A frivolous invention

One can live forever with no toilet-paper holder, but we are striving to be a civilized household. Though we deemed “heat system” and “ceilings” more urgent projects, we still gave toilet-paper holder a place on our big list of things to do. (This is notwithstanding John’s claim that the back of the toilet made a fine toilet-paper holder.)

I got an idea a couple weeks ago to use the last of the four wooden drawer pulls to fashion the TPH. (The other three found various spots as part of our trim.) I liked how well the dark wood of the drawer pull matched our sink cabinet, and it seemed that if we cut the pull in half, it would make two arms perfect for holding the plastic springy thing that goes inside the roll.

And it did. The cutting was a death-defying double-operator miter-saw trick, and we made it through sans injury. Then John skillfully drilled depressions (not holes) into the ends of these arms, into which the springy thing would fit. Then we cut a scrap of oak trim to be the “plate,” sanded it, and forstenered two holes in for screws.


We glued the arms onto the plate, and we put two drywall anchor screws into the bathroom wall.





Glue dried, plate went onto wall, roll went onto springy thing, and voila! Civilization.

Working at it

There will come a time, hopefully in the next couple of months, when we will be "done."

(We will never be done.)

But we must be. At some point, there needs to be a "done." We need to be able to say, "hey, we finished fixing up this house and now let's get on with the next big round of modifications: the converting the attic to a bedroom, the kitchen remodel, the tearing off the back porch and laying down a deck, chickens, an outdoor shower, an earth oven..."

Oh so close now. We've been steadily tying up the loose ends and we're making progress. Each week it seems like we cross another thing off the list. Lately, we've been way into molding. We've finally made, painted, and installed baseboards where they had been missing.





We did all sorts of crazy work around the attic hatch above the staircase: plywood, doorstop, cove, quarter round, small pieces glued perpendicular to long ones, a time capsule hidden behind a square of plywood with an old wooden drawer handle mounted to it...we spared no technique for that area! Oh yeah, then we painted the stairwell and all its new trim.

in progress:



the front portion, completed:



the plans that we dated and tucked away as a time capsule:





Also recently crossed off the list: the screen door. It's an old, dry, wooden thing which has had a nasty sag to it since we bought the house. It wasn't doing much for the overall appearance of the front of the house. We installed a couple of steel brackets and glued a few small wood triangles in support of the cross members and now it sits level (pretty much).



We've been trimming around the oak posts! Ended up using a 1/2"x3 red oak arrangement and we think it looks pretty sharp. This is about the time when we discovered the beauty of wood glue



Did some insulating around the chimney (wow, there were some large gaps where a bunch of our heat was escaping) and finally finished insulating the attic.

Oh yeah, and we made a 3-sided wood box to hide the plumbing under the bathroom sink!



We've even ordered a ceiling lamp for the kitchen!

Basically, in our quest to be "done," here's what's left:

- fabricate an "official" toilet paper holder (we started this last night!)
- Choose and install light fixtures in the living room, kitchen, bathroom, and studio
- Sand and paint the front porch
- Put some sort of newel-items on the porch railings
- Finish painting the eaves
- Paint the house (outside)

And then, then we'll be done.

Really?

- John

Merry Christmas!

Bonus Season

Certainly is one of your chillier sub-freezing mornings. A hard frost on everything. Heatmor burning nicely though, still a couple of logs burning in there as we overslept this morning. Whoops.

Lady Luck was on our side at the Habitat Store last night. We found exactly what we were looking for: An old, metal, salvaged magnetic bracket and plate (the kind from old furniture, that holds a swinging wooden door shut) and a neat looking, old brass drawer handle. Measured to the exact spot we wanted to mount that stuff, and did so. Crossed the plumbing access hatch off the list.



The exposed stud was finally finished off, too. I like that 2x4. We left it for a couple of reasons. One, a year and a half ago when we were putting the drywall there we didn't know how we were going to deal with this 2x4 that was sticking out a quarter-inch too far (we now know enough to tell you that this isn't a structural piece, just a partition wall post, and we could have just removed it). The other, and better reason that we left it exposed is because in my mind it's the color of the house, the color of its bones. For about nine months when there were no ceilings or walls, all we had was the old, dark brown wood with all its scars and stains. This is our truth window!



We took a quick break for dinner and then nailed up the trim around the kitchen-side of the posts and beam. The longest piece, which covers the drywall edge along most of the length of the beam, was fabricated on the kitchen floor by gluing a corner piece the length of the trim, forming about a seven-foot L piece. We were impatient and short on clamps to use wood glue, so we used up our fast-drying epoxy. The results weren't as fine as we had hoped; the glued-on piece was slightly warped and didn't always sit flush with the wider piece. So once it dried, I got the block plane on it and evened it out. Erika hit it with another coat of paint. We nailed it up, and then nailed up the final vertical piece.



Looks good! We need to do a little touch-up work to it before we can cross the "trim around the posts and beams" off The List, but we're getting close!

- John

And we feasted

It was a glorious Thanksgiving, the first big party we've had in our house that wasn't a work party, and a beautiful celebration.

We had, at various times, three and six and nine and twelve people at our house. Lucky numbers? Mary and Paul came over on Wednesday while I was home for Baking Day: we spent a fun two-plus hours slowly touring the house, and it was so awesome because they've been embroiled in their own house project for more than two years—it's way bigger than ours and has involved a lot more rotten luck than ours, so they are the rare guests who truly understand what it means when I pull down some denim insulation in the basement and say grandly, "Here's our tubing." They love our place and asked good questions. Then they left and I made a green-tomato-mincemeat pie, two other pie crusts, tomato sauce and a lovely pumpkin bread.

Wednesday night my family arrived and we ate the sauce over pasta and sang songs 'round the table to Seth's magic strumming and split a chocolate bar. Dad slept in the attic and was reasonably warm—hey, this heat system's really working! Thursday we launched into a frenzy of cooking: I made those pie crusts into sweet potato pie, Mom made peanut soup, John made biscuit batter, Mary and Archie and Paul came over, we made cranberry sauce and stuffing and a chicken and salad from the garden. We ate some pepper jam and brie on crackers and hot cider. John got a fire going outside; Seth split some wood. I picked some things from the yard for a centerpiece. Alex and April and Penny arrived and the kitchen became a freight train: John baking the chicken and the biscuits and making honey turnips, Mary making mashed potatoes and Brussels sprouts, April unveiling her beautiful rolls and a Crown Roast with beet stuffing and a pumpkin cheesecake! We had peach honey for the biscuits! Wine! Vermont specials (equal parts maple syrup and whiskey, hot)! Coffee with Grand Marnier!

We are thankful for good food, our house, our family and our beautiful friends.

Saturday and Sunday, alone again, we rode the wave of the Thanksgiving Challenge right on into the January Challenge, a month early! Bought a few pieces of trim, cut 'em up, painted, and threw in the plumbing-hatch project while we're at it. This is the little door that gives access to the shower/tub plumbing, just in case. We made a nice one from ½-inch plywood and painted it to match the wall, then added cute little fleur-de-lis hinges. Too bad most of it will be hidden behind furniture. Tonight we'll be nailing all these trimmies up and we'll put some pix up soon.

- Erika

To summarize:

Happy Thanksgiving!

Big day, Sunday. Epic.

The night before, we had all the pieces of the wooden threshold cut and laid out. After we had quit, I had second thoughts about this one, narrower piece of moulding that we were using on the short side of the kitchen floor. We decided to use a 1x4 in place of it, which matched the rest of the design better. We also decided to cut it on a 45 degree angle (and cut its mate the same way), which would look a lot better. The bevel and mitre cuts went off without a hitch and we were ready to start nailing it down.

We set the 2x4 first, and glued it instead of nailing or screwing it. The reason was simple: we couldn't be 100% sure that we weren't going to nail right into one of our heating tubes under the floor.



(I really like that the above pic shows all the parts of the threshold, including the blocky shims.)

With the 2x4 glued down, we placed our thick shims and then nailed down the 1x4 on the high side, covering the nasty cracked linoleum. Last, we nailed the doorstop trim to the 2x4.



Okay, threshold's in place...what's next!

We nailed down the hardwood floor along the edge of where the second stone threshold goes. Erika cut some plastic for a vapor barrier under the stone. We screwed down the plywood on top of that. Rushed outside, mixed up a batch of thinset, came back in and started spreading.



Erika worked the trowel and cement, I set the stone, we wiped the excess from the edges. It's the prep work that takes most of the time; setting the stone itself went pretty quickly.



We gobbled up some lunch and discussed color options for the wood threshold. We wanted it to match the exposed wood around it, which is mostly dark brown. After lunch, we hit the hardware store and bought some brown paint. Chesapeake.

Back home, we had more domestic tasks to accomplish ahead of the company we're expecting for Thanksgiving. I mowed the lawn at a brisk pace, Erika buzzed about transforming the back porch from recycling/landfill-esque area to a nice and clear back entrance to the house. She also picked up around the yard and elsewhere.

Still a little light left, so we hit the dump with our recycling and all. Back to the house, deep cleaned and rearranged some stuff. I broke out the vinyl collection (finally!!) and set it up. With the house clean, there was one thing left to do: paint the threshold. Masked it off and painted it up. One more coat, tonight.



Finally, dinner at 10. What a day. But, the Thanksgiving Challenge drew to completion, and we met it, victoriously!

- John

Update: Second coat on, masking tape off!