Built-in Bliss

The built-in bookcase under our master bathroom window is now complete!

After much planning and many drawings, we finally (with the expert assistance of our neighbor Ken) cut all the pieces for the bookcase last weekend.

This weekend, Darwin nail-gunned it together and caulked it up nice and pretty, and then I primed and painted it. You can admit it - it's the prettiest bookcase you've ever seen, right?



We also painted a second and third coat on the bathroom floor:



And cut, primed and painted the baseboards (Benjamin Moore Glacier White, left, primer on the right):



We're getting so close I can taste it!

It Takes a Village

As members of the unofficial Work Day Club of Eutaw, we've helped our neighbors on several occasions. This weekend we cashed in some of our help-out bucks to get a jumpstart on the bathroom.

It all started on Saturday when we took Millie for a walk around the block. We ran into Deirdre, who was helping tear out more plaster at Denise's house, and then we visited a while with Ken and his son, who were working on a truck. We told them about the work we'd recently begun on the bathroom walls - scraping off the flaky top layer of paint to get a smoother surface for painting.

A couple of hours later Deirdre showed up, scraper in hand. She promptly climbed on a ladder and joined me in scraping the walls. We scraped like mad in short bursts, then stopped to rest and gab, then scraped again. In this way, the work (and the lead paint dust) flew.

Then she and Darwin took two wall boards over to Ken and used his woodworking tools to shave a little indention into the backs, so they would fit against a stud.

For some reason Deirdre and Ken volunteered to help us begin wiring the bathroom the next day. We had to leave for a New Year's Eve ball by 4 p.m., so it was an ambitious project.

The bathroom's power was feeding off the guest room light, so first Ken disconnected that and installed a refurbished antique light fixture I bought on eBay about two centuries ago. Meanwhile, Darwin disconnected the light in the bathroom.

Then Darwin headed for the attic and ran a new wire from the breaker box to the bathroom, where he installed a junction box to feed one wire to the light switches and one to the outlets.

Of course, some other finagling had to happen. Holes had to be drilled, wires fished and plans made. Deirdre brought over their massively long drill bit to drill down through the sill in the top of the bathroom wall, and that's when Ken found the happy little rat skeleton.



In the midst of all this, Deirdre cooked us lunch! Can you ask for better friends than these?

After lunch we ran into further problems. One, we had no large plastic wingnut thingies. Two, when they drilled a hole in the future closet ceiling to feed the wire for that light, they discovered that the ceiling had been lowered from 12 feet to 10, and the drill bit wouldn't reach through the 2-foot gap. Three, Darwin was a little confused about how to wire the three-switch box.

Finally we gave up for the day with the bathroom wiring not finished and not connected to the breaker box. But when they turned the power back on, half the outlets in the kitchen and an outlet in the guest room wouldn't work.

While I showered and beautified myself, Darwin tried to figure out the problem. Finally, he switched some wires around in the guest room light fixture, and that did the trick.

But by then, it was already 4 p.m. We finished getting ready in a frenzy, loaded up Millie in the car (she was spending the night with her grandparents) and flew toward town. We had to call my mom and ask her to meet us in town, so we wouldn't be late. She generously agreed but threatened me with a "life lesson" lecture.

Eventually, we made it to our New Year's ball feeling frazzled but looking snazzy.

Before:	After:

We drank champagne, danced the rumba and foxtrot, kissed at midnight, laughed a lot, and crashed by 1:40 at a nearby hotel.

On the way home the next day, we stopped by Lowe's (fortunately open on New Year's Day) and got the larger wingnuts. The rest of the way home, I demanded Darwin explain electrical wiring to me and attempted to draw diagrams to figure out the three-switch problem.

We had resolved nothing by the time we got home except that we have terrible communication skills. And that it's hard to draw a wiring diagram with a dog sitting on your lap.

Fortunately, our neighbor Doug, an actual electrician, was home. Darwin called to ask his advice on the three-switch situation, and Doug generously offered to pop on over and check things out.

He figured the problem out in a flash (we needed a fourth wire directly from the junction box into the three-switch box) and demonstrated how to connect the switches with jumper wires.

After he left, we worked by lamplight until dinner time. Darwin finished the wiring, while I scraped more paint. Oh, and he also hung the second refurbished antique light fixture in the hall to match the one we replaced in November.

All that's left to do with the wiring is deal with the closet light, hang the light fixtures, and hook the bathroom system to the juice. They're all pretty simple, especially since we decided to just rip out the drywall in the lowered closet ceiling. No problem, right?

As for the rest of the bathroom, I'm so sick of scraping I could scream, but we've only really got one wall left. Then we have to fill a truckload of nail holes, hit the whole thing with a palm sander, wipe down the walls, and finally, FINALLY paint.

So how it's going on our wrinkle-free timeline? See for yourself:

Figure out where to put electrical outlets in bathroom wall and cut holes.

Run new wiring to the bathroom for a closet light and two new outlets, and organize all three light switches into one switch plate.

Order faucet for bathroom sink and light fixture for over sink. (at least I've picked them out)

Move plumbing vent pipe into corner of future closet.

Visit Neighbor K to use his woodworking tools to shave a little indention into the back of a replacement piece of beadboard, so it will fit against the stud.

Install two replacement pieces of beadboard. (We were waiting to do this until the wiring was done, in case we needed access in that wall. Now we can install them.)

Cut opening for bookshelf under window and make plans.

Build little bookshelf under the window.

Patch nail holes, scrape loose paint, etc. on "rustic" beadboard walls. (Halfway done)

Buy materials for upcoming projects - wood for trim, paint for walls and trim.

Stuff our faces with Christmas goodies.

Install drywall to close up gaping hole to the attic, and re-create mini-slant in bathroom ceiling. Repair a couple spots of drywall damage on ceiling from when we removed the wall separating the two parts of the bathroom. (This is another thing we were waiting to do until after the wiring was done.)

Prime and paint ceiling.

Prime and paint the walls.

Prepaint and install baseboards, crown molding and corner molding to disguise the edges of the slanty drywall ceiling and where the beadboard meets all crookedy.

Touch up paint on moldings, and paint bookshelf and door trim.

Paint second coat on the floor.

Install light fixture over sink.

Rearrange the bathroom plumbing.

Install sink, clawfoot tub and toilet. The clawfoot tub with its maze of nickel-plated pipes will probably be an ordeal, so prepare for The First Screaming Match of 2007.

Hang vintage nickel-plated bathroom stuff like sponge holder and towel bars.

Take a bath in clawfoot tub, using yummy bath goods bought in Italy just for this occasion.

***

I'm still aiming for Valentine's Day. Hey, it's a month and a half away. The wiring was a huge project, so the plumbing is the only major obstacle left. It will happen!

Plaster Party

The Work Day Club of Eutaw lives again! This time the work day was dedicated to plaster removal, a task we’ve read about but could only dream of doing ourselves since our house was de-plasterified well before our arrival.

Okay, even I never really dreamed about plaster removal. But it wasn’t so bad. We got very very dirty, and then got to go home to our own clean house. Not so bad at all.

The plaster removal occurred at the house across the street. Last year, our brave and industrious friend Denise bought the house and began steadily proceeding through a long checklist of all the major repairs you’d expect from a wood frame house built in 1896 and neglected for the past several years. Foundation, electrical, plumbing, climate control, nonexistent kitchen, roof. Not least of these was a house full of plaster, much of it cracked, falling off the walls and ceiling, or previously (badly) patched.

We share two connections with Denise: 1. We have the same last name (but are not related, at least not in the last 100 years or so). 2. Our houses have the same original owner.

Mary Julia McGiffert Murphy Dunlap lived with her first husband James Murphy, a banker, in Denise’s two-story Victorian house. When poor James died at 29, leaving her a widow with three young children, Mary Julia remarried, sold the house (for $3,200) and built a new, smaller house across the street on her brother’s land. That new house was, of course, ours.

Darwin and I feel a special affection for Denise’s house for that reason. Our affection for Denise herself aside, it just felt right to work on that house, our house’s older, fancier sister.

The members of the (unofficial) Work Day Club of Eutaw convinced Denise that we’d all gladly come help with her plaster problem. Give us beverages and lunch, we’ll be there.

So she set the date (Saturday, which stretched into Sunday, too) and we all showed up.

Denise is living in Tuscaloosa for now, while her son finishes high school. Her goal is to finish the upstairs of the Eutaw house before he graduates, so she can move in and work on the downstairs.

Naturally, Denise wants to save as much of the original plaster as she can. She carefully evaluated what had to go and what could be saved. With some input from her volunteers (us), she decided to take out the walls and ceiling in one bathroom, the master bedroom and the hall; the ceiling only in another bedroom; and one wall only in yet another bedroom.

Let the games begin.

When we showed up Saturday morning, the ceiling and walls in one bedroom were already half done, and the dumpster outside the window was already littered with debris. The Work Day Club doesn’t mess around.

Darwin and I donned our heavy-duty dust masks, protective eyewear and gloves (mine were new and pink), and picked up hammers – the first of a variety of tools we’d wield over the course of the day. Darwin taught me how to hit the plaster at an angle, and I figured out on my own how to punch holes in a line to loosen a chunk, then pry it away with the claw end of the hammer.

Later in the day, Darwin climbed up on scaffolding with Ken – as the two of them always seem to end up doing – and worked on the ceiling with a long-handled, flat-ended tool and a similar one shaped like a giant fork.

When the ceiling came down, we shoveled up cardboard box after box after boxload of debris, toted them to the window, emptied them over the edge into the dumpster. My arms quickly learned the best technique for emptying the boxes – one hand grips the top edge, other arm supports the box underneath, lift out and over. The best technique for shoveling – stay low, stay steady. Scoop, empty, scoop, empty, scoop, empty until the debris was reduced to a small enough pile that we could gather up the tarp like Santa’s bag of toys and shake its content into a box.

Then we picked up the plywood sections and tarps protecting the floor, moved it all to the next room and repeated the process.

As we worked I felt a mixture of relief and disappointment that we don’t have to do this kind of work at our house.

By the end, we were all satisfyingly filthy. Darwin, who’d decided on a whim to clean out the chimney in the master bedroom, was perhaps dirtiest of all – gray-black dirt and soot clinging to his hair, face, clothes and even teeth.



(More Plaster Party pics here.)

When we finally called it a day, more work was left to be done, so Denise tentatively asked if we’d be willing to come back Sunday. We all agreed, though I ended up staying home to nurse my laryngitis/bronchitis/some-kind-of-itis.

Darwin came home Sunday afternoon reporting that they’d nearly finished. Now Denise can work on booking drywallers, and then all the things that will make her upstairs feel like a home instead of a construction zone.

Today, I am tired and the muscles of my hands (from hammering) and thighs (from shoveling) are a little sore. I probably have dirt left in some crevices I haven’t discovered yet. But I feel so satisfied and pleased with myself.

Sometimes I wish for a life that simple – work hard, get dirty, get clean again, eat hearty, go to sleep.

Work Day Club™ to the Rescue

A few evacuee families have found their way to our little hamlet. This weekend, the Work Day Club of Eutaw™, plus two other handy couples, cleaned up and fixed up an old house for one family who fled New Orleans. Darwin and I only helped for a few hours on Sunday, but some of the others labored the whole weekend.

This house is an 1840s cutie ... or used to be. The ceilings have been lowered and every other atrocity imaginable enacted upon it. Inside, you'd never know the house was antebellum. It looks maybe ante-World War II. It's in a sad state.

Fortunately, now it's relatively clean and, from what I hear, much better smelling. People from around Eutaw donated sheets, mattresses, clothes, cleaning supplies, etc. for the family to tide them over until their little bit of money arrives.

As awful as the destruction is at my parents' house in Biloxi, at least they don't have to start over with virtually nothing, like this family does. I can't imagine losing everything and transplanting to a new place, having to rely on strangers for even the smallest necessities.

It's hard to imagine, too, that there are thousands more like this family, facing these same difficulties, all over the state and the country.

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?