Last post: April? Seriously?

Wow, sorry, blog peeps. Even sorrier that I don't have a ton to report. I am still stripping wallpaper...seemingly endlessly.

Most of my spare time, though, has been transitioned to triathlon training. Think of me the last weekend in August and say a little prayer to your deity of choice that I survive the swim! :)

RIP, fridge :(

I do believe my fridge is no more. That stinks.

...and the chimney, she went a'flying.

We had a hellacious windstorm last night. Worse, I think, than the storm we had in September because of Ike. That was one steady strong wind...sure, it took down a tree and I was without power for almost exactly a week, but a lot of things stayed up!

This time it was GUST......nothing....GUST GUST GUST GUST.....nothing.....GUST GUST GUST.....nothing and so on. I was finally drifting off to sleep as the house shook (I kid you not), and all of a sudden I hear CRAAAAAACCCCCCCK and then clonk clonk clonk clonk. Didn't take me long to figure out I was listening to the sounds of bricks rolling/sliding down my slate roof.

When I surveyed the damage this morning I found that about half the chimney appears to have crumbled down. The cap was about 50 feet away from the house and was embedded into the ground by a good 8-9 inches. Glad no one was standing in front of it--that sucker flew!

Snow, ice, snow, snow, snow, snow

It is only January and I am ready for spring, much more so than in other years. I. am. tired. of. snow.

That's all for today.

I should have known it couldn't last

All those plaster walls, all in lovely (lovely!!) condition. It was too good to last. The walls in the office are going to require some MAJOR patching. I can do it, but it is going to take a while. I believe it is still salvageable; time will tell as I start to notch it out and find out how far down it is unsound, or how widely spread the unsoundness is.

Wish me luck!

The protector

Meet Winnie--the bestest dog around, as long as you don't mess with me or her house. She is as much of a guard dog as she needs to be. She's a pound rescue, a mix of GSD, Doberman, greyhound, and who knows what else? All I know is that I saw that face and knew she was coming home with me.

Begone, foul carpet strip!!

Many old house bloggers probably already know and use some iteration of this method, but I figured I'd post it for all my non-home-improvement-fanatic peeps.

My house is now blissfully, gloriously carpet-free. However, I was faced with tack strip that appeared to have been laid by someone who went a little crazy with the nail gun. Pulling the strip up the old-fashioned way (with thin crowbar) was tearing my floor up in a big way. To compound the pain, my tack strip is old and totally dried out, so in many areas it would splinter rather than pull up. Ugh. I needed a better method, so I experimented until I came up with one!

I filed one of my metal scrapers so it would be nice and thin. Then I grabbed it, my trusty flathead screwdriver, and my hammer. Wham bam thank you ma'am the carpet strip gave up the ghost SO easily!

Here's how I do mine. The tools of war:

I carefully drive the scraper underneath the tack strip using the hammer. Try to do this near a nail so you will get the full effect.

After the scraper is fully under the tack strip (I drive it under until I can see it peeking out the other side), I piggyback the flathead screwdriver onto the scraper and drive it under, too. You can see that this basically just pops the nail right out of the floor. Success! I keep doing this until I've got a clean piece of tack strip that has just been pulled right out of my beautiful floor. Then I sweep up and I'm d-o-n-e!!

It is finally happening!!!

Lookie! I am so very happy to have this duck-free spot of wall. You have no idea!

And...I literally have seen the writing on the wall! Of course, I can't read half of it. Sigh. Looks like a possible date of February 1904, but I don't know what that'd refer to. The house is far older than that, and the wallpaper is newer. How much newer I don't have the foggiest!

Hey duck wallpaper! Buh-bye

I have started stripping the office--this is a project I have been looking forward to since 2005! The crazy duck wallpaper and its roomie the fake paneling wallpaper are in the process of being NO MORE! Mwahahahahahahaaaaaa!!!

My goal is to strip and scrub the walls by this weekend, then prime one day and paint the next. I am cautiously optimistic that I will actually get this accomplished. ;)

Minion!! I had a minion!! And it was awesome.

My niece stayed the weekend with me so she could help with the house. I put that young woman to WORK, and she never once groused about it. Future old house owner!!!!

We stripped the wallpaper from my upstairs hallway and pulled up the last--the very last--of the carpet in the house. I am now all heart pine, all the time, all the way, baybeeeee! It is a great feeling.

Isn't it gorgeous? Huh? Isn't it?

The to-do list for this room is still not all checked off, but at least it's starting to look like a room again!

Here is the before, for anyone who is interested...

Mr. Screwy!!!!! You're home!

My favorite flathead screwdriver had gone M.I.A. and I was very upset about it. Do you have one tool that always seems to come through for you? That, for me, was Mr. Screwy. He had a really sharp head, so even screws that barely had any head left were no match for him. Mr. Screwy was the BEST. And somehow, somewhere, I had misplaced him. But he has returned! Please share in my joy, fellow old house nuts! :)

Over. Whelmed.

• Too many projects that should be done NOW (insulation, shore up kitchen floor that is eternally sinking, scrape/prime/paint exterior window trim....there is so much more but I'm depressing myself)
• No funds
• Worried about job
• COLD already and it's only November

Sigh. I'd better stop before I wallow down any further.

What do you do when you feel like this? I am waaaay open to suggestions. :]

Not having power stinks

All projects came to a grinding halt last week when my electricity went out. From Sunday afternoon until Friday night I had no power and no water. It is amazing how helpless a girl can feel without water. Lights, I can live without...farmer's hours and all....but water? No water? Now that's hard.

The electrical company called in people from all over and the crew working on my house could not have been nicer. They were efficient and polite, and best of all they were F-A-S-T. Woohoo!

Anyway, I will be back to posting with regularity soon. As soon as I clean out my fridge, clean up my house, and find my way back to the path. :)

Gratification

They name is Peel Away 6.

In just a few short hours I went from paint to this:



















And finally, to this:



















It needs some cleanup, obviously, but this would have taken me a long time with the heat gun thanks to all the nooks and crannies.

In the end I am going to be very glad I decided to strip this paint. And I'm going to keep telling myself that until the last scrap is OFF.

Sisyphus cat just keeps rollin' on...plus a little wood trim p0rn

The red went onto two walls in the dining room tonight. It is THE most gorgeous red, and it was not easy to come by. Almost every red out there has a touch of blue, or a touch of purple, or a touch of pink, or orange, or some shade of some color other than true plain RED. But I finally found one and am rolling along now!














Here are the fabrics for the curtains. The pictures simply cannot do justice to how gorgeous they look. The overlays are beaded and sequined and will pick up light in a stunning way.













And here is the evidence that I am a fool. This is the trim I decided to strip, "just to see." Idjit!! I should have known it'd be gorgeous. Guess what project has been added to the dining room to-do list? Uhhh, yep. How can I leave the white when I know this is underneath? Besides, if you look at the above picture I think you'll agree that a deeper trim shade will look better with the general color scheme I've got going here.

This is how I feel most days

Home improvement:

What kind of fool am I?

I will tell you.

I am the kind of fool who gets a wild hair in the middle of priming a wall and decides to get the heat gun out to see just what's under all that white painted trim.

I am the kind of fool who then sees how beautiful the wood underneath is all that paint and realizes, with a kind of sinking feeling in her gut, that she will not be able to rest until every scrap of trim in the room is stripped of said white paint.

I am THAT kind of fool.

I *hate* scrubbing walls

I hate scrubbing walls

I hate scrubbing walls

I hate scrubbing walls

I hate scrubbing walls

I hate scrubbing walls

I hate scrubbing walls

I hate scrubbing walls

I hate scrubbing walls

I hate scrubbing walls

I hate scrubbing walls

Have I possibly mentioned on one or two occasions that I HATE SCRUBBING WALLS??!?!? Ugh, it is such a slow and tedious process. But I am delighted to report that the dining room gold wall is done (yay!), and I will have the rest of the walls primed at some point tomorrow (double yay!). Next week the red will go up, and my dining room will be starting to take shape (triple yay!!).

Cheap thrill

Pictures only! Scrubbed, primed, tester reds (going with the bottom one for SURE), base coat, first coat of gold (will put on two, maybe three coats)