Crazy Stable

A Sunday afternoon of Indian summer in "Victorian Flatbush" starts out looking like a dreamscape of autumnal Main Street, USA.

But on this Brooklyn afternoon, all the colors seemed a little deeper...at the Cortelyou Road farmers' market...

...and along the leafy streets with names like Argyle, Rugby, and Marlborough.

Inside, the second Flatbush Artists Studio Tour unleashed more color, and colorful neighbors. Our houses are like the TARDIS of Dr. Who--bigger on the inside than on the outside--and this weekend, some of the most magical were opened to the public. For those who expect to find artists in dreary garrets or grim industrial lofts, the cognitive dissonance is delightful.

Visitors took in the kaleidoscope of Karen Friedland's lush canvases, and fingered dazzling little beaded necklaces and earrings. (If you missed the FAST event, Karen will be hosting a holiday art and jewelry sale on December 12 from noon to five.)

Very young, very talented Simone VerEecke is currently creating vibrant, exciting abstracts (click on her name to see more), but I was drawn to her huge high-school self-portrait.

As a family friend, I was also allowed an audience with the artist's mother's Russian tortoise, who displays a more moderate temperament. You look at that face and think, "the dude abides"...from the Jurassic era or so.

Down the street, in another rambling house/atelier, five artists live and work. One, Arturo Garcia, lavishes the golden light and shadow of the Old Masters on hams, pomegranites, and even some Italian cookies from the local bakery. Another, Marcelo Pittari, channels Rembrandt in soulful portraits, including one of himself here.

As we kicked along homeward through drifts of leaves, the very teenaged Daughter complained that I was "doing my spiel again about our marvelous neighborhood, blah blah blah." Guilty as charged.

It rained over the weekend—rained hard. I ran from room to room, squinting at the ceilings. No drips. I ran my hands compulsively over the surfaces beneath, hunting for errant drops. Nothing. I stuck my head out the window, peering at the Roof Valley of Death; no firehose-like torrents issued from it, and the new extra-wide gutter was not overwhelmed by the downpour.

In reviewing the story of Noah's Ark while finding this circa-1750 engraving, I was struck by several things.

One: Waterproofing hasn't changed much since the Year of the Flood (although Biblical scholars still puzzle as to why God's specs for the Ark included "gopher wood," a term found nowhere else in Scripture and one that still stumps translators; given the hurried job schedule, it probably means 3/4-inch plywood).

Two: Protecting your family (and your critters) from the elements is one of the primal bargains you try to make with God.

Three: It feels like one heck of a blessing when the storm is over and you're still nice and dry.

The guys "knock up the gutters" today, says the roofer, and then we're done. Genesis says nothing about Noah feeling pretty overwhelmed by the prospect of cleaning up all that water damage and starting over from scratch, not to mention repopulating the earth...

"Make for yourself an ark of gopher wood; you shall make the ark with rooms, and shall cover it inside and out with pitch.

This is how you shall make it: the length of the ark three hundred cubits, its breadth fifty cubits, and its height thirty cubits.

You shall make a window for the ark, and finish it to a cubit from the top; and set the door of the ark in the side of it; you shall make it with lower, second, and third decks.”

                                                                   Genesis 6: 14-16

 Image: Ancestry Images

My aunt Beatrice Warde wrote a book about the Blitz called Bombed but Unbeaten, about how ordinary London citizens got used to going about their daily business with pluck and resignation amid the smoking ruins left by the Luftwaffe's most recent visit. It came to mind yesterday as I stepped onto our front porch under a cascade of crashing debris. The guys had to claw me a path through the stuff, which was knee-high on the front steps.

The Great Roofing Epic seems to be going amazingly well: no sorrowful pointing to "surprises," no "worst I've ever seen in 20 years on the job" comments, etc. The crew works harder than I've ever seen guys work, and we've almost become used to the sight of them dangling or grappling outside our windows. Our next-door neighbors on both sides have borne their share of disruption with good grace, and have dealt tenderly with our shattered nerves. (It helps that they are both pro-am DIY types and not petunia-growing little old ladies.) Above: Guy installing custom extra-wide gutter, seen through kitchen window. Is it distracting to wave, or rude not to?

We knew the porch roof was in bad shape, but this section of fascia board seemed like a downright masterpiece of rot, a mural of multimedia corruption. What would you like with that alligatored lead paint, ma'am—mold? moss? carpenter-bee holes? dry rot? Or would you like our special with all four? This piece was replaced before being capped with aluminum to await its new gutter.

Supposedly the guys will be done in one more day. And then, the house will look...remarkably the same!

Yes, Cocobop, today was the day my brain fell down the rathole. It was Day 2 of Week 2 of our Roofing Extravaganza, with mighty crashing and scraping overhead all day long (hey, at least the weather is permitting). And yesterday was New Windows Day.

Not all new windows, just 7 of them. Our house has some 50 windows; we have replaced almost all the century-old originals, and yesterday, replaced 6 of the first-generation replacements (which were cumbersome insulated wood-sash disasters that clouded up and lacked built-in screens; we got them under my deranged notion of historical authenticity).

And we bade farewell to one of the originals: the biggest window in the house, an 8-over-8 double-hung affair that flooded our first-floor landing with light, and drafts. Thankfully, we are not in a landmark district, so we can retrofit our Victorian house with vinyl tilt-ins, the greatest inventions since man cut a hole in his wattle-and-daub hut to let the sunshine in. The exterior capping looks a little cheesy, but we can paint it eventually...and now I can actually clean my windows without a scaffold or a ladder.

The old window could not be opened, although it was so loose in its frame that we stuck folded chunks of cardboard between the sashes to keep them from rattling. The old lead-weight and chain system for opening windows still gets my vote for low-tech genius; the mechanism (here, revealed in its casing) was indestructible. Some of the ancient windows actually work better than the newer ones.

That landing, by the way, is about the size of a Greenwich Village studio apartment that I almost rented for $450 a month back in 1983. Still un-plastered and unpainted, it communicates with the backstairs to the garden, as well as the main staircase, and is thus a nexus of confusion for people attempting to find their way around the Crazy Stable. The photo above, of Coco and the strange hole for some long-removed pipe, shows the oxblood-red paint applied by Mr. Chang, the previous owner. I usually keep a jungle of houseplants and some flimsy bits of salvaged furniture on the landing, but I am hatching more ambitious plans. Things are looking brighter already. Plus, now I can open the window and smell (and see!) my garden down below, for the first time in 23 years.  

Blue sky is but a distant memory. Yesterday, with cold and soaking rain in the forecast, the crew worked until dusk to get this half of the roof covered with the new shingles. We may not see them again until Monday, or whenever it dries out.  After one day of downpour, even without gutters, nothing seems to have leaked...yet...

Late last night, a flatbed truck pulled up and used its mighty hydraulic dragging gizmo to haul the bulging dumpster up and away. We'll need another for the second half of the roof. I love dumpsters; they mean progress.

But it got me thinking: How much recycling, composting, and buying of cute recycled tchotchkes do you have to perform to offset a gift like this to America's landfills?  Nobody, to my knowledge, is making anything useful or quaint out of mountains of skanky, nail-infested old roofing material...but if you come up with any ideas (clever placemats or totebags, anyone?), there's more where that came from.