Moving Anytime Soon?

I found these pages in my 1909 book that I read whilst sitting on the throne. I really hadn't given old time moving much thought. This puts a new perspective on what people had to do in order to move to a new house.
Read it all. You will be tested on it soon and by the way, the wagon will be here in 40 minutes to move your stuff!

My Bedroom Closet

I thought I would be quite smart today and show you how to revitalize "Lac Paint". I got all my wood trim sanded, ready to be primed and decided to sand the floor in my closet with 100 grit paper so that it too could be painted. The area is small so I used the palm sander. I vacuumed and wiped the floor with a damp paper towel and a sponge. Then I soaked a paper towel in denatured alcohol and wiped my floor expecting it to come to life with a gloss sheen. The alcohol didn't do anything except make the floor a little cleaner. I thought it would lift some of the paint off, revitalize the color and maybe, just maybe I wouldn't have to paint this floor, but alas NO!!!! So I really have nothing that will improve your knowledge of home renovation except that sometimes I don't have a clue what I am doing!

Since I took the picture anyway, here is my closet floor. This is the same closet that I smoothed the walls to AND the same one that was a real bugger to install a light in way back in times of "Yore". I think it took me 3 hours to snake the electric wire behind the molding and feed it through the wall to where I wanted the fixture! If I was a paid electrician then this would have been the most expensive bit of wiring in the whole house... When we move in, Deborah will fill it with a small portion of her clothing and shoe collection and I will never see the walls or floor again.

The Last Four Years of My Life.

Every so often I look through the old pictures of this place to remind me of how it used to look. Then I think about what I could have done with my time if I didn't have this place to work on. The answer is always the same. If I didn't do this, I wouldn't have what I have. I could have done what many folks do and drank an excessive amount of beer and absorb a whole lot of television in the same time but after three episodes the "Gerry Springer Show" becomes a blur.

So, if you are ever feeling overwhelmed by your own renovation work, just think, someone, somewhere is worse off than you AND that someone could well be me....

Here is a reminder of where I was in October 4 years ago, three years ago and 2 years ago.

I've come a long way, Baby!

Ready for Another Bash!

For those of you who remember my "Matching Pair" of fingernails from April. Well, here they are a mere five months later. Aren't they in fine pristine condition? You know what that means? It's time to start some more hammering!

Maybe if I make enough noise my pigeons will go away. (Maybe if I put a ceiling on my balcony the pigeons will go away sooner....)

The Epitome of Bad Taste!







We took Elizabeth to Columbus Zoo today. When we left we stopped at a store called "Garden Ridge" and looked at all the "Made in China" future land fill products they had to offer. Among them was this for $150.00. It sings six tunes.

For $150.00 I would expect it to wash windows, wax floors and scrub the bathtub! I hope that anyone reading this doesn't have the misfortune of "inheriting" one of these for Christmas!

My Door is telling stories

Our house originally had 2-panel doors throughout. However, there are only 5 of them left. One separates our bedroom from the bathroom. The doorway was made sometime after the house was built because the molding is different and projects into both rooms. Original molding is flush with the plaster walls and closed doors were flush with one side of the molding.
The door tells it's own story. Now 34 inches wide, it was originally 36 inches wide and occupied the doorway between our dining room and what we call the cottage living room but was the original kitchen to the house. I know this because one side of the door was painted green and the other side was given a coat of shellac. Each vertical edge had 1" trimmed off exposing the tenon joints and exposing raw wood that was painted over (making stripping harder). This picture verifies the story. The mortise lock was moved to adjust for the cut sides.




This was not a simple task because this is the lock and each section has it's own mortise! Ever seen one like this?

An affair with Joint Compound!

I hate textured walls and rough textured ceilings. Texture is usually added to obscure or cover cracks in plaster. I prefer smooth walls and smooth or lightly textured ceilings. Unfortunately the "Old Crackhouse" lives up to it's name. It really is old and cracked!

This week I have been smoothing the walls in what will be our bedroom. They were smooth to begin with but had some really nasty settling cracks and a bunch of divits where nails had been driven into the plaster which is applied directly over the brick walls.

This is the ninth room which I have had to smooth the walls and ceiling. I am getting REALLY good at it. I don't even need to finish by sanding the walls any more! I have gone through so many 5 gallon buckets of joint compound over the last couple of years I have lost count. The bedroom has only needed two buckets and a small part of a third. Most of our rooms require 4 or 5 buckets.
Today I applied "Top Coat" to the ceiling of the bedroom and bathroom with a medium nap paint roller. This produces a fine texture to the ceiling and saved me hours of time trying to make the ceiling smooth while at the same time covering the smoothed over joints and cracks.

While I was at it, I even smoothed out the walls in the closet! Don't ask me why.

OOOH OOOH Gotta get me one of these!

I'm back to stripping paint in the bedroom so that I can finish smoothing out the walls in case anyone thought I wasn't doing any work around here! In the meantime, I came across this in case anyone was remodelling their bathroom and wanted one. If I hadn't put all that tile in and all those shower heads I could quite easily consider this as a period alternative. What do you think?
Water tower sold separately.

A Builder in the Family?

Elizabeth has a new boyfriend! They met at Wal-Mart. I understand he is quite well known and owns his own construction company. He took her out for a ride this evening. She is quite infatuated with him at the moment. He owns earth moving equipment too. I could approve of this relationship. One problem though, batteries not included....

Curiosity sucks up my time!

Now that I am able to navigate the US Patent Office website fairly well I managed to get sucked into a vortex that consumes time the way Elizabeth consumes ice cream! To view the pictures you need a .TIFF viewer. You can download one from the USPO website.

That woodstove that we bought at the auction has some writing on it. The back says "Harris and Zoiner design pat'd 1866" and the front door to the ash guard says "Patented July 18, 1867".
So, being curious, I tried to locate patents issued on July 18th, 1867. First I need a date range so I typed in #100,000. This appeared; a sun bonnet for a horse. There is a description of the item as well but you can search that for yourself!

How interesting is that?

Eventually I found the correct date around # 65,900. Now the fun begins. The patents issued that day range from 65,790 to 65,986. That is almost 200 patents that I would have to search through one at a time! After looking at 120 of them I found it! It is absolutely amazing what people submitted patents for. Some of this stuff would make great wall art. Anyway, here is what I found after 2 hours. Patent # 65906 for a fender.



Well, I couldn't stop there so the next day I searched "Harris Zoiner Patent" in yahoo and found 32 design patents and 7 idea patents issued between 1851 and 1870. Harris and Zoiner manufactured stoves in Cincinnati, Ohio. So, another 2 hours later I have this; Design patent 2339.



Great eh? Except today I found one of our mortise locks with several patent dates stamped on it between 1862 and 1863 and now I am itching to find out what was new in a mortise lock at the time of the Civil War. I can see another 4 hours being sucked away, can you hear the slurping noise?