Reviving the Colonial

Warm Windows

erilyn — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 16:57:00 +0000

In order to try to keep the baby warm this February despite the original [beautiful but drafty] windows in his nursery, we decided to try a product called WarmWindow. It’s basically a system for making your own window shades using a special quilted, insulated lining with a system of magnets to seal it tight to the window frame. The insulation, rings, magnets and hardware are kind of expensive, but we bought them in stages at JoAnn Fabrics using 40% off coupons, and it worked out to be about $25 a window.

It took me an evening and and afternoon to finish sewing the first shade, but I think it will go quicker now that I know what I’m doing. It wasn’t really hard, but it was kind of tedious and tricky to get everything exactly straight. The instructions can be downloaded off the WarmWindow website, and are pretty straightforward. As I make the second shade, I think I will cut the insulating fabric just a tiny bit wider (a quarter of an inch or so), because once it was all sewn together, it seemed to bow or shrink just a little from side to side.

I also made a valance using an extra crib skirt (I bought 2 on clearance for $10 at Land of Nod - couldn't resist the tiny embroidered neighborhood...). When pulled up, the WarmWindow shade hides behind the valence.

You can see the long magnetic strips going down the sides of the inner edge of the window frame (the part that screws in and holds the bottom sash in place). The shade has magnetic strips sewn into it, which cling to the window frame as you let down the shade. The WarmWindow instructions say that you can paint the magnets, so I may paint and shellac the magnetic strips on the frame so they blend in better. I ordered some aniline dye in an antique cherry color, which I plan to add to amber Bullseye shellac to get the right color. I'll shellac the sill and other worn places as well.

When let down all the way, the shade keeps the cold air out and the warm air in. It blocks light completely, so during the day you leave it open to let light and solar energy into the room, and at night you pull it closed to keep the heat inside. This light-blocking characteristic also might help us trick the baby into taking a nap during the daytime…

Us, too...

erilyn — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 16:26:00 +0000

This seems to be a pretty common announcement in the houseblogs neighborhood lately, but if you've been wondering where we were - yep, I'm pregnant!

T. and I are looking forward to welcoming a baby boy in early February or thereabouts. Our focus on the house has shifted into make-room-for-baby mode. (I had originally planned to strip the outside of all the windows this summer... That plan was scrapped with this new development - no lead paint for baby, thanks! Plus, with the puking and the headaches and general weariness, there was no way I was up for that job even if it was safe.)

Despite the total lack of blogging, we have made some progress on the house, which I'll try to share as I feel up to it.

Porch progress

erilyn — Sun, 16 Apr 2006 00:56:00 +0000

Thinking of warmer days to come, this week T. turned his attention to the enclosed back porch. We plan to scrape and paint, as well as reglaze and rescreen the windows. But first he had to add electricity, another circuit for a GFI outlet and a ceiling fan. Over the past few evenings he's made good progress, and today he hung the motor for the fan and hooked everything up. We won't hang the fan blades til we scrape and paint the ceiling (scraping overhead beadboard, what fun...).

The way the ceiling is constructed, it was impossible to remove the beadboard without cutting it on the edges down the entire length of the porch. The ceiling is integral, essentially sandwiched between the framing of the lower and upper porch. Kind of hard to explain, but long story short we decided to just add a raceway for the wiring to the fan. You can see where T. removed a couple of the cedar shakes - we'll put those back soon. The top hole and wire will be hidden behind the crown moulding when we put it back up, and the raceway will get a top cap and a coat of paint.

Today we couldn't have asked for anything better weather-wise... warm in the sun, cool in the shade. I have a cold and felt kinda crummy, but the sunshine was irresistable and I spent the morning bagging sticks and leaves, and weeding the flower beds, while T. mowed the lawn. The back yard is filled with violets, and these pretty blue flowers that I don't know the name of:

Have a joyful Easter! He is risen!

Hanging together

erilyn — Fri, 07 Apr 2006 14:28:00 +0000

Although I'm an illustrator and have stacks of paintings and prints in flat files in the attic, we had yet to actually hang anything on the walls. Until this past weekend.

The larger monoprint on the left is a self-portrait done by yours truly. The smaller monoprint on the right was created by my great-grandfather F. Sands Brunner (b. 1886) - it's a portrait of my great-great grandfather Thomas Speers (b. 1867).

I unearthed the old print when looking through a bunch of sketches and tearouts of my great-grandfather's work, and was struck by it's beauty and simplicity. I love the way my new print and his old one seem made to hang together.

(I'm sorry now that I didn't scan the old print before I framed it, because it doesn't photograph well under glass. You can see a better image of the new print here.)

Rugged

erilyn — Fri, 07 Apr 2006 14:48:00 +0000

Yay! The dining room rug arrived in the mail today. I ordered it from the "Outlet" section of CB2. (Crate & Barrel and CB2 always seem to have nice rugs on sale at reasonable prices.) I also ordered a rugpad from Overstock.com.

We really like the way it finishes and adds warmth and color to the room, as well as protecting the floor. We tried to go pretty dark with the color - the better to hide the spills, my dear.

And the rug pad is wonderful. The pad we have in the living room is from Ikea and it doesn't hold up at all to a skittery dog who loves to launch herself from relaxing to racing in .007 seconds. This one seems to grip the floor very well.

Of course, for some reason, this dog (who has never chewed on any non-food item except her own toys) has taken a perverse delight in trying to bite out the knots in the rug's jute weave. Then today I caught her knawing on the new chair legs. Argh! Bless old houses and all their extra doors with which to shut dogs out of the dining room...

Spring?

erilyn — Sun, 26 Mar 2006 23:20:00 +0000

Between the cold weather (a. unmotivating and b. heating bills draining the ol' bank account) and a busy work schedule, we haven't done diddly squat on the house in a couple of months. This weekend we finally did a little work on making the dining room more hospitable.

First, we bought a new table. Our old table was fine, except we could only seat 4 adults comfortably, and then there was never enough room on top to fit all the food. The new table should seat at least 8. We got on a scratch-and-dent sale at Value City, so it was missing one chair and one of the 2 leaves. But the wonderful discount made it, in our opinion, well worth it. Maybe we can even make some kind of extra leaf that will fit and can be covered with a big tablecloth for those rare occasions when we would need to seat 10 or so. T. and his friend brought it all home from the store, crammed in the back of Tommy's van (thank you!).

I never know if I should decorate in a craftsman, deco, or colonial style, since the original house seemed to be such a mixture. We chose a quasi-colonial table. In the right side of this photo, you can see our old, formerly white shelf which I painted black so it would match the new chairs.

I also finally bought fabric and started sewing curtains. Here are the first 2 panels...

I think the next order of business in this room is a rug. And hopefully with the arrival of Spring (it was 50 degrees today, the warmest it's been in 2 weeks) we will make some better house-related progress soon...

Doggy doors

erilyn — Tue, 31 Jan 2006 02:55:00 +0000

This weekend we re-hung the two original kitchen doors, one leading to the basement stairs, and the other leading to the front hallway. The doors are heavy solid oak that we found in the attic. (The previous owner thought they got in the way so she took them down.)

Half of each hinge had been left in place on the door frame and painted over many times, so I used a heatgun to remove the thickest paint and unscrew the plates. Then I chucked the hinges and screws into a pot of boiling water and baking soda, which worked pretty well to remove the top layers, although not as well on the oldest paint. The hinge halves still attached to the doors had a layer of paint on them, too, but we didn't strip them because we were kind of in a hurry.

See, the reason we were re-hanging the doors was because we just adopted a dog. She's almost 6 years old and pretty much housebroken, but it's been a very stressful time for her... we figured better to keep her in the kitchen when we can't be watching her, 'til we're sure she's fully trustworthy.

This is Morgan. Ain't she cute?

She seems to be adjusting well so far, just understandably a little neurotic about being abandoned. She's calm and sweet when you're in the room with her, and just fine when you're gone, but if you come back from being away (even from upstairs. for two minutes.) she cannot control her exuberant, ouchy leaps of welcome.

We are working on sit. And stay.

Hooray for new socks and long underwear!

erilyn — Mon, 02 Jan 2006 15:01:00 +0000

Remember when you were a kid and hated getting footwear or undergarments for Christmas? Well, I felt kind of old this year, because I got both, and was quite pleased about it.

My parents and grandmother gave me not just one, but two complete sets of my favorite Duofold long johns, aiding in my quest to have enough to wear a thermal underlayer 24/7. (Reminds me of this funny post from Mindy at Fixer-Upper.)

And my mother-in-law gave me some fun socks - complete with little pink hammers and wrenches...

We were also excited to receive some Lowe's gift certificates to buy more toys for the house (Thanks K+D!). Happy New Year!

Working like/Sick as a dog

erilyn — Fri, 30 Dec 2005 20:04:00 +0000

In his one day off between Christmas visiting (we loved seeing everyone!) and going back to work, T. dove right back into the projects. He's been wanting a big workspace of his own for a while, so he decided to fix up the basement for this purpose. The first order of business was to tear up the nasty, nasty carpet.

The cement floor underneath isn't super gorgeous, but at least it doesn't smell! Later on I think we'll repaint the floor and maybe put down a carpet remnant or some kind of rug that we can remove and clean/dry if it should get wet or dirty.

Our new electric space heater makes the basement space much more livable, too. T. is planning to build a workbench with that plywood/chipboard stuff.

I, on the other hand, am sick (again!) and pretty much good-for-nothing. I have been really enjoying 2 Christmas gifts from T.'s parents, though. Flannel sheets and an electric blanket, mmm...

Shrink wrapped

erilyn — Tue, 20 Dec 2005 20:26:00 +0000

The battle of Homeowners vs. The Cold, Nasty Elements continues...

Over the weekend, the office reached 68 degrees! I was dancing a victory boogie.

General T. won that skirmish with the help of a 3M indoor window insulating kit. He wrapped both the office window and the door that leads to the upper porch. Here's a photo of it in progress. We still need to trim away the excess plastic.

Previously, I had tried stapling vinyl gasket weatherstripping to the outer door frame, which helped some, but not enough. Eventually we'll need a good storm door.

It was duly noted that were we not "grown-ups" with a mortgage, but back in our dorm-living days, this heat-shrink-plastic-over-the-doorway shtick could have been good for a few laughs when plied on an unsuspecting roommate. If we were the practical joking types. Which of course we would never dream of being. But seriously, if you do it right you can hardly see the plastic film.

We were further aided in our campaign by the discovery that adjusting the duct valves in the basment has a profound effect on the airflow patterns in the house. Optimum office heat can be obtained by closing off one of the living room ducts.

I hope this winning streak continues...

Merry Christmas!

erilyn — Sun, 25 Dec 2005 03:31:00 +0000

They went on their way, and the star they had seen in the east went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw the star, they were overjoyed. Matthew 2:9-10

Wishing you true joy this season and always...

2005: The Year of the House

erilyn — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 15:18:00 +0000

In a previous post I mentioned my tradition of sewing a new applique onto our stockings every year. This year the designs represented our new house (what else?), which has thrilled, frustrated, dismayed and delighted us.

The wreath represents our front door with the new address.

When we had company over last night (we love you, small group Bible study) we lit 3 little candles in the fireplace, which was surprisingly effective in brightening up the room and creating a nice glow.

T. - I'm so thankful to share this home with you.

Tree time

erilyn — Tue, 06 Dec 2005 18:26:00 +0000

Well, it did stop snowing and we did get a tree. Yay! We bought it from the big box hardware store, but we styed in the outdoor enclosure so we wouldn't be tempted to go inside and spend more money on house stuff...

We don't have many ornaments yet, but it still looks pretty. And the house smells so good!

All circuits go

erilyn — Tue, 13 Dec 2005 15:23:00 +0000

On Sunday I came down with some kind of achey-shakey-bakey flu thing, so since then I haven't done much besides sleep, but we did get some work on the house done on Saturday. My part consisted mostly of cleaning, especially the office/studio, which looked like a cyclone hit.

T. put the electrical wires that he had disconnected in the attic (to demo the wall) into new junction boxes. Thus we could finally turn on all the breakers that we had turned off.

One nice bonus to this was that we could turn on the electric candles in all our windows. (Previously the circuit to the right front window had been turned off pending the new junction box.)

I used the neighbor's mailbox as a tripod for this low-light shot.

Next year we would like to add an outdoor electric outlet so we can add some exterior Christmas lights.

Make Your Own Holiday Cookie Cutters Using Home Improvement Materials

erilyn — Fri, 09 Dec 2005 20:28:00 +0000

A Humorous DIY Guide

1. Find some leftover aluminum ducting, preferably clean and unused. Disassemble (unroll) the duct.

2. Using tin snips, cut a 1" strip off the bottom.

3. Reassemble the piece of duct, reversing the direction so the seam is on the outside instead of the inside. Needlenose pliers are very helpful for this.

4. With your fingers, bend the aluminum into a simple holiday shape. Don't rebend the metal too much, or it will snap. If it snaps, all is not lost - just use silver HVAC tape to repair the cookie cutter.

5. Repeat these steps until you have a collection of Christmas shapes.

6. Enjoy baking with your new cookie cutters! None of your friends will have slightly lopsided cookies like yours!

7. If this has not been enough creative fun for the day, you may decorate your cookies.