Spring Projects

It is so strange for me to scroll down and look at those snow pictures... Life is bursting so quickly from everything right now!

Can you tell the difference in temperment of these two dogs? Yeah.

And since no one, not even the one person who reads my blog (thanks, Mama!), posted about their Springtime projects, I will write about mine for my own entertainment!

First off, we are having a foal. Since we don't know when Reagan's date of conception is, we don't know when the foal will come, what it will be (horse or mule) or what it will possibly look like. Honestly though, I don't see how Reagan can keep going and growing. She's eating 24/7 on grass and hay in addition to 6 + pounds special pellet feed with vitamins and corn oils added in three times a day. She's a machine! So, when will the Little Rea Rea come? Any day now is my guess. I'll get worried if we end up in April and there's no baby yet...

I'm also trying to work with Kahlo more.. I want to train her in several things such as barrel racing, trail competition and endurance. If we just stuck to one thing I think it would be boring for both of us. Plus, the more time we spend together and work on challenges together the better we will both be!

Another Springtime project is the beginning of the vegetable garden! Some of our seedlings have begun to sprout and we have plans to till up and compost the would be garden area. It is our first attempt to grow anything edible and neither one of us know all the little insider tricks of the trade as far as gardening goes, so I'm not expecting too much but nonetheless it is exciting! Our own little Recession Garden!

Of course, we have lots of little house projects going on as well. I'm currently looking for tiles to replace one or more of the sections of the floor part of the hearth were there once were tiles. Expense and availability are the major roadblocks at this point. I just can't justify spending 3.75 per antique white tile right now, yet I want things to be as historically accurate as possible, so I am wanting salvaged tiles, but will take reproductions. They are such small areas, but big focal points and one of the major traits of old houses - cool fireplaces! I don't want to skimp on these. I did pay a high amount per tile for the dining room fireplace, but it only needed a few tiles and they are so unique - I'm CERTAIN no one makes them anymore for any better of a price.

I'd also REALLY like to get the mudroom in shape, finish the remaining woodwork in the kitchen and put in some cabinets in the laundry as well as putting the finishing touches on decorating these areas. Oh yeah, and a new door for the art studio... and curtains... and the black board... and on and on and on! You old house people understand!!!

Everything But The Kitchen Sink!

Here they are - meet the kitchen cabinets!!!! TA-DA!!!!!!!!!

I am SO ready to put stuff in them!!!!

This wall runs parallel to the driveway. The infamous "Stove Placement Debate of 2007" took place in this very kitchen. A compromise was reached by both parties and the stove top/oven combo will be placed over 9 inches away from the window to meet code (the open place where the wires are coming from) and the kitchen sink will be placed in its desired spot so that the cook (me) may look out into the backyard while she works at the sink.

The fridge will go next to this little cabinet. We hope to have a little bar top area here as well so that you can pull up some little stools in the family room to it (that beige room is the family room).

Yes, I am keeping those little shutter things at the bottom half of the windows. I like them mostly because they remind me of my Grams's house. She has them in almost every room. It just makes me think of being there.
Here's another view of where the fridge will be. We hope to move this door to the outside where the screen door was and make this little room into a mud room (We are not sold on doing this yet. We are going to live here for a while and let the house "tell us" what to do). It used to house the water heater, but we are moving those underneath the house. No, we are not open to suggestions. The "Great Water Heater Debate of 2007-2008" also took place here and it was very traumatic and difficult to come to any resolution. It involved every plumber, sub-contractor, Gas Co. Personnel, Electric Co. Personnel, family member and friend that you can imagine. All possible options were considered and the discussion is closed.

OH! Did I mention that we will have a dishwasher?! And no, I don't mean myself, Sam or the dogs, I mean a machine one!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! What are we going to do with ourselves?! I haven't had a dishwasher in 5 years!!! (it will go in that little empty space by the present back door).

So you aren't impressed, eh? Well, here's an older picture of the kitchen when we first looked at the house. This picture gives no indication of how FILTHY this kitchen was. Dead rats, onion skins, a jar of three-bean salad... Not to mention the 3 ceilings that the drop ceiling was concealing (say that 5 times really fast!) and the 5 or so layers of old flooring that was on top of the original hardwood floor. Oh, and we found a chimney pipe and tons of bricks from the original wood-burning stove. And the tar and soot.....OH the TAR and SOOT! I'll never forget it...

Here's the lovely built in which I am so very excited to have! I've always wanted one! The PO of the little house tore one out when she remodeled in the 60's. It broke my heart to find that out. But now I have one of my very own!!!! Isn't it grand?!

So, needless to say, I'm a happy girl. I even have pots and pans drawers by the future stove! And they have a really cool closing mechanism.... if I'm feeling really ambitious later I may take a video of it...

Quickie

Just a quick update on the goings-on around here:

• The floor people have been called and warned (we noticed a few more big mistakes)


• Cabinets are here and checked in!


• Cabinet installer comes tomorrow


• Kitchen is fully painted -YAY!!! And it looks like the sky in Spring - just like I wanted.


• The mantle has been installed in the master and matches very well to the scale in the room. I am very pleased!


• It rained a lovely Spring rain here, allowing my allergies to calm down a bit.


• Nobody tricked me on April Fools Day.


• My arm is slowly healing.


• I think we'll actually be in the house by May!

Life is GOOD!

Get Out Your Catcher's Mit...

Because I am about to throw some quick updates at ya.

I know, I know, I know. I told you I'd update you on all of this cool stuff going on at the Foursquare last week and I didn't. it was a busy one.

My allergies have come back with a vengeance and I caught some sort of cold/fever thing. I had a birthday, I taught my riding lessons all week though I was in bad health (the world doesn't stop for sickies), I've been working on camp curriculum, I fell off of my horse (I actually just kinda bailed) which was TOTALLY my fault and left me with a nasty scrape and lots of soreness, I worked at the Foursquare, sold the double oven, made 6 birthday presents for some of the barn kids, attended the big birthday bash had laundry coming out of my ears and how knows what else. There was no rest for the weary.

This week will be more of the same:

• cabinets come today


• kitchen must be completely painted


• lessons to be scheduled and taught


• curriculum to be presented


• slab picked out for counter tops


• cabinet installation


• art lessons


• "floor people" must be called about problems and fix before cabinets put in


• Plumber called and scheduled before cabinets installed


• And much more of the same

All of that to say, I won't be posting much this week and it certainly won't be very witty if I do post.

Here are some pictures. I know that's really what you stopped by to see!

Kitchen: patched and primed
Laundry room ceiling with walls painted

Master Bedroom: patched, primed and picture rail added (educational post on picture rail coming soon!)Family Room: floors have a little bit of polyurethane on them instead of the POLYURETHANE we requested for the future House of Many Feet. More to come on that, too, but I hate to complain....

I Am Totally Floored!

OK, now, you remember me talking about spending countless hours scraping 90 + year old tar off of the kitchen floor to reveal the hardwood underneath ONLY after my husband scraped 3 or so layers of flooring off of that? Soaking towels in vinegar water and letting them sit on the floor for hours to loosen up the gunk... Feverishly scrubbing the remnants.... Scraper's Wrist... Blisters... Tears... Agony... Pants with tar stuck to the butt area....


Well.... The floor sanding people are here today!!!!!!!! YAY! And this is how is looks so far:


This (above and below) is in the kitchen..

YeeeeeeeeeeeeHAW! Yeah, we could sand it ourselves, but now we BOTH have jobs and we are in a time crunch, and you just can't do everything yourself. There are times when it's really just worth the money to have someone else do it!

Here's the family room:

It had been stained at some point, but never had any protective coating on it, so it was worn a bit even before we bought the house. We are going to go with the natural look (no staining) to the floors. The house is 98 years old and has lots of "character" already, which renders it imperfect. The flaws existing in the floor now do not at all bother me. I take pride in their imperfections!
Most of it will have furniture here and there. Plus, we'll have twenty-something feet going in and out of these two rooms several times a day! Bring on the polyurethane!!!!!!!!!!!

They should be done at the end of the week. I'll post an update!

We real cool... We skip school...

AND if you can finish that poem, you get 50, yes 50 points!!!! So far, Nick (a man who believes in buying in bulk) is leading in points with 10 total.

So, back to the blog. I was going to title today's entry as Schoolhouse Rocks or Too Cool for School but everyone uses those. It's just not creative (or crazy) enough for me. As a friend in high school once yelled at me in an angry lack of understanding, "M'elle, WHY WHY do you always have to be SO DIFFERENT from everyone else?!!! Can't you just be normal?!!"

No. Sorry. It's not my thing. I think she was just PMS-ing that day anyway.

Anyway, really now, back to the blog.

Perhaps my light fixtures would have behaved like the poem above, or perhaps they actually did skip school. You see, these are what are commonly called "school house" style globes with the fixtures. They are more utilitarian and were commonly found in schools (no, really?!), courthouses and other public buildings. They are a little more 1920's than 1910's, but hey, we are going to have appliances in our kitchen. That's not very 1910's either.

These fixtures were found in my dear in-laws store in Pike county. My husband said he remembered something like this in the basement of the store, so he went a-hunting and here we are! I was elated when he brought them to me. I couldn't have bought better ones!

The larger of the two was as black as black could be on the metal part. After an hour with some Brasso and elbow grease, it looks as it does now - copper! Some of the brass started to show through, so I had to stop scrubbing, but I like the aged look it has. The smaller of the two would probably polish up similarly, but the fitter ring is completely rusted and it needs rewiring (they both probably do, but the wiring on this one is broken), so I have put off scrubbing it until I decide to search for another fixture to go with the globe or take it to the "light man" at the antique mall to see what can be done.

The largest fixture will go in the middle of the kitchen. White globes of this shape and size were good for diffusing light evenly over a room (and they had to deal with those carbon filament bulbs), so this is why they were used in places like school houses and public buildings where efficiency was sought. They are "green" or "energy star efficient" by today's standards, I suppose. The little fixture will go in the laundry room where a fluorescent fixture glares down from a plaster ceiling. So, maybe going from the fluorescent to this fixture isn't as green as I thought, but I can put one of those curly bulbs in it to make up for that.

See, that got kinda wordy and boring. But hey, you learned something new today I bet!

On a side note, I am looking for a place or website that might have old or reproduction finials and metal decor for light fixtures such as this. I know all about rejuvenation.com, which is fabulous in helping to guide one in what fixtures would best represent a remuddled old house, but they don't have finials for sale, that I can tell.

And the Oscar Goes to...

And now... the award for "Best Supporting Dishwasher in a Dishwasher-less Kitchen" goes to (drumroll please)...

Miss Ella Bella BEAN!!!!

(crowd goes wild - dogs howling and panting, cats purring and yowling, general carrying on of merriment, Ella Bean trots onto stage, tail wagging )

"Thank you, thank you! You have no idea HOW MUCH this chrome faucet means to me! It's beautiful, shiny and looks like an antique! I couldn't have asked for more!
"You know, even since I was a little pup, I helped my mother with the dishes. We didn't have much money then, so a dishwasher was something we didn't dare dream of, much less a brand new faucet in period design.
"I can remember her (my Mama) crying over the sink (this was before my step-daddy came along) wondering just how she was ever going to get all of that baked-on spaghetti sauce off of the pyrex and get a man to marry her. 'Mama,' I said (dog choking up a little, licks away her tears) 'Mama, here. Let me help you.'
"Let me tell you I licked that dish so clear and clean all she had to do was slap a little Dawn on there to get rid of the slobber! I may have been small and of mixed breeding, but honey, I've been lickin' dishes with the best of 'em ever SINCE!!!!!!"

(again, crowd, pack, pride - whatever you want to call it - goes wild)

"So, thank you! Thank you Pegasus Faucets, Dawn, Prego....and thank YOU, Mama!!!"

"And ALL I got was this crummy spray nozzel as an honorable mention! Hmpf!"



Yeah, that was a little crazy and over the top, but admit it - it was a lot better than posting a pictures and saying, "Hey, here's my new kitchen faucet and spray nozzel - cool, huh?!"

Under the Radar

It's true - I said I would go and not return, but I have. Only because business is at a stand-still and people ask me to send picutres of the progress (or demolition, rather) of our 1910 Foursquare. I learn lots of interesting little restoration tips from other old house owners and their blogs - not the home improvement stores or websites. That being said, I need to pass along our experience to others that are stepping up to the plate and rescuing and rejuvenating beautiful old homes. It's cool, it's Green and 100% a labor of love. I know - I flatter myself.

Anyway, this will most likely become a "house blog" for now.

Here's a pictoral update. Enjoy!

The current "kitchen," sans appliances, cabinets, sink, lighting...

Celing number 1 - numbers 2 & 3 have been removed.

So, yes. We had three ceilings at one point. Don't you LOVE that light fixture?!

A tarry, tarry night (or nights). Actually, about 50 hours total of scraping tar off of the original hardwood floors that were covered up not only by Christmas red and green linoleum, but 2 or 3 other layers as well. We had to soak towels in water and vinegar and let them sit for at least 12 hours to loosen up the tar before we attempted to scrape it off. Yeah. We would sand and poly them ourselves but our hands are broken. Seriously - mine has been going numb.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen. THAT is only some of the tar that was scraped off of the floors. We used some of the old celing tiles from celing number 3 to wipe off our scrapers.

Recycling at its best!