Maybe a blog resurrection?

I've been wanting somewhere other than facebook to post a few photos of things around the house, so maybe I'll actually do it here.

We finally got the bathroom renovated!

Here's the awful, terrible before picture. It's from when we bought the house so it wasn't quite this bad right before we started the bathroom project, but still--it's what we started with when we moved in.



Brent did the awful, dirty work of removing all the old tile and paneling.



He then rebuilt part of the floor to try to level it since the bathroom slopes pretty dramatically. It's much better--as good as we can get it without the inside of the bathroom going higher than the hallway. Ah, old houses.

We tiled the walls with subway tiles.


And the floor is a mosaic basketweave pattern with a border of subway tiles, all in marble.


After the floor was done, we had Thompson Fiberglass come and refinish the sink and the tub, then a plumber got rid of the stupid old shower coming out of the wall, and installed all our shiny new fixtures from Henry Plumbing. The fixture installation was a two person job, so it was me and the plumber Josh. It all went pretty well until we found that the sink drain opening was waaaaay too small for the fixture I bought.

A little metal filing, some creative use of the lathe, and a little soldering got us a part that worked. I cut down the brass flange to fit, Josh soldered it to a smaller drain piece, and filed out the opening to allow it to fit, and voila! Sink drain works :)

After all the demolition, the glass of the chandelier was pretty dusty so I knew we needed to clean it. Brent realized all the tarnished brass parts would polish up on a buffing wheel, so he went to it. We went from old and brown to shiny and new. It looks great. I don't get all these brass hating people. With the right color palette, it can look great.

Here's the finished view into the bathroom.



And a look up at the gorgeous ceiling. Brent did all the crown moulding.

Our wireless doorbell decided to at first not work, then work when it wasn't required. It's been removed, and a new butler style doorbell was installed.
The bell



And the new button on the front door

More updates

First, in the kitchen. Carrie made curtains and hung the curtain rods.

Then I finished the back transom and got it in place using the reproduction antique hinges. We also found some brass latches for the transoms. A 6-foot pole with a brass hook for reaching and opening the latches is currently drying in the basement.


Early this year we found a chandelier for the second floor bedroom on sale at an antique store. It sat around for a while until we found some replacement crystals to fill it out. Then all of that sat around until we finally decided a couple of weeks ago to get it in place.

We went online to architecturaldepot.com and found a ceiling medallion we liked. It arrived in a few days and the first step was to paint it with a couple of coats of the ceiling color


Then after some experimentation both on the computer and on the medallion, colors were picked and a paint scheme developed

After it was all dry, it was time to attach it to the ceiling using mostly liquid nails, but four finishing nails were used just for a little extra help. It looks a lot smaller way up there.
The last step was raising and attaching the chandelier, then making sure all the crystal pieces were in place. We counted 80 hanging pieces. The finished, working, restored chandelier:

Kitchen Paint and Stain

There's been a lot of work going on lately. Here's some pictures of progress in the kitchen.
The first step was picking a color for the walls, getting the unfinished trim stained, and attempting to do some refinishing on the cabinets.


That's as far as the cabinets got. It looks like they may just be painted after all.

The corner block rosettes in the dining room all need to be modified to match the thicker-than-usual trim. These two on the kitchen doorway are all that are done so far.

After all the window and interior doorway trim was finished, it was time to start on the two exterior doors. This one is the "front" door that opens to the side deck. The transom has been removed and boarded in this photo.

Here's the transom after stripping. The flat surfaces were stripped with the heat gun, but for the routing I used a chemical stripper, followed by lots of hand-sanding.

And here it is after staining (sideways photo, I forgot to flip it)

For the doors and transoms we found reproduction antique cast-iron church-steeple hinges. There are a few doors and transoms in the house that still have these original hinges, but most of them are covered in paint, or in bad shape. We got enough to start with the two doors and transoms in the kitchen.
And here it is working again. The brass latch is still on it's way here. The door is still waiting to be stripped.
Across from that is the back door. Here is preparation for staining.

Here is the completed trim and the sanded and filled door, ready to be stained and finished.
And finally, the upper-half of the walls were painted.

Remaining still is to strip the front door and rear transom, and to put the new hinges on those pieces. Plus we have to decide exactly what to do with the cabinets.
As a garden report, we got a decent haul of potatoes with quite a variety of shapes and sizes. Here's a sampling from one plant immediately prior to being made into dinner.

More Yard Work!

We've been busy bees out in the yard, and the work keeps going on as long as the weather's nice like it has been.

After a weekend of working outside, I figured it was picture time. It's hard to capture in photos, but it's really quite pretty! We need a couple more garbage cans full of mulch to finish the mulching. Maybe tonight or tomorrow, if I can convince Brent :) He's currently digging a trench for another brick path, so I'm thinking he won't want to do mulch tonight.

Here we have a current status picture of the south side of the yard...

and another of the north side.

Now for some closeups. Roughly following from the bottom of the steps around the yard in a clockwise direction.
My Rhubarb has really taken off! It keeps getting new stalks and leaves and is looking extremely healthy!

These 2 elephant ears have come up nicely and put out some lovely leaves. There are 3 more that are just barely up now, so they'll be coming out with leaves soon too.

I just planted a bunch more ajuga after seeing how well these plants have taken on the task of filling in the bare ground. I read they're in the mint family so it makes sense that they'd spread well.

Speaking of Mint, here's a nice view of mine--all contained in a pot though. Mmm, mojito anyone?

The corn is looking a bit windblown. Who knows if it will manage to make ears of corn this year or not. We shall see!

The potato plants are thriving. The critters seem to be leaving them alone now, after a few early nibbles on a couple plants.

My lettuce looks awesome. I just thinned it, but it still looks a little crowded. They seem to spread out to take up as much space as possible.

Brent put in a new path from my car to the sidewalk a while ago, so I filled in around it with some pretty annuals. Mostly yellow snapdragons.

and another view

The petunias under the birdbath are loving their location since the birds are constantly splashing water out over them.

One of my Canna lilies is looking quite handsome. Seveal others are a few inches tall right now and should start sending out their large leaves soon.

I don't remember what this plant is, but I really love its purple leaves. They make me think of dragon scales with their almost iridescence.

I also took pictures of my berries (strawberry, raspberry, and blackberry), but they were blurry. There's 1 strawberry that is very nearly ripe and nothing has eaten it yet. I hid it under some leaves a little bit, so maybe it will make it til tomorrow when it should be ripe.

Some gardening

This spring I planted 55 gladiolus bulbs in a corner of the front yard. I like to plant them fairly close together so they have a better chance of not falling over when they're fully grown. You can see a few of them are up. I think I counted 15 or so. I put the 2 big pots around the patch so people would quit stepping in it. Someone even stepped in them when it was obvious there were things sprouting! The nerve.


In the back yard next to the porch, we have a bed of irises and lilies. I never saw the irises last year, but this year they're gorgeous. All white and with tons of blooms!


Here's the north half of the yard. In the far left corner, I plan to do some elephant ears and some shade plants under them once they're established. You can barely make out the ground cover plants near the garden boxes. Speaking of garden boxes, lettuce and carrots have begun to make an appearance! I'm hoping to see potatos any day now. I also got some small watermelon plants at the nursery and added them in one of the boxes. We'll see how they do. Under the big tree in the back, I'm planting a bunch of impatiens. It's too shadowy to see them right now. I'll try to get a better photo this evening.


I've spent most of my time on this part of the yard. It houses all the fruit stuff: blueberry, raspberry and blackberry bushes, and a pot of strawberry plants. I've filled in with a bunch of other plants too. I really like these leaf-only annuals with red, white, and pink leaves. They're quite colorful. I also put my hens and chicks in this area. I do so love them (and have since I was a kid).

The Bathroom door

There hasn't been much activity here, but there has been a lot of activity on the house. We've just not done a good job of taking pictures of it.

Since we've been here the second-floor bathroom door has been less than adequate. It's a solid pocket door. When we moved in one of the rollers was broken completely. I tried to replace it with an off-the-shelf one, but it never really worked, and eventually it broke, too. This meant it was time to take out the entire old door header and put in a new, more substantial one. First step, rip out the wall and take the old door parts out:

Next step was to put in the new header

Next the steel-encased split studs that support the wall go in. This required the addition of a small access hole on the inside of the bathroom.

With all that in place, it was time to put new sheetrock in. All of this happened in one afternoon:

During this same time, the door was taken down and sanded, stained, and refininshed. Once it was complete, it could be hung. The new header had rollers that clamp onto brackets screwed into the door, rather than connecting to the door directly. This allows the door to be removed without taking out any trim or jamb pieces, something the old mechanism didn't offer. There is no way the rollers can come off the track, making it impossible for the door to fall off as it did before.


With the door in place, it was then time to replace the jambs. The old ones were fairly beat up, so I ran to Lowe's bought new pieces, stained and finished them and hung and shimmed them. The sheetrock was sanded and primed.

The original trim was taken down and stained and finished before reattaching it:

Inside view:
The final step was adding the reproduction antique hardware so the door could be pulled open and locked shut:

Closeup: