One thing I’d been looking forward to doing in a house of our own is engaging in a targeted recycling program like Ridwell (https://www.ridwell.com/). It started in Seattle and I wished to be one of the houses with a Ridwell box on the porch. But when I investigated joining I found they do not have service here across the Sound in Kitsap County. I input my email for updates just in case things changed, and forgot about it til I received a message from them inviting me to attend a community event they were putting on in July. There, the company pitched us on a new pilot program they were running in Kitsap County. It would not be full Ridwell service, but it would be something and hopefully we’d help them to refine the program and enable its expansion. 

Basically the program is this: subscribe to receive pre-paid mailer envelopes, fill them all the way up with the correct type of recyclable material (they offer two bags – one for plastic food packaging like granola bar pouches and one for stretchy plastic packaging like cling film), then USPS takes it to a Ridwell facility where it’s sorted and sold to local manufacturers that refine the plastic and use it as material for their products, one of which being the outdoor building material Trex (https://www.trex.com/). We generate a LOT of this kind of waste in our house, and I love finding ways to reduce my landfill contribution, so we signed right up. We’ve already sent in our first set of envelopes and gotten a confirmation email that it was received at Ridwell. I hope it expands both in scale and scope, it’s a really good idea and it makes me feel like less of a consumer goblin.

-Jess

I have always – ALWAYS – wished I had a piano in my own place. My parents volunteered at our church and when they took me with them on random evenings I’d sneak into the sanctuary and play with the beautiful grand piano. I wrote little songs and sang, and I just loved being alone in the dark, where I was used to seeing the place full and illuminated. There was a Casio keyboard in our house as a kid in the 90s but I didn’t have training and let’s be honest, it sounded bad! In college I could access pianos any hour of the day in the practice rooms, and though unsupervised, all that practice helped my skills go from yikes to just meh. I had a decent keyboard after college until the pandemic when I moved into a rental house that had an upright piano already in it. It was life-changing to have that 24 hours a day, and think about it as a fixture in my place rather than an ugly thing I didn’t like to keep set up. I immediately had it tuned – for the first time in 8 years, by the look of the service log taped inside. I wrote some good songs on it, including one for Frank for our 10th wedding anniversary. We didn’t live in that house forever, but it signed my fate as a future piano owner. 

There are a lot of pianos on FB marketplace but not a lot of pianos with a delivery option! Absolutely no type of piano is fitting into my Subaru! But Frank found Kitsap Reuse (https://kitsapreuse.com/),  a place one town over on Bainbridge Island that had several pianos we could sit and try before buying, and delivery options. It was a complete relief to just go in, try the pianos in person, know I’m getting the best-sounding one, and then have it brought into my house on a date of my choosing. Chef kiss. I also got it tuned and professionally worked on by True Sound Piano Service (https://www.truesoundpianos.com/) – James is an awesome guy and great technician, and I’m happy to have a piano guy to call now! Thanks James! 

So please meet our newest addition to the family of musical instruments: the Baldwin Monarch Upright Piano! And now to find myself a badly-needed piano teacher…

Finally being in a house we own, we were ready to get more hands-on with projects we could accomplish by ourselves as virtual novices, and the den – we actually call it the fireplace room – was just the project to get us started. 

After developing our rough idea, our first call was to Shannon, our close friend who’s also a badass carpenter in Seattle. She stayed over one weekend, took us to Home Depot and helped us choose the right power tools and accessories. And crucially, she showed us how to set it all up and how not to cut off our fingers or nail ourselves to the wall. From the bottom of our hearts, Shannon, thank you for being generous with your time and expertise, we love you so much.

We knew we wanted an English countryside vibe in this room; we envisioned spending cozy evenings around the fire and bright mornings by the windows. Jean Milburn’s house in Netflix’s show Sex Education was a major inspiration. One tricky thing to work with here was the fireplace. This house was (beautifully) built in 1999 by a local carpenter, and few stylistic elements reveal that time period as clearly as our golden oak mantle. It’s a very warm tone, it definitely pulls orange. It’s not something that is in fashion in 2024, and we considered stripping and staining it, or painting it. But Shannon made a really smart recommendation: high quality wood should be left alone, rather than tampered with, because nothing we do to it or replace it with, professionally or DIY, will look better or retain value like the original, gorgeous, wood element. She helped us realize that we bought something well-made, and not to toss the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak, just because 25 years and a thousand interior trends have passed. 

Next we consulted our friend Lauren, a clothing designer friend in Maine with a green thumb and the coolest personal style, on how to work with this golden oak focal point from a color perspective. She took me through a few scenarios and one big question: are we minimizing the mantle, or drawing attention to it? And look, living in the woods like we do, not only do we appreciate wood on an aesthetic level, but also on a spiritual level. Something was alive and then it was cut down to be made into this. So we decided to embrace it and treat it as a furniture piece like the other things we’d be adding. 

With our new tools and skills and plans we’d drawn up, we cut and nailed wood moulding to the den walls and above the fireplace to add a wainscoting type of effect. Big assist here from the laser level Shannon encouraged us to buy. It took us another month to make a final decision on paint color and finish, but in the end we covered the walls, window sills, and even ceiling with this gorgeous deep dark blue-green with a satin finish. We’re already loving filling this room with art, bright colors, candle light, and brass accents. Can’t wait for autumn and winter nights in this cozy room!

– Jess