Fun With Photo Shop

I love our little ranchalow (ranch-bungalow) painted white! I'm currently trying to figure out the rest of the color scheme. We are planning to paint the eaves "Haint Blue". Haint's, as the southern lore has it, are the bad ghosts prone to haunting. Painting the eaves Haint Blue is said to keep them out of your house. I don't know about ghost stories but I love the effect. For the trim we are thinking a dark forest green. While playing with colors I thought I'd throw in a gravel path, some stripped awnings and window boxes.

House Painting Part I

We started paining the house today...here are the first round of during photos.

A BIG thanks to Kieth for all of his help:)

floor sagas continued

333 ft. of lumber, 100+ concrete anchors, 100+ 1/4-20 bolts, 150+ washers, 350 or so concrete screws, 140 douglas fir toung-and-grove flooring planks, and a whole mess of nails. clearly, there is still plenty of work to be done, but we have most of a porch floor.

shown here: 1) a bit of floor and implements of destruction 2) alger enjoying the smooth transit from the back yard into the house. why is there nothing to trip over? 3) a typical anchor point, 1/4-anchor shimmed, leveled and pinned with concrete screws on both sides. this image will be history after tomorrow.

and ok, so blogger does not really facilitate layouts, so we'll just have to infer which photo goes with which comment by context.

a day of floor laying progress: as we approach the end of the porch, we witness the "last stand" 720 marshall porch tool barge... and it's gone, paving the way to further floor laying and progress in general.

wood floors and wainscoting

some time ago, there was mention of wood floors in the bathroom. as i recall, i went to the SCEC meeting for a few days, and rebecca went nuts on the bathroom floor tiles with a hammer and chisel end wrecking bar. "Good news," she said. "We do indeed have hard-wood floors in the bathroom."

of course, we called troy and took to dismantling the rest of the tiles, this time with the aid of a 71/2" circular saw equipped with a diamond blade. having done the floors, we decided to get rid of the home-depot vanity and have a go at the walls. the walls had seen some tough days. there was obvious patching, and we found more interesting electrical work. by interesting, i mean a little scary, like a bunch of wires stuffed into a small box, with no cover, behind the vanity. the wire screws were totally melted and hot (zap hot) to the touch.

as per the condition of the walls, we decided to wainscot the whole thing. as an added bonus, we used heavy trim with a little shelf running the perimeter of the bathroom. i used an interesting wedging technique with a couple of 2x4's to get the long trim pieces into place. if i'd had a free hand, i'd post a picture.

we bought the vanity from an antique shop. we had a piece of glass cut for the top, drilled a few holes in it, ran some plumbing, and voila. sink.

the light fixture appears innocent enough, but we are particularly proud of it as well. rebecca found the fixture itself on some restoration site. after a few trips to OSH, we found electrical bits that fit well enough. after a few trips to the attic, i managed to set up a fixture box that would work for the fixture. we then removed the old hanging lights and installed a junction box where the previous owner had spliced the lamp-cord in the open attic. done. also note, please, the tricky photography - we can see that the light is on, yet we can also see all the features of the lovely fixture. how does he do that?

do not miss, of course, the beautiful reclaimed douglas fir floor. i am sure there will be more of that to see in the kitchen.

For the record...

I realize we haven't updated the blog in a LONG time but the camera has been broken. We have lots of good things to show you and once Mark figures out how to work the new SLR digital camera I bought him for his Birthday we will overwhelm our readers (all 2 of us) with copious photos documenting our progress.

Before we have our big reveal I thought I would post the old G-Maps pictures of our house (at least 1.5 years old). Actually, we are currently trying to paint the exterior (the weather is not cooperating) so the outside currently looks a lot worse then it does in these photos.