By Request

Milah asked if I had any photos of what my dining room looked like when I moved in.  Unfortunately, I lost the pics I took on Closing Day when my old laptop died a few years ago.  (That taught me to back-up everything on a flash drive.)

This is the best I could do...

A lot of things are different now, huh? 

Check out that wallpaper.  Itty-bitty flowers on a stark white background.  I'm not entirely sure this stuff wasn't actually shelf liner.  Obviously, this photo was taken when I was tearing up the carpet.  That top layer is the blue wool carpet that was throughout the entire house, except for the back porch, my bedroom, and the bathrooms.  It was probably really nice carpet at one time...like in 1982.  (The red stuff is carpet pad, which was stapled to the floor.)  The bottom layer of carpet is not only absolutely horrid, but it was glued to the floor.  Finding that in the dining room too (after uncovering it in both parlors) caused me to fling myself on the floor and wail.  I'm not even kidding.  The trim in this room is cream now, not off-the-shelf Walmart White.  The door was still in two pieces, before Mare and I used lots of biscuits and glue (and some really big clamps) to put it back together again.  And lastly, there's Big Christopher....gosh, I miss that cat.  I had to give him away after he developed diabetes and needed insulin shots at regular intervals.  (Working 12-hour shifts really sucks sometimes.)  As far as I know, he's alive and well and back to being Greeter Cat at the vet clinic.

Oh, and that wallpaper had a border, too.

A border which didn't really coordinate with the wallpaper...

But the best worst part of the room was the curtains.  There was a gigantic upholstered cornice made all in one piece which covered the upper third of the bay windows.  (Think upside-down upholstered headboard with swoopy curves, covered in pale blue raw silk and moss green velvet.)  I really wish I still had a photo of that thing.  Dylan (my son) volunteered to take it down for me one night, thinking it would be a quick project.  Three hours later he was done.  The thing was attached to the wall with a variety of nails, screws and big metal brackets.  We took it apart and saved the lumber from it.  A couple of years later, Mare and I used the lumber from that cornice to build sawhorses and a little worktable when we put the doors back together.  Told y'all it was a really big cornice. 

The cornice and the curtains matched the ones in the front parlor.

Hideous.  Hid-eeeee-ous.  I kept expecting the cast from Dynasty to show up at my house.

I like my dining room much better now....but you know, someday in the distant future, someone else will live in this house and they'll complain about the ugly damask wallpaper in there...

I Blame Sarah

I blame Sarah, my daughter-in-law, for what I am about to tell you. 

Like everyone else with an old house (or any house, for that matter) I have a very long to-do list.  Some of the projects on that list have fallen into the "someday" category.  They're things I'd like to do, but for various reasons they get pushed further down the list in favor of other projects until their timetable changes from "this fall" to "next spring" to "someday".  Y'all know how it goes.

Wellllll.....one of those "someday" projects just moved to "right now".

Take a good look at this photo.  Notice anything unusual?  (Not the pane of stained glass that's been replaced with clear; that's been that way for Lord knows how long.)  Look at the bottom of the windows.  I'll give you a minute to think about it.  You scroll down when you're ready.

The storm windows are gone and the windows are open. 

Wait.  Let me say that again.

The storm windows are gone and the windows are open!!  HOORAY!!

Like I said, this is all Sarah's fault.  She knew that (someday) I planned to take the ugly storm windows off and cut the windows back open again.  Sarah thought this project deserved to be moved up on the timetable, so every time we had nice weather around here, she'd text me and say "I have my windows open and it's sooo nice in my house."  Persistence pays off.  A couple of weeks of that and I decided that my windows needed to be open too.

Last week I brought it up to Charlie.  "I'm thinking about taking those ugly damn storm windows down and cutting the windows open."

Charlie: "Why would you want to do that right now?"

Me:  "Because those storm windows are ugly as sin and the house would look better without 'em and so I can have the windows open."

Charlie:  "They keep out some weather."

Me:  "Not much.  Look at all that dirt and stuff between the windows.  They're not exactly airtight."

Charlie:  "Without screens, you're gonna have bugs in your house."  I pondered that for a moment.  Then he said, "Grasshoppers are likely to be bad this year.  They could jump right in your house."

That about made me change my mind right there.  I am terrified of grasshoppers.  All-out, screaming like a little girl terrified.  The thought of those nasty things actually inside my house.  Shivers.

But then I got over that and texted White Trash Bob.  "I'm thinking of taking the storm windows off my house."

His reply:  "Do it.  They serve no useful purpose."

So I went out and took four storm windows off the house, and then I cut through the globbed-on paint on the inside sashes, and then I went outside and cut through the globbed-on paint on the outside sashes.  (In fairness, I should admit that some of that paint was globbed on by me, but only two coats.  The other quarter-inch of paint well pre-dates my ownership of this house.)  And then the windows still didn't open, so I did what I always do when I run into problems and I called WTB.  He came right over and with a flat-head screwdriver, a hammer, a Wonder Bar (aka wrecker bar), and a whole lot of patience we pried those two windows open. 

"Be very careful when you hammer," WTB cautioned.  "And don't ever pry on the middle of the window.  Just on the corners.  You don't want to break the glass."  Indeed I don't.  Almost all of the windows in this house still have the original wavy, bubbly glass in them.

And then I shut the windows again, called Sarah, and told her to come right over because I had something very important to show her.  When she got here, I opened one front window and then the other one.  She laughed and laughed.

As it turns out, I'm really glad Sarah talked me into this.  I have some touch-up painting to do on the house this spring anyway, and while I'm doing that I can go around, take all the ugly storm windows off, pry the windows open, and then repaint the trim if I need to.  Three windows open.  Fifteen more to go. 

How I Spent My Spring Break

I'm back, y'all!  My unexpected absence from blogging--and from working on my house--was because a few days after I finished the floors I had a really bad arthritis flare.  I wish I could say I handled it well, that I was all stoic and inspirational like Helen Keller or something, but the truth is that every morning when I woke up in pain I said bad swears.  A lot of bad swears.  I'm used to having my knees snap-crackle-pop after I climb up and down a ladder all day, but this involved both ankles, my right knee, and my right hand.  For three weeks.  Y'all know I have no patience for this schidt.  So I liberally dropped F-bombs, hobbled around my neighborhood, and didn't do much on the house.  Thank God that's over. 

This week was a whole lot better.  The dining room is about 98% done.

Note that the china cabinet is missing.  So are the register covers.  That's the 2% that isn't done.  (Oh, and the centerpiece there is a bouquet of peacock feathers, a birthday present from WTB a couple of years ago.)

I planted some flowers.

I accidentally threw away the plant tags before I blogged, so I don't know what the flowers are called. 

I planted viola (what my mom calls Johnny-Jump-Ups) all along the front walkway, but they're still teeny and didn't photograph well.

And I hung up two strips of wallpaper in the front parlor....after I went out and bought a big piece of plastic to cover the nice floor with.



There's not much left to paper--just the long wall with that window and the "short" wall where the fireplace is.  A good couple of days of work and I'll have it done.  I might've gotten more paper up, but I was distracted by another project.  I'll tell you about that tomorrow.

Happy Reading

If you're anything like me, you love to read all about other people's houses and the projects they're working on.  (For me, this might sometimes be simply that misery loves company.)  So I was really unhappy when the HouseBlogs website started having trouble and then went down for the count. 

Happily, I've discovered the HouseBlogging site.  It combines the things we all liked best about the other website--a way to read all the blogs we're interested in on one site and the ability to search for blogs by location or house style or project--and they also have a Facebook page and a Twitter feed.  I've re-discovered some favorite blogs that I'd lost track of after the demise of the other website.  (Incidentally, the two websites are not affiliated, that I know of.)

You can access HouseBlogging via the above link, or by clicking their badge on the right-hand side of this blog.  If you have a house blog of your own, please send these nice folks a request to add it to their blog directory. 

Happy reading!

Hell's Bells

I am not good at making decisions.  I get nervous if I have to spend more than a hundred bucks at a time.  I lack the gene or whatever it is that makes some people able to perfectly arrange furniture.

So this week when I picked out a new couch and a new area rug, bought them, and then tried to figure out where to put them in the front parlor I almost broke out in hives. 

I bought the couch at my aunt and uncle's furniture store.  I went there three days in a row and sat on almost every couch in there.  My Aunt Helen, clearly concerned about my mental health, patted me on the shoulder and said, "I'll just let you look some more, hon" before escaping to her little kitchen at the back of the store.  On the third day the heavens smiled upon me and my friend Shirley was there.  She's one of the owners of Riley's Pub, where I went when I was trying to decide what color to paint my house.  Back then I threw a dozen or so paint chips on a table in frustration and let Shirley pick the colors.  Ten minutes later, she'd picked the main color and the three trim colors.  Based on that history, I showed Shirley the five couches (yes, five) I was debating among.  "That one," she said right away.  I bought it.

When my Uncle Arlie delivered the couch he asked me where I wanted him to put it. 
"There," I said. 
Then, "No, there."
After he walked over there, "Maybe it looks better over here?"
And finally, "Oh Hell's bells, just leave it in the middle and I'll decide later."

Then I moved it around 47 more times.  Which caused Charlie to say in alarm, "You pushed that thing all over the new floor?!?!"  Of course not.  Well, not without an inch of paper towels under each leg, anyway.

And now, it's here, on the only long wall in the front parlor.

Pay no attention to the lampshade, the tape measure, the ladder, and the running dog.

I like it there best.  It opens up the room more and makes it easier to place other furniture around it.

And it even looks good with the wallpaper.  (Which I really need to finish.)

There's only one teeny tiny problem.  See that long black cord in the first photo?  There to the right of the sofa, strung across the mantel?  Yeah, that.  That's the television cable. 

So the tv would be behind the couch.  That's new and different. 

Unless I can get the cable company to come over and move the cable to another corner, preferably the one diagonally from where it is now.  A corner in which my tv stand may or may not fit. 

Hell's bells.

Ta-Da!

We shoved all the furniture from the front parlor, the entryway, and the dining room into the back parlor when we refinished the floors.  It looks like a mashup of Hoarders and Holmes On Homes in there, but somehow I managed to find my camera.

I varnished the floors Friday and Saturday, and unless the nightmare I had that the house flooded and the floors were ruined proves to be prophetic, they're finished. 

The dining room

The front parlor, looking into the dining room & entryway

The entryway

The stain is Minwax Special Walnut and the varnish is Minwax Clear Polyurethane in Satin Finish.  The floors all really are about the same color; it's just the lighting in each room that makes them look darker or lighter.  The middle photo is the one that shows the color best.

Progress & A Small Disaster

I made a lot of progress today.  One coat of varnish on the floors in the entryway, the front parlor, and the dining room.  Junky cellphone pics available on my Twitter feed.  I'll take better photos and post 'em here...as soon as I find my digital camera.  (Speaking of digital cameras and progress, I finally ordered a new one.  It has more megapixels and some other nifty features that I only pretend to understand, so in the future the photos here should be of better quality.)

More progress--at least, in theory if not in practice--on the bathrooms and the back door situation.  I showed Charlie the BH&G photo of the bathroom and he said amiably, "That doesn't look too hard to do.  I'll help ya."  I thank my lucky stars for Charlie, especially since White Trash Bob paled at the thought of helping me tear up my bathroom.  (In fairness, it may have been the whole two-bathrooms-into-one plan that made him blanch.)  When Charlie and I were talking about working on the bathroom I said, "The only thing I don't like about keeping both bathrooms is that now the back door will never line up with the sidewalk."  (Keeping both bathrooms and moving the back door to its original location would mean that the back door would open into the shower.  Not so good.)  Charlie laughed and said, "Well, it's just too bad that you don't know a concrete guy who could tear up your old broken sidewalk and pour you a new one that lines up with the back door."  Now would be a good time to mention that Charlie is, in fact, a concrete guy.  Huzzah.

And...a small disaster at the end of the day today.  I was finishing up the varnish on the dining room, standing in the kitchen/dining room doorway awkwardly propping the door open with my hip (it's one of those really heavy double swinging doors like June Cleaver had) while putting on the last bit of varnish.  I heard the distinctive click...creak that means the bedroom door where all the animals were corralled had popped open.  (The door isn't quite wide enough for the latch to fully catch the hole inside the strike plate, so the door pops open fairly easily.)  I yelled, "NOOOOO!" just as Louis Cat charged past me, ran into the dining room, and leaped down the cold air return just to the right of the open door.  By the time I let go of the door, prepared myself for the inevitability that I was going to have to step in the wet varnish, and slid over to the cold air return in my flip-flops, only the end of Louis Cat's tail was visible.  He was heading down the ductwork.  I said some very bad swears and grabbed his tail.  Louis let out an unearthly wail, made worse by it echoing through the metal ductwork, as I dragged him out.  When his head popped out of the duct, so did a giant softball-sized clod of dust.  It hung in the air for a moment above Louis before it burst and a billion little dust bunnies landed all over the newly-varnished floor.  It reminded me for all the world of one of those big Roman candles on the Fourth of July...only horribly ugly instead of sparkly and pretty.  That'll be fun to sand out tomorrow....