The Homestead: Next Ten Years

William Sundwick

We’ve been here 35 years, among the old-timers now in our Arlington neighborhood. The house began as a simple center-hall colonial, built in 1947, but grew with our family. Two boys went from birth through high school graduation in this house. Both returned for customary “back-with-parents- after-college” periods in their lives. We didn’t become confirmed empty-nesters until about 2014. I retired the following year. My wife has not taken that plunge yet – she still commutes daily between the house and Capitol Hill.

While there is no official timetable, it seems appropriate to begin speculating on how much longer we’ll be comfortable remaining in our now apparently too-large home. The assumption is that at some point, downsizing will be advisable.

But, the usual reasons for downsizing have not settled in for either my wife or me – yet. We can still both negotiate the stairs easily for all three floors. We enjoy the space, the copious storage (especially, empty bedrooms), kitchen and dining room big enough for our friends and family to gather. And, neither of us foresees a reason why this will change in the near-term.

My wife anticipates her second knee replacement will mean a temporary disability for her, as did her first, “I’ll have to live on one floor for a while.” But I can handle the nursing, fetching, and driving. My own physical health remains astoundingly good for my 72 years.

It looks like plans for improvements, once again, have higher priority than plans to move. This happened twice before, when expansion of living space was the driver. This time, it’s enhancement and beautification of living space and outdoor environment that captures our imaginations.

The next ten years should see both a remodeled basement and reconfigured landscaping. In addition, some details too small to be considered “projects,” like replacement of broken bathroom fixtures (a robe hook) and upgrades to technology (new computers) need resolution soon.  Procrastination is a bad habit for me, as my wife keeps reminding me, “When are you going to replace that robe hook?” A ten-year plan shouldn’t mean that we wait for nine years, then try to do it all!

Improvements generally have their greatest payoff when you get to enjoy them, not simply for increasing resale value. We learned with our previous construction that Zillow, at least, doesn’t support the Cost/Benefit ratio of either of those additions. My wife says, “You know, we’ll never get our money out of it!” Now inured to that real estate fact of life, our final round of improvements will focus on our own ability to appreciate them while we’re still living in the house. Our Arlington privilege makes us feel that we wouldn’t be able to sell unless we address the two major projects – basement and landscaping. “Everybody” in our neighborhood has beautiful homes. Logically, we should do basement first, then yard and plantings.

Basement enhancement

We intend to keep the same footprint for the basement – no new foundation. We now have three rooms and bath under the original 1947 house (crawl spaces for our two additions).

One of these rooms is dedicated to laundry and HVAC installation. Another was originally intended as a bedroom (pre-code renovation, no egress), with nice built-in closet space. The third room, with bath, serves as my wife’s office, but functioned as a family room (“playroom”) when our kids were young. There is pantry storage under the stairs and very cheap paneling from Home Depot throughout (we re-paneled the family room shortly after we moved in, with my father-in-law’s help). And, there is an equally passé drop-ceiling with probable asbestos tiles. A fine home like ours, in a neighborhood like this, surely requires an updated basement living space.

It all needs to go. The bathroom will be reconfigured as a larger powder room (minus shower stall). The laundry/HVAC room and ersatz bedroom will be combined into one large open space, while retaining built-in closets. This should allow minor relocation of HVAC unit for more efficient ducting design, counter space for laundry, and moving the refrigerator-freezer from its semi-accessible location in the small laundry room. Being able to fully open the fridge doors would be a real boon -- that’s where I keep my beer!

A newer, more attractive, family room/office will feature recessed lighting and drywall, and egress window in front -- some excavation will be required here, sacrificing our dead compacta holly bushes which now occupy the space in front of the window well. It should contain a play area for grandkids, with juvenile furniture, as well as desk and computer equipment for wife’s office. “I like it here,” she says. We’ll probably get a futon to replace the broken sofa-bed and TV will remain in place. This is our plan. We made drawings and invited one contractor to give us an estimate. It was high. We stopped, but now it’s time to proceed where we left off.

Landscaping renewal

After we finished work on our second addition (2009), incorporating a large kitchen with master suite above it, more or less swallowing up our backyard, we hired a local landscaping company to give us a usable hardscape patio and walkway from our new addition around to the driveway. Plantings front and rear, and river-stone-filled driveway median completed the plan.

The backyard, especially, was a beautiful, compact, outdoor space with photinia, vibernum, skip laurel, inkberry holly, and azaleas. Liriope ground cover for the beds, and a relatively small lawn. It was nice for about seven years. Then, things started going south. Now, there is no ground cover, virtually no lawn, overgrown photinia and scrawny, but tall, vibernum, dead inkberries and azaleas. Moss grows in the cracks of the hardscape patio. We never use our backyard furniture anymore.

Would a pruning routine, as vigorous as lawn maintenance and weeding, have made a difference?

Perhaps, but there’s a limit to how much time I’m willing to spend simply for external appearance – even in my neighborhood.

In any case, it all needs to be replaced. No plan yet, and I’m ready to search for another landscaper. My original company, although presenting an attractive picture at first, has not been very helpful with maintenance. “It’s much too expensive,” says he. I’m apparently on my own for replacing dead plants.

A realistic ten-year plan will likely be:

1)      engage contractors for the two big projects

2)      continue to close off unused rooms (if climate control costs don’t explode), and:

3)      optimize our large front yard for appearance only – although a usable backyard might be nice.

The little things I should get to right away – of course! Robe hook, new computers; yeah, yeah …

  

Mira and Her Big Brother

Grandchildren in the World

William Sundwick

When they first come into the world, they have no idea what’s in store for them. And it will be a long time before they have much influence over it.

They do, however, influence us, their elders – parents and grandparents. We love them, nurture them, are entertained by them. We raise our offspring in a spirit of optimism. They force it upon us.

Grandchildren, perhaps, even more than the immediately present and demanding children, suffuse that spirit. We must make it good for them for, surely, we have the power!

I have two grandchildren (so far). They are almost four and about 13 months. Big brother Owen is bemused by his baby sister Mira, but his primary concern seems to be to keep her from messing with his creations and toys. She is surprisingly mobile – and curious. He mainly seeks peace.

They both are driven by achievement. Mira is now taking her first steps.

She is tall, can pull herself up on most pieces of furniture in her house and her grandparents’ house. Yes, even walk without holding on. This presents an increasing threat to Owen – whose own achievement motivations require imagination, role playing, and manual dexterity. And he is aware of knowledge – he tells us as much when he says: “I’m almost four, I know lots.” He appears to be contrasting his mammoth achievement portfolio to his baby sister’s trivial level of development.

They each have their own communication styles: Mira by smiling, grasping, pointing, vocalizing (not quite words yet); Owen by his politeness (“Excuse Me!” when he wants to talk) and questions (“Why?” is the eternal question). Both seem to have an urge to share – stories, experiences, objects, food – and both seem to crave attention from adults, including their grandparents! “Play with me, grandpa!” commands Owen, and outstretched arms from Mira indicate she wants to be removed from her highchair.

As grandparents not charged with primary care for these two, we have the best of both worlds. We see them and interact regularly, but then can always send them home with their parents. We welcome them at our house, providing accommodations like training potties, highchairs, car seats, step stools, as the need arises. Plenty of books and toys at our place, too. When we babysit at their house evenings, we’ve learned to nail the bedtime routine for both – as well as feeding them dinner (and playing together). But we’re never required to spend more than a few hours devoted to their care. This is good for septuagenarians.

Even such relatively short stretches, however, remind me of the sense of foreboding we all share these days. That commitment to optimism is being increasingly challenged. What sort of world will they inherit? How much of their future misfortune will be our fault? In extreme cases, it appears that some are foregoing having children altogether. Has guilt and fear consumed them to such an extent?

It’s clear that much of Mira and Owen’s education will be focused on dealing with their own uncertain futures. What will they now need to learn? Instead of success tools, it seems they will be learning mostly survival tools! Even their parents – what will they have to look forward to in their own retirement? Will they even have a retirement? Will lifespans increase, or drastically contract? What about economic resources? Will my two grandchildren grow up conditioned to expect less? It seems the moral choice for them would be … absolutely, yes! Nobody should be allowed to have as much in their future lives as their parents had (or their grandparents). At least, that’s the way it looks from the privileged positions we find ourselves in today.

Perhaps the secret for us grandparents is to spend even more time in direct contact with our grandchildren. Then, we wouldn’t have time to think too hard about these questions. Their wonder at the world – at their own bodies, minds, and capabilities -- might consume us as much as it does them. We might discover some of their innocence. Optimism may then begin to climb out of that pit of anxiety and pessimism.

Warp & Woof

v.1.3

Welcome to Warp & Woof, a blog from William Sundwick. Its purpose is to share with its readers some ways to navigate the philosophical, moral and aesthetic dimensions of life.

It is not a scholarly blog, but the author hopes that his own life experience and reading can inform his readers’ journeys through such realms.

He wants to share some things that he believes matter, not “fake news,” and he will offer frequent enough doses to motivate you to keep checking in. Comments are welcome. While Blogger requires you to identify yourself via your email address, the author will anonymize any comments before publishing them.

Warp & Woof has a structure. There are five departments of thinking (pages) -- but some entries may be cross-posted in more than one department. These five “realms of deliberation” are:

The Present

    … what matters, for sure!

 

                     The Past

                              … what used to matter       

                                                               

                                                                              

                                             The Future

                                                      … what may matter, who knows?

 

                             Totems

                                    … objects that matter (or mattered)  

                        

Beats

    … sounds that matter, since we never get tired of hearing them! 

Author’s Introduction

Switching to the first person now and translating -- readers can expect entries dealing with health and wellness for seniors (that’s me) in The Present, along with musings on bigger psychological/philosophical issues. This includes a fair dose of writing on child development (I spend some time babysitting my grandchildren).  

The Past will be filled with lots of hopefully knowledgeable meanderings around politics, sociology and history. I’m a liberal arts type, undergraduate major in history, and professional librarian for something like 30 years before imperceptibly transitioning to IT professional. I retired from the Library of Congress in 2015, after 42 years at that institution. History and politics are very big topics for me, despite their vague and uncertain impact on the present or future.

Exciting (to me) developments in science and technology will be found in The Future, along with a healthy dose of fear about things like global warming and other planetary or civilizational catastrophe! Perhaps I have an apocalyptic frame of reference -- most of my thinking about economics and anthropology belongs in The Future. Economics covers consumer behavior and marketing, both interesting fields for me. Anthropology deals with primitive roots of tribal life, which I claim will become more apparent in the future, as more complex social arrangements break down, putting sociology in The Past. The Future is not the place for invective about the status of American politics -- that belongs on the page for The Past!

On the page for Totems, you will find lots of apparently senseless, but exciting for me, information about cars, past, present, and future. I’m a “car guy”, by virtue mostly of my upbringing as a General Motors brat in Flint, Michigan during the fifties and sixties. I’m not a car guy mechanic, however. I never open the hood or crawl under my own vehicle (much less anybody else’s!), but a car guy who was raised in, and by, mid-century American “car culture.”

Finally, on the Beats page, another personal obsession gets its due: rock music, from the origins in the Great Migration, through the British Invasion, hard blues, acid rock, punk, metal, techno. If anybody thinks these genres are still alive, please let me know! I’ve “got my ear down to the ground” to paraphrase Jim Morrison, When the Music’s Over. Yes, there is audio here, via YouTube videos.

That’s been the concept. Version 1.0 of Warp & Woof launched on Ground Hog Day, 2017.  I made some changes to the layout and design recently, for v.1.2 (sounds better than v.1.1).  And, true confessions, this v.1.3 is informed by two-and-a-half years in my Arlington, VA Writers Group. These folks may be my only audience – except when I beg my Facebook friends and relatives to read my posts. I hope my mission statement remains unchanged at least through version 2.0; i.e., helping my readers see the “big picture” more clearly, making the complex simple, and having fun while we expand both our peripheral vision and depth perception!                      

         

Me, at Filene Center, Wolf Trap, 2018

                                                        

Car Buying: The Experience

William Sundwick

For a life-long car buff like me, shopping for a new car has been an exciting, intensely pleasurable, experience. Cars are fascinating to me: their design, their features, their engineering. I grew up with the industry, and I’ve followed the automotive press intermittently ever since.

My latest experience was no exception. My Excel workbook of all possible competitors compared not only numeric specs, but capsule summaries taken from reviews and road tests. The process lasted two years – my spreadsheet had tabs for 2017 models, 2018 models, and 2019 models. I didn’t pull the trigger in either of the first two model years I tracked. In 2017, I merely collected data on all possible popular-priced SUV/Crossovers. For 2018, I devised elimination thresholds based on certain specs. This, combined with a comprehensive tour of the 2018 Washington Auto Show, allowed a hypothetical emergence of an “elite eight,” then “final four” contenders (roughly on time for the 2018 NCAA basketball tournament).

But I didn’t buy a car. Rinse and repeat for 2019 models. For this model year, I could only reduce to five finalists – I had tightened my elimination standards, but there were simply more cars that met those requirements.

Test drives at dealers finally became a reality this August. Dealers were ramping up their summer clearances, seeking to clear out inventory for the coming model year. They wanted my business. Five contenders quickly became four after a disconcerting phone call to a Nissan dealer where the salesman conceded: “nobody stocks Rogue Hybrids -- they don’t sell!” – the Rogue Hybrid was only model that made Nissan one of the five finalists. “Thank you, I guess I can cross Nissan off my list!” Four different test drives ensued. VW Tiguan was eliminated after a decisive spin – too big, ungainly, slow. A slight delay before following up with the remaining three choices found both my wife and me getting bored with the process. Eager to reach a decision, we arbitrarily crossed Ford Escape off our list: “It is due to be replaced for 2020 with an all-new model,” I reminded my wife. “And Consumer Reports rates its ‘expected reliability’ as low,” granted a statistical assumption. That left a titanic duel between Subaru Forester and Honda CR-V.

We went together to other Subaru and Honda dealers, searching for the one thing that might be key to a final decision. This was somewhat painful until my wife took the wheel of both contenders. Even though she had insisted throughout the test drive process that this would be my car, not hers, the final word belonged to her! The Honda felt more “familiar” – coinciding with my own feeling that it was more “straight-forward” (less “gimmicky”) than the Subaru. And there were no minuses with the Honda, except that it didn’t include a heated steering wheel in the price (a $500 accessory, we later discovered).

The decision was made! Now came the hard part. Where would we buy my Honda? And, how to avoid being taken for a ride by that dealer? Further Internet research followed.

All dealers publish their inventories online. While it is possible for them to trade cars to make a sale, I found that such practices work against the best price – seems reasonable, especially in this annual inventory reduction environment. All dealers may not have equally well-managed stocks of cars. They do compete after all. In our case, a larger inventory worked to our advantage.

With some insight provided by Edmunds.com, I decided the best approach was to email blast all local Honda dealers with my requirements and wait for the best quote for an “Internet price” to come in response. The Edmunds site provided the interface for my blast. The response came same day -- from the dealer which had claimed, when we visited, to be the largest in Northern Virginia (Ourisman Honda of Tysons Corner). The test drive there had been pleasant enough. The salesman said he remembered us from five years previous when we were last car shopping – and, we didn’t even buy from him! It’s possible he could have done advance research on us, since I made the appointment with another sales associate – I didn’t remember him. “What did you buy five years ago, you were looking at a Civic Hybrid?” he offered unprompted. (Winner then, a Chevy Volt!)

One of the best qualities in a car salesman is the ability to put the customer at ease, with personal anecdotes, less-than-perfect knowledge, and general easy-going demeanor. This salesman possessed all these skills. He had some knowledge of features he could demonstrate – hands-free tailgate, remote starting with key fob, personalized settings for almost everything in car. He continued his presentation, even after we announced we were ready to buy his car.

He did, however, gloss over a problem we had with our “Internet price” quote: the fine print said “dealer financing required” – we expected to pay cash! Since Virginia doesn’t allow pre-payment penalties for financing, we all agreed that the “dealer financing” requirement was a mere formality. We could pay it off with only one additional small payment – our salesman insisted. But that was before he went to his sales manager to seal the deal.

Hard-nosed negotiation commenced. Finally, a concession from the sales manager: “I’ll give you two free oil changes if you agree to make at least three payments.” And only the oil changes were in writing! He seemed so pathetic in his desperation to make a small amount in interest for his bank! Margins must be very tight in this business. The law was on our side. He can’t force us to pay interest!

And, he wanted to sell us a car.

Driving away from the dealership in my new Honda gave me a sense of accomplishment. I’m not sure I’ll bother with the two free oil changes, anyway. I still needed to arrange for the towing of our old car, to be donated to Vehicles for Change, as we have for the last two cars we’ve replaced. The satellite radio needed to be registered (first 90 days free), presets set, old car’s radio deactivated. I needed to read the manual cover-to-cover. Fortunately, Honda also provides a website with a collection of videos on how the car’s controls work (the manual is not especially comprehensive or well-written). 

Driving is the best way to learn about the car. And that is what I’ve been doing for the last few weeks. Its HondaLink navigation system now knows where I live!