Oui oui!

It snuck up on us over the last year--we do not like our coffee table.

We bought it on Overstock a little over a year ago and, as this post notes, it is a massive, heavy piece of furniture. At first, we liked how solid it was, and how much space it had for storage. But the truth is that we only need a little drawer for remotes and the weight means lots of shin bruises (and baby head bruises when D's little cousins come to visit), rug divots, and awkward vacuuming positions. It's also about 2 inches too high, which shouldn't seem like a problem except that we find it really uncomfortable to put our feet on (and eat on, since we eat dinner while sitting on the floor and watching TV more often than I like to admit). Finally even though it is real (and really solid) wood, it is covered with veneers that are not holding up well.

So now that we've lived with it for a while, we decided that its flaws were not something we could get used to. I've been perusing craigslist and even google images to figure out what it is that I want. It has to be 16 (versus 18) inches high, made of hard wood, and have legs and a drawer. It must not have a lower shelf (because then it wouldn't have high legs), glass (ew!), or weigh 100 lbs. It turns out there aren't many options with these specifications.

Until I found it. My one true coffee table love! Those following my blog closely probably won't be surprised by the style--it should loo familiar. Check these babies out:

Belle Maison Francaise

First is a limed oak finish French provincial table costing a mere $1100. OK, not gonna happen. The next try got us a little close:

Etsy Seller HarrisMarksHome

This one is only $250 plus $90 shipping (via Greyhound, so that's a huge annoyance). It has the added benefit of being nice and long, so folks sitting on the gray love seat that is perpendicular to our sofa would also get a foot rest.

But I still can't quite bring myself to spend that much. At least not yet. Not without a good, thorough hunt. Apparently I am set on French provincial, so that much is decided. Looking back, I guess it's a favorite style of mine--I just love those sexy, curvy legs (I imagine this post is going to come up for someone trying to find porn who will be very confused by the results).

 

D prefers the clean lines of mid-century modern, but fortunately we both like combined styles and are happy to have a little bit of everything in our house.

So if you see a French provincial table in your neighborhood thrift store or yard sale, give a shout! I might come take it off your hands...

Plants and a Planter

Bonus points to the reader who can identify these pretty little purple flowers:

They grow on the side of a nearby property and make such lovely ground cover. We are in a long-term process of removing unpleasant invasive ground cover from our property (ivy, liriope, etc) and trying to replace it with something prettier, less prone to spreading, and less likely to harbor scary creepy crawlies. So if you can help us figure out what this is, you will be our hero!

And because I don't just want to make this post all about asking what you can do for me, I'd like to share a cool plant-themed find we made recently: The SOCKER Greenhouse by Ikea (and I'd been so good lately about not mentioning Ikea on the blog!)

But seriously, this thing is really cool! It helps to insulate plants in a microclimate that is slightly more humid and warm, it looks pretty darn awesome, and most importantly, let's us keep cat-unfriendly plants around the house without hurting our pets.

In this case, we have two spider plants sandwiching a jasmine plant. None of these are harmful to cats but we found out the hard way a few years ago that spider plants are basically cat LSD, so they would get devoured if the cats got access.

Now, does it increase the odds of us actually keeping a plant alive? Probably not. I took this picture a couple of months ago and the jasmine plant has already gone to plant heaven. But it's probably not hurting.

To Pay Or Not To Pay?

In my Leap Day post, I hinted at a problem with our heat. We've known for a long time that our house heats unevenly. Half of the house barely gets any heat at all--the pipes carrying the hot water from the furnace to one side never get warm. We thought this problem would clear up when we insulated our house better, because the cold side is also the side over the crawl space. We figured that the reason the water was cold by the time it hit those rooms was because the pipes were uninsulated and basically outside, so the water cooled off by the time it got where it needed to go.

Having been through a winter post-insulation, we can now conclude that is not the case. So the problem is clearly in our actual heating system.

Now the whole system is unreliable at best--we have toasty warm rooms in our living room, dining room, and master bedroom usually but even these rooms (actually mostly just the master bedroom) have moments of chill. When that happens, D bleeds the pipes until he doesn't notice any more bubbles, and that usually clears up the problem.

But the bad rooms mostly don't work at all. D can bleed the pipes until there is no noticeable air but the water is always cold (sometimes on a good day, it is tepid). So this winter we finally called in our local heating company and asked them to solve the problem. They came out twice and still seem a little confused, but here's what they think will solve the problem:

After emptying our pressure tank, trying to bleed sections of the house, and after considering our furnace and pipe structure, the folks at our local mom and pop place believe the piping down near our furnace is wacky. They were unable to effectively bleed our system and believe there are bubbles trapped permanently in unreachable places. Now I might have the fundamentals wrong here, but what they seem to be saying is that the release valve (red arrow) is in a section that leads to the outside water source. But it should be in the section that goes from the furnace to the house (blue arrow). This bad placement is what is not allowing them to bleed our system. So they want to reroute some pipes to make a full system bleed possible.

They also want to install an auto-bleeder which would automatically pull out air bubbles from the water that passes through it.

The problem is that the company admits that they are guessing the solution. And there is no guarantee that they're right and that doing what they recommend will fix the problem. And it's not cheap ($800). But at least they are being completely up front with us.

This company has not charged us a dime to come out all these times and take a look. They also didn't charge us two years ago when we called them and asked for help when our heat wouldn't stop running (they serviced the heating system for the previous owner and we had his work records, so that's why we called them). This company is the kind of place where, if it where called Smith Heating, the people who came out to see us would be Bob Smith and Mike Smith. They are really nice and I don't think they are trying to rip us off.

However, that's enough money that we thought we should get a second opinion. We called a bunch of other places. All of them have either said that they don't service baseboard heating or that they would charge us about $200 just to come take a look (creditable, of course, towards follow-up service).

So this giant post all boils down to two questions: Do we pay for a second opinion (and possibly a third and a fourth opinion, if they all disagree)? Or do we pay to get the work done? (A third, off-the-wall question is do we pay even more for some crazy solution that involves replacing our entire heating system?)

(Either way we probably won't do anything until September, so that we won't have to wait months to turn the heat on and see if it worked...)

It begins again

The pesky thing about spring and gardens is that it keeps coming around and I keep having to do work in the yard. And usually it is to fix the same problems over and over again.

Of course without all that liriope grass, there's been real positive progress. And while the new plants are still very puny, most of them appear to be coming back. But we still have work to do.

Step one, fill in the holes that the squirrels caused since fall. Those little critters really went to town along the border area. I guess because the dirt there was loose? I don't know, but there were some pretty big gaps. So we filled them in with some of the compost we still have leftover from all and laid new grass seed there.

Then we relaid more compost and seed further out into the yard. Because despite thatching, seeding, watering, you-name-it last fall, we still have a lot of bare areas and very sparse, unhealthy grass. Of course the other side of the lawn (to the left of the house) looks ok, but it is actually covered in moss. So we either have moss or mud. What a choice!

At some point we need to fertilize with a nitrogen-rich blend, but I read that we aren't supposed to do that when seeding--and we are ALWAYS seeding, in the vain hope that something will actually take root...

Next up, we had to plant the few seedlings that arrived this month from an order we placed last fall with a garden supply company. Since not everything has come up yet, I tried my best to plant where I thought we had empty space, but I may have ended up crowding some other new baby plant. I guess we'll have to wait and see when everything pokes through the leaf layer.

We got so many seedlings that I had to stick some in pots temporarily. Because of course if I wanted one flowering quince, I have to get 3. And if I want one spirea vanhouttei, I have to get 5. And all of them require 5 feet of space to grow.

Also please note that while these things are supposed to reach heights of 5-8 feet, they currently look like little sticks. Less than impressive...Pathetic, actually.

Did I mention I'm a very impatient gardener?

And so for a slightly more immediate satisfaction, we are doing an herb garden again this year. No tomatoes, since they took over our stoop and looked awful, but hopefully a lot of tasty herbs.

This year we're trying two types of basil, spearmint, chives, oregano, and parsley. Oh, and green onions, which I guess isn't really an herb. Some of the seeds are last year's stock, so I hope they haven't expired. It seemed like such a waste to throw them away and buy fresh this time around.