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trials and tribulations : EasyClosets not easy (for plaster walls)

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Following the glowing recommendation of friends who used EasyClosets systems to maximize the storage space of their San Francisco condo, I ordered shelving to convert our small hall closet into a pantry. We have a larger closet in the family room that we use for coats, and the hall closet is directly across from the (also small) kitchen. My hope is to move the collection of small kitchen appliances out of the dining room and off of the kitchen counters, along with the canning supplies currently in my office and the stocks of rice milk, paper towels and distilled water that are stashed here and there under counters and at the backs of cabinets. I’d like to remove the bookshelf from the dining room entirely, relocating the cookbooks to the nearest shelf around the corner in the living room.

At any rate: EasyClosets. Nowhere on their website does the word ‘plaster’ appear, nor is there any warning statement indicating that the hardware and mounting system — set up to drive the weight of the shelves against the wall and down toward the floor — is suitable only for drywall. Nor does any such warning or distinction appear in the instruction booklet accompanying the materials. Nonetheless, the anchors are readily identifiable as drywall anchors (once you have them in front of you), and the E-Z Toggle website clearly states (when you go searching for clarification), Since plaster has a different composition than drywall, E-Z Ancor® products cannot be used.

So. Here we are with a living room full of particle board, a dining room full of the stuff that we took out of the closet to prep it plus the tools we assembled for the installation, and no pantry. I called EasyClosets and am hoping that the guy who’s ‘done a lot of installations,’ but wasn’t at his desk just then, will call me back with instructions for mounting the shelves into plaster. I’m sure they would rather do that than pay to ship the particle board back to themselves because they don’t make it clear that their system is drywall only. I, of course, would rather have mounted shelves in the closet than not, so a hardware alternative would work for everyone.

Our own research didn’t leave us very hopeful; from what we could tell, the approach for mounting wall units into plaster is nearly completely opposite that of mounting them into drywall. With drywall, you use anchors to distribute the weight across the wall as evenly as possible, and the surface takes the force. With plaster, it seems that you drive as much of the weight into the studs as possible and away from the wall itself. As our closet is adjacent to the original exterior wall, we have only the first stud off the wall to work with, smack in the middle of the space; the closet is not wide enough to span two supports. The other alternative, of course, is to install freestanding shelves that are anchored to the wall for balance only, but I can’t tell you how sick I am of that type of setup. I believe my exact statement on that topic was ‘I want a pantry, not another gosh-darn bookshelf in a closet!’ It was late, I was tired, but the sentiment is the truth (and if you know me I’m sure you can guess that by gosh-darn I mean a whole bunch of other stuff not suitable for prime time).

Hopefully EasyClosets will pull a bunny out of a hat for me and save us from having to have another gosh-darn bookshelf in a closet.

trials and tribulations : EasyClosets not easy (for plaster walls)

patchy DSL

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Last month we started the process of switching our DSL from Verizon to Speakeasy, with the intention of trying Speakeasy’s VOIP service. After a year of being harassed via evening calls by Verizon trying to sell us FIOS — each time being told by their customer service people that ‘it takes a while to get off the list’ and ‘we don’t control the list’ and being promised that I wouldn’t hear from them again — I decided I was done with Verizon. We had Speakeasy DSL for two years in the District and had changed to Verizon when we moved out here because it was less expensive. In terms of DSL service, the Verizon service was comparable to what we’d had from Speakeasy, with only slightly more frequent modem reboots required for line drops.

Since we got our new dedicated line installed we’ve had nothing but difficulty. The line has trouble locking on a signal, it bounces all over creation, it only works consistently in safe mode — with about half the speed we’re paying for — and even then it drops in the evenings and on the weekends. This makes it a little difficult to follow up on all the communications we have in progress with basement repair companies and caterers, to say the least. I certainly have no intention of transferring my phone to a completely unreliable service.

For the most part Speakeasy has been responsive. They’ve taken our calls and tested our line many many times; I think we currently have five or six open service tickets for various aspects of the problem. They have agreed that our line is not yet installed. They just haven’t fixed it yet. Granted, they are limited by our schedule (going out of town for a week stalled the process) and the schedules of the people who maintain the physical systems and have not been available to swap out circuit cards and the like on weekends. Still, it’s been a month and we’ve had only craptastic to nonexistent DSL service with no end in sight. If I weren’t switching from Verizon because I believe the company to be the spawn of satan, I’d be entirely inclined to stick with what I had.

I’m sure all this is just a fluke of a series of poor mechanical connections and I’m hopeful that the service techs will be able to locate and fix the problems this week. In the meantime, I’ll continue to do a lot of things around the house that are generally neglected for lack of time and conduct my business by phone (which is my least favorite way to communicate after spending six years in a long-distance relationship). We do what we must.

patchy DSL

garden log : what a difference a week makes

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Blooming row of yellow daylilies at the top of the front bed.

We returned from our trip this week to the sight of our yellow daylilies in full riotous bloom. They had started to bloom before we left, but the five days of rain and sun did them good and they are magnificent now. At some point I’m sure they’ll need to be thinned and I might break up the monotony with some other plants, or at least different varieties in various shades of yellow and orange. For now, though, I’m just enjoying the bright swathe of color. There’s really no comparison to how they looked last year; this spring’s rain and the additional year to become established have made them into a veritable wall of flowers.

Our days away have also made it possible to see the impact of the herbicides on the patches of poison ivy that we’re working to eradicate from the yard. Not much, as the case may be: we’re definitely going to need to reapply, possibly several more times through the summer. Ah well. Despite the claims of the label — and the exhortations to phone poison control of any of the spray whatsoever comes into contact with any part of my body — I suspected that our ivy might not be so easily vanquished. No rush, though. If not this year, next year; poison ivy is nasty enough that I won’t be giving up so easily.


Three blooms on the Louise Odier rose.

Sadly, our week away meant we missed the last of the wonderfully fragrant Louise Odier blooms. Perhaps the bush will bloom again later in the season; this will be summer I learn as much as I can about the roses I’ve inherited. I plan to pick the brain of a gardener acquaintance on the verge of retirement, during the three days per week he’ll be at home. Hopefully between his advice and books from the library I’ll be able to develop a strategy for moving the bushes without killing them come autumn. For now, I enjoy the multitude of blooms on the Blaze bushes and work on sketching out plans for my little island bed of herbs.

garden log : what a difference a week makes

garden log : a whole lot of planning

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The lavender bursting out in new growth.

My garden notes these days are trending more toward the ‘to be undertaken when I have more time, money and energy’ and away from ‘done done done!’ Happily, growth continues without me: the lavender has taken to its new home and is sending out all kinds of shoots, the first yellow daylily of the summer appeared this morning, and the roses continue to bloom. I haven’t made any more progress on the peony identification front—I emailed Kelway’s asking for help, but haven’t received a response—but I have a new bloom to work with: the transplanted peonies produced a single blossom that opened up today, so I’ll take some photos and see what I can learn.

In terms of the future, I’ve been researching roses and sketching out a plan for preparing a new bed and moving a large old climber to a sunnier roomier spot against the south wall of the addition. The prep appears to entail major soil modification, in the form of compost and topsoil addition, and the purchase of an arbor. We’ll then let the bed sit and get nice and juicy over the summer while I research how to actually move the plant in the fall. This approach has the added bonus of giving me plenty of time to shop for a suitably un-kitschy arbor; I’m fussy with regard to avoiding the country cottage look as much as possible while still filling the house with color and the garden with flowers.

The other plant-shifting project that I have in mind for June involves the creation of a raised border bed in the middle of our front yard. Well, truthfully, at the edge of our front yard—thus the border aspect—but in the middle of the expanse of grass made up by our lawn and our neighbor’s. This bed will serve several purposes: improving the drainage of the front yard, visually defining the edge of the yard, rerouting of the letter carrier, and providing a home for several sun-loving plants that are currently hanging about in less than ideal circumstances. Over the past couple of weeks I’ve acquired three little sprouts that need to go into the ground soon. The rosemary and ‘Italian oregano’ (thyme) will go into the new bed, with plenty of room to grow into nice sizable little shrubs; both should overwinter here without a problem. The summersweet is destined for the existing bed, but its future location is currently occupied by a clump of yellow daylilies and some garlic chives. So, those two plants will be moved to the new bed as well. It’s my hope to put the small fragrant rose bush—the Crimson Glory—into that front bed as well, but I need to do a little more research on soil conditions and wind protection and that sort of thing before I make a final decision about that.

In the meantime, I water them in their little pots and hope for the best!

garden log : a whole lot of planning

garden log : peony identification project

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Bloom from the peony that came with the house.


The peony bush in question.

My goal for this week has been to conclusively identify the peony that came with our house. It hasn’t been as easy as I’d hoped. Part of the problem is that I lack knowledge of the correct flower-describing terminology, which makes using the search function on HelpMeFind’s peony page more challenging and less productive than it should be. Is my bloom pink? Yellow? Double? An anemone? This was easier with the roses, as I had a borrowed rose book in front of me to provide the basics with regard to double blooms and such.

Nonetheless, by blundering around the web for a while and poring over pages of results from a Google images search on ‘peony,’ I’ve come up with two possible matches for my plant. Our house was built in 1936, and the peony was likely planted by the first owner; at the least, I’m quite sure it wasn’t planted by the most recent owners, post-1983. I first decided I had a Lady Alexandra Duff peony, based on the bloom description and the year of introduction in the United States (1932). Upon further looking, though, I’m not as certain. Our plant definitely has drooping blooms, and quite a bit more yellow in the blooms than other photos of Lady Alexandra Duff plants.

My new theory is that I have a Bridal Veil peony, introduced at an unknown point prior to 1958 and still for sale by Kelway’s. Of course, I’ve been unable to find any more information than that, and am wondering if this is an alternate name for the variety. I would love to learn the year of introduction and more of a history of the plant, so if any peony experts are reading this, let me know what you think!

garden log : peony identification project