Hoot's Happy Ending

When I got home from dance lessons last night, I changed into pj's, donned my hoodie - zipped to the chin, hood up - and ventured out into the cold to take Millie for her walk.

We began our usual circuit - down the back steps, between the posts of the half-finished fence, stop for pee break (her, not me), then around the corner of the porch to the front yard. In the evenings, I usually get the mail before circling around to the other side of the house, where Millie often poops near the holly tree.

Last night when I approached the mailbox from our sidewalk, I saw a dog across the street. I reined Millie in and fell silent, hoping not to encourage it to cross the road, fearing it might start a confrontation with my pooch or get hit by a car on his way across.

The dog came on over anyway. He gave Millie a cursory sniff and headed right for me, where he moved in quick for the kill - a doggy grin and a handshake to introduce himself. He was mellow and friendly, just the sort of dog I love to meet.

I'd never seen this dog before, but my first thought was that it might belong to my part-time neighbor Denise. He was an Australian Shepherd, and I thought I'd heard her say she had one. Maybe he had escaped out the door or wandered off earlier in the day.

So I cinched up on Millie's leash, and away we went through the dark past the tennis court and beyond.

I admit I was a little nervous, out there in the cold, in the dark. But Eutaw is a tiny town, and there wasn't a soul to be seen on foot or in vehicle. And I had two dogs for protection.

But as I got to Denise's house, I saw she wasn't there. And then it dawned on me that Denise's dog was a girl, and this one kept hiking its leg to pee on tufts of grass and clumps of leaves - a very boy behavior.

By now the dog was wandering off through the neighbors' yards, so I headed home, hoping he would do the same. But when we paused at the corner, he caught up with us again and sidled up to me. In the pool of light from the streetlamp, I pushed back the thick fur on his neck to look for a name or contact information.

On a bright orange collar written in black were the word "Hoot" and a phone number.

"Go home, Hoot," I tried, but he followed us back across the street into our yard.

Millie and I finished the circuit, and as I headed for the back steps, Hoot came, too.

"No, no," I said at the door. "Go on home."

I admit my tone of voice wasn't very authoritative. Understandably, Hoot didn't listen.

But I figured he would leave once we were inside. I've had dogs try to squeeze into my house before; I even had a pair of Labrador Retrievers climb into my car with me at a yard sale. But if they have a home to go to, they eventually just go.

Not Hoot, though. He stared at me through the glass of the back door, his eyebrows knitted together and ears pricked. Puh-puh-puh-please, his brown eyes said.

Millie joined in with a whine. "Let him in, Ma! It's cold out there!"

The thermostat read 38 degrees.

But I turned away. "If we leave the hallway, if he can't see us," I told Millie, "he'll go on home."

And when I peeked my head back into the hallway a few minutes later, he was gone. I relaxed a little, though my tense stomach told me all was not well.

Then Hoot came back. This happened several more times, and I started worrying about him in earnest. This was not normal behavior for a dog who so obviously had a family.

Finally, I decided to call the number on his collar, though it was 10 p.m. and I was afraid of disturbing someone's sleep. All I got was voicemail, so I left a message.

But I wasn't satisfied. So I called an expert - my sister. Resisting a possibly lost, lonely dog is even harder for her than it is for me.

She agreed with me that he sounded lost, especially when I told her his fur was caked with mud. He was obviously a house dog, since he seemed so convinced he needed to come in my house.

But I was afraid to bring him inside in case he really did belong to someone and might wander home at any moment.

Finally, I spread a towel out in the sheltered corner of the stoop and brought him a bowl of water and a jerkey strip. The next time I came to check, he was curled up on the towel.

Now I was convinced he was lost, so I called the number again and left a second message updating the owner on the situation. I told him he could call any time, but I didn't hear from him all night.

I went to bed with a heart full of worry for poor, sweet Hoot.

So when the phone rang at 5:33, he was my first thought. I sat bolt upright, instantly wide awake.

It was his shocked and happy owner, who said Hoot had disappeared Sunday afternoon. The puppy he was with had returned, and when Hoot was missing two nights in a row, they'd feared the worst.

I told him Hoot was on the back porch and I would bring him inside to make sure he stayed put until they could come get him.

Before we hung up the phone, I had to ask, "Where are you?"

"Boligee," he said.

"I'm in Eutaw!" I answered.

And we both marveled over how - and why - Hoot made it 11 miles from his house to mine.

After we hung up, I brought in Hootie, fed him some of Millie's food and shut him inside the bathroom for the cats' protection, just in case, though he'd shown no signs of hostility at all.



When a family friend came to pick him up an hour later, I was a little disappointed. I was hoping to witness the joyful reunion of dog and family, the doggy kisses and those brown eyes winking with satisfaction.

Still, I am filled up with joy for this small, miraculous thing. What if Hoot and I hadn't met on the sidewalk last night? What if we'd missed each other by moments, and he was gone, left to wander another 11 miles, or worse?

I couldn't be happier if I'd invented a teleporter. How precious to almost lose something and then get it back.



*In memory of Sophie and Toby, who were lost and never found.*

Voyeur-Tour

I spent my Saturday as a guide for the Greene County Historical Society Tour of House Porn. Okay sure, they call it something a little more prim (because Eutaw is nothing if not prim), but we housebloggers can read between the lines. Interior and exterior home tours with no restrictions on photography? Yes, that my friends, is house porn.

I love looking at old houses for three reasons. 1. I love old houses. 2. I want to get ideas (particularly for kitchens and bathrooms). 3. I am a voyeur. Well, aren't we all? We want to see how other people live: how tidy they are (though tour day is probably not a good time to judge); whether they like antiques, reproductions or Target chic; what their idea of restoration is; whether their TV is prominently displayed or tucked away; whether they have a pampered pet, a dog chained in the yard or none at all; what paint colors they chose; whether they have a bedspread or a comforter; whether they store their clothes in armoires, dressers or an entire room repurposed as a closet.

It's all so telling.

And in a small town - where everyone feels they have a right to know everything about everyone else - a home tour is the perfect way to nose into each other's business.

Each year in October several fine residences from around town are chosen to be "on tour," and there's always a slight shuffle in the mix. Half the town turns out for these tours, especially the older women, who dress to kill in elegant suits.

This year our friends L&M and S&B were both invited - and agreed - to be on the tour.

In the past several months L&M bought and rapidly restored a Victorian cottage catty-corner to us. Our house is its evil antithesis - ours is decorated with cat hair and random eBay finds, while theirs is the most immaculate house I've ever seen, and it's stuffed with glamorous trappings like rich fabrics and lots of gilt.

S&B moved into their antebellum Greek Revival the same time we moved into our house (2 years ago this month). It's a wonderful place for entertaining - lots of wide open spaces and the smells of Bobby's incredible cooking wafting through. S&B's major contributions to the house have been painting the interior walls bold, inviting colors; scraping/painting the dizzying 3-story exterior; and landscaping the yard in a way that showcases the house perfectly.

The trouble with S&B's residence is that it's too big for one person. Yep, our beloved S&B are splitsville. The house had been on the market for a month and sold the day before the Home Tour (a remarkably short sale time for a home in Eutaw).

ShantheMan asked me to hang out and help give tours of the house on Saturday, so I dolled up and headed over bright and early that morning. Some houses go all out with tour guides in each room clutching notecards and elaborating on the origin of each stick of furniture or piece of silver.

Yeah, that's not the kind of tour we did. We gave a little spiel something like this:

"The house was moved here in 1856 from the nearby community of Springfield. It was rolled here on logs" (pause for crowd reaction) "Yep, on logs! And it's only slightly haunted! Tee hee!"

Sometimes we threw in a ghost story or two and/or mentioned the fact that Dr. Willis Meriweather was the original owner and look there at those medicine bottles found in the attic! Then we sent them wandering about the house on their own.

A surprising number of fellow voyeurs asked ShantheMan: Why are you selling? How much did the house sell for? Where are you moving? Why are you moving there?

He answered with more poise than I probably could've mustered and never said, "Noneya business!"

All in all, the day was surprisingly fun. I enjoyed my tour guide role and meeting so many people who like old houses; some had even driven hours to get there.

We also got to meet the new buyers! They seem dedicated to preserving the house, which is wonderful. And the woman was wearing a cute sweater. So that's good.

Still, it was always present in my mind that our friends would be leaving soon. Bobby is moving to Tuscaloosa, and ShantheMan is moving to Moundville while he looks for a small house to restore in Eutaw.

Sigh. Anyway. In our down time, we also stole away to tour two other houses on the tour and one that wasn't, which I'll share pictures of later in the week.

And now, drumroll please, let the house porn commence:

Home Tour - ShantheMan photo set

Home Tour - ShantheMan slideshow

Lotsa Loot

Actually, not so "lotsa." I bought a little less stuff and spent significantly less money at this year's Antique Alley sale. Still, I am thoroughly pleased with my purchases and today I'm feeling as light as a fat-free biscuit since I didn't spend a jillion dollars.

My first and favorite purchase was a medicine cabinet for the bathroom. No, not just "a" medicine cabinet - THE medicine cabinet. It's the absolute perfect medicine cabinet for our bathroom, and I love it dearly, so much that (watch out Darwin) I may one day run away with it to Cancun.



It has adorable shabby chic chippy off-white paint. Underneath the paint, the cabinet is mahogany! So I may strip it one day, but for now I like the chippy lead-o-rama paint. (Have I mentioned I'm already planning an early death due to lead poisoning?)

It has two doors with beveled mirrors on the outside and racks on the inside, plus shelves in the cabinet, and it has a keyhole but of course no key. This thing is HEAVY!

Also, the antique store lady pointed out a paper label on the back that says (I think) R.J. Horner, which was supposed to impress me and make me feel guilty about getting a bargain on the cabinet. I'm not impressed and don't feel guilty. Names on antiques mean nothing to me because I don't know what I'm doing. I just say, "ooh pretty" and I must have it.

Which does nothing to explain my purchase of this:



It's a turn-of-the-century Hitchcock chair, which I'm told should also impress me. I paused and touched the chair on my way into an antique shop, and the proprietor immediately began regaling me with all the wonders of the chair and saying the word Hitchcock and lot, and telling me its never too soon to start building a collection of "good" antiques.

My translation: buying this chair is the equivalent of buying a designer purse, just so people will know you can afford to pay for it.

Somehow in all this, I became convinced (with the help of my trusted antique dealer friend down the street) that the $85 for the chair was a bargain. So I bought it, maybe because I hadn't found much else of interest at the sale and I wanted to buy some more stuff, darnit!

Maybe it is a bargain. I don't know. But I do like the chair, and it does look nice in our house. I just had to endure the not-another-chair looks from Darwin when I brought it home. Hey, at least it wasn't another bed, right?

So then we went back on Saturday morning in hopes of scoring some baked goods from the Mennonite ladies. They weren't there (or were sold out already), so we bought yummy cookies from a church group instead.

On our way back to the truck, I noticed a chair (yes another chair) that I hadn't paid much attention to on Thursday. It looked like a very low-to-the-ground rocker.



We strolled over and discovered that it was an 1890s folding camp rocker with a carpet seat. The seller told us the Victorians liked to go all out with silverware, china, etc., when they camp (could be true, I don't know), and they'd take these cute little rockers to relax in.

Well, one of my favorite things to collect is antique stuff that can still be used the way it was intended (like the 1920s toaster I got last year, which Darwin now uses).

Darwin liked the chair, too, but wasn't sure. Meanwhile, I spotted a 1940s handpainted cookie jar and fell in love. With the black, yellow, green and pink on this jar, it couldn't match our kitchen any better if it was covered with clutter.



That decided it. Like an idiot, I offered $100 for the chair ($58) and jar ($45) without doing the math properly first. The seller accepted, saving me a whopping $3. I'm an idiot. Oh well.

Anyway, I'm feeling no buyer's remorse about any of my purchases, with the possible exception of two pots of zinnias, which are presently dying on my front porch. If they can be rescued, I'll post a pic once they are planted in the front pots.

House Movers Anonymous

I'm back from a few days at the glorious beach. Oh wait, not so glorious when I had to waste one entire day staying close to the bathroom for PukeFest 2006, which led to watching Passions because the TV remote was broken. Here's a tip from me to you: Never watch Passions. Ever.

On my first day back, Darwin came in from work super excited about something. He told me to grab my camera and dragged me out of the house, into the truck and down the street (okay, that last part was less drag and more drive).

Here it is:



A house is being moved from Wilson Ave. It's a cute little one-story Victorian with a nice purple color scheme. I've always admired it. I wonder who owns it, if ownership has changed hands, if it was up for sale why wasn't I notified, are they planning to re-use those bricks and if not can I have them, and where is it going?

From the piles of bricks lying around, looks like they demolished the foundation (probably brick piers). The house is propped up underneath with (among other, more sturdy things) what looks to be wooden pallets.

Whoever is moving this house, I should track them down and direct them to The Devil Queen for mucho good advice on house-moving and the subsequent renovation. Also, I should direct myself to a local insane asylum because I SO want to buy and renovate this with this yard. I guess there are some benefits to having a yard that converts to a swimming hole whenever it rains.

I'm Baaaaack!

I'm back home after several days in Louisville, Kentucky, where I got three massive blisters on my feet, saw snow for the first time in years, met Mikey from American Choppers, and was falsely accused of paparazzi-ism by a member of an aging country music star's entourage.

I'm so glad to be home I can't even express it. It took all my self-control not to fall down and kiss the hideous vinyl floor.

I rolled into Eutaw at about midnight Friday. Saturday morning we attended an auction at an antebellum house my parents are interested in here in town. It's an awesome house with 16-foot ceilings (!!!!) and it's on the National Register. Still, it needs LOTS of work. For example, the kitchen has a gigantic dip in the floor, there are big patches of plaster falling off everywhere, and it more than likely needs all-new plumbing and electrical.

My parents have never owned an old house before and are usually not the DIY types. However, they are approaching retirement age, and already my dad is bored. Lately, he has taken to gardening and going all out with the Christmas lights - things he rarely did when we were growing up.

Plus, Dad is a big history buff. He's the person who taught me to appreciate history. Though I'm dubious whether he and Mom have the patience for this project, I can see Dad really loving owning a piece of history like that.

And the yard is 10 acres and gorgeous. My dad was a forester for years, so he is a sucker for a lovely piece of land with some giant old trees. Trekking through the tall grass with him on Saturday reminded me of the times as a child when he would take me for walks and teach me the names of the trees.

Also this weekend, we got to see inside another National Register house in Eutaw, this one in impeccable condition. It was so beautiful. Best of all, the house has only had three owners (like ours, but this house is much older) and several photos, portraits, books and even CLOTHES were left in the house by the original owners. They have a black mourning dress on a mannequin, and I almost passed out from joy when I saw it. *SIGH* I'm so jealous.

Speaking of National Register stuff, the owners of that house advised us to start the application process to register our house. I didn't realize a house only has to be 100 years old to qualify. I thought it had to be "significant" in some way, but apparently just being at least 100 years old is significant enough, especially since we're in a town that's chock full of National Register houses.

I need to look into it some more. Anyone out there gone through the registration process? Seems like I've read it's reeeeeally complicated and time-consuming. But these folks said it wasn't too bad.

Rebels With a Cause

Last night we attended a meeting of the Greene County Historical Society. We've lived in Eutaw for 16 months now, which means we are considered newbies. We sat at a table with the other newbs - all of whom moved here around the same time as us - and joked that we are the rebels of the historical society crowd.

The veteran members of the GCHS seemed glad to see us. New blood in a room where the average age skewed toward 70.

The keynote speaker was the architect in charge of the Greene County Courthouse Square restoration. He was a fascinating guy, obviously dedicated to accuracy and faithfulness. The properties must be stabilized first. A moisture problem with the 1840s probate building must be fixed. A separating roof support in the 1869 courthouse must be fixed.

Then for the fun stuff. He wants to get a paint analysis done on the exterior of the courthouse (interior, too, if possible). Now it's "monolithic white," which the architect said wasn't even an available paint color when the building was constructed. He says the stucco was most likely scored to look like stone blocks and faux painted like stone. I could tell he freaked some people out with that talk, but I thought it sounded fabulous.

Inside, the upstairs courtroom floor was changed years ago to a stadium-style slant, which eliminated the original fireplaces that were the only heat in 1869. This guy wants to restore the courtroom floor to flat and put mantels back in.

I love all his ideas. I just wish we could raise enough money to do them. We have $700,000 of grant money available, but we can only use as much as we can match. Yeah, can't do much with $20,000.

So for now, the drainage system and the roof. It's a start.

I wish I could help, but I don't know how. Being a newbie (and a rebel), I'm waaaay outside the loop on GCHS goings-on. Good news, though - donations are tax deductible. Maybe I've found a way to ward off a high tax bill next year ...



The Greene County Courthouse in 1936, courtesy The Library of Congress

Slump

Progress on the house has slowed to a crawl. No, crawl sounds too speedy. Creep. Drag. Complete standstill.

First, we got sick. Then came the holidays and all their accompanying gatherings (two down, three to go).

But the real reason we've virtually stopped working on the house is the cold. We're trying to avoid the $300-plus gas bills of yesteryear, so the thermostat is set on 59. Every now and then, the central heat kicks on, but for the most part the house is heated with portable electric heaters. The house is one giant refrigerator punctuated with three tiny pockets of heat.

In the evenings, we retreat to the living room, even eating our dinner there. We almost close the pocket doors between living and dining rooms (leaving just space enough for the cats to squeeze through), set the electric heater on oscillate, and cozy up together under that warm blanket I made a while back. After a few minutes, the cats snuggle up with us - Alistair between us under the blanket, Henry stretched out on my legs.

Who wants to leave the comfort of family and the heater to go wrangle with sheetrock in a cold, dusty bathroom? Not me. And Darwin is even less interested.

Even in the weekend daytime, the night's cold hangs in the house. Darwin flees outside and invents work to do on his motorcycle or the yard. I layer a T-shirt, flannel pajama top and hooded jacket and get sucked into the computer until my fingers and nose turn into little ice cubelets.

Ugh. I'm getting disgusted with myself just reading this. Sure, we deserve a break now and then. But it's so easy to get into a habit of nonactivity.

This Saturday was the first day in a long while that we hardly watched any TV. It was a fun and busy day, but even then we didn't do any work on the house.

We slept late, then went and had pancakes and bacon at our friend R's new restaurant and stayed to watch the Christmas parade out the front window. Then we went to the post office, where the postal worker was as mystified by my package bound for Australia as I dreaded she would be. After that, we peeked in the windows of a cute Victorian house/former hotel R owns, while my heels sunk in the ground. Back at home, D tried to cut some limbs away from the power lines, but the limb cutter pole thingy wasn't long enough. We did some laundry and folded some clothes.

Then we went back to R's restaurant for a late lunch and chit-chatted some more. Back at home, we changed our sheets to the new brown flannel ones I bought a while back (SO WARM!). Then I wrapped presents for our nieces and nephews, while Darwin played invisible marker games. That night, we watched Monster-in-Law (not a classic, I assure you).

Okay, I'm boring even myself.

So what now? Do we just accept the status quo until the end of February? Somebody give me a jumpstart. Is it wrong to think about throwing money at people and telling them to fix my bathroom?

Little Worker Bees

Gracious, this has been a whirlwind week. The plant where Darwin works is closed for the week, so he has been at home. I wanted to take a day or two off myself, but things have been too crazy at work. In the evenings, we've done stuff with our fun and wonderful neighbors (hi, guys!) three nights in a row. On leftover night, my 4th of Cream Cheese cake even got devoured - hurray!

On his days off, Darwin has done a little work on the house. He put up more of the cabinet knobs, and he worked yesterday on wiring my dollhouse. His birthday present to me is to finish the wiring. Woo-hoo! It's only been a year since we started it. Let's see ... 10 days left till my birthday!

Saturday we're planning to help our neighbors S&B put up a fence to hold in their three adorable pups. Last night, we helped them prime the front of their house. It's funny how work doesn't feel like work when you're with friends.

Soon it will time for our work day ... we're the ones holding it up. We have to do the preparation work so the Work Day Club of Eutaw can have something to do when they get to our house. But we suck at preparation. So our front porch continues to languish.

As for the broken light and the broken digital camera, neither issue is resolved yet. I'm working on it. *Sigh*

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?

House Stalker

My time off had a way of disappearing itself ... the way time off tends to do. I began coming down with a sore throat/cold on Wednesday evening, and now I'm feeling miserable sometimes and OK sometimes.

In the OK times on Thursday I got a lot accomplished. I finally took the ornaments and lights down from the Christmas tree. After watching an episode of Christopher Lowell on de-cluttering, I tackled three huge boxes of clothes we had never unpacked from the move. I put away one box, packed up one box and found a whole box full of stuff for charity. I'm proud of myself for that one!

I also painted another coat of green in the kitchen. And I folded some sheets. Hey, that's something, right?

On Friday, I went to Bed, Bath & Beyond. *siiiiigggghhh* I am in love with that place. I bought three huge bags of organizational stuff and found a beautiful curtain rod for the kitchen. Darwin is hanging it right now, and I can hear his grunts of frustration while I type away in my comfy office chair.



When Darwin and I got home at 8:30 that night, we had a message from our across-the-street neighbors inviting us for dinner and dessert. Lucky us, they were still hanging out and having dessert.

So we walked across the street - so fun to be able to walk there - and had tiramisu with them. We also met two other Eutaw-ites (Eutawans?) and had a blast. We also got a tour of the neighbors' house, which you know I always love.

We ALSO found out from them that my favorite house in town is for sale. AND they have a key and offered to give us a tour of it today if we want it. Do you think we might want a tour? Hmmmm, let me think about that for a minute. YES, YES, YES, WE WANT A TOUR!

Oops, did I sound too eager there? Like a house stalker?

That's the good news for today. The bad news is, I got the day wrong for the auction. So clever of me. They told me Feb. 20, but I assumed it would be a Saturday. Oops. You know what they say about assuming.

Turns out the auction is on Sunday at 1 p.m. ... we already have plans with my parents and sister for lunch on Sunday. I'm disappointed, mostly because this auction has DOLLS.

But there will be others. Anyway, after all the wise comments on antiques the other day I was feeling less jazzed about antiques in general. And the neighbors' house last night? It was a regular house inside, like ours. It had excess stuff on the kitchen counters; it had "vintage" furniture rather than antique. It looked LIVED in.

And heck, that's more "us" anyway.

We've Become the Kravitzes

The new neighbors have apparently closed on the house next door. As we peered surreptitiously out the kitchen window, the office window and over the hedge today, commenting on their comings and goings, wondering what the husband was doing kneeling on the ground in the backyard, etc., I began to feel like Gladys Kravitz from Bewitched. You know the one - always poking her nose into Samantha and Darrin's business.

I definitely don't want to be that kind of neighbor, and I don't think we'll end up that way. We've just got a heapin' helpin' of curiosity about the new folks who'll be taking on similar challenges to us - the same commute, the same front porch needing repairs this spring, the same ... um, I'm sure there's something else the same.

Speaking of our challenges, we worked on the kitchen again today.

We're considering the cut-outs-in-the-soffits idea. Darwin measured and drew some squares on the soffits to help us picture what we want. The main issue is that none of our cabinets are the same size, so symmetry is out the window. I like symmetry.

And the dumb old stove vent is in the way.

We spent the morning filling the holes from the old hinges and drawer pulls and finishing up the priming on the stuff that's ready. Then we painted.

The paint color turned out to be perfect (semi-gloss Floral White, by Benjamin Moore). We ended up going with oil paint, and it hasn't been as big of a pain in the you-know-where now that we know about the old aluminum foil/freezer trick.

We're using a small foam roller because that's what the paint store guy recommended. I really like it so far. We've only had to use a brush for a teensy bit of cutting in, but the roller is small enough to handle most things. And the foam makes a nice, smooth finish. Even with only one coat, only on the top half, the kitchen looks brighter and fresher already.

104 Years Young

This morning a man came to the door and announced that he once worked for the previous owner, Miss Syrene, and - the more amazing fact - that he was born in 1900, making him two years older than our house. He had walked to our house, and after our conversation sped away with his cane. I hope I'm as spry if I get to be 104 years old.

I wanted to ask him about our house, but it was hard to understand what he was saying, and I didn't want to confuse him. So we just let it go at being glad to have met him. Same as our house - we may never find out all the answers, but I'm just glad to be here.

Today Darwin has been installing the microwave/vent hood over the rangetop. What a nightmare that has turned out to be. But it's coming along, slowly but surely.



On one of Darwin's many trips up to the attic today, he noticed something fascinating - original cedar shingles on a portion of the roof that had been covered when an addition was made. From the clues, we figured out that the master bathroom and guest room (and possibly guest bathroom) were added on fairly shortly after the house's original construction. This must be the "addition to accomodate a growing family." We think it was added on quite a while ago because it incorporated a fireplace that required a new chimney to be built. Why would you go to all that trouble in a bedroom unless you needed fireplaces for heat?

Another clue - knob and tube wiring. I had never seen it before and wasn't quite sure what to picture. But now I've seen it - right there in our attic! Fascinating stuff. Better than that, though, were the fingerprints all over the roof boards.

According to the attic, the kitchen was original to the house, as I suspected. The office and laundry were added at a later date. Apparently the reason half the roof on that section is asphalt shingled instead of tin is that a tree fell on the house at some point. Darwin saw broken boards and new ones where a hole had been patched.

Also, Darwin found a spot on the front of the roof where a dormer once was. Why oh why didn't they just leave it there? Of course, I like the steep angle of the roof there and can't really picture it with a dormer, but if it was original, it makes me sad to see it go.

Today has been a day of clue-finding. In the little closet under the stairs - the only room in the house with plaster intact - we noted the baseboards.



The baseboards are one flat board with a piece of more decorative molding above it. Apparently, when they were drywalling, they took the decorative piece off and when they put it back, it stuck out a little farther than before. In the little closet, the decorative molding lines up even with the boards. It's nice to have this little window into what the house looked like before.