The House

Tom got batteries for his camera, but instead of getting a shot of Oprah's place, he took some pictures of the interior of our house. Here are some:


Okay, not the interior. This is the deck out back this morning after a rainy night. Tom's plan was to build a series of decks at different levels, stair-stepping down to ground level from the back of the house. After he and his son Peter did a beautiful job on this part of the project, he realized how much work was involved and things are on hold for the moment anyway. That sort of dry grassy thing you see in the back corner is a planter that Rich and Peggy gave us. The begonias, as I have mentioned before, have begone. The ornamental grass is dry, but still ornamental.



This is the view of the doors onto the deck from the living room through the library area. That sofa is made of Texas cherry (I think) and weighs a ton. It took three ingenious and strong college guys to get it out of the basement apartment and into the moving truck, and it took the substantial help of Steve Flower -- whose name gives you no idea of his size and power -- to get it into the house. There is a cedar chest serving as coffee table in front of it.


This is the dining area with the library in the back. Separating the two areas is a combination buffet (facing the dining table) and bookcase (facing the library) that Tom built. It matches the kitchen cabinets pretty well and provides lots of storage for the extra dishes and things.


The kitchen viewed from the library and across the dining table.
What more can I say?

This is the dining table. As you see behind it, the windows in the house are all large, making it very light. (Well, not on a dark, rainy morning like this.) We went shopping for the chairs over the weekend. Before all we had were four stackable conference chairs donated by the Carmelites when I moved into my apartment in Chicago. I won't go into the whole story of buying the chairs, but Tom says that I got testy. Actually, I told him that I had reached the optometrist point. When asked if this is better or this is better or what about this, I could no longer tell. He kept asking, since I was going to have to live with them, and I did become a bit cranky. (I can hear him now: "A bit?") The chairs do look good with the table, though. They don't match, but then nothing really matches around here. We are going more for a co-ordinated look, I guess. Maybe that's why that carpet works. It is not all the same colors, but they work together.

More later.