PAINTERS
If only home reno was as a simple as on HGTV’s Fixer Upper, which I’m obsessed with. In it, toothsome Texans Chip and Joanna Gaines will show an anxious couple three falling-down houses. The couple picks one. I love how easy Chip and Joanna make it. The couple says what their personalities are like—she says: “I’m a homebody. He’s outdoorsy.” Chip and Joanna proceed with sledgehammers, tearing off the “ship lap,” repainting it cobalt, and festooning it with design elements from Joanna’s handy online store—stainless steel fixtures, antique farm lamps, adorable distressed-wood flower boxes. Two months later the couple returns to a landscaped backyard terrace that magically “brings the outdoors in” with a throw pillow that says NATURE.
You have to live in Texas (literally, Waco) to be on the show. If it were L.A., you’d spend a year just waiting for permits. And contractors!
I am trying to just get the outside of our house repainted. The exact same color. This should be simple. From Angie’s List, I get three estimates. The first guy (a fastidious Asian American with bouffant hair) thought I had a lot more money than I do. He went to his immaculate Prius to pull out an unnecessary binder of satisfied client letters, including one from the Sultan of Botswana(?). Quote: $20,000. The second guy, a white sixtysomething hippie artisan with a back brace, quoted $11,000, but estimated it would take him three and a half months. Until he fell off the ladder and broke his hip—then years could go by.
Third estimate? $3,500. Done in seventy-two hours.
How is that possible? I think. Is the paint radioactive?
A Latino crew of six shows up on time, 9 a.m. on Tuesday. They’re professional, neat, focused. They measure, cover, tape. The next two days, twelve painters show up, working ten-hour shifts. I’m both thrilled and horrified. I’m taking out a calculator trying to figure out how much each guy is getting paid. (Is negative five dollars an hour even possible?)
Ah, well. I have to say, the house looks great.
Just add a throw pillow from Joanna’s store that says GUILT.
A BAD WEEK IN THE KITCHEN
In my home economics class at Malibu Park Junior High in the 1970s, Mrs. Shellkopf taught us girls to:
Punch-hook a rug
Resheath a pillow
Make a recipe box of easy appetizers like “Foxy Franks”—basically cut-up hot dogs in ketchup, soy sauce, and brown sugar
Four decades later, I feel a major part of modern home ec training has gone missing. In the history of America, first there were no appliances, then there were helpful appliances, and now we have high-maintenance/too-smart-for-their-own-good appliances.
My house came with a fancy new KitchenAid refrigerator, with monolith-like steel doors that repel magnets—aka: family photos or children’s drawings. Arguably, this is an innovation, particularly for ashamed divorced parents. Anyway, the other week, it stops making ice. The fix-it guy from Sears comes over. He says it needs a new part . . . but here’s the twist. There’s no telling which part because there’s no model number on any of Mr. KitchenAid’s impassive steel faces.
The only place KitchenAid put the model number was—get ready—on an ink-jet-printed paper sticker glued to the top right inside of the fridge. Right where we keep the milk. So, in fact, our entire household has spent years gradually rubbing off the model number with our forearms while pulling milk in and out of the fridge.
Also, as there’s now much busy refilling of ice trays, with the taps twisting on and off, the kitchen faucet starts to leak. I take a wrench—and I’m amazed I can actually find a wrench—to try to tighten the hexagonal spigot . . . nut . . . thingy. Charlie senses I don’t know what I’m doing. So he steps in with his manly strength, turns the wrench the wrong way—and with a scream is rocked back with a propulsive roar of water.
I’m embarrassed to say I now hysterically call the Pasadena Fire Department. In thirty seconds, three strong men simply turn off the water line mechanism/joint/rotator under the sink—
Although now of course we had no dishwasher and, weirdly, no microwave because it has been so doused with water its—what do you call it, its brain board—? intelligence board—? smart board—? thinky board has fritzed. We are advised to test the circuit breaker. You mean that thing whose diagram used to be taped to the outside breaker box, which blew away a few years ago in that very strong wind? When all those palm fronds fell (Damoclean swords)?
LIGHT BULBS
A Series of Unfortunate Events
Some light bulbs have burned out in my house, which means that’s it for indoor lighting in this house because replacing modern light bulbs is beyond my human ability.
Apparently, it’s not enough to match the “flame-tipped candelabra” shapes of burned-out light bulbs, nor to match the sizes of the bases. The lamp warnings (yes, lamp warnings!) say it’s crucial not to screw a sixty-watt bulb into a forty-watt socket.
But now I’m standing in the grocery aisle studying a package, thinking, So much for watts, but what about volts?
Phone comes out. I google. Here’s a wikiHow essay from no less august a source than the Washington Post. Its literal title: “How to Navigate the Increasingly Confusing Light Bulb Aisle.” It’s by David Brooks, proprietor of Just Bulbs in New York. (Just Bulbs? Way back when, SNL’s “Scotch Boutique” was an actual parody.)
Brooks addresses a question that has long been—vaguely—haunting me: Why don’t our dimmers work with those spirally new CFL (compact fluorescent lamp) bulbs? Apparently, CFLs use so little energy, with their clever phosphor coating, mercury vapor, and argon technology, that “old-model dimmers can’t even sense that there is a bulb there to dim.”
So in that case, just buy regular bulbs—but instead of wattage you should measure lumens. What are lumens? So easy to remember! Wattage is energy, lumens is brightness. For example, a 100-watt incandescent has about 1,600 lumens, whereas a 40-watt incandescent has about 450 lumens. If you forget, you can check out the handy charts and tables at www.energystar.gov. In your spare time. Feel free, while you’re at it, to get a PhD from Cornell in the electromagnetic spectrum.
Further, light bulbs come in a variety of shades. You’ll be horrified to learn, as I was, that each color has a temperature rating measured in degrees Kelvin. The lower the Kelvin number, the more yellow the light, the higher the Kelvin, the bluer.
Brooks—who clearly has time on his hands—suggests buying different bulbs with different Kelvin numbers. Why? To see how you like them. “Every shade of white is good for a different reason,” he says. Modern spaces look better in whiter light, traditional rooms in yellower. A whiter, higher Kelvin light is more popular in the South, a yellower, lower Kelvin light in the North.
In the end, experts recommend not buying too many of any one bulb because, as they say, “the technology is just changing so quickly.”
YANKEE CANDLES
What Are These?
We’re all familiar with the piney theme candles realtors love for their open houses, like Winter Harvest, Christmas Wreath, Cranberry Potpourri. Or the candles of various girly fruits like Apple, Banana, Papaya.