Happy Birthday, Jeff! Loving A Husband In A Year Of Transition

Jeff helping to pick out a Christmas tree a few years ago.

Today is my husband Jeff Modereger's birthday.

I'm not going to tell you which number birthday or in which year he was born, because that would be rude. But it's a significant number. And it's coming in a year that is bringing big changes to his life, our life.

Jeff will retire from the University of Vermont this coming May. He's been at UVM for a quarter century. His departure will be a big adjustment for him, for the university, and I would argue for the community at large.

As he retires, he doesn't want hoopla. He wants to ride off into the sunset, as he puts it.  As if his retirement is some sort of end. It's actually a beginning.

Some people, when they get to retirement age, do fade away.  Jeff won't. He doesn't have it in him to just fade. It's one of the things I love about him.

True, he'll be home more often when he retires, which is a definite plus. But he'll still continue his career as a scenic designer, which has always been his passion. He's so good at it that he'll always be demand. Probably even when he's 100 years old.

His mother worries that he pushes too hard, and it's true Jeff works too hard. (Note to Lois Modereger: I crack the whip when Jeff starts to push himself too much, and so he's fine!) The retirement this year is not a sign of him aging, but it is a sign that he's finally wising up enough to slow down, just a bit.

I'm not surprised, but always stunned by the number of his students and former students who come to Jeff and tell him what a great influence he was on them, how much he taught them. I know that will continue after he retires. Because he will meet more people, and teach more people, and just make things good. It's his habit, and he'll never be able to break it, thank goodness.

Jeff's magic is that he makes everyone he comes in contact with a better person. That certainly includes me. I'm far from perfect, but every day, Jeff, through example, shows me and everyone how it's done.  As of this August, we will have been married seven years. Time flies. And I can't wait to experience the many more years I have with Jeff.

It's funny. Jeff has an eye for fashion, at least in a superficial sense. We'll tune into some show like "Project Runway," and he'll exclaim: "What is she wearing! Did she look in the mirror before she left home?!?"

Yet Jeff is completely out of fashion in a much more fundamental sense. It's not fashionable these days to have a sense of morality. To be honest. To do the right thing.   Jeff does all of these things, fashion be damned. Thank Gawd. Another in a list of a billion reasons why I love him.

So Jeff: Here's to another birthday. I love you so very much, and look forward to being with you as the years tick by.

This post has been sappy, yes, but so what? I'll even make it worse with this song, which reminds me of you. Here's Carly Simon to help me out here:

Pappa Built Us A Brand New Deck, And It's Awesome

The unsafe old deck on our house, minutes before it came down.

During April and May, the trees around our house went from bare to leafed out.

That's not the only major transition around our St. Albans hacienda.

We got rid of our rickety, scary old back deck and replaced it with a new deck that I swear will land on the pages of House Beautiful any day now.

My husband, Jeff Modereger designed the new one. He does things right, so I knew his little scheme to build a big deck would at least be safe.

And big. Did I say big? Jeff does nothing small. Uh-uh.

Note: Nothing tracks the progress of the deck like photos. Click on any of the photos to make them bigger, so you can take a better look at the images.

Jeff is a theater scenic set designer, and he becomes extremely antsy in the rare moments he if doesn't have a project to do. So, during some down time, he designed this entire project. He works fast, too, so this came awfully quickly.

Old deck down, we await the new one.  

The decks, both the old and the new, were/are on the back of the house.

The property slopes downward behind our home, so the  back of the house sits on what amounts to the second floor, as opposed to the front of the house, which is essentially on the ground floor.

A door comes out of the basement beneath the deck.  

The design for the new deck extends across the entire back of the house, on the second floor. It wraps around both sides of the house. A second deck extends from the basement door, and out 40 feet toward the vegetable garden.

Starting to take shape.  

The only thing that went slowly was getting the St. Albans, Vermont town permits to build the deck. It wasn't the town's fault.

The town has regulations that any new construction in our zoning district must lie 40 feet from the property line.

Fine. The only question was whether the deck would fall less than 40 feet from Vermont highway department, which owns the road in front of our house.

We knew the deck wouldn't impinge on the setback requirements  but the state of Vermont had various maps that all wildly incorrectly positioned our property outside of where it was.

We either lived a half mile east of where we were, or west or our house was in the middle of relatively busy Vermont Route 36, which in reality is the road that sits 150 feet or so from the house.

It's a little scary that every government entity around me has a wildly different idea of where I own property, but oh well.

It took an act of Congress to prove that our property was not too close the road.

The point we could first stand our our new deck.  

But we got the permit, eventually.

The crew came to tear down the old deck and start installing the new one on a chilly April morning that threatened rain.

The old deck was unquestionably dangerous.  It was built with substandard material and with substandard construction methods, to say the least.

 We knew it was a little scary. It bounced when you walked on it. The frost made the middle of it rise, creating a nice little hill in the middle of the deck in February.

The old deck was on the second floor of the house, and I had worrying visions of it crashing down to the ground when we had a gathering out there.

Two chain smoking guys tore the old thing in minutes. I told the contractor I was a little alarmed that it came down that fast, was it that unsafe?

The lower deck begins to take shape.  

Well, yes. The supports for the deck only extended five inches into the ground. The supports themselves were only two by fours.

The old deck could have collapsed under the weight of just one person, never mind several. I'm surprised it didn't collapse when a bird landed on it. I shuddered.

I was heartened a couple days later the contractors started preparing the posts for the main deck supports.

The supports extended concrete more than two feet into the ground. They used six by six boards, and used sturdy brackets to fasten the vertical support beams to the concrete bases.

The new deck at completion. It's so big I can't get it
in one photo.  

This spring, the trees leafed out around our house abruplty, as we seemed to go directly from winter to spring.

The new deck took shape rapidly, in tandem with the blossoming trees. It started just as the tree buds were poised to flower, and finished when the leaves were fully out - less than three weeks.

As the deck was rapidly appearing, Jeff did have to do some last minute redesign.

The property slopes behind the house more than we thought, so the end of the lower deck was more than four feet above the ground when the contractors finished it.

Jeff had intended the lower deck to be deep within garden flowers and plants that will eventially surround the lower deck.  He didn't want the deck towering above the gardens.

Another view of the new deck.  

So, thanks to Jeff's changes, the lower deck now has steps that gradually lower it along with the slope of the property.

Here in Vermont, we're environmentally friendly, so recycling is big.

So,  Jeff took some of the debris left from the old deck, and pieces of wood left behind and built a great, sturdy potting bench. It's under the main deck, just off the basement door, next to the lower deck, closest to the house.

He also took more construction debris to build a cover over the recycling bins in front of the house, so things look more attractive there.

Some of the only debris we couldn't re-use was the approximately 1,987,532,221 cigarette butts the contractors left behind. I'm still picking them up. Anybody want LOTS of cigarette butts? We got 'e. Other than that, the contractors were very good, if just a bit messy.

Another problem: We have about two dozen or slightly more immense poplar trees that grew up over the years, mostly along the edges of the property. Most of these tall poplars died in the last couple of years. Some of these ghostly dead trees threatened to topple over on the brand new deck, or the shed where we store so many of our tools.

An awesome potting bench Jeff built out of leftover
construction debris.  

We had to hire a tree guy to cut them down. To save money we told them not to haul the debris away.

That left us with HUGE piles of wood to get rid of. I'm gradually piling the poplar tree debris on a corner of our property.

We did hire a guy who is built like a Big Brick House to take the heavy chunks of wood and stack them on the edge of the property for now. But I have been cleaning up the epic amounts of wood from the house.

Poplar wood is basically worthless, so I'm going to have a LOT of brush pile burns/bonfires come winter.

(I like to do brush burns when there's a little snow on the ground, so embers don't get away to cause a massive St. Albans forest fire. Forest fires are just so depressing.)

The only drawback to the deck, the trees that have been cut down and the gorgeous raised beds for the vegetable garden that Jeff is building is these projects created an ENORMOUS amount of work to do.

It's all the type of work I love to do, gardening, garden design, physical labor outside. So this will keep me happy and in relatively good physical shape for years to come.

Note to Jeff: We did all to ensure I got exercise daily to stay in OK shape, didn't you?

The biggest challenge is creating a design for the gardens around the lower deck.  I'll get out there soon with a sketch book and map out what kinds of plantings to place around the deck, what varieties to set in, what the overall look will be.

The goal is to make our property a Must Stop on any garden tours that swing by within three years. Good look with that, but I'll try.

Jeff, with Jackson (the black dog) and Tonks (whose color
blends in with the sawdust( with just a small part
of the dead trees we had to cut down.  

The deck has only been completed for a couple weeks. It's already creating great moments, great times.

This deck has room for our dogs, Jackson and Tonks, to watch me as I work outside. (Gates block stairs and entryways, so the dogs stay put on the deck.)

Beforehand, when I was inside, Jackson would be indoors, howling because he was alone and couldn't see what I was doing.

Now, both Jackson and Tonks come out, peer through the railings along the edge of the deck and watch.

I'll glance back at them, and it's always a wonderful, happy moment.

Jeff also likes to come out and visit. Or on mild early summer mornings, we'll take our coffee and breakfast in the fresh air out on the deck while the dogs play with their toys next to us.

The deck is already the best room in the house. Also the biggest.

We'll have parties and gatherings out there, especially now that we have a deck that won't collapse under the weight of our friends and family.

We're really not into killing those we love, so it's nice to have something safe.

Jeff also hit the recycling bins under a platform made
of construction debris.  

As I noted, there's still a lot of work to do.

 I'll give an update in about, I don't know, 1,000 years, when I complete the gardens around the deck.

And if anybody from House Beautiful or HGTV wants a look see for an article or television, show, leave a comment with this blog post and our people will talk with your people.

Marital Bliss: Guy Razes House; Neglects To Mention It To Wife

James Rhein is in trouble with a lot of people
for tearing down his house without first telling
anyone he was going to do it, including his wife.  

At the Marital Bliss lab here at Matt of All Trades we ran into one story that illustrates that maybe, just maybe, communication is essential in a successful marriage.

Then what do we know?  Because the guy in the following tale seems to think everything is just peachy.

James Rhein decided to tear down the house he shared with his wife, Diane Andryshak last Monday because the foundation needed too much work and he decided he wanted to start over.

In what might be a weakness in the couple's marriage communication channels, Rhein tore down the house, with all their stuff in it, without mentioning to his wife he was going to do that. 

Surprise! She was upset when she showed up and found that the house was gone.

Rhein doesn't seem to be all that talented in the communication department anyway. You do need permits for a big job like tearing down a house, and he did not obtain them.

He said he tried to get a permit Monday to take down the house, but government offices were closed due to the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday.

"So I took it down, that's it," NBC New York quoted him as saying. 

He couldn't wait just one more day to get a permit? The offices reopened Tuesday. Impatient little jerk.

The area of debris between these two houses
was the house owned by James Rhein's wife.
He tore it down without first mentioning to
her he was going to do it.  

Let's get back to the lack of communication with the wife, or lack thereof.  Why didn't Rhein tell her he was going to take the house down?

"I tried calling her, she didn't answer the phone," Rhein said.

Um, you couldn't leave a message and wait for her to return it?

Most married people, when contemplating something major like tearing down your house, have a little discussion with their spouse, at least, before moving forward.

Not to gloat, but something as simple as me burning my brush pile tomorrow, was a topic of discussion between me and my husband before I went ahead and got the burn permit.

Note that I got a permit from the town, unlike Rhein and his house. And I'm not even doing anything to my house.

By the way, ownership of the house was under Rhein's wife's name, not him, so it should have been her final decision on what to do with the building.

Rhein acknowledged his wife was initially upset, but he said, "But she's over it now... We're good. I'm a good husband, what can I tell you?"  

I think you're tellling us you're either delusional or a liar.  Judging from news report, I don't think his wife is over it, either.

Andryshak (the wife) said she's still in shock, given that all her medications, her possessions, etc were destroyed. Rhein didn't take anything out.

He says everything's replaceable. She said not everything.

Rhein is facing felony charges for not getting permits for the demolition, but I think that's the least of his problems.  Somehow I think his wife will have the last word on this. She'll communicate with Rhein all right.

In court, I bet.

He was behind in paying mortgage payments. Maybe he wanted to stick it to the bank? His wife said she was unaware of any financial problems that big.

Can this marriage be saved?

We at the Marital Bliss lab at Matt of All Trades don't think so. Many marriages can survive difficulties with communication, but Rhein's trouble with this issue takes it to a whole new level.

He's a First Class Dick. Our advice to his wife?

Run, Diane Run! Stay away from him. Except in court, where you should take him to the cleaners and get a nice big fat divorce settlement.

The CBS New York report on this is priceless. Watch: