Life Downunder

The following is a load of self-indulgent drivel. Read at your own risk.

The Basement

Well the basement is FINALLY done. As usual, the project took 2.4 times as long as expected and cost about 3 times as much as the budget. Amazingly, it turned out very close to the original designs. The whole basement is divided into four rooms; the bedroom, the bathroom, the laundry room and the main room. I don't have any before pictures, but think concrete floor, concrete walls, bare floor joists overhead and two bare light bulbs and you get the picture. One of the themes I carried throughout the basement was the use of arches. I was inspired by a show I saw on HGTV where some guy spent $160K on his basement and they had arches everywhere. I thought, I can do that...which I leared that I can, but not without a fair amount of difficulty. You'll also notice some interesting angled walls, which were both design elements and solutions to various problems.

While I did the majority of the work myself, I did have the help of many family and friends along the way. My dad and Keith did some of the wiring and my neighbors helped out with hanging the drywall on the ceiling. My dad helped me finish the drywall. Special thanks go out to my neighbor Michael, who helped me out on a variety of occasions, mostly recently with carrying the pool table slate downstairs. But my primary assistant was my son Zach, who helped out immensely along the way. He was a real trooper and a huge help.

The bedroom

You saw some pics from my previous post of the bedroom, but I was informed that I failed to point out some of the finer points of the room. The bed was designed and built by yours truly. The bed is constructed of hardwood maple and veneers. The bedside tables are integrated into the piece and as you can see, the headboard mirrors the arch overhead.

The bed is a pedestal design with four large oversized drawers underneath that are designed to hold your largest suitcases.

The room was decorated with some pen and ink pictures that we have acquired in our travails, the larger of which was done by Jackie's college roommate, Sandy.

The smaller one we picked up at a wine festival several years ago. Jackie picked out the beautiful decorative prints over the bed.

The HD flat screen TV in the upper right hand corner was a gift from our friend Charles.

The small desk in the corner was built for you to rest your laptop on while you stay with us.

The Bathroom

The bathroom is a full bath and connected directly to the bedroom. The floor and the shower walls are covered with the finest Italian tile for your bathing pleasure. The vanity is the only piece of cabinetry in the basement that I did not build, but like the rest of the cabinetry is build of maple. The sink top is made of cultured marble...none of that unrefined marble for us. The room also contains a linen closet with a pocket door.

The hall and stairs Because of the fact that we have no other egress into the basement other than the stairs going up into the house, we made the hall about twice as wide as normal so that we could get furniture and stuff in and out of the basement. That allowed for the rather dramatic arch that frames the entrance into the main room.

Our kitchen does not currently have a pantry, although we intend to remedy that deficiency when we remodel it (next on the list). Since we had the room in the hallway and no storage upstairs, I put two large pantries in at the bottom of the stairs. The one on the right is the food pantry and the one on the left houses our vacuum cleaners as well as a variety of appliances and large cookware.

Originally the stairwell wall came all the way to the bottom of the stairs. We opened it up and added the railing with the black wrought iron balusters. We also covered the stairs with oak treads and risers.

The Main Room

The main room contains a bookshelf unit at the far end along the side wall. Next to that is the sitting area with the entertainment system.

Somewhere along the line we decided to use a musical theme in the main room, going so far as to find treble cleft note pulls for the cabinet doors.

The print on the right is a Gockel, one of my favorite contemporary artists. The whimsical print on the left is by Mark Hudson. It was hand embellished by him specifically for us at a Beatles art show we attended in Baltimore. We have several other pieces of musical memorabilia adorning the walls that we have been able to move out of the closet and onto the wall thanks to my brother, our master framer, Larry.

At the other end of the room is the bar, bar rail and pool table. We decorated the walls and floor in very neutral colors so that we could add bold colors in the furniture and decorations. The double wide chaise lounge is one of the favorite spots in the house to hang out.

This is the graduated drawer system that I built. To the left is the HVAC, to the right is a pole in that little wall. I could have put in a small closet, but I decided to build these drawers to add visual interest and storage. The bottom drawer is 20 inches tall, 20 inches wide and 30 inches deep (huge). It holds all of our games. The other drawers which are 16, 12 and 10 inches tall respectively. They hold our photo albums. They no longer have to live in the garage in boxes.

The bar was also built of maple. The front is framed with ebonized maple. It has a liquor cabinet in the corner and 3 sliding doors in the back with three shelves for glasses. The top is covered with black granite and edged in solid maple.

The bookshelf unit is comprised of two bookshelves at the top on either side of the computer work station. Underneath the granite counter top on each side are cabinets. The work station area is flanked on both sides by file cabinet drawers. This unit, which I also designed and built is fashioned out of maple solids and veneers like the bed, the bar and the drawers. The right hand cabinet holds our computer and network equipment. I used a wireless keyboard and mouse and all of the other wires are hidden, so the only wires that show are for the monitor.

The Table

The pool table is a story all its own. THE table is a 1948 Brunswick Centennial. It was designed by Donald Deskey, the iconic art deco designer responsible for everything from the architecture of the Radio City music Hall, to the Tide bulls eye and the Crest logo that graces every tube of toothpaste to this day. Deskey was one of the primary designers responsible for popularizing the streamliner look. During a very short lived partnership with Brunswick, Deskey designed three of the most beautiful tables ever built by Brunswick, the Centennial, the Anniversary and the Paramount. The Centennial is the most highly prized of the three.

All of the wood is Brazilian Rosewood. The metal is polished aluminum. The design is undeniably deco.

I bought the table off of Craiglist out of Winston-Salem NC. Zach, Charles and I drove down and disassembled the table enough to load it into a Uhaul and bring it back up to northern VA. Once here, the table underwent the kind of ground up restoration normally reserved for antique automobiles. The table was completely disassembled. The wood was then refinished with 11 coats of hand rubbed lacquer. The aluminum was stripped, ground, buffed and polished for over 100 hours to achieve the mirror finish you see here. All of the parts were cleaned, polished and made whole. The table was then professionally reassembled and covered with royal blue 860 Simonis cloth. The table plays like a dream and favors its owner, especially when playing people like Haz and Rodney.
Tables in this condition regularly sell in excess of $15k, if you can find one.

You are personally extended an open invitation to come visit us,

stay in YOUR suite

and get your ass kicked by me at pool.

See you soon!

Unexpected Pleasures

I first started growing fresh herbs back in Texas. We planted some thyme and sage in the hollowed stump of the Mulberry tree that we cut down in our back yard. I only occasionally used it to cook, but it always looked very cool. I would imagine it is still there.

When we moved to VA we realized that the garden around our deck provided an excellent spot to plant our herb garden. Until this year, it was actually our vegetable garden too (limited to tomatoes only). Since we now have an actual vegetable garden this year, we were able to expand our herb garden. Having the herbs right outside the back door is perfect. When I'm cooking I can just step out and clip what I need for dinner.

We now have basil, thyme, rosemary, lavender, chives, tarragon, sage, oregano, mint, lemongrass and the reason for this post, pineapple sage. This spring when we went to get the plants for our gardens I was intrigued by this new herb. The freshly pressed leaves do indeed smell like pineapple. While I have used them in only a few dishes, I'm still glad I added them to the landscape.

The thing about fresh herbs that is really nice, besides their obvious addition to the culinary experience is that the vast majority of them bloom in the late summer. Actually the basil begins to bloom in July and I am in a constant battle to hold it at bay long enough to get the nice leaves to chop to go with my tomatoes and mozzarella. The flowers vary from subtle to dramatic, but they are almost all beautiful.

However, the nicest surprise in the garden this year, was surely the pineapple sage. It's brilliant red flowers, shown above, make it worth planting, regardless of it's epicurean contributions.



This first picture is the mint. It has very delicate white flowers on the top of it that are quite lovely.


















This next picture is the rosemary in our garden. You can barely see the small white flowers on the top. I have a smaller rosemary bush on the other side of the garden that is a pretty amazing story. I bought some rosemary at the store. Used some. Put the rest in the fridge for about a month. I took it out, clipped off the top to use it and stuck the rest in a glass of water. It sprouted roots. I eventually planted it out in the garden.







The last pic is of the lavender. It's flower are gorgeous. Unfortunately most of them have already gone for the year. I'll try to get better pics next year. The real thrill though is the smell....mmmmm good.

Your Suite is now Available

OK, so it took a few years. Perfection knows no boundaries. OK, so it's not perfect. But it's still nice. OK, so the rest of the basement is not yet done. Money doesn't grow on trees you know. And I have a life. And we really are getting there. It really is like building a whole house except for the roof OK. What, so you wanna see some pics? OK.....