Superman Takes a Fall

Last Sunday (not this past, but the previous) Tim fell while taking the recycling out.  He tore the ligament and tendon that runs through his Achilles heel (???  I think - I'm not medically savvy), so is on crutches for a few weeks.  We figure we'll both be on our feet again at the same time - the beginning to middle of December.

Now for those who don't know us well, you may be thinking that this house is cursed.  It's not. This type of thing happens to us frequently.  We are, however, optimistic that this is the end of it.  I am in the process of looking for a housekeeper, which is something I've needed to do but have been putting off.  With Superman down, it forces the issue.

It was two years ago that we found this house.  It's hard to believe it's been that long AND that short.   It seems that we should have had more finished by now, but it also seems like we're still new to this area.  I'm slowly building up connections for when we open and the ideas keep flowing much more quickly than the projects get finished. 

I've asked Tim for his next project (after the bathrooms) to be the front of the house.  We need to build the dirt up and fix the walkway to keep the water from flowing toward the house when it rains.  It's hard work, but it will help with the dirt pile by our driveway and be one more way to keep our basement dry.  When we're both back on our feet, I'm tackling our daughter's bedroom!

Major Set-Backs

Working on the house seems to have come to a temporary halt. I recently had surgery and ended up in the hospital for over two weeks with complications. Tim has been a saint - running the house, his work schedule, the kids' schedules and still staying with me in the hospital as much as possible. While Superman has been doing all of that, the bathrooms (our obvious current projects) have understandably come to a stand-still.

I'm home now to finish my recuperation. Unfortunately, I think my energy level will take a few weeks to get back up to normal, so things around here will be a bit slower than we'd hoped. We've just had one of those years and are learning how to just go with the flow of it all. What else can you do, right?

Some new fun stuff ... The week between my surgery and my re-admittance, my mother came to stay with me to help out around the house. While she was here, we bought five new chairs for the house.  The pictures are not so great, but you'll get an idea.

Two are leather chairs that supposedly were original to the Empire State Building (we didn't buy them based on that). We've incorporated them into our dining room suit, for which we only had five chairs. They need some slight buffing on the leather, but the netting and construction are very solid.

 A late-Victorian chair that we also bought has some minor upholstery problems, but it's comfy and not in a place where it will be used much. It looks incredible in our foyer beside the marble top table. We need to move the marble-top slightly to one side, which is a chore because the marble has to be removed first and I can't lift anything right now. Once it's all in place, I think it will make for a very, very welcoming foyer.

We also purchased a gold upholstered barrel-back chair that is also comfy and looks good in our library. The upholstery needs some slight work and shows some wear, but it adds to its charm, frankly. I'm not sure I'm going to fix anything other than re-tack some of it. Right now we have it sitting beside our drop-leaf table along with the "library" wingback chair in the bay window.

Finally, we bought a French love seat that is close to perfect condition. It also looks fabulous in our library and is set under the window between two of our bookshelves. I have a current-style floor lamp with it, but now I'm on the hunt for a late-Victorian or early arts and crafts style lamp for that little area. I also need a small reading table/plant stand or something of the sort.




Now having three chairs in there, we're trying to rearrange the room. We're going back and forth about the placement of EVERYthing. We still don't agree on what to call it - a library, a conservatory, the living room... I think I've settled on "Salon", seeing as that's sort of my vision for the room - an arts/cultural center on a personal in-home level. I'll have to tap the knowledge of my decorating-savvy friends for how best to arrange the room.



(painting:  Jean François de Troy (Paris 1679 - Rome 1752), Reading from Molière around 1728, Oil on canvas. Collection late Marchioness of Cholmondeley, Houghton.  Thanks to Wikipedia.)


Screens... I need screens...

Hot Water!

Tim removed the handle from the new shower in the north wing and, as Gene mentioned in the previous post's comments, there was a limit to how far the knob could be turned to prevent scalding. This is what Tim suspected, too. Unfortunately, that limit wasn't adjustable, so Tim had to do some jury-rigging to get it to turn farther. It was installed correctly, it's just that we need a greater mix of hot water than the manufacturers expect. We now have hot water. It's nowhere close to scalding and if you like a hot shower that's just this side of scalding - you're out of luck.

He still has to fix the sink and wants to do another coat of sealant in the shower. Then, of course, there's the painting. I still need to think about paint color. I'm thinking a light, light, light gold. I found a website called My Perfect Color. It allows you to look through over 100 different paint manufacturers' colors. They have a color called Mushroom Cap (highly appropriate, isn't it?) by Benjamin Moore paints that may be perfect. (I can't post the color within the post, so you'll have to click the link.) Remember - this is the new shower:

and the bathroom walls (the shower in this pic is the old one):


The other thing I like about the Mushroom Cap color is that I think it will replace the pink paint well in the front guest room:


This is a room where I like the wallpaper, but the pink paint has to go. There are some great shades of beige and such in the wallpaper that would be more appropriate for the walls and woodwork.

The key will be to find it in an ecologically safe paint!

Unfortunately, I will personally be out of commission on any work on the house for the next month or two, so I'm going to have to kibitz to Tim (poor Tim) and do the simple things like picking paint colors. I think my wallpaper stripping days are a bit ahead of me yet, but I may get some sewing and crafting done. Not such a bad trade-off, I suppose, just not as productive as I'd like to be.

Set-backs

You know - I thought that the shower in the north wing was going to be the end of that long saga. I should have known better. Now we can't get hot water out of it. Tim finally finished grouting the area between the floor and sealing the tile, but when I had a friend from California come last weekend, the knob doesn't turn enough to get hot water out of it. She took a mighty cold shower.

I'm not surprised. When we were using the shower, before we knew it leaked, we would turn the hot on full-blast with just a dribble of cold. Tim thinks that if he takes the plate off and moves the handle, he should be able to get it to mix correctly. I have some doubts.

The sink in that same bathroom is not draining. This has also been a continuing issue, but it has become seriously worse in the last two weeks. Tim tried to get into the S-trap, but the sink was installed with only ONE PIECE from the origin of the drain to the wall. There is no separate S-trap. So now we have to take the entire sink out and quite possibly remove part of the wall. This sink was installed within the last few years, so it makes absolutely no sense to me. Tim's two home-repair albatrosses (is that truly the plural?): plumbing and electrical.

While we're dealing with the northwing bathroom, the southwing bathroom is being ignored, but is still torn apart. Nothing like living out of a bathroom with a plywood floor, holes in the ceiling and a partially installed toilet! Certainly not a room I want anybody other than the four of us in!

This past weekend I held my first "third-party event" in our Library/Conservatory/Formal Living Room (we really need to decide on a name). Jaqueline Kramer, author of Buddhamom was visiting from the west coast and I was able to host a Dharma Talk for her. In spite of the short notice, we had a wonderful crowd. Again - each time this home hosts an event (which have all been very different), the possibilities expand. Jacqueline seemed to be pleased with the event as well and we discussed having some meditation retreats here in the future.

It may be that while we work out our bathroom problems upstairs, I should start focusing on the aesthetics of the downstairs so that I can start hosting some third-party events before the B&B actually opens. While that was sort-of my initial plan, it looks like it can happen much sooner than I expected!

Not Much Accomplished

We didn't get as much done this weekend as we'd planned. This is why:



Meet Tara and Thor. We found them at the Chester County SPCA on Saturday and adopted them on Sunday. By the time we got home with them, it was already 4pm and we had a lot of "touring the house" to do. They are two year old black labs that a family gave up because they couldn't take them to their new home. They are beautiful, know a few commands and very, very sweet and wonderful. I wasn't so ready to get another dog, since I miss Sadie so much, but the rest of the family was. I'm not regretting it. I mean, really - just look at them.

Thor is sick right now and that's been tough since we got him, but I think he's showing improvement even just this afternoon.

Right now the house is quite a mess, so while Tim continues working on the bathroom, I need to catch-up on just the daily housework. Having dogs in the house again adds the dog-hair dimension, which is always fun.

We've also been busy with social and local events. This weekend is a WXPN's Artists To Watch Concert here in Kennett Square. I've been to a couple of these before and they are always good and a lot of fun. I think it's great that WXPN does one here in Kennett! And it's free!

I enjoy looking for new and up and coming artists. Kennett Square recently opened a venue just for that called Kennett Flash. Some are artists that travel a bit and some are true home-grown bands and artists. Monday night is their blues jam night.

So, we grow as a family, continue to remodel, clean and still keep an eye on what's going on locally. Not a bad life, is it?

Backyard Fun

Before the Alpha Rho party, we knew we had to clean up the backyard quite a bit. It didn't get as much use as we thought, but it got enough use that I'm glad we took the time to do what we did.

We have a couple beautiful trees and shrubs back there against the great room wall, but they were overgrown. If you look on the far right, you can see the tops of the shrubs on that wall:


This is what it looks like now:


We cleaned a lot of the underbranches out, giving more light into the great room and really trimmed the bushes way back. It looks so much better. Between cutting down the magnolia tree (sniff), moving the boxwoods and getting these trees/shrubs under control, the back courtyard is so much more open.

I just picked up the Fall issue of Nature's Garden. In it are three great articles on creating hummingbird, bird and butterfly gardens. My daughter and I are starting to plan...

Will We Ever Be "Moved In"?

My son is cyber-schooled, which means that his classes are all online, as are his teachers and classmates. We set up an "office" for him in the den, but found out he needs more room to spread out his school supplies.

Also, if you recall... When our daughter decided to move out of the north wing into the south wing, she displaced my sewing room. It was moved into the south wing room adjacent to hers, which was Tim's and my office.

BUT - when I set-up the third guest room in the south wing, we had to move Tim's office to the master bedroom and my office (and now sewing room) to our dressing room. Tim's "game tables" also had to be moved to the dressing room. (Whew - I'm tired just remembering all of this!). I did leave the old desk in the south wing guestroom, which still had a lot of my office things.

However, in preparation for the party and to give our son a better school desk, we decided to move my old desk down to the den and move the smaller desk to our master bedroom, back to back with Tim's desk. (Are you following this??)

So, I emptied the rest of my office into the small built-in desk in our dressing room, we moved the small desk up to our bedroom and brought the big desk down to the den.

WENDY'S OFFICE BEFORE:

THE OFFICE/SEWING ROOM MESS BEFORE:

This ended when I moved the sewing room into our dressing room, of which I did not take pictures.

DEN BEFORE:


I do not have pictures of Tim's office before.

My old office is now a temporary guest room, with our folding cot set-up and an old sewing machine cabinet as a nightstand. I did this for the party. I don't have a picture of it right now.

Tim's old office became our regular south wing guest room:




And the den now looks like this:


What happened is that our dressing room became... impossible to use at all. I did set-up my sewing room and used Tim's game tables as cutting tables before I moved the rest of my office in there, but now you can't even get through the dressing room and my office in our master bedroom is a mess!

My next house project, obviously, is to set-up my office in my "new" desk from the den and get my sewing room back in order in the dressing room. I have a week-long plus project there I think!

As far as the den goes, the changes allowed us to move the TV out from behind the door to the foyer and in a corner better suited for it. We also moved the couch closer to it. This gives our son the back half of the room for school and the front half of the room is for the kids to play in. Hopefully, this will allow him to not confuse the two!

Our son doesn't start school for a week and a half. All I can say is that he'd better do much better with this set-up!!