The Cherry Chocolate Hall

    The front hall began like this.

   You'll note the door. As did we. It was so very handsome we immediately assumed that the previous owners had perhaps spent all their door budget on the one.
   At first we didn't recognize the wall treatment. We thought it was a rough paper made to look like terracotta. But after taking a piece of the tattered wall around to various hardware and paint shops, a woman in Home Depot paints remembered it - a designer "suede" paint mixed with sand. Whatever it was I didn't want to repeat it, but now I knew I could simply paint over it.
   I do not have what I've heard called "the color gene" - that uncanny ability to choose paint colors well. Already I had made a mistake choosing the color, or more accurately the hue, for the place the living room wall meets the eating area. Faced with that decided handicap, I moved carefully through the eye-watering and mind-numbing world of swatches.
   In the end I was saved by one - "chocolate cherry". It is beautiful, deep and rich and I needed no more choices.
   Clearly this was a dangerous decision, but it wasn't clear to me. Only later did I hear four coats were necessary, but my greatest threat was where the creamy moulding would meet with the crimson. I am not and never have been a professional painter but we are quite pleased with the drama that is now our little foyer.

   Though I have no other photos of the previous hall, there is a hint of it from the old plaster room...

And here is the new hall from the new plaster room

   It is truly delicious.

Glass Half Full

   After reading a few of these posts, I feel I may be complaining too much.  
   Yes - we are a few doors short of a full house; and we were left with only three sources of light: a circa 1950's fluorescent kitchen torture model, a rusted medieval number in the hall, and finally an Ikea fixture that was clearly too much trouble to remove...but the list of what was left for us is much much longer.

   First and clearly the heaviest, an early 1900's gas stove left in the cellar-

More colorful and probably more missed, countless matchbox cars and trucks-

A most thrilling find - a Pawley's Island hammock and a place to hang it-

An old vent cover-

A chest full of screws and nails-

   Hanging brass monkeys-

   A pig key holder-

The base of a bird bath as well as a bird house where a nuthatch family resides-

A potting table and a plethora of pots-

Rustic stonework-

   And finally a great, great deal of very difficult, awe-inspiring and clearly loving work on the house which we are working very hard to live up to.

 

A Good Door is Hard to Find

    One takes doors for granted. They are always just 'there'. 
    But in our case they weren't.  Of the ten door frames in the house, only three doors remained. The avid Irish gardener who owned the house before us took almost every one with her. They must have been lovely.
    The only door we've thus far replaced is the one that leads down the deep dark stairway to the cellar. It was imperative that we do so because not only was it an unsightly maw but the sound of the boiler scared the bejesus out of our cat. And thanks to our thoughtful neighbor we were able to do so.

   We aren't in much of a hurry to replace the others because we are looking for doors that suit the house. We can't find them at Home Depot. They aren't at Ring's End. They are most likely stuffed into an old couple's barn or standing in the shadows of a dusty antique shop.
   Two months ago we were searching through thrift shops and ReStores hoping to find something suitable for a back door but we were forced to move on. There were just too many other tasks. All this frigid winter we have been missing the outer back door to the house.

   
   We were on the verge of buying a new one out of sheer frustration and impatience, but one afternoon in January, as I was puttering around the shed and finding someone's lost matchbox cars, I opened the door beneath the shed for the cat. Oreo adores the shed as we do. I wandered in after her and kicked around in the corners between the left-behind bucket of fertilizer and a transom window, when, lo and behold, I came across a door.

The room under the shed

     
   Now we had found several doors under the shed but they had all proven much too large for the likes of this little house, so we traded them at a local antique shop. One was intriguing insofar as it had a built-in doorbell which Pete removed for possible future use. So I thought I had found just another old but generally useless door, until I walked it up into the light.

    This was the door I had been looking for all along - except for the fact that it was merely a screen. But it had such good lines and it was such a strange old shade of green. Though there is now every shade of paint under the sun available, there is something about the old colors that seem to glow. Perhaps it's the lead.

   Like Cinderella' s slipper the door fit the frame perfectly, well .... almost. So now it is just a matter of waiting for the temperatures to rise enough to melt the snow which in turn will allow us to feel our fingers long enough to prepare the frame, so we can finally put up the screen door and welcome the glorious heat and flies of a hot day.

                     *****ONE OF THOSE WONDERFUL MOMENTS IN LIFE*****

I came back from teaching mid-afternoon today and pushed open the gate...

Strolled down the path...

Turned the corner and .... (audible gasp)

   Pete had hung the door to welcome our first day in the fifties. 
Oh tremendous joy! 
   There is no sound so full of possibility as the slap of an old screen door.

"Hope is the thing with feathers...

...that perches in the soul" and in the northeast it is thoughts of warm sun and crocuses and any color other than soiled-white that fires our icy and wearied imaginations.
Oh Spring...where are you?
   Every cold afternoon I walk through the snowful and soggy yard hunting for bulbs and fresh green shoots. For Peter and I, this spring will be extraordinarily exciting because we don't know what will be sprouting. What we do know is that the former owner of the house was an avid and Irish gardener.
   We have found the roses, some of which grow twenty feet into the trees.

These rosehips attract bluebirds

   We have found the grape which tangles itself relentlessly through the fence posts. We have been told by our lovely neighbor Patricia of the host of daffodils beneath one of the sugar maples.
  I have uncovered the tiny patches of bulbs which I hope will grow up to be grape hyacinths.

   Beneath one of the living room windows is a bush I pray is a quince and beside that imaginary quince is a beautiful and malignant wisteria.
   Among the moss I put down at the stone base of the house there are a few maybe-tulips forcing themselves through.

The moss we collected from the shed roof

   And beside our beautiful little shed poised here in its winter finery,

 is another pièce de résistance - a flowing and generous lilac.

Proactively added our own color to the landscape

      The only thing in the yard that has grown this winter is my tipi, which I hope will support sweet peas and morning glories in the early summer.

But first spring must come!

The Plaster Room

   The greatest challenge that awaited our attention would most definitely be "the plaster room". Other than the minimalist bathroom, this is the only enclosed room on the first floor. It's a small room, about eight by ten, and it was covered in hairy plaster.

We can only conjecture as to how this came about. Pete feels it was done for artistic effect. It that was indeed the plan it had gone horribly wrong. Unlike the traditional horsehair plaster, the hair was obvious and 

bristling - decidedly not a good look.

   So we had a decision to make. Learn how to plaster and fix the broken pieces and replace the wall that had been damaged when the pipes had burst, pull down all the plaster and lathe and put up sheetrock, or, as our inspector suggested, put 1/4" sheetrock over the whole nightmare. We thought long and hard about it and chose what we thought was the easiest option - cover it up and save it in case we should ever want a hirsute wall.
    We talked about this decision almost hypothetically because we didn't think we'd get to it for some time. We had so much else we needed to do, we didn't need the room, and the work required by the project was well beyond our pay grade. So we felt safe laughing about it.
   Until much to our amazement, three months of cold winter later, we had finished our tasks throughout the rest of the first floor. Most of the kitchen was complete, the bathroom had been painted and the sagging ceiling temporarily repaired, front and back doors had been encased, lighting fixtures had been replaced by Pete (who should not have done such work), the front hall was painted a cherry chocolate, and the window on the staircase was framed,  moulded and painted. It was time to take on the tiny behemoth.
   Sheetrocking a room would be a challenge for us at its most basic level; throw in the facts that the walls are lumpy and of differing heights, well...
...but the first step was completed.

Sheetrock accomplished

   And now we had a bit more insight than when we had first begun. There was no earthly way that the ceiling moulding could be nailed. It had been problematic in the hall. There was simply nothing to nail it to.
   Pete was now excited about using 'liquid nails'; something his new friends at the local hardware shop had touted, but they warned him not to use too much. So we erred on the side of abject paranoia and used too little. I don't remember how long we stood there holding the moulding up to the ceiling, but we did come close to losing heart, and we made a fine mess to boot. But we finally figured that process out.
   I too had learned something about process, namely, never ever, ever paint before Pete completes all possible projects. The boy has heart but no sense of decorum whatsoever. I had painted the kitchen countless times after his various projects. This time he would have to get the window moulding up before I even thought about buying paint. Particularly since we were going to use liquid nails there as well. Oh my.
   Enter the new and very necessary mitre kit. But perhaps one should practice first, non?
Nay, our Pete was on a roll.
To make a long story short, much caulk ensued.
   And here is our new 'bald' room...Tada! We will soon furnish it as a guest room.

Particularly pleased with the merely waxed floor

It has a lovely view of sunsets