Funkiest table/bed ever

Yes, table and bed! This is a totally wacky, totally cool antique we found when researching some furniture.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/nhofer/sets/72157612992430365/

It's on ebay now - in case someone wants to make it their own! Sadly, it's too far away for us to pick up - but an inspiration for amazingly efficient furniture design.

That Murphy sure was clever. Do you think he's the same guy who keeps messing me up with his law?

Three cheers for a new ReStore!

We're getting a ReStore in our neck of the woods! No more grumbling about everyone else's awesome finds! Can't wait till it opens...also, I bet we can bring our paneling from the study there - that would be just as good as a great find!

http://www.wlbz2.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=99867&catid=3

Reflections of...

The mudroom mirror-pseudo-hall-tree. Finished last night. No injuries or illnesses! Mittens are officially off the floor. I never realized before, it's tough to take a photo of a mirror. But I dig the cool reflections.

Busting my butt

Literally. I totally took a digger in the driveway on Saturday as I went to start the car so we could go help a friend with an ice dam crisis -- let no good deed go unpunished, right? I think I broke my tailbone - or at least bruised it - but I landed perfectly square right on the old tush so nothing truly bad happened. Although it was the hardest fall I've had (those on skis excluded) in quite a lot of years. Eddy went ballsitic and barked and pushed his way outside to rescue me (I guess I screamed), and Ken came running out in the snow in his socks. Ah, good guys we've got at the Bungalow. It provided loads of comic relief the rest of the weekend, as I made awful noises everytime I bent over or squatted down. And of course, all the wonderful jokes and puns having to do with an ass injury. With PBSs "Make 'em Laugh" episode on physical comedy fresh in our heads, we had just so much material to work with.

Add that to the cold that Ken gave me - and he still has - and we didn't get much of anything done this weekend. But, we did work on one thing: due to an overabundance of mittens and hats strewn about the mudroom, the hall-tree-mirror type project got moved up the list. Last week, I was home in the middle of the day at one point, and managed to squeeze in a trip to the glass shop to get mirror glass cut. The old timer who runs the shop is so cool, we chatted about how the cold bothers our knees and he laughed when I commiserated with his "I'm getting old" comment.

Saturday - post ass-bruising - Ken set up the saw and took a tiny bit off the sides of both of these windows to square them up. We found them on ebay for a couple bucks each, from a California bungalow, and without glass the shipping was really not much.

They've been sitting around the house for a couple of years, moving from room to room, waiting to be turned into mirrors. They're so weather beaten I didn't have to strip them, so a light sanding and some stain/topcoat and they're ready to get some glass installed maybe tonight, if I can stay on my feet. We'll see what happens...

Back to houseblogging

In the words of Tiny White Bungalow*, "Now, Let's get back to houseblogging." Right. Let's. But we have only been making slow progress on that sitting room. Ken and I attacked the crazy assortment of walls with joint compound and patches over the weekend; still need to finish that up.

Then it turned out to be a busy week at work, so all I've managed to keep moving forward is stripping paint off the little 2 inch strip of wood inside the door jamb. Talk about feeling like getting nothing done - it took 4 evenings and still needs touch up! Thick paint, limited time, etc. I think we're finally over the hump on that one. We feel like we need to do the correct thing with all the door jambs, since we (sort of) were published in American Bungalow for asking for official guidance about where paint meets natural wood.

Armed with the knowledge of how it should be done, we've felt obligated to do it that way. Stupid high road. Although, it seems kind of weird that it looks to have been originally painted. But maybe the builders didn't read AB! :) Anyways, if it were painted my common sense suggests that you'd be able to see the strip of white from the hall, which is against the advice of the AB editor, so we're doing it this way. What an esoteric thing to worry about - so we'll stop. It wasn't so bad in the guest room, where they bizarrely only painted one of the sides and the other one was stained (hello?), but in this room, it was covered with layers of sticky old paint. Hopefully the door will shut a bit easier now too, so maybe that will make it feel more worth it. Hrmmph.

And the last tiny thing we got done this week was that, on a run to the office store for supplies for a work project, I remembered to bring my tracing of the lantern from the old wallpaper and got it enlarged (they do a 3'x4' enlargement at Staples for $5!). We think we'll paint it on one wall of the room. What do you think? Too "Changing Rooms?" I thought it would be good to commemorate the original wallpaper - and it's a pretty design.

* TWB: your blog keeps trying to run scripts & crashes my browser, so sorry I'm not linking to you here, but maybe you want to check that out!

WAHOO!!!

Despite my tendency to be politically-obsessed, we at the Bungalow try to be non-political in our blog posts.

But today is the day for rules to be broken. An unbelievable day for our generation.

We must "pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and take up again the work of remaking America."

We at Bangor Bungalow are also humbled, grateful, mindful, and HOPEFUL. And if we can remake an old house with four hands, a few old tools, and spare change, then we can remake a country with sheer force of will. Congratulations and best wishes, President Obama!

Deeper than dog

It snowed. A lot. The neighbor says 18", but I think it's more like a foot. On top of the other foot we got recently. On top of some other miscellaneous snow and ice. So it's now pretty deep. At least it has warmed up by about 50 degrees to about 30 ABOVE zero. It's like summer out there!

Post-shoveling and pre- work conference call, Eddy & I took the camera out for a stroll. He loves, loves, loves the snow - but it's so deep now that we have to shovel him some dog trails out back to do his business. Luckily most people in the neighborhood clear their sidewalks, so we're able to go for long walks without too much trouble.

Eddy poses by a snowbank at the corner by the park, for scale. Even where not piled up, it's over his head now.

Two streets over, the sidewalk was pretty photogenic. Love that winter light. The big Y tree on the right has one of those push-in faces on it; I didn't notice while I was taking the photo.

Next year's X-mas card? Two houses over, the lights were still up in the bush out front and looking oh-so picture-perfect.

Our big tree out back - poking out of the deck. This guy is a giant.

The cozy bungalow. The snow in the extreme foreground is the snowbank between the sidewalk and road.