I’ve said that I’m really interested in Arts & Crafts style furniture and such for my house. I know the house itself is Colonial Revival, but I’ve never been attracted to colonial style furniture, and I think transitional craftsman style fits well with the period and other details of my Cape Cod anyway. So to satisfy me until I have money to spend on real furniture, I bought this book: Bungalow Style: Creating Classic Interiors in Your Arts and Crafts Home, by Treena Crochet.
When we did the inspection on this house, a 16 foot section of fence was missing from the backyard. This is actually a section of my neighbor’s fence, but I bought the house advertised as a fully-fenced backyard, and it was most definitely not fully fenced. After the inspection, the sellers promised to fix the fence. On the final walk through, though, the fence was not fixed. The sellers made some claim about it not being their fence to fix, and I figured it was better to just let it go and close on time than to raise a big fuss.
I installed an iron fence on my side. The only way the girls could escape is if they worked their way behind the dense cedars that lined the fence and went through the space between the neighbor’s fence and my fence (there’s a short wall that made me put my fence about 4 feet closer in on the property line).
This morning, I let the girls stay outside playing. At one point, I looked out and saw only one dog. I went outside and Pi - my well behaved one - was standing outside the gate looking back in! Sure enough, she had squeezed back behind the cedars looking for sticks, escaped, and couldn’t find her way back. I was not amused.
So as a temporary solution, I took some of the 4′ lattice left by the former owners, cut it down to size, and put it in place to block this escape.
I will need a more permanent solution soon. Looks like another trip to Lowes or Home Depot. I will have to decide if I buy a couple more sections of iron fence, which are very easy to install, or if I buy some posts, cement, and wood fence. It’s a good thing I will soon be the proud owner of a little SUV so I can transport all this stuff around..
I took a razor to the corner of my wall to investigate the potential wallpaper. Here’s what I found.
First, be amazed at how much this looks like a map with a big continent from a distance…
I decided to peel this up over a seam and on a crack. The seam doesn’t show up too well, but you can tell when the paper switches from greyish to browninsh. Here is a closeup where I have labeled all the parts.
This bit is in the dormer, so it’s not plaster. It’s not sheetrock either. It’s some weird white board with little thread looking things in it (I investigated from the attic side). I did check one tiny spot on the plaster wall, and the layers are all the same.
So the blue paint came off in its own layer, and the beige did too. Then there was this bright bright yellow. That was on top of the brown papery stuff. Could that be yellow wallpaper? It seemed to flake away and I am not familiar with wallpaper that’s brown on the back - all of it that I’ve seen in my life has been a thinish white backed thing. The brown paper also flaked off pretty easily. Then I was left with the basic white board.
After all this destruction, Ruth sent me pictures of her paneling, and they look just like this. So I guess it’s not wallpaper after all. Now I just have to patch up these holes
I think my beautiful, freshly painted bedroom has wallpaper under layers of paint. My little nightstand lamp casts light on the walls such that I see a seam at even intervals. Oh no oh no. The paint looks so good! If I had noticed this under the beige paint that was here originally, I would have stripped it then! Now, after it is all beautifully painted in a perfect color, and I find this mess. ::sob::
Well, I have too much to do! There are much bigger projects in this house. Dealing with that mess will wait until either everything else is done or I get tired of the wall color (unlikely). In the meantime, though, it will bother one of those deep OCD parts of my personality, like a sliver in my finger that I can’t get out.
Why people?!?! Why are you so lazy that you decide to paint over the paper?!?! COME ON!!!
Anyway, here are photos. Am I right? Click to see big versions.
I have a phobia of most bugs. I mean this in a very literal way. Bugs don’t just freak me out. When I see a house centepede I break out in a cold sweat, feel things crawling on my skin that aren’t there, and get paranoid that there are bugs everywhere. In college, when I would see the monster roaches that lived in our basement, I’d turn right around and head upstairs without doing my laundry.
Not all bugs bug me. My new house came complete with Boxelder Bugs, the insect of my childhood. I deal with them just fine.
I suspected my house had ants, too. There were ant spikes all over the place outside. Today, I started seeing them. I’ve killed about 10. They are teeny tiny ants. So I bought some traps and raid and hopefully will nip this infestation in the bud. Here is a gratuitous ant close up.
I can handle these things. But what really freaks me out is this!
These are the stairs leading from my backyard to my basement. When we were doing the inspection, a big old house centepede crawled in under that door to the basement and when the inspector tried to kill it, it fled out under the door. I have since put a new door sweep down there that very tightly blocks that space. However, there are bugs down there. I just know it. I also know I’m going to have to clean out leaves regularly so the drain doesn’t clog. It makes me anxious just to think about going down there.
Amid all the bugs and imagined bugs, there was some beauty today. Look what I found out in the yard this evening:
Why would a couple decide that the spot next to the porch is a good place to dump trash - old shoes, little sample ice cream spoons, broken hose sprayers. Layers upon layers of trash and leaf litter.
But in my cleanup of all those dead leaves, I discovered some biology. There are a bunch of flowers pushing up. Those I can’t identify. But these bigger plants are over in the corner - could they be hydrangeas? I *love* hydrangeas. This looks like a dead version. Any ideas?
I also have a big old rose bush. It was obviously neglected, but I have no idea how to care for a rose bush. Should I chop off those dead flowers?
From the time I made my appointment, I was worried that the kitchen helper guy at Lowes was not the brightest bulb in the box. That was confirmed during my visit today to get my cabinets and countertops.
I am a scientist, a perfectionist, and obsessed with detail. I showed up early for my appointment with very precise drawings of my kitchen, photographs, and model numbers for each cabinet I wanted and where. He finally got to me 20 minutes after my appointment was supposed to start, and it took 90 minutes for him to get that into the computer. Man. That guy didn’t know anything. Every question I had, he didn’t know and had to ask someone or go look up in some deep, dark, far away room. When they gave me an insanely high quote for granite countertops, he said “well we have another collection that’s less expensive, but I can’t show it to you and I can’t give you any information about it.” Gee, how helpful. And apparently, everyone was totally baffled about what to do with the vent that is half behind my fridge and half behind where my new cabinet will be. I could build that myself if I had to, but it’s too much for Lowes to comprehend.
So an installer guy will be coming at some point to measure my cabinets (you know, in case I managed to be THREE INCHES OFF). Then I’ll get a different group of people to do my counter tops, and I’ll also get the floors installed. When Dad comes we will figure out what do do about the windows. A bit at a time…
The one update I have is that I decided to do glass doors on both wall cabinets. I’ll be moving the food currently occupying one of them into the new next-to-the-fridge base cabinet. I ordered that with slide out shelves, so that will work well and look good.
Tomorrow I’m going to Lowes to order everything for my kitchen! I’ve decided to go with white cabinets in this door style:
For hardware, I’m doing bin pulls on the drawers and knobs on the cabinets. They will be either in brushed nickle or oil rubbed bronze (the former matches the appliances, the latter matches all the other knobs in the house)
I’m going to get at least one of the wall cabinets with glass doors. I can’t find a good picture, but they look like this:
I’d like it to be symmetric and have both wall cabinets with glass doors, but I don’t know if I’d have enough room for not-so-pretty things if I did that.
Counter tops will be a very dark grey granite. I decided against the apron sink.
After much deliberation, I decided to do hardwood floors. I don’t think I’ll even try to match it to the rest of the house. I might do a lighter wood floor in there, or perhaps cherry.
I also think everyone who commented was right, and I’m going to put a tall cabinet next to the fridge. It will either be one big tall unit with a space for the microwave, or a base cabinet and a wall cabinet with a microwave unit.
The paint will definitely be green. I do like red a lot, but my adjacent dining room is red and I think that might be too much. I can always do red accents with a green kitchen. This color is “Lounge Green” at Sherwin Williams. It’s getting toward what I want (note the yellow walls and red chair in the background mimic my living room).
I will also be replacing both windows.
Left for deciding later: The light over the sink (though I’m thinking about somethig like this one - more on that later), the main kitchen light, the faucet (but I know I’m doing double handles), window treatments. Tin ceiling is almost certainly a go, but that will also happen later.
So we’ll see what happens at my appointment tomorrow. Hopefully I’ll come away with dates, prices, and pictures!
Most days are house days for me recently, but today was all house all the time. I finished getting everything out of boxes that could be unboxed (e.g. my china and crystal will remain boxed until I get a china cabinet).
I put everything away, assembled the furniture in the basement that was disassembled, took apart the things I had to throw away, and finally got all my laundry and clothes off the floor and put in their proper places.
Importantly, I got all my medals hung up! Here they are:
And here is Pi wondering why I’ve been going up and down and up and down the stairs like a crazy person all day.
I am very broke at the moment, having sunk every available cent into my down payment this month. I’ve been trying not to spend much money, but there are things I really needed for us to function in this house.
On the expensive side, I got a rug for the living room. The girls were sliding all over the place, and I could tell they were becoming tentative about playing. They were spending time in the basement and den to be on carpet. So using my gift cards (thank you Gramma and Michelle/Tom/Kate/Emmy/Wrigley), I went to Pottery Barn after work today and got this rug. K is on it in this picture, but Pi has been the one sleeping on the rug all night.
You will see that after some prodding from Michelle, I replaced my big ol’ Ikea media center with the mission coffee table that my dad made. This is temporary until I have money for furniture.
And now for the praise. Who invented teflon tape? I need to give that guy a cookie. I moved my hand-held shower head with me (very necessary for washing golden retrievers), but when I installed it in place of the nasty old shower head upstairs, it leaked. So a trip to Home Depot and $1 later, I had a roll of teflon tape which totally fixed my problem. I’m amazed by the stuff.
Oh - and about that trip to Home Depot. I only spent $8!! Teflon tape and two sheets of MDF to makes shelves to fit in my bedroom closets. Yeah, dude. $8 at Home Depot. Marvel at either my willpower, or my acceptance of my financial state.
