My house sets on a road that’s sloped toward it, and it was built a little bit below street level. So you can imagine how much water landed in my basement every time it rained. Luckily, the laundry room side of my two-sided basement came with drains all around the perimeter and in the center of the concrete floor. So if water got in, it drained out fairly quickly. The finished side of the basement wasn’t born as lucky. Without drains, water pooled on the floor — and this happened a lot. Water didn’t usually pour in through the windows; it flowed in under the basement door and seeped up from …
I can decide whether or not to buy a pair of shoes the second I see them. I knew in a heartbeat which color car I wanted (horizon blue metallic). It takes me no time at all to choose a movie to rent or an entrée to order. If you ask for my preference, you’ll very seldom hear me say, “I don’t know.” Yet it took me five full weeks to pick out a carpet for my home office. I worried and wrung my hands and researched and visited the carpet store about three times a week for more than a month. Eventually, the salesmen started scattering when they saw me coming; I was the woman who was going to look…
The builder who constructed the sturdy, old College Park home I live in must have figured that anyone who took a shower in the master bathroom would open the window to let the steam blow outdoors. I say this because he didn’t install an exhaust fan and he didn’t wire for one in case we wanted it later. Turns out, that builder figured wrong. I don’t open the window when I take my shower for two reasons: First, it’s too cold during the winter to let outdoor air indoors—especially when I’m soaking wet—and if I open the window during the summer, I let too much expensive, air-conditioned air out. …
Shortly after my husband and I bought our College Park home, we happened into an art gallery in Rehoboth Beach and settled on a small, original oil painting that we agreed would blend nicely with the taupe-and-off-white sofa/loveseat set and matching whitewash-style coffee table in our new living room. Overhearing the rationale for our choice, a smug, self-important gallery owner butt his head into our conversation and admonished us: “Good art does not match your furniture!” We left the gallery empty-handed, and 13 years later, that line is still one of those husband-and-wife “insider” jokes …
My College Park house is a pretty comfortable place. Our sofas and chairs sport big, overstuffed down cushions, and our three cats keep us fairly tolerant about little stains and claw marks that leave our furniture and rugs looking less than perfect. In other words, I’m no Martha Stewart, and our home is no museum. Our place looks lived in, and it feels like it’s OK to live there. But when my husband got sick a couple of weeks ago and took to our bed for nearly a week, I realized it could be even more comfortable—especially for someone who’s housebound or restricted from walking up and down …
I’m too busy to pick up after myself. I know I sound like your 12-year-old, but the fact is, I was a lot neater when I was 12 than I am now. I’m a freelance writer, so I have a hard time saying “no” when work comes my way. Often, I work on four or five or more assignments at a time. And when I finish with one, I plow right ahead to the next one. I also drop whatever papers and notes and photos and folders I’ve been using for my finished project right on the floor next to my desk, or on top of my desk, or on top of my printer. I figure I’ll put them away after I finish Project No. 2. But I don…
I bought a gorgeous new satin-nickel, swan-neck faucet for my kitchen sink from a local plumbing fixtures store. I wanted a matching soap pump, but the store doesn’t carry that item, so my saleswoman suggested I look for it online. I had no trouble finding exactly what I wanted—a satin-nickel pump by the same manufacturer that made my faucet. I ordered it, it came in two days, and—it didn’t match. Same company: check. Satin-nickel: check. Yet the two pieces are different colors. So I returned the soap pump. And the manufacturer had the nerve to charge me a 10 percent restocking fee—plus …
I live close enough to Kenilworth Avenue to hear fire trucks from Riverdale and Greenbelt speeding by, and near enough to Paint Branch Parkway to hear the sirens when College Park’s own emergency vehicles barrel into the neighborhoods near the College Park Airport. Every time those screaming sirens sound like they’re a little closer than on those main roads, I cross my fingers and hold my breath and pray that nobody in my neighborhood is in trouble. Owning a single-family home in College Park for 12 years has made me so much more aware of fire safety than I ever was when I lived in my …
I’m still under strict “orders” from Husband to quit hiring home improvement contractors, who can be disruptive to our lifestyle, time-consuming to deal with and — this is the biggie — expensive. I sort of overdid it the past couple of years when I had our patio enlarged; the water problem in the basement sorted out; the gutters replaced; our rec room finished; the kitchen countertops and floor upgraded; 19 new windows installed; and about half a dozen other enhancements made that, I must say, have made our home more beautiful and me much happier to live in it. The problem is: I’m not …
All I want for Valentine’s Day is not to have to cook, clean, grocery-shop, make the bed, do the laundry and scoop the kitty litter, even for one day. My husband of 16 years has at least a million wonderful qualities, but he really doesn’t like to pitch in around the house. Shortly after we got married, I realized he was perfectly happy letting me do absolutely everything we needed to run the house and keep it from turning into a garbage dump. That didn’t quite work for me, though. So I “assigned” him the laundry. I asked him to do it once a week. Instead, he did it only when he ran …
You have to indulge people who have babies and pets when they gush every once in a while about how cute their little ones—furry or the human variety—are. And while I’m not prone to gushing—even though my three cats are the most precious ones on the planet—you’ll have to indulge me today while I rave about a few cleaning products that really, seriously work on pet hair, stains and odors. If your cats or dogs rule the house like my little Rover, Whiskers and Jay-Jay do, then you’ve probably had to clean up an accident or two—and perhaps have suspected that they’re not always accidents, but …
I’m guessing I’m not the only one who wound up with unexpected houseguests during last week’s snow storm. Friends and family who got stuck in the snow on their way home from work or whose homes were without power were bunking wherever they could find a willing relative with the electricity on. In my case, it was my nephew, Matthew, who realized after his car spun out on Route 50 while he was on his way from Baltimore to La Plata that Aunt Sharon’s house in College Park was his best bet for a good night’s sleep. So I had the pleasure of spending the evening and the next morning with Matthew, …
Over the past two years, I’ve resolved the water problem in my home’s basement; built a gorgeous flagstone patio, finished the downstairs rec room, replaced the gutters, cleaned, painted and added sturdy storage shelves to the laundry room and garage, and bought 19 new windows. I’m out of money. Unfortunately, I’m not out of remodeling ideas or over my lust for repairing, replacing, upgrading, organizing and beautifying my home. So during my self-imposed year-long remodeling breather (OK, it’s not self-imposed. It’s husband-imposed), the only things that will get done are those I can do …
I was going to walk five miles on my treadmill this morning, but I couldn’t find it. Before I moved to College Park almost 13 years ago, I lived in a tiny townhouse in Greenbelt and rented an office in the College Park Shopping Center on Baltimore Avenue so I’d have a quiet place to go to write the great American novel (still working on it). I spent so much time there—and writers spend quite a bit of time thinking instead of writing—that I figured I would up my chances of getting some exercise every day if I bought a good treadmill and walked on it while I was thinking instead of writing. It …
I’m already working on my happy holidays for 2011. I put off taking down my Christmas decorations for as long as I could this year because my husband and I had company on Saturday night and wanted the house to look festive for our friends. So on Sunday, down came the tree and the stockings and the icicle lights. This year, I spent more time on the taking-down than I usually do. That’s because decorating for the holidays seems so stressful. I can never find everything I want. Sometimes, I find broken ornaments or lights that I’ve packed in a hurry the prior January. And often, even my precious…
I'm watching my 14-year-old orange tabby cat lick my family room coffee table like it's an ice cream cone, taking care not to miss any nook or corner of what appears to be the tastiest treat he's had all day. About half an hour ago, I gently scrubbed and buffed the finished pine table with a new cleaning solution that I decided to try in my quest to go a little greener at home and use products that are healthier, more natural and friendlier to the environment. Turns out Rover really likes the taste of olive oil and lemon, and now I'm going to clean the coffee table again — with a different …
For once in my life, I actually kept my New Year's resolution. Problem is, it was such a huge resolution that I didn't finish it, so I'm making the same one for 2011- get organized. My house and I were so disorganized one year ago that I was buying stuff at the store that I already had at home—only it was so hidden behind junk that I couldn't see it; out of sight, out of mind. I brought home a black cowl-neck sweater and decided to put it into a drawer with some other nice sweaters, only to find the drawer crammed full of so many sweaters that I had to empty it, neatly re-fold everything so …
That noseful of pine that you'll smell if you come to my house this holiday season is wafting from the Wallflowers plug-in air freshener I bought at Bath & Body works over the weekend—the same day I bought my first artificial Christmas tree. My husband and I made the surprisingly grueling and somewhat heart-wrenching decision to buy a fake tree this year, complete with what seems like a million bright, twinkling lights and a mind-blowingly straight aluminum "trunk." This is a decision that took both of us by surprise. My husband hails from rural Pennsylvania, where the townsfolk not only …
The minute I heard the crash-shatter-thump in the living room, I knew what it was, even though I didn't see it happen. There's no mistaking the sound of a seven-foot–tall pine tree, painstakingly adjusted and straightened and centered, lovingly decorated with more than 100 angel ornaments I had collected since my wedding day 15 years ago, and proudly admired and photographed just the evening before, as it crashes onto the living room floor. So there were no surprises that Sunday night one year ago as I tore out of my comfy seat in front of Desperate Housewives and into the living room—not …
It's as if the scraggly dogwood tree in my front yard purposely waited until after Thanksgiving to shed its fiery gold leaves. Just a week ago, I marveled to friends about the unusual sight from the side porch of my College Park home: My typically sparse dogwood was still in full fall bloom while the foliage on every other tree in my yard—and my three-quarter-acre corner lot is full of trees—had long since turned from green to gold to gone. And right across the street in my neighbor's front yard, a tall, lush burning bush clung to its shocking red leaves for just as long, as if the two were …
