Goodbye Lions!

Received word today that Leo and Theo, the lions that have resided in our living room for a while now, are going to be moved tomorrow to their rightful places astride the pathway leading down into Forest Glen from DeWitt Circle.  New pediments will be built for them, and they will eventually be restored.  Found this out via the neighborhood listserve, which has actually proven to be pretty interesting, if you don't count people complaining about their refrigerators... (what does that have to do with anything?)  Anyhow, we're hoping we can make good use of the lions no longer being in the house, because today, hopefully, a decision was made about our application.  I say "hopefully" because the board meeting was scheduled, and as far as I know, not interrupted by an earthquake like the last one was.  I sent an overly pleasant email note to Amy and Renee with MHT, asking them whether I should have a celebretory or a consolatory drink tonight, seeing as I am currently on a business trip in the hometown of Tequila, but didn't get a response.  Who knows what that means?  Could be they were so excited talking about my house at the meeting that they didn't get back to work in time to check emails.  Or could be that they didn't want to tell me the super-awesome news without the sound of a marching band in the background.  Or could be the application continued to be conentious, and we'll have to wait another 45 days.  If that happens, I might just have a few more of those local concoctions than I had planned.

But in the meantime, at least the lions are leaving.  That's progress.  Right?

Right?

MHT Deadline Redux

Okay, so it's been 45 days since the last deadline to hand our plans in to the Maryland Historical Trust, so that means it's time to do it again.  We've spent the last two weeks going over our previous, unsuccessful application, editing our words, adding stuff they wanted us to add, removing stuff they didn't like.  Gone is any mention of ripping out the kitchen ceiling.  Added in is a stipulation promising not to get rid of the wall to the left of the kitchen doorway.  Still in is my bedroom closet, which they didn't like, although we were pretty much assured it wouldn't stand in the way of approval.  Iffy is our plan for exterior insulation: they wanted us to rip off all the exterior shingles and apply a vapor barrier, but they thought the shingles were going to be removed anyway.  Now that they know we're only replacing the few shingles that went bad, we're hoping they're going to be okay with blow-in insulation from the inside.

But here's the kicker: we've removed any mention of the roof.  Argh.  They asked us to explain how we were going to insulate the roof without raising its profile more than a few inches.  At the walk-through, Rory said that wouldn't be an issue.  They asked for a mock-up of what he planned to do-- first one made of plywood, but later saying we could just send an architectural drawing.  So last night, less than 24 hours before we have to drive out to Crownsville to deliver the application, he calls us and says it's not do-able, and that we should just fill out the form however we like, because there's no way to get the profile to go up less than five or six inches.  Our stomachs dropped like we were on a bad roller coaster.

We spent the entire morning texting, emailing, and talking to Rory; leaving messages for and finally talking to Renee at MHT; printing and reprinting new versions of our application; debating what to do about the roof.  All the while, Abby delivered Isaac to school, then sat outside my office for a while in the car with Lola, then spent the whole morning at McDonald's so Lola could play on the playground while Abby figured out the application.  Oh, and I was at work.  Needless to say, we were both stressed out.  Did I mention Abby had the beginnings of a migraine?

Finally, after noon, Renee called and told us we should submit the application sans roof, and write a note alongside our submission noting we weren't eschewing talking about the roof altogether, but rather needed another few weeks to discuss our options.  I find myself constantly saying "fingers crossed" about this project, but our fingers are definitely crossed now, because we were basically told if we did everything according to plan this time around, we would be fine.  Now?  Who knows?  Regardless, Abby drove the hour back out to Crownsville, headache and Lola and all, got lost along the way, but finally delivered the packet.  Luckily, on the way home her medication kicked in and her head felt good enough that she was able to pick Isaac up after school and catch a play date at the zoo.  I think we're both going to have a bit more Kahlua with our ice cream tonight than we usually do...

So that's that.  Now we wait.  The Easement Board meets next Tuesday, after which we should hopefully get a nice, quick answer from our friends Amy and Renee, regardless of how long we have to wait for the paper answer.  We'll have to have a serious conversation with Rory about the roof, because I don't know that I want to have absolutely no insulation in my roof, and I don't know that I want this situation to happen again where we have all our ducks in a row, yet are held back at the last minute by what seems to have been a miscommunication we could/should have resolved at least a week ago.  As Abby drove off this morning from my office, en route to McDonald's in Falls Church, we looked at each other and said "Here we go again."  Hopefully, this time, this will be one of the bigger bumps in the road.  (After all, we're just now getting the electric upgrade on our current house that we were permitted for back in 2004.  No one can accuse PEPCO of jumping the gun, that's for sure...)  *sigh*

Clarifications and Chagrin

It's been some time since we received word from Maryland that our plans weren't good enough, but today I managed to talk to one of our main points of contact up in Crownsville, Renee.  I wanted to see if she could clarify some of the points the board put in one-huge-paragraph of a letter, and she did so quite nicely.  I relayed the information to my dear wife, with all her Southern sensibilites, on the phone from work, and she unloosed a cute little tirade of unpublishable words.  Not aimed at Renee, mind you, but at the situation.  (She actually really liked Renee when they met on Monday.  Really!)  Here's why she's not happy:

1. We will not be allowed to raise the ceiling in the kitchen, which at my last measurement was about, oh, 4 1/2 feet tall.  And we have to keep it beadboard, which is not exactly the look we were going for.  Apparently, one of the bungalowish things about any bungalow is its abundance of porches.  It's not our fault that the Army enclosed the porch, and they're fine with us taking the already enclosed porch and making it into a kitchen.  But since the porch ceiling is still there, we've gotta keep it as is.  I guess this was one of the main objections of the board to our application.  It's also one of Abby's main problems with the house.  Hmm...



You see the boards under the ripped drywall?  THAT's what they want us to keep as our kitchen ceiling, rather than having the gorgeous exposable beams that are directly above them and continue into the Great Room.


2. We will not be allowed to make the doorway into the kitchen into a wide opening.  We will be able to widen the doorway and get rid of the door itself, but wall has to remain on both sides.  Again, because of the original this-is-inside-and-that-is-outside nature of the rooms.  That we can both deal with, although I think it'll look silly.




This is the doorway they will only let us expand, and not remove.
And above it are the beautiful beams they don't want us to expose.


3. We can raise the ceiling in the upstairs bathroom.  Huzzah!  If the kitchen's clearance is 4 1/2 feet, the bathroom's is just over a yard.  They would rather we not have the bedroom closet jut into the Great Room.  Yeah, so would I, but I would also like a closet.  I guess this is not a make-or-break section of the plan, so if we leave it in the next application (which we will), and it's the only problem, then they'll either say okay begrudgingly or just make the approval conditional on us getting rid of or shrinking the closet.  Then I'll just hang all my clothes on a hook outside the house or something, I guess.  That'd be "very bungalow," no?
4. They do not care about our paint colors or tile colors, at least at this point.  Too bad, because Abby has them pretty much all picked out.  Cabinet facing too, after a lucky trip to a specialty cabinet place in Hyattsville yesterday that was fortuitously located across the street from a brand new Burger Delite-- the best place for Carolina Barbecue outside of NC.
5. The board wanted us to put together a "mock-up" of what our roof will look like.  Puzzlement ensued.  Did they want us to do a third-grade diorama?  No, actually, Renee clarified, just some architectural drawings of a cross section of how the new roof won't make the dormer look weird.  That we (and Mohamed) can deal with.

So it shouldn't be that bad.  We have 11 more days until the second round of applications is due.  No doubt we'll be working on it a lot this weekend, and hopefully will have it done by Monday so we can pass it to Rory.  Renee repeatedly mentioned to me that she and Amy were reminding the board that our financers are not too happy about the work not having started.  That said, I made sure to email Patty (our financer) and Sheyy (our guy from FHA) to let them know we had another 45-day wait ahead of us.  I'm sure they're both thrilled...

From everything Renee said, it sounds like the people on the board (who are all specialists of one kind or another-- architects, historians, bungalowists...) are just trying to get things to be perfect.  That said, a comment I received on my last post from Paul, a neighbor I haven't met yet (Hi Paul!) echoes a sentiment I'm sure is shared not only by us and our neighbors but by Renee and Amy as well: that the heretofore moniker "Save our Seminary" should be altered to be "Finish our Seminary!"

It's a No-Go For Now

I just got off the phone with Amy at MHT, who delivered the frustrating news: We won't be able to start work on the Bungalow for at least another 45 days.  She said our application has been rated as “Incomplete” (a technical term) and has to be resubmitted for the next cycle before any work can be done.  She seemed pretty frustrated as well, and said our application was "really good," and “really close” to being accepted with conditions, as we had hoped would happen.  However, it’s a no-go for now.

Apparently, the main issue in our not getting a conditional acceptance may have been that so few of the board members had ever been in the house.  Therefore, they weren’t able to picture what we meant by a lot of the changes, even with drawings and pictures, and even with explanations from those who had been there.  We're going to fix that on Monday: Abby and Rory are going to meet the board at the house for a walk-through.  Afterwards, we can work on resubmitting the same exact application we put in last time, but with edits, additions, tweaks, and other such helpful ways to get this party started. *sigh*

The news is not all bad: I asked her about several of our main concerns, and she said that the board has absolutely no problem with us moving the kitchen upstairs (yay), and no problem with the excavation under the porch (double yay).  Their only two concerns, apparently, are the roof and that damn wall between the dining room and the kitchen.  For the roof, it is her understanding that as long as we are there to explain exactly how we will maintain the current slope with the 2-inch rise we propose due to the need for insulation, they’ll be happy.  As for the wall, they have apparently given us recommendations as to how we might approach it without changing the authenticity of the great room.  She will mail the packet of recommendations to us today, but will also email me an electronic version of it for us to look at, so we will have something to occupy our time over the next few evenings.

So our timeline now has been pushed back by 45 days.  The next board meeting is on October 4, and the deadline for submission of a new application is September 27.  However, she did mention we might want to put information into the packet about specifics such as paint and tile preferences, so we can start taking those steps and making those decisions now.  We’ve already started making some of those decisions-- we went last weekend on a Lowe's date, and will have no issue attempting to do the same this weekend, albeit with kids in tow.  Once we make decisions, I'll post them here on the blog for you to ooh and aah over (and, I'm sure, to try to convince us to go in other directions...). 

Irene in the House

This morning we awoke to a mess of leaves all over the street, a freakishly clean car, and a nearly empty freezer, but other than that there was little sign of Hurricane Irene's overnight "wrath" in our neighborhood.  But we were not-so-secretly worried about how the storm treated the Bungalow, so we took a detour up to Forest Glen on the way to my sister's place in Virginia.  Little more than a half-mile from the house, we saw a tree that had formerly lined Illinois Avenue laying nicely on top of a surprisingly unsquooshed Cadillac.  Small limbs were abundant on the ground, but it wasn't until we got to Sixteenth Street Heights that the traffic signals were blinking.  Once we crossed the border into Maryland at Eastern Avenue the power to the signals went out altogether; not a good sign, we thought!  To make it worse, on the last split before the Seminary, at Brookville and Linden, a DOT traffic sign blinked "detour to Forest Glen."  Uh oh.  But from there on, no sign of Irene at all.  Driving through the tunnel on DeWitt, I crossed my fingers, but emerging from it we saw the fountain working, the trees standing, and the Bungalow, er, Bungalowing.  Roof looked wetter than normal.  Abby says the extreme left (as seen from the front) corner of the porch roof looked like something happened to it, as did the middle of the right side, but I think both of those things were already like that.  (You decide: there are before and after pics to compare below.) Not to mention, both are set to be replaced completely, so who cares?  Sigh of relief...

Bungalow pre-Irene

Bungalow, post-Irene.  Supposed new lean at far left,
and supposed deeper rut at center right of porch roof.

I went inside while Abby walked around the neighborhood with the kids.  Downstairs, where everything is rightfully musty normally, there was no sign of new wetness.  Upstairs, where there are BROKEN WINDOWS, no sign of wetness on the floors.  That's right: hurricane... broken windows... dry floor.  It had only stopped raining about an hour before, so it's not like things had time to dry.  Weird.  The only interior "issue" seemed to be the far corner of the upstairs bathroom, where there was wetness on the floor.  But that was due to a bad seal on the vent leading up through the roof, so all in all, the house made it through Irene like a champ.  Hooray!

Wetness next to the toilet.
Who can't aim?  Irene!

We met another new neighbor on the way out: Peter, a pediatrician who commutes to work via Ride On (the Montgomery County bus system), and his 18-month-old daughter Anna.  He recommended I get on one or more of the area's many resident Yahoo listservs.  We'll see... it might be a great way to find out the skinny on what people really think about the place... or it might just be a good way to be annoyed by people who themselves are annoyed.  Other than that, we're still waiting for the MHT decision.  Believe me, you'll all hear about it as soon as we do!

The Earth Moves (and other things do too)

We haven't been out to the Bungalow since Tuesday's earthquake, but I'm guessing if the house completely collapsed we would've been contacted by now!  Funny thing is, after we got ourselves outside and onto the front sidewalk, the first thing I thought of was not "how is my son faring after this earthquake, seeing as today is his first day at school?"  No, rather, it was "I sure hope the Maryland Historical Trust Board Meeting didn't have to be canceled!"  On Wednesday morning I shot off a polite-as-can-be-yet-completely-ants-in-the-pantsy email to Amy at MHT, asking how Tuesday went.  Her response makes me tentatively hopeful:

We were actually in the middle of the Easement Committee meeting when the quake hit.  We did review your Application and the Committee will have recommendations/comments shortly.  I wanted to let you know that a site visit was requested by Easement Committee members so that they could see the house and be better informed when reviewing future Applications.  Renee and I will contact you (or Rory?) shortly to arraign a site visit for early September.

A shot of Leo (or is it Theo?) in our
Great Room, by Michael G. Stewart

The part I, as a hopeful applicant, picked out of that statement was the "recommendations/comments" part.  And the fact she didn't say "the Committee laughed in the face of your application, and your house fell down because of the earthquake."  I'm hoping you all see the same potential conditional acceptance reflected in this reply I did.



Besides the movement represented by MHT's partial answer, we also got a partial batch of pics back from Laurie and Michael, the two photographers who were in the Bungalow on Saturday.  (And I have to correct something I said earlier: Michael is not Laurie's assistant; he is a photographer in his own right, and found it amusing I referred to him as such.  Sorry, Michael!)  Anyhow, Michael sent me a few really cool pics he took of the place.  My favorite is of Theo (or is it Leo?) in front of our fireplace.  Check it out.



A shot looking up at the ceiling in the Dining Room
section of the Great Room, by Michael G. Stewart



Finally, there's some more possible movement on the neighborhood home-sales front.  According to local real-estate websites, the Swiss Chalet has been put under contract.  For those of you who may not know, the Swiss Chalet, which is located on the edge of the Seminary property right next to the Chinese Pagoda, is the house that initially drew us here.  We toured that house-- absolutely gorgeous, but in even more desperate need of help than the Bungalow-- first, then looked at the Pagoda next door.  It was only after that, when I was hooked on the former, and Abby was hooked on the latter, that Marc, the realtor showing the places to us, suggested we walk through the tunnel and see the Bungalow.  So, for better or worse, we owe our being here in the first place to the Swiss Chalet.  Danke schön!

The Swiss Chalet: the younger, more expensive, and
in-worse-shape "Alpine" version of the Bungalow



Taking pictures, crossing fingers

Interesting weekend with the Bungalow, in that it involved others availing themselves of the house without needing me around.  Yesterday, while Abby played the model parent helping Isaac's new school do last-minute set-up stuff (I think it's called "barn raising?"), I took the kids to the Bungalow so a local photographer could do a shoot inside.  I had seen her stuff while doing online searches of the place, and had commented about liking some of it on her blog.  She wrote back and asked if she could shoot inside, and I didn't see the harm, so yesterday happened.  She showed up with an assistant and they took about two hours to shoot, while the kids and I rode bikes outside until we were sweating too much, then headed inside to the community room, ostensibly to play foosball and pool.  But it was Saturday morning, and some kids that lived in the apartments were watching cartoons, so invariably my kids sat leaning against the foosball and pool tables, transfixed with the images on the tv screen.  (Pokemon: what a ridiculous cartoon...)  Once the kids left, I switched it to something more palatable for me, and enjoyed the air conditioning.  In a week or so, I'll be able to see some of the shots she did, and hopefully they'll be linkable so I can put them up here, but in the meantime you can see the photographer's stuff at her blog, Laurie's Lane.  Her assistant also has an interesting website, and says he's shot album covers for local bands on the grounds of the Seminary, which would definitely be cool to see.

Today we went to Six Flags, but my friend Dave, who works for State Farm Insurance,  told me he wanted to see the place.  So I gave him the combination to the lockbox and hoped he wouldn't find some terrible reason we shouldn't have bought the place-- a reason the home inspector and the general contractors missed.  I trust him because he's been an interested bystander (and frequent contributor) to our current house in its various states, and because of his professional background.  He came over afterwards and had interesting and constructive things to say, but nothing like the crazy awful things we were fearing, so yay!  (And no, Dave's not the holding-punches kind of guy...)  He did mention it was funny we had two lockboxes on our door, yet some of the window panes were knocked out and, if you really wanted to, you could just reach in and unlock the door from the inside.  (It's like I teach in Botswana: it's the appearance of security that matters!)

We're still crossing our fingers for Tuesday's board meeting, after which I've convinced myself the Maryland Historical Trust is going to call me personally to gush over our wonderful plans.  That, or there are 1000 things we left off the forms, and we have to redo it all and spend another 45 days waiting until the next meeting.  (I already know we forgot to talk about removing the paneling from the basement, and talking to Dave has me second-guessing our room placement again...  Argh!)  But no matter: it'll be another 36 hours until the board meets, and it could be up to two weeks before we hear their results.  I asked Abby to bake some cookies and show up at the meeting, but she says she doesn't think showing up with baked goods as well as two screaming kids would help our cause.  I say bake a second batch and stuff the kids to stop the screaming, but she says I'm crazy.