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RATHER THAN BLOG about my exciting day at the shopping mall (I went to the K-Mart in Bridgehampton for such essentials as a new toilet seat and a corkscrew), have a look at my friend Nancy’s new bluestone patio in Boerum Hill.
AFTER (well, during - it's not quite finished)
In my two-and-a-half weeks at her house, I managed to screw up her cappuccino maker and leave a couple of eggs on the stove so long they exploded, but on the plus side, I encouraged her to call Carlos Serna of Stones R Us, an Italian stonemason who re-built a collapsing retaining wall at my Boerum Hill house, and get going on the patio she’d been postponing for ages.
BEFORE
About 8′x10′ (the rest of our design concept calls for a slightly raised wood deck, to be built later this summer), the patio cost $3,800 and took 3 or so days for two men to accomplish, what with breaking up the existing concrete and carting it out, excavating several inches, laying a bed of gravel, setting the 2-foot-square bluestone slabs in a bed of sand, and trimming it with cobblestones.
The bluestone will darken and mellow with time, and the sand between the stones, rather than concrete, allows for the possibility of growing thyme or other greenery in between.
Ohmigod. There’s a lot to do.
Arrived in Springs yesterday, and my priorities are not what I thought they’d be. The road traffic is less intrusive than I feared. I thought I’d be on the phone immediately, making arrangements for a solid board fence to block all motor vehicles from my sight. Occasionally, I’m conscious of the whoosh of tires, but most of the time I’m unaware.
It’s now the end of Day 2, and I’m one step further from camping. But the situation has many similarities:
- I’m freezing. 40 last night, 50-55 today, going down to mid-30s tonight. The heating system is kaput (I knew that) and I don’t have an electric heater. I’m sitting here with a wool scarf around my neck, a down jacket on my shoulders.
- My provisions are in an Igloo cooler. The refrigerator I thought I would salvage makes a loud noise and it’s gross. It’s going away ASAP.
- You can’t drink the water. It’s orange. Rusted pipes, no doubt. I’m brushing my teeth with Poland Spring.
- There are animals in the woods. I’ve seen five deer in my backyard in the past 24 hours. I shouted “Go away!” but they didn’t budge.
I’ve had a very productive two days.
Going, going, gone!
On Sunday at 11, I met Rob and Sean from Relocators at my storage unit in Centereach, where I had squirreled away some basics. The truck was only about 1/4 full on the trip out, but, because they are also junk removal “specialists,” I had them take away a couple of hideous tall storage units and a plaid couch, above. Another hour’s labor and $90 later, they had also removed a load from the cellar where I thought I’d find useful things and hidden treasures, but instead found moldy old armchairs, a badly broken wicker sofa, a rusted-out power mower, a weight bench and bar bells, a mattress and box spring, and, as they say in the tag sale ads, “much much more,” mostly disgusting.
From the time they left till midnight, I was non-stop movement, unpacking and arranging and trying to get rid of the dank smell of a house no one has lived in for a year. I Lysoled, opened windows, turned on fans, burned scented candles.
Lots of this (barberry)
Wisteria strangling red maple
Carpets of this in bloom (lily of the valley)
Today was even more productive. This morning I got online – YEAH! – thanks to two guys from Cablevision, one a fellow Brooklyn refugee; then met with Marcello, a landscape contractor, and showed him all that needs doing, from hauling away a fallen-down wooden shed (‘shed’ makes it sound smaller than it is – it’s got to be the size of a front parlor) to taking down an oppressive, misshapen cherry tree (not a flowering cherry) and digging up evil wisteria which is running rampant. He also has a guy (naturally – they all have a guy) who can fix my broken doors, jack up my slanty floors, replace my bathroom linoleum with ceramic tile, and “much much more.” I await his estimate.
Pretty but evil wisteria
I mopped 1000 square feet of floor, including the porch, dealt with a dead mouse under one of the baseboard radiators without calling an exterminator, got my dumping permit from the Town of East Hampton ($70/year – not bad for anything and everything) and then my beach parking permit ($25/year), more quickly and with less pain than I had imagined. My car is now festooned with colorful stickers.
Then I had a cup of New England clam chowder from the Springs General Store and bought two astrology books and some Updike stories from the Springs public library book sale for 25 cents each. Who says the Hamptons is a rip-off?
(Seriously, everything, from laundry detergent at CVS to a box of crackers at Maidstone Market, costs at least $1 more than it “should,” or than it does in Brooklyn, rather.)
In the late afternoon, in a bid to get warm, I drove to the end of Flaggy Hole Road, where I sat in my car looking out at the water, listening to NPR, and dozed for a spell. There was a Little League game going on in Maidstone Park, and people were walking dogs and fishing in Three Mile Harbor.
It feels strange to be here. I keep thinking, “What am I doing here?” Then I look at other people, and wonder “What are THEY doing here?” The draw is not as obvious as New York City. Some vitality is missing, or perhaps that’s another word for stress.
New headquarters of casaCARA
This evening I had my first official visitor: my friend Jifat, who lives about 20 minutes away in Northwest Woods. I told her to dress warm. She came in a fleece jacket, wooly scarf, and gloves, bearing champagne.
I SEEM TO HAVE BOUGHT A HOUSE today. It was very unceremonious. No fanfare. No champagne. Just signing papers. At one point, I said to my lawyer, ‘Did I buy the house yet?’ She said, ‘You signed the deed, so, yes.’ That was it.
Things have leafed out since this picture was taken
The seller wasn’t present at the closing. Neither was her attorney; he sent someone. Someone else represented the bank. The title closer was there; not even a hello.
I had hoped to meet my mortgage broker. She wasn’t there either. I did get to meet my lawyer. These were both women I’d been talking to and emailing for months and was looking forward to meeting. I like my lawyer a lot. She’s my neighbor in Springs and invited me to dinner Sunday night. How d’ya like that? A dinner invitation my first night.
I like my interest rate a lot, too: 4.875%. Makes me want to re-finance everything. With taxes ($1,500/yr) and insurance ($717/yr), my monthly nut comes to $1,508. Not bad for the Hamptons.
Below: Jackson Pollock, Springs’ most famous resident
Pollock's home and studio are just down the road
BROWNSTONE VOYEUR is a joint project of casaCARA and Only the Blog Knows Brooklyn. Look for it every Thursday on both sites.
THIS HAS BEEN MY comfortable home away from home for the past two weeks. It’s my dear friend Nancy’s brick row house in Boerum Hill, and it’s classic.
Built around 1870, the house retains many of those coveted Victorian “details,” including spectacular plaster work in the dining room (painted an historic blue-gray), original pocket doors with etched glass, an over-the-top pier mirror, right, between the front parlor windows, a black marble mantel in Eastlake style, long four-over-four parlor windows, and wood floors so old and thin if they’re sanded one more time they’ll turn to sawdust.
Nancy bought the house in 1987 – it was the first house she looked at – and furnished it with a mix of found and inherited antiques. Particularly intriguing (and sort of useful) is the piece she calls “the chest of 1,000 drawers,” a cabinet used for fittings by a jewelry maker. It had been left in her previous home, a loft on Fulton Street in Manhattan.
All the paintings on the wall are the work of David Fisch, a close friend of Nancy’s, who died in 1993.
Nancy travels frequently to Amsterdam, and there’s something of a European feeling about the place, I’ve always thought – the velvet textile used as a tablecloth in the dining room, the collection of old copperware on display throughout, the enormous glass-fronted cabinets full of art books.
I could live here quite happily. Oh, right – I have been.
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