| Sunday, June 8, 2003 |
02:05 - Sweet Merciful Marzipan
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So this weekend I've been rather out of it; it seems a lot of people have, and all with good beginning-of-summer-type excuses. I hope mine counts.
See, it's been another painting weekend; and unlike the past few outings, this time we shanghaied several friends into helping steady ladders and lay blue tape everywhere. The result is that while at the beginning of the weekend we had a total of one room almost done, now we have almost the entire house painted with the exception of a few small detaily rooms, plus the original room that's... almost done.
Once the job gets into the big general chunk of work, it really does go fast. We found a $3 edging tool that screws onto a standard brush handle and runs on little wheels, letting you go right up the the ceiling's edge and cut-in properly with a nice crisp line, as long as you don't have any non-90-degree angles between the wall and the ceiling. (We have three walls with non-90-degree angles.) Plus the big vaulted ceiling means lots of extending the big ladder to its maximum setting and then standing about three rungs from the top, causing parents and homeowners' liability insurance agents everywhere to turn over unaccountably in their restless sleep.
But the Linen White ceilings are all painted now-- all of them-- and the walls, for which we chose a light-dusky-orange tone called Sweet Marzipan, are almost all done as well. As the day came to a close, and I stood in the middle of the living room with the sunset light streaming in through the west-facing picture window, I realized that suddenly we have a house where it looks like sunset was happening all the time-- and when sunset is happening, it looks like the Mingling of the Lights in Valinor of old. It's really frickin' cool. Once the walls are all done (including the accent walls in the living room, such as the big vertical hanging eastern wall opposite the picture window, which will be done in a rich Cinnamon Spice) and the vibrant forest green carpet is in, this place will feel like somewhere I want to start spending the night. Already it's looking like a place where I want to start making the neighbors stop coming in to see our progress, and wait until the housewarming to see what we've done with it. Suddenly I want to surprise everybody.
(Don't worry-- I'll post photos here soon.)
But that's the weirdest thing about the neighborhood, if I haven't mentioned it already. It's this little cul-de-sac in southern San Jose, right up against the hills at the south edge of the Valley, at the boundary between the gridwork of wan little ranch-style homes and dreary apartment blocks, and the broad-streeted upscale neighborhoods that appear the instant the terrain starts to rise into the foothills; while all other streets immediately around it are full of nondescript workaday housing, this one little strip of two distinct floorplans (each with two mirrored variants) is made up of fairly shiny, colorful little two-story contenders and pretenders to the world of the well-to-do suburbanite dwellings. No, they're not big; but they look bigger than they are, and they're inhabited by a tight-knit cast of folks who seem determined to turn the cul-de-sac into a vision of 50s domesticity transplanted to 21st-century cosmopolitan virtues. On one side there's a couple from Canada who have proudly stuck US flags all over their house, movers and shakers in their fields. On the other is the CEO of a placement agency, whose son-- a regular Dennis the Menace-- hit his baseball into our garage one day and stayed to prowl about the house while we banged on things, asking if he could take home this or that piece of scrap wood. There are twentysomethings with motorcycles. There are all ages and races and lifestyles in evidence. There are people who have been on the street since it was built-- recalling days when the circular end of the street was home to monthly neighborhood barbecues, where all the folks would wheel out their grills onto the pavement and cook each other steaks and burgers, and live bands would play, and everybody would tour each other's houses and keep abreast of gossip, and a good old-fashioned friendly American neighborhood-- the kind that would give Michael Moore hives if he saw it-- would forge itself from whole cloth.
Said neighbors have been taking great interest in the house's development. And frankly, I'm thinking it's one of the best things about the house's location-- right at the end of the street, it commands the circular cul of de sac, where during sunset the light streams down the street and washes over everybody as they come out of their houses which all face each other, carting their garbage cans to the curb for Monday-morning pickup, standing out in the street to chat for a languid hour while toddlers scoot around on toy fire engines in the background. All that's missing is a soundtrack.
And to crown it all, the local Round Table Pizza-- owned by a couple who turn out to be Middle Eastern, though the newspaper article on proud display on the counter doesn't give any further detail than their Arabic names-- is apparently anointed by the Round Table Central Command to be the finest in the land. Seems the remodeling job they did recently, coupled with the consistently outstanding food and service we've had every time we go there, won them such acclaim that this restaurant is being held up as the definitive example of what a Round Table should be. Fine by me-- tonight's dinner, with which we treated our wounded and tired painting crew, was eminently worth the big fat tip we left on the table as we scuttled out at what had to be past closing time, under the undimmed smiles of the proprietors.
This week I'll be hopping over there for a couple of hours a day to putter about and do touch-up work, finishing up a few of the smaller jobs. We'll definitely be ready for the delivery of the carpet on the 17th, at this rate. And then... and then we can move in.
I'm really starting to get antsy now. Instead of shuttling back and forth with Home Depot spoils and tired friends, I want to be driving back to that place to stay.
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