musings of a self-proclaimed author: a year in the manor; part IV of IV

Part IV

Outside

The start

Let's begin here. So before you is Parker Manor, built in November of 1914, sold in February of 1915, and falling into my clutches more than 103 years later. The wood siding is redwood and original to the house, the white siding is cement board and it was added sometime in the 60's or 70's. The wood siding was painted brown in the mid 80's when the house was sold from the longtime owner (43 years of ownership, give or take a couple), and the teal was added as an accent at that same time.

And then it neeeever changed.

After speaking with the gal that lives next door, this house has been this color since the 80's. And when she saw what I was doing to it this spring (after taking a couple weeks to get the nerve to actually speak to me) she said she never thought she would see this place change. Well, enter me and my uncanny ability to have to paint everything in the world. But that's what is happening now. Let's take a peek back at what the outside has gone through in the last year.

Looking out the front porch

Last summer when I moved in, the yard was, to put it mildly, overgrown. This front view was almost entirely cleared out by my awesome sister Megan. My dad, Tony and I had all gone to Menards to get the supplies for the built-in and kitchen, and while we were gone Megan got to work. The people that lived here before me had a whole bunch of raised gardens, and while I don't hate that idea, it wasn't what I wanted. Least of all in the front yard.

Least least of all in the state it was in.

Looking toward the south side of the property

The next day Megan and I both tackled this opposite side of the yard, unveiling four more raised beds and putting order to the MESS of raspberries that had overtaken the yard (and the side yard). My neighbors (that I had only met once or twice) Jake and Allison were at a Twins game while this part was happening and I'll never forget Jake coming home and exclaiming "HOLY SHIT!"

Didn't even know there was a Japanese Maple there

Megan unearthed a Japanese Maple that may or may not have died this winter, the jury is still out. I'm waiting on those leaves to appear (though from now to the time of year this picture was taken, I've got about a month and a half to wait). It was such a shock to see the front of the house without a bunch of shit there.

Also didn't know there was a second apple tree

Raspberries went all the way to the wood walkway, and there was grass and milkweed and a million other things in all that. And spiders. I screamed a lot during this process. Megan got one or two shouts in... but it was mostly me. And then dancing away from where I'd been with hot feet because of something crawling on me.

This is my amazing sister Megan. She's the best (c:

Overall that weekend we collected something like 35+ bags of yard waste. When Megan came out with my mom the following month, we cleared out the side yard and added another 25+ bags of yard waste. In the fall I made another 15+. So in what... six months?... nearly 80 bags of yard waste. That's enough for a year. Until this spring when I collected another 23 worth of leaves.

The house in early August 2018, mostly weedless.

This was the house once everything had been cleared away (and some shrubs had come back to life after cutting them down to nothing). When I first purchased it, I appreciated the screened in porch but something about it always bothered me. It just felt very closed in and dark. Granted it literally was dark in there, from the colors to it just being plain dirty, but I digress. How do you open up the front of the house and make it a little more modern? And what color do you paint it?

I knew I had a long road ahead of me with the paint. The wood siding needed to be scraped down, patched, and then it could get color. The cement board needed to be primed and painted, to cover 40ish years of dirty and greasy air.

The white above the porch still makes me groan, it was so icky.

Overall the house just felt dated, filthy, and dark. There was really no charm. Whatever charm there had been was lost at some point in history with the choices made by previous owners. And I wanted to reclaim that, ala Maxine Walters.

Reclaiming. My. Time.

The house, sans screens and scalloping on the porch, early April 2019. AKA condemned crackhouse.

Step one this spring was ripping the siding off the two posts supporting the roof. I wanted to re-frame them and beef them up, just square. No fancyness. The side effect of losing the pop of color from the screen frames and then exposing the 105 year old wood is that my house suddenly looking condemned and even more terrifying than it already did. No greenery, no life. Puke.

Again with no scalloping on the posts.

On the left you can see where the screen frame met the siding, in that line. I wanted to cut that part of the siding out in order to frame it in, giving the porch a little bit more of a deliberate feel. If I were to put screens back up eventually, it would be a smooth surface to work with rather than having to cut a piece of wood at a bunch of angles to fit back in. Notice all the peeling paint. Everywhere. On all the things.

Peeling.

I kept my dad out of pictures in the event that his "working" face looked as dumb as mine does. Also, cheese.

Enter stage-left: papa Parker. Dad came out at the end of April and I helped him bring my big ideas to life. Also to note here: I was criticized fairly openly by people saying "put the phone down and help", etc. Do you think I stood there with a phone in my hand for three fucking days taking pictures of myself? Do you have any idea how much work we achieved in those three days, in which I took two (count 'em, 1, 2) selfies? Blow it out your ear ya bunch of shits.

Siding cut out for the new framing.

This was the first side to get the siding removed, and it turned out better than I could have hoped. Even with just the bare wood added in it was already brightening things up. This was the last hurdle before priming could begin (and sanding and scraping and all that other boring stuff).

Overall of the porch, with the screen door and screens probably not coming back at this point.

Everything teal would be painted white. Around the entire house, some eaves are painted green, some brown, some white (I say "white" loosely), but to continue with my theme from inside I wanted everything unified. Time to begin.

Priming begins. The porch took almost 4 gallons.

At first I was alllllll about the primer. Afterall, it was fresh paint. It was clean, and white, and bright, and new. But lemme tell ya, the novelty wears off pretty fuckin' fast. Covering the green was super exciting, even covering that awful old and cracked ivory was exciting. But then covering your primer with more primer is not exciting. And then covering that white primer with the nice white "actual" paint was definitely not exciting. So that all took a couple weeks, but I just moved slowly and methodically through it all.

Two coats on everything you see here. The ceiling will be six coats.

Initially I was going to keep the ceiling stained because I liked the color, but on closer inspection the stain was just so incredibly old that it was no good anymore. Either it needed to be sanded down or painted. And I sure as shit wasn't going to sand down the ceiling. For a jumpin' jack flash instant I did also think about removing the ceiling and leaving it vaulted in there, but for now I'm keeping that on the back burner. Definite possibilty in the future though! I think on the bottom beadboard here I had only done one coat so far.

Starting to brighten up a bit

You could feel the shift once the white was added in. Even painting the rain gutters/downspouts added a little something extra. Not such a crackhouse at this point.

Wood scraped and ready for priming.

I attacked the front windows as well during all this (and the upstairs windows too). It always bugged me that with the dark trim, you could clearly see the aluminum frames of the storm windows.

Wood putty filling the holes, windows primed and painted.

Happy accident, they essentially disappear into the white paint. I wish the cement board wasn't covering the top piece of trim on these friends, but here we are.

This is still on the back of the house. It annoys me.

Initially when I was choosing paint colors, I wanted to paint the house black. Part of me still wishes I had chosen black, not gonna lie. But when it came time to actually bringing samples home I was pretty set on Iron Ore (the middle color) which is also an accent color inside the house for the cabinets/doors/stair spokes. Thinking maybe lighter would be better, I also picked up Peppercorn (top color) and decided almost immediately after painting it on that I didn't want that color. The final one caught my eye by pure chance, Dark Night.

You can't really tell here but in person, there is almost a teal undertone to the color. A little bit more sapphire jewel-toned than this depicts. And for as much as I liked the Iron Ore, several realtor friends reached out to say the blue was the way to go for trendy houses and that gray was done. So I hopped off to Sherwin Williams and bought 5 gallons.

Sun-dried Tomato. Also spray painted allllll hardware black (from white/green/brown/yellow)

In feng shui, red front doors are meant to bring prosperity to the home. That's something I could definitely use. I took the old green storm door down and painted it up, finding this really great dark red shade when my sister was visiting this spring. I did not INTEND to have a red white and blue house, but that is indeed how it ended up. This door (and the original front door) will most likely get replaced before long anyway, but for now I'm content with the look. And to have all the hardware matching for the first time.

Unintentionally patriotic (the floor will be grey), but look at that six-coated ceiling tho!

That ceiling just SHINES. I got these great LED Edison bulbs off amazon with a white cord so that the lighting on the porch didn't look so janky (it did before. Scroll up. I tell the truth.). At night the porch glows like a beacon, which is wonderful because it was dark AF before.

My new street numbers that I ordered. Also the only tease I really gave of the siding painted.

Once the interior of the porch was painted, the primer was set, and the final coat of white had been applied, it was time to move on to Dark Night. It took me a couple weeks, some inventive skill of taping a brush to the end of a pole and precariously perching myself on the roof to paint the peak, but I finished the front (and south-facing side) of the house all before my June 1st deadline.

Ready for the reveal?

Are you sure?

I don't know if you're sure.

Just be really sure.

Okay, I think you're sure.

Are you tho?

Just kidding.

Parker Manor

My house doesn't feel like the house I moved into any more, and that's okay. It feels like my house now. My dear friend Jill came to visit and when she said the house feels like me, I thought it was such a curious thing for someone to say. But she went on, saying that as she looked around the house and noticed the pockets of interesting moments and the colors and the things and the throws tossed "just right" and the pillows crunched "in that way," it was all me.

I suppose we are what we live in, and if this is now a reflection of me then I'm happy to embody it, clean lines and all.

There's still work to do outside, largely the landscaping. The front deck will get torn out eventually and expanded to reach to the edge of the house. A pergola of sorts will be built over it, with Wisteria planted at the base of the supports so that it can grow along the white painted wood and eventually hold huge purple blooms.

The backyard is also a work in progress, and as of right now, the back of the house and north side (the right side as you're facing it) both need to be painted still. The bonfire pit is built but needs more rocks, the pathways need rocks, I need a mountain of mulch, and then plenty of plants to start my 'lil English garden. The garage might get painted this summer, and again it might not. It is functional now and clear of all the trash and shit left behind by the previous owners, and I can at least park inside of it.

A year in the making

When I stood outside my house a year ago today, hauling in a few trash bags of clothing and then dropping to the living room floor to cry, I think a big part of me didn't expect to reach this point. Eight rooms to paint top to bottom, the hallways and entries, the outside... decorating and designing and maintaining... it was so daunting. Even looking back now I am shocked that I was able to do it. But I did. My goal in purchasing this house was to get back to my center. Re-discover the creative side of me and expand on it. Find something good to focus on again. Get my mind off of the past and in doing so, greet a future that was getting brighter every day.

It took a lot of window cleaner. 32 gallons of paint, 47 rollers in various sizes, 115+ yard waste bags, a lot of pizza deliveries, my mom's shoulder, my dad's lost measuring tape and two screwdrivers, countless trips to the hardware store where they now know my name, and of course enough glasses of lemonade to quench the thirst of an army. But this is it. This is Parker Manor.

A year ago when I posted the picture of myself sitting against the wall of my living room, the caption underneath read "So I bought a house. And ::cues music:: I did it mmmmyyyyyyy waaaaaay." Here I am a year later, having done it all my way, having only compromised a little bit, and living my truth. I feel light. Like I can take a step in any direction and have it feel like it's the right one. Like the words of people from my past can't do anything more than push me further along in my journey, rather than holding me back. I wanted to build a home with love and warmth, pushed together through determination and will, and held together with a unique stubbornness that I call my own. I finished writing my book series in this home. I'll start another in this home. I'll fall in love again in this home. But can I tell you the best part? The part that just... resonates and reverberates through me for the first time in my life? It's that I finally realize I won't be answering to some force on how to do this all.

That's the best part.