Frank Pepe Pizzeria Napoletana in Fairfield

The best pizza in the world is coming to within a mile of my house!

Frank Pepe Pizzeria Napoletana is widely regarded as the best pizza in the world. And after 80-some-odd years of operating establishments on Wooster Street in New Haven, CT, they are opening a new location mere minutes away from my house in Fairfield.

Now, it was never any great hassle to travel 30 minutes up to New Haven for great pizza. But this new Fairfield location will change the dynamic of take out pizza for us at home.

I swung by the new location today -- which is still under construction -- and managed to snap a couple of photos. Pepe's is taking over the location of CJ's Restaurant on Commerce Drive in Fairfield. This is an up-and-coming area, but is currently home to some auto dealerships and other industrial and trade-oriented supply shops. It's a little off the beaten path from the typical Fairfield restaurant locations, being located across from a electrical supply store, and a quarter mile down from Connecticut Limosine's Bridgeport station.

It looks like the restaurant will take over the entire first floor of the building. I don't know what's on the second floor. (Rooms to rent?) There is a modest sized parking lot (15-20 spots) to the side of the building, and the entrance is on that side as well. As you walk into Pepe's, you'll notice what I presume will be a dining area to the left. This could also be the waiting area. Straight ahead is a short, shallow ramp up to another dining area. What looks to be a service area already has a beverage refrigerator installed (labeled Foxon Park, of course). To the right is the counter, pizza-making area, and the oven.

Ah, the oven. If you've seen the oven at Pepe's in New Haven, you'll know that it is a beast of an oven. It takes up the entire wall, and is coal-fired. It looks like they've built a replica for the Fairfield location. Interestingly, when I was there taking pictures today, the restaurant was clearly weeks away from opening. But someone was already there firing up the oven. I presume this is to break-in and "season" the oven for Opening Day.

I'm already plotting my first visit pies: 1 white clam, 1 sausage. Stay tuned for the first report...

Mimi Wins Barrymore Award for Outstanding Set Design

And the Barry goes to...

It's a couple of months old, but I did want to mention that my sister -- Mimi Lien -- won a Barrymore Award for Outstanding Set Design! Mimi won for her design for the Wilma Theater production of Outrage, in which she designed a "sprawling vertical set [that] looks like academe in collision with history."

The Barrymores are like the Tonys, but focused on the Philadelphia theater scene, so it's obviously regional and not national in scope.

Still, this represent a significant achievement as she was up against some pretty established set designers. Our entire family is so very proud of Mimi, and we're sure this is just the first in a long line of feathers in her cap.

Congratulations, Mimi!

House Project - Day ???: Tunnel<-Light

Keeping to my recent bi-monthly update schedule, I thought I'd take the opportunity to write-up another entry about the status of our house remodeling project.

In the last episode, the drywall had just been installed. Since then, as expected, a lot more has happened, and we're getting really close to being able to move in.

The kitchen cabinets got installed, and they really look nice and crisp and clean. The color we chose for the cabinets -- Bisque Glaze -- was a little yellower than we expected, especially when seeing them next to the flat white of the wall primer. It would all turn out for the best, as we shall see later.

On the exterior of the house, the existing roof shingles were taken off, and the entire house reshingled with the Certainteed Independence Weathered Wood shingles that we used on the new garage a couple of years ago. In addition, the existing furnace chimney was also rebuilt.

Then the siding crew came in and started to trim the windows and put up the siding. The trim for the older windows ended up being a bit wider then originally envisioned, and perhaps a tad off from a proportion standpoint. It was necessary to add this width due to the construction of the original window trim, and the fact that it was necessary to retain this original trim.

Meanwhile, work continued inside as Kevin the tile guy laid down the tile in the powder room, kid's bathroom, and master bathroom. We chose hexagonal ceramic tiles for the upstairs bathrooms, to try and retain some period flavor. For the powder room, we chose a simple, squarish pattern with natural stone, to complement the natural material richness of the kitchen countertop.

After the tile got laid, the bathroom vanities got installed.

New windows were punched through and installed in the dining room and Miranda's room.

John started milling and installing the window trim work, as well as the baseboard trim, trying to replicate the original trim work as much as possible.

Outside, the siding continued to go up, along with detail pieces for mounting lights. When done, the new siding gave the house a nice and cleaner look. The 5" clapboard might not be absolutely historically correct for our Dutch Colonial Revival style, but we think it looks good. The deck railings are PVC and maintenance-free (yea!), and look great!

It then came time to paint the interior of the house. Originally we planned on tackling the painting ourselves, but when it came time to paint, neither Wendy or I thought we could muster the energy to tackle the painting ourselves. So we hired a painter. And thank God we did, because the painting was truly a larger task than we had anticipated, and the painter we hired has been doing a great job.

Finally, within the last month, came the installation of various finish materials. First, the masons installed the brick surround of the fireplace. We had a choice of tumbled or non-tumbled brick, and we chose non-tumbled for, again, a crisper look.

At around the same time, the kitchen granite countertop and kid's bathroom countertop got installed by SMC Stone. They had to come back to install the master bath countertop, because the sink holes got cut incorrectly.

And the Kempas wood flooring was installed through the new portions of the house. The flooring installer originally started laying out the floor using a pattern, given the 4-5 differently sized pieces that the flooring came in. However, neither Wendy and I were very happy with the results, so we asked him to just use a random pattern, making sure that repetition in sizes, seams, and color was minimized.

The end is near, the light at the end of the tunnel grows brighter, and we are tentatively scheduled to move back in the weekend of September 24.

And of course, as usual, there are more pictures uploaded to my Flickr "House" picture set than I've shown and/or linked to on this blog.

House Project - Day 113 - Drywall

It's been a long while since the last house project update. Since then, a lot has happened in the house: plumbing and electrical rough-ins were completed and passed inspection. More doors and windows were installed.

Our existing house did not have any insulation in the walls, so we took the opportunity to have insulation blown in during the remodeling. One place they didn't blow it into was the ceiling above the sun room. John the Builder still has to get the insulation in there somehow.

A central air-conditioning was installed in the attic to service the second floor. And the electrical system was consequently upgraded.

The new Majestic fireplace insert got installed into the fireplace bay in the family room. As is becoming the norm, Wendy and I struggled to find the unit with just the right combination of: size, efficiency, viewing area, refractory brick pattern, and install dimensions. Some compromises were made, as you might expect, and we ended up with a Majestic unit that had slightly less viewing area than originally planned. But the brick patter of the refractory ended up being just what Wendy wanted.

The door to the basement had to be relocated to the foyer, with the stairs re-routed to match. This would have made for a tight squeeze for moving anything into and out of the basement. Fortunately, the new foundation area has a bulkhead.

Most of the drywall was put up this past weekend. In the family room, the application of the drywall has predictably made the room feel smaller.

In particular, the ceiling feels lower than we otherwise would like. This may be because we recently visited my sister's new place in Brooklyn, with its nearly 10 foot ceilings!

With drywall in place, the new master bedroom has turned into the most dramatic new room in the house. The transition from hallway to raised bedroom level accentuates the feeling of the ceiling's height here, and the tray ceiling adds depth (I'm talking like an Iron Chef commentator). It's sort of a Frank Lloyd Wright thing happening there.

I hope to update with a little more regularity, but with an upcoming business trip, the next update probably won't happen until a bit after that.

As usual, there are more pictures uploaded to my Flickr "House" picture set than I've shown and/or linked to on this blog.

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