6160 A Diary of the Urban Gardener and Cook

Life can be so utterly unpredictable.  Most people use that expression when explaining some unfortunate situation that arises out of the blue;  for me at present, it's the complete opposite, as we have purchased the house next door to us and it's thrilling.

The exact mirror of 6160 to some extent, the property is allowing us to essentially take our double sized lot and double it again.  There are multiple facets we will be tracking on the website - the changes to the home as well as the complete installation, renovation, and incorporation of the back yard into the gardens of 6160. 

It's incredibly exciting... and abit daunting... because in tandem with all these changes, we will be launching three books over the coming months.  Drawing deeply from the website, the first book is complete and tracks 6160 through the course of a year.  The second book, already under construction, covers various collections and plant gatherings in the house and garden.  The third will be tracking the incorporation of the adjacent property into 6160.

And finally, after what feels like over a thousand emails, yes I will setup a Facebook account.  Have patience!  Don't forget we had already kicked off the demolition and rebuild of the front porch, and the trip to Belgium is right around the corner too.  But everything will come together for what I assume is going to be one gangbuster June and July.

In the meantime, we are having a really beautfiul Spring here in St Louis, and the gardens most definitely show it.  The Whiteout roses look spectacular, the Japanese Maples are filling out and taking on a look of antiquity and maturity, the Sages are in full bloom and the new Azaleas were a definite improvement by the Orchid House.  With everything looking so lush so fast, I've been reluctant to plant Orchids this year at all (I don't want "Jungle Love" to be hummed by every visitor to the garden...).  So the Orchid House may remain a still life this year.  We'll see.  But don't forget to check the Spring 2012 Photo gallery as it continues to receive uploads (as does the Orchard photo gallery).

"Bienvenue à début 2012 intérieurs".  Thanks for the loads of emails and yes, French classes continue (albeit it's been a little sporadic these last couple weeks).  Many of the 6160 interior renovations have already been completed and as such, I've dropped in a new photo gallery appropriately titled "Early 2012 Interiors".

In the lower level, the last vestiges of the damage wreaked when Hurricane Ike (the second costliest hurricane in the U.S. after Katrina) moved up from the Gulf Coast to the St Louis area; by the time it hit St Louis, it packed 90mph winds and torrential downpours of water, which culminated with the storm wrenching the gutter downspout out of the sewer line and aiming it at the laundry room like a water pick.  Of course water flooded into the basement and destroyed the laminate flooring.  So last week, we pulled up the last remnants of the damaged laminate (which was isolated to the laundry and bath), laid a thin layer of Quikrete, and used hammered bronze rustoleum to stain and marble the floor.  It now looks like rich brown leather and, best of all, if a hurricane ever hits St Louis full force again, water on the floor is irrelevant.

In the kitchen, a number of changes occurred.  First and foremost, the birch countertop that has been in place for the last seven years was removed.  Despite the quarterly tung oiling of the wood, the continuous exposure to water by the sink caused the wood to split;  we knew going in that the lifespan for a wood counter that had a sink was only about five years (we made it seven...) but wanted the look and feel of wood.  Now that I'm in my  mid forties, I'm more about simple and "permanence", a nice word for "when I'm retired I don't want to have to mess with _______" (fill in the blank with whatever home maintenance you're not interested in dealing with).  So, a solid quartz countertop was installed in its place.  In addition, the old wall cupboard over the stove (acquired from an Amish woodworking shop on the way to Harrisburg airport back in 2004) was replaced with a simple pedestal shelf.  The old spice jars with ill fitting lids that sat on the Amish wall cupboard were replaced with a trio of antique silver cocktail shakers (holding Italian spices, Montreal steak seasoning, and Turkey herbs, respectfully).  Alarmingly, while completing these renovations we discovered that the bakers cabinet which sits next to the stove was dried out to the extent the wood was about to split in three locations.  As such, the entire cabinet was stained with exterior grade sealant.  A pair of Belgian Deed Boxes were introduced (both are filled to the absolute brim with Illy Espresso Pods), and the antique sugar shakers that hung on the Amish wall cupboard were simply placed next to boxes.  And finally, the kitchen HVAC vent, which rested beneath the rotisserie cabinet, was rerouted and integrated into the cabinet itself (allowing more air flow into the room, not to mention looking nicer...).  

With redbuds, peach trees, and tree peonies all set to bloom in the next week or so (egads - it's the first week of March...), I, along with much of St Louis, am keeping my fingers crossed that winter has passed us safely.  Assuming this is true, some minimal garden changes will be introduced but more important, the massive front porch rebuilding project can initiate.  So look for an "Early 2012 Exteriors" update soon, weather permitting...

Thanks so much for the relentless emails over the last few weeks.  Yes, I've been offline for abit; while work has required a good amount of time closing out 2011 and preparing associates for 2012 objectives, I've also gone back to school for French language training as well as Italian cooking.  With a trip to Belgium just weeks away, the idea of becoming fully fluent in French became increasingly intriguing to me.  Further, with many of my recipes moving in my repertoire from "new" to "go to", I needed to continue expanding my capabilities on the cooking front.

If time permits this weekend, I'll begin filling the site with some of my newest "successful" recipes, from Baked Ziti - Penne to Lemon Turkey Cutlets to Butternut Squash Soup with Ricotta Quenelles. 

January is always an interesting time at 6160.   While most of my gardening friends have moved to "armchair gardening" (a phrase coined for those individuals who in the absence of the ability to garden at all because of the Winter season turn to reading about gardening to fill the time) we suddenly discovered that our kitchen project of replacing the old birch countertop with solid quartz was going to need to shift forward rather quickly.  Right after a wonderful New Years Eve party we found the telltale split in the wood by the sink (the sink and its constant exposure to water is the downfall of wood countertops everywhere...).  As I outlined the kitchen project for our contractor, the customary "while he's doing this I think I'm gonna changeout that" scenario began to take place in my mind; and of course, I began to introduce my changes before he even got started.  As such, the kitchen is already beginning to morph to make it both more functional and (in my estimation) attractive.

January is also the month where as Christmas decorations come down and the house returns to a sense of normalcy, the functional evaluation of the space takes place.  Coming right out of the holidays it was clear we needed yet more storage at 6160.   A key change many of you noted in the "Early Winter Interiors" photo log I started a couple weeks ago was the storage chest I built in the Living Room.  Its artistic "mentor" if you will was the milk crate sitting in the second floor sitting room.  What made it fun was taking a chain and beating the living daylights out of it to distress it, then decoupaging an old French winery label to it. 

While for most of St Louis' residents January is a month where cabin fever has just begun to set in, French classes, Cooking classes, and changeouts to the 19th Century Kitchen at 6160 have me completely occupied; to be honest, I'm glad not to have the opportunity to go into the gardens right now - at least I can stay focused!

So stay tuned - recipes are on the way...

Probably one of the most important design elements at 6160 is the use of architectural remnants both inside and out.  At the turn of the last century, St Louis was the fourth largest city in the nation (third if you consider Brooklyn had not yet merged with the rest of NYC), and an industrial powerhouse of the time.  This led to substantial building boom in the housing market here, all during the zenith of the Gilded Age.

The Gilded Age was notable for Beaux Arts - neoclassical stylings that significantly heavily influenced U.S. architecture and interior design from 1880-1920.   The essence of these stylings entailed sculptural decoration along conservative, more modern lines, Baroque and Rococo finishes, somewhat overscaled details, bold scuptural supports, rich chunky cornices, sculptural enrichments (such as swag details), and subdued/very subtle polychromy (ie, in today's terms, "distressed" or "tarnished" to subtley introduce a number of colors into a setting).

In the housing boom of the 1990s, many a "McMansion" was built at the expense of homes that were built during the Gilded Age era - very unfortunate in my estimation.  Thankfully, a robust salvage industry arose, carefully preserving the architectural remnants during the tear down process for resale.  These details were all cast in the elements of the era - tin, thick hardwoods, iron (lots and lots of iron...); the sheer weight of the products sometimes leaves me slackjawed.  And at 6160, there was now a way to introduce elements of the Gilded Age without making the house feel like we were living in a museum. 

Working connections in Upstate NY and New England, as well as an antique/salvage area in St. Louis by the old Lemp Brewery, I secured dedicated "pickers" - teardown specialists who "picked" these details out for resale versus scrap the lot of it and send it to a landfill.  I sent them all lists of what would be in scope/out of scope for 6160; they in turn sent me weekly emails and inventories of the architectural salvage they secured.

Gardens

The gardens of 6160 are filled with iron elements from the Beaux Arts era.  Heavily rusted arbors, fencing, ferneries, etc... were all shipped in from New England.  These were fairly simple and straightforward to resurrect as the sculptural "bones" for the gardens.  Other elements were repurposed; for example, wrought iron railing detail from a widows walk at a teardown in St Louis was given new life in the front garden as edging for the Barberries.

The less simple to resurrect and implement were the windows now in the gardens.  Upon learning that several large homes in western Connecticut were being destroyed for NY suburbanite McMansions (how depressing on so many levels... my God what Bravo has done to this country with "Real Housewives" garbage...), I shipped all the windows from the southern wing of one of the teardowns back to St Louis.  The Orchid House and Potting Shed were almost completely constructed from these windows.  The window in the Barn, as well as the massive 5' x 5' window that rests behind the Orchard, both sourced from this Connecticut home as well.

Home

The interior of 6160 is equally at home with architectural remnants from New England, New York, and St Louis' robust past.   A massive tin ceiling medallion which formerly held a glass chandelier in a Connecticut hotel lobby now dominates a living room wall;  wooden columns from the same home that provided the windows for the garden rest against a corner near the tin medallion.  White roof finials, weather beaten and mottled to a soft gray, found new life as decorative objets - the smaller window finials now rest on a shelf in the entry hall, while the massive two foot finial that formerly capped the front porch sits on the floor of the dining room for architectural "pop".

A teardown in Upstate NY delivered a wealth of beautfiul, distressed pressed tin;  an artist nearby crafted five massive shelves for 6160, meticulously wrapping the chippy white metal around a  wooden framework.  Picture frames were also formed using the remnant tin; the living room, entry hall, and second floor bedroom all play host to these.  The artist found himself with a smidgeon of unused tin leftover; we purchased that from him as well, framing two of the panels for the entry stairwell and hanging the other in the stairwell to the lower level "as is".

Mouldings from a St. Louis mansion that I wish they would have rehabbed but ultimately destroyed were brought in and repurposed as towel racks in the bathrooms; where one was given a fresh coat of paint and matte metal hooks, the other was left in its highly distressed state with a pair of equally distressed iron hooks attached for utility.  A giant pulley from the old barn behind the lovely St Louis mansion was ceremoniously brought back to 6160; worn from years of use (and abuse), it now rests on a dry sink in the lower level. 

The St Louis estate had another find which was unique in my estimation - a crusty white iron gate which was only twenty inches tall.  Highly decorative and very heavy, the gate was from either a child's garden or pet's garden (who knows what or why the uber rich were doing with their money); we placed it in the kitchen on an upper shelf as another decorative objet.

The plethora of achitectural salvage across 6160, both inside and out, weaves harmoniously with the number of garden antiques we've sourced from Europe.  Net net - it works...

So many emails have flown in regarding all the glass block in 6160, with the bulk focused against the ten foot bank of glass block in the dining room;  so... this might be a good time to give a history of how that arrived in a house over 100 years old. 

Actually, glass block, or "glass brick" as they were initially referred to, were invented back in 1847 as telegraph insulators. They were much smaller and thicker than today's glass blocks and were used mostly in the southeastern United States until eventually replaced with porcelain and other types of insulating materials. So to use them in a home over one hundred years old is not really anachronistic...

So once again, dialing the clock back to the late nineties and the horror festival that occurred during the first (and final) walk through of 6160...   Picture it.  We had just survived the shocks of the terri-bad kitchen and turned into what was the original dining room - but it was a dining room no longer...   While the son of the current owner lived in the unfinished basement much like the Gollum from Lord of the Rings, the daughter lived in the dining room.  A brass bed with a filthy worn purple coverlet sat where a dining table should have been sitting.  Shoes were piled by a pocket door that had seen much better days.  Strangely, a thin sheet of 1970s panelling had been installed as a "wall" for a make shift closet in the northwest corner of the room.  Two small windows, original to the house, were wedged into corners of the room (one to the southeast facing the gangway with the neighboring house just thirty inches away; the other facing the southwest under a porch overhang).  Both provided the thinnest veil of light - in fact, they provided about as much natural light as a studio in the depths of Manhattan, and for similar reasons.  A peach colored bedsheet hung precariously against each window - makeshift drapery.  So this dining room turned curious bedroom sat in almost cave-like darkness 24/7.

Upon taking ownership of the home, I waltzed about the property for weeks with sketchpad in hand, drawing multiple images for the contractor I'd worked with so much throughout the late 90s.  I remember at one point looking through the sketchpad - page after page made it clear that this property was going to take a great deal of rework to bring back into its own...  At one point, as I sat sketching the dining room and was focused totally on how to convert the make shift closet into shelving for my countless books, I turned and found myself fixated on the odd placed windows and lack of light.  For the Children of the Corn that owned 6160 before me, it was fine to have cave like darkness blanket the bedroom/dining room; for those of us who wanted to actually dine in the dining room, not so much...  Staring up at the sixteen foot ceilings, I began to ponder how to wrench apart the bulk of the eastern wall and convert it into glass block.  Window vents were unnecessary;  the footprint of the first floor allowed maximum air flow simply by opening the front and back door.  I really just wanted a wall of natural light.  As I sat pondering the numerous challenges, it became clear the biggest challenge would be ensuring the second floor remained structurally sound during the process.

After multiple meetings with contractor and crew, in came the massive temporary support beams and sledgehammers.  In the space of about an hour, the thirty inch gangway was four feet deep with smashed brick.  And then the dusty air was filled with screaming obscenities and workmen rushing about both inside and out; the eastern ceiling had slowly begun to sag and was poised to collapse.   Neighbors had wandered by and were milling about - both they and the laborers alike were certain the second floor was going to come down. I was convinced that this was the one project where my aspirations went too far, and called my family to tell them I was going to name 6160 "Project Chechnya".   Additional support beams arrived and were rushed into the dining room, stabalizing the second floor.  They were quickly followed by tarps which were taped to the gaping hole in the eastern wall.  It was September - the onset of Autumn made the tarps inhale and exhale as if  6160 was a belaboured, wounded beast.  Several days later, a ten foot solid wall of glass block arrived and was cemented into the brick like a translucent filling from a dentist.  And from the very moment the glass block adhered to the brick, the dining room was instantaneously bathed in soft, beautiful, unfocused light - this perpetuated even into night, when silvery moonlight glistened in the warbled glass bricks and pooled across the room.

There are numerous glass block windows in 6160 - the stairwell to the second floor, over the kitchen sink, in the computer room as well as in the lower level bathroom.  But it is the massive glass block wall in the dining room and the near disaster that occurred in making it happen that really stands out to me at least.  It stands out as one of the most aesthetically pleasing parts of 6160 as well as when I thought I would be the first individual who might actually overdose on Mylanta when it looked like the second floor was going to end up on the first floor thanks to my "brilliant" idea for a glass block wall...

There is just nothing that can compare to the unique nature of the weather in St Louis.  With temperatures going into Labor Day weekend sitting at around 104, Labor Day itself had a high of 74 and the temperature has now remained constant, with low 50s at night, mid 70s during the day.

Welcome Autumn...

Autumn truly is my favorite time of year.  Growing up on the farm, it was the time of harvest, which was a wonderful experience.  Praying for weeks to The Man Upstairs that He wouldn't allow any of the chickens to break free and ravage the herb, vegetable and fruit gardens or worse, allow wandering deer discover the bounty sitting just beyond the woods of a massive state park (our farm abutted Greensfelder Park, which actually made the farm feel like it went on forever...), harvest was the time where the weather finally broke - you could go outside and not feel like you would need to shave your clothes to take them off from sweating so much...  It was the time where months of hard work paid off handsomely at the dinner table...  It was the time where the washed out, tired greens of late summer gave way to blazing beta-carotene like colors...  Important though, it was also the time for evaluation and big project tackling before winter's chill settled in.

At 6160, one could hardly describe there being anything very "harvest" like;  true, herbs continue in full abundance and the numerous tomato plants, which have been in virtual hybernation during the deadly heat of August, are now making one last attempt at fruiting.  But that's about it.  What does remain constant from the farm days, however, is the evaluation and big project tackling (for me at least), and this year was no different.

Gardens

2011 was an incredibly difficult year for the gardens.  Tornadic spring weather, followed by a dry, sweltering summer, made for a stressful time for most of the plantings.  There are always victims in circumstances like this; this year, however, saw the demise of two Standard Form Hydrangea Tardivas in "Sam's Garden", a fenced off area within the Woodland Garden.  These two plants were two of the very first plantings we introduced at 6160 back in the late 90s.  While unfortunate, I was completely amazed as I looked around the rest of the Japanese Maple Courtyard and the Woodland Garden - to my utter surprise the Japanese Maples looked completely unfettered by the horrendous weather that played out in 2011.  While multiple neighbors lost their Japanese Maples (I suspect they overwatered them - which is a big no no for these plants...), in the very least I expected to encounter leaf scorch;  however, the Japanese Maples at 6160 were completely unphased and resilient.  So... in came two more Emperor Ones to replace the lost Hydrangeas. 

On the flip, what did work was the introduction of WhiteOut Roses in the front garden - they continue to bloom even today, looking lush, disease free, and have fully encompassed a crusty old urn which houses a Rosy Glow Barberry.  The introduction of chicken wire and door mouldings to the Orchard was a huge positive after the spring storms shifted a number of birds into the Orchard itself (that was a total drag...).  The new steel door on the Potting Shed was a huge plus given the amount of watering that was needed this year - no rotting, no warping, and no kicking the door shut anymore (it had warped to the point the door could hardly close without using a Medieval battering ram approach...).  The Hostas were a beautiful addition to the Woodland Garden.  Not a huge fan of Hostas, I do appreciate Praying Hands and Blue Hostas of almost any nature (both add a unique shape and color element...) the best of which is that the varieties at 6160 are without slugs....  The swaths of Lemon Balm were a really good option for the western bank of the garden - in 2012, I fully intend to expand this;  it looks great and smells great too.

Home

August saw the removal of the old armoire that used to house the flat screen TV as well as the benches that sat to either side of it.  The armoire was rebuilt flushmount, along with new side storage banks.  This was a win on multiple levels - first, the vents were able to be rerouted and carefully introduced into the salvaged base boards.  Equally important, the new big banks of storage that sit on either side of the armoire have been mounded with piles of soft pillows, providing more seating (it really is a nice place to sit and read...). 

September will see the introduction of two additional built ins to replace current cabinets - one in the dining room where the Frank Wolff studio prototype pottery sits, the other in the Living Room where all the Brooklyn seltzer bottles reside.  Neither will really deliver more storage; however, they will open the rooms abit more since they'll be flush mount, and architecturally they will mirror the rest of the built in cabinetry we've installed in 6160. 

The new wood and glass shelving installed in the lower level bathroom just the other week was an important upgrade in 2011;  it allows for better use of space given how truly small this bathroom is... not to mention looking really cool (almost like store shelving at Williams-Sonoma).  I'll try and snap some pics of the lower level bathroom soon.

So despite the crazy year, 6160 continues to grow & evolve in a beautiful way as we shift gears for Fall.  Here's looking forward to apple everything, pumpkin bread and pumpkin pastas, butternut squash soups and purees, roasted chickens and italian chops, rosemary honeys and cranberry side dishes, and blazing colors in the gardens.  Welcome Autumn...

I remember times growing up where my mother, with a cigarette in her left hand and a scowling expression on her face, would state from the hallway to some unfortunate in the loo "Um, excuse me - bathrooms should be seen, not heard - thank you" (not awkward - nope - no awkwardness whatsoever...).  When we purchased 6160, however, the phrase wasn't applicable at all - this was a bathroom that shouldn't seen, either...  

6160 shares its heritage with four other homes, which are all nearly identical save for slight decorative window and brickwork changes.  When looking at this series of five homes on our street, It brings to mind images of the Seven Sisters in San Francisco.  At the time we bought the property, there was one bathroom located on the second floor.  In the basement, there were fittings for the installation of a second bathroom (which the owner's son, who lived in the unfinished basement, was using - aye caramba!) which I'll discuss another time.

So dialing the clock back to the walk through before purchase, not finding a bathroom on the first floor was abit alarming, so I was eager to see the size and scope of the one upstairs.  Freshly tacked cheap tan carpet, which covered the dining room, living room and entry hall (???) swept up the stairs to the second floor.  I climbed the steps and entered the master bedroom.  The walls were stripped of almost all the original woodwork save for a couple of door frames.  Dingy white popcorn paint, which was probably applied in it's heyday (1968?) covered the walls.  I crossed the threshold into the sitting room, which looked identical to the master bedroom, and spied the bathroom - this was yet another one of the jaw dropping moments of 6160...

Picture it - the walls were covered in frosted baby blue ceramic tile.  The ceiling was covered with a paisley and striped baby blue wallpaper.  The pedestal sink was baby blue.  The bathtub was baby blue.  The shower curtain was baby blue. The toilet was baby blue.  And to ice the cake, the same cheap tan carpet covered the floor (um, yuck...).  The real estate agent, some distance behind me in the sitting room, stated blandly "it's my understanding the owner's son completed most of the repair and rehab work to ready the house for sale".  Was he saying this like an interesting fact he'd read on Wikipedia, or trying to explain the "why" behind the horrors we were encountering?  I couldn't tell... 

We purchased 6160 days later.  Like most moves and transitions, there's the getting all your stuff into the house phase, then the unboxing and placing phase, the absorbing your new surroundings phase, and then ultimately, the changing the surroundings to what you really want phase.  For some, the phases and transitions can last a fairly long time; for me - um, not so much...  So dial the clock forward exactly four days after we moved in.  Having a night in, we were lying on the floor in the sitting room playing video games while the dogs were still sniffing and examining every aspect of their new surroundings.  As I got up to go get more drinks, my eyes caught the baby blue horrors of the bathroom.  Drawn to it like a scene from a bad 80s slasher film, I put the empty glasses down on a nearby table and entered, looking about the room wide eyed and tense like Freddy Krueger or Jason would spring from behind the nasty shower curtain.  "Whatcha doin?" I heard Bob yell from the other room.  "Just looking at how the work was actually done and how hard it will be to take it out" I replied. 

It would not be hard.  It would not be hard at all actually.

The son who had completed all this fabulous work had again not used enough glue;  the wallpaper was peeling back from every corner of the ceiling.  The fact that there was constant humidity in such a small space could not have helped the wallpaper's precarious situation either.  The grout he'd used for the frosted baby blue tile was much more intriguing; it looked like old Crest toothpaste, lumpy and gooey-looking in parts, glops of it missing in others (my guess was too much water in the mix).  I stuck my fingernail into one of the groutlines - it sank right through the grout like it was pizza dough.  I looked down and examined the carpet.  To my shock he apparently had run out of material when he'd finally reached the bathroom - as I peeked around the toilet and bathtub, the carpet didn't even reach the baseboard - I stared at a three inch gap where the carpet ended in the room and the floorboards were exposed...

And suddenly I was awash with feelings of absolute revulsion for what the owner's son had done to the bathroom.  I quietly closed the door, grabbed one corner of the terri-bad wallpaper on the ceiling, and began the process of "decrapping" the room.  Down came the ceramic tile from the globs of Crest toothpaste-like grout;  the tiles actually seemed to want to be free of the walls they fell so readily.  It seemed he hadn't just run out of carpet in the bathroom, he'd run out of carpet tacks as well.  The entire south side had no carpet tacks at all - it had been caulked (???). 

The door opened behind me.  "What are you..." was all Bob got out of his mouth.  "Can you get me a few trash bags?" I replied, looking like Pigpen with what I have to assume was inclusive of the tornado of filth that seemed to accompany Pigpen's every move...

The bathroom has gone through two iterations since we acquired 6160.  In the first iteration which occurred days after moving into the property, we replaced the toilet and sink but attempted to keep the bathtub by reglazing it.  In one of our previous residences we reglazed a brown tub before selling the property;  the only "rules" if you will with a reglazed tub is being cautious not to drop sharp objects (if the glazing is chipped, it begins peeling apart from that site like bad sunburnt skin).  And unfortunately that's exactly what happened when we reglazed the tub at 6160.  A thin baby blue slit appeared one day like a hideous eye peeking up from the past, and then began to grow like baby blue bathtub cancer.  Adamant that I was not going to experience baby blue anything ever again,a second bathroom rehab occurred - a sledgehammer took care of the last vestiges of 6160's baby blue past.  The flooring and walls were redressed - soft gray floor tile were installed, beadboard and mouldings were applied to the walls, and remnant German lap siding from the kitchen ceiling project was applied to the bathroom ceiling, then painted a glossy white. 

The bathroom is quite small by today's standards, but yet again it's another example of having costlier, nicer things in less expensive, more managable space.  Let me rephrase that - less expensive, baby blue free space...

"Oiy".  That's the phrase I recall uttering repeatedly when we first looked at potentially purchasing 6160...  With Jesuits having made an offer I couldn't refuse on the house we had just finished gut rehabbing, we had to find new digs quickly.  The time was the late 90s, when the housing market was experiencing explosive and unexplainable growth (well, it's all explainable now...).  With the only qualifying factors in our real estate hunt being a sizable yard, close proximity to a park, close proximity to a freeway, and close proximity to work, 6160 fit the bill perfectly on all four measures.  Buy oiy...

The property had been in the same family for at least three generations, who I had to assume became poorer and poorer as time went by (at least that's what the house seemed to indicate).  The proverbial "lipstick" had been applied to this pig (such as a fresh roll of cheap carpet being tacked down throughout much of the house) for resale.  And topping what can only be described as an appalling list of do nots would be the kitchen.  Oiy that kitchen...

As we did our first walk through of the property, literally our jaws dropped on multiple occasions (and not in a good way), but it hit its zenith upon entering the kitchen.  Picture it.  The wonderful sixteen foot ceilings we found in the other rooms suddenly became an eight foot ceiling in the kitchen;  a nasty toilet leak on the second floor caused serious damage.  Rather than fix it, the homeowner's solution was to install a drop ceiling to hide it.  Apparently these toilet problems were increasing, as the entire western side of the ceiling was soggy and disintegrating, smothered in water stains (um, I hope it was just water that was staining the ceiling - aye caramba...).  Cheap tan vinyl sheet flooring had been laid with the barest amount of glue; as such, it was coiling back furiously from the rear door.  An ill fitting window sat preciously over the sink;  frighteningly, the window couldn't even close - while we were there, a sparrow sat on the windowledge of the uncloseable window, deciding whether he was coming into the house with us or not.  The walls were covered in a strange poinsetta-like wall paper (by now we suspected it was leftover wrapping paper from Christmas in 1971 that they found a "new use" for); the original woodwork long since gone, a mustard painted band of quarter round was used as an impromptu base board and, more than likely, the only thing keeping either the wallpaper or the vinyl flooring from coiling up like slinkies.

A refrigerator dating back to the Carter administration sat alone against the eastern wall, as if rolled to the nearest electrical outlet and abandoned.  A whopping total of three cabinets comprised all the kitchen storage; however, one of the three was peculiar in the extreme.  It sat on the western wall against the plumb stack to the second floor (where the infamous toilet leak had occurred).  There was something dreadfully wrong with the cabinet.  As I stood there, staring vapidly like I was missing a chromosome, it finally struck me - the cabinet had been sawn in half.  Literally, the countertop was less than eight inches deep.  You'd dare not put a toaster on there, and would be concerned if a Pepsi Big Gulp needed a resting place and that was the only space available...  "If a clown car pulls up or the bathroom has funhouse mirrors this will all make perfect sense" I heard myself saying into the emptiness.

Of course none of this stopped us from buying 6160.  In fact, we always looked for "shells" to buy - it was easier to fix a shell than to pay for someone else's idea of taste, then tear it all out and fix it...  But it never ceases to amaze me what people do to homes.  And so it was with 6160.  Within days of purchasing the home, the kitchen was gutted - out went the drop ceiling, out went the sad little cabinets, off came the Christmas wrapping paper being used as wallpaper, out went the vinyl sheet flooring, gone was the ozone depleting refrigerator, and out went the dilapidated, unclosable ill fitting window...  leaving us with a thirteen by eleven foot empty room to rebuild the right way.  

Having worked in bars and restaurants throughout college, there were some definite "must haves".  Dishes, glasses, etc... needed restaurant like accessibility.  Rarely are there windows in restaurant kitchens, and if there are, they are glass block - safer (ie, no break-ins), and incredibly easy to clean.  Restaurant kitchens almost always have a pantry for foodstuffs.  Floors were tiled for sanitary reasons.  However, within that framework had to sit the aesthetics of  the era when the original kitchen was built - things like beadboard, thick wood mouldings, decorative ceiling materials of some sort - even a turn of the century bakers cupboard - the house was "speaking" (I am one of those people that believes in the idea that the inside of the house has to harmonize with the outside the house...). 

So... beadboard was quickly installed and whitewashed.  Exterior grade German lap siding was whitewashed as well and converted into ceiling material.  Decorative crown moulings and a sweep of chair moulding was used to dress up the walls.  An old bronze replica of a gas chandelier was installed, along with a number of custom made cabinets painted in glossy white.  A thick, massive plank of birch was paintackingly rubbed with raw tung oil to bring out a rich, amber tone, then cut into a kitchen counter.  The change of each season at 6160 is marked by re-tung oiling the counter to seal it for another three months.  Old stair treaders were converted into a wall of restaurant shelves over the sink, so that all the plates and glasses were within easy reach while cooking.  The turn of the century bakers cupboard was dragged to where the peculiar "halved" cabinet once stood.  Thick oak planks and mouldings, painted in rich cobblestone hues, were used to build custom cabinetry for the refrigerator and rotisseries.  And most important, a pantry was installed in a small nook by the stove.

While by today's standards the kitchen may seem quite small, the workspace is ideal - especially since the bakers cabinet has a pullout counter, providing even more cooking space.  I've never been a fan of having to walk like a Von Trap Family Singer to get from the sink to the stove to the fridge.  Cooking, at least in my estimation, has a large number of time sensitive issues, so proximity (for me at least) becomes key.  And having grown up on a farm where there was an eat in kitchen and a separate dining room, the unfortunate truth is the dining room became the place I dusted twice a week, and that was about it.  We used it for Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas, but ate all other meals the other forty nine weeks of the year  in the kitchen.  I suppose it left me abit tainted - I never want an eat in kitchen and I absolutely love using the dining room for every meal year round.

Now if I had kids, I might view the 19th Century kitchen we've rebuilt abit differently.  But I don't.  I suppose I am one of those people that enjoys an aesthetic of smaller, less expensive spaces filled with more luxurious, costly things.  And so it goes with the kitchen of 6160...

One textile I am particularly fond of is grainsacks. French grainsacks.

Back... way back... back before burlap anything became all the rage, I always had burlap at the ready at 6160. It hearkens to the days on the farm. Back then, one of the only feed stores that was nearby sold several varieties of corn and chicken feed in giant, burlap sacks. Chicken feed made life so much easier back then... and if the chickens behaved during the week and didn't make me late for the bus, I'd reward them on the weekend with some scratch (which for the most part consisted of a couple handfuls of blackberries from the nearby brambles and an apple core or two. But that's a different story...). The burlap grainsacks from the feed store were so intriguing to me - they were incredibly strong, and yet soft to the touch. Some had blase' nondescript labels, others actually had artwork and distinct "branding". The colors were muted - like ghost ads (ghost ads - a term that refers to faded advertising from another era on brick buildings).

By the time I arrived at 6160, I'd never lost my affinity for grainsacks. Sure, we kept rolls of burlap handy for any number of projects - for many years the drapes were nothing but masses of burlap tied with gardening twine - but actual grainsacks, especially antique European ones, were different. These were always a bit more polished. A bit more dressed up. And most weren't even burlap; they were a soft, nubby linen.

So dial the clock forward abit. I stumble upon a shop in Vermont that specializes in nothing but European textiles. At first, I just assumed it was just going to be another cabbage and roses scene, or "Made In China But Pretending To Be European" shop. I was so wrong. The owners were sourcing antique linens from across France and the Low Countries, with a whole section of their store filled with nothing but old, hand-woven grainsacks. I tried to contain my excitement, but that fell apart quickly and I bought out all the French grainsacks on the spot. The flight home to St Louis, with a "suitcase" (I traveled with a well worn canvas dufflebag) filled to the point of bursting with nothing but grainsacks was a trip I won't forget. I literally feared for my safety when looking at my dufflebag - sides bulging, the zipper flap gaping open like a pervert's pants in a public restroom - I just kept praying the the bag was sewn with titanium thread... The zipper, Lord the zipper... it felt like I needed to wear protective eyegear if I neared it... oiy. I left the shop owners my email address - they began to send me periodic updates regarding new grainsacks they'd secured. And I purchased more. There was a surprising sophistication to the French grainsacks in particular - the branding, although faded, spoke to how the French do many things - not just function, function plus style. There's a lesson in there.

These grainsacks are all over 6160 - stacked in the Living Room armoire, hanging to the side of an old dry sink which now functions as a bedlinen cupboard, repurposed as pillow covers, wrapped around a pictureframe as a pinboard over a desk, even functioning as dining room tablerunners. But beyond the utility and decorative aspects of these grainsacks, they are something more to me; they are a reminder of what is feeling like many, many years ago - the quiet solitude of the morning chores on the farm.

While roasting a chicken this weekend, I was once again asked about the antique bee smokers that sit on a ledge in the kitchen. And once again I told the very, very odd tale of when 6160 was swarmed... a bizarre little story where the entire house filled with bees one afternoon and then, just as suddenly as they appeared, they all left...

Dial the clock back about six years. Multiple visits to Connecticut and Adelma Simmons herb farm, Caprilands, had had a profound influence on me; as such, the gardens of 6160 looked much different than they do today. None of the iron fencing had been procured. Few evergreens were in place. Outside of a terrible little rubbermaid shed that housed a pair of bicycles and a lawnmower, not an outbuilding to be found.

However, herb beds stretched in all directions. Rosemary varieties piled towards the house, interplanted with Lavender and Thyme and encased in a hedge of Caryopteris; Lemon Balm and Pear Mint sprawled across the western fenceline, banking cluster plantings of Camelot Crabapples. A massive herb bed (we referred to it as "the Big Planter"), covered nearly a third of the entire garden. Essentially a raised planter, it had a thick tier of retainer stones, three layers high, in which sat trio of massive white butterfly bushes which were completely encompassed by purple and white Foxgloves. Dame's Rocket spilled in all directions around the Big Planter, while every variety of Sage and Artemisia covered the hot southern area of the garden. Fencelines were softened with repeat plantings of Autumn Clematis. So you can imagine, pre-Colony Collapse Disorder, what the gardens were like then - a bee's paradise. They would literally be everywhere, blissfully ignoring me while I would be puttering around the garden.

One late summer day, as St Louis was in its usual swing of one hundred degree plus weather with humidity so high it felt like you would have to shave your clothes off when you came indoors, I was sitting in the dining room balancing my checkbook; Bob was down in the lower level video gaming. Suddenly I noticed a bee flying lazily into the living room from the second floor. Then another. And another. Puzzled, I climbed the steps slowly, noticing with grim resolve that a gentle buzzing was getting louder and louder with each step I took; as I crossed the threshold into the second floor bedroom, it looked something like the Amityville Horror - bees were absolutely everywhere, clinging in clusters to the windows and drapes, zipping through the air all around me, crawling into the room from under attic doors. I know I stood there, mouth gaping, for several minutes (I'm sure standing slackjawed in a roomful of bees I must've looked like I was missing a chromosome or two); they weren't aggressive whatsoever so I wasn't worried I would be stung. But how did they get in and more important, why?

I turned on my heel, went to the edge of the steps, and yelled "Bob, up here, now!". Moments later he appeared and thankfully, took on the same "Cletus the Slackjawed Yokel" inbred expression. We couldn't open the windows and screens to get them out - there were more bees on the outside of the windows trying to get in than the reverse... So Bob rushed to the broom closet, turned on the shopvac, and began waving it through the air like a can of Glade. Bees were sucked into the transparent cannister - you could see them buzzing inside - and once it appeared the cannister was filled to the brim, he took it outside to let them out. And they promptly flew back at the house trying to get in...

Following him out the door for one of the shopvac "releases", I found neighbors staring at our roofline with stunned expressions - bees were everywhere along the roof and gutters; our chimney was nearly blacked out, encased in a net of bees trying to come down and in.

What the hell was happening?

Not knowing what to do, I turned on the hose and tried to shoot a stream of water at the swarm on the chimney (now there would have had to have been a modern miracle to get the water to propel that far - it was a garden hose, not a fire hydrant...). I dashed back inside - Bob and I were both laughing hysterically, him still waving the shopvac furiously like a Walmart storegreeter who'd been overcaffeinated...

For every bee we captured, it seemed like two more appeared. All I kept thinking about was that we'd be on the local news with a headline like "and tonite, a pair of Dogtown hillbillies discover they have 71lbs of honey in the walls of what is now their condemned house..." This continued for the space of about thirty minutes (it felt like an eternity) and then suddenly, the buzzing was diminishing rapidly. The bees that filled the space around us were thinning - you could actually begin to see through the windows again. Outside, the chimney was becoming visible. And as suddenly as they had come, they were gone.

Bob released the last shopvac'd "guests" and began calling St Louis Wildlife and Forestry departments while I went to the laptop and began typing keywords in Google - we were desperate to make sense of what had just played out. Google, along with the Wildlife department, came back with the same answer: a Queen Bee was moving her colony and they had somehow decided that 6160 might be the appropriate location for the hive (the ample flowering herbs and flower beds had to be a definite lure). But apparently for some reason, we were ultimately deemed not worthy. I can live with the rejection...

Interestingly, the very next summer, which was extraordinarily hot, we noticed a small, yellow orange stain that was spreading on the southwest ceiling of the second floor (near "the bird closet"). When we had the new galvanized roof installed, we discovered an area of old honeycomb above the ceiling that was melting in the fervant heat - the bees from the swarming event had apparently begun building and then abandoned it immediately when 6160 was found wanting. Sort of sounds like the construction boom and bust in Las Vegas...

For awhile we left the stain as a reminder of that very strange turn of events. The remodel of the second floor, however, has sealed that up forever. Fascinated by garden antiques, I discovered in an antique shop not long after that remarkable day three antique bee smokers - I snatched them up immediately and placed them atop old corbel shelving that spans the pantry in the kitchen. They stand there today, a gentle symbolic reminder of that very odd event at 6160.