Uncategorized – Page 4

16 04, 2013

My kitchen remodel a year later

By Steve McKee|2019-04-25T17:05:49+00:00April 16th, 2013|Uncategorized|Comments Off on My kitchen remodel a year later

McKee Kitchen It was just over a year ago that I finished my kitchen remodel. I've now had many months living with the real-life impact of all my decisions and am happy to report that it's actually worked out very well, though I still sometimes pivot left instead of right when going for the silverware. That's just me getting over a twenty year run in the old kitchen. Now we don't have to squeeze around one another at the sink if the refrigerator door is open, and that is a beautiful thing. Guests seem to like the new [...]

5 12, 2012

Five days in the Grandest of Canyons

By Steve McKee|2019-04-25T17:05:49+00:00December 5th, 2012|Travel Tales, Uncategorized|Comments Off on Five days in the Grandest of Canyons

On our big raft on the Colorado River we live in swimsuits, water shoes, and SPF 30 sun-block. We have lifejackets too, but those come off whenever we pull up to the little sand beaches to hike the side canyons and creeks. If we get wet, the canyon heat dries us within a half hour. It all works. We get wet often. There are twelve of us on a five day trip through a hundred miles of the Grand Canyon with two professional guides. Our raft is thirty feet long with big pontoons on the sides and is [...]

11 10, 2012

The house-move makes its final landing

By Steve McKee|2019-04-25T17:05:50+00:00October 11th, 2012|Phil Joy's big house move, Uncategorized|Comments Off on The house-move makes its final landing

A few farmers’ markets ago my son Wesley and I accepted an offer to tour the crawlspace under Phil Joy’s big Queen Anne house. This is the house that arrived in Benicia by barge from Napa several years ago with the intention of being transformed into a Bed and Breakfast Inn and is occasionally written about here. The house had recently been lowered onto its new foundation – a red-letter day for a house-move – especially for this one because it was years in the making. We all felt at home kneeling in the dirt under the old timbers of [...]

24 09, 2012

Notes from the Coconut Coast

By Steve McKee|2019-04-25T17:05:50+00:00September 24th, 2012|Thinking like an architect, Travel Tales, Uncategorized|Comments Off on Notes from the Coconut Coast

“It’s too bad they didn’t add windows right where those blank walls face the view,” I said to my son as we sat in the hot jets of the spa at our Kauai condo resort. I looked over the arrangement of buildings and could see that every unit had an ocean view of some sort, but here was an easy opportunity to make the end units especially fabulous with sweeping views on two sides – but the architect didn’t do it. And what a view it was – the Pacific Ocean endlessly turning itself from blue to white against the [...]

26 05, 2012

At the Vietnam Veterans Memorial

By Steve McKee|2019-04-25T17:05:50+00:00May 26th, 2012|My favorite columns, Uncategorized|Comments Off on At the Vietnam Veterans Memorial

My family and I returned to the wall because I needed to see it again. This time we had a name to look up, Wayne Anderson. He was a distant relation, not ever met by me, but at the hotel I had overheard his mother talking to my aunt. “We found Wayne’s name on the wall” she said, just like that, as if we would all know what the wall was. And we did. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial wall is in Washington DC in a side area of the vast green mall between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument. [...]

4 05, 2012

How Venice got its mojo

By Steve McKee|2019-04-25T17:05:50+00:00May 4th, 2012|Travel Tales, Uncategorized|Comments Off on How Venice got its mojo

My buddy Chris and his family are heading to Italy soon and I don’t get to go. But since I’ve been already, I got over it and settled for watching A&E’s “The Miraculous Canals of Venice,” a forty minute documentary available on Youtube and also as “instant viewing” on Netflix. It’s a way to get a dose of Venezia without having to even get out of your chair. I love getting a brief overview of a place with interesting history, especially if the emphasis is on interesting big-picture stuff and not so much on political details and dates. Some [...]