While You Were Out

My mother was visiting us for the last week, and she wanted to work on a crafty type project while she was here. We decided to decorate Cerra's room like an aquarium, because she loves the movie Finding Nemo. Two walls of her room were ugly dark "wood" panelling (the stuff was put up throughout our house); the other two were painted an off-white.

I had found some pretty tropical fish fabric to use for curtains, so we based our paint color choices off of that. We ended up with a turquoise blue for the walls, bright green and orange for the trim and doors, and a sandy pinkish color for the baseboard (to look like sand). We also found coral accent wallpaper and Finding Nemo wall stickers. The two non-panelling walls would be painted using glaze to thin it down, so that it would be lighter the higher it went. The other walls would just be covered with the full-strength blue paint. The ceiling would be painted a blue that was heavily diluted with glaze, and then a rag-roller would be used to make ripples so that it would look like it was under water. We figured that we could get it done in about four days: 1) Prime walls, 2) Paint walls, 3) Paint ceiling and trim, and 4) Touch up paint and apply wallpaper and stickers. The curtains would be sewn while we were waiting for the paint to dry.

A couple of weeks ago, I had tried removing some of the panelling in the spare room to see if it would be feasible to remove it from Cerra's room prior to painting. This was not a good idea. The plaster underneath was in really bad condition, so I decided to leave the panelling up and just paint over it. I used a liquid sander before priming to remove the gloss from the panelling.

We experimented a bit with the paint+glaze combination, and decided that it would be best to paint the walls with the mixture, and then remove it with a cloth to achieve the shading effect. One of the walls was a practice wall because it would be mostly hidden by furniture. I found that scrubbing off the paint and then blotting away the rub marks with a clean cloth gave me the look that I wanted.

The ceiling turned out to be very easy. I had a lot of fun moving the rag-roller randomly to create the look of ripples.



Here are before and after pictures of the room:

Farm Work

Tiger spent last Thursday, Friday, and Saturday with her grandparents, so Corvus and I spent a lot of time out at the land. Earlier in the week, he had hired a guy to rototill about a third of an acre, so he was busy planting. Here are a few photos of the freshly tilled area.





I spent the time building a fence around the garden area. Eventually we plan to have all of the land fenced, but for now that's the most important section. Thursday I spent the entire day driving T-posts into the ground. At the end of the day I had put 65 of them in, and only needed two more to complete the circuit.

Several months ago, I had seen in a catalogue T-post brace adaptors, that allowed you to brace a corner T-post with other T-posts. That seemed like a good solution, so I asked the farm supply store if they carried them. The guy at the counter was very disparaging of them, saying that they weren't strong enough to support woven wire fencing. So I decided to go with the traditional braced wooden post corner. This meant that I had to pull out three T-posts at each corner and dig three post holes. I spend Friday doing that.

Saturday, we only planned to work a half day, so I managed to completely finish one corner. Here is a photo.



I have three more corners plus the sides of a gate to build. After that, Corvus and I will have to work together to attach the woven wire fence.

Pictures of house and land

This is the front of our house.


This is the left side, with the garage entrance. Above the garage is our library and Corvus's office.


This is the right side. The steps go up to the sunroom, which is our pantry.


This is the back. The bottom part is the garage, which connects to the basement.


Our land, looking south from the northern end.


Some of the forest on our land. This is near the creek.


More forest, this time near the road.


Looking north from the southern end of the cleared area, just past the start of the trees.



One view of our creek. It defines one long side of our property, while the road defines the other long side. They're roughly parallel. In this photo, the creek is higher and muddier than it normally is because there had been a lot of rainfall over the previous few days.

More linen closet

Corollary to Mel's Law of Renovation #1: Things will always cost more than you expect.

I picked up the lumber for the linen closet shelves yesterday. It ended up being around $65. I could have bought cheaper wood, but it was all pitted and rough. Since these are indoor shelves, I decided that the paint-grade boards were the best bet.

After I got home, I realized that I had bought one shelf too few. However, I think I'll just leave the top shelf off. This will give more space for bulky things like quilts, of which we have a lot.

Today I started prying off the old shelves. Apparently, underneath the tar-stuff and two layers of paint there were nails holding the shelves onto the braces. Obviously, there was no way I could get at those nails so I ended up banging on the underside of the shelves with a hammer until they came up. So far, I've removed two levels, with three more to go.

Linen Closet Woes

Our house has the advantage of a very large linen closet in the upstairs bathroom. The disadvantage is that there was mildew on the walls. So I bought some anti-mildew bathroom paint and set to work scrubbing the walls down with a bleach solution. There was some nastiness when I had to scrub a spot where large quantities of soap had been spilled. It had soaked into the shelves and it took several changes of water in the bucket to get it all. There was also a spot with mysterious black stuff that appeared to be coming from under the old paint. Yuck.

The wooden shelves had strips of metal screwed to the edges, so I set about unscrewing them. That way I wouldn't have to worry about keeping the paint off of the metal. Unfortunately, many of the screws were so tight and of such a soft metal that they preferred to strip rather than unscrew.

I took a break to survey what I had done so far. I noticed that on the shelves where I had managed to remove the metal strips, it was obvious that there was some sort of black layer on top of the wood. It turned out to be some sort of foam cover that was glued to the shelf with something resembling tar. Aha! So that was the black stuff I had tried in vain to clean earlier! Underneath this cover there were at least two layers of paint. I know this because one of the layers came with the foam when I pried it up. If this stuff had been applied to bare wood, I don't think I could have moved it at all. At least not without some sort of softening chemical. As it was, there are still gobs of the tar-like adhesive stuck to the shelf.

At this point, I think it would be easier to rip the shelves out and replace them. They look like simple 1X8 boards, so that should be easy enough.

Mel's Law of Renovation #1: Every repair will take far longer than expected, and be more complicated than it at first seemed.

Fixing a Hole (and Scraping Some Putty)

Now that we are in our new house (see Corvus's blog for details), I suspect that most of my posts will now be about the renovations and repairs that I am doing.

A few days ago I noticed that the drain pipe near the basement stairs was leaking just a little, particularly when large amounts of water were draining at once (such as emptying the bathtub). According to the book "Renovating Old Houses," the way to fix it was to apply a "bandage" of alternating layers of cloth and plaster of Paris. So today we went to Lowes and bought plaster and a putty knife to apply it with. I quickly learned that a putty knife doesn't work well when applying plaster to a curved surface such as a pipe. I ended up just scooping it up and smoothing it with my fingers (protected inside rubber gloves, of course). The bandage seems to be working nicely.

When we first moved in, all of the windows had been caulked shut by the previous tenants. According to the neighbors, this was in an effort to keep warm. Now, I don't know how warm they were trying to keep the house, but caulking the windows isn't going to help much. At first, Corvus and I were thinking that we'd need to completely replace the windows, but now I'm not so sure. I've been reading up renovating old windows, and I think it's doable.

I've been taking the windows apart and removing the sashes in order to scrape the caulking off. Of course the sash cords are all broken, so the windows are difficult to lift and don't stay up without being braced. Also, the cord pulleys have all been painted over, and in some cases the opening was stuffed with newspaper before hand. I was beginning to get a bit worried that the counterweights would be missing, because those aren't available anymore (except at antique shops and the like). However, tonight I opened up the access panel in one of the windows and found that the weight was still there, frayed cord and all. So I think it's likely that the rest of the windows still have their counterweights too.

I'm actually getting pretty excited at the thought of renovating these windows. I'd much rather preserve the look of the house than have brand new windows that will look out of place.

My Hero, the Master of Google-Fu

I've been tracking down out-of-print books from my childhood. Usually I only remember some of the plot, not the title or author. With the help of google, I had compiled a nearly comprehensive list of books that I wanted:

Balch, Glenn: Little Hawk and the Free Horses (Little Hawk must tame a band of mustangs to save his tribe from the white men and the Apaches. Probably incredibly not PC now, but one of my favorites when I was a kid.)
Bell, Thelma: Captain Ghost (A mysterious man teaches several children how to turn a fallen tree into a sailing ship.)
Brock, Betty: The Shades (People's shadows live lives of their own in an enchanted garden.)
Nash, Mary: Mrs. Coverlet's Magicians (When the three children don't like their new nanny, the youngest turns to magic.)

Still, there was one book that I had treasured that I could find no trace of. I remembered the title as "The Queen Bee, and Other Stories." It was a collection of nature fables that were rather twisted. Unfortunately, all of the keywords I could think of were not specific enough to find it on google.

A few days ago I was telling Corvus about the stories in this book. He also writes fables that tend to be twisted, so he was very interested. He rose to the challenge and applied his google-fu to the problem.

And, believe it or not, he found it. The book I remembered was The Spider and Other Stories by Carl Ewald, not "The Queen Bee." He also found the complete text for the story "The Queen Bee" in The Junior Classics, Volume 8, verifying that this was indeed the author we wanted.

I'm looking forward to finally getting my hands on this book that I've remembered for so long.

What a Haul!

In the course of packing up our bookcases, Corvus and I found about four boxes of books we were willing to part with. We took them to Bookmans, a local used bookstore. I figured that we would have over $100 in trade credit, so we went crazy in the classics and children's sections. After all, the credits won't do us any good in West Virginia. Here is what we got:

Alexander, Lloyd: The Black Cauldron, The Castle of Llyr, The Foundling, Westmark
Babbitt, Natalie: Tuck Everlasting
Baum, L. Frank: The Wizard of Oz
Beowolf
Dahl, Roald: The Witches, James and the Giant Peach, Matilda
Grahame, Kenneth: The Wind in the Willows, The Golden Age
Howe, James: The Bunnicula series
Jackson, Shirley: The Haunting of Hill House
Kjelgaard, Jim: Irish Red, Outlaw Red (we already have Big Red)
Koehler, W.R.: The Koehler Method of Dog Training
Lovecraft, H.P.: The Thing on the Doorstep and Other Weird Stories
Martin, George R.R.: A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings
Milne, A.A.: The World of Pooh
Norton, Mary: The Borrowers, The Borrowers Afield, The Borrowers Aloft
Paterson, Katherine: Bridge to Terabithia
Sharp, Margery: The Turret (sequel to The Rescuers, which I already have)
Taylor, Theodore: The Cay, The Trouble With Tuck
White, E.B.: Charlotte's Web, Stuart Little, The Trumpet of the Swan

All this for only $115 in trade credit. In the words of Happosai, what a haul!