Tuesday, January 14, 2014

The Sky Is Falling....

And it sounds like terra cotta roof tiles falling 20 feet and smashing to the ground.  At 2:30 in the morning.

So that's fun.  As we jolted awake to the sound of our house falling apart, Husband did what he generally tends to do when there's noise in the night or a puddle of anything anywhere in the house (sadly on that front he's usually right)--he blamed the cats.  My brain hadn't cycled awake enough to realize that the sound clearly had come from outside and that our cats were inside, in the little hallway downstairs that can be closed off from the rest of the house (which is where they spend the night so they don't walk across our faces at 3am--not that I mind, but Husband isn't too keen on the 3am cat paw parade).

In the morning, we discovered the smashed tiles on the driveway, looking like a bunch of broken flower pots, minus the potting soil and plants.  One giant tile continued to hang from its nail, precariously dangling off the roof, directly over our heads.  Nothing climbs up onto your shoulder and whispers "money pit, money pit, money pit" like entire pieces of your roof sliding off of your house.  Roof guy came today and climbed up on the roof to take a look around at the state of things up there.  We knew the roof would need replacing sometime while we were the owners, but didn't think that day was coming quite so soon.



But yeah, there's that....even better, apparently these tiles are no longer made (which I totally understand because as much as I love the house and its whole mediterranean vibe, these tiles are a bit too LOOK AT ME--I'M SO MEDITERRANEAN! I'm looking forward to replacing them with something a bit more subtle (and getting the house painted a color that's less mustard-y)  (and maybe putting in a couple more windows so parts of the house don't look like part of a face without a nose...) (maybe we should just move...)

No.  We're not moving.  We are going to tear this place up one roof tile at a time and go from room to room beating it into submission until it looks exactly like we want it to.  Starting with this room:




This is the family room/kitchen and while we LOVED it when we first walked through the doors over a year ago, a year of living with/in it has made us increasingly more irritated with its lack of efficiency, its oversized appliances retrofitted into spaces where they don't actually fit and its awkward use of space.  Also, the windows are old and a green nightmare, and the fireplace looks like it belongs in a medieval castle.  That gorgeous oven and cooktop?  Doesn't work. And we can't get anyone to repair it because it was installed incorrectly and is a huge liability.  And the cherry floors are SO RED IT HURTS MY EYES. Which is sad because in theory I love them.

We've been talking to a builder for months and spending far too much time on Houzz, and hopefully soon we will start ripping things out and punching out walls and moving chimneys around and redesigning the whole space and the "after" pictures will be all "Property Brothers"-esque "No way that's the same space, how did they do that?!!!"-ish.

We'll see.  Because now we need a new roof.  "money pit money pit money pit."



1 comment:

Sarah said...

I love your giant oven and cooktop and your red floors and pretty much everything about your house, actually. Can't wait to see what you guys do!!