark walnut chip against a tested floor area that was only about a 20% saturation of the chip color. I still don’t fully understand the reasoning, but if we were going to get what we wanted in a truly dark tone, we were going to have to also have the floors dyed. Where the usual staining and refinishing process requires 1,000 layers of work, dyeing just brings it to 1,001, and at about a $250-300 cost, so not that big a deal.

Continuing the series of awful interaction design, I present Wired.com:

Yes, I am viewing it in Firefox 3 (not by choice), which is a relatively outdated browser. But that would only excuse the floating navigation, not the atrocious layout, coloring, and overlays.

I don’t usually peruse ESPN.com but I wanted to see what their sensationalist take on the MLB playoffs situation was all about. Here’s their homepage in its entirety:

That may not look crappy on the whole, but focus on the middle section – which is basically the second page down when scrolling:

Are you kidding? ESPN.com, one of the most popular websites on the entire internet, stands by this abomination? I know most people don’t take ESPN very seriously to begin with anyway, but they’re still the leader in sports. And the other areas on this page are no picnic either; just try using the navigation.

I see both 3- & 6-column layouts – alternating back and forth and back again – and count no less than 15 rows of crammed-in content of extremely varying heights. And of course the final kick in the sack is the homepage takeover on arrival – which is probably a blessing in disguise, the only time I’d rather see a 1024×768 image of a Subway sub than the content I thought I had wanted to see.

I’m not a UX expert, I’m just a user. And I know it’s far, far easier to break something apart than to build something. But I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that even I could redesign this site and satisfy millions more users than their current design team. They should be embarrassed.

A few years back, I was reading something online about Viggo Mortensen. He had just been in two excellent films – A History of Violence and Eastern Promises – as well as coming off his role as Aragorn in the epic Lord of the Rings trilogy. In this article, I learned that David Cronenberg had actually had a ‘trilogy of violence’ in mind when making these two movies, the third of which was in the works.

When I stopped to think about, I realized how many other LOTR actors were in at least one other movie of a trilogy. It’s a lot!

• Viggo Mortensen
• LOTR: Aragorn
• Elsewhere: David Cronenberg’s Trilogy of Violence (A History of Violence, Eastern Promises, and still-to-come A Dangerous Method)
• Notes: Viggo’s other trilogy isn’t quite done, but for the time being, it seems like it’s happening.

• Hugo Weaving
• LOTR: Elrond
• Elsewhere: Agent Smith, The Matrix trilogy
• Notes: Creepy in both.

• Ian McKellen
• LOTR: Gandalf
• Elsewhere: Magneto, The X-Men trilogy
• Notes: X-Men has since gone beyond three movies, but the first three movies basically stand as a trilogy on their own.

• Christopher Lee
• LOTR: Saruman
• Elsewhere: Count Dooku, Star Wars prequel trilogy
• Notes: Lee is only in Episode II of the prequels, but a) it counts, and b) the prequels are considered a packaged trilogy (one we’d all like to forget exists). Also, according to his IMDB profile, he does a ton of voice work for supporting media of the properties in which he’s acted, which is cool.

• Sean Bean
• LOTR: Boromir
• Elsewhere: Sean Miller, Patriot Games from Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan trilogy
• Notes: This one is a stretch. Boromir is only in one LOTR film. Sean Bean – pronounced “seen been” – is only in the first of the Clancy films. And no matter how you slice it, the Clancy films aren’t even a trilogy – there were four Jack Ryan movies, including Ben Affleck’s turn in Sum of All Fears – but the first three came out in rapid succession and stood on their own for so long, so I’m counting it.

• Orlando Bloom
• LOTR: Legolas
• Elsewhere: Will Turner, the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy
• Notes: Consistently woman-like. And, yes, Pirates is taking off but it was always intended to be a trilogy, before Disney slapped the franchise tag on it and shot it into space. Maybe in a few more years these will beat Star Wars to “a trilogy of trilogies” status.

• John Rhys-Davies
• LOTR: Gimli
• Elsewhere: Sallah, the Indiana Jones trilogy
• Notes: I saved the best for last. And I don’t know about you, but I was (very pleasantly) surprised to learn he was Gimli, and long after having seen the first LOTR movie. Rhys-Davies wasn’t in Temple of Doom, and I refuse to acknowledge the existence of any Indiana Jones films after Last Crusade (yes, I saw it, thus the denial). But his 5 appearances across these two franchises are just stellar, some of my personal favorites in all of film.

I did some thorough IMDB research and couldn’t find any more. But might I be missing any?

This post has been a long time coming but there’s obviously been a lot going on over the last few weeks, and I wanted to be able to provide fluid thought and some good pictures, both of which always take longer to assemble than planned. All in all, things are going great and we couldn’t be happier with the house, the neighborhood, and everything that comes with them.

Except the mortgage, that sucks.

L’Histoire

January 29, 2011

At our going away party back in Brooklyn, Amber and I got to chatting with some friends that had been MIA. It turned out they had been house shopping and had had an offer accepted, and didn’t want to tell anyone for risk of superstitiously queering the deal. We were obviously super excited for them, and understood completely; we’re both very superstitious ourselves. We swore that if our own plans for home ownership had progressed that far, we’d do the same thing: keep it all under lock and key until it was a done-done-done deal.

April

We found our house and immediately blabbed it to every person we met on the street.

After some relatively painless negotiations, our offer was accepted, a closing date was chosen, and we started on the mortgage process.

May

We went through a full month of mortgage hell and almost walked away from the deal, thinking it was hopeless. But on a Hail Mary play, we tried a local credit union who had no issues with our situation, and secured us a loan.

(If anyone is wondering and wants to hear the boring story about paperwork, bureaucracy, and federally-backed mortgages, I’d be happy to discuss elsewhere.)

July & beyond

On the 18th of July, after some more restless nights and last-minute bumps in the road, we closed on the house.

On the 11th of August, we moved in the last of our things, and that night slept in our new home for the first time.

As of now, September 2011, we have not yet exploded the house.

The Town of Wayland, Massachusetts

Facts I discovered about Wayland while writing this post:

• Covers 15.28 sq. miles
• Established in 1638
• An early strong advocate of separation of church and state
• Wayland library was the first free public library in MA, and the second in the country
• In the top 5 communities in MA in conservation acreage
• Steven Tyler of Aerosmith lives here

Facts I discovered while talking to neighbors (in increasing freakishness):

• Wayland is run by open town meetings, “in which all registered voters of a town may vote (as opposed to having elected town councilmen)”
• About 4 houses down from us are some neighbors that grew up about 3 houses down from my childhood home in East Patchogue, NY
• Two of our three direct neighbors have twins

Facts I discovered while driving around:

• Right around the corner from the house, Rice Road may be the most beautiful stretch of land I’ve ever seen with my own eyes (it sounds like hyperbole, but it’s completely true)

Part of the allure of Wayland was its proximity to Boston, but it’s in a pretty sweet spot for getting to  a lot of our personal points of interest – as far north as VT and as far west as Ithaca. While the rest of Boston’s MetroWest area is saturated with history and panache – Lexington, Concord, Wellesley, Newton, Sudbury, Weston – Wayland is relatively unremarkable. But it is a beautiful, small, ‘semi-rural’ town with some of the best schools in the state (and MA is #2 in the country), no real crime to speak of, and a serious outdoors / ecology / naturalist / granola scene for passive livin’ and active doin’.

Obviously, it’s been a huge change of living for us, but one that we’ve been looking for for almost two years. We’re no longer walking distance from Pacifico or the Calexico cart. We can’t call up Happy Days Diner for a last-minute morning egg sandwich or late-night drunken burger. But health-wise (and financially) we’re better for it. We make the usual periodic trip over to Trader Joe’s – about 8 minutes away – and are regularly going to Wilson Farm, the most magical place on earth.

There are a few huge, stunning garden centers nearby, and plenty of awesome farms and farmers markets. We’re situated near a number of lakes, ponds, parks, and trails, so there’s amazing scenery in every direction – especially in our wetlands backyard.

The Homestead

• Split level, built around 1960
• 4 bed, 1.5 bath
• ~1420 sq. ft. finished, ~1660 sq. ft. total
• .49 acre total; half usable, half protected wetlands

Castle interior:

The lower level is home to a small furnished bedroom – now Amber’s office – a furnished living room with a fireplace (“the library”), and the unfinished side for laundry, plumbing, HVAC, and goat tenderizing.

On the main level is a large front den with a fireplace (“the great hall”), a dining area, a living room off the back with 3 windowed walls (“the aviary”), the kitchen, the full bathroom, three bedrooms – master, guest, and my playroom – and a half-bath off the master bedroom (for more discreet poops).

The whole thing feels extra grand because we can’t afford furniture. But the tearing up and down of our two monkey-cats are a constant reminder that we’re not in fact squatting in someone else’s home.

Land & castle exterior:

Put another way: if we want to build or plant or modify stuff, we have to keep the full .49 acres, even though we can’t touch half of it.

Spun an even better way: we own preserved lands that no one in the world can ever touch; lands that give us a direct, private, and gorgeous view of nature at its best.

• Seen on our property: gray squirrels, red squirrels, chipmunks, rabbits, robins, blue jays, ravens, hawks, brown bats, frogs, dragonflies, hummingbirds
• Smelled on our property: skunks
• Seen around town: deer, coyotes, wild turkeys,
• Yet-unseen but supposedly rampant: foxes, raccoons, geese, ducks, orioles, herons, owls, salamanders
• Assumed near, but so very wishful is nonexistent: snakes

Life

I get up at 6am now, and take a commuter train instead of subways.

Amber gets up every day at the same time.

Our computers – where we typically spend a lot of our time – are in different rooms for the first time ever.

Nighttime is utterly silent.

We (sort of) have total control of our interior climate.

Other than our neighbors, we don’t know anyone for miles – and even that count is low.

Practically nothing is walking distance, but now there’s infinitely more accessible things and places.

We can play the TV as loud as we like.

I can’t strut around half-naked anymore because of all the windows (this has taken some getting used to / enjoy the show, neighbors).

We have tons of space, inside and out.

It’s all taking a lot to get used to. We have our moments of missing people and places. But more often than not, we’re excitedly plotting the next project. Now that we’ve been here for a few weeks and settled in, I’ve been able to control some of my anxieties and Amber’s started nesting. It really feels like home. And you’ll hear Amber and I say this a lot, but we would love to have you come visit for a day or three.