Back to workin' on the house

Ever since my fabulous real estate agent said, oh look you might have shutters painted shut here on the first floor in the bay window, I've been dying to strip the "molding" around the first floor windows and find out. I decided my summer project would be to strip the paint around the bay window. Even if I don't have shutters back there, having the real wood show through would be more beautiful anyway. What a mess. I don't understand why anyone would paint 15 layers of paint over such beautiful wood. This house must have been amazing back in the day. Everywhere where I find the original stuff, it's gorgeous. Remember the banister? Beautiful Mahogany.
After two evenings of lots of orange stripper stuff, lots of scraping, then sawing, because the shutters were actually nailed opened at one point, my hard work paid off:
I do indeed have beautiful shutters stuck in the walls there. How could anyone ever! paint these open!? The insides haven't been touched - there are cobwebs and a little dust, but I think if I just wipe them down they will be as beautiful as they were to begin with. I also found a lottery ticket from 1983. Wonder if it's still good - or even worth something. Would that be terrific!? And another cool thing is that the shutters are in two halves. Top half and bottom half. So the top half could be open for light, the bottom half closed for privacy. I can't tell you how excited I am about these.
But before I can really enjoy them, I have to finish stripping them. That's going to be a lot of work. At lease now I know there will be a big reward when I'm finished. Yay!
In other news, I finished my other sock. Yep, on Sunday in 90 degree sweltering humidity I sat here knitting. But now, I am all set for November. Problem is, I don't know what to knit now.
Oh, and by the way, I did buy the gold shoes.
What do you think... are they me?

Oh and PS: Jeff's back. (of the fabulous bathroom). He's going to fix the leak on the third floor and pull rotten wood off everywhere and make things look good and be airtight again. Sigh, I don't have enough to pay him for everything that needs to be done, but at least its a start. I've got to look into that lottery ticket.
And then next week that lucky duck is going backpacking through Yosemite. I haven't been to Mammoth for too long. (that's the back side of Yosemite - our summer family vacation place) I should go back.

Home again

Oh boy, home again. Glad to see the cat - he's clearly glad to see me. Had to wake me up every two hours to be sure I was still there. Now he's lying in his basket, snoozing. Poor guy - I have to give him flee stuff today. He's not going to be thrilled.
To sum up the last of Germany, I guess some good things happened. The hearing aides are happening, and my aunt should have them sometime next week. She seems to be excited about them. She keeps turning to my uncle, pointing her finger at him and saying, "you just wait until I can hear again!" I also managed to have a good talk about meals on wheels with both of them. So I hope that happens as well. It would be good for them. It was clear to me by the end of the week that my uncle is not eating enough. When I first got there, he had no energy. Everything was extremely difficult, he really didn't want to do anything and there was no fight in him, like there usually is. I cooked all week, he ate everything I put in front of him, big plate of food, cake, torte, strawberries with cream (he's not supposed to have cream according to my aunt - well, what she doesn't know....) So by Thursday he was happily explaining everything my aunt was telling me as usual, even though I understood everything in the first place. I really hope they get that meals on wheels, they need it.
In the meantime, I'm home, it's really hot and humid in Philadelphia, and my garden needs some serious reigning in. The grass went wild, weeds too, but the tomatoes grew a bit and my raspberries:
Here's my first serious crop of raspberries and there are still more. They are so sweet! I have no idea what to do with them, pancakes? ice cream? preserves? muffins? Or maybe I'll just keep eating a few every time I pass the bowl. I also have a billion potatoes still, I think I'll make potato salad today. That will keep for a while, and will be super yummy.
And since I have to go to market anyway..... maybe raspberry ice cream? Hmmmm :)

The roller coaster ride from hell

Well, lets start with something positive, shall we?
I may actually like knitting socks.
I forbade myself from purchasing too much yarn this time around. However, I did buy this stuff - and knitted these. I'm finished with one now I have to start the other. But these are FUN! They twist! and then when you use the recommended yarn (Regia - designed by Kaffe Fasette) The twists turn the pattern into diamond boxes. I can't wait to finish the other one... which shouldn't take to long....

So the roller coaster started last Thursday evening, when I got to see a friend of mine whom I haven't seen in almost 10 years. So we sat on the patio, it was cold, we talked until 1 in the morning, and I caught a cold. Yup. I was miserable on Friday. All my fault.
Friday. I try to get ahold of the hotel I'm supposed to stay at in Kissingen. (where my aunt lives). We finally get through to a very strange lady, who, when I asked for directions say, well you come to Kissingen and before you come to the bridge you turn right, right before the bridge!! I asked if there was a sign - yeah yeah! call me when you get there, I don't stay there, but I live very close. Me: I don't have a phone - I'll call you this afternoon when I know when I'll be there. Okay Okay - I'll be waiting for you then.
No. First of all, it was left, and second no where near the bridge and third I would only have seen the sign if I were coming from the other direction. It's nine when I get there - and 10 when I finally get out of the car, and ask another hotel where this place is and find it. Oh, says the waitress, it's hidden, and she gives me directions. Hidden is not the word, and it was completely dark. No one anywhere. I find a pay phone - the phone number she gave me answers with something to the effect of, "this phone number doesn't function" Now what. I have no money because I didn't think I needed any - I try call the booking agency with my last three euros, no help. Finally out of money, and completely frustrated, I walk across the street to where there is a beer sign hanging on the door and there is a sign that says, rooms available. I know it's 10:30 at night. I ring the bell. The nicest people I've ever met great me - take care of everything I zonk out.
Saturday - I wake up and I'm feeling much better from my cold and I get myself to my aunt and uncle. All I have to say is that old people should not take care of other old people. Just imagine the smell. It was overwhelming. I ran around opening windows, tried not to freak them out by being upset, but of course by the afternoon I lost it and fell apart in tears. I tried to talk to them about people who could help, nurses who could help. Nope - they don't need that - every thing's been going fine, and it will still be fine. It was horrible.
Sunday - same thing but worse. I fell apart again because I found out some more horrible things about about the way they were functioning that made me so upset. My uncle and I argued, I couldn't hold it together and said I would leave. Then I was forbidden to leave - I finally manage to get out... and it may not have been such a bad thing.
Monday - I run errands. 1. Reading glasses for my Aunt. 2. new house shoes for my uncle (his toes are peeping through the others. 3. other unmentionables 4. talk to someone about a hearing aide. 5. Introduce myself to my uncles nephew whom I've never met - find out he is a great guy, and he's been having the same conversation with them for years. We are all just banging our heads against the wall. Make my peace with the fact that I can't do as much for them as I wanted. Go back to them, they are happy to see me,I find out my aunt almost fell this morning and it scared the crap out of everybody. Their ears are a bit more open now.
Today - the hearing aide guy is supposed to come. Talk about an exciting day. Good lord. What will my aunt wear? This is a two hour conversation. Trying to convince her to get in the wheel chair to move her to the kitchen - forget it. The guy comes - she has 20% hearing in one ear at 105 decible. (that's practically nothing) and 60% in the other ear. The one ear is pretty much blocked, the other is okay. She likes Mr. Müller because he speaks properly, the rest of the people can't speak properly anymore, they all just mumble. Mr. Müller tries to explain that everyone speeks just fine, she just can't hear, she doesn't seem convinced. After an hour of checking things out, my Uncle is exhausted - he can't handle all of this, the hearing aids are going to cost 900 and something Euros each. The best part of all of this is? Mr. Müller recommended some which are self adjusting. She just has to put them on. My uncle the "optimist" says this will never, never work - we can't do this... blah blah blah. My aunt says, "When do I get them?" Now I've got to work this out with the nephew and hopefully my uncle won't manage to sabotage this. It would be so good not to have to scream at her everytime we need to talk. Even though its pretty comical.
"Where is he?" in "Porto"
"Wolfsberg?"
"PORTO"
"ah".
sigh.
I'm trying to get them to have some meals on wheals - I'm trying to think of the best place on the wall so that I can start slamming my head against it.
Oh, and I also had the nerve to bring flowers - my aunt loves them, my uncle ... well - it might have been better if I'd have brought cow pattys. He walked around all afternoon muttering and I finally heard him say, "scheiss Blumen" - (basically f*** flowers) Poor guy.
Alright - bedtime, one more day.

Grüße aus Deutschland!

Yes, I'm in Germany. I'm visiting friends and relatives for a couple of days. And so far it's been great. Even though it rained all day today. that's not fun. But I do need to back up a bit and catch people up.
So last week Watsuki moved into the third floor! I have a tennant! Yay!
And then last weekend my cousin from Germany, who was working in Lancaster for a few weeks came to visit on Friday and Saturday. We haven't seen each other in something like 15 - 20 so it was interesting to see him, catch up, hear about the family - and we "skiped" with his mother and father (my mother's cousin). Okay - that is way coool. Now I've got to figure out how to get into that. Watch out Daddy - you will probably be the first one who will get roped into this.... :)
Anyway - I took Marc-Michael on a Mural tour of West Philly. Saw neighbor hoods I'd never seen before - saw Murals I'd never seen before which were amazing. So that was awsome.
And then it turned out that it was strawberry time at my Amish Farmer. Of course I had to buy a flat before I went to Germany to be sure I had a chance to make strawberry jam. I put Marc-Michael to work. - he was very good at quartering the fruit. We got some very nice jam out of all of the work - and he took two jars home.
Now I'm here in Mainz which family friends which is great. Dietlind and I ran around in the city today and this time instead of buy heaps of wool, I'm going to buy some shoes:
Dietlind is desperately trying to convince me to buy a golden pair. (I can't steel the image so click here to link to the website - okay just tried to put a link in and it won't give me a link to the shoe I want to show you, just to the home page! Grr) They are super comfy but they are gold... yeah, enough said. And then.... they are really really cool, and they looked so good with what I was wearing. I could have worn them. Ugh - decisions.
In the meantime - my book arts friends: How do you like this? Hans (Dietlind's husband) must have the worlds smallest board shear:
I'm so jealous.

Ps: for this post - the spell check insists on being in German (because I'm on German internet service???) - so of course everything is highlighted. I'll fix it when I get home, if I remember.

A Major Misshap

I spilled/broke a bottle of black nail polish in my bathroom. Now it wouldn't have been so bad if it would have just dropped and broken leaving a big black oozing puddle on the tile. Instead it hit the edge of the toilet, broke the neck of the bottle which then spun around, flinging nail polish in all directions before it shattered on the floor. Needless to say - there are tiny black drops of stuff everywhere! I think I'll probably be finding them for years to come. sigh.
Well - at least it comes off with acetone.
This is a project for tomorrow. My friend Babette has been here for the weekend from Australia. We've had a blast! Australians are wonderful people. They are tenacious, positive, happy, and enjoy good conversation. Babette did a residency in North Carolina before coming up the east coast to see me (!) and family. It's been lovely having her here and I'm going to miss her when she's gone.

Happy Anniversary to me!

Yup - signed my life away - two years ago today. I can hardly believe it. But I sure don't regret it. I love this house. Love living here - and slowly, very slowly things are falling into place. I'm getting some important things done, and some things I want to get done. Things are good.
The first update is the 3rd floor. Time for before and after pictures:
The ugly green room before: and after: It looks beautiful. I just have to put the molding in. But first I have to finish painting the baseboards in the bedroom and the hall, and put the molding into the bedroom. That required another trip to that orange do-it-yourself store I am single-handedly keeping in the black. I bought ANOTHER 5 gallons of white eggshell paint. Hopefully this will do me for a while. Lugging 5 gallons up to the 3rd floor is a different matter all together. 5 gallons isn't exactly light! I also had to purchase a few miles of blue tape to do the baseboards, and an electrical cover. I'm starting to do pretty well at my local store. I can find almost everything without having to ask an orange apron.
This past week I worked really hard on the 3rd floor. Finished that front room, painted the hallway and prepped the molding.
On Friday I was able to get out in the yard and finally finish that back part. I had to go out there in full regalia, since I couldn't track down a hazmat suit. Jeans tucked into my socks, longs leave shirt head scarf and hope that I didn't encounter any more poison ivy, although I'm beginning to suspect it was actually poison sumac. I found some of that back there. I'm on my third day of prednezone and it seems to be working. I'm not itching as much as I was before. But my friend was telling me she had the same thing and that it had entered her blood stream and she was getting the mirror image on both sides of her body. Well, I definitely have that! Ugh. I'm also slathering on the Benadryl cream and following up with Tea Tree salve. It's working pretty well. But, well, in the mean time, ...
Jacques is thrilled that I cleared all of that brush from the back there. Can you guess why?
It is the perfect place to take lots of dust baths. Lots of them.
And... my kitty has decided he can climb chain link fences. I discovered this when I wasn't paying enough attention to him because I was talking to my neighbor through her chain link fence. So he went to the back area, and as though it was a ladder, just stuck his paws in between the links and "walked" up to the top. Then he had to show off is balancing act of walking around on the top pole. !!! I'm not making this up.
So what's next? I get to re-clear the other side of the back because it's all growing back again. Yay me. I planted a bunch of seedlings yesterday as well. Let's hope they take.

For all of you mothers out there - happy mother's day. :)

What I have to show for it.

In my last post I talked about working more in the garden.
I scooped up about five large trash bags full of stuff. Three bundles of wood, two more giant bundles of evergreen boughs, and lot of weeds and dandelions. And even though I still have a bit more to do, I was feeling pretty good about it all. Until.....
In the middle of the night on Saturday night I woke up scratching myself. I've gone through this before, I scratch until I break the skin. So in my delirium of sleep I thought - well - what if I slap myself instead? Maybe it will stop itching. It did and I went back to sleep. Great idea right?
Sunday morning I woke up to about five inches of bruising and more itching and scratching.
I painted in 90 degree heat that was building to a thunderstorm with long sleeves because anytime I touched my arms I would scratch.
This morning I woke up and not only were my arms still itchy, but my legs started itching. I threw in the towel went to the doctor.
I now have a dose of a steroid, prednesone, to help fight my nice little case of poison ivy. Lucky me.
Since I still have more to do in the garden, think I'll do it in a hazmat suit. Anyone know where I can get one?

3rd Floor Bathroom? check.

Remember this? Now it looks like this.
SO much better. ¿que no?
And now to tackle the last hideous color left in the house... the green room:
There it is in all it's glory with no flash - yes, that's how dark it is.
And below is an image with the flash so you get a good idea of the color. Lovely.
Seriously, what are people thinking?
I also worked in the garden on Friday for quite a few hours. Slowly slowly I'm managing to clear things away in between keeping everything else from taking over. I have a tray full of seedlings that need to be put in the ground soon.
There are a ton of morning glories, poppies, Shasta daisies, cock's comb, columbine, three different types of sunflowers, echinacea, hollyhocks, sweat peas, cosmos..... can't remember what else. Can't wait for them to bloom - they will be lovely.

Last Day of Class

The last day of my Advanced Book Arts Class. They decided to make The Pocket Tara for their final project. It was their idea to begin with. During the first few weeks of the semester someone was joking about needing the pocket reference guide to all of the little things they learned in my class. I suggested the idea as a group project for their final project - each chose something from the list and made a spread. I made the colophon, the title page and the cover.
The cover is dyed Tyvek with a magnetic clasp. The structure is the drum-leaf binding. It's quick and easy and they only have to print on one side.
It is incredibly flattering that they wanted to do this project with so much enthusiasm. It's funny and clever. I am really touched by this. By the end of the evening they had decided on two things: 1. I needed to be an app and 2. they wanted exclusive rights to the idea - they wanted to be the only class that ever made The Pocket Tara.

The project was a group effort at my house. Because we could use the guillotine:
There was a lot of food and fun and general good spirits. The seniors have their show opening tomorrow so they feel like they are almost done, and the rest are trying to slog through finals. Very little sleep had been had around the table. But pizza and chocolate and cookies makes everything better.
What did Jacques think of all of this? Are you kidding?! There were 12 women to pet him and talk to him and flatter him. He was in heaven.

A post for Aunt Lois

She asked me to post the orchids. Here they are! I bought these last year. They are little ones - the blooms aren't more than an inch and a quarter across, but they match the ceiling of the bathroom, and they seem to love where they are because they came back! I have one of those non-see-through windows in the bathroom, lets in lots of diffused light. I think that is what they like the most. That and the rain water.
So yeah, Aunt Lois and Uncle Ralph are on their road trip and they came to see me. It was so much fun.
We met up in Western PA so that Aunt Lois and I could go visit Falling Water. Wow - it is so beautiful! We had an excellent tour guide as well.
Its funny to be in a place I've talked about so many times in class and didn't really understand. I wish I could tell my students about it now. I could give them so much more insight. Ah well, in my next life maybe.
On my way out there I noticed that all the red bud trees were in full purple bloom. There was one between the house and the guest quarters, I tried to get it in as many shots as possible.
We stayed in a great little cabin in Maryland, nice and toasty warm, but no cell phone reception. The landscape around it was beautiful. All farmland, and not much else.
On Sunday we headed back to Philadelphia and did the grand driving tour.
Here's Aunt Lois in front of the Maxfield Parrish/Tiffany mural in the former Saturday Evening Post building. This mural seems to glow on it's own. It's quite beautiful.
Speaking of murals, we did the driving tour of as many of my favorites as possible. They really liked them. Had lunch at Sabrina's, yum, saw Ben Franklin's "house" and mailed things off from the first post office of the USA. The stamps are still canceled with Ben's signature.
And of course - the now standard Philadelphia photo:
How fun is that?
And before they left, Uncle Ralph taught me the Battista Chicken recipe. Oh boy is it good.
I'm pretty honored to have been allowed to learn this - seeing as I'm not Italian at all. :)
There's lots of garlic in it:
And red wine vinegar too:
And the rest is a secret!
I really enjoyed having them here - it was really fun to talk and hear family stories. I love that.

Gettin' ready for visitors

The bedroom is painted. My Aunt Lois and Uncle Ralph are coming this week and now they have a beautiful bedroom to sleep in! Not the ugly blue one. It looks so beautiful! I'm so happy I tackled that now. It only took four layers of primer and two layers of paint to make it look right. But it's done. So of course I had to start on the next thing. The ugly bathroom. But I didn't make it. That's mostly because I got really sidetracked by the skylight. I don't have a before picture of this thing and I wish I had. Someone had screwed a piece of plexiglass over the opening to the skylight. This spring I noticed that it had become a bit, um, "clouded." Stuff was accumilating on the glass and things were no longer clean and clear. I thought I better take the plexi down, clean it, and caulk the skylight. Well, I discovered that there is a vent there as well. And it still works. There is a chain hanging down. The chain gets pulled in one direction to open the vent - in another close and lock the vent. It's so much more beautiful and cooler (literally) with that thing open! I was just left with my perpetual question - who was allowed to "fix" so many things on this house?

A beautiful weekend

We had another beautiful weekend. It's amazing that it is always so short. I spent quite a bit of time in the garden (as seen from the previous post). I even got to spend some time yesterday and of course Jacques helped. Every weed I tossed onto the brick walkway he had to subdue with his paw. Apparently weekding is extremely interesting. Ants too. Every poor little ant that came across his path was halted with a paw plopped down on it. He sat by me for a good hour supervising and making sure that things didn't get away. I've still got more to do in the yard. I feel like I've done so much it should be perfect by now. Not so. Every time I turn around there's something new that needs attention. Right now, it's those blasted dandelions. There are far fewer than last year - but still plenty to be getting on with.
Today I finished the room upstairs! Yay!
It looks SOOOO much better than it did before. Oy - that blue was hideous.
I had plenty of supervision on this project as well. The inspector was in full force.

I had to patch where Lee left a hole when he installed the fan. Which I was patient about and let the spackle dry over night. You can't even tell there used to be a hole there now. The bright white room is light and airy. The fan Lee installed works really well too - it's not going to be sweltering in there. I just have to finish painting the trim - which I think I can manage before Aunt Lois and Uncle Ralph come to visit. And then voila!
I also fixed the running toilet on the third floor. This is thanks to Melanie when she was here a few weeks ago who said - hey your toilets running. I think the black rubber thingy is shot. So I picked up another one from Home Depot - it was a piece of cake to install and now, no more running water.
After I got finished painting upstairs, I had some left over primer and a dirty roller. Rather than wash it out, I thought I'd do some preventative maintenance. When I bought this house almost two years ago, the door to the basement was white. now all of that has been washed away due to weather.

Since I'm not interested in redoing a door - I thought I'd put a fresh layer of primer on it. It's nice and thick and blindly white. Hopefully that will protect the wood for a while.
I took a rather cool self portrait while I was up on the third floor. The light from the setting sun, reflected off some other windows into the apartment on the third floor. It was a beautiful orange light on the horrible army green. That will be the next big paint job. Can't wait until that is taken care of. Up next? The bathroom on the third floor. We'll see.