Pecan Place Victorian

New Beginnings

2011-04-12T01:05:00.000-05:00

Everyone wants to know where we're going when we leave here, this is it. We're in the process of the meticulous paperwork that needs to be done before closing. We spent a couple of days last week working on the curb appeal and doing a little clean up of the grounds. The seller is almost 90 years old and could use a little help.

It's a cute little place on a side road just inside the country. There are 3 acres for the cats to play on and a pond that apparently has fish in it. The neighbors are almost all known to Donnie's family and keep their properties well maintenanced. So far, 5 of the cats have accompanied me on a field trip and have decided the back porch is the cat's meow. You wouldn't believe the breezes that seem to always be blowing. It's wonderful! I sense a lot of slacking off in the near future.

There's plenty to do to get it like we want it as there are limbs and yard clean-up projects pretty much everywhere. I think we're decided that we'll wait a year before doing anything major to the house itself so we can get an idea what direction we want to go. There are some things inside that need an update, but maintenance-wise, there are no emergencies.

We think we're going to like it a lot and so will the cats. We're shooting for a closing at the end of this month although the first available date for the contents auction isn't until the middle of May. We can still work on cleaning up the kitchen and bath so that it is comfortable to use it and start transitioning cats. After the auction, I guess we'll move furniture once there's space to put it. After the furniture is out of our house, then it will be time to clean this place and de-fur so it's ready for the Fosters when they arrive. It's a plan. Whether it works out or not is another matter!

So, here are a few pics that I took the other day while I was working out there. It's looking better already. Tomorrow, I think I'll work on organizing the carport.

The view from the front yard.

The pond in need on a little clean up. I think they made this mess a couple of years ago when they ran power lines straight through the middle and pushed over a bunch of trees . Nice. That's another day's project.

Meet Tom & Janet Foster!

2011-03-30T21:53:00.001-05:00

We met Tom and Janet in early February when they made a 12 hour journey to put an eyeball on Pecan Place. I was working that day, but Donnie was home to answer any questions. Our agent had to leave for another appointment which gave her a good excuse to leave Donnie, Tom, and Janet alone to talk about the house. While this isn't typically done in the real estate process, real old house lovers are just special that way. It isn't just a house, it's a special experience and all the knowledge and stories that can be gained by the present caretakers make it even more special.

When I got home from work, Tom and Janet were still visiting after an hour and a half...a good sign I hoped. Five hours later, after we all talked, exchanged experiences, and got to know each other, they left to make their way on to the their next stop-a Valentine's vacation.

Two days later on Valentine's Day, I got a call from Tom and we discussed a few more things about the house and some of the furniture we won't have room for at the next place. I put together the information he requested, and he and our agent, Barbara Hopkins-who is excellent, by the way, negotiated the whole transaction with little involvement from us. Now about Barbara, she knew what we needed to get our of the sale and had it all worked out with Tom and Janet. By the end of the day, we had an agreement in which every one wins-my favorite outcome! So on Valentine's Day, Tom and Janet gave a unique and wonderful gift to each other. Now, how cool is that?

During our conversations, we it became apparent that these were not ordinary people. There was something special about them and at the end of the six and a half hour initial showing, we knew that we had entertained angels. I can't say what it was that they did, but can only say that it wasn't so much words that they said or any religious conversations, but it was something unseen, below the surface that made meeting them worth the experience-even if they chose not to buy the house. It was an amazing experience that we will never forget.

When they came back through town to sign the contract in person, they stayed with us for a few days. The time they spent with us confirmed that angels posing as regular people truly do walk among us. They say God moves in mysterious ways and I'm adding this to my my list of undeniable proof.

Since then, were once again we spent a few days with the Fosters when they came up for the closing. The first morning, Tom, having been the owner of a B&B before moving south, made us all his B&B breakfast. Man! That guy can cook! If he chooses someday to open a B&B again, I know where I'm coming for breakfast.

After the closing, we all went to breakfast at The Old Country Store and toured the Casey Jones Village before spending the rest day antiquing. We had a wonderful and exhausting time. For the first two nights, they spent the night at our house. For the last night they were here, we spent the night at theirs. Kinda cool really.

We'll be around for a few months since they aren't ready to move and neither are we. We're working on getting things in order for our next place which won't be available for at least a month, so it all works out well.

Now, it's time to meet Tom & Janet Foster-the angels that have taken up the challenge of making Pecan Place their new home. I think they'll fit right in. Don't you?

Pecan Place Is For Sale???

2010-12-18T22:24:00.008-06:00

After much consideration, we have put the fabulous Pecan Place on the market. While our stay here has been relatively short, we have decided to downsize and seek something with a bit more outdoor space. We will remain in the area, as Donnie's family is close by, but in the meantime, Pecan Place is looking for her next caretaker and one that will continue to care for her so she will remain front and center for generations to come. Pass the word along if you know of someone who might be interested in this beauty.

Here is the listing information from Realtor.com:

Virtual Tour

These are some of the listing photos:

After 8 Long Months...

2010-11-01T14:06:00.007-05:00

The front parlor floor is finally finished! I put the last coat of varnish on it Saturday afternoon. It was worth every hour put into it. This was one of my "little projects" while Donnie was working elsewhere. It turned out fabulous!

Now for the month-long wait so we can put the furniture back. I want it to be well-cured before adding any weight to the new finish. After the months of work, I don't want to blow it at the end!

From the Peacock Parlor

From the Foyer

You can't have the after pictures without at least something to compare it to, so here is the just waxed floor right after we bought the house. As you can see, the design was very subtle due to the deterioration of the 30 year old finish.

I didn't keep track of the number of hours this took, but I'm guessing at least 2 hours per square foot. Worth every second!

While the following won't be very interesting, this was the process I used as well as some of the things I discovered by experimenting with various methods. The method I ended up using was the most time consuming, but provided the best quality result. Hope it lasts a very long time.

The process and outtakes:
This entire project was done on hands and knees. Since part of it was top nailed and the 2x2 squares aren’t real thick, I didn’t want to use one of the big sanding machines to sand off the old finishes due to the amount of wood surface they remove.

It was February and cold, so I thought I’d see how the heat gun worked on it. It worked well and warmed p the room which was great, but didn’t get the residue out of the grain and it became apparent that I was probably going to have to go over it again with a liquid stripper and a wire brush to get the old stuff out of the grain. I tried a section by sanding off the remaining finish with the orbital sander and skipping the liquid stripper. The end result was lighter in color and it seemed like the sanding kind of embedded the old finish into the wood as opposed to removing all of it. It would have been OK, if I hadn’t seen what complete removal looked like. Needless to say, I had to restrip that whole area.

Most of our projects are learning experiences with experimentation of various methods just to see how they turn out and what happens if you approach them different ways. It seems nuts, since most people like to just get it done, but I like to play and learn while I work even if it means doing something over again. Here’s the process that gave the best result. Since this is something I just made up out of what seemed to be common sense, I have no idea of its longevity. Guess we’ll find out in a couple of years.

Around here, we like oil-based products for hard surfaces. It’s a personal preference that we believe provides the best durability, cleanability, and accentuates the natural characteristics of the wood, so this process will be based on oil products.

Here were the steps I used that I found produced the best results:

Step 1: Preliminary stripping of old finish using Kutzit and a putty knife to remove the majority of the finish.

Step 2: Second coat of Kutzit with a fine bristle wire brush to remove old finish from the grain until all the finish has been removed.

Step 3: Scrub with paint thinner and a vegetable brush to deactivate the stripper and remove the gray color caused by the wire brush, wiping everything clean with a shop towel.

Step 4: When stripped area is dry, sand with the orbital sander with a 60 grit pad, sanding down to raw wood and removing any remaining ashy places.

Step 5: Resand area with the orbital sander and with an 80 grit pad.

Step 6: Mix linseed oil and turpentine mix at a rate of about 2/3 linseed to 1/3 turpentine. Apply to prepped section with a paint brush and let it soak in for several hours. Adding the turpentine thins the linseed oil and allows deeper penetration of the oil into the wood. Adding the oil to the wood intensifies the richness and grain of each species of wood far beyond the results obtained by skipping this step. Once most of the oil has soaked into the wood, wipe the excess off with a shop towel or that area will become gummy.

Step 7: Apply another coat of linseed/turpentine mix. Allow to penetrate for several hours then spread the remaining oil evenly across the finished area. If desired, apply additional coats using the same process.

Step 8: I applied 2 coats of Minwax Tung Oil Finish to the completed sections to seal those areas from the dirt, dust, and shoeprints and also to begin applying the sheen. The MinWax tung oil dries solid like a poly or varnish, but not as hard so it makes a good temporary finish on something like a floor. I use it on furniture as a finish coat all the time as furniture doesn’t get the hard use that a floor does. I really like the stuff.

Step 9: Once the entire floor was stripped and had a couple of coats of tung oil on it, I allowed it to dry for a few days then went over the whole thing with varnish.

Step 10: Then varnish was allowed to dry for a week, then I sanded the whole thing down with the orbital sander and a 220 grit pad which knocked all the little nubby bits and dust particles that had settled and left a silky smooth surface on which to apply the next coat.

Step 11: I vacuumed the floor then ran over the whole thing with a tack cloth to remove the extremely fine sanding dust that the vac didn’t pick up.

Step 12: Before applying the finish coat, I ran over the area again with the tack cloth in small sections, maybe 18” wide and the length of the room, immediately before beginning to apply the varnish. For this coat, I thought I’d experiment with the 9” foam roller which worked out pretty well. After rolling on a section, I used a brush to help even out the finish, removed the bubbles, and knock off the “orange peel” effect that the roller tends to produce. I did the whole thing in sections about 18” wide, the length of the room, and immediately cleaned with the tack cloth prior to the application of each section. It worked great and got the job done in a more timely manner than using the brush alone.

Step 13: (optional) Given that there are several layers of protective coats on the floor already, I could forgo an additional coat. We have a huge mess we need to make in there when we work the rest of the room. There will be a lot of dust and grit that will likely create tiny scratches in the finish. I’m considering doing one more coat once we’re finished making the mess. I like at least 3 coats of finish on a floor, so at some point yet to be determined, I want to put on one more coat. I imagine I’ll decide to do another one next week and maybe a fourth once the room is done. We’ll see.

If we were going for a semi-gloss or satin finish, the final coat is the time to apply it. I had heard this once from an old refinisher and I also discovered it on a project that I worked a few years ago as well. Must be some truth to it. Gloss finishes have no additives for changing the characteristic of the product from a visual perspective. Semi-gloss, satins, and flats contain additives that produce a duller finish which is why it is important to stir them often while you’re using them. Those additives add a little bit of a milky (for lack of a better word for it) quality with each coat that is applied. Several coats of a non-gloss slightly obscure the characteristic of the wood which reduces its richness. Applying the undercoats in a gloss and the final coat in a non-gloss helps retain the clarity of the wood characteristics while giving the satin of semi-gloss finish desired.

The project I was working on when I discovered this was a walnut colored faux finished door. The gloss was just too loud, so I decided to go with a satin. There is a little pool in the corner of one panel where a small drip occurred. It’s a tiny bit milky and is really bugging me, but I remembered what the guy had told me. Had I been working with something that was lighter in color, I never would have noticed, but looking at that area with the thicker finish, it all made perfect, provable sense. Just in case you were dying to know. :)

Riding History

2010-08-02T13:07:00.000-05:00

This morning (8-2-2010) the Neil House pulled off its lot to begin its trip to Jackson. We were invited to ride in the house on its way out of town. This was taken on High Street. We got on at "Mae West Curve" and rode it down to past the old Peabody High School. Our friend, Jesse, the guy in Confederate uniform, stayed on until the trip concludes for the day. Not every day that you get to ride a house!

Lift Off!

2010-07-26T12:36:00.003-05:00

Today's big event. It was pretty cool. This morning they removed the second floor of the Neil House in preparation for its move to Jackson, TN.

Neil House Update

2010-06-30T09:06:00.004-05:00

I've added this to the Neil House blog, but since plenty of "Neil House" Google searches pull up this blog, I thought I'd post it over here as well. It's good news.

This was broadcast on WBBJ News Monday evening. The house is indeed on its way to Jackson to reside at the Casey Jones Village where it will join several other structures that have been saved by the Shaw family.

Video Broadcast: Moving History

Text version: Moving History

To read the plan for the Neil House, please read the "In The News" article on the Casey Jones website: "Neil House Announcement"

Old Country Store

If you're ever in the Jackson, TN area, please take time to stop by the Casey Jones Village for a visit and to say thanks to the Shaw family for saving the many endangered structures that now reside at the village. While you're there, check out the great menu at the Old Country Store as well as the Casey Jones home, Railroad Museum, the fascinating things that can be found at the Shoppes, and don't forget to stop at the authentically recreated 1890s Ice Cream Parlor & Fudge Shoppe!

The Shoppes

Please check out their website at www.caseyjones.com for information about what the Village has to offer. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so check out their photo album for a preview of the many things the village has to offer. Personally, I'm adding it to my list of places to go this weekend!

Casey Jones Railroad Museum

The source for all photos is www.caseyjones.com

COMMENTARY: America Is Still A Rose

2010-06-30T08:55:00.001-05:00

This Letter to the Editor was also written by my brother and appeared in the Cannon Courier this week. A nice reminder of the things that are important as the holiday approaches.

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COMMENTARY: America Is Still A Rose
By: LETTER TO THE EDITOR
Posted: Sunday, June 27, 2010 7:42 am

I have a rose bush next to my carport and often the thorns snag me when I’m getting in and out of my car. The bush was there when we moved in and from the looks of the height it must have been there for many years. Too often I notice how many thorns are on that bush and don’t notice the big, puffy, gorgeous roses it produces on the end of its thorny branches.

As the 4th of July approaches, I think it would do us some good to reflect on just what occurred on this date and what that meant in the history of our great nation. At times we appear to be a nation where thorns have overtaken that old rose bush planted by our Founding Fathers so many years ago.

Many thorns of our past are still so vividly visible today. It is true that America held slaves and continued for many long years the segregation of our fellow citizens. It is true that America forced Native Americans off their land and recklessly killed them to gain our “manifest destiny.” It is true that America did not allow women to vote and often treated them as second class citizens. It is true that during WWII America interned and confiscated the property of Japanese Americans and carpet bombed our enemies. It is true that Americans torched villages in Vietnam and took away the human dignity by humiliating Iraqi prisoners at Abu Grab. It is true that many such instances have occurred over those long years since our birth as a nation.

Yes, America has committed many indiscretions and even atrocities in its 234 year history which should be amended where possible, and at the least learn from our mistakes and vow to never let those mistakes happen again.

It is also true that these thorns in our past often cloud the big, puffy, gorgeous roses that many others have found in this great nation. Freedom of religion and from tyrannical kings was the first rose that attracted many seekers. Another rose was seen in the Emancipation Proclamation and the subsequent blood spilled to correct this shameful wrong. The Statue of Liberty has been a symbol of the rose that has brought countless millions of “huddled masses yearning to be free” to “the land of the free” for 124 years.

Roses were also seen in WWI and WWII as we took part in the liberation of millions of oppressed and exploited people. Another rose is political freedom found for those who fled repressive totalitarian and communist regimes. If we continue to peel off thorns, we may even see a rose in Iraq where people, even once subjugated women, are voting in free elections and holding public office; and where schools and hospitals have been built.

Here at home roses are seen in our attempt to amend the wrongs of the past with ended slavery and segregation, giving women the right to vote and equal status, and acknowledging the wrongs on interment and abuses. Yes, thorns still and will probably always will show up as political corruption, extremists’ fanatics on both the left and right, and just plain old regrettable mistakes, but they have not nor do they need to ever destroy the roses in our historical past.

The world loves to point out our thorns and say “see, they aren’t as good as they think they are. They need to become more like us.” I’m not here to argue over who has bigger roses or who has fewer thorns. What I am suggesting is that we, as Americans, acknowledge our thorns, but never forget to look at the roses; learn from the past and commit ourselves to making more roses - our own way.

Let’s continue to stand by those immortal words of our Founders: “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.”

No other nation has a rose like that. Let’s not let the thorns overtake and choke our roses. May God continue to bless America on this 4th of July. And may we continue to bless others with our roses.

Sincerely,
Perry F. Louden, Jr.
Woodbury, TN

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My Little Brother...

2010-06-30T08:24:00.004-05:00

...and my little sister too! They have a deep caring, giving goodness that makes them so much better people than I will ever be. I doubt that they know how proud I am of them.

This is an article from the Cannon Courier, a weekly paper serving Cannon County.

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CAB Driving Force Behind Baby Shower For Young Mothers

Posted: Monday, June 28, 2010 9:52 am

Perry Louden of the Cannon County Community Advisory Board helped organize the baby shower.

The Cannon County Community Advisory Board (CAB) sponsored a baby shower for teen and young adult mothers at Sunday at the Woodbury Lions Club.

At the shower mothers received needed baby equipment, supplies, clothes, and information from public assistance agencies such as the Department of Human Services, Department of Children Services and SAVE.

Those in attendance heard stories of the issues faced by young mothers and the obstacles they have to overcome, along with information about how to find services that can assist them.

There were experienced sponsor/mentor mothers on hand to answer questions and give practical advice and information.

During one of the presentations, participants heard the story of one teen mother, Kelly Cosgrove, who said via a letter and YouTube video, "I look as things as a mom now, not as a teen ... the most beautiful things in our life can sometimes come from our most awful mistakes."

Perry Louden, who serves as the facilitator for CAB, said the event was one of the efforts the organization does to "give back to the community."

Jessica Tucker, who works for DCS, spoke about the Tennessee Early Intervention Services programs and other assistance offered by the agency. "We want to help you find resources in the community that can help you with those things that you and your child need," she said.

Lisa Baird, who is the director of SAVE, Cannon County's agency to assist victims of domestic violence, said, "Hopefully you will never need our services, but we are here if you do." Baird said SAVE could also help with diapers, clothing and educational materials.

Shirl Louden, who works with DHS and is station at Middle Tennessee Medical Center, talked about Tennessee's Families First program, which can help with signing families up for health insurance, transportation, clothing, food stamps and other necessities.

Perry Louden said CAB is still in need a car seat and two cribs for three of the girls.

Louden added, "We would like to thank these organizations for helping us make this possible: Woodbury Lions Club, Jenny Grady of River Park Hospital, Cannon Community Church, Adventist Community Services, Women’s Ministry of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, Bags of Love, SAVE, Millennium Hair Salon, Hot-Spot Tanning and Briar Rose."

Any agency, organization, church or individual that would like to help people in our community is welcome to be members of the Cannon Co. CAB. Meetings are the first Tuesday of each month. Contact Perry Louden, CAB Facilitator, at 796-7020 or perry.louden@us.army.mil.

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The Park at International Place Towers

2010-06-18T23:20:00.001-05:00

Recently, I had the opportunity to work a contract located in the International Place Towers in Memphis which had the most delightful park in the space between the three towers. The first time I saw it, everything was in bloom and it was spectacular! Once the onset of spring had passed the overall look became more wild like something you might see in the woods with tall trees and an undergrowth of smaller trees and bushes. Upon further investigation, you could see that all of the undergrowth was actually comprised of flowering bushes and trees or trees with colorful foliage and that none of it was accidental undergrowth that comes with neglect or self-population. Whoever the architect was, he (or she) did a fabulous job. Not only is it beautiful, interesting, constantly changing with alluring views, it's also human friendly with walkways between the buildings, seating areas, and the constant sound of peaceful waterfalls that beckon you into it's shady delights.

So, with that, I'll share some pictures!

This is the view from the back door of the building where I was working.

Beyond the front entrance is one of the busiest streets in east Memphis but from the serenity of the park, you never even know notice there's a road out there.

Here's an overhead view of the area. It's not really that big but it seems to go on forever. To put things in perspective, all that concrete behind the building is the parking lot. It's amazing that such a treasure could be packed into such a small area and be in the middle of the busy city. Needless to say, I enjoyed my breaks.

Holy Hollyhocks!

2010-05-27T12:06:00.001-05:00

After spending the work week in Memphis, I came home to discover that the hollyhocks that had just begun to bloom the previous weekend had not only broke out into screaming color, they had also grown several feet.

When we bought the house, they were out in the middle of the yard mingled in with who knows what else, so during the yard clean up, I moved them to a bed under a tree.

They didn't do so well there so I moved them out to the sunny south side of the house last fall. They love their new location and are anxious to prove it.

....and the bees love them!

When they were out in the middle of the lawn, they grew to be 3 or 4 feet tall. This year they're between 6 and 7 feet. I had no idea they got this tall!

Say HI to Constance

Say HI to Red and Tula on the deck

Aren't they pretty?

They fairly glow with vibrant color!

Since most of my time is now spent in Memphis, I'll have to show you the sights around the workplace. I think it just might have made Olmsted proud. It's just lovely.

Oh My!

2010-05-14T12:41:00.002-05:00

I finally got up the courage to order some samples of the Bradbury & Bradbury wallpaper we have in mind for the front parlor and they arrived yesterday. It was a fun surprise for Donnie since he didn't know I had ordered them so we had a little "play time" in the parlor last night trying to see if there was a clear answer as to which one we liked the best. They are totally awesome! The pictures on their website don't really give a good idea nor do the pictures I've taken as most of the patterns are well-embellished in metallics. One unexpected treat was how they smell. These are flat oil pigments-at least one of which smells like mint. Kinda cool I thought.

Both patterns are Aesthetic Movement styles in the Herter Brothers tradition. The long strip laid out on the floor is comprised of the frieze, wall fill, and dado. The shorter strip is made of the individual patterns for the ceiling minus the accent pieces and corner blocks.

Aesthetic Green

Pompeiian/Burgundy

I think we've decided on the "Passion Flower" pattern for this room, but may play with the "Tiger & Crane", the alternate wall fill, as the dado instead. We both really like the Tiger & Crane a lot but this room seems like the Passion Flower probably suits it best.

Tiger & Crane

We didn't have any luck deciding which one we liked the best as they are both droolable and each renders a totally different ambience to the room. In times like these, it's always nice to have to approach the whole thing from the perspective of something like science-not that even that is of much help as the green is wonderful with the furniture in the room and the color of the woodwork. It will make a cooler, more neutral room than I had thought to go, but a stunning one none the less. The red on the other hand is wonderful against the adjoiging rooms and the vibrant blue accents really accentuate the blue tiles of the fireplace. It's a very rich colorway. Then, there's the floor that should probably factor in to some degree since it will have quite a distinct pattern when it's finished.

Decisions, decisions. Good thing we have a lot of work to do before we can hang anything. Surely, we will have reached some kind of conclusion by then!

Got a favorite?

This & That-The Projects That Never Quit

2010-05-12T12:59:00.002-05:00

I'm still making very slow progress on the parlor floor project now that it's spring and yard maintenance and the front porch project have had me working elsewhere during the day. I imagine it will go even slower now that I've finally acquired a daytime job in the workforce and will only have weekends to divide between the porch and the floor as well as various other little projects around here.

At any rate, this is a close-up of the floor before I started the stripping. I don't know if I mentioned this before, but the design is comprised of 2"x2" squares of 5 Tennessee hardwoods-red and white oak, walnut, cherry, and maple. There is no stain on any of these pieces and the design is created by the natural color of the various woods. The design is great although the old finish has turned ashy which obscures both the color and the grain of the individual pieces.

Here's a sample of what a section of the floor looks like at the moment. Notice that in the "after" section you can actually see the grain patterns of the tiger oak very clearly. This is a lovely surprise that we had not anticipated.

After oiling the finished area several times and allowing time for the oil to be absorbed, I put a couple of coats of tung oil finish on the completed section to protect the raw wood while I work on the rest of the floor. As I mentioned before, the oak trim of the windows, doors, and baseboards also needs to be stripped. In the event I get any of the stripper on the floor, the tung oil will touch up better than a poly or varnish finish will. Once all of the trim is stripped, everything, including the floor will get a couple of coats of varnish as the final finish, but for now, just the tung oil finish looks fab!

Working on the floor gets hard on the back after several days of doing it, so I have a couple of "relief" projects that are hard on different parts of the body. One of these is the tedious stripping of the back stairs.

There are probably a dozen chipped and worn off layers of paint that have been painted over so there are nice little pools where dust and dirt love to settle and makes keeping them clean a real pain. In addition, there's a kind of cubby hole on one side where I keep the paints during the winter to keep them from freezing. A couple of years ago, there was something of a mishap with a gallon of deck sealer being knocked over by some miscreant feline and it bounced down the stairs relieving itself of its lid and a river of sealer ran down half the stairs and over the floor of the porch.

I suspect the feline in question was the Siamese standing on the landing watching the whole thing play out. Knowing that he'd be wanting to come down and not wanting him to run through the house tracking sticky oil-based sealer everywhere, I went up to get him so that I could bring him down and put him outside until I got the mess cleaned up. Up the stairs I went in my tennis shoes, collected the cat and began my way down. I was hoping to make it back down the stairs without incident, but alas, my first step landed me at the highest speed possible at the bottom of the stairs. After hitting the far wall at the bottom of the stairs and determining that my butt-or anything else-wasn't broken, I discovered that Donnie had come to see what the commotion was about. I harp on him about approaching things in an unsafe and dangerous way, but sometimes, I have him beat. I must say that at no time during the uncomfortable whirlwind of slip-sliding down the stairs did I ever let go of the cat who by then was terrified and wanted as far away from the incident as possible. At least I didn't have to worry about permanent, undiscovered paw prints roaming around the house. Needless to say, the added sealer didn't help the usefulness, safety, or cleanliness of the stairs since it essentially sealed in any dirt, dust and nonsense that happened to be on the stairs at the time. Ewww.

The cool thing is that the middle of the stairs has been worn down by at least 160 years of use as we're pretty sure these were the main stairs that used to be in the center hall of the original house. When they removed the hall, they kept the stairs and installed them as a back staircase. On the lower riser where several layers of paint have already been stripped, you can see what remains of the original faux finished poplar done in milk paint.

To prevent entry of the brown recluse spiders that often frequent the stairs, I'm caulking the crap out of everything as I go along. It's amazing how much quieter and sturdier feeling the finished steps are once they've been caulked.

This was the first section that's been stripped, primed, and caulked. I decided to break this run of stairs down into 3 sections to make it more mentally manageable. The things one has to do to try to maintain a little sanity!

The bottom section has been completed, the middle section has been stripped to the milk paint, and the top section is what's left. There's a landing that will come a little later and another short flight of stairs that completes the ascent to the second floor.

At the moment, 2 sections are completed with the top section remaining, but it's time to give my butt a rest as sitting on the edge of the stair tread gets uncomfortable after a couple of hours. Time to go work on something that wears out a different muscle group for a few days....

Which brings us back outside to the porch.

Finally, Donnie's gotten all of the post restoration completed and it's all waiting for its final coat of paint.

As you can see, he's begun working out what needs to be done to rebuild the handrail and arches. While there are still some of the original pieces that are in good enough shape to reuse, replacement pieces will be needed to make it all the way around the porch. Donnie was able to recreate a template from one of the old pieces and is using some of the pieces of poplar ceiling from the dining room to create the new arches. We've had a lot of trouble out of the repairs that have been made with new wood even if it's had plenty of time to age which has caused much delay progress where the porch is concerned as he's had to redo several areas due to the instability of the new lumber. All I can say is that you just can't beat old-growth wood.

It's as tedious as the parlor floor, but the porch railing is a lot of what makes the front porch special. (Saw HI to little Duncan. He's just turned a year old.)

Where There's One...

2010-05-05T20:33:00.002-05:00

Not long after our friends left, they returned home to discover "The Gift" had relatives-8 of them in fact, 7 siblings and a wildish mama all trying to find a new home under the shelter of the central HVAC unit. We were able to collect up all the babies fairly quickly with the exception of one fluffy gray who held out for most of the afternoon.

We even got Mama collected up with the assistance of a can of tuna set inside the cage. She doesn't care for us and won't let us come too close, but is more than willing to take a little tuna off our hands.

So, at the moment, all 8 kittens and Mama are upstairs in my sewing room/TV room/old office until they get a little older. The objective is to keep Mama contained until she can be spayed as this is her 4th litter of kittens in 2 years all of which fell victim to the packs of dogs that run loose in town. We want these kittens to survive long enough to have a more positive fate and plenty of love and fussing over and for Mama to be able to do something with her life besides reproduce. Poor ole girl. I'd bet she'd love to become a lap cat someday! Right now she's not too happy.

The Gift

2010-05-02T11:05:00.001-05:00

Our friends came over a little while ago and brought with them a little tuft of fur that they had saved from the rain. Everyone is out on patrol at the moment and have reported that you can't get out of Trenton due to flooding. They discovered this little guy near their air conditioner and didn't have the heart to leave him outside to fend for himself in this weather. I'm guessing that he's about 3 weeks old. I'm also guessing that he's a he since it's hard to tell when they're so young. So, looks like we have another member of the family at least for a little while as they may decide to keep him once he's grown a little and can hold his own with their very playful dogs. Isn't he sweet???

How It All Began

2010-05-01T17:45:00.007-05:00

The Trenton Teapot Festival Parade is today (or would have been if it were a water sport) and I guess there is no more appropriate time to tell the story of how we came to be-both as a couple and as the owners of Pecan Place. It's a long story so get a cup of coffee and sit a spell.

**************************************************************************

It all began several years ago after I purchased my last house-the 1918 bungalow that I've been posting lately that had a back yard full of wild violets. While the violets were so cute and pretty, I discovered that they were a haven for mosquitoes and wanted some advice to try to eliminate them and signed up on HGTV's General Gardening message board for answers. While on the site, I discovered that they also had a General Decorating message board and that's when the trouble began.

In August of 2005, a new poster joined the board and posted a project in which he had recently created a lighted shadow box out of an old full-sized glass door from his grandmother's house. Since she had passed away, it was kind of a sentimental project and it turned out lovely as a backdrop behind a brass bed. The project was great, but what I wanted to know most of all was where he got the wallpaper in the room, so I sent him a message and asked about it. And that's how we met-on a decorating message board that was 98% women and not the kind of place you go to find a "date"-not that either of us terminally single people were looking as our lives were perfectly content as they were.

Since we both liked antiques, I invited him to the Nashville Flea Market that they have every month. In September, we met in person at the flea market and browsed the wares for a little while. It was nice to have someone with similar interests to snoop around the place with.

During the next several months, we continued to talk and hesitantly discovered that we might actually like each other in a more-than-friendship kind of way.

In February 2006, Donnie came in to Trenton to pay his taxes and brought his camera along to snap a few pics of some of the historic architecture in town so he could share it with us on the decorating board. When his post titled "Look What I Found on Sale Today" presented itself, we figured he'd come across a cool eBay find. Much to our surprise, it was a very cool, very large Victorian house that had been on the market for about 5 years. Needless to say, all of us nosy women had to know what the inside looked like, so we asked to see if he could get in to take some pictures.

I had been working on some construction projects around the house and decided it might be nice to take a break and go on a little trip out to see the house since it was only a few hours away. I asked Donnie if he'd like company and he accepted, so we got together one weekend and had a look. We had a good time imagining what we'd put where and how we'd decorate the rooms, but neither of us were interested in buying the place since we both had our own homes and were content.

Tangled into the story is my friend Tammy who I also met on the decorating board who, upon hearing of the housing prices around here was interested in coming down from snowy Massachusetts to have a look around. As it turned out, I made several trips out here to look at various houses with her. Meanwhile, in the back of my mind was the fact that you couldn't touch a house like this one in Nashville for what they were asking and the little town was nice and quiet and peaceful.

To make a long story shorter, Donnie and I decided to buy the house together since there would be two of us to work on the long list of things that needed done to the place-not that it was in horrible condition or anything, just that many years had passed since the last renovation and the owners had moved 5 years prior, so it wasn't in the shape it would have been had someone been actively living there and been doing meticulous maintenance.

It was a huge risk since we both needed to sell our current homes and I would have to move out here and find somewhere to work. To make things even more complicated, we also discovered that we had found the one thing neither of us had been looking for-the perfect partner and somewhere in there we decided to get married.

We discussed when we'd like to have the wedding but knew we wanted to have the reception on the lawn at the new house. That gave us the option of spring or fall since the hot summers aren't a place one wants to be spending a lot of time outside when dressed up. Donnie said spring, so spring it was and we decided to have a little fun with the whole thing and have a "Victorian dress" ceremony of sorts. Donnie had a little fun at the costume shop where we got his gear.

I'm not sure how it came to be that we chose the Saturday of the Trenton Teapot Festival which was about 6 weeks away. There was a lot to be done in 6 weeks with trying to organize the wedding from 3 hours away, closing on and preparing a house for the event, all of which had to be done while both of us were working our full-time jobs. We were about to be very busy as the closing on the house was only 2 weeks before the wedding.

There was a parade on that day, so I think we decided it might be fun to have something other than the wedding to do for those who had traveled. Originally, we had planned to have the wedding at the church with the most beautiful stained glass in town which was located across the street from the house. In the end, we decided that there was no reason why we couldn't have the wedding at the house as well as the reception, so we went with that plan. The wedding would be at 11:00 on the front porch if the weather was nice and in one of the parlors if it was raining. I had no idea what time the parade was, but discovered that it started at 10:00 and that there would be marching bands passing in front of the house during the ceremony! A wedding before 10:00 would be too early since many people had to drive several hours to get here and a wedding after the parade would seem too much like an afterthought. Besides, we wanted people to be able to watch the parade, but since the bride and groom aren't supposed to see each other before the wedding, that wouldn't work out so well. What to do, what to do?

I had requested information about the festival from our real estate agent and he sent me a brochure for the festival. In the brochure was a registration form for the parade. So....what if??? A plan began to develop and I made some calls to see if there was such a thing available-and there was. I filled out the registration form for the parade and hoped that Donnie wouldn't kill me!

Then, it happened. A month before the wedding, a tornado ran across the back yard at Donnie's house and a tree fell on his little shop and carport, crushing his car, blowing out some windows, poking holes in the roof and siding, and generally making a mess of things. Needless to say, stress went into overdrive.

Two weeks later after closing on our new house, he was awakened one night to a terrible racket. Given that he had just experienced a tornado two weeks earlier at his old house, he knew what it was. Once things had died down and he was able to get out and have a look around, he went to check on some of my cats that had already made the trip. The carriers I had brought them out in were lined up on the upstairs porch and he found them all hiding inside with eyes as big as saucers.

In the light of day-since there was no power to see at night-the front yard where there would be about a hundred people sitting in two weeks for the wedding didn't present itself as the most inviting scene. All the while, Donnie, after his work day was still trying to clean up the damage at his old house, clean the new house so that it would be ready for guests, move his things to the new house, help me move a couple of truck loads of things from my house on weekends, and now this? It's a wonder he was able to maintain his sanity. On my part from Nashville, my hands were tied since I was on call 24/7 for much of this time and was trying to get my own house ready to put on the market.

Other than parts of the roof blown off and a couple of downed trees in our own yard, the biggest problem was that a huge, beautiful pin oak from in front of the church was uprooted and came crashing down in our front yard taking with it several sections of iron fence and brick columns. What a mess! Amazingly, people from everywhere came together and got right to work with the clean-up and other than the twisted fence and broken columns, there wasn't much evidence that such an event had even taken place by the time of the wedding. The street pick-up crew was even able to make a trip out to remove the parking lot full of debris that came from the damage in our own yard. It was amazing really.

While all of this was going on, I was busy surfing eBay to see what kind of dress I could find as well as the corset and hoops I would need for it. I was lucky enough to find one I liked that was even in my size. It arrived just in time. The hat I found at the costume shop. Finally, it appeared we both had clothes to wear! Clothes are always nice to have. :)

Luckily, my mother-in-law and sister-in-law handled all of the arrangements in Trenton since they knew who to call for catering, where to get tables and chairs, etc. I was grateful that they took time out of their days to manage all of this as a party-planner, I am not. Whatever they thought was appropriate was fine by me. What we wanted most was that people were comfortable, and had a good time.

The day finally came. Everyone was there by 10:00 which was a good thing since finding parking posed a real problem with the streets blocked off for the parade. Donnie had spent the night with his parents and his brother was driving him over. Much to Donnie's surprise, his brother took "the scenic route" (of course this was all planned out in advance) and instead of dropping him off at the house as expected, dropped him off in the parking lot of a church several blocks away. He had no idea what was going on until he saw me standing next to the open horse-drawn carriage!

He seemed to handle it pretty well given that he had no idea about any of this. It was a well-guarded secret between his family and me. I guess with all of the other things that were going on at the time he didn't have time to ponder what we were up to since none of us lie very convincingly.

The pastor from Donnie's family's church performed the ceremony. Donnie's brother, Terry, was his Best Man and my long-time best friend, Margaret, was my Matron of Honor. Only once during the ceremony did my mind scream out "OMG! WHAT AM I DOING HERE???" :)

Insanity Presents:

The Mitchells

Well, we made it! Unlike most of these types of events, there was no panic and everything went like it should-or at least that's how I remember it. One thing I appreciate about casual affairs is that they leave plenty of room for managing obstacles if they arise. I don't remember that any did and we all had a good time.

Margaret and I discussing the hole in the porch floor that we were both standing over and hoping not to fall through during the ceremony.

Starting the reception back when the dining room still had walls!

Donnie and his parents before the wedding.

My family with the exception of my son who was taking the picture and my mother who was caring for my beloved step-father who passed shortly after. That's Donnie's silly brother Terry waving out the window. :)

Silly runs in the family. :)

My one and only-the kid every other mother hopes for but that I got! :)

My dad and step-mom, Joanie.

So, that's the story in as short a version as I can manage and although our actual anniversary is on the 6th, we always observe it on the Saturday of the Teapot Parade.

Happy Anniversary, Donnie!

The Simple Home-My 1918 Bungalow

2010-04-12T23:17:00.004-05:00

One of the things I liked the most about this house aside from a sensible floorplan was the size and shape of the kitchen and that it would be large enough to accommodate a table without being crowded. There were some weird things about it that I thought could be better-like a sink installed in front of and overlapping a window (I've always hated that). That there was little counter space next to the sink and stove wasn't the most functional set-up but given that I don't cook, it wasn't an urgent need. In the long run, it would need a redesign, but for me, it wasn't high priority. Since my interests were in the other rooms of the house, a simple facelift would suffice for the next several years. One thing that was high on my list was taming the high intensity green and white combo.

One of the things I liked was the full wall of cabinets and countertop with a desk area across the room from the work area. I spent a lot of time in this room engaged in decorating work for clients and the cabinets, countertop, and table close by all provided ample workspaces where I could drag out all the samples I needed from the cabinets that held the supplies and all of this within steps from the most important thing-the coffee pot.

My second and third homes were more modern homes and had been furnished in more modern styles. While the table and chairs were nice in my last house, they looked a little like cheap hotel furniture in this one. I liked the style, but knew for this home-that I planned to keep forever-I'd like to see something that blended with the style of the house a little better. I'd have to keep an eye out for just the right thing.

This is the kitchen once it had been cleaned and after I had officially "moved."
Here's something interesting I discovered during my time cleaning the place. Someone had left an open garbage bag which contained an unfinished can of Coke. At some point, the bag had tipped over and Coke spilled out onto the floor. When I wiped it up, the floor beneath had a clean, high gloss. I didn't think anything about it until I tried to clean the rest of the floor and found that it took significant effort and a multitude of chemicals to get it as clean and shiny as the area where the Coke was. While I haven't tried it on anything since, I learned that Coke was the least labor intensive way to clean stick down vinyl tile. Who knew?

The removal of the multiple layers of wallpaper came first. If I remember right, I found evidence of at least 7 layers. I have a love/hate relationship with stripping wallpaper-the hate part being that removing the old layers also removes the chronology of wallpaper history as well as history of the house. On the other hand, removing all the wallpaper is the only way to get a reasonably smooth surface, discover the true condition of the wall beneath, and get the best adherence for hanging new paper and removes the seam lines from previous paperings.

This shows the wallpapers and the matching border

This is a section of border from one of the other layers of paper found

For the record, I'm not much of a "yellow" person, but this room "said" it needed to be yellow. I've never really cared much for yellow but when I found this lovely honeysuckle paper with its pinks and greens, it was a perfect fit for the room. The background was a wheat colored yellow which would add the warmth and visual lightness to the room, the pattern was kind of old-fashioned although I don't remember it being a true reproduction, the colors coordinated well with the floor and countertops that I would be keeping for several years, and I thought it was a pretty pattern. It was a good decision that met both my personal preferences as well as the needs for the room. I was excited to get it on the wall!

Initially, I thought I might be brave and try out yellow painted cabinets just for something different. If I remember right, it was an Olympic color called "Honey Pot" that I had mixed in an oil base. The color was actually pretty nice but the cabinets weren't and with a whole house to work on both inside and out, new cabinets weren't coming anytime soon. Time to come up with a plan B. While I was thinking about it, I went to do some work in the parlor.

Eventually I began to wonder.....what if.......

and dragged out the can of brown latex (don't remember the name) that I had been using on the exterior window sashes and a jar of faux finish additive that I'd never had a reason to use. I figured I'd play a little and if it turned out horrible, hey, it was latex over oil and could be removed with a warm damp rag.

So, I set off to try my hand at my very first faux finishing adventure and try to make the cabinets look something like a wood grain. Since I prefer woods of a finer grain, I just went at it with a throw away china bristle brush.

Well, that was interesting, but I did like it better than the plain yellow as it helped draw the attention away from the imperfection of the cabinet doors. It was however, missing depth and looked like a weird paint job. Back to the basement I went to rummage through the paint cans for some stain. I picked my favorite MinWax Red Mahogany.

After some playing around with it, I finally got the hang of how long it takes before it starts to tack up. While it's still very wet, it blends itself back out and appears grainy like a bad copy of a picture. If it sets too long, it becomes too defined and has a dragged, sticky appearance. Somewhere in there was just the right time span to create pattern that is defined enough to be kind of convincing without being heavy-handed-if that makes any sense.

Some things I learned from the experiment:

Stain will come off immediately with mineral spirits or paint thinner. This I already knew. Applying a clear coat of poly on top of the stain that is merely lying on top of a non-porous surface will undo any of the previous work as it is compatible with the stain. While I suspected this might happen, I gave it a try anyway. Needless to say, I had to entirely remove the poly and the stain from the first door-all of which came right off with the mineral spirits.

Back to the basement to root through the cans of products. Hmmmm.....let's try the shellac! Hey, that works great! The shellac stabilized the stain so that the poly could be applied.

As you can see, there is no resemblance to any kind of real wood. Still, it turned out pretty cool. Besides, most of the people I know can't tell the difference between oak and cherry, nor do they care. Most of the time, it's the illusion that counts the most.

This was the stove cabinet which was where my experiment started. The guy I was dating at the time came over a few days later and I showed him what I'd been working on. He just kept standing there looking at it all puzzled like. I told him what I had done to them and he didn't believe me until I finally had to open the door and show him that the backsides were still white. I guess it didn't occur to him that hinges don't come in wood tones. :) Once I worked out the process of the fauxing, I took the old hinges off as I went along and sprayed them with Rustoleum Hammered Pewter.

Now for the hard part-getting the frames on the upper cabinets that would be more noticeable to look like the individual pieces of wood that make up the frames. Common sense said to tape them off and work them in sections-verticals first, horizontals last.

Painted cabinet frame with vertical elements taped off

Next apply the first faux layer. I kept these simple with very little movement to the pattern.

Apply the stain layer, shellac, and poly.

Once the poly was applied, it provided enough protection to be able to tape off the horizontal members without pulling off the underlying finished treatments.

I'm kind of an experimenter at heart so almost everything is a learning process. Here are some other things I learned while finishing these cabinets:

If you miss even the smallest area while applying the shellac over the stain, the entire piece needs to be restarted from the beginning. Note the one yellow door and trim piece above-I missed a spot and the poly took the stain right off.
Spray shellac doesn't give the appropriate coverage to seal the whole area and once applied, reapplying multiple coats results in something ugly.
As things were tedious and weren't working out so well, I tried a new experiment and added a small bit of poly to the stain. In theory, once the poly was dry there would be no incompatibility between the products and would cut out several steps. Because the intensity of the stain was desired, I only added a little poly. Too much varnish would water down the effect and make everything too light and would wash out the "grain" appearance. Adding that little dropper of poly turned out to be the perfect solution. It took a couple of days for dry time, but was worth it. An added note is that the more poly you add, the faster the dry time.

Since the house was built in 1918 and the walls were plaster and lath, imagine my surprise to find that the kitchen had been finished in drywall-really old drywall. The old wallpaper fragments I posted above were applied to it, so drywall was around a lot longer than I ever imagined. In fact, drywall was first invented in 1916, two years before the house was built. It wasn't until the U.S. entered WWII that it came into more common use in this country. I imagine for whatever reason, this room got a rehab somewhere between 1918 and 1940 and the plaster was replaced with the old version of drywall. I had no idea it had been around that long! The interesting thing was that initially, it was generally considered a cheap, low-quality product and people refused to use it which is why most homes were still finished in plaster.

Something else that I've noticed in older homes with drywall is that once the joint compound was applied and the walls finished, it was standard to finish the entire surface with shellac or varnish making the surface waterproof and allowing wallpaper to adhere and be removed without taking the surface off the wall-something many people removing wallpaper from newer homes today encounter as it pretty much ruins the wall surface and is costly and/or time consuming to repair. The amazing thing is that we think we're so smart with all our technology and short cuts, but the truth is that there was usually a reason for the old timer's methods for the things they did.

As you can see, eventually, I got the many layers of wallpaper scraped from the walls and ceiling. It took some patience, persistence, and a wallpaper steamer that the guy that replaced my HVAC system donated to the cause. It took a couple of months to get it all off since I wasn't really excited about the work, but eventually, it was ready for the next step.

Fortunately, most of the walls were in great shape. There were a couple of sections that looked like someone had applied flooring adhesive to the wall and those were nasty to deal with. Once I got that mess off, I floated out the areas, primed, and hung liner paper over them. A little feathering with joint compound at the seam created a new smooth wall surface.

The next step was to prime the ceiling and wall surfaces. I did this with an oil-based primer, probably Kilz Original if I remember right. You can see the area in the photo to the right of the window where liner paper was applied. Liner paper is more porous than the shellac-sealed drywall, so the absorbs more product and is the darker area. I primed this area twice so that the liner paper wouldn't absorb too much of the wallpaper adhesive and cause the wallpaper to fail.

Eventually, I finished all the cabinets and hung the new paper. I found a cherry table and the chairs at a consignment shop that were perfect for the room I wanted to create. This photo must have been in winter as I had curtains (left over from the previous house) up to block the cold transfer from the glass on cold nights. All in all, it turned into a beautiful room-to me at least. It was just what I had in mind.

The door on the right was to the dining room-still open to the front door at the time.

Let's recap. Green on green on green accented in black and white:

The new room. Total cost was probably between $800 and $1000 (prep supplies, wallpaper, ceiling fan, furniture.) All of the previously installed elements remained including the painted tile around the cooktop which was stripped back off to expose the white tile underneath.

It was a room I could live with.

Artistry & Craftsmanship

2010-03-18T19:33:00.002-05:00

Just thought I'd pop in and give ya'll a sneak peek at a project I'm working on that will probably take forever.

The left side has been stripped, sanded, and oiled. The right is the finish that is currently on all the floors. On a normal day, the floor is a pretty one, but I just had to peek and see what it could look like. It's time-consuming work but.......

I'd say it's definitely worth it!

They just don't make 'em like this anymore...not even in the above-average new homes around here!

Yes, I'll eventually get back to posting the bungalow kitchen. Really. :)

The Simple Home-My 1918 Bungalow

2010-02-24T20:24:00.004-06:00

First things first.

As I mentioned in a previous post, because insurance companies have different conditions for the properties they will insure, I had to find one that would insure a house with asbestos siding. Erie Insurance stepped up to the task. They gave a 30 day deadline to get the house secure-which meant glass in the windows and a door on the back. I didn't think keeping out intruders was an unreasonable request on their part. They insure our current house and my car as well and if Donnie's truck wasn't helping a friend in the insurance business keep food on his family's table, his truck would be too. I'm very pleased with Erie.

Windows, a back door, and some drywall work in the damaged rooms upstairs came first. I went to Architectural Elements in Nashville to look for a door and found the perfect one. What I thought was interesting was that when I got it home, it fit in the hole and the hinges lined up. Makes one wonder if it was the door that came off the house in the first place! I wouldn't doubt it. The windows and drywall work I hired out so it could all be done before the 30 days expired. Besides, I wasn't ready to learn to drywall at the time. and I had bigger fish to fry, like.....

figuring out what colors to paint the outside. The high contrast of the white with the asphalt "brick" siding just didn't do it for me and since it was still fall, I had a little time before turned cold.

See the row of glass block between the foundation brick and the siding? They were pretty cool from the basement too.

On the inside, once every thing had been bleached and scrubbed with ammonia (prior to actually moving in) I started working on the parlor. The old living room became my dining room which was weird since the front door opened into the dining room, but we'll get to that a little later.

This was the room when I started. While the house was empty, I had the electrician put in between 20 and 30 outlets on the first floor after they installed the 200 amp circuit panel to replace the fuse box. As you can see, they were able to install them in the baseboards, but the baseboards had to be removed for access which damaged the plaster, so that's where I started my prepwork.

Then it was on to patching cracks in the walls, hanging a rail to make a frieze for the wallpaper, and painting the trim as the first step of the faux finished trim project.

I was kicking around options for the trim but really wasn't loving the choices so far, so I asked my friends on the decorating board what they thought and a friend suggested the faux finish. I cringed because I don't faux, but gave it a shot.

Here were a couple of options I considered. One was the standard white as was all the trim in the house, but it was a little too crisp. One of the others was a pale green with a translucent gold metallic overlay. It was very cool, but a little washed out overall.

Recognize these papers? If these papers hadn't discontinued and I had been able to get this colorway for this house, it would be hanging in the peacock parlor today.

I think the faux finished trim was the perfect answer.

The fireplace:

This is why I love wallpaper so much. Here's the room before I started:

The finished room in daylight:.

I did contemplate drapery for this room, but moved to our current house mid-thought. Sometimes, that's just how it is.

Wallpaper.....it's not just for grandmas anymore.

Next post: The kitchen

The Simple Home-My 1918 Bungalow

2010-02-23T02:20:00.011-06:00

When I moved to Nashville from Murfreesboro I lived in an apartment for a few months and this house was on the road between the apartment and all of the places I needed to go. It was a foreclosure and the first time I noticed it I thought, "Now, who is gonna buy that hellhole." Well. Turns out it was gonna be me.

It all started with a roll of film and a trip to Walgreens one-hour photo processing. Of course I had to pass this place to get there and since I had some time to kill while I waited and being the nosy person that I am, I thought I'd just pull in and take a peek in the windows and see what kind of nightmare was waiting inside. As I started toward the house, I noticed that someone had poured curbing around the flower beds and that there looked to be glass block between the brick foundation and the framed house. That was kinda cool.

Once I made it across a rotted section of porch and peered into the front door, I was surprised to find that it was in much better condition than I thought it would be and looked like just what I had in mind for the perfect house.

There was a privacy fence with a gate across the driveway and I managed to push it open enough to squeeze through. Wow! It was like stepping out into the country! The lot was way bigger than I expected and it had an old barn with 3 bays for parking. Oh, the possibilities! Of course it was all overgrown but there was something charming about all that and you really could imagine that there was no city at all outside the gate. I could feel my heart pumping already! Ok, so it needed some work, but all doable. I decided this place could be a real cutie with some elbow grease and some panes of glass. I was dying to go inside!

When I got home, I called around to find out about the place and couldn't get a good answer. It was a HUD property and no one had any info on it, but it didn't appear to be for sale anymore. What a letdown. I went back to my boring apartment life.

About 2 weeks later, back to Walgreens I went. There was a Realtor's sign in the yard! I jotted down the number and went straight home and called. The guy had just put out the sign about 20 minutes before and agreed to show it to me in 15 minutes. I ran out the door to make the 2 minute drive.

Entry and Living Room

Not so bad; a little graffiti on the walls? I can fix that. Chandelier missing, wires handing? I can fix that too.

Parlor

This room seemed ok except for the big "BP" scratched into the mantle mirror. Some cracks in the plaster, but nothing broken. I found out later that someone ran into this room with a car, so I guess it held up pretty well considering.

Hall

Ok, so someone has stolen the back door-and who thought up this color scheme? Where

are my sunglasses?

Kitchen

I wouldn't have gone this route with the color scheme, but just the kitchen I was looking for with enough room for a table and chairs.

Master

Not so bad but that hollow core door's gotta GO!

Master Bath

Did they break out ALL the windows?

Hall Bath

Ok, I can deal with broken windows, but those cherubs gotta go-and quick!

Back Porch

Yeah, the cats will love this!

Time to go upstairs.....

Ok, so a few issues.

And more broken windows

And broken walls

Alrighty then. Ya gotta love teen-angst gangs that have nothing better to do than express themselves on an empty house. I heard they caught them and they all spent a little time in juvie.

Ok, so there's some work to do. Let's go down in the BASEMENT! It's got a BASEMENT! There were 4 usable rooms down there including a laundry with an old concrete shower stall, a clawfoot tub on blocks, and a sloping slab with a drain in it that I always used to joke about it being where they bathed the corpses. I never did find out what it was for.

This was originally the coal room. The place had definitely been "uniquely personalized."

Laundry with corpse slab and tub on blocks. Very interesting. The shower is to the right of the tub.

Workroom with glass block window.

I loved the place, so over fajitas at the real Mexican place down the street, we wrote up my offer which was immediately accepted and in no time at all I was packing my crap for the second time in 6 months and moving a half mile down the road.

Now what?

I'll save that for the next post. :)

Vegetables-It's What's For Dinner

2010-02-14T20:28:00.005-06:00

During the "learning to cook" escapades, we discovered that what we like for dinner is usually something simple and that soups, salads, baked potatoes, bread or crackers are kind of nice in the evenings.

So, tonight's dinner was just that-salad and baked potato. The first time I made baked potatoes, I had to Google to find out what temperature and how long to cook them. I'd only ever knew of them baked in aluminum foil, but when I Googled "How to bake a potato," the first entry was http://howtobakeapotato.com/. Cool. Everything I wanted to know except that her method was different so I thought I'd give it a shot. I deviated a little.

Few things needed:

Potatoes
Oil-I like the garlic flavor of wok oil-there's probably a real cooking oil for this, but this happens to be what we have around the house.
Salt
Something to poke holes-which I have a little Pampered Chef poker thingy that I like for this.

Poke some holes all the way around the potato, slather in oil, shake on some salt

Shove 'em in the oven

Set the oven at 350

Let 'em bake until they skins are crispy-like and hour and a half or so.

Have a salad while ya wait. Fresh salad in a bag, Roma tomatoes, onions, green olives, a little baked ham sent over from Donnie's parents, and some cottage cheese on the side and topped with Ranch dressing.

Donnie wants to know, "Are you gonna eat ALL that?" Yep.

By then the potatoes are done. Butter, sharp cheddar, sour cream are all that's in the house today, but I like green onions on mine if we've got them. Neither of us have ever eaten the tire-tread skins before, but cooked this way, we both eat the skins because they're crispy like a thick potato chip, so they're not only tastier, but you also get those extra nutrients.

For dessert, hot dark chocolate with a plop of whipped cream and a couple of Toll House mint & dark chocolate chocolate chip cookies.

While this ain't diet food, it's probably still better for ya than McDonald's-or at least that's what we keep telling ourselves! :)

More Seat-of-the-Pants Recipes

2010-02-08T18:19:00.004-06:00

So, I've been hankering for tuna casserole, but didn't know if Donnie ate tuna. He said he did, but didn't know if he'd eat it in a casserole. Either way, I thought I'd try it. I surfed the internet a bit to see how people make theirs and decided I wanted to make mine differently, but at least I found out how long to bake it and all that. So, here goes....

Keep in mind, nothing is actually measured, so you'll have to use your imagination.

What went in it:
Maybe a half a bag of noodles (maybe more)
2 cans of tuna in oil-drained (I don't do diet food)
1 can of cream of celery soup
1/2 cup of milk (if you like it creamier, add a little more milk)
A hefty dose of garlic powder
A good dose of seasoned pepper
Maybe about 1/3 cup Italian bread crumbs to mix in
Shredded mozzarella-however much you want (if you shred your own, which I did, take a knife and lop of a piece for a little snack)
Feel free to add chopped onions and celery. I don't think Donnie likes them, so I didn't put them in mine.

While the noodles are cooking, mix all the rest of the stuff in a large bowl and preheat the oven to 375. When the noodles are done, drain them and mix them with the rest of the stuff.

Dump it all into a covered casserole dish. Toss some more bread crumbs on top and sprinkle til you're happy with parmesan cheese.

Bake it with the lid on to hold in the moisture for 20 minutes of so or until the top turns a little golden. It will be moist, but not gooey. I don't care for gooey!

Donnie actually had a good helping and I had 2, so it suits my taste just fine.

And speaking of Donnie, he's learning about things he's never had before like Earl Grey tea with cream and sugar, turkey bacon burgers, spaghetti mostly made from scratch with seasoned browned meat and using an altered version of Hunt's Zesty & Spicy sauce sprinkled with parmesan in a casserole dish, baked in the oven and served with 9 grain Italian bread and salted olive oil. There's crunchy-skinned baked potatoes with butter, sour cream, and bacon bits and tons of salads mixed in there too. There's the flavored hot chocolates topped with whipped cream that are actually served in the previously unused appropriate cups and saucers, maple-pecan oatmeal cookies, and last night's treat was dark chocolate covered pecans.

While all of this might sound ordinary to people who know what a kitchen is for, these are never-been-seen-before events at our house. So far there's been no rocket science involved and I don't know about him, but I'm feeling considerably better than when we ate frozen food and take out all the time. Besides, I'm having fun using all those kitchen gadgets that I collected up years ago but never had the time or inclination to use.

And WHAT??? It's snowing again! About 2 inches worth since 3:00. It's not freezing so it'll probably be gone tomorrow, but it makes me want to bake cookies. I just can't decide if I want peanut butter, sugar, or chocolate chip. Decisions, decisions. :)

The Story of the Peacock Parlor

2010-02-07T12:56:00.013-06:00

This was a project that we started in October 2008 when Donnie was working on the porch and I was busy waiting for him to sign off on his work so that I could begin mine, so this was a "filler" project.

There really wasn't anything visually wrong with this room, but like every other room in the house, the plaster behind the wallpaper was deteriorating which resulted in piles of sand on the floor around the perimeter of the room. The fireplace area was especially bad and the sand would puddle up inches deep in a short amount of time. This was bugging me for quite some time and since this room needed little in costly repairs but would be labor intensive, I figured I might as well spend my available time working on it. Another factor was that we'd had the wallpaper we'd be hanging in here for a couple of years, so we might as well get it on the wall.

So, here was the perfectly lovely room that we started with.

Probably the biggest factor to working on this project at that time was the little issue of going to the Nashville Flea Market and winding up bringing a trailer load of furniture from an estate sale home with us! Like we needed 2 more entire sets of seating, and then some, as well as several marble top tables, but on the last afternoon, they pretty much gave them away so we borrowed one of Donnie's uncles trailers and hauled it all home. The one thing we actually went to pick up in Nashville had to wait til the next weekend. That's about how it goes isn't it?

Of course once we got it home, we had to figure out where to put it. The pink settee and 2 matching chairs were assigned to the upstairs hall. The next question was, do we want the green set to replace the white set in the second parlor? The white set was "new"-as in less than 10 years, not 100. It could be sold or traded or something if we liked the green set in the room better. Nothing like a real visual to help one decide! So, I set up the room with the green Eastlake set (which I absolutely love) to see if we could do away with the white set.

Great visual, but still a tough question as the mood in entirely different. So how about this logic? Do a mock-up of both rooms using the new wallpaper and configuration to see if that helps!

I mean, how hard can it really BE??? Still the difference in mood really didn't help things. I like the comfortable feel of the fully upholstered pieces but there was something kind of quaint and spacious about the Eastlake set. Speaking of getting nowhere fast. So, what else was left but to actually work on the room and see what works best in the real thing? Might as well.

One night while Donnie was in the shower, I decided I'd give the paper a little pull and see how bad tackling this removal was going to be. I was delighted to discover that it pretty much came off in entire strips-sometimes in entire sections of multiple strips. Here's what I got pulled off during the time it takes for an average shower:

Needless to say, I was very excited! The whole room was stripped within an hour. This was what was behind the paper-or at least part of it.

Meanwhile, over by the fireplace, Constance inspects the pile of sand that used to be a wall.

No wonder I could never keep the sand vacuumed up over there! Demolition is certainly a fine time for discovery and obtaining answers to those nagging questions.

Where's the furniture during this process you might ask? Well, three sets of seating and a variety of tables and accessories were crammed into the front parlor. Looks a lot like Mrs. D's "homeless shelter" that she's got looking fantastic!

While I was working between the windows, I uncovered one of the later previous patterns. It's wet in the photo as the pattern was easier to see when wet. Pretty neat.

Behind this pattern was an even earlier pattern which I suspect was around turn of the century and possibly the original pattern that was in this room when this part of the house was built. I'm not an expert, but it strikes me as being later than 1893 though. I'd guess early 1900s but I'm not sure why. Most of the oldest patterns we've found in the new part of the house are very feminine. If I have the family members accounted for correctly, Horace and his wife Sallie had 4 girls and one surviving boy-Harry. I'm guessing the ladies were in charge of the decorating. They picked some really pretty patterns that I wish I could have seen in person when they were fresh and new and still in their proper colors.

Here's the window wall once all the old paper and lumpy patches had been removed and flattened down into something that could be managed.

Let me preface the following with this: I don't know how to plaster and I really don't know how to correct the problem these rooms are having, but after giving it some thought, I came up with the process I used based on what I know about certain products, what I've seen used previously that was holding up fine, and what I hope to be common sense-although that is yet to be determined.

Here are the things that I know and the things that I discovered:

The entire wall surface is porous sand that brushes off with any kind of contact.
The old joint compound patches were holding up like the day they were applied and were not trying to delaminate and weren't crumbling. In fact, they were nice and hard and took some effort to slap down to smooth.
Based on previous experience, shellac-based primer soaks into porous surfaces very well and leaves behind a fairly hard finish.

So, with these things in mind, I taped off all the trim with paper that would act as a shed so that the shellac-based primer which is a very thin liquid wouldn't splash onto the wood trim. I liberally applied the shellac primer with a 3/8" nap roller allowing it to soak into the sand as much as possible before drying-and it dries very quickly.

After I got as firm a coat as possible over the surface, I allowed it to dry then repeated the process at least one more time if not two to completely coat and stabilize the loose sand and start filling in the voids between. Once all this is dry, you can dig into it with a putty knife or 5-in-1 tool if needed, so it isn't hard like cement, but not soft like a regular primer either.

Yes, that's some kind of dingy light pull hanging from the ceiling.

Once the walls were firm and the primer was dry, I taped the cracks and holes and began the tedious floating process. Since the previously used joint compound wasn't failing, I went that route and began floating using an arch-like motion to fill in the dips and float out the tape repairs. I used both mesh tape and standard paper tape in this room. I've seen them both fail, so it will be interesting to see if one type or the other fails more regularly. Naturally, I'm hoping for no failure at all. I floated all the walls with 2 to 3 coats depending on what was needed and used the shellac-based primer between each coat. While I understand that that's a lot of sanding and probably considerable overkill, I wanted to harden the surface and joint compound isn't all that hard. Another advantage was that with a coat of primer over the area, I could see where I had done additional floating so I wouldn't miss areas that needed to be sanded.

Once it was all smooth, sanded, and primed, I hung a fibrous heavy-weight liner paper on the horizontal over the whole thing and primed it with Kilz Original (oil-based) a couple of times as the liner paper is porous. I thought this would protect the underlying float-work and prevent future cracks from becoming a problem. Will it work? Who knows.

You can see the liner paper going up on each side of the middle window. It's the lighter sections at the bottom of the wall.

Thankful to have that completed, I decided I'd try a color placement experiment to see if what I had in mind would actually work in reality. This served two purposes as I like to back-paint the areas that I'm going to be papering in the event that there is any shrinkage at the seams when the paper dries. I've been papering for years, but no matter how perfect you are, products and their properties aren't always consistent so I like to have a color that's somewhat similar to the paper color as a buffer between the paper and the glaring white of the freshly primed walls. It's just one of my anal little habits.

I picked up a couple gallons of inexpensive paint and went to town. I decided it would work out fine.

If you'll notice, there's still a lumpy, badly-done stomp job on the ceiling that still needs to be addressed. We were going to hire this part out so that it could be done and over with and we could move on. We were going to hire out the fireplace rebuild too, but ya just can't get people to show up when they say they're going to or call to let you know something came up. Eventually, waiting for the guy to do the work was holding up our work so we decided to do it ourselves so we could move on.

Donnie meticulously scraped all the old nonsense down to the drywall that the last guy hung over the plaster. As I've said before, this lot wasn't into craftsmanship so the drywall work was appalling. So, it was back to work for me-cutting out strips of the drywall face so that tape could be imbedded into the joints instead of being installed on top of the joint then covered with mud to leave a whopping big lump everywhere two pieces of drywall met. Lemme tell ya-it's a pain when the stuff is already mounted. If you can't picture this, I'm sure there will be an upcoming project in the dining room where I'll demonstrate how to make a seam where two flush ends need to meet vs. the tapered edges that run the length of a sheet of drywall. If you're lost, don't worry about it.

The wallpaper we would be using in this room was the same pattern and configuration that I had used in the parlor of my previous house. It was lovely and not something you see everyday in most wallpaper books and was era-appropriate. As much as I loved the colorway I used in my old house, the book had discontinued and that colorway was no longer available, so we had to chose another one. I had previously encountered "The Wallpaper Lady" on eBay that handled discontinued papers and she just happened to be carrying the remaining stock from the book and we picked up an alternate colorway as well as the wallpapers and borders for several other rooms at a fraction of what it cost to do just the one room in my other house.

This was the basic plan:

Ceiling paper-same as the one I used previously-gold metallic leaves on a mint ground.

Frieze Border

Frieze Fill

Wall Fill

Here's something interesting we found out not too long ago. Donnie was surfing the internet for who-knows-what one day and happened upon a Walter Crane peacock wallpaper pattern. See if you think this looks familiar:

Little did we know that the wallpaper we were using actually was a reproduction of a real wallpaper offered by Silver Studios c. 1890 from a Walter Crane design called "Peacock Garden" c. 1889

Here's an alternate colorway.

What I wouldn't give to have it in the original colors as I think both colorways are stunning-especially the last! In our reproduction, it looks like they only used one set of peacocks to make a smaller pattern repeat. We had no idea and come to find out, all the patterns we purchased from that book were real reproductions adapted in color for today's preferences. I just picked the papers because I liked them! Who knew???

On my days I went into Memphis to work, I spent my lunch hours browsing around for the other details we wanted to add. We had removed the badly installed crown moulding from the previous "renovation" so adding new was on the list. I also wanted some sort of railing for between the wallfill paper and the frieze, so I dragged a sampling of a variety of options home. In the end, we chose a crown, a base moulding for behind the crown to help diffuse the irregularities of out of square walls and ceilings and so on, and an interesting little moulding for the railing below the frieze.

It's little things like being excited about little finds that cause you to keep pushing the boulder up the hill with the prep work.

You might have noticed in some of the pictures that there's a laptop on a stand with a set of speakers. Like I've mentioned previously, I'm a book addict but with all the things we have going on around here, I don't have time to actually sit down to read. This is where audio books checked out from the online public library and downloaded to a PC allow me to read while working. Not only can you download to a PC, but also to other devices, so I downsized and got a 50 dollar MP3 player to load them onto. So, Duncan Kincaid, Aloysius Pendergast, Thomas Pitt and Gabriel Allon kept me company through the tedious and boring skimming, floating, sanding, scraping, painting and refinishing. Without their company I would have lost my mind!

One of the most important tools in my toolbox

(Works with a headset too-the better to mow the grass with, my dear)

While I was busy doing my ceiling work, Donnie cleaned the goo and nastiness that had been clear-coated into all of the trim and doors during the last renovation. When my ceiling work was done, I went to work refinishing the prepped doors and trim. For this, I used an almost dry-brush application of MinWax Olde Maple PolyShades to add a little life and bring out the richness of the red oak trim. We discovered this by accident while working in the foyer a year or so before.

This is actually a photo from the pocket door in the foyer, but it demonstrates the difference a very tiny bit of color and a higher gloss will make in the appearance of a wood surface. The darker, richer panels have just a slight touch of Olde Maple high-gloss PolyShade. The color adds richness to the wood while the gloss adds depth to the reflective quality of the grain patterns. It's quite lovely, so we will proceed in this same manner throughout the newer part of the house.

With the ceiling flat and entirely floated out to as smooth as humanly possible without replacing the thing, and the trim all clean and shiny, it was time for a trial run of what the paper might look like. The door on the right is the inside of the door to the downstairs bedroom and wasn't part of this project. Notice the color and vibrance difference between it and the pocket doors? This is a good example of what I'm talking about. The wet-look will tone down on the newly refinished wood a little in a month or so and will leave behind a nice gloss that doesn't require sunglasses.

As a note, I should mention that in our house, everything that isn't a wall gets painted, stained, and finished in an oil-based product. Given our independent experiences with oil, latex, and acrylic products, we both found that you really can't beat an oil-base as a durable, easily cleanable product. In a latex-driven country, I thought it was interesting that we both discovered this while working on our own projects long before we met. At our house, latex is a wall paint-period-unless it's something we're planning to tear down or throw away. That doesn't mean other people can't use it at their place and be pleased, it just means we won't be using it at ours. Some other day I'll do a segment on paint and painting and why we make this choice for ourselves-but that's a rant that I won't go into right now. :)

Right. Where was I? Oh yes, I was going to talk about some of the pretties we found. The first thing we came across was a stunning converted gas & electric ceiling fixture on eBay. It was unfortunate for the seller that he had misspelled chandelier and it wasn't coming up in the regular searches. I thought it would be the right thing to do to contact him and let him know about this little issue. On the other hand, we wanted it for the parlor and didn't want to lose the bid on it. I still feel bad about it as similar fixtures have sold for hundreds more than we paid for it-which was about $270 if I remember right. We were the only bidders. It really is a beauty and in perfect condition but if it had gone higher, we probably wouldn't have bid on it at all as Donnie is a bargain hunter. I, on the other hand will pay fair market value or more for something that is absolutely the perfect fit since I don't shop much, know what I want when I find it, and tend to keep it forever. I've missed too many things thinking I'd get it later or maybe the price will come down to risk it not being there when I want it. (Yes, I'm kicking myself about some wallpaper patterns that I should have ordered before they went out of business-which basically proves my point.)

Here's the eBay listing photo (I'll show it hanging a little later)

The next thing on the agenda was to swap the stained glass transom from the north stair hall into this room with the southern exposure. The colors in the southern sun just dance across the walls and furniture. It's very cool. To the right of the window you can see a test of the wallpapers and placement. Sometimes ya just gotta peek!

The next elements are the mouldings. We'd never considered anything other than real wood products, but of the various selections I brought home, we were shocked and appalled to discover that it was the polystyrene mouldings that had the style and depth of detail that we were looking for. I found the crown moulding and the rail moulding off the shelf at Lowe's. They came in 8' lengths in the standard white. Now, going back to what I said in another post about irresistible details, how could one not embellish these when used in a highly patterned Victorian room?

The top moulding is how they come out of the plastic wrap. Using some of the paint colors I had lying around the house, I just started embellishing them to see how they might look. The gold highlights are Ralph Lauren Duchess Satin in Ballroom Gold (since discontinued under that name) There were 85 linear feet if I remember right. Painting them out took an hour per linear foot, so I painted crown moulding for about 85 hours. There's something ridiculous about being so...well....as my previous boss would say...OCD.

And that's not all. There were also the little railings with little flowers that were begging for embellishment. For these, I got out some old paint cans and started mixing small amounts of color together to get the blue I wanted to use. Over the blue I brushed on a little Ralph Lauren Duchess Satin in Oyster (c. 2000) for the pearlized effect. For the gold, there was the Ralph Lauren Ballroom Gold again. Fortunately, there weren't as many of these since the doors and windows broke the flow. I wanted to keep these fairly unobtrusive, while making them substantial enough (which the texture of the design pretty much accomplished this) to make a clear break between the wallfill and the frieze. It's very subtle and not something a person would notice right away unless they spent some time in the room-which was the objective I was shooting for.

Then of course there was the medallion for the ceiling fixture. Ya can't go to all that trouble and drop the ball on the medallion!

This piece is also polystyrene that started out as white.

I wasn't sure where I was going to go with this, but thought I'd incorporate some of the blue-purple from the peacocks onto the ceiling since it was going to be a sea of mint green up there. I didn't have any purple, so I mixed some left over red and blue paints to make a color I liked and that coordinated with the peacocks-and I lied earlier. All the embellished details were done in left-over latexes. The purples on the medallion are matt finishes while the greens are satins and the metallics are semi-gloss. I considered clear-coating all of them, but decided I liked the visual texture of the individual sheens.

So, here's the tentative laying-out of the medallion.

I thought I'd try a quadrant and test its feasibility against the wallpaper it would be associated with. This was very exciting as I liked it very much!

Now to see the full plan with all the elements together:

The cool thing was that we were able to obtain nicer things than we had planned by reallocating the funds that the contractors would have gotten (had they bothered to show up) and doing the tedious work ourselves-no matter how much we hated doing it and still have funds left over. Cool.

Ok, so we have a plan! Now let's get back to work! Donnie installs the base moulding to help alleviate inconsistencies where the wall and ceiling meet as well as create a little more mass to the crown moulding.

Crown moulding installed over base moulding.

With that complete, it was time to paper the ceiling. It sounds like a nightmare of a job and requires two people for best results, but I think it's easier than papering walls. It's easier if you have enough scaffolding and ladders to make it from one side of the room to the other without having to get down. Basically, Donnie held the tray (the top to a plastic storage box) close to the ceiling and aligned with the adjoining seam. He held the paper up to prevent gravity from pulling it back off the ceiling while I butted up the seams, smoothed, and removed air bubbles. Once a section of a few feet was stable, he moved back a couple of steps and I moved forward. Once you get the hang of it, it's kind of like dancing and you're done in no time. One of the things that helps avoid the neck and back strain that many people encounter is to get as close to the ceiling as you can so that you are mostly looking across the surface instead of looking up. Fortunately, my height makes this pretty easy to do whether on a ladder or a scaffold. I never have neck pain from looking up and I think it's related to my head's proximity to the ceiling, but I could be wrong.

Next came the long awaited installation of the ceiling fixture!

View from below. I thought this was pretty cool.

Walls were ready to go and we could finally get a preliminary idea of what it was really going to look like. I've said with other projects that often I "see" what they should look like but even though we'd had the papers for this room and knew what they looked like, I never "saw" this room as a completed room. "Seeing" them in advance is like having a trail to follow and you know where you've going. Not "seeing" them is like carefully choosing your steps as you pick your way through never knowing exactly where you'll end up. Either way, the end is usually better than you think it will be and in truth, I've never been disappointed. I've been lucky enough that my projects have always knocked my own socks off. "The hand that guides me" is clearly with me in all things-even ridiculous ones like decorating and renovations 'cause I'm not just that good. I have upstairs help.

Let's have a look at that fixture again!

With all the wallpaper hung, it was time to have a look at those furniture options again. We had to make up our minds soon so that we could get the extra set squared away somewhere since we were due to be part of the Annual Teapot Tour of Homes on the first Sunday in May.

In comes the Eastlake set.

Not bad. A little barren, but not bad.

Next came the white set-which was actually a cream damask.

I'm going to have to go with the fullness and comfort of the white set for this room. Either would be fine, but since this would have been a more comfortable room that the family would have used-as opposed to the front parlor that was for entertaining guests, I thought the heavier upholstered furniture suited the room better. So the decision had been made.

Enter the "wildcard."

One day we stopped by an antique shop I'd never been to before. They were having an outdoor "yard sale" and there was stuff all the way around the building. Donnie went browsing around the corner and came back in a few minutes and said there was something I needed to have a look at. To make a long story short, there was a sofa and chair (did I mention that we already have way too many sofas and chairs???) for $100. They were the style I had been looking for when I bought the white set 3 houses ago, but these were unpainted wood and probably from the 30s. Unlike most people who replace old stuff with new, we replace new stuff with old as it presents itself. How tempting! The upholstery was filthy and thread-bare in several places and there were holes, but it's all surface treatment right? By the end of our shopping trip, the guys who own the store offered it to us for 40 bucks. 40 bucks! Needless to say, we loaded it up in the truck.

So we have three sets of furniture for one room. Now what??? And where are we going to store it during the tour which was now only 2 weeks away? Fortunately, our upholsterer was able to deliver the completed Art Deco set of furniture for the library and was able to take these pieces to his shop and they wouldn't be ready until after the tour was over.

While all this was going on, the mantle and overmantle were taking up the floorspace in the kitchen while Donnie did his cleaning and repairs.

Before mantle

Here's something cool we found still attached to the backside of the mantle. It's the original identification from the Hegan Mantel Co. Pretty cool huh? That was an exciting find!

Once Donnie finished with the cleaning and repairs, I did my finish work-again, several coats of high-gloss varnish.

Donnie pulled out an old gas insert that we had gotten at an auction for $10 and used it to determine the size to make the opening for the tile surround. While he was at it, he cleaned and tested it as we'd like to run a gas line into this room so we can use it someday (it's on my "honey-do" list once the weather warms up.) It works great as does the newly framed opening upon which we were able to reinstall the original tile, moving the damaged pieces to less conspicuous locations and where they might be protected from further damage. We were very pleased with the outcome.

For the drapes, we decided to go with inside mount so that we wouldn't be putting holes in the wood casings. I had in mind a solid and found the perfect color of gray-blue velvet at a shop in Jackson.

Since this is a south-facing room, I wanted to line them and found a perfect insulated liner on one of my lunchtime shopping trips in Memphis as well as a gray-blue and pale gold beaded trim (Tipton Mix) for the leading edge of the simple panels I was going to make. Once I started working with the velvet, it became clear that each 8 1/2' panel was going to weigh about 30 pounds and that's without the liner. Since it was pretty heavy stuff, I skipped the liner for the time being.

The plan was to make some light-weight covered cornices to cover the pole and rings. I'm still waiting on those, but the craftsman is currently engaged in the dining room, so I won't mention it. I'd make them myself, but he enjoys creating detailed things like that.

One parlor, tour-ready and just in time.

The tour was a success and I think the general concensus was that our house was the best of show. Talk about elating, but the real truth is that the house-minus anything we have in it-has the nicest details of any other house in town and I've seen them all. We're very lucky to have this spectacular place to groom into a delightful home.

The next day.....

The reupholstered furniture arrived!

Blue leaning toward aqua??? Well, it was an accident. I had bought home about 20 samples of possibles-some good, others just as an experiment and tossed them on the furniture just to see what worked with the color of the wood trim and what might be appropriate for the color of the background. To my surprise, one of the least likely candidates provided the perfect solution for not just the wood and the vintage of the furniture, but also by adding that extra something that can often be found with an imperfect match. What it accomplished was to subtly put the attention of the room on the seating group-which in a room for sitting and conversation-is exactly where it needs to be. It didn't give the impression that it was a "not to be used" room but invited you in to have a seat and make yourself comfortable. We really liked it a lot. Because it was blue and thereby making the whole room primarily in shades of blues, greens, and blue-greens, it created a very peaceful space.

Are we done yet? Not exactly. I wanted the striped chair to go with the suit it came from in my office and there was a bald spot by the fireplace. Of all the sofas and chairs we have, surely we could come up with something of the right size and shape to fill the space by the fireplace. In the meantime, we'd keep a look out for a loveseat that matched the new sofa and chair.

Just so happened that the best fit for the room was a chair in the shop purchased from the estate sale of one of our neighbors for 8 bucks. It needed a complete overhaul, but it was the best fit.

I learned everything I know about the construction and reconstruction of a fully upholstered chair from this $8 teacher. Everything needed redone, restrung, re-strapped, etc.

But, the results were pretty good for a first-timer and Constance seems to approve.

Now, if we could only find a loveseat-which I had purchased enough matching fabric for in the event one presented itself.

Much to our surprise and delight, we discovered that we already had the perfect thing in the room next door.

Enter the wine-purple sofa from the front parlor. Donnie had just gotten this piece reupholstered right before we bought this house and while we considered reupholstering to match, the job was nice and tight, the fabric in perfect condition, and a color that was nice on the piece, well it just seemed wrong to tamper with that. Besides, that one different piece adds a little something to the room. We decided we liked the room just the way it had developed.

Now it's perfect-to us at least-a nice mix of styles, comfortable seating that isn't too fussy to use. But there was just one thing I still wanted to do....

Embellish the gas insert which I puttered around with and completed a week or so ago. I think it turned out well.

As with everything in any house-not just an old one, there's always something else to do. What's left?

Strip and refinish the floor-which will probably be done in conjunction to the adjoining rooms
Remove all the window sashes, stabilize and straighten up the frames, replace all the glazing compound and apply a new faux wood-grain finish if the original faux finish can't be salvaged-but not in February!
Make the cornices
Line the drapes and install them on some kind of seamless pole for ease of use.
Add 2 little pieces of some kind of trim on each side of the mantle at the baseboard where whatever used to be there is long gone.
Install a gas line to the fireplace

All in all, it's a short list.

The "finished" parlor

So that's the story of the peacock parlor that only took 8 months to complete and 2 days to try to remember, find the pictures for, and type out. Ridiculous, huh? Better get started on the 3-year long dining room! :)

Callie & the Vacuum Cleaner

2010-02-04T15:21:00.002-06:00

Callie is just too cute! I was trying to clean the back porch/sunroom which serves as the cat room when it's really cold out, so it was time to de-fur the place. Some cleaning just can't be rushed and Callie wasn't about to give up her spot on the well-worn scratch post (as you can see, all that's left of the scratching part is a shredded 2x4, but they love that thing!) Callie is just hilarious. All of the other cats are afraid of the vac, but not Callie. She loves to play in the water and have baths too. Go figure.

The Coolest People!

2010-02-02T01:43:00.001-06:00

I swear I "meet" the some of the coolest people!

There's a couple in a town close by that I have yet to actually meet in person, but hopefully they will stop in soon. They sent me an email a few days ago and introduced themselves and yesterday they sent an email of a picture of the house that used to be on the empty lot next door to us!

You can't imagine how many times we've wondered and tried to find out what the house next door used to look like and all we could discover was that there was a bungalow there at one time and that it was long gone when the Methodist Church (across the street from us) bought the lot. We were able to see on the 1877 map of Trenton that there was definitely a different house there (not to mention that bungalows didn't become popular until several decades later.) Why did it seem important to us to find out what the house looked like? Well, for the simple reason that it was also an Elder family residence.

Henry Lucas Elder built the original house on our lot-the part that remains is our kitchen, dining room and the two rooms above. His brother, John Wesley Elder, built a house next door. I'm don't recall at the moment what Henry Lucas did for a living (he had an office or shop on court square) but we do know that John Wesley was the President of the Gibson County Bank which he founded along with his nephew, Horace McClung Elder, (Henry Lucus' son) who worked for him at the bank under the title of "cashier" (which I suspect held more responsibility that today's cashiers.) I don't know when this picture was taken, but when Horace built the addition to the house he would have been around 46 and John Wesley about 74. I wonder if these two are John and Horace? I'll have to ask Donnie if he knows.

So, we always wondered what John's place was like, especially since it was next door. Now we know-thanks to some good people who were willing to share!

Our house is to the left of this one. The house to the right still exists. I'd say this photo was taken around 1895 as the city's tree-lined streets planting project is fairly established.

Our house-taken around the turn of the century-J.W. Elder's house was to the right.

The house to the left of ours was also owned in part for a short time by one of the Elder family, W.L. Elder, (who I believe to be William L. Elder, Horace's brother) who purchased it with James R. Deason. W.L. Elder later transferred his half to James who then became full owner until his death when his law partner (of the firm of Deason, Rankin, & Elder) Henry "Harry" Houston Elder, (Horace's son) handled the Honorable James R. Deason estate which was then purchased by M. H. Holmes who I believe was the Holmes who was also one of the partners.

The house to the left of the Deason/Holmes house (which later became Holmes Funeral Home, then Shelton Funeral Home) was the home of Quinton Rankin who was also one of the law partners until his murder in 1908. His widow later remodeled the whole house, removing the 3 arched openings on the upper and lower porches and replacing them with the large columns, giving it the appearance it has today. I'll have to make it a point to see if the new owners happen to have a picture of the house in its original design.

What I find interesting is that you can't start talking about one of these people or houses without talking about half the town since they all link to each other, but these are/were the four houses in a row that all have intertwining histories.

Deason, Elder, Holmes, with Bobbitt-a colleague from Humboldt (in order right to left with Bobbitt in the doorway-if I remember right)

Speaking of "Tammy's Room"...

2010-01-31T22:57:00.005-06:00

This is the room upstairs at the front of the house above the front parlor. The stained glass window in the bay faces west, there is a south-facing window, a southwest facing window a northwest facing window and a door on the north side that goes out to a balcony. The fireplace is angled in northeast corner of the room to the left of the door to the hall. The corner opposite on the right has a rectangular cedar-lined closet with a built-in cedar storage chest that was added by the last guy. It's a useful space, but frankly, the craftsmanship is hideous and I hate the thing.

There's storage above the closet that has a louvered door-Hey! Wait. just. one. minute! Is that one of the missing interior shutters I've been looking all over for????? Well, yeah. I found all three missing shutters forced into service as doors to the overhead storage in this room and in the master bath. This is the kind of stuff that makes me crazy about the last guy's "renovation". I mean, really. How much could an actual door for the things cost? At least I know where the shutters went and they've all been accounted for.

Upon investigation of said overhead space, we discovered that there was once a built-in corner unit that mirrored the angle of the fireplace on the other side of the wall. Nice. Guess what will be coming out and what we'll be putting back in when we get to this room?

We've been told that this room was originally the family library. If so, I suspect the corner built-in was once a nice bookcase for those treasured books. Having a private library and owning books was a big deal and reflected a family's social status during the Victorian era. Not only did it mean that you could afford books, but also that you could read-not something everyone could do back then. So, there was a library here somewhere and we're lucky enough to have some of the actual books and a letter from Harry (Henry) when he was at university at Vanderbilt to his sister that he had acquired a new volume for their library. If this room was indeed the library, then it stands to reason that it's possible that it also had seating, right?

Prior to the previous owner purchasing the property, there was a huge estate sale and pieces of the family collections were spread far and wide-and from what I hear this place was packed with great stuff including plenty of Civil War treasures which are in huge demand around here. Everything went.

One day we were at an antique shop in Jackson and came across a settee and two chairs. The wood was dry but in great shape, they were sturdy, interesting, and reasonably priced probably because they looked like they had been in a store window for years and the upholstery was shot. Donnie mentioned that they were similar to the design on the mantle in "Tammy's Room." Perfect since that's where we were planning to put them anyway. So, we brought them home and put them in "Tammy's Room."

Once we had the set in the room and compared it to the mantle, questions began to arise. There are 11 trees across the back of the settee. Of the hundreds of settees and chairs we've looked at we'd not seen this design on anything before.

Now have a look at the mantle.

There are 11 little trees in the negative across the top of the mantle.

So, did this furniture and this mantle used to be in the same room together as the family library??? Or is this just a bizarre coincidence? And if not, is there significance to the number 11 or is that just how many little trees fit comfortably across each piece? I wonder if they're pecan trees since this is the part of the house that was built when the house was named. Maybe there were 11 pecan trees on the lot. I don't think they represent the children as I think there were only 5 that I've been able to discover that were living at the time.

I'm hoping someday we'll be able to find out-not only about the furniture and mantle, but also about the use of the room as there's a gorgeous mantle in the downstairs master bedroom which makes me wonder if the library was downstairs with the other formal rooms and was moved upstairs sometime later. I'd love to find the blueprints!

This room is way down the "to do" list but happens to be one of the few that I actually have a plan for. It seems like it should be pink, green, and cream. While I don't really care for whitish walls, they just seem to be right for this room and apparently, the last guy thought so too.

I've picked up a few things as I've run into them even though I wasn't actively looking for things. When the right thing comes along, you just get it whether you need it immediately or not. Having a goal, reasonable restraint, and being willing to wait for "the right thing" keeps all that potential over-shopping in check.

The first thing I picked up was this really cool crewelwork bedspread. It's not a hundred years old and not Victorian, but this isn't a museum so I don't think the furnishings and fluff need to be era-appropriate. I like that impression of the "passage of time" in my rooms.

You'll also notice that quite often I choose things that don't match-like say, this bedspread and the wallpaper that I'll show in a minute. The colors are wrong. In truth, there's a reason this doesn't bother me a bit.

A couple of houses ago, I was looking for some red velvet drapes to go in a new room I was working on. The walls were a reddish-maroon damask wallpaper. In the typical fashion, I brought home a pair of two possible best-matches. One set was a dead-ringer for a match. It was perfect. The other set was slightly "off" in color. They were hung on two windows where they could both be seen at the same time. As I stood there checking out the two different "looks" I was surprised to discover that the perfect match made the room so boring and the not so perfect match enhanced the other things around it and made the room more interesting. The "perfect match" went back to the store and that's where I got my "The perfect match is often the least interesting" theory although I suspect plenty of other people already know this.

So, on to the perfect fabric for the settee and chairs which I found accidentally while shopping for something else. Perfect for what I wanted without necessarily being a perfect match to anything else. Isn't it pretty?

Now for the one thing I'm still waiting for but at least I know where to get it when I'm ready unless House Vernacular decides this is no longer a historical paper.

Isn't that just fabulous??? Here's the thing. I just clicked my link to House Vernacular to see what the pattern name was called and here's the message on the page:

We regret to inform you that House Vernacular is no longer accepting orders. We thank our customers for their support and apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

Sincerely, The Staff at House Vernacular

You have GOT to be KIDDING! I'm hoping this isn't permanent, but I suspect they're out of the wallpaper business. I'll have to do some snooping around.

Well, here's the wallpaper I could have had if I had figured out what I needed and ordered it a year ago.

Ceiling paper

Frieze

Walls

Wall & Frieze

Ok, I think I found a backdoor and was able to send them an email, so I'll wait to see what they have to say before panicking. If I didn't love this pattern so much, I'd just skip it as I think Bradbury may be more cost effective, but this is just beautiful and I want it for that room! I'm disgusted.

Meanwhile, here's the view of the Methodist Church from the front window of the room-obviously not taken today since church was canceled due to snow. Only in the south. :)

One More Fireplace!

2010-01-31T17:24:00.002-06:00

I was tinkering around upstairs last week and went into the room we call "Tammy's Room" (because my friend Tammy stayed with us for several months when we first bought the place)-the friend responsible for helping me "free" the walled-over dining room door. This bedroom was always freezing even with the central unit going. Oh right-back to the point. I noticed there was not only a set of gas logs just setting there in the opening not doing a thing (moved from somewhere else at some point and forgotten about), but there was also a capped gas line still in the room. Well now, what's the point in that???

Next trip to ACE for more weather stripping and I picked up a gas line long enough to hook the thing up. 10 minutes later there was a working heat source in the room! Before using it for any length of time, Donnie cleaned it and I pulled all of the old newspapers out of the flue. Works great! I turned it on when I was in that room earlier and it went from 43 degrees in there to the most comfortable room in the house in no time. I'm so excited!

You know, I've kind of enjoyed being home all the time with nothing much to do but piddle around and leisurely work on those "one of these days" projects. Of course at some point later, we'll work on making it look a little more attractive, but in the meantime, one little thing on the wish list has been accomplished and we have another bedroom that is comfortable enough to use.

The Obligatory Snow Pictures

2010-01-29T21:16:00.000-06:00

Since we only get about one good snowfall a year that sticks, here's this years photos. They aren't as cool as previous years since the yard lights are out of commission since we're going to run a dedicated circuit for exterior lighting. Oh, well. We took these about an hour ago. It's been putting down fine snow and little balls of ice all day and it's colder than the dickens since the wind is blowing.

Actually, I took that first one earlier today...obviously.

Well, that was fun. I'm ready for summer.

The Products of Pecan Place

2010-01-27T16:58:00.004-06:00

2 trees produced a 129 pounds of pecans-and that's just the ones that fell into our yard. The neighbor behind us also collected an abundance on their side of the fence. There are 3 other trees that still need to be picked if I can work up the energy to go out in the cold and kink up my back picking them.

A few bags looking all tasty and posing with Donnie's vintage scale

I took the ones I picked to a place that shells them and left with what turned into 28 pounds of clean pecans. I roasted them in the oven to dry them out so they wouldn't mold and dang they're good! Since it wasn't biting cold this afternoon, I took them outside with a hair dryer to blow out the little skin part that comes loose when you roast them. That little skin part is kind of bitter-kind of similar to the skin on a peanut. I'm going to hate to see the electric bill from running the oven for hours and hours. Cleaning all the skins, bad pieces, and shell fragments is a tedious and time consuming affair. Now I know why pecans aren't cheap!

The process is kind of like this:

Pick them up out of the yard-this is hell on the lower back
Take them to the sheller-at $.40 a pound in the shell-or spend the rest of your life cracking them by hand.
Clean the non-edible stuff out of them-this means examining every single one-putting aside the ones that didn't get extracted from the shell and the riff-raff at the bottom of the bag for examination later.
Roast them in the oven at 225 until they look kind of shiny and kind of medium brown
Remove them from the oven and let them cool
Put them in a large trash bag-this allows static to pull off some of the skins
Shake, fold, stir, whatever until nice clean pecans are at the top
In the meantime, address that bag of riff-raff cause there are several pounds in there-way to many to waste.
Get a scale and start weighing out 1 pound freezer bags of roasted pecans until you get to the area that starts having skins
Get a table, a hair dryer, and an extension cord and take them outside.
One cooking sheet at a time, take them outside and use the hair dryer to blow out the skins.
Bring them in and weight them out and bag the clean ones.
Repeat this process until they're all done and pray that you have room in the freezer until you decide exactly what you're going to do with all of them since a person can't use all those for a household of 2, by this time they're become pretty costly with the expense of cracking and electricity, they were way too much trouble to just give them away-cause my back still hurts, but they're frozen and safe and sound and ready to become something really tasty!

I'll let you know what I come up with. :)

Irresistible Details

2010-01-26T23:51:00.016-06:00

I don't know if it's all those paint-by-number sets that I did as a kid or just a natural impulse to want to paint out details, but I've been itching to play with this little beauty for some time.

Just look at all those pretty things going to waste in a shroud of uniform color. So, should I or shouldn't I? In the end, I just couldn't help myself. This is a gas insert that we got at a friend's auction. If I remember right, it was ten bucks. TEN BUCKS!

I had forgotten about it and didn't realize how pretty it was until we were working on the Peacock Parlor and Donnie dragged it in from the shop to see if we should use it in there. Oh, absolutely! He cleaned it up, tested it to see if it was functional-works perfectly-and gave it a fresh coat of paint. Even plain, it's a pretty piece, but in a room full of patterns, movement, and embellished trims, it seemed like it was wasting its visual potential against the plain blue of the tile surround. With everything else being decorated with details, the insert and surround seemed to me like someone dropped the ball in this area.

Yesterday while Donnie was at work, I started "playing" with it. Due to looking at wallpaper designs and paint color selections of the era, where color combinations would make a modern-thinking person cringe, I saw the colors I wanted to use. This is a mystery to me as I actually see finished projects as opposed to thinking them out. The colors I knew I was going to use actually did make me cringe, but I followed the vision anyway.

As of last night, this was the base polychrome scheme. Ouch! That's some obnoxious color-and flat looking too. Reminds me of something a child would create. All of the line details were just missing and it all looked too new and too cheap-but this was the first step. Toning down the colors at the outset would have obliterated them during the "aging" process. I let it dry overnight.

The newel post project was a warm-up exercise to tackling the completion of this one as I wanted to be warmed up before starting the next steps. Tentatively, I began at the top to experiment with what the results might look like.

I pondered about the medium that I wanted to use for the aging process and in the end chose the orange cast of the MinWax Olde Maple PolyShades that we've been using to bring out the richness of the wood trims and doors. Using the same color would help integrate the insert to the other colors in the room.

As you can see from the detail on the header, the Olde Maple ages the painted areas and enhances the glow of the gold background while returning dimension to the stems, leaves, and flowers and gives it a subtle appearance.

I don't do "pop" and I wanted the insert to appear feasible for its era. Although this is an Art Nouveau piece and the colors would have been different, I used colors that are more likely to be seen in the high Victorian era to integrate an non-era appropriate piece into the overall color scheme for the room. I think it turned out lovely and as the oil-based PolyShades mellows slightly, it will be even more attractive.

Now it seems right with a little design against the plain tile surround. I think it's just enough without being overdone and gaudy.

With all things, I like to stand back away from the project and have a good look at everything in context. I find it's easier to determine when things are "off" when seen from a distance.

I still think it's perfect. Truth is, last night when I was painting out the details, I stood outside the door and looked in to see if where I was going was in the right direction. It's all about perspective and you can only judge that from a distance. Needless to say, one of our favorite smoke-break pastimes is to peek into our own windows. It's amazing the things we've decided about the inside by standing on the lawn!

Today's Little Crafty Project

2010-01-26T22:05:00.004-06:00

My friend over at "At Home With A Country Lady" posted some refinishing projects she did on some accessories that looked fab! She used Gel Stain-a product I'm totally unfamiliar with-to antique or change the color of some things. They turned out great and I thought about a little project I've been considering for a while but never got around to doing.

We'd been looking for something to set on the newel posts in the stair hall since we bought the place. One day while scrounging the Nashville Flea Market, there was a guy pulling things out of a tangle of stuff in the back of a truck. It wasn't what I would call a high-class booth by any means. BUT, as we were passing by, one of these ladies caught my eye. Happily, after digging through boxes of what-not, another one was unearthed. Hey! We've got a pair and they'd be perfect for the newel posts! While we paid $20 each for the Plaster of Paris statues-probably $15 more than they were actually worth, we were tickled to death with our find and indeed, they were just the thing for the posts. So, the base is wider than the top of the posts and I didn't care for the dead-looking finish color, but it was a small compromise given that they were perfect otherwise.

We didn't want to drill holes in the posts to mount them, but the solution presented itself in the form of a roll of stick clay-like stuff I found in the shop that had been used to adhere/insulate the storm windows by whoever installed them. Works like a charm. The only problem is that I had planned to do some other kind of finish on them which I had been putting off because I mounted them for the historic home tour this spring and now they really don't want to come off. I'm tellin' ya, the stuff is sticky!

My thought was that I'd like to try to make them a bronze color but was having trouble getting up the initiative to start using a thin stain with the likelihood of drips while they're mounted. Rita's post provided a solution I thought would work, so I picked up some red mahogany (if you haven't noticed, I'm addicted to this color stain) and thought I'd give it a whirl.

I thought I'd just start a section and see how it worked then wipe it off if it looked terrible. One thing lead to another and I had the skirt finished out. I'll mention at this point that it is much easier to work from the top down, but I wasn't expecting to be happy with the results on a first try, so I didn't figure it mattered. So, above the waist is the original finish and below the waste is a thin coat of red mahogany over the metallic gold which maintains some of the illusion of metal.

The second one went more quickly as I worked it from top to bottom and had learned what to expect from playing with the first one. I used an old, weathered chip brush that was pretty stiff and worn halfway down to the nub so I could get the minimum about of stain shoved into the cracks and crevices, apply a thin layer overall, and allow for striations-think brushed nickel and the like. Once the stain started to cure, barely stroking the brush over the surface helped smooth the finish even more, but still left faint striations. I brushed the whole thing out in straight lines like something that might have been cast in a mold, and tried to resist following the flowing lines. For the bases, I just created a textured effect by tamping the brush randomly over the surface, allowing it time to set-up then diffusing the texture by tamping some more. I they turned out pretty good, but now I want to work on restoring the tired-looking newel post they're sitting on! I'm going to try to behave.

Fantastic GlasTile, Inc

2010-01-24T23:58:00.008-06:00

Once upon a time, I decorated (and plumbed, and wired, and installed tile, and provided general handyman services) to make a living after being laid off from my real job due to a site closure.

One of my projects was to rework a master bath that I had hung a Monet "Waterlillies" wallpaper in several years before. My client wanted to replace the carpet with tile and put in a usable whirlpool tub as well as a tiled shower. She wanted to keep the wallpaper and work the changes to compliment the waterlilies. On one of my shopping trips to look at possible products for the tilework, I discovered the perfect solution-glass tile. Not your standard colored paper or paint on the back glass tile, but iridescent tile that was colored glass made from sand-not recycled window glass. It was perfect. The showroom where I found it no longer carried it but gave me the information to contact the company.

The tiles are made by GlasTile and each tile is handmade by the couple who owns the business and is fired in kilns in their shop. They were wonderful to deal with. Their prices are higher than the machine-made painted-on-the-backside nonsense you find with most glass tile, but aren't that bad given that you have a high quality handmade product.

We chose the lavender and a pale green 2x2 iridescent textured square as accents to the 4x4 frosted pale blue iridescent tiles by Oceanside glass and the sand colored porcelain tiles that we would also be using.

Backsplash and surround for the whirlpool tub

It was in this bathroom that I learned to tile-and with glass none the less. We chose a sanded thinset for behind the glass as you can see through the tile to the sandy texture underneath. For a bath where the setting will be water, shells, the beach, and so on, the sand gave the perfect texture.

Don't worry, I won't go into installation details and yet another "how-to" for the day. Maybe some other time. My point here is to introduce a company and a line of products that I think very highly of and can't wait to try to use them again. What I like about them is that the tiles don't have that "clean-lined", modern, contemporary look that is common with most glass tile. These are unique as are the lines they offer-which I'm excited to say they've added to since the last time I visited.

Completed shower tilework

We have a couple of fireplaces that no longer have surrounds-or hearths for that matter-and I'm dying to play with combining some of the various lines they offer. Are they period correct for our house? No. BUT might the Victorians have used them if they had been readily available (which I don't think they were at the time) along with their stained glass windows and Tiffany lamps? I'd almost bet on it.

Shower wall detail with iridescence

Have a look around the site. They have some pretty stuff! Check out the gallery where they've been nice enough to showcase pictures of customer installs-this project being on of them. Not bad for my first tile job.

Meanwhile, I'll leave you with one of the lines I'd like to use someday:

(Disclaimer: This photo is a link from the GlasTile photo gallery. It is possibly another customer's install. It is not my work or my photo and is merely for show and tell on this blog.)

Happy shopping!

Spring Break in January?

2010-01-24T20:15:00.003-06:00

The temperatures this week have been wonderful and now that the windows and doors have been prepped for the next cold stretch-which starts tomorrow I believe-it was time to get out of the house and play and this weekend I did just that.

I'd been thinking that I really need to get those bulbs that I dug up last summer back into the ground before they ruin and there was this little irritating area next to the wall of the parking lot that I thought I might turn into a partial shade bed. Of course this all began simply by wanting to get some of the daffodils back into the ground. Of course once that was done I got to pondering what else could be planted-irises near the wall where the digging is shallow, some lavender plants that I have no idea what they are but there are only a few-surely I could poke them in there some where...etc.

The next thing you know, I had 2 boxes of bulbs replanted around the back yard and a new bricked off bed near the gate. One thing leads to another. Here's the new little bed.

I did a little mock-up so that I'd know what I planted where.

Hopefully, it will look something like this as it blooms-not all at the same time of course.

Can't wait to see stuff blooming there!

Christie's Seat-Of-The-Pants Delights

2010-01-24T12:41:00.001-06:00

Lemon Pecan Pancakes

Mix up some pancake batter using the directions on the box
Toss in a handful of roasted pecan pieces that happen to be in a bag on the table waiting to be measured, bagged and put in the freezer.
Splash in some ReaLemon lemon juice until it tastes like you think it should.
Remix batter
Melt a sliver of real butter in the skillet
Pour in the batter, flip when ready
Remove from skillet
Melt a little real butter on top
Add maple syrup
Crown with a plop of whipped cream

It's pretty good! Donnie says "Move over Cracker Barrel! He's staying at home for breakfast!"

Note: I made one with oil instead of the butter in the skillet to see if it made a difference. I didn't tell Donnie it was different than the other two because I doubted there'd be a noticeable difference since it's just a small bit of butter. I was surprised when he mentioned that it didn't taste lemony and asked why. That little bit of butter enhances the flavor of the lemon. Who knew?

By the way, this is NOT diet food! :)

Restoration of a Queen-Simple Window Repair

2010-01-24T11:12:00.002-06:00

Since I've been working with the windows, I thought it might be a good time to share another important aspect of increasing the energy-efficiency of old windows. This is one of the attic windows that was in appalling condition as there are no storm windows on the attic. Mind you, this was a window that was part of the "renovation" of 30 years ago and I've never been able to understand how when you have such lovely things to work with that a person would drop the ball on things that are important to protect-functional windows being one of them, beautiful ones being the bonus.

This was the condition of the window when Donnie brought it down from the attic.

If you'll notice, there is plenty of damage, missing pieces, crappy paint job, peeled off paint, dry wood, and failed glazing compound. There is nothing energy-efficient about a window in this condition as there is little left to keep drafts from blowing right in.

Here's a detail of the muntins and mullions. You can see the cracked glazing compound as well as some broken muntins (the horizontal pieces) and separating mullions (the longer vertical pieces). It was in really sad shape and while I'd replaced the glazing compound in several windows before, I'd never had to actually replace missing, split, or rotted parts, so I got my window restoration education from this sash.

The first order of business was to remove the glazing compound and carefully remove the glass. Next was to strip the old paint from the exterior of the frame, sand off the dead wood, and apply a couple of coats of linseed oil to put some moisture back into the wood. There are other products on the market for conditioning wood, but I've always used linseed. I chose linseed over tung oil for this part because the color of the interior side of the frame was very splotchy colored and I knew I was going to want to try to even it out with some stain. Tung oil dries to a hard finish much faster than linseed which is why I went that route-I wanted the stain to soak into the wood, not lay on top of it.

I took a break from working on the sashes to see what could be done about the glass panes that had paint slopped all over them. As you can see, it looks like there was no effort at tidiness employed when these windows were painted. Usually I do my glass cleaning with a razor blade as it's quick, doesn't burn your skin, and has no fumes. Stained glass however, can't be effectively scraped with a razor as the surface is textured.

After giving it some thought, the no-brainer answer was to clean them with liquid paint stripper and a soft tooth brush. The results look like new:

So, now it's back to the sashes. Once prepped and well oiled, it was time to play with some stains. The trim in the house is red oak however the window sashes are pine. To add the orange-reddish cast to the sash, I first applied a red oak stain which turned them quite orange. As you can see, the light red oak stain allows noticeable discolorations from water stains.

Next, I applied a thin coat of red mahogany stain over the red oak which knocked down the intensity of the orange and produced some color dimension as well as helping to blend in the imperfections and make them less noticeable. It's the same concept used with creating color uniformity in modern kitchen cabinetry-which is where I learned this useful tactic.

So now we have a top and bottom sash that look convincing enough to be the appropriate color and continuity for the wood windows and trim in the rest of the house that has undergone over a hundred years of the aging process. I put three coats of oil-based varnish over the stain. I was delighted that these turned out so well. It's a shame they will be in the attic where they will never be seen.

Now for the hard part-figuring out how to fix the broken and missing pieces of the frame without having any experience or even having needed to give it a thought before. After pondering and wandering around the house and shop looking at objects, the right possibility presented itself in the form of a paint stirring stick. While they come in slightly different thicknesses, they're generally made of a soft wood that can be cut to the length needed then split along the grain to the desired thickness to make the depth needed to function as a muntin. Muntins, being the horizontal element of the grid are more susceptible to damage than mullions (the vertical members of the grid) since water can pool there and rot them out especially if the glazing compound is missing as there is no longer an angle to divert the water away from the glass. Glazing compound failure can allow water to seep or pool on the muntin as well and is also a cause of damage as is evident on this sash.

The supplies I used for the project are as follows:

Chisel-to remove the damaged backsides of the muntin
Measuring guide (I can't think of the technical term for the thing at the moment)-for measuring the length of the muntin
Paint stirring stick-to use as a replacement part
Awl-to poke holes in the paint stick and exterior of the remaining muntin
Hammer-to use with the awl
Utility knife-to cut the paint stick into strips
Toothpicks-to stabilize the paint stick to the backside of the muntin
Wood glue-(not pictured) to glue the toothpick to the paint stick and the muntin

Step 1-use the chisel to remove the backside of the muntin until it is fairly flat and will make a suitable surface for attaching the replacement part.
Step 2-cut the paint stick to the necessary length
Step 3-cut the paint stick to the desired width to match the existing muntins
Step 4-poke a couple of starter holes in the thin side of the paint stick so that the toothpick can be inserted.

Break a toothpick in half and stick the pointy end into the starter holes in the replacement part. Gently hammer them in until the point sticks out the other side (as shown on the toothpick on the left). Cut off the excess toothpick where it will stick into the muntin with the utility knife (probably around 3/8" to 1/2" protruding from the stick)

Put a little glue (or chalk) on the end of the toothpicks and position it evenly on the frame over the damaged area. This is just to mark the proper position of the replacement part so that you know where the holes in the remaining muntin should go. Once you have the locations marked, use the awl to poke the holes at the markings. Be careful not to poke the awl all the way through to the interior surface of the muntin.

Dry fit the replacement part to the holes in the muntin and make any needed adjustments.
Once you're satisfied that it will be a clean, flush fit, fill the holes in the frame with wood glue and run a bead along the length of the muntin.

Fit the replacement piece into the holes, cut off any bits of toothpick protruding from the front of the replacement piece, wipe off the excess glue with a moist paper towel and move onto the next one. Pretty simple and cheap to boot!

Here's the repaired frame with its replacement parts.

When everything is dry, you can put a little primer on the areas that will be covered with glazing compound as well as the noses of each piece. Some people don't prime behind the compound (there are reasons, but I won't go into them right now) and others do. I'm not sure which way is the most correct or if it even matters, but I chose to prime everything.

Once all of that has dried, it's time to reinstall the glass. When I remove the glass, I stack it top to bottom, left to right and keep them oriented the same way that they were when I took them out of the frame. Masking tape stuck to the back of each pane of glass and marked with the position in the frame and which direction is "up" is great for keeping track of what goes where since the pieces sometimes don't fit any other hole than the one they came out of. Yeah, I know I'm anal.

Once you have the panes positioned back in the appropriate openings, use some glazing points to hold the glass in place. Because muntins and mullions are thin, the glazing point will likely poke through to the other side of the wood, so you'll want to stagger the positioning of the points which will help keep the adjoining pieces of glass in place. Something to consider before installing the panes is to run a whisper-thin bit of caulk (I like to use clear) around the backside of each opening. This creates a cushion between the frame and the glass which eliminates rattle, provides sound-proofing, and the prevents dust from lodging in any irregular gaps in the wood. The key here is thin as you don't want a lot of goop squeezing out onto the textured surface of the panes now that they're nice and clean and paint-free. You can also use a thin bed of glazing compound for this as well, again thin being key.

Once you install the glazing points and the panes aren't moving, turn the window over and clean off any excess caulking from the interior of the panes while it's still wet. If you've used the glazing compound as a bed, there's no rush on this part as it takes several weeks to cure and will remain easy to clean up for months.

I'm not an expert when it comes to making beautiful joints with the compound on an entire window at once-or at all for that matter. Since time wasn't of the essence on these windows, I chose to do the compounding in 2 parts-mullions first, then when the compound was solid enough so as not to try to stick to my tools, I worked the muntins. On a standard plain glass window, I work the whole thing at once as the spaces are big enough to do without too much trouble, but with these tight little panes, it was less stress and a cleaner job to do it this way.

I used the old-fashioned DAP brand compound for the windows I've done so far. I've heard high praise about other products, so being an experimenter, I may try one that doesn't take a month or more of dry-time before you can paint it. I'll go into window glazing some other day as I have a full set of pictures of accomplishing that task as well.

Now, ya've got to adore a man that doesn't notice that you look like a homeless chic (my signature style, it seems) but is so enamored by what you do that he'll take a picture of you looking like this and post it on his blog!

Once the glazing compound has cured enough to paint (which in our humidity, the DAP takes about a month) I applied three coats of oil-based gloss black.

While it doesn't look like a brand-spanking-new window, it certainly is improved!

Inside of sash stained with red oak, then over-stained with red mahogany.

The completed outside of sash-what you see from the street

It's hard to believe this is the same window!

So, with a little time, patience, common sense, and a good cup of coffee at hand, there's no end to what can be achieved. This was a pretty simple project that didn't take all that long to do, but the results are astonishing.

Exciting Event!

2010-01-23T19:51:00.000-06:00

One day while Googling Pecan Place, I happened to bump into one of the Elder family line who built our house. He is the great-great-grandson of Horace McClung Elder who created the house in its present form that everyone now knows as "Pecan Place" and the great-grandson of Henry (Harry) Houston and Martha (Mattie) Evelyn Elder whose home was Pecan Place for three-quarters of the last century. I contacted him and he was kind enough to contact me back. Neat guy!

The really cool and totally unexpected part was that he forwarded my email to his father and 3 days after Christmas I got an email from him sharing some really great things about the house and the family. I was so shocked and excited that I couldn't keep a linear train of thought long enough to write him back in a very timely manner. Let's just say that when I did, it was only a portion of the book I would have written had I asked all my questions!

All I can say was that was the coolest and most unique Christmas occurrence! And speaking of Christmas, it seems that Mattie really decorated for the holidays. I'd love to see pictures of that! Maybe next Christmas we'll start trying to make her proud.

I hope to hear back from the family soon and will ask to share some current information, stories, memories, and hopefully some pictures! I'd love to see how the house looked when Harry and Mattie called it home.

Restoration of a Queen-Weathering the Winter

2010-01-17T18:15:00.008-06:00

Those of us who get to live in these fantastic old places know that age, deterioration, settling, and the older methods of construction can provide a challenge when it comes to keeping them warm in winter. While central units are great in new houses, the draw from the air returns can really pull in the cold air. My little desk is in a bay and you know it's bad when I can't wait for the heat to shut off so the draft on my backside will cease! : )

Since we're having a heat wave (which in most years would be known as "normal January temperatures"), I decided it would be a good time to work on some draft control before the "normal February temperatures" arrive. While a good deal of the task at hand is temporary until we get to the overhaul of each room, it works wonders. As we tackle each room, we'll do some caulking and take some more permanent measures, but until then, we don't want to add anything else that needs dug out, scraped, or stripped off. All this stuff will come back off without too much effort.

So, now that we have established that these are temporary measures, here are the tools I'll be using to do the work. I noticed I left out the all-important pair of scissors though. You'll want to have a pair of those.

Things I'll be using:

1/2" upholstery tacks
3/8" upholstery tacks
upholstery tack hammer
1 1/4" nail-on felt weather strip
3/4" open cell poly weather strip
3/8" open cell poly weather strip
rope caulk
Philips head screwdriver
flat head screwdriver
needle nose pliers
putty knife
scissors (not shown)

To be able to access several of the leaking parts of the window, the stops had to be removed. The stop (in case you don't already know) is the piece that is mounted inside the casing of the window (usually covering half of the weight pocket) with the thin back edge of it butting up to the front of the inside of the bottom sash. This is what holds the window in place (so it doesn't flap back and forth into the room when the wind blows) when the window is open. In our house, the window stops are also the tracks for the interior shutters. Luckily, they haven't been caulked in so they are able to be removed quite easily.

Once the stops are removed, I vacuumed the dirt and debris off the surfaces I'd need to apply the stripping to and gave it a washing to remove the dust and coal soot residue. These areas are raw wood and will need to dry completely before the stripping will stick to them. If you'd like, it's a good time to seal the raw wood with some shellac or something that will allow the stripping to stick even better.

For the windows that didn't have the top sash caulked into place from the outside, I pulled down the top sash and put a length of the 3/4" stripping across the top of the sash to insulate the gap between the top of the sash and the header when closed. I don't have a picture of it since I didn't think about it until after the top sash was remounted from the outside and the ladder put away. Next, I did the same to the bottom surface of the bottom sash.

On the sashes that moved so that I could get to the locking rail between the two sashes, I pulled the top sash down and put a length of 3/4" stripping on the inside of the upper sash to help close the gap between where the two sashes meet and lock.

I used the 3/4" on these three places for 2 reasons. One, because it is a wider tape, and two because it's thinner and can be compressed enough to help block small drafts without adding so much bulk that the sashes don't meet at the lock. The sash locks serve 2 purposes. One to provide security, but just as importantly to pull the two sashes together to reduce unwanted airflow, so it's important not to add so much bulk that you can no longer lock the window and close that airspace.

With most old houses, sometimes things just aren't what they should be anymore and due to settling or shifting, doors and windows don't always sit properly in their frames. Such is the case in our foyer, so a different method of insulating the bottom sash had to be used. For filling larger gaps, you can stack the foam insulation and use the denser closed cell, but since cracks aren't always even, the foam versions don't always make the transition from big crack to little crack without leaving gaps and nonsense. That's where the nail-on felt comes into play. I cut a length of felt to fit across the bottom of the sash. Then I cut a smaller piece that extended into the area where the gap began to narrow. This is where I used the upholstery tacks and hammer because you have to nail this stuff on. Because you can pull the felt and feather the end some without breaking, it makes the transition from the large gap to the smaller one more smoothly than with foam. Ok, so it has a rather festive look about it, but when viewed from the outside of the house, it isn't a blaring white that can be seen a block away, so it has it's perks.

On the inside of the same window, there was a large gap between the front of the bottom sash and the backside of the sill. For this area, I used the 3/8" thicker poly stripping and ran it along the top of the felt stripping to close that gap. When the window closes, that bit of stripping closes the gap. Like I said, some of this isn't pretty, but feels much better than that single-digit breeze that was blowing in!

With that accomplished, it was time to start with insulating the stops. First I ran a length of 3/8" stripping down the inside of the frame where the backside of the shutter tracks butt up to the frame. I used open cell stripping for this as well since the shutter tracks have a header track and if too much bulk is added, the tracks won't fit back into the window frame. This will also allow the shutters fit and be able to operate in the track if we choose to put the shutter panels back in the tracks later.

I butted the foam up tightly to the bottom window sash but didn't allow it to stick to any part of the sash or it will impede movement or tear off the stripping when we want to open the windows this spring. Now if you think about it, this piece of stripping won't seem to have much purpose once you consider that most of it will be mashed almost entirely flat by the shutter tracks. The gaps around the window are much larger than the sliver this foam is going to be when compressed. Even so, it's going to help since part 2 is to insulate the narrow back edge of the the shutter tracks.

I only insulated as high as the top of the bottom sash as there is no need to insulate higher than that. You can see in the picture on the right that the stripping protrudes to the side of the track that will be butted up against the lower sash. Once both the frame and the track are insulated, I reinstalled them on the window frame pressing first towards the insulation on the frame until it was tight, then pressing firmly towards the sash until it was tight. Both of these pieces of stripping together should create something like a solid L-shaped configuration behind the track when compressed thus blocking the drafts from between the track and the frame and between the track and the sash. Works great and the window still opens if needed but is nice and firm in the frame without being extremely hard to operate. While the closed cell stripping would have worked nicely on the sash side, it would have been too much pressure to allow the window any flex to move which is why I like the open cell for this.

So, the window stops and sashes are insulated, but what about the drafts from the chain or rope hardware? Here's a tip I got from 'This Old House' except that they used carpet pad. Cut a length of felt. Tuck it under the chain over the wheel. Pull the chain out a little and let the chain pull the felt into the hole as the weight pulls the chain back into position. Well, that was too easy. Why didn't I think of that???

Without the flash, the felt isn't really something a passerby would even notice and you can just pull it right back out in the spring. For the holes at the top of the bottom sash, I just cut a smaller piece of felt, slit it in the middle, put the chain in the slit and stuffed the little "ears" into the gap. You can use a flat head screw driver to poke it down in there better if needed.

The windows I've been working on currently do not have storm windows on them. What I found interesting was that every step I finished blocked more and more of the noises outside. Now we all know that there are gaps in windows, but until you start stopping them up, you really don't realize how much of the outside comes in through them. It was pretty quiet in the room by the time I got this far.

I couldn't get the foam between where the sashes meet on some of the windows and this is one of the places where the rope caulk comes in handy. If you've never seen it, it's kind of like clay and comes in a long wide strip that's comprised of individual clay "channels" that can be pulled apart one at a time or several depending on what's needed to fill the void. Where the sashes meet, I pulled off a single channel and tucked it up to the backside of the inside sash so that it closed the gap between. It was raining outside by then and you could hear the rain falling from the porch. By the time I got this stuff pressed against the crack, there was almost no noise at all coming in through the window. I think it's cool how such a little thing can make such an astronomical difference. Just imagine what it will be like with properly sealed and installed storm windows!

While rope caulk isn't very attractive, it's easy to remove in the spring and won't pull off the paint, so I use it a lot when I need a temporary fix for the season. It works better if it is installed when the surface of where you're putting it is warm. If you install it when the surface is very cold, it is likely to fall off in a day or so as it isn't really very sticky. Use a hair dryer to heat the surface where you are installing it a little to alleviate the problem. It also mashes into the cracks better if it's warm so hair-dry it a little if you want to really cram it in there. What I like about it is that it can be temporary or permanent, there's no waste involved and that it doesn't get real hard or dry out. I remember my parents using the stuff on our windows when we were growing up in upstate New York. Funny the things that stay with you.

One other place that I'm shoving that rope caulk is between the trim. The construction method used on the newer (1893) part of our house was that the trim was installed first, then the plaster which means there is no wall behind any of the trim so drafts come in where window sill meets window skirt, where window skirt meets baseboard cap and where baseboard cap meets baseboard and baseboard meets the floor and shoe moulding.

That's a lot of drafts all the way around the room! As we're working each room, I've been clear caulking these areas once the mouldings have been cleaned and prepped. It makes a big difference, but we only have 2 rooms done, so for now it's the rope caulk at least around the exterior walls.

From the height of a standard person, you can't see the rope that's between the baseboard and cap and the rope that's between the window skirt and the base cap just looks like part of the wall. If I hadn't written about it here, Donnie probably never would have noticed and may not still even though he knows where to look. Without the camera flash, it's really not that disturbing.

Here's a link to a 'This Old House' video about properly insulating working weight pockets that's pretty good. As we work the remaining rooms, I think I'm going to have to pull off the casings and work the entire pocket.

How to Insulate a Window with Sash Weights

With that said, here's my speech-Go green! Stop sending the earth's natural products to the landfill in lieu of products produced from chemicals and filled with gas. Want those? Buy a NEW house! Actually, I should mention somewhere in here that once upon a time, I had a newer house that had vinyl windows. Truthfully, they were pretty nice, very efficient, and a dream to clean (since both sashes tilted in). With that being said, everything has its place and vinyl windows on an old house are like implants on grandma-ouch! (Thank you Magnaverde for introducing me to that visual!)

There's no reason why original windows and doors can't be as energy efficient as the vinyl, it just takes a little effort and costs a lot less to do it. With winterizing products, storm windows and some beautiful lined drapery (that contributes to the era-ambiance as well as being totally functional, portable if you move, and less costly than a replacement window plus installation) you can be just as comfortable and energy efficient as a modern home. What many people don't realize is that cold comes from a variety of sources and you have to investigate them all to be most efficient. But at the moment, let's stick with just the windows.

Glass is a conductor of heat and cold. If you put your hand on a window even on a cold day when the sun is shining, it's likely to be warm. If it's a freezing night, you can feel waves of cold coming from the window. Unfortunately, people think this is caused by leaking windows and call the replacement place the next morning. The real culprit is purely the nature of glass and the cold transfer that radiates from it when it's freezing outside.

To live comfortably in an old house, you have to use the logic of the time. If you look at Victorian houses, you'll never see one with bare windows. Oh yes, those lace panels and glass curtains are a the epitome of Victorian now aren't they? Well, try a little experiment on a cold day. If you have bare windows, put up something as simple and as thin as a sheer curtain (available for less than 10 bucks at WalMart.) While it won't provide a lot of actual draft protection from gaps, what it will provide is protection from the cold that radiating off the glass whether the windows are old or new. Those pretty lace curtains so popular with the Victorians were just a fancy way to provide several functions-protection from heat and cold, fading UV rays and privacy.

While in a real Victorian house you might find just lace or sheers (glass curtains) at the windows in summer, you'll also find heavy lined drapery over the lace or sheers in winter. The reason for this was not purely for the purposes of aesthetics, but for controlling the environment inside the house. We could learn a lot from the eras before central heat and air allowed us to be able to complain about the inefficiency of windows. Like I said earlier, when I sit at my little desk, the central unit draws the cold air in through the gaps around the windows and trim. Replacing the windows won't fix that. Perhaps it's not that the old stuff is bad, but maybe that we just aren't using it in the manner it was intended. Make sense? If we want to use modern conveniences, the whole house has to be prepared like a modern house which means that some of the penetrations that used to let the house "breathe" before modern heat and air was invented need to be addressed.

In the meantime, go Victorian green. Cover the windows when it's cold with multiple layers for various levels of control. Open the drapes, lace, and sheers on sunny winter days and take advantage of the solar heat since the UVs aren't as strong in winter. Close the sheers or lace before the glass starts transferring the cold. It works the same way in summer if you live in a warm, sunny climate. Keep the lined drapes up and close them on hot sunny days on the south side during the day and it will keep those rooms much cooler and will result in a more environmentally-friendly cooling bill or at least leave some green in your wallet. Common sense and taking the time to do the work are the keys to comfort.

Now, can someone explain to me again the superiority of vinyl replacement windows?

I didn't think so.

Ok, So I Lied!

2010-01-15T01:17:00.007-06:00

I DO know how to make something! I may not have a clue about how to cook, but I do know how to bake chocolate chip cookies! My mom always made Nestle Toll House Cookies when we were kids and I never realized there were other kinds. For me, there is no other kind 'cause these are the best.

So, tonight I made a batch with chocolate chips. I love chip cookies and no matter what flavor of chips or what combination of flavors, I always use the Toll House recipe (that can be found on the back of the semi-sweet chocolate chips) and they're always awesome. I made some butterscotch during the holidays and took some to the get together at Mom's and my sister in law came into the kitchen with a plate of desserts and yelled out "These are awesome! Who brought these?" Well, there were probably eight hundred awesome desserts (yeah, we all bring 'em in our family), but it was the butterscotch chip cookies made with the Toll House recipe that she was raving about. Who knew?

When I get in the mood to bake some, I usually take them in to work for the guys ('cause my field is mostly guys). They always have the same response as Becki. Once, I made several batches-regular semi-sweet chocolate chip, semi-sweet chocolate chip and peanut butter chip, white chocolate chip and almonds, butterscotch, and white chocolate and butterscotch, and took them in to work for the construction and electrical crews that were building the theatre where I worked. Of course I picked up a couple of gallons of milk on the way in. I think there were more than a few non-productive hours that morning from the guys sitting around eating cookies that they all said were the best they ever had.

Here's a tip. If you need to make a few friends, bribe 'em with cookies. :) It always seems to work even if you don't need more friends!

So, here's some hot, fresh, chocolate chip cookies to drool about. They ain't cute, but they sure are tasty!

Christie's secret ingredients:

Parkay margarine-not whipped
Real vanilla-not imitation
Pampered Chef baking stone-makes nice, even warming. The bottom of the chips don't burn like they seem to with metal pans and they don't stick so hard to the stone.

Flour, sugar and eggs are usually something generic. Nothing special, so it must be the 3 things above that make them different. And that's the "secret" for what its worth. Now ya know. :)

Oh, and if you want them to stay soft, put a slice of bread in the cookie jar with them!

A New Kind of DIY Project

2010-01-14T21:09:00.004-06:00

They don't call this Pecan Place for nothing. We had a nightmare of a pecan crop last year-well, for us-make that me-since dealing with pecans seems to be one of my jobs. So, the story was that neither of us had any idea what to expect from a crop of pecans and we certainly weren't expecting the heavy crop we got. We had no idea how they grow, when they fall, when they're ready to use, how long they keep, or anything, so we were totally unprepared. Neither of us know how to do anything in the kitchen besides surf the internet and use it as a paint station on rainy or cold days, so when they fell we gave boxes and boxes of pecans to family, friends, and co-workers, and let anyone in town come into the yard to pick as many as they wanted just so they wouldn't go to waste. At the end of the winter, we still had a 33 gallon trash barrel full to the brim with them and they molded before summer was over. It was upsetting that they went to waste.

I learned all kinds of things about pecans including how to tell by the sound of the shell whether they're good or not, and that there are at least 5 or more kinds of pecans growing on our lot and that they all have a different flavor. I figured I'd have a plan worked out for how to deal with them next time we had pecans. They only produce every 3 or 4 years, right? Plenty of time to come up with the plan. Until........

We had almost a full crop of them again this year! 7 of the 8 trees produced and I'll have to say they are almost as abundant as they were last year. We've got pecans out the wazzoo and I've only gotten one section of the yard picked up. The front and side yard haven't even been started and it's been so cold that they're frosted into the grass. The ones that are still out there on the lawn are delicious though and I'll have to get them picked up or there will be little trees sprouting up all over the place in the spring. Oh, my!

I did make some progress though. Yesterday, I took about 125 lbs of them to a place that cracks and shells pecans. About a half hour later, I left with 25-30 pounds of cracked pecans, ready to do "whatever" with. So, last night I decided to start removing the nuts from the bits of shell and hull and picking out anything that didn't look like something you'd want to eat.

The lady at the processing place said to take them out of the plastic bags they put them in and spread them out on a sheet to keep them from molding. Oh crap! They're still going to mold??? So I decided I'd roast them and get them dried out so they can be stored until I get them ready to turn into-well, something else.

Don't they look yummy??? Now if I could just keep Donnie out of them! :)

So, I'll be starting a new kind of DIY project-I believe I'm going to learn how to cook!

I have some thoughts on some different flavors of seasoned, spiced, and candied pecans I'd like to try. I know what yummy tastes like and what different ingredients taste like, so it shouldn't be too hard to figure out how to combine them to get them to taste like the yummy in my mind. Right? Haha.

I'll let ya know. :)

The Beginning of the End-Part II

2010-01-10T20:26:00.002-06:00

I started this post more than a week ago then was ambushed by another week-long round of something like migraines, so I didn't get more than 2 lines written. Meanwhile, progress continued in the dining room. Donnie wrote about it over here so I'll skip the details on that other than to say, learn to pay attention and always take the time to assure at least some level of safety! The good news is that nothing seems to be broken except a short buffet that I was going to use in there that now needs reconstructive surgery.

Call me paranoid, but I'd never get on a ladder sitting on sawdust on a slick hardwood floor with all those obstructions around. Just looking at it is enough to make me apoplectic! Poor Donnie. He went to bed at 6:00 with a bruised line across his butt where he landed on leading edge of the little buffet. That's his sense of humor up in the drawing by the way. If ya live through it, sometime ya just gotta laugh-even if it hurts.

Christie's rules of safety:

Keep the work area clean
Keep the walk path clear
Keep obstructions (furniture, tools not in use, lumber, things that will stab through you if you fall on them) in an area that is not in a potential fall zone
Know where your feet and hands are at all times
Don't overreach-get down and move the ladder to where it needs to be
Hold on to something while you're on a ladder
Keep cords neat and out of the way

In short, pay attention and take the time to be safe. If you can't, please increase your life insurance!

The Begnning of the End

2010-01-05T10:56:00.010-06:00

Finally. After more than 2 years of demo, thinking, procrastinating, we're finally going to work on finishing the dining room!

It's 10 degrees out at the moment and has been lower than 20 for several days. Needless to say, this has brought any piddling around with half-finished projects outside to a complete stop. No better time than the present to work on a hefty indoor project.

So, I'll start this story from the beginning with a shot of Carolyn's dining room when they owned the house.

Allegedly, lightning struck the chimney and blew out half the wall and that's when the room turned into what it looked like when we bought it.

This is how the trouble started-well, not necessarily as it was pretty obvious to us that there was a problem in that room when we bought the place, but this is how it started when it did.

See the door on the left just past the shelf? Well, that door faces south, but from inside the dining room, there was no door on the south wall. SO, one day while Donnie was at work, my friend and I decided we'd free the door.

Mission accomplished.

To make a long story short-well shorter, we ended up stripping that room the first summer we were here so that we could see the condition of the walls behind the paper and assess the work that needed to be done. The south wall had been drywalled over the failing plaster where the plumbing had leaked for who knows how long from the bathroom above, so Donnie removed the drywall and the plaster to investigate.

We knew there was something fishy with this room when we bought the place as there was a bow in the ceiling along the south wall that bowed into about a third of the room. There was a dip in the floor as well. Not a huge one, but one that raised questions. What he found was that all of the studs on the south wall were entirely rotted off and were basically hanging mid-air. The only thing that was holding the wall in place was the door that had been covered over. It was then that we realized exactly what to expect of the workmanship of the 1980s renovation-lipstick on a pig-i.e. do what it takes to make it pretty, but don't bother to actually fix it. Not a discovery we were pleased about, but one that was correctable as long as you undid everything the last guy did. We have a lot of that around here, but those efforts while slap-happy, may have kept the house from becoming a parking lot, so ya just shake your head and do what needs to be done to fix it.

After tearing half the house apart and jacking up the floor, fixing the bad bits, putting shut-offs on the leaking pipes and repairing the leaks (there was still a usable bathroom and a laundry room above this one at the time), insulating and stripping the wall for drywall, the repair portion of the job was done-of the wall that is. Notice the slope in the ceiling that the top piece of stripping really accentuates? That slope is what Donnie is working on now.

Me? I'm staying out of his way for the moment. Too many cooks in the kitchen and all that.

2009 Projects In Review

2010-01-04T16:17:00.010-06:00

There's nothing like looking at the things that were accomplished last year to get one's procrastinating rear end into gear for facing a new year. So, this is a little pictorial review of where we started and what we accomplished last year. Later I'll post our first project for this year that we started yesterday.

The most significant accomplishment of last year is the overhaul of the second parlor. Later, I'll post what we did in there under the "Restoration of a Queen" series.

This is the second parlor on the night before our wedding. I had brought a load of extra furniture out when I put my house on the market, so that and some of Donnie's extras furnished the room temporarily. After all, someone might want to sit down.

When my house sold everything else made the "big move". In the end, this was the parlor right before we started work on it:

After 6 months of work, this is the end result. What I find interesting is that it a single room can have so many looks and moods-all of them individual-and not necessarily any of them unattractive while still remaining the same 4 walls.

So, that was 1 project completed.

The second project that made me happy was the removal of gazebo. Yeah, it's cool to have a gazebo, but this one was out of scale, not very attractive, and did I mention that it wasn't concreted in and had termites and wood root at the legs which resulted in the drunken tilt it had developed. I don't need a gazebo that bad.

Back yard in full bloom, May 6, 2006

(My sister in law, Becki with Micah, Hannah & Kyle after our wedding)

So, away it went and a little later in the spring, another unsightly section of the warren of buildings we call the shop got the sledge.

The view from the deck when we came out for our first look at the place almost 4 years ago:

This is what it was when we started last winter. Nice, eh?

The same view today (literally):

Our much adored neighbors fenced in their back yard. In the process, our "fence" had to be removed as it snaked and weaved in and out of their property. Oh, break my heart! Their fence makes our place look good! The removal of the greenhouse is next on the list.

Probably the next great improvement was some rearranging of some dirt in the south side yard. The previous owner must have loved gardening and planting and while that overgrown blooming look may be charming, it was impossible to mow. We spent most of our first year here cleaning up the yard. There were raised beds, railroad ties, landscape timbers, and bricks everywhere. Here's a look at the south side yard in bloom before we worked on it.

Manageable:

I'm hoping all the bulbs I dug up will make it until I can get them replanted. I like a golf course lawn with controlled planting areas, so I plan to replant many of the bulbs and share a good deal of them with others. There are more bulbs here than one lot can really handle especially since they've propagated significantly.

As you can see in the last picture, there are tools on the left. Most of this work I did myself while Donnie worked on the porch. I did ask for assistance with the removal of the roof of the gazebo and outbuilding though. It gave him a break from the porch. : )

The last thing I think we did-and this is still a work in progress, was the resizing of the deck. The previous owner loved to build and plant, but maintenance didn't appear to be in his vocabulary, so everything he built needs to go, but we're kinda using the deck, so the whole crooked, buckling thing couldn't go-but half of it could! So, one day while Donnie wasn't looking, I knocked it back to the size it was the last time they added onto it-which was 3 times at least.

Deck Day 1-February 2006

Before "Hurricane Bella"

While the deck is still a work in progress, its function and stability is much improved. Donnie rebuilt pretty much the whole thing using the old wood (since we're planning to turn this area into a covered porch so this is temporary for a few years), widened the stairs from the drive and added a nice wide set of stairs to access the lawn and removed the weird existing stairs. I'm happy because I don't have to walk a half a mile around the thing to get to the other side of it because now it aligns with the sidewalks. Yippee.

So, other than the other digging, scraping, and painting, that's what got done this year. Doesn't seem like much, but it sure did take forever!

Oh! And I almost forgot! Donnie's bath got a little face lift. It was just a tad more "pop" than we could handle.

Benjamin Moore's Prescott Green & Oatmeal

Now to get back to work on the things that are on this years agenda! : )

Effects of Light

2009-12-30T17:37:00.002-06:00

I was walking past the second parlor a few days ago and saw this going on. The sun was at the perfect angle to shine through the stained glass transom and onto the peacocks. While you can see some of the band of blue and gold filtered through the glass in the picture, it's really cool in person.

Restoration of a Queen-Restoring & Refinishing Stairs

2009-12-29T14:07:00.005-06:00

In my last house, the stairs to the basement were painted black by a previous owner. I found it hard to tell where each step was, so decided to paint them in a lighter color for the sake of safety.

The problem was, my office and the laundry room were in the basement. These were areas I needed to use all day, every day. So, how do you work on a set of stairs while still being able to use them?

The answer is: skip every other step.

Of course this only really works if you have legs that are long enough to step over the wet steps and probably wouldn't work for homes with small children. Using the handrail helps for those of us that are fairly short.

Fortunately, we have two sets of stairs in this house, but if I were going to work the only staircase in the house (and all the bedrooms, etc. were upstairs), this is how I would go about it since it allows for a smooth finish across the entire surface of each tread and riser with no lap-marks.

Stripping treads and risers can be done half and half if needed-meaning, the left half or right half of the staircase so that you can use at least half of it during the prep process which is the time-consuming part of the project. It's better to work the entire length of a riser or tread at the same time for the sake of color continuity. When you work with strippers and such, your method-or rather the amount of time the stripper sets on the surface being stripped-may vary from one day to the next and sometimes this shows up as a change in the coloration of the wood (ie. the section that was worked one day may show a darker edge than the section you worked the next) when finished. This is just an observation from my own years of painting and finishing. So, it's better to strip on entire length of surface at once-if possible.

Either way you chose to strip them, start at the top so that and dripping stripper runs down onto an unstripped surface below. Not only can you use the run-off to start removing the finish below, this method also keeps stripper from dribbling onto a raw wood surface-one cause for the color irregularities I mentioned above.

Once you have a section stripped, wipe it down good with mineral spirits. The mineral spirits neutralizes the stripper and if there is residue from the stripper on the wood, the spirits will cause it to ball up and it can be easily removed with a broom or vacuum cleaner. Wipe with the spirits until no more residue comes off the surface. Those blue shop cloths they sell at the big box stores work good for this as they're pretty durable and don't leave behind a lot of lint, etc.

Strip all of the treads and risers before moving on to the sanding process. In a household that wears shoes all the time, you'll want to cover the stripped treads so that dirt and shoe prints don't get ground or pressed into the raw wood. Heavy craft paper (sold pretty cheap by the roll at the big box store) comes in handy as it isn't slippery like plastic and is safer. If you tape it in place, try not to tape it to the raw wood as the tape will likely leave behind a whisper of a residue that will need to come off. Old towels will work just as well and without the tape residue.

Once everything is stripped, move on to the sanding process. I like to use an orbital sander attached to the vacuum cleaner hose for this since sanding indoors is such a nasty business. There will still be dust, but not as much as sanding with only the bag on the sander. Every little bit helps. After sanding, vacuum and wipe it all down with mineral spirits again.

When you're ready to start finishing, consider each tread and the riser above it as a set, working the riser first, tread second.
While the bottom of your shoe will come into contact with the tread, the toe of your shoe is likely to come into contact with the riser above that tread. That's why you want to work them together as a set. You'll also want to do the entire staircase, (skipping every other set) in the same working time. It's mentally easier-and safer-to maneuver an entire set of stairs when the rhythm is consistent than when it is not, i.e. step-skip-step-skip-step-skip vs. step-step-skip-step-skip-step-step-which becomes a trip hazard just from the confusion of it. (I hope that made sense.)

It's easiest to do this task when the house will be empty for several hours-like while everyone is at work or school-as it gives the finish time to start drying while there is the least amount of activity. After everyone else has gone to bed works out pretty well too.

Put old folded towels that are easy to see on the treads that aren't wet. Leaving something visual like that helps serve as a reminder of where to step. I usually put some other obstruction at the bottom and top of the stairs to also serve as a reminder that there is work in progress in that area and to use caution.

Although there will be no one stepping on the wet treads, the nose of the treads will also be wet. Since they protrude over the riser of the treads that are in use, they are vulnerable to being bumped by a toe on the way up and by the back of a pant leg on the way down-especially since you're having to jump over a step to get to the next one and will be descending at a greater angle than usual.

In my experience, the first coat of finish normally takes the longest to dry. If you can keep from stepping on that coat until it dries, it's pretty much all downhill from there. Fortunately, even oil based products (which are the only thing we use on wood surfaces) generally dry to touch in less than a work day, so the inconvenience isn't long-lasting. Subsequent coats generally dry in a couple of hours in our climate.

When the first set of finished risers and treads have cured enough to handle normal household foot traffic, (usually a couple of days after the last coat of finish has been applied) move the towels to those steps and proceed in the same manner as before on the skipped risers and treads. At this point, I'd avoid the craft paper on the finished treads as it may scratch your newly finished surface. I'd also avoid anything rubber backed as it may also make marks in the fresh finish. Something soft without a lumpy texture and preferably cotton, is nicest. If you do use towels, be sure to also use the handrail as towels on that slick new surface can be slippery. If the finished treads are well-cured, you should be able to use tape on them for added safety if you want to tape the towels to the finished treads-or if you want to just use the tape as the reminder that will work too. Even though I haven't tried it, I'm thinking a smooth textured carpet pad might work great. Should have thought of that in the first place!

Repeat the process on the remaining stairs. Nothing to it, huh?

If you are going to use a high gloss on the stair treads, be aware that they can be very slippery. Once the treads are cured, wash them with a mild dish detergent and water to help knock down the slickness. Don't ask me why, (and I suspect it's possibly the lime and minerals in the water) but it seems to help-a little.

Anyway, that's how I'd go about it and I'd have to have that high gloss shine like the ones in the examples as it really highlights the grain, movement, and color of the wood. Aren't these beautiful?

(Original photo from http://www.thewoodworksbg.com/)

I probably should add that if there is a landing,you can either work it with the stairs or separately. Either way, you'll have to work it half at a time, following the length of the boards. Leave yourself enough room to be able to turn the corner of the stairs at the newel post when you work your first half without stepping into the wet.

If you'll be working the landing at the same time as the stairs, you'll want to plan out the pattern for working the stairs that includes a comfortable transition from the stairs to the landing.

In the example, working the stairs marked with 1 and the 1st half of the landing at the same time will keep anyone using the stairs from needing to be able to do acrobatic splits to get from the dry step to the dry part of the landing. Use the arrows as a guide to traffic flow. Make sense?

It's the Little Things...

2009-12-27T22:53:00.008-06:00

that just drive ya nuts!

Donnie was working in the library and I was bored with doing prep work for tax time and tired of seeing this ugly little mess on the floor where the previous owners had a stove when they used this room as their "den". It's been bugging me for 3 years and today I decided that mess was coming off since I didn't have anything else fun or interesting to do.

Under the stove, they had installed some brick veneer and had glued it to the hardwood floor. When we took the stove out (because it got in the way of where we wanted to put furniture and we want to put a fireplace there one day) we pulled up the brick under it. The good news was that it came off easily. The bad news is that they used what looks like carpet adhesive-I think they loved the stuff or there was a huge sale on it somewhere.

So, today was the day that lumpy discolored nonsense came off the floor. It will look like there has been something done there, but at least it will look-and actually BE clean and cleanable. Woo Hoo!

So, here's where today's little project started...creeeepy.

The tools of the day-1 heat gun and one putty knife.

I took a couple of hours so get it all off given that I took a few breaks and wasn't in a hurry. When I de-funkified the half bath under the stairs, I learned about how well the heat gun works on that adhesive. Apparently, someone had used it to apply mirror squares to the beadboard wall behind the toilet. At some point the mirror had been removed and they just wallpapered over the lumpy adhesive and sections of broken glass. They called it renovated, but I beg to differ. Anyway, the heat gun worked wonders for getting the adhesive off the wall-as well as the broken glass, so I used the same method on the floor.

Since the removed stove was gas, there was a capped gas pipe right in the middle of what needed to be worked on and I was afraid of what might happen if I got close to it with the heat gun. Using a little improvisation, I wrapped the pipe in a wet paper towel then covered it with aluminum foil to reduce the heat to the pipe. Of course as an extra precaution, I kept a fire extinguisher handy, pin removed and ready-not that it would really do more than sneeze at a leaking gas pipe explosion, but ya do what ya can and hope for the best.

All went well and I managed not to blow anything up. So, here we have one nasty section of floor stripped and rubbed over with mineral spirits and ready to go.

Fortunately, I was able to manage to shake enough tung oil out of the empty can to put a thin coat on it. You can still see where the tampering was done, but at least it's CLEAN and won't try to rip the legs off the furniture if you scoot something across it. Bonus!

A word of warning though. The fumes created by heating that adhesive are possibly toxic-just something you may want to consider if you're thinking about using this method-and if the fumes don't kill you, the smell just might. The stuff stinks! (Think burning tennis shoes)

Where Did My Kittens Go?

2009-12-24T22:13:00.001-06:00

Baby Callie

Christmas Callie

Baby Duncan

Christmas Duncan

The Potted Cat

They're both probably about 8 months old now. Can you believe it? They're monsters-but they're SO sweet!

Restoration of a Queen-Choosing the Queen You Wish To Serve-Part VI

2009-12-24T15:52:00.001-06:00

Not much left for a lay-person to look at besides peeking into closets, cubby holes, and under cabinets and such. If there is a basement, check it out to see if you notice a water line up the wall where the basement floods, have a look at the foundation from the inside of the basement, and inspect the joists that are holding up the floor above. You'll want to note whether there is a subfloor to the floor above. If you can see daylight through the overhead floorboards, there is no subfloor.

If there are stairs, check that the railing is stable and that the stairs are properly attached to the wall. The following example is from a wonderful house in our neighborhood that was recently demolished to make way for a parking lot. While the stairs themselves were solid and didn't pose any danger, it was apparent that they were pulling away from the wall. In this case, it was a sign that some structural issues beneath the wall needed to be addressed and was correctable, but still something that needed to be considered.

Another thing that I like to do is to give the floors a good stomping. It usually makes the agent showing the house a little nervous, since many of them assume that because the house is old, you'll fall through. Well, if I'm going to fall through, I want to know before I buy the place, not after!

The houses we look at have, for the most part, been vacant. If you are stomping in a house that someone is currently living in, please keep in mind that this may dislodge any valuables they have sitting around, be respectful and don't break their stuff.

Generally, I start in the middle of the floor where the span between the joists is most vulnerable, then jump and land solidly on both feet-not like a ballerina, that won't tell you anything, but more like an elephant which should bounce the floor surface. If the floor bounces significantly and everything in the room rattles, you may want to have the cause investigated. It doesn't necessarily mean foundation problems as construction methods changed during the Victorian era and the bounce may just be caused by a 24" spacing between the floor joists vs. the 16" that came later. In our house, we have both. The dining room (and the two bedrooms upstairs in the original house) has quite a bit of spring, but the room is large and the joists are single boards that spans over 17', are set at 24" and unsupported in the middle. Things shake when you walk in there. The newer part of the house doesn't spring like the dining room as they are set at 16" centers. Since there are more of them per room, they provide more support. Springy floors on the ground floor can be stabilized by blocking between the joists and adding piers to support the center of the floor. Springy floors are not necessarily dangerous floors.

Off the top of my head, I can't think of anything else that needs to be checked out as far as condition. This is mainly to get you started at looking at things and making observations so that you can make better decisions which is all a layman really needs to do. When I look at houses, I generally take a legal pad, a couple of measuring devices, pencil (which will write in the cold and upside down if need be) and a digital camera. Most digital cameras have video capability and I use this to walk through the house and property and talk about what I see so that I have more than just a written record of the place when I get home. A few other useful items are a small screwdriver (to use to investigate the wood decay) and a utility knife.

Some observations I have made while looking at properties and accompanying friends who are looking at properties are that the first viewing of something that really grabs you is usually very emotionally exciting and not the best frame of mind for making important decisions. Generally I go to get a feel for the house and make subsequent visits to collect information. Multiple visits also give you a feel for the house and point out areas where function can be improved. I also like to spend some time on a Friday or Saturday night to see what the neighborhood is like since the agent cannot reveal much of this information.

Once you've collected all your data you should have a good idea of whether this project is right for you, your skills, and level commitment which is different for everyone. If you think the house is right for you, there are a few other things that would be wise to look into before making an offer.

Insurance-I've come across may insurance agencies that will not insure houses on the Historic Register, houses over 100 years old, houses with asbestos siding and the like. You'll want to look into who will insure the house and factor in the cost.

Taxes-Get your tax information on the house.

Previous utility bills-some places will provide them readily, other places won't. Due to lack of insulation, drafty doors and windows, knowing what the previous owners average consumption was can be helpful when considering the budget.

When you've found your perfect queen, it's a wise idea to include a home inspection clause in the offer. There are so many things that need looking into with older homes and a licensed home inspector knows where to look for problems and can often offer solutions to correct any problems found. I think they run in the ballpark of $400-$600 but can save you the anguish of finding out the problems with the house after you've already bought it. Most reputable inspectors will give you a printed breakdown of their findings. They will also crawl under the house and go into the attic. If I don't have to crawl under the house, it's worth the cost. Being inspectors, they are also likely to have a network of contractors that do the kind of work that needs to be done if you don't feel comfortable doing the work yourself. While the cost of the inspection comes out of your pocket before closing and may not be something you want to spend, it can save you in the long run by not investing in a money pit. In my opinion, it's money well-spent.

There are several things I assume when buying an old house. First would be that everything is lead. You can't really do much about lead before a purchase except make a personal decision about whether or not it is acceptable. If it isn't, you'll probably want to look at new houses as almost everything that is original in an old house is lead based. Can you deal with that?

Second would be that if the house has gas heat, the heat exchanger is probably cracked. Every house I've ever owned had a cracked heat exchanger when I bought it. If the unit is older, plan on replacing it. Part of the inspection process can be to contact a reputable HVAC contractor and have the unit inspected. In some areas, the home inspector will inspect the unit. In others, they will not. HVAC contractors will usually have a look at a unit for free since if it is bad, they'll be hoping for the sale of a new one and can give you an estimate of what a new one might cost. This is useful information to have.

Termites-to my knowledge, termite inspections are required by the mortgage lender before securing the loan. A clause in the contract that stipulates that the seller pay for termite treatment if termites are found is pretty common.

Plumbing inspections-you might want to have a reputable plumber come out and have a look at the existing plumbing. Again, this is probably likely to be at no charge. They will crawl under the house and inspect for proper ventilation, leaks and other irregularities. You can also include in you contract that the seller be responsible for a certain dollar amount in repairs. Have the plumber give you an estimate of the cost to repair any discrepancies.

Electrical inspection-same as the plumber. Get estimates for the correction of anything that isn't right.

Even if you are buying a house "as is" and the seller will not be making any repairs, having these inspections done will give you an better idea of what you will need to do once the house is yours, and approximately how much it might cost to correct them. Going into a project informed beats learning by hindsight being 20/20.

Once all of these things are accomplished, you should have a pretty good idea if you're up to the task and if you have the financial resources to accomplish them even if it takes time. If the answer to both are yes, CONGRATULATIONS! Git packin'!