It has been 1O months...

...since I last posted.

Here's what I have been doing since then.

January... got rid of all the old knob and tube wiring in the basement


The house is all rewired but there is still old stuff in the garage. Do you like this tuna can receptacle?


February, March and April in were spent in a funk and I couldn't get my mind around doing anything but sorting Legos














May
Worked on the sewing studio


June
Stripped the stairs and landing


July
Spent three weeks in China!!

Hangzhou


Shanghai


Beijing

Three wonderful weeks visiting my son and his girlfriend and seeing as much of China as possible.

August
Tore up the kitchen floor and emptied out the main level of the house



September
Had all the wood floors stripped, sanded and refinished


October, November
Stripping trim, restoring windows, painting, aargh it has been a full year. The house is still empty and working like crazy to get the windows back in their frames.

A New/Old Light

This was the light in my dining room this morning. It has been hanging there for about 6 months. The 5 years prior there was no overhead light due to the "Oops-I-cut-the-wrong-wire fiasco of 2002" that lead to the loss of all overhead lights. There were lots of floor lamps for a long time. The original dining room light was long gone when I moved in and there was a 5-arm brass and globe light there until I cut it down. I finally put in a new box and wiring.

I found a beautiful old light at the Habitat Restore. The glass shade was designed to hang from three ball chains. I have similar lights in the two bedrooms so it seemed like a good match for the house. But, the light shade was so heavy that I did not trust the chains to hold it. I have been looking for some other way to use the shade. Ideally, I would find a vintage fixture to match it. I also looked at lighting stores for possible solutions but none were within my budget.








Then one day at the ReStore I found this monstrosity. Bright brass, crackled glass--- but still....

A little priming and some faux rubbed bronze spray paint....

















And a new/old light. I am satisfied with how it turned out. I think it is pretty. There are few things that are pretty in my house at this point in the restoration. It is a big light, about 18" across. I have it on a dimmer switch and I like the shadows it throws on the ceiling.
It is a good solution for now. Until I can pair it up with a proper vintage base.

Plaster repair

I did some work in my dining room repairing several areas of plaster that needed attention. Here is an outlet that was poorly patched. Can you see the large divot? This outlet was in a bad location, is not wired to anything and there is another outlet on the same wall 2 feet away. I decided to close the hole entirely.
















There was also some failure of the plaster below the window due to some previous water leaking. I took the opportunity to open the space below the window enough to add insulation. The walls were insulated from the attic above and the areas below the windows had no insulation.
I removed lath and put loose cellulose into the wall then replace the lath. There is also an opening for a new outlet to be added one day.

The area pictured below had a poorly done drywall patch. I imagine it was due to the removal of a beautiful old cold air return that was replaced with a small ugly metal grate. Argghh. There is another opening on the other side of the wall and the grate is visible. I filled in the area with scrap lath.
I am using the "Worley method" of plaster of repair that I have read about on several housblogs. It is a three layer system using different mixtures of 2 types of plaster-- Structolite and Diamond Finish plaster. It was a bit of a challenge to work with but I finished the first two layers.
The other ongoing project is stripping the paint off all of the baseboard trim.