Me, My
House
& I

Episode 12 & 13: Backyard Bliss/Sitting On The Fence

With: Ron James

Episode Outline: Torchy the dog finds a hole in the back fence - for the last time. After Brigitte gets him into the house, she checks the fence to find the out where the loose board is. No sooner does she put her hand on the rotten plank, than the whole fence (held upright by some very high tech NASA space twine) falls over. The whole back fence!

Not one to settle for just your regular solid cedar fence - Brigitte has her glinty eye on something a little more …interesting...like a Tuscan style wall.

Reality Check: Okay, everything I said earlier about the Drywall Episode being so hard? I lied.

Building a wall is waaaaaay harder…on account of the fact that it's a wall.

Everyone knows someone who can pull off the 'wonderfully dishevelled' look.

That person, with even the most greasy of hair, the most hairy of legs, the kind of clothes and personal stench, that, if borne by anyone else, would inspire civil unrest; those people who can, seemingly without effort - manage to look good even when they should look like a bag of hell.

That was the effect I was going for with this wall. I wanted it to look effortlessly old. To have an air of solid tranquility about it - without imposing a history or sense of boundary.

I wanted the three hundred year old wall I saw in Tuscany. I wanted it here, I wanted it in the suburbs of Ottawa - and I wanted it to look like it wasn't trying too hard to look 'great'.

You know those people who look great without trying? Believe me - when your not looking - they're trying.