Reuters Shoot: The Backstory (May 31, 2012)

Reuters photojournalist Brian Snyder kindly gave me these photographs he shot at the house on May 19th for the newswire’s recent story about resident curators. The piece, by Kathleen Kingsbury, ran on reuters.com, msnbc.com, cnbc.com, usatoday.com, yahoo.com, the Daily Mail in the U.K., and scores of other smaller online outlets. The Huffington Post followed up on May 27th with its own article on resident curatorships. We’re thrilled that our largely undocumented little house has finally made the historic record.

Brian requested these posed shots after photographing us at work for nearly two hours. (This long view ran in the U.S.; the closeup ran in the U.K.) I’m hiding my sweaty face and shiny nose in Kevin’s shadow. He’s tipping in toward me at my request, to help me take cover. The raking is staged; I’d been weeding, but the rake made a better prop than a spade. 

The shoot took place at the start of my week-long vacation, which I spent, for the most part, priming trim. Unlike my fashion inspiration Tom Sawyer, I like whitewashing. Good thing: We have 26 windows and 10 doorways, all of which the state stripped during the lead abatement in 2011. I’d wanted to seal the unfinished wood, but historically our frames would have been painted.

Here we’re sanding the window frames on the west-facing wall of our bedroom, to prep them for primer. We’re mostly removing gypsum plaster, which splattered on the wood when Kevin refinished the walls, and smoothing out the putty he used to fill in damaged sections of the window frames. Curiously, the state’s hazmat squad left the lead paint intact in the center of the doors and on the top of the window frames. We’re guessing they removed only unstable paint from chewable surfaces. 

Brian shot this photo from our guest bedroom looking through the hallway, where Kevin is futzing with electrical wires, to the master bedroom. The guestroom is laced with graffiti, which I’ll detail when we tackle that room, once we’re living in the house.

We’re doing minimal yard work this year, while the house itself is undergoing major renovation, and mainly aiming to keep the front lawn tidy (no small chore). We’re also taking stock of what’s already growing annually on the grounds, from lilacs to pear trees to tiny antique wild white roses, which are running rampant right now. Stay tuned for details on our flora and fauna.

We can’t wait to get a certificate of occupancy, so we can turn our attention outdoors and buy our own lawn mower (this one’s a loaner from the state), paint the exterior, install new roofs, repair the chimneys, clear out the ferns and this silly tree from the backside of the house, and start gardening. All these expenses and time commitments are luxuries, however, until we move in and put the “resident” in resident curators (target date: July 1st).