don't see this
Update 7/14: The Salmon Room Is Now Available!
Update: I've been using this page to show people what the house looks like in case they wish to move in. If you've come to the site to see the house and the available room, just check out the images below. For people who want a description of the house in less-than-concise form, here you are:
I'm looking for someone to sign up for a one year tour of duty starting around the middle/end of August. The house is located at 1800 Vermont Ave, NW. at the intersection of 11th and Vermont and is a block south of the U St. Metro exit. It's a three-story, three-bedroom white brick row house built in 1869 and renovated in 2001, with access to the roof, hardwood floors throughout and a full-size washer and dryer. The house is surrounded by a rose garden on three sides (it's at the end of a triangular block) with a large patio area on the western side, perfect for parties and cookouts. The front yard area has recently been redone to allow even more space for gatherings. The interior is very stylish, with recessed lighting, original mouldings and an artistic paint scheme throughout. Other rooms include a large kitchen/dining area, a comfortable family room (with DirecTV, an 80-hour dual-tuner TiVo and surround sound) and a living room great for entertainment. Total interior space in the house is 1,690 square feet, excluding the attic. The two bedrooms in the main tower are octagonal in nature, with 95 square feet of space inside each.
Our Logan Circle/U St. neighborhood is very safe (including four churches, a police station, an elementary school and a middle school all within a two-block radius) and is right near U St. and within walking distance of Dupont Circle and Adams Morgan. A Whole Foods/Fresh Fields is only a few blocks away as is a 24-hour Giant supermarket and several convenience/mom and pop stores on 11th and U streets. The house has central air conditioning, 1.5 bathrooms, gas (for cooking and heating in the winter), a netflix subscription, a broadband internet connection (DSL) and both wired and wireless networking. The total cost for the room is $1200 per month and doesn't include utilities.
Given the paucity of images on the site, one might be tempted to think that I have some loathing for the visual. Far from it. It's merely that I think people use images too often when words would suffice. A good analogy would be color photographs versus black and white photographs in newspapers. The move to color is often heralded as "progress" but too often people without a full understanding of color make the decision. The result? Photos that are weaker than their black and white brethren. The trick is to get good at the "basic" stuff, then learn all you can about the more advanced items before you move.
That said, I think enough time and energy has been spent on the text side, so I'm going to throw up some images of the dredwerkz itself. Some of these are a little barren, like the shots of the Salmon Room. The rest are just everyday sorts of pictures. I have Brad to thank for the camera which enabled me to run around like a half-dead chicken this morning, snapping shots left and right, and then uploading them to the website. You'd never guess that the entire camera is the size of a matchbox.
Here goes. Captions go along with each, naturally.
- Here's an exterior shot of the dredwerkz. You can see the growth of ivy on the house, as well as the extensive rose gardens on the left. The main rose bushes surrounding the entrance have yet to bloom, but the pink, rose and yellow ones have already begun. On the right side, there's a garden that hasn't seen much effort put into it yet. Hopefully I'll get that taken care of this summer.
- Here's a nice shot of the bradford pear in bloom. It's a much more hardy tree than the flowering crab in front, mainly because the crab apple tree is half-dead and the other half only manages to keep its petals on for a day or two. The pear keeps the blossoms in bloom for over a week. Not as cool or as long as the roses (which bloom 8 months out of the year!) but still nice to see at the time the cherry blossoms come out.
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- This is an image of the rear entrance to the dredwerkz. The door in the shot leads into the entertainment room shown below. The large concrete slab was discovered while cleaning up the garden. I have no idea what's below it, but it makes a great grilling spot. To the left of the image is a path leading to the main outdoor area, with white stones below. To the right is another path leading through the front garden to the other side of the house.
- A shot of the entertainment area, located in the basement of the house. You can see the surround sound speakers, the television and even the devilish ps2 from this shot. Although it took us six months to get it properly installed, we finally managed to get DirecTV to setup our satellite system, which typically oscillates between every program available (during the fall when they offer the Sunday ticket package) to almost nothing but the basics (during the spring). You can also see the rather nice fireplace screen and accessories that have lain useless for going on three years now. On the right side of the image, a door leads to the rear garden. As you can see, there's recessed lighting in this room, just as in the main living area. The clocks in the picture are labeled with yellow post-it notes which explain that they are set to the appropriate time and dates in Kyoto, Japan; London, England; Monterey, California and Washington, DC.
- Also in the basement, the spacious kitchen contains a breakfast area, with an open air atrium to the floor above. To the right of the image are the washer/dryer room and the downstairs restroom. Behind the lens is the main kitchen counter, the fridge and the gas oven. There are tons of exposed bricks and bright copper pipes throughout the house. Go post-modernity! The kitchen contains two different sets of track lighting, some cool blue ones above the counter and these bright ones on the ceiling.
- This is a shot of the main kitchen preparation area. The breakfast table sits well to the left of the picture's edge. There are a series of blue track lights above the bar, as well as a bright fluorescent light above the glass cabinet. The previous owner was a big fan of chrome and metal in the kitchen, so there are several storage containers with metal doors. In the early days, these were filled to the brim with packets of ramen noodles. These days we don't have to skimp so much.
- Here's a shot of the oven (notice the chrome) and the small cabinet I purchased (with chrome feet) to hold the shiny new microwave. Unfortunately, after we got it in the house we liked the additional counter space so much we kept the microwave in its current position, sitting on top of the grey cabinet that you can see on the right side of this picture. On top you can see our breadbox, useful for 20 questions and the like.
- This is another shot of the oven, from the angle of the breakfast table, which you can see the black top of in the lower right-hand corner of the picture. You can just make out one of the wine racks in the house on the top left corner of the image. The door in the picture leads to a small hallway underneath the steps in the picture of the front of the house. We currently use it to store most of our outdoor furniture, mainly because I'm too lazy to store it in the shed where it belongs.
- If one were to walk in the front door and take a right, this is what you'd see. The bar in the picture is actually embedded into the wall and appears quite old. The paucity of clutter on top of the bar is an anomaly...most of the items that go up top have been carefully shelved below. Normally, the area is standing room only. The wine racks seem somewhat depleted because of Helena's departure, but they'll be full soon enough. Recessed lighting in the bar area and the main living area.
- Here's a shot of the pillars in the main living room directly above the kitchen. The bar is behind and to the right of the frame, the chess set (below) to the left. Behind the pillars is the atrium leading down to the kitchen below, which benefits from the recessed lighting coming from above. Just to the right of the pillars is a passage to the office nook. I really should have taken my coat off the chair for the picture, but oh, well.
- Here's a shot of the main living room again, showing off the large mirror and the two reading chairs. Sunday mornings in the winter are a great time to be upstairs, catch some light and read the Post. Come to think of it, that chess set shouldn't be there anymore, as it is Helena's.
- As you can see in the mirror in the shot above, the bar is right on the other side of the room. What you couldn't see were the three solid white pedestals (you can still only see two from this angle) we got from a Crate & Barrel closing out sale. I had a gift certificate, rolled into the store which looked worse than downtown Baghdad these days, and asked a sales clerk if the pedestals which displayed items were for sale. They decided that they were, hastily set a price, and we purchased them for a song. (The gift certificate I think ended up almost exactly paying for them...conveniently.) Now they hold house gifts, a globe, the phone and some art. Well worth it in my opinion.
- This is a shot of the house during a recent art show. Those paintings aren't normally there...but maybe if I get some more money and can afford them, I'll buy them. Of course, by that point, they'll be spoken for. All the art in the next few pictures is by Carroll. My normal posters and artwork have been taken down for this occasion.
- I like this shot because you get to see my office nook by looking through the mirror, as well as the pedestals, as well as Thomas Jefferson's hiding hole. The best part is that currently, the three paintings above the mirror are still there, as Carroll has loaned them to me for free. If anyone is interested, I have the prices. They're fairly cheap, and if I had some extra cash lying around I'd snatch them up immediately.
- There are few things better than getting a great interplay of light in a photo. This shot catches the late evening rays falling on some fruit perfectly. The symmetry, the color scheme, everything just looks good in this, except for the absence of wine in the racks. Of course, that's more than made up for by the quantity sitting on the bar below, but it reminds me I need to go purchase some more.
- Someone stole Helena's chess set!
- Not the best lighting but a good angle nonetheless. You can see the globe Helena gave me here in yet another nook: it's a ancient map, the sort that would have "Here Be Monsters" written on it, except that it's an entire globe. Very, very cool. Not a good navigational tool, though. The painting is one that I keep thinking Carroll is going to sell. She likes it too much, I think, to let it go.
- I like the chili peppers as well, which are also temporarily residing in the house. The angle of this picture also make me appreciate the huge mirror, which almost doubles the psychological size of the entertainment room.
- Yeah, the house is normally this clean. Riiight. Regardless, a great shot of the exterior iron work and you can just make out that the tree outside (bradford pear, possibly?) is in full bloom. Unlike the half-dead crappy crab apple in the front yard, it's still got flowers even a week later.
- My room on the first floor. In disarray. My namesake's artistic works grace the space above the fireplace, (the kitchen picture shown above hanging on the brick is also one of his) and normally I'd like to think that things are cleaner. Right. It's located directly above the entertainment room, and looks through to the living space when the door is open.
This is a picture of the second floor bathroom. It has a unique color scheme, with lime green walls, blue shower walls and a bright yellow toilet. Normally it'd appear much brighter but in this shot one of the three track lights has been taken off its track for replacement.
Here's the blue room. Brad used to live here. Not a great shot, but I was pressed for time. If you look closely you can see an amusing gift I bestowed upon the occupant sitting on top of the fireplace. Actually, you can see three of my gifts. You can't tell from this angle, but this room has a great view of both 11th St. and Vermont Ave.
This is a fancy cd holder Brad purchased from Canada that he mounted to his wall in such a way that he couldn't remove it. It's now a permanent, cool, addition to the room. You can see the stairs up to the attic from this shot as well.
Brad's expensive bed, nightstand and mirror, which took months to arrive and are in themselves a story of frustration, are in this picture. It's not the best picture but it does convey a sense of the room's current style.
This is from the second story, as one enters the salmon room (the upstairs bathroom is just to the right of the cameraman in this shot). Obviously, there's very little furniture in this room as Helena had just moved out when this picture was taken.
Once one enters the salmon room, and turn right, one will see the fireplace and a large bookshelf. The bookshelf has seen too much action to move anywhere. The room itself is the largest bedroom in the house, not including the nook, which adds even more space.
Here's the radiator in the salmon room (you could just barely see it in the entrance shot above) along with one of the two windows. I really love this picture, I'm not sure why.
Here's the nook in the salmon room, colored a deep blue. There'd be more shots of the interior but the spy camera I'm using doesn't have a wide enough lens to capture it. It's got two windows on either side and corresponds to the office nook below it perfectly. Originally, Helena had her bed in this room. It fit, just barely. After a week of sleeping there she decided that, although it was cool, having a huge dressing room wasn't all it was cracked up to be. So she moved the bed back into the regular room and made the nook her dressing room. In the process she covered up the windows, which made it seem less spacious. It looks better now.
Here's a shot leaving the salmon room. The bathroom is to the left in the hall, with the blue room down the hall to the right. All the floors are hardwood, with the exception of the entertainment room.
That's it so far. I'm still uploading other images to this page so be sure to check back often.
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