Drip Edge

Since Kate asked on my last post - "Is that horizontal strip above the door a drip edge?" - I'll answer here.  Yes - it is a drip edge. 

To the right is a simple profile of how the drip edge fit together.  (Just pretend that the garish bright yellow and red are a more respectable tan and maroon - Homestead Resort Parlor Taupe and Carriage Door to be precise.)  I used my mom's SawStop table saw (and my dad's help) to make the angled cuts and everything fit together pretty easily.

The drip edge is functioning exactly as intended.  I know this because at the end of my last Saturday of outdoor work I spent 40 minutes on a stepladder in the rain wiping Carriage Door-tinted rain splatters off of the Homestead Resort Parlor Taupe drip-edge.  (It had been overcast all day, but the forecast for that Saturday had no mention of "rain" and given my dwindling number of days with temperatures above freezing I figured I would be safe painting on a forecast of "mostly cloudy".)

The hinges and latch for the doors that will go under this drip edge finally arrived last Friday, so I should be moving on to door building soon.

My Favorite Color

It must be red.  Because I'm usually happy when I'm painting, but I'm only ridiculously happy when I'm painting something red.

 So I've quite enjoyed my last couple weekends of work on the west side of the shed:

Getting the salvaged barn siding hung has been more time consuming than I expected but I'm thrilled with how it is looking.  (And honestly, by now I should realize that every job is more time consuming than expected.)  

First, each piece of siding was primed and cut to length.  I then caulked the existing nail holes and the most severe cracks.  The first coat of red paint went on before the boards were hung, and the second coat once the wall was finished.  It's ship-lap siding, and I don't want unpainted sections of wood to appear as the siding contracts or swells.  The wood has a lovely aged look to it, but it's definitely still got a lot of life left in it.  Every third board had to be notched at the top to fit around roof joists and this salvaged siding cuts much harder than any of the new lumber I used rebuilding the shed's awning.

There are three ugly sides of the shed still to go, but the view coming up the driveway is already 100 times better.  Because instead of this:

It's now this:

This weekend looks like it may be a washout, but as soon as I'm able I plan to start work on the shed's south side next.

In Better News

It's still raining outside and there's been much discussion regarding the stone bridge over the past week, but I'm going to devote this post to other (much less depressing) things that have been going on here at the Einsel House.

First - this arrived in the mail last week to brighten the end of February:

I knew my aunt was working on this (she let me pick the pattern) but I was still surprised when it came.  It's stunning - the stitches are all so delicate yet so perfect, and it came so beautifully framed.  Thank you Aunt R!  The sampler has found a home upstairs already, and hopefully by the next time you're in Ohio I'll have it surrounded by a collection of old family photos.  : )

Another piece of news here is that Charles and I ordered new living room furniture.  We had tentatively talked about new living room furniture for our 10th anniversary this summer but after spending a week quarantined in our living room - with the cheap Craiglist couch we picked up last summer - I suggested we celebrate a few months early. 

Appropriately I suppose for an anniversary gift, there was a large amount of compromise in choosing furniture.  In my mind I could see two wing chairs with a small round table between them against the east wall of the living room.  But Charles was picturing the antithesis of a wing chair - a "Papa Chair" as he called it; think of the largest poofiest recliner you can imagine.  (You get bonus points from my husband if the recliner you pictured has armrests that open to reveal beverage and remote control storage.)

In the end I gave in, our living room will not have any wing chairs.  But Charles conceded some too.  The chair we ordered is a conventional recliner, but it is one of the smaller recliners we found (and he will have to rely on an end table for that beverage and remote control storage).  The striped fabric below is what will be on Charles's "Papa Chair" and we will get two pillows for the sofa in the same fabric.

The paint card is for "Sweet Annie" which is the color of the living room walls and the paisley fabric is what I used to make the room's curtains.  I have extra curtain fabric to make a few additional pillows for the new sofa.  I don't have a picture of the fabric for the sofa, but it is called "Caramel" and that's a pretty apt description.  We have about five more weeks of waiting before our furniture is ready and I'm quite anxious.  I hope it looks as good in our living room as I think it will.

Another room in the EH that is already looking better is the kitchen.  In my last kitchen post I was not feeling so keen about the peach colored doors.  Remember this:

I'm now much happier with this:

That picture is of the back kitchen door, but the front kitchen door is now also sporting a "Flannel Coat" paint job.  I also replaced the tarnished and painted over brass hinges on each door with new oil-rubbed bronze hinges.  I like the new hinges so much that I may have to go ahead and change the door knobs as well.

And yes, I've been contemplating new paint colors for the kitchen walls, but at this point that's a job that's rather low on my priority list.  Much higher on my list of priorities is addressing some lingering issues caused by the recent flooding.  Fun stuff....

Kitchen Again

Monday afternoon:

I was home with a sick kidlet on Monday, so I got a fair amount of painting accomplished.  As the above picture shows, I took off the back door so I could get a cleaner paint job around the door frame.  Thankfully, Monday was unusually warm for this winter.  It was about freezing.  (Tonight we'll be back down around zero.)

Tuesday night:



By Tuesday night I had the door back up and a second coat of paint on some of the beadboard.  The rest of that tape might be up through this weekend.  And the blue walls are still grating on me a bit (although the peach-y steel door is grating on me much more at the moment).

Painted

Priming and painting are such similar activities.  And yet priming is pure drudgery and painting is pure bliss.  (Well, that may be a bit of a stretch I admit.  But painting is sooooo much better than priming.)

I'm very pleased with how this first wall turned out.  I had a small delay after the first coat of paint when I stepped back and realized that although I had caulked nail holes and imperfections on the beadboard I had not caulked any of the nail holes or imperfections on the trim around the window.  With a coat of white paint on every little hole and crack immediately drew your eye.  So I got up early enough Sunday to finish caulking before church, and then put on the second coat of paint Sunday afternoon.

The wall color makes me a bit uneasy, but I'll finish my existing plans for the kitchen before I make any final decision about the walls.  When I chose that color I was aiming for a 'is-that-blue-or-is-that-gray?' color.   Sometimes, if the light is right, that's what color the walls are.  The rest of the time they're baby blue.  With painters tape up the walls practically screamed BABY BLUE, but thankfully once the blue tape came down the walls seemed a bit less obnoxious about their blue-ness. 

The north wall will be the focus of my attention next, but it will probably be the weekend before I make any significant progress there.

Tidbits

Tidbit #1 - I put a load of laundry in the washer a few minutes ago. :)

Tidbit #2 - We have four new barn kittens:

From left to right are Harold, Walter, Maude and Ethel.

Tidbit #3 - I put the last coat of finish on the back bedroom's floor last Sunday:



Part of the plan for tonight is to put the final coat of paint on Cecilia's bedroom furniture so that she can (finally) move into her new room this weekend.

Tidbit #4 - Remember the Leaning House? Well, it's leaning more. I called my mom today and she mentioned that that she had gone back for another salvage trip, but she changed her mind when she got to the back door. Apparently the kitchen ceiling is now caving in and some of the cupboards have fallen off the wall. She didn't go in. "I do have some common sense, despite what you might think," she told me.

Tidbit #5 - I hung these on the wall in the office a few days ago:

I made them about six months before we sold our old house, but after spending the past sixteen months wrapped in newspaper in storage I had forgotten about them. It was a pleasant surprise to unwrap them and realize how perfectly they match the new wall color here at The Einsel House.

Back to the House

As promised, I'm moving back on topic. The masons were back at work on the springhouse yesterday, and I'll have another post on their progress coming soon.

In the house, my mom has been busy putting her carpentery skills to work. In the dining room, she put up baseboard and chair rail in the corner with the new boxed out duct work. Once I finish get it all shellaced, it will look like it has always been there. Mom has also put up various pieces of trim in the living room. The past couple of days she has spent back up in the back bedroom, building a small closet into the northwest corner of the room.

Charles has been busy with the play, but he did find time to haul off two more loads of scrap metal. So far Charles has made over $200 just cleaning scrap metal from the property.

My uncle J has also been back at the house. As we get each room painted, he follows along replacing outlets and switches. It makes such a huge difference to see clean plates go up over new outlets. Pictured below is a sample of my uncle's work. Two outlets in the living room were in boxes installed on the woodwork. J removed these sections of baseboard and cut holes to install new recessed boxes. He also had to carefully chip into the stone wall behind each outlet, making just enough room to allow for this change. He then put brown outlets and covers on each (we're using ivory in the rest of the house, but thought brown would work better since these are in the walnut baseboard.) The light colored rectangle in the floor is the site of the first outlet in this room, it was installed in the floor rather than the wall. We removed the outlet and my mom patched the floor. Right now the patch is still bare wood, hopefully it will blend in better when we put the next coat of finish on the floor.



As for me, I've been painting. I hope to finish the second coat on the office walls tonight. The color is called Spring Forward. It's something of a muted teal.


And I've been painting in the Book Nook as well. The purple here is called Kimberly (how appropriate!). The nook will get carpet and then small baseboards, but other than that it is basically finished.

Going Green

The choice of paint color for the living room has long been the topic of much discussion. With the fabric for the living room curtains in hand I picked Olympic's color Sweet Annie. That was months ago, so there's been plenty of time to gather reactions before the paint actually hit the wall. And the reaction was about 25% "That'll look great!" and about 75% "That's too dark!". I admit that I was wavering a fair amount, especially over the last couple of weeks, but in the end I stuck it out. So yesterday, I spent my 30th birthday introducing Sweet Annie to the Einsel House living room. I think they hit it off quite well.

Looking into the living room from the dining room:

And in the living room:

Charles had never tried to talk me into a different color. God bless the man, his immediate reaction when he got to the house with the kids after school was, "That doesn't look as bad as I thought it would." (I think that means he likes it.)

I'm quite pleased. The room doesn't feel too dark, and the green does an amazing job of pulling in the view of the creek through the windows. I'm quite eager to hang those curtains I made last fall, but as you can see in the picture above the woodwork in the room still needs more attention.

In closing, if you're someone who knows us IRL (in real life) then you know that all winter I gave yesterday as the date we hoped to be ready to move into the Einsel House. In case you missed it above, I turned 30 yesterday and moving into the house would have been a nice present. So we're looking forward - maybe Mother's Day (but I doubt it), or our anniversary, or July 4th, or some random weekend just before Charles and the kids go back to school. It's sure to be a glorious day when we bring that first truckload from the storage unit, but yesterday was a glorious day too, in its own quiet way. As we sat down on the bare kitchen subfloor to a supper of KFC and chocolate cake (with pink frosting and yellow roses) it struck me that the memory of this birthday will always stand out. A good day at the Einsel House has a way of reminding me of the many blessings I've been granted. So yeah, it was a good birthday. :)

A Pick Me Up

Although it was the weekend, I set my alarm this morning early enough that I could make the 7:30am Mass for Palm Sunday. Waiting for the next service would have cost me two hours of progess at The Einsel House. After Mass I went to McDonald's for an Egg McMuffin and a large vanilla iced coffee. As I pulled up to the first window to pay the teenage employee was counting some money in her hand with a somewhat bewildered expression on her face. She turned to me and said, "I assume you know the lady who was ahead of you?" I looked at the white minivan now stopped at the second window. It didn't look familiar. The cashier continued, "She left this money to pay your bill." I looked back to the van now pulling away from the window ahead of me. It still didn't look familiar. Feeling rather bewildered myself, I paid the 17 cents still owed for my breakfast and pulled forward to pick up my food. I had planned to splurge on the iced coffee as a pick me up, but it paled in comparison to a stanger's random act of kindness. God bless that lady, she made my whole day better by starting it with a smile.

The little dorm-sized refrigerator in the EH kitchen now has this sheet of paper on the front of it. Being able to put an "X" in another box is a good feeling at the end of the day.

Two of the most recently filled in boxes include painting the living room ceiling:

and the primer and first coat of paint in the dining room:

The basement also shows signs of recent work. Our new bat boxes have been primed and have part of their first coat of black paint:

And hanging from the ceiling are four of the house's original floor registers. We had these sandblasted and they are now primed and waiting for spraypaint:

Next up is a picture of my Aunt D, who stopped by for a few hours on Saturday and helped us prep the dining room before primer went on the walls:

Thanks, D!

And finally here is Cecilia looking quite at home in

her playhouse/jungle gym

(a.k.a. the scaffolding our contractor has in the north end of the kitchen):

(A corresponding picture of her brother would have shown him upstairs in his bright yellow bedroom in front of a small TV, Wii remote firmly in hand.)

Painting Begins

Neil's room has been painted since some time in February (or was it January?) so I suppose "Painting Continues" would be a more correct title for this post. But this time, painting has commenced in earnest, one room to be followed by another, and another, and another, until every wall and ceiling in the house is fresh and clean and bright.

First up is the kitchen:

I'm loving the light blue/gray color so far. I'm contemplating painting the ceiling beams and the rest of the woodwork in this room white, but so far I'm content with just contemplating. (At the moment I've got plenty of more pressing items on my to-do list). But I am planning to paint the kitchen cupboards a deep charcoal shade of gray sometime this summer.

Tomorrow after work will be spent priming and painting ceilings, and then the coming weekend should be a mix of more painting and finishing trims.

Our general contractor is planning to be finished at the house within the next week. He has a bit more sanding to do in the back bedroom and he is also going to install the new front door. In a few weeks we will welcome back the masonry crew to continue repointing with the south side of the house. It's snowing outside at the moment, but I'm ready for spring (bats and all!)

Keeping Busy

I've been taking pictures but haven't had time to download them from the camera. The schedule this past week has been the same each day. At the office until 4:00, then hurry to the house and work until dark (which comes way too early every night). It's only about 3 hours a day at the house, but there's been progress. We're going through primer and have several empty tubes of window and door caulk. There are a couple swatches of paint color on the kitchen wing but I'm not happy with the lighter color yet, so by tonight there should be at least one more swatch up to compare to the others.

The masons have half of the front of the house ground out. New mortar is in on the back of the 2-story part of the house and it's looking nice. They are also supposed to have estimates for us today on the various options for repairing the front door's lintel.

The kids have been enjoying the weather too. Our son has been spending every afternoon exploring the creek and the woods. Our daughter putters about variously riding her bike on the driveway, lugging around a cooperative tiger-striped kitten, or joining her brother for adventures along the creek.

We've also been enjoying our bats. At about 6:30 each evening we can hear them start to chirp and chatter. And shortly after 7:00 they start to come out. They swoop out fast and low from the fascia board along the attic. They are big enough that we can easily watch them fly away. The kids got a huge kick out of the bats the first time they saw them, with lots of squealing and running and pointing. While we need to get the bats out of the attic, I really really hope we can convince them to remain somewhere on the property.

And one last note today - I've changed the blog back to a public setting. The Order of Confirmation of Sale was subject to a 30 day appeal period, which expired late last week. I've been checking the on-line docket on the county clerk's website religiously and so far nothing has been posted. It appears our worries about the sale being contested are over. It is still frustrating that we had to buy anyone's cooperation, but having the house tied up in appellate courts for another year would have been a nightmare.

Pictures!!! (of houses we will not be living in)

(Trivial detail I know.) I mentioned in an earlier post that Charles and I spent part of Labor Day in Centerville, Ohio. There's a very good reason for that....

So although the pictures that follow are not of our house (sorry!) they should give a pretty good idea what kind of house we are buying. The first picture below is now a museum. Of course everything was closed while we were there.

Below is a picture of the front of a building that is now home to an interior design business.

The next house is quite similar in design to our house. Three windows over two on the front with a centered entrance door. Our porch is much smaller, though. We also have a story and a half stone wing off the back of the house, where this home has a frame wing painted white.

The house below is now a funeral home. It was by far the largest of the stone homes we saw in Circleville.

This home is a private residence. We thought the tan and white paint presents a nice clean look. This is also another 3-over-2 house similar to ours. I also liked the centered dormer framed out of the roof. It's something we could easily do to our house to gain some attic space.

These last few pictures are of another house museum. I loved this place. The paint colors and landscaping were just delicious.

Notice the dental molding in the picture above? I love it, but don't think it would work as well on our house. Our frame addition has board and batten siding rather than clapboard and is a bit more rustic. But we love the colors here, so much so that I went to the van and came back with paint samples so that we can try to match these colors on our own home. One thing I don't think we can match will be the deep red on the windows. Our home's original windows are gone, and the replacements are white vinyl. The old house lover in me sort of cringes, but I know the original windows were in very poor condition and the replacements will be nice in the cold of winter. The old house lover in me still cringes, though. Right now we're thinking we'll use the deep red on our exterior doors instead.

We're heading back to our house next week for a round with HVAC contractors, and I'll try to remember to get some pictures. Just be prepared - our house is not quite as picturesque as the ones posted above. At least not yet!