The no-bell prize

This was not the best of days -- it does get tense as the days dwindle down -- but things did get done.

We ordered a few extra door sets, towel bars, TP holders -- all those glamorous things. Picked up tile for two bathroom floors. Researched finishes for the fir front door. All's well.

And then: A, having left town, passed the paving bid on to B, but B wouldn't be able to do it either, so C stepped in. D had a dispute with E over contract terms. F had a dispute with G about code requirements. H and I disagreed about a whole raft of things.

Early in the day, I'd found spray paint that would turn our twig door pulls, which are cast bronze but look like really cheap gilt, into a simulacrum of oil-rubbed bronze. By the time I drove some flipping screws into a flipping board to support them for flipping painting, I was flipping out.

Then the UPS man drove up with our doorbell (ring it when you click on that link) -- an old-fashioned, honest-to-God, twist-and-hear-it bell, also in oil-rubbed bronze. Makes such a cool old sound, and works even when hurricanes leave us with no power. I gleefully ripped the package open and found . . . the really beautifully detailed twist and beaded escutcheon for the outside of the door, in a lovely oil-rubbed bronze. No bell.

I am happy to report that the twist is so well made that it didn't suffer any damage at all when I flipped the flipping thing the flipping length of the flipping house.

Seeing red again

. . . And not just about windows, though we did start the day with a strategy session by phone with our architect, Dennis.

The second phone call was to lock down the order on our floor materials.

The third was incoming: A frantic call by Roy, our painter, who'd been unable to find our shade of door stain at Sherwin-Williams.

No wonder, we said: We'd gotten it at Benjamin Moore -- and he called from there to say he'd nailed their last quart.

We high-tailed it to Strunk's, and picked up the last two quarts of Provincial on the island, cornering a small market at best.

Then we went out to see Stacy at the bath fixtures store to get our toilets in line and ran into . . . a member of the Historic Architecture Review Commission. I was happy to see her, but when she started asking about our project, told her that, ethically, we shouldn't discuss it, because we would be appearing before her soon. So we talked about her renovation project.

All the time, Santos was working away in the den, re-redding the tongue-and-groove wall and its trim. Nathaniel wandered by late in the day, poked his head in and said, "Y'know, I was worried about all that red, but now I think it's the prettiest room in the house."

Awfully nice to hear.

A chilly blush

This pink-tinged variety of bougainvillea began showing up at the plant stores here in recent years, and as I saw this sprig peeking out from a whitewashed fence on Truman Avenue today, I couldn't help thinking of fair skin reddened by a chill, brisk wind.

Robert doesn't get it, but those of us who've been here awhile are bundling up -- you even see some people in stocking caps and scarves -- because temperatures are dipping into the low 60s.

No big deal, until you remember most of us have no insulation, no heat and no tolerance for much under 75. Good thing we're not in Orlando, where it's supposed to hit 28 tonight. I'm not even thinking about anything farther north than that.

Meanwhile, on the finish front . . .

We take a momentary break from my obsession with windows (I was up at 3 a.m. researching Historic Commission guidelines) to bring you
. . .

Our obsession with floors and doors.

You can see just a bit of the floor choice here: that little block of santos mahogany at the bottom of the door, and that patch below. It comes with a terrific finish, and it's significantly lighter than the kitchen cabinets, which I think will set them off beautifully.

And the door. We took two trips to the paint store, and Roy one, before coming up with a winner.

You'll have to stick your head inside the tiny guest room closet and peer at the back of the door to see our first test, a far too dark shade of mahogany. This one is darker than the ceiling, lighter than the floor. It's a Zar stain shade called "Provincial." What's next? Urbane? Rustic? And who the hell names these things? Still, it made our day.

Noncomformists

These are the old guest-room windows from a year ago. Click on them if you want a frightening look at what used to be there.

Trust me, this is going to be part of the photographic evidence the Historic Architecture Review Commission gets when we make our case for mercy in terms of window materials.

I hope you'll forgive me, but I haven't been quite right since Friday's shock about HARC. (Actually, I've been sleeping like a baby, as the old joke has it: Waking up every 30 minutes to cry.)

In addition to the points I listed Friday, this argument from analogy took form:

A few months back, Sullins, our architect friend, mentioned an oddity in HARC regulations. Owners of a building that's "nonconforming" by HARC standards -- not historic, not "contributing," perhaps a concrete block structure with aluminum windows -- are allowed to replace it with another nonconforming structure, rather than one meeting historic design standards.

What's the chance that windows conforming neither in style nor material nor wind-code compliance can be replaced by windows that conform at least in style, and up the ante by adding incredible hurricane safety? I'm just asking -- and looking at every window I see in the Historic District.

A huge favor

Robert and I ordered an awning in late December and, as luck would have it, it arrived Friday.

I mentioned it to Shawn and wondered whether, since he and the guys were in town. . . .

So there we all were at Home Depot at 11 a.m., with Li'l Shawn at the wheel of their huge diesel dump truck, the back jammed with equipment going back north, sliding 21 feet of ungainly shipping tube over the truck bed and lashing it down.

Installation would take "15 minutes," Robert had been told.

Shawn was too bright to buy that (he hasn't been around Robert long enough to know that "5 minutes" is usually about an hour), but even so I don't think he figured on four hours.

They had to rip a few boards into 2-by-10s, lag-bolt them just below the ledger board (not smack in the middle, as I'd thought), then lag-bolt the brackets to the new boards.

Robert and I performed such high-skill tasks as unwrapping, handing drills, tools and bolts up ladders and fetching sodas.

Of course, Shawn engineered it beautifully, and everything clicked into place after a big heave-ho.

We gave the crew yet another round of thanks for yet another job above and beyond -- though I did hear Shawn say, "Next time I come to Key West, I'm not bringin' a hammer."

I'm devastated

This is the way our house looked a year ago, and there is a good chance that the Historic Architec- ture Review Com- mission prefers the way it looked then to the way it looks now.

The problem is our hurricane-resistant windows, and in the worst case we may have to rip seven of them out.

This all came up today when I went to the HARC staff director, Diane, to ask whether it might be possible for us to use aluminum shutters -- which really do look just like the "real" thing, wood, which HARC has always required.

There's a shutter maker in Key West who has done all he can to emulate the look of painted wood, and he's had some success getting his things approved in Truman Annex, and he keeps trying to get his products approved in Old Town.

One topic led to another -- since hurricane windows don't require shutters, I thought perhaps the question would be moot -- but then Diane said our metal frames are unacceptable to HARC and would have to go.

When she told me that, I had to sit down rather suddenly, and it took me a few minutes to collect my thoughts.

I went back to the house, told Shawn and Arnold what the problem was, and retreated to the apartment to assume the fetal position.

- - -

So now I'm filling out an application for an appearance before the full commission to seek a revision in our plans -- to wit, approval for metal frames because:

■ The windows we inherited were bad, storm-unsafe, relatively new, un-historic aluminum, many built smaller than the historic window openings. Our windows, though not compliant in materials, far better reflect historic architectural standards, are storm-safe and are true to the sizes of the building's original openings.

■ Before his untimely death, our builder installed the windows in good faith and in strict compliance to structural and hurricane codes. It would be unfair to penalize those of us who survive for his error.

■ Our neighbors along the street enjoy a wide variety of window materials -- some wood-framed, some vinyl, some aluminum (even jalousies). Ours at least show a historic style. Is it fair to penalize us for making our windows both congruent to historic style and safe thanks to new materials technologies?

■ Though their interests are obviously different from historic preservation, the city building inspectors who approved every stage of our project over the last year never alerted us to the possibility of a problem, despite their experience with projects in the Historic District.

(If you can think of other, better arguments, or refinements in these, or ANYTHING, please -- please-- don't hesitate to share your insight in comments or e-mail. I need all the help I can get here.)

At any rate, Diane says she'll search out variances that may tend to support our case. After seeing my faint and hearing the circumstances, she became quite sympathetic.

Also, our architect, Dennis, says he will be there with me in late February to make the case before HARC. If they deny us, we'll have recourse to the Board of Adjustment, to seek a variance on appeal. If the BOA denies us -- well, I guess we'll have to post a sizable performance bond to get our certificate of occupancy, and then special-order seven windows, along with seven million antacids.

I will look at this as an opportunity to invite HARC into a new era, to help it realize that technology and architectural preservation can coexist. I hope the commission can look ahead in hurricane protection, as well as back in history.

A few loose ends

Yep, that's Frank from the Macon crew. And yep, he's cutting up some work that was previously thought finished.

But sometimes life is like that.

He, Shawn and Li'l Shawn are down for the weekend -- mostly to pick up some equipment of Ref's to take back north, but also to fix some problems with pocket doors. It seems as if everyone hates pockets but Robert and me.

In this case, the pressure of the tongue-and-groove apparently buckled the box the door slips into. A little work, but nothing insurmountable.

Want a low-stress job?

The Keynoter has had a display ad that's intrigued me for a few weeks:

Do you like to take walks on the beach at the first light of day? Would you like to earn $10 an hour while walking the beach? Then this is the perfect job for you.

The City of Marathon is hiring several individuals to be our Turtle Nest Surveyors to work 3½ hours a day April 15 to October 31 for our two beaches. Our Turtle Nest Surveyors must be licensed by the Department of Environmental Protection through Save-A-Turtle. The class will be held in March. . . .

I'll pass along the contact number if you're interested. And it's BYO sunscreen, of course.

White belts

Not the best fashion statements, but they can be really striking features on a house.

On the rear and south sides, a wide piece of wood called a ledger board marks the depth of the joists between the first and second floors.

We could paint them yellow for less emphasis, or leave them in white to frame the house with the rest of the trim.

The vote's for white, even though this piece will be broken up by the roll-up awning over the big door to the living room.

(Sorry about the sky color, by the way, but a cold front was starting to blow through; it was dropping to 60 and spitting rain. Everybody who lives here was in sweats and a jacket; the turistas were still in T-shirts.)

Call it chameleon

"Ooba-
tooba?," asked the woman from down the street, looking at the card- board- wrapped island and counters.

No, I said, "peacock green."

And only when we got to the upstairs bath was there enough light to see the details.

The sunlight shows up the green and brown flakes in the black -- but it's still too bright, and the dark places too dark, for you to get a proper view.

Besides, it looks different against both colors of tile, and I'm sure it'll look different against the slate backsplash in the kitchen, too.

Blue and happy

The soffit at the top is the same color as the one at the bottom, and the beam -- it's just a trick of light, because all the blues are the same shade, and apparently pretty eye-catching.

A nice couple staying at a guest house down the street stopped by to compliment me about the house's appearance this morning.

Arnold plans to paint his porch ceiling this blue, the sincerest form of flattery, so I gave him the chip to match.

Dennis, who runs the guest house two doors away, calls it baby blue but says he likes it a lot anyway. Roy, the painter, calls it sky and wrote the number down so he can do all his porches in it.

Nice. But people are still perplexed by our two tones of yellow. Under the porch is the real color. The rest is just tinted primer -- but Roy thinks the exterior will be finito by the end of the week and no one will doubt the shade.

Everybody says the yellow makes the house look a lot bigger. I told Arnold I'm not going to wear yellow anymore.

Another day in paradise

It was one of those days today -- lining up a return visit by the tile guy, dealing with the HVAC guy, the electrician, the pool guy. Bleh.

Robert and I decided to head over to Higgs Beach for sunset, and sat under a palapa where a few guys were quietly shooting the breeze about linguistics, classic cars, the way they dream. . . .

The sun started setting, and people who had cameras got them out. Another guy strummed a guitar and hummed softly.

One guy sitting near us said he'd been working on his house for two years, and I told him I'd recently had a few days of construction panic. Even so, I said, probably more to convince myself than him, the worst day here is better than the best in lots of other places.

"I hadn't thought of that in a while," he said, shaking his head. He smiled: "Thanks. You just made my day."

And that made mine, to remember the power of a word of encouragement.

Master classes

I was watching Arnold and Mr. B working on the upstairs doors today and at one point, preparing to take a Skilsaw to the bottom of one of them, he looked up and smiled:

"Eighty percent of carpenters would take the door off the frame before doing this," he said, "and only 10 percent would use one of these," pointing at the saw.

He then proceeded to demonstrate why he earned the 10.

Hanging doors is more complicated than I thought, but simpler, too: Get the frame plumb and square, and you're home free. At one point, to tug an already-nailed frame just a bit forward, he drilled a screw in and one tug with a hammer's claw did the trick.

Mr. B looked over at me and laughed. "It's a classroom up here," he said.

Later in the day, shooting the breeze with Scott, who keeps up the Duval House down our street, Arnold came up with great reverence.

"Guys like him have 10,000 pages of carpentry lessons in their head," Scott said. Personally, I think that's an understatement.

Counter measures

Germán and his crew from Miami came by early Monday for our counter installation, and they were still finishing up the third bathroom after dusk. A long day, and a productive one.

It took all five of them to wrestle the big pieces off the truck, up the steps and into place.

This was the big L -- one piece that makes up the right side of the kitchen counter. (Germán is in the red shirt, by the way.) Just at the left edge of the picture is the cutout for half of the undermounted sink.
Luís -- "Lucho" -- is Germán's right-hand guy, and he shaved the left piece along the sink wall to get a perfect fit. Better to start with too much than too little.

The guys wrestle the left piece into place. You can see the sink cutout on the right end.

Then it's time for the island -- one very big, heavy slab.

Luís made the cutout in place for the cooktop, along with diamond-grinding the epoxied seam at the sink. By the time he was done, it was all but invisible.

Finally, the cooktop (yes, it's a Maytag, and their biggest) goes into place. And it fits, with a tolerance you can't believe.

An edgy day -- but nothing snapped: not the big angled piece, not the sink cutouts and most surprising of all not my nerves.

Counterweights

The spinnaker set packed up this weekend, the regatta over, and this picture from the event's amazing official photographer, Tim Wilkes, certainly described how I was feeling today: atilt.

(Take a look at the water color, by the the way, and then think about our guest room baths.)

Darren and Santos were at the house, caulking and filling back and side walls and being incredibly supportive. Yet it was one of those days when it all seemed as if the boat was about to flip.

Maybe it was the hundred or so details I still feel iffy about -- every doubt, ding and dread -- or a bad case of so-close-and-yet-so-far, or my fears of Code Enforcement and the certificate of occupancy. . . .

I try not to let the guys know when I'm in one of those moods, so I was concocting reasons to take my worries elsewhere when Franklin pulled up to work his continuing magic on drywall. Then Arnold swung by, and then his lady friend from the thrift shop up the street to look at what we've done to Marvin's house, and then Matt, another floor guy, to scope out the job for a bid.

I was showing Matt around, and we were upstairs, with Franklin working away in the upstairs bath, when he said to me, "You're really mellow for someone at this point in a project. That is so amazing."

I almost felt like crying, but I said to him: Well, I could take it out on myself and everyone else, but I'd rather just keep going with a smile.

And it occurred to me later that I was so lucky: Everyone here is on the same side of the boat, using every ounce of his weight to get that extra inch, that extra second, toward the finish line. Another truth: Weights vary, but when people apply all they have, that's all they have, and you can't ask for more.

Franklin is a great case in point. (This is my favorite picture of him, mixing mud last month.)

"You know, Mr. T, this is gonna be a real pretty house." I thanked him again for his great part in making that way, and mentioned how much trouble the tile guy had with the surfaces he was now repairing.

"Well, some people wake up every day wondering what's gonna go wrong. What an awful way to live."

A-men, brother. And I went away wearing the smile he'd given me.

Red squared

Days of our lives, conch-style

I was walking down Simonton just after 2, and I'd already pointed one gaggle of tourists toward Schooner Wharf and another toward Ft. Zach.

I heard the two guys at a guest cottage north of Petronia before I saw them: One was fiddling with something under the hood of their truck at the curb, talking with the one on the porch.

As I got closer, the one on the porch hailed me: "Can I ask you a stupid question?"

I told him I love stupid questions.

"Is this Friday or Saturday?"

Friday for sure, I said.

"Thaaanks!," he said, grinning and nodding to his friend. Then to me: "I'm sorry to . . ."

I cut him off. No need to apologize. One reason people come to Key West is to lose track of time, and I was glad in their case that it was working. To them it really meant another day in paradise.

Agony, ecstasy, etc.

Not so much the Irving Stone novel or the movie, though I did tell Roy and Darren that it would be interesting to see them give our big ceiling the Charlton Heston treatment. (Lord, do I have to take the Rex Harrison role again??)

I think Darren's agony tonight is going to be the sunburn he got today. Even early, when I got the picture, the sun was doing its thing pretty mercilessly.

My ecstasy came early: Arnold and Mr. B had been hanging doors -- without the Macon crew who had been planning to bop down to aid the effort -- and were more than three-fourths done by the close of business Friday.

They look even better up than I'd expected, and now the agony (if you'll pardon the gross over- statement): Do we pickle them, like the V-groove, as planned? Or do we finish them with a dark cherry stain to match the floors? Pickling would be far more Keys-casual; staining more traditional, and maybe a bit more elegant.

Elegant, schmelegant, I think they'll look like a million bucks either way -- but it's a question I'm going to ponder for a few more days.

The doors come knocking

Arnold and Shawn have been working on the doors for months now -- one of the joys of a handmade house is that nothing is quite off the shelf, and to complicate things, Robert and I had the architect specify solid wood and lots of louvers.

(We had some unfortunate hollow-cores in Chicago, and Tennessee's really heavy doors spoiled us; besides, Key West's humidity means louvers are a great antidote to mildew.)

So they were all special order, and we've been waiting, waiting. . . . Just yesterday, Shawn said they'd been delayed yet another week. But early this morning, Manley-De Boer, our lumberyard, called to say they'd be delivered in a few minutes.

The truck pulled up, and a big, burly guy about my age handed the doors down to the whole crew -- the painters scrambled, too, to help us shoulder them into the house.

They're beautiful. The louvers, mostly on closet doors, are sturdy and perfectly set. The "four-lights" (with four panels set into the frames) are heavy and a pleasure to run a hand across. "Furniture-grade pine," said Arnold, who explained to Darren the painter that joints at the panel edges, which looked like 90-degree angles, were really quite complex routs. "Those are really nice doors," said Roy, who was already dreading painting the louvers but figuring the best strategies to get it done.

"Mind if I take a look at the house?," asked the delivery guy, his truck still idling in the street.

Of course not, I said, and took him through.

"Wow, nice!," he said. Thanks, I said, and shook his hand and introduced myself.

"Scott De Boer," he said in mid-handshake.

Short pause. (Well, enough time to think, "Manley-De Boer.")

I gestured at the paneling and grinned: I think you've sold us . . . well, all of this, really.

"I know," he said. "I noticed your deliveries. I just wanted to see what you did with it all, and it looks really great."

I thanked him and asked him to come back when it's finished, and he promised he would. Or wood.

Bright birthday, Mr. B

I broke out the birthday banner for Brantley on Thursday, and hung it in the same space where it had been for Arnold last week.

Earlier in the morning, Roy had painted a few boards on the porch with the finished yellow color -- and when you look along the top of the picture, you can see the relative pallor of the primer.

The full color is bold, no doubt about it, and the white porch rails set it off a lot better than raw lumber did.

Martin, who takes care of some guest- houses along the street, stopped to say how much he liked it. So did a few total strangers passing by.

But the guys and I were mostly toasting Mr. B. We had a case of champagne -- OK, since he doesn't drink, it was a cooler full of Sprite -- and cupcakes and a card. Plus one of those candles that relights itself 10 seconds or so after you blow it out.

After the third or fourth relight, it was good for a great laugh.

Hand-made goods

Arnold found some plastic caps for the fence posts -- they screw on, they're paintable and they'll never rot -- and after showing them to me went back to the drawing board.

He cut some squares out of our leftover deck wood, made a few passes through the table saw (since he'd packed up his radial-arm saw), and studied the result.

He made a few adjustments and then cut out caps. "If you bought these things from Strunk, they'd be 8 or 10 bucks apiece," he said. "I can make the whole batch in, what?, 20 minutes?"

Franklin took a look at the stack when he came through the other day, and said, "Man, these will be sittin' on the ground when the posts have rotted away in a hundred years."

So Brantley countersunk and drilled them (you can't get a nail through the wood), leveled them on top of the posts and Arnold fashioned a trim to marry them to the posts.

He gave them his highest compliment today. After stapling the trim on, he pulled back and took a hard look. "They'll do," he said.

110 in the shade

No, not the air temperature (that's about 82), but the visual heat.

A cheery face

Roy had the porch ceiling primed in sky-blue early Wednesday, it and was wonderful.

The fresh paint showed every place that needed extra spackle or caulk, and the laths blended against the ceiling as if they'd been there forever -- just the effect we were hoping for.

It was another of those times, and they're coming more frequently every day, when I choke up and think: Ref would have loved this.

There was another one waiting for me when I got back from lunch.

(Incidentally, it was Mike's fantastic tuna melt at Flamingo's Cafe, where Jody the waitress had a different take on the yacht crowd. "Oh, the crews on those boats," she scoffed. "Cheap, cheap, cheap. You know, they come to town with one pair of underwear and a 20-dollar bill -- and they don't change either of 'em." But I digress.)

While I was away, Roy and Darren had put a coat of tinted primer on the front, and Santos was starting on the den porch wall.

It's just tinted primer, so it's a shade or so less intense than the final color will be. "Bright," Roy said. We went across the street to take another look, and he said, "Actually, I like it a lot."

New folks at Fausto's

The international regatta is in town, so there are a ton of yacht folk here. You can tell at Fausto's, because they're nicely dressed and well-mannered and all that, but their accents aren't quite local, and they're not quick at punching the right buttons on the credit-card checkouts, and Joe and Darrell have to guide them through steps to confirm their transactions.

Turns out one of them is Frederik, crown prince of Denmark, captaining his Farr 40, taking on all comers seaside with a few security guys dockside.

Unassuming, nice smile, knows how to navigate far more than a good race.

Like buttah

I like this picture for several reasons:

▪ It shows what Arnold and Mr. B were doing today -- cutting trim for the doors, which are supposed to get here Thursday.

▪ It's an angle you haven't seen before, shot from the loft, facing the front door, looking straight down to the little guest room door.

▪ If you click on it, it shows how the paint interacts with the grain to make a fine pickle indeed.

▪ It does justice to our yellow. Arnold's shirt is yellow.

▪ It's a cool angle on the pineapples, which have come a long, long way from that first stencil I found on the net.

Ding, ding, ding; patch, patch, patch

We called Franklin, our drywall guy, to come look at the bathroom walls over the tile -- there's some smoothing to be done over the WonderBoard, and he's the smoothest guy around.

He also had asked to come back once the primer went on, because any flaws show up so much better then, and he wants his product to be as close to perfect as it can be.

Most of his work is flawless -- you should see the soffits close-up -- but red shows every little thing. So there we were, using blue tape to mark tiny seam lines, a few nicks and what appeared to be built-in flaws in the drywall. Skim a little, sand a little, and voila.

Some were amazingly small; some show only in a certain light; some show only from a certain angle; some probably only show up at the full moon in months without an R. I appreciate Franklin's eye for detail, but I told him not to kill himself.

Also on the paint trail, Darren finished up the primer on the picket fence -- it looks quite . . . Mr. Blandings -- and he, Santos and Roy started caulking the front porch wall.

Roy and I took a drive out to Stock Island to return a bad set of scaffold wheels, and stopped at the paint store on the way back to pick a nice shade of sky-blue for the exterior soffits and porch ceiling (keeps the birds and bees at bay) and then order the shade of yellow that the Historic Architecture Review Commission approved for our exterior.

"Wow!," said the paint guy, who assured us he mixes his own special formulas for yellows, since the sun is so relentless here and bleaches out lesser stuff. "HARC approved that?," he asked. I assured him I had the certificate.

"They must want to make Key West visible from the Space Shuttle," he said.

He who laths last . . .

. . . Is going to save himself a whole lot of puttying.

When Ref and I first took a really hard look at the porch ceiling almost a year ago, it was hard to overlook the ravages of 120-plus years on the planks.

All those years of scraping, rotting and insects meant it didn't look good -- so he thought we should sand, dig out the rot and then putty and caulk, finally running a finger-bead down the seams.

He had Nate start scraping, sanding and digging. Then Ref went into the hospital. While he was dying, Nate was pulling out shards of old newspapers that had been stuffed into the gaps and painted over. The gaps widened. When Ref died, we inherited the challenge to find a solution to a bigger problem than we'd imagined.

Arnold came up with the idea of new wood over old fractures. Rotten beams have been replaced, and new boxes built for the porch fans. Where the boards themselves are broken, we'll putty or spackle or whatever.

And the big gaps? Cover them with quarter-inch-thick lath, then caulk and paint everything a nice sky blue, which will keep out wasps and birdies. I think it's going to be a brilliant solution.