Darnit

Due to circumstances beyond my control, there will be no putting together of sawed-in-half doors tomorrow.  Or the next day.  In fact, not until a week from Monday.

Mare's voicemail message said only, "Um, I know we planned to work on the doors tomorrow, but..uh...I'm not gonna be able to make it."

Mare is also building a timberframe house for some guy down around Truman Lake.  I bet it pays better than gluing doors together for me.  So I really can't blame him for not coming tomorrow.  But still...darnit.

Waiting....

We took all the half-doors off their hinges almost two weeks ago.  Wrote numbers on the doors and on the door jambs so we'd be sure to put each door back in the right doorway.  Threw the brass hinges in a pile on the dining room floor.  Left the original steeple hinges neatly piled on the kitchen table next to the paint-boiling Crock Pot. 

And the doors?  They're stacked together against the chimney in the dining room.  Waiting.

Waiting, just like me, for a day off and Mare's trip up here to put another door (or maybe two) back together again.  Sigh...

Those boxes there against the wall?  Don't worry, I'm not moving.  I just have to pack up everything in the china cabinet so I can wallpaper behind it.  And that big cat there?  That's Christopher, wishing he was little and agile enough to jump up on the buffet with Louis.

Hello, Beautiful

I think I can hear Mrs. Kelly applauding. 

For the first time in decades, her dining room door is in one piece again. 

Door Dreamin'

I think I might be obsessed.  Just a little.  See, last night at work I kept thinking about filling in the seams and holes in that door Mare and I stuck back together.  All night long (in between sending the guys out to snatch people from the jaws of death, I mean) I kept thinking about that door and how nice it will look when it's finished.  Yep, just a little obsessed.  Not so's you'd notice or anything.

So when I got home I walked straight to the dining room and started mashing wood putty into that door.  First I filled the seam and then the holes where those stupid little cabinet knobs were.  (Did I tell y'all that someone put rubber bands on the knobs and then painted over 'em?  Yep.  Bet it was the same person who used paper towels and #2 pencils as insulation around the attic vents.) 

Then I did the same thing to the other side of the door.  Exciting, isn't it?  (In this picture I haven't wiped off the excess wood filler yet.)

But excitement didn't stop there!  After that, I filled in where the hinges used to be on the door jamb.

And then (this is the really exciting one, folks) I filled in where the hinges used to be on the edge of the door.  I'm actually kinda proud of how this looks so far.  Look at the nice edge I got on that thing. 

My idea is that, while I'm sleeping, the wood filler will cure and when I wake up, I can paint the door.  Mare might get a little pissy about that because he still has to drill out the holes for the mortise and the doorknobs, but he'll get over it.  Besides, he won't be back for a week and I don't want to wait that long to see how the door will look once it's painted. 

Now it's off to Dreamland for me.  Maybe I'll have that dream again where I find the big box of original doorknobs, backplates, mortises and striker plates....sure wish that one would come true!

Ode to O. Possum

Departed from this life January 18th or so, and still resting at the east end of the alley where he was mercilessly struck down in the prime of his life by a passing motorist, Mr. O. Possum.  Mr. Possum was well-known throughout the Old Neighborhoods National Register Historic District as a frequent and unwanted visitor to the front porches and trash cans of the neighborhood's homes and was rumored to be a possum of interest in the death of Mr. Blackbeard, a much-beloved cat of the district.  By his uniform unpleasantness and general ugliness of character, Mr. Possum won the unanimous disgust and near hatred of all who came in contact with him.  During his last moments, he appeared to be aware of his impending fate as his trademark snarl is now forever imprinted upon his lips.  Though called so unexpectedly from this life, and in the midst of his trash-raiding, we who knew him are consoled by the fact that never again will the call "Here, kitty, kitty" be answered by Mr. Possum's hissing.  Our loss is Hell's infinite gain, in that Mr. Possum shall surely spend all eternity posted at its gates. 

One Door Done

What?  You want to know what happened with the doors?  I tried to post last night, but I was just too darn tired.  Either that, or I have lead poisoning.  One of the symptoms is fatigue, you know.  But I digress...

First we turned the second parlor (reknowned for its pee-pee carpet, which is almost gone) into a workshop.  See? 

Lacking sawhorses or a decent worktable, we improvised with my extension ladder and two pieces of lumber that used to hold up the gigantic cornice in the dining room.  (By the way, the curtains on the left are soon to be gone; the curtains on the right are the keepers.  And does anyone know the name of the pattern of that quilt in the corner?) 

My idea was to take pictures of the door repair process as we went along, but Mare didn't really want me to.  "If it doesn't work, I'd rather not have my failure all laid out in photos," he said.  So, briefly, what we did was this:  we used maybe a dozen or so biscuits and a gob of wood glue, clamped the two halves of the door together with those big bar clamps you see at the left of the photo, and waited for the glue to dry.  And waited.  While we waited we went to KFC and had lunch, drove past an old farmhouse he used to own and learned it's for sale again, took the rest of the doors off the hinges and stacked the steeple hinges in the Crock-Pot for later.  Then we checked the glue.  Still not dry.  So we wandered into the front parlor to look at the line where the picture rail used to be and discussed how putting it up again ought to be the Next Big Thing we do while I lamented the cost of this Bradbury frieze I'm in love with. 

And then we hung the door.  See?

It still looks like a door sawn in half because of that big seam down the middle and the holes where the dorky cabinet knobs used to be.  Those will be filled in later with Wood Bond.  But it feels like a regular door.  Yes it does!  We took turns opening and closing it at least 20 times.  It works smoothly on those hinges I cooked the paint off of.  It might work even better with a doorknob, right?  I have one, a nice mortise set of Eastlake brass knobs that I scored on ebay.  But the old mortise hole was filled in with water putty which is hard as a rock.  Mare will have to drill it out to put the new mortise set in there, and we just ran out of time yesterday.  He'll be back next week to biscuit together another door and finish up this one.

But wait...what's that to the right of the door, on the trim?  Is that...could it be?....Yes, it's restored transom window hardware!  Here's a somewhat better look:

(I really need to get a better camera.)  Bigify that photo and check it out.  The operator rod seems to be bronze, the little knob I showed y'all earlier is brass, and the thumb lift (that little thing at the bottom of the rod) is copper.  Wow!  Who knew that was hidden under all those layers of paint?!  We got the paint off by sticking first one end of the rod and then the other into a big pot of boiling water...but that left the middle still painted.  We figured out that if we laid the rod across the pot and turned it rotisserie-style, the heat from the steam would soften the paint enough for us to remove it.  Hence the lead poisoining comment at the beginning of this post.  We had probably half a cup of paint flakes, most of which I'm certain contain lead, all over the range top, the floor, and our shirts.  But of course we took safety precautions, right?  Yeah.  We pulled our t-shirts up over our faces.  This is why we get our lead levels checked every year or so.  We are Not Careful. 

One door done (almost) and only six more to go...

Today

Today I ...

went to Wal-Mart, which I never, but never, do on a Sunday morning, and now I remember why...

called the antique mall and...

brought this very cool 1950-something RCA Victor console box home with me...

and put my stuff inside it while it was being thoroughly inspected by two of the kitties.  (The tv that's in there is temporary; my bigger tv is too large to fit inside there.) 

And after that...

I replaced this thermostat...

with this one, which is programmable so I don't have to worry anymore when I'm at work that I forgot to turn the heat down, and which will make the house nice and warm when I'm awake and a little less nice and warm while I'm sleeping, all without my doing a thing...

And then,

I tore out two more strips of pee-pee carpet, which I carefully measured to be sure they were short enough to meet the trash company's exacting standards...

And after that...

I rearranged the furniture in the front parlor.  Under the watchful eye of Louis, of course. 

And tomorrow...

Tomorrow Mare is coming over and we'll work on the doors.

But tonight...

Tonight I am taking a nice long shower and then snuggling with the kitties.