House of a Different Color

Ah, how I love three-day weekends. You can get so much more accomplished on your house, enough to rescue your blog from stagnation. Enough to make you feel less like a loser in comparison with your more hardworking blog associates.

On Saturday we had another work day with our crew of handy neighbors (who have found this site now, so we'll have to come up with some code for me to say if they make me mad ... how about "the bluebird is flying"). We helped S&B scrape and paint their beautiful, extremely tall 1850s house. Darwin volunteered for the high-up work, while I kept my feet planted firmly on the ground ... or at maximum three feet above it. S&B's house is white - like every other house in Eutaw - but they are bravely painting it sort of a subtle tan with cream-colored trim. It looks fabulous, and I am so proud of them for taking the color leap.

When our work day comes around, we are probably going to work on scraping/painting/conditioning our extremely weathered front porch floor. I've been working on color combinations for our white-house-with-green-shutters in the Benjamin Moore Color Viewer, which I'm proud to say I finally figured out how to use. It refuses to give me a proper red door, though, so I have to fix that in Photoshop.

I tried out combinations of browns, blues and greens (I like tone on tone stuff), but my favorite is the grays. Behold:



Of course, this is a very simplified view. The porch railings, for example, would probably all be the light gray with certain parts accented with darker gray. And we might paint the gingerbread in two or three shades of gray, changing with the different patterns of shingles (pointed, rounded, etc.)

So what do you think? Be honest. The blues, greens and browns are OK, too. Remember, we can't change the base color of the house, only the accents, and the roof isn't due for another painting for a good long while.

I also played with color for our master bedroom. The best by far was this:



On my computer at work the navy (Hale Navy, by Benjamin Moore) has a hint of green that it didn't have at home. But in general, I think the navy walls look great. The room has three tall windows that let in lots of light, so I don't think it would be TOO terribly dark.

But we won't be able to paint the master bedroom until we rip out the closets, which we won't be able to do until we build the new closet outside the bathroom, which we won't be able to do until we remove the tub and install the clawfoot, which we won't be able to do until next year.

If you can't tell, I like to obsess plan ahead.

Sweat is Now Banished

Sadly, the time of open windows is over. I gave in and turned on the central air.



Some of you Northern folks will probably think it's ridiculously early to turn on the A/C, but here we were one of the later hold-outs. This had been a lovely cool spring, but then one day in early May the heat hit and it hit hard.

For some time, D had been hinting that he wouldn't mind a little forced-air refreshment, but I was stubbornly - and stingily - holding out. "Let's just see how long we can go without having to turn it on!" I would say, in the sort of making-something-sucky-into-a-game tone parents use with their toddlers. Even as I worked with the dear heat gun, I shunned the A/C, pretending instead that I was Ashley Judd in A Time to Kill when she was always glistening attractively with Mississippi sweat-pearls.

Then when our neighborhood friends came over to see the house and view our Antique Alley purchases, we were all sitting in the kitchen sweating glistening ... and I gave in.

Darwin raced to close all the windows (which only seemed to be letting in more heat anyway), and we kicked on both A/C units. Ahhhhh, it felt wonderful.

But I'm not totally casting aside my stingy self ... I keep inching the thermostats up.

The cats are the true losers in this deal. They loved hanging out in the open windows, soaking up the sights and smells of birds and grass and bugs. Now, they shove their heads under the blinds or the curtains, but it's just not the same. Poor boys. Maybe we can open the windows again in October.

Alistair Befriends the Footstool

It's funny how moving a piece of furniture into a different room makes the cats think it's a totally new object, worthy of long periods of sniffing.

When I brought the footstool into the dining room to take its picture, Alistair came around immediately.



Later, Henry was seen lounging on it, his considerable backside hanging off the edge.

Too Tired to Think

This weekend we helped my younger sister move to Georgia. She was surprisingly cheerful throughout the process, unlike me; I have at least one nuclear meltdown each time I move. I hope I never move again until I'm 95, and then I'll just bring a few picture frames and a plant to set on the window sill of the nursing home.

Got Any Fish Heads I Can Borrow?

Last night I went with neighbor D to an organic gardening class that taught you how to compost. I think composting is a great idea, but I am also a very lazy person. So I bought a 50-pound bag of "finished" compost from the dude and am planning to use it around my stagnating peony and in the soon-to-be flowerbed next to the driveway.

Apparently, to make proper compost you need lots of "green" materials - though green is a deceptive term since most of the "green" stuff is actually horse manure, fish parts, etc. He let us sniff his tub of marinating fish guts ... mmmm, that was yummy.

His garden looked awesome, though. Beautiful flowers and the cutest cornstalks "companion growing" with beans and squash. I felt like a cool, crunchy-granola person just being there. One of the other attendees even had a Toyota Prius in the color I want!

Some of the tips didn't seem out of my reach - like using pellets of alfalfa rabbit food or cattle feed as fertilizer. Interesante. I need to check out the Web site he recommended - The Dirt Doctor - and read up some more about the chemistry ... or is it biology? ... behind all this.

I'll Think About It Tomorrow

Thanks for the support, guys. We talked to our lawyer friend last night, and he gave us the name of a friend who works with this kind of case. We hope everything will turn out all right.

Now I'm going to do some deep breathing and turn my mind from this. In the immortal words of Scarlett O'Hara: "I can't think about this now. I'll go crazy if I do. I'll think about it tomorrow."

I finally got those photos of the parlor set and fainting couch uploaded. I also realized I forgot to mention a cute little green 1930s-ish footstool I bought at the Antique Alley sale.




Last night we talked to an antique dealer in Eutaw who said the sale went great for all the dealers and that everyone he talked to planned to come back next year. Now they are trying to orchestrate another antique sale, this one on Hwy. 14, which bisects Alabama. There are several small, historic towns along the highway, each about 30 minutes apart, so it would make a good trail for traveling buyers. I get excited about anything that draws positive attention and travelers to our little hamlet. Eight houses have sold to outsiders in the past eight months (including us). That sounds like a miniscule amount, but for a town of 1,900, eight new families is a lot.

The nearest large town's newspaper did a story about out-of-towners moving to Eutaw. I'm always happy to see Eutaw get positive press, but I wish the story focused less on the two individual stories and more on the big picture and benefits of moving to Eutaw.

Of course, Eutaw aside, I'm an evil journalist and have to find flaws in everything. ;)

The Past 114 Hours

I tell ya, this has been one hell of a week. Darwin got arrested Saturday night for speeding. Though I was able to get him out within a few hours, we still have to go to court and will probably have to pay an enormous fine (up to $2,000).

So I haven't been able to concentrate on the house much or on writing pithy posts.

But I'll give a quick update of our non-arrest-related happenings:

Thursday night our neighbors S&B dropped by with their adorable Miniature Schnauzer to see our house and all the things I bought at the Antique Alley sale. While they were there, Alistair mauled their dog.

Friday night we went with some Eutaw friends to a restaurant that is a restored 1840 house. Very cool place, but dinner took three hours.

Saturday morning we had a joint yard sale with said Eutaw friends, and I made a whopping $80. That's really going to help out with our $2,000 fine. Ha.

Sunday we looked at real estate in Georgia with my parents and sister because my recently graduated sister is moving there next week for her First Real Job. We were on our way there when Darwin was arrested. It was not the most pleasant of trips, for many reasons.

Monday we visited my friend Wendy's kittens, and it made me nostalgic about those first months of our marriage when we lived in a shack and Alistair was a biting, mewling baby.



Isn't he sweet? No, wasn't he sweet? Now he is a snooty, unsociable, dog-mauling beast. And look - he doesn't even feel guilty about it:

Cool Old Stuff for my Hot Old House

Update: Sorry about the broken and messed up links. They're fixed now. I apparently forgot to upload the new photos of the parlor set and fainting couch ... there's a photo of one of the parlor chairs. I'll post more later.

I'm back and bronzed. OK, I'm not really bronzed. I have never been bronzed in my life ... unless you count those brown patches on my knees and ankles whenever I tried self-tanners. I didn't even set foot on the hurricane-flattened beaches of Gulf Shores, though I did sit out on the balcony and enjoy the view.

Now I'm back and suffering from some sort of mild stomach illness that allows me to feel fine most of the time but then strikes after I eat or drink anything. So I'm home from work today.

But, industrious woman that I am, I couldn't stand to hole up in the house all day. So I went to the first day of Eutaw's Antique Alley Trade Days. We were planning to go on Saturday, but I figured it's always better to get there early and snatch up all the good stuff before someone else does.

My Veruca Salt tendencies came out in full force. But I got good bargains, I swear!

I would name my favorite purchase of the day, but I am pleased as punch with every last item, so I'll list them all:

5-piece Eastlake parlor set (4 chairs and a settee)

Upholstered Eastlake chair

Fainting couch (that another antique dealer told me I got a real bargain on)

1928 toaster (still works)

1950s/60s GE electric fan (that works like a dream, ahhhh)

vintage wooden level (the dude estimated that it's pre-1940s)

Pink and red brooch

Eastlake full-size painted walnut bed

Two Gerbera daisy plants and 1 hot pink geranium

Little halfmoon side table

Total: $1,490. Yes, that's a lot of money, but I got a lot of stuff for it. The best part was when we brought the parlor set home and realized it looks as if it belongs here.

In spite of my illness - and the unbearable heat - this has been a wonderful day. The only real fly in my ointment - almost literally - is the 15 unbearably itchy mosquito bites I got while put-put golfing at the beach. I wore bug repellant, so I guess I would be one giant mass of swollen red spots if I hadn't. Ah, the Mosquito Queen's work is never done.

Half-baked

Our oven has been troublesome from the beginning. It was that lovely avacado color, and it generally overheated by about 50 degrees. Recently it started a new trick: cooking the tops of things so you think they're done, but then when you take them out, you realize the bottom half is totally uncooked.

I forgot about this trick when I volunteered to back a cookie cake for my sister's birthday/graduation party yesterday. I remembered in the middle of mixing up the dough, and Darwin set to work figuring out the problem. It turned out a wire was disconnected from the bottom coil. He had to take the oven out of the wall to fix it, and he had to take the door off to do that. So I figured it was the perfect time to finally spray paint the oven door off-white. I bought the paint a while back in the Great Sherwin-Williams 50 Percent Off Sale of 2005.

I cleaned the door - it was horribly, embarassingly filthy because we never cleaned it after we moved in ... we don't cook much, OK. Then Darwin took it apart and hung the front on a wire hanger from the limb of a crepe myrtle.

I spray painted. Darwin unwisely hovered around telling me the "right" way to do it. To his surprise it turned out beautifully. So there, Expert in All Things House-related.



Unfortunately, the paint didn't dry in time to re-attach the door and bake the cookie cake. So we loaded the thing up and took it to Mom and Dad's to bake. All was well, except when I decorated it I got carried away with the size of the letters and ended up decorating it like this:

KELL
Y

Ha, I'm a loser at cooking.

Anyway, this morning Darwin reattached the oven door, and it looks great.



We now have all matching appliances. Now we'll see if the paint can hold up to the heat. We tested it out with cinnamon rolls this morning, and both the newly reattached heating thingy and door worked perfectly.

In other news, I'm going to the beach for a work meeting and won't be back until Wednesday evening. I know it will be hard, but you'll just have to muddle through without me for a few days. ;)

Heat Gun and I

I think Darwin is getting suspicious of my relationship with the heat gun. I spend every spare moment with it, affectionately aiming it's superheated nozzle and watching the paint cower before it.

Just look at all we've accomplished - Heat Gun and I - on the mantel:



I thought the mantel was nice before, but now that the thick layers of paint are peeling away, the little details are so much more defined. I was worried about getting the paint off this beaded edge, but the paint was so thick it came off in big chunks.



One issue is that Heat Gun, overzealous darling, is weakening whatever glue is holding the ornamental woodwork on the mantel face. Just around the edges, but it's making me work very cautiously.


P.S. Happy 22nd birthday, little sister.

Paint, Thou Art Fragrant

Ah, I love the smell of hot paint in the morning.* I woke up early this morning and decided to dedicate a few minutes to the entry hall woodwork. But then I got carried away and made myself late (even later than usual) for work.

I am now in love with the heat gun. We are planning to run away together soon.

After working as high as the gun's cord would reach (need to find the extension cord) on the door trim, I decided to give it a shot on the mantel. It went SO well on the mantel. The paint was coming off in sheets, in some areas not even leaving a speck of paint behind. There are apparently more layers of paint on the mantel, and the backs of the paint chips look more yellow-brown than the dark-tinted shellac on the door trim.

The easy stuff was all on the flat faces of the mantel, though. There are lots of little details that will be harder to deal with. On a recommendation in the heat gun's manual, I think I'm going to gently try a wire brush.


*Actually, the stink of it fills the whole house, and I can still smell it on me. It has soaked into my pores and become my new perfume. I think I can even feel a cloud of it hovering in the back of my throat.

Take That, Trim

We had a coupon for $10 off a $25 purchase at Lowe's, so we went on a little shopping spree there Sunday. After asking three different Lowe's employees, we finally found a heat gun. We got the cheapest one there, a $30 Wagner brand with only a high and low setting.

We also got stuff to work on the weedy flowerbed by the driveway - two bags of hardwood mulch, a set of gardening tools, a pot of Gerbera daisies, and all-important Roundup to kill the evil weeds. And we got three strips of lattice to finally finish the kitchen trim and drywall mud to begin patching the guest bathroom walls for painting. And I couldn't resist a hanging basket of beautiful yellow begonias.

When we got home that night, we had to try it out on the trim in the entry hall. Working together on it didn't work out too well, so we were grumpy and didn't get much accomplished.

Then last night Darwin went to bed early, so I worked on the trim solo. It went much more smoothly, but I got less than half of one side of the door frame done in an hour. Eeek, this is going to take 100 years. Still, I'm excited to get back home and work on it some more!



It looks like most of the trim wasn't primed before painting, as it's chipping off everywhere already. See the left side of the door frame? I scraped some paint off without even using the heat gun.

Under the white paint is some kind of burgundy-tinted slightly sticky stuff. Some of it comes off on the back of the paint chips, and some stays on the wood. The wood underneath the paint for the most part looks like it still has a dark stain.

Any idea what that stuff is? Shellac or something? And when I go back with some kind of chemical to get off the little bits of leftover paint, will I also have to take off the shellac (or whatever it is) and start over?

The Work Day Club

Our neighbors this weekend initiated the first convening of the Work Day Club of Eutaw. OK, this gathering actually has no official name - I am just the official dork.

Seven of us gathered Saturday to work on extending D&K's picket fence. The work went quickly and smoothly with so many people - heck, even I worked hard - and it was lots of fun. A delicious lunch was provided by neighbor J.

Now we all want a picket fence because D&K's looks so good, but that project is just a distant glimmer in our house's future.

Next on the schedule is S&B's house, maybe working on their ongoing exterior painting project. When it's our turn, we may work on our front porch.

The whole membership strolled over to our house after the work at D&K's was done to survey what we need to do to our garden and porch. It was decided that we should liven up our house with paint. Right now everything is white. White clapboards, white porch, white trim, white door ... even white roof (painted metal). Oh, and dark green shutters.



I had planned to paint the door a different color to make it stand out - maybe a dark red - but I had only briefly entertained ideas of enlivening the trim.

The body of the house must stay white - at least for the next several years - because we aren't ready to deal with the white aluminum siding on the back of the house. The trouble is that the earthy tones popular in the Victorian era look positively horrid with stark white. I have two books for inspiration (and I wouldn't mind owning this one), but not a one of the houses in the books has a speck of white on it.

In a previous era, our house was grey, which an interior designer neighbor tells us was popular during the time of coal heat because the smoke and dust from the coal would make white houses look dirty. Using that bit of inspiration, we're thinking of accenting the white with shades of gray and black ... plus that red door I wanted.

I downloaded the personal Benjamin Moore Color Viewer, which allows you to paint on photos of your own house, but I haven't quite figured it out yet. I might've been better off sticking with Photoshop. UPDATE: I actually read the software tutorial last night, and now I've got the hang of it. Some of the colors still show up like a faded version of themselves, but so far I'm liking it.

I painted a photo of another Victorian house on the free version of the Personal Color Viewer and decided I liked the colors Duxbury Gray and Boothbay Gray from the Historical Collection.

But it's a hard thing to think about painting my precious house. When I stand out in my front yard and look admiringly at my house, I swell up with pride. While I know the house could look even better, I love the way it looks now - white bread though it is.



So, what do you think? Play it safe or take the leap - and the Work Day Club's advice?