Getting punchy again

It's been a crazy couple of weeks - I was in San Francisco for work, and got stuck there an extra two days because of giant snowstorm #1, which shut down the east coast airports. Luckily, I got home just as giant snowstorm #2 pummeled the middle of the country.

So, we've been laying pretty low. Our goal for holiday break is to work on the old punch list again, and after catching up on sleep after the jet-lagged, red-eye-flight, airport-dwelling beginning of the week, we started on a couple of those tasks.

Sorry readers, it's going to be a while still till our next big project - our bedroom. We pushed it back to March break - it'll just work better. Anyways, Item 1 on the punch list was to finally put a surround around our pellet stove. See, when we bought the stove, there were two different sets of dimensions for our model, depending on which piece of literature you had in your hand. We knew that it would either just barely or not quite fit all the way back in the firebox. Turns out, it doesn't quite fit in the firebox - the back of the 'finished' part of the stove sticks out about an inch from the brick surround.

We wanted to avoid any giant, tacky surround piece (like the big brass or black frame sold by the stove shop), so we've been just waiting for a solution to pop up. We decided to figure something out just before I left, and went to the big box with the idea of finding something metal we could tuck behind the stove and paint black to make it fade away.

Then, Ken happened upon a random piece of someone's roof flashing, in a custom reddish-copper color. We thought it would closely match the brickwork, and we snapped it up (it was marked down from $18 to $5.25, and the woman rang it up for $4.71, so the price was right).

Using the existing lengthwise bend to fit it against the stove back's 'lip', we cut it to size with tin snips...

...and brought in some clamps and wood to make a break for bending the metal to fit in the firebox, but were one piece short & too lazy to go back to the garage, so we used a copy of "Swan's Way" as the final piece of the metal brake. Thanks, Proust!

Though we planned to use liquid nails to tack it to the brick, it 'sticks' just fine with no adhesive so far, so it ended up being a really simple, easy, tidy, quick project.

And, now we won't have escaping pellets falling down behind the stove anymore - finally!

Click: 1929 to 2009

I was buying a vintage item on Etsy for someone for the holidays, and I happened to notice that the seller was also selling this little oddity for $8:


...and, always a sucker for a deal on combined shipping, I nabbed it. It's a Brownie (box camera) Model 2-F, probably from around the late 1920s to early 1930s.

We got it in the mail a couple of weeks ago, got some film, and just started messing with it on the night of the snowstorm. We cleaned it, found the old manual (which is entertaining in itself), then we shot a roll of film. We were kind of just seeing if it worked at all - so we didn't pay much attention to the exposure time or subjects.

Today we walked down to the camera shop to pick up the prints (if it worked at all). We were thrilled to see a huge roll of negatives with things that looked pretty recognizable on it - but the camera shop folks (the best ones in town, so they should know) said they can't develop that size negative - it's like 2x3". Hmmm.

Then we thought, Photoshop can make things look like negatives, so maybe it can make things double negative (=positive). So we scanned in the negatives and messed around with the results.

From inside the dining room, through windows, stained glass panel, and plastic (not bad!)

Just after the snowstorm, the garage.

We actually took the photos 'blind' - all the silver had flaked off the viewfinder mirrors and I didn't want to open it up to replace them with film in; now you can actually see something with new mirrors so the next photos should be better composed! Our scans were not at the best resolution and we can play more with contrast - but it was totally an amazing process:

• to use a camera with absolutely no electronics, batteries, buttons, beeps, etc.
• to see the giant negatives (when was the last time you saw film negatives?)
• to realize the camera worked
• to take something from 1929 or so, snap a totally mechanical photo, then 'develop' it on a computer in 2009.

I feel like we just came out of a time machine. Weird...

Yellow snow

Not really. But we did work on something related to pee and something related to snow this weekend.

First, while I was at Lowe's the other day buying a replacement part for the upstairs toilet, I realized that with only $15.95 I could finally replace the el-cheapo toilet seat that came with the downstairs toilet (2 years+ ago). That gross thing was thin molded plastic and had these little concave areas underneath that were atrocious to clean. Plus the yucky plastic hinges - ew.

So before:

And, 10 minutes later, solid seat with chrome hinges:

I know, it really doesn't look much different. But it is!

Then it snowed. Which is great - we love the snow. So we put up some decorations outside.

Then, as the mudroom descended into a chaotic pile of mittens, boots, and hats, I went on a hunt for a mudroom bench. Someday we'll build one from our stash of oak lumber, but one more winter with a big ol' mess was sounding like a bad option.

So I scouted all the usual haunts - thrift store, online, various horrid big box stores, etc. Found nothing good that was a reasonable price for a somewhat temporary solution. Then, at KMart, I found a Martha Stewart buffet table from the Mission Bungalow collection.
It was on clearance and the dimensions were perfect for a mudroom bench - it was just too tall. So, I lugged it home, we did some measuring, and we immediately set to work destroying it. We cut a foot off each leg, left off the plate rack & second shelf (which goes on the cut-off part of the legs), and voila! A better shot at mudroom organization. Thanks Martha!


p.s., this table seems to actually be wood and is quite solid. So maybe someday it'll be re-purposed into a coffee table or something else.

Take that, overprotective parents!

Hah! Our nemesis, the stupid little plastic stick-figure child cutout with a little flag that was put out in the road all summer long to tell everyone that someone's oh-so-special kids might be playing in the road like idiots, has fallen over! Thanks to the wind. Thanks, wind!

I don't know why we've developed such a hatred for the stupid thing, but it's completely obnoxious and I can't wait for them to finally decide it's too cold and bring the dumb thing in. Once they put a large rock behind this thing - and put it in the middle of one lane of the road - which would have inflicted major damage on someone's car had they hit it. And I don't know about you, but seeing these types of idiotic things just makes me want to drive faster.

People - if you think the speed limit is too high in your neighborhood, go to a town meeting or get a petition started to commission a traffic study! Don't just put out a passive-aggressive fluorescent green creepy plastic kid imported from China, resulting in air and, eventually, water pollution that will be much more harmful to your kids than the occasional speeding motorist.

There, I've said my piece. Happy Thanksgiving! We're giving thanks for the smiting of our enemy, Traffic Child.

Diamonds: not a girl's best friend

Before everyone goes out holiday shopping, I wanted to point out this statistic published in this month's This Old House magazine: 85% of women would rather get $5,000 in home renovations than a set of equally valuable diamond earrings. I'm definitely in that majority!

So guys, if you buy your girl some jewels, don't be surprised if she hawks them to get a new deck, or have the floors refinished, or start a kitchen re-do. That is, unless you bought her a diamond-encrusted tile saw so she can do her tile project...

Our first bungalow DIY

All right, in between raking leaves all weekend, here's an entry to another contest (we could really use the $ for upcoming bedroom renovation slated for this winter).

The question is, what is the first thing we did as soon as we got the keys to our house? Well, after we had the lawyer kick out the grown son of the previous owner (who had broken in because his plane got in late and he didn't have keys, and needed to get a few last things from the house! Surprise! as he came up freshly showered from the basement bathroom when we arrived for our pre-closing walk-through!), we lugged over our sleeping bags, some champagne, and some snacks and we all planned to sack out in front of the fireplace - our favorite pigpile with cats & dog seemed in order.

Settling in by the fireplace with a desk lamp and extension cord (there were no lights in the living room), I realized there was no way I could sleep in front of the hideous 1970's-era brass fireplace screen. Ugh, I can hardly even look at this photo:

"Can we just rip this off right now?" Ken knew that it was kind of a rhetorical question. So, off it came (with all the wrong tools and a lot of swearing). Then we sat in the fireplace like Cinderella, scrubbing ages of crummy soot off until it looked reasonable. Here it is now, after lots more work:

Then, sleep. It's amazing we were able to wait another 48 hours before we tore the horrible green brain carpet off the stairs!

This post was written for Houseblogs.net as part of a sweepstakes sponsored by True Value.

I want this vacuum!

In our city, they come by and vacuum up the leaves in the fall & spring. Such service! Actually, it happens quite a lot in this neighborhood; when we lived in the ghetto section of town, I don't remember it at all. Hmmm. Maybe it was just that no one bothered to pile up their leaves.

At any rate, we got a bunch of leaves down to the curb in time for one of their passes, and I snapped a photo of the most awesome vacuum ever. Yes, that hose is big enough to engulf that guy. Can you imagine the dust bunnies you could suck up with this thing?


If the weekend's not a total washout, we hope to get the rest of the leaves to the curb for the next pass. This year they're paying special attention to the leaf removal because trees in our area had leaf Tar Spot, a fungus that was widespread because of our wet summer. Apparently if we compost the leaves or keep them around, it's more likely we'll get it again next year. So, removal it is this time.

Turn up the heat!

Apparently it's time to crank up the pellet stove, or so say these two heat-seekers:

Tomorrow is supposed to be pretty warm (in the 50s!), and it's a day we have to hike for work. Even though we really should be raking the yard, etc. instead. Hopefully we'll get that pesky raking done before it snows - again!

Getting ready for winter

The storm windows are in, the stove is fired up, and it's getting cold.

This guy feasted on all Ken's remaining sunflower heads. While doing amazing acrobatics. Who'd have thought that he could perch atop sunflowers taller than us, hopping around like he was walking on clouds. With a full belly, hopefully he's ready for winter.

Hey, Moe!

If you've read this one before - sorry you have to look at my legs again. (Ick). The story's back for a contest - and we could use some financial help now! So, bear with us! More (new) material soon.

This post was written for Houseblogs.net as part of a sweepstakes sponsored by True Value. http://www.startrightstarthere.com/

A friend recently commented that the projects we post on the blog are all so nice and inspirational. But behind the scenes, our projects are much more like a Three Stooges episode.

Take tonight for example.

I spent all day finishing sanding all the little annoying cracks and crevices on a dresser I recently bought for Ken's birthday (it's not a surprise, obviously). After dinner, I did the final sand and began staining it.

As I walked around from one side to another, the stain can slipped from my hand and splattered all over the garage floor, several tools, a big tool box, the chop saw, and me.

At that very moment, Ken came walking out of the house - he had answered the phone and was bringing it out to me. Barefoot. As I hollered about having a stain emergency and I couldn't talk, and he began trying to explain it to my mom on the phone, he stepped on a weirdly-shaped wood scrap in the driveway (leftover from the other day's fence-capade) and shouted as he hurt his foot.

He hustled my mom off the phone (I called back), and came over to laugh at my leopard-print self (and grump about the tools, which I later cleaned).

Of course, I was in the middle of staining the dresser so I couldn't stop - so I threw an old pair of pajama pants on the mess (they were in the rag pile) and kept going. I ran out of stain - it being all over the floor - and had to use the stain-soaked pajama-pants rag from the floor to squeeze out the last little bit of coverage. Happy Freakin' Birthday, honey.

Once I finished, I wiped off all the tools off and went in to shower. Yuck. After ruining a loofah, a nail brush, and giving up, I stepped out of the shower only to have a huge moth fly right into my wet hair. Superb.

So, here I sit in my pajamas, ready for bed at 8:10, as soon as I finish this margarita while keeping my stainy feet off anything important.

Tomorrow we'll start over in a (hopefully) less Stooge-y way, and attempt to finish the back fence. That is, if we can keep from clunking our heads together long enough.

Good night!

Privacy, please!

Every time we have guests over, we remember that the guest room door doesn't close all the way, and we add it to the list of things to do. Somehow, it never actually gets written down on the actual list of things to do - and we forget. Then, guests are over again, and doh! we forgot to fix the door. So they have limited privacy, and run the risk of having cats but in & wake them up, or the dog breaking into the room while we're out and eating their belongings (e.g., a clean (thankfully) baby diaper - sorry Daniel!).

We've had guests the last couple of weekends - the last of the summer season before we button up the house - and somehow I remembered to fix the door before they arrived (ok, so it was like 3 hours before they arrived, but still before!

I did a bad, bad thing and planed the top down until it fit. I always feel guilty doing that after swearing about other people doing it - but we had tried everything else in this case. So I planed and made a huge mess (in the room I'd just cleaned) for about 45 minutes. The door closed!

But it didn't latch. It was going to be one of those projects. Ugh. I noticed that the little latch was not going into the strikeplate - a common problem, and it usually is rectified by shimming out the strikeplate. After we removed about 8 metric tons of paint from the trim, things tend be a bit slimmer. So I got to try out an idea we had.

Last year, we were thinking about shimming out strikeplates, and we thought it might be a clever thing to use a piece of leather as the shim - it's easier to cut, we could get brown (and not have to stain it), and you could easily add multiple thicknesses. Plus, if you make a mistake, you can easily trim it or make a new one.

So we bought this hideous (leather) purse at the thrift store for like 25 cents*. And then it sat around in the closet for a long time (carefully stashed lest someone think I would own this thing). Here was the opportunity to try it out. I cut a piece out of the flap, traced the strikeplate, and reinstalled it with the leather shim behind it - which worked out perfectly.

Unfortunately, though I think the shim was necessary in the end, it turned out that the strikeplate was too low on the jamb and the latch still wouldn't grab! So, back to the garage for the chisels, I re-cut the mortise, then reinstalled the strikeplate and leather shim - and it stayed shut! Finally, some privacy for guests. And it only took about 2 hours - 1:55 more than I estimated. As per usual.

* There's no cents sign on a keyboard? Huh.

And the list goes on...

Still working on the punch list here. Sorry, folks who are hoping for a big new project to start - check back in November or December to see us tear up our bedroom.

This weekend, we worked our fingers to the bone - or, more appropriately, wore the fingers off our gloves - tidying up the garden/yard. We're not quite done, but we:

• weeded all the beds
• mowed the lawn
• changed over annual planters to mums (yuck)
• turned all the compost
• raked leaves
• watered every dang plant in the yard
• pruned & deadheaded everything
• Ken finished the grape trellis extension, then he
• finished nailing the last few fence slats, then he
• cut the large corner fence post down one level (the aesthetics weren't working), then
• I built and installed a fence cap on it (made from scrap cedar + the lid of a cast lantern I got at a yard sale for $3 - which saved my life because I was sucking at cutting double miters to make a little cupola-type thingy).

This is me on my tiptoes, trying to get a photo of the little roof.

You gotta love these Autum Joy sedum - even though everyone else has them (usually I have to be different), they're still such a superstar.

Tidier!

Did I forget anything? I'm tired again, thinking about it. So the punch list is getting shorter. Here's what it looks like now, all in priority order & by category (at great risk to myself I post this, knowing that CAB is rolling her eyes and thinking, "You nerd").

Nerd or not, sh*t's getting done.

A lot done, not much finished

Today was one of those days when everything on your long list gets stuck somewhere - either it takes much longer than you thought, or a series of bizarre other things need to get done before your thing can get done, or things just keep screwing up.

Regardless, we managed to get the kitchen door sanded - thanks to Ken's awesome technique and moral support (I stripped it last weekend), stained, and up. It still needs tung oil, but I can do that in situ. It has totally changed the character of the kitchen - it's so much better than a cracked, chippy old white door. It has presence.

So, even though only really one thing got finished this weekend, the stuff that did get done was pretty good.

A little less inadequate

Often, on Saturdays, we watch the home improvement shows on PBS (we don't have 'real' cable so no HGTV here!). You know, things like This Old House, The Woodwright's Shop, the New Yankee Workshop. Good stuff, all.

But - especially with the New Yankee - we always feel a little inadequate. I mean, Norm's shop is UNREAL. And all his tools are all properly maintained. And he is organized, and has a special table/storage unit for everything. Oh, and he has every tool, ever.

One tool he's always using and that we've needed for a long, long time is a stacked dado blade. You know, so you don't have to make a million passes with the table saw to put a groove in something? Well - I found one the other day at the antique shop that has old tools down cellar - it's DeWalt and it was $10.

Now we can groove like Norm.

The last dresser

We've been replacing dressers in our bedroom so we'll be all ready to go when we finally re-do our room later this year. So - I found the final one yesterday. Picked it up from a person who does one of those perpetual yard sale things (pretty common around here). You know, there are always tables of stuff with tarps on them in the yard, like year-round? The neighbors must LOVE that.

They had already sanded some parts of it, saving me work, but we still have a bit to do.

And - most importantly -we MUST change out the hardware. Before the dresser even touched the ground here in the bungalow, these pulls were OFF.

I know, they sort of make you throw up a little, don't they? Bleagh.

The frightening thing is that I bet they'll sell right away in next year's yard sale!

Hedging...a bit

So, things have been slow. End of summer stuff, plus the scorchingly hot, sticky humidity was not particularly conducive to a lot of physical labor-type stuff.

This morning was cool enough to rip out the last dead hedge piece and replace it with two small new guys that will (someday) fill in. We got these guys at the less-expensive good nursery, on sale. And they were still a bit pricey. But a steal compared to what they charge for 5-6', balled and burlapped cedars for hedges. Since the non-dead section of hedge is in great shape, over 60 feet long and over 6' tall, we figure the existing hedge is probably worth more than the house! Crazy!

Grow little guys, grow!

Success - from the brink of disaster

So, we managed to make it through the rest of the weekend without any additional Three Stoogieness. Well, a couple of small things, but nothing as completely chaotic as Friday.

Fence?

Check.

Dresser*?

Check.

Homemade mini-pedi?

Check.

* Scored the dresser in unrestored - but never painted - condition for $37.50. Escutcheons (in the correct size and finish) were hard to find, but I got some great ones from Horton Brasses - the company seems great and prices are quite good.

Fencing, part two

Don't say it too loudly, but the weather has been fine lately. Our fencepost holes dried out (well, enough) for us to pour concrete on Thursday, then we started making and assembling our back corner fence. There will be four sections total - here are two of them.


The other two will be on the left side, in an L. This is the back corner of our yard, where the dead hedge grew (and where trash blew in through said dead hedge from the main road out that way).

The corner post looks odd now, but it should look good once we put a copper roof on it. It is pressure treated (everything else is cedar) because we wanted to sink it, so to make it look cedariffic, we clad it with leftover shakes. Kind of an architectural-type flavor to it.

A couple of more sunny days and we'll be done. If we can stand the cedar splinters in the eyes, that is! Even with saftey goggles on, they somehow always manage to get in there. Nasty!

Total liquidation sale

While we're waiting (still!) for the holes for the back corner fence to dry out, we're started on another of our planned summer projects: sorting out and selling all the house parts and hardware we're not using. If we get to the basement re-do in the next year or two, we figure, it will behoove us to start clearing out all the excess stuff now.

Oh boy, this is a task. We had accumulated all manner of hardware, lighting parts, planters, heating grates, etc. that are now on the Island of Misfit Toys and need to find a home where they'll be loved. There's nothing wrong with them - they just didn't end up working stylistically, or in the case of the awsome grille covers, we didn't need them. Bummer because it was really, really hard to find mission-style grilles, and I love these!

So, if you're in the market for house parts, feel free to check out our stuff and place a bid! (Shameless plug).

Wish we were sitting here today

It's raining again. We've finished some details of the shed and are ready to start on the fence, maybe this weekend if things dry out. In the meantime, here's a photo of where we'd like to be hanging out - in the side yard, in the sun.

We found these chairs at Marshall's (we live dangerously close to one), and then found the small iron tray stand and tray at an antique shop when I was in NH. I painted the tray and stenciled the same design in the center as is on the chairs. Sadly, you'd have a wet bum if you sat out there today. Go away, rain!

Hole-y water table, Batman!

We rented the hole digger and dug the last 5 holes in the yard, for the back corner fence. It went quite well, for a job that generally sucks - especially where there are roots.

However, it looks like it will be a while 'till we can construct said fence. The water table is only about 18" belowground, as illustrated here:
We are having the coolest and wettest summer since the Little Ice Age (mid-1800s), and it's totally messing up the schedule.

So, on to other projects while we wait for the ground to dry...and wait...and wait...

At least they're screening the original Batman movie downtown this coming week - if it doesn't rain (yeah, right) it will be outdoors.

Dining room light is finished - 2.5 years later

Back in February 2007 we bought this old thing from ebay.

This was before we remodeled the kitchen, and we were looking for an old light to hang over the little breakfast table. I think it cost something like $30, and we figured it was worth snagging to see if we could make something of it. It turned out to be solid brass, after all.

It was missing the canopy and we wanted longer chains - so we found some square old brass chain on ebay (again) and we asked Rejuvenation to fabricate a simple canopy for us. They worked from the photos of the fixture and did a perfect job getting the scale and style right. In the meantime, we decided it wasn't the right scale for the kitchen, so we got a different (vintage) light for that spot.

Then I found a painted light shade I liked, and went on a mission for the next year or so to find a mate - similar, but not too matchy. After a while, I found one that's a great sister to the first.

Over the next 2+ years, I've been occasionally pulling this thing out, polishing a few links of chain at a time, and otherwise making extremely slow progress. With all the rain we've had this summer, polishing chain became a nightly activity (3 links per night!) and I finished the whole thing about last week.

Ken then helped me wire the fixture (I've done it before but this was complex - for me - with the two sockets). We used Sundial Wire again - good stuff. After some tribulations having to re-drill the old connectors to make the wire fit comfortably and an early-morning installation-fest, we installed the light this morning, stopped at the store to pick up two dimmable CFLs (the old light had one bulb so we needed another - but the old one was first-generation dimmable and not great; the new ones are much better, FYI) on our way home from a mid-morning meeting, and viola! We have a new, period appropriate dining room light.

And now we're selling our leftover light restoration parts on ebay. Need any square chain, anyone? It's a total bitch to polish, but it looks cool!

The coolest car in the neighborhood

So, yesterday we did some planned stuff in the morning, then somehow got onto a new task we weren't planning on starting just yet - the back fence. All we really wanted to do was do a little measuring and figure out the general spacing, so we could start thinking about it and figure out if we had all the right lengths of wood, etc.

Which quickly morphed into, "well, this would all be easier if the hedge weren't here".

Which quickly turned into, "let's just take down the hedge* now".

Which quickly became, "the hedge is down, let's clean up all the leaves and garbage and make a run to public works".

We're very lucky that our city Public Works yard - which is less than a mile away - lets you bring all your yard junk over for free. Stumps, shrubs, leaves, grass - whatever. And they're open all the time - sunrise to sunset in the summer. Which is super.

So we piled everything onto and into the Suby and took a run over there. It looked quite a lot like the Grinch's sleigh, or something. We did get a thumbs up and 'not bad!' raised eyebrow from a guy in a big ol' pickup truck on the way. People are always amazed how much crap you can haul in a Suby.

I digress. So we drove to public works and found out...the only day they're NOT open till sunset is Sunday! They closed at 3:00 and we got there at 4:00! So we had to drive back home with our unwieldy load and park it in the driveway all night. We were quite sure the neighbors had a laugh.

The real bummer was that we were going to go get iced coffees at Dunkin Donuts after we dropped the load, but we weren't going to make the extra detour down a busy road with all that crap on the roof. Anyways, we dropped it off first thing this morning then got coffee - so it worked out fine in the end. Just silly, as usual.

* By the way, we're not tree-killers. This part of the hedge - about 12 of 100 total feet - was pretty well dead from shading by overstory trees when we moved in. We rescued what we could back then, but the plan was that it would need to eventually be removed or replaced - it was really ratty. When we pulled it out yesterday, we could just pull these huge stems out of the ground - they were basically standing deadwood. A fence section will replace this hedge section.

Reaping the rewards

This is the time of year that the gardens start to earn their keep. Not only have we put up a bunch of snap peas for winter, but the flowers are starting to really do their thing. Eddy and I just ran between the raindrops to collect this bunch.


Now if the rain would quit again for a couple of days we could get started on our last fence project.

We solemnly swear

...to put tools back where they belong. To put them back clean, dry, and happy.

We will occasionally even sharpen the pruners and clippers. We promise to avoid, at all costs, having the garden tools become a huge tangle from which no tool can later be extracted without major bouts of cursing.

We pledge to put the lids back on things, and put them on their shelves, not on the floor. We intend to keep the twine, ties, and other expendables restocked. We won't create tripping hazards by leaving everything strewn about.

We will always sweep up after a big potting mess, and will wipe up big spills. We'll avoid making loads of big cuts in the bench - though it is a workbench - and will make sure it's always presentable. We will do our best to stack the empty pots and fit them in their places. We will remember to occasionally see if there are un-used items that can go to the yard sale pile.

Do you think we can do it? You might have your doubts if you ever saw the garage in the pre-shed days. Only time will tell...

By the way, here's where you can get the totally cool tool hangers.

And, thanks to all our friends who brought over vintage shelf brackets to add to the collection. The shelves were salvaged from our own kitchen - they were the original pieces to which the wainscoting would have been attached if it had survived - sub-baseboards, if you will. We kept them and were thrilled to repurpose them in the shed.