Anyone Still Out There?

Hello!  

I cannot believe that it's nearly 
3 years -- years! -- since
I last published a blog post.  

Wow.  I am the very definition of lazy. 

I'm not sure I remember how to do this.

The last time I wrote a blog post on this date of September 18 was in 2013.  It was about psychedelic forsythia leaves in the autumn, old doorknobs and rim locks in our old house, and our two dear dogs, Gilda (L) and Dylan DiPoochy (R).

Sadly, only Dylan is still with us.  

Our beautiful Gilda left us two summers ago.  Dylan is now 10 years old.

Time flies when you're having fun.

And you know what else you do when you're having fun?  

You paint your front door pink.  

Because what looks friendlier than a pink front door?

I mean, who would not want to buy a 187-year old house

with a pink front door?  Hmm?

Yes, friends. 

That Old House is for sale.  

It seems odd to even write that.

When we fell in love with and bought this house in 2008, we were 55 years old, and retirement wasn't on our radar yet, and we never thought, "Gee, all these stairs," or "Gee, our kids will be scattered," "Gee, so many rooms to clean!" or "Gee, how will we pay these New Jersey taxes on a fixed income?"

Image courtesy of https://thegraphicsfairy.com/

But now?  We're both 67.

Yes, time does indeed fly when you're not looking!

Howard is ready to retire.

He is tired of the commute into New York City.

(Even though there is good public transportation.

Tell your friends who might want a wonderful old house on good bus and train lines!)

And I realized, as I went looking for pictures of the house, or pictures of parties or events here, or information on pretty much anything else about our home, as I was reminiscing ... I could find anything I wanted on this blog.

  

This poor old blog that I neglected for years,

after I ran out of ideas.  Or stamina.

My writing corner, with a strange bearded man in residence.
Where all the bloggy magic used to happen.  :-)

But now, I am going to chronicle the selling of That Old House, the process, the downsizing, the choices of new location, new dwelling. 

I'll have these newer posts to look back on, when Howard and I are retired and living in a Sears refrigerator box under a bridge somewhere.  Come visit!

:-)

P.S.  Have you retired yet?

All best wishes, Cass

Primer, Grout, and Draperies OUT

We're busy here at That Old House.
It is just 12 days until our daughter's wedding.
The reception won't be here at the house, but the After Party will be.

It's best bib and tucker time.

Although if you looked at the house today,

you might think otherwise:

That's Danny, painter extraordinaire, starting to prime the old clapboards.

(Me 'n Danny, we love that oily smell.)

He was kneeling in the grass; he may have been praying.

This is one big project to finish in a week, even with a crew of four.

It took one or two workers 3 days to scrape loose paint off the house, and they're still doing that on the other side.

Please ignore the painters' schmutz on the translucent ceiling, and MY mess on the table -- it's all mess around here this week!

Luckily, no one expects 182-year old siding to be perfectly smooth.  Certainly not me.  (I?)

Inside the house, it's my show.

Howard took down the dining room draperies for me last night; I'll turn their fabric into seat covers

for our oddball collection of dining room chairs, and hang something new at the windows in the next day or so.

It's funny, but the room seems smaller without the drapery panels.

Why is that?

You can spy ladders and paint cans and painter stuff out on the grass of the side yard.

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"Hey, Hon, you want some chocolate mousse?"

 Well who knew -- certainly not I -- that dirt-colored tile grout looks unnervingly like chocolate mousse?
Lesson learned -- don't grout while hungry.

And there you have it, in one concise collage, my grouting of the kitchen sink backsplash.

Now I only have to install it, and run a bit of thin molding along the bottom, and . . . .

I'll get back to you.  -- Cass

Link Parties!

At The House In The Roses, it's Show Off Your Cottage Monday.  Click thee here!

At Mary's Little Red House, it's Mosaic Monday.  Clicken Sie hier!

And at Between Naps On The Porch, check out Metamorphosis Monday.  Clickst du hier!

Random Shots for Sunday Favorites

Ah, it is Sunday, this Blogger's Day Of Rest, thanks to Chari of Happy To Design, who hosts Sunday Favorites and lets us recycle old stories. And as you know, recycling is A Good Thing.

Two months ago, my computer was on the fritz,
and had flown home to the Mothership for repair. I improvised.

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(July 21st, Somewhere In New Jersey) -- If you have read my last few posts, you know I have not been able to load new pictures onto my temporary computer -- which is really my daughter Anne's laptop. Very frustrating; I love posting pictures -- usually too many!

So today I went into my blogger pictures album and chose some favorites from past posts -- including the picture that started it all.

Now . . . let's see if I can figure out how to load these pictures . . .
Yes! I can. (I am ridiculously proud of this.)

So, let's flip through a very personal little album of favorite pictures of That Old House.

Ring our high-tech doorbell,

and come on in.

We'll just wander around a bit, ok?
Please excuse any dust -- remember it is a protective coating for fine antiques.

I think my favorite room of all is our parlor. I fell in love with this room, naked.

The parlor was naked, not I.

It's just got such good bones:

(Much nicer than mine, which considering the fact that I am 120 years younger
than this room, is rather humbling. I creak more than these floors do!)

I have pictures of this room, furnished, but it's not done yet to my liking,
and these are favorite pictures I am sharing -- so you get the naked parlor pictures today.

Not so the dining room, which wasn't such a beauty in its naked state:

That's piles and piles of heavy draperies and elaborate lace sheers on the floor. They were donated to a thrift shop, and I hope have found a happy new life. The light fixture went also, replaced by a crystal jobby that looked way bigger in real life than it had on the Internet.

It's a bit over the top, but you can do that in a dining room.

We certainly go over the top at Christmas; I love this room at the holidays!

I wish I had a picture of the rest of the dining room all gussied up for Christmas.

Next year I will take more pictures!

For summer, I had planned on replacing the gold draperies with lots and lots of sheer creamy white -- floaty and dreamy. But, life interfered, and that particular project didn't get done.

We use the dining room a lot; it's cool in the summer, and always tidy and rather serene,
which is more than I can say for the rest of the house!

But this is my favorite use of That Old House:

Packed with young people.

This was taken after our House Blessing party in March -- these are friends of our daughters, who hung on afterward, helped us clean up (bless them), and talked well into the wee hours in the conservatory.

Ah, yes, the conservatory.

The newest part of That Old House is only ten years old, and it's a people magnet. We all love it, and although I am not yet happy with its looks, I do enjoy this room. It's especially fun in the winter:

Great fun, watching the snow fall. Coming downstairs and finding thick ice on the windows...

not as much fun, but at least the ice is all outside, and it's warm inside!

At Christmas, I loved sitting in the study, and looking at the big fresh tree in the conservatory:

Among the favorite pictures I found while browsing the online blogger album,
is this one of the bed in our yellow guest room:

Doesn't that look inviting? Love the light coming through the window, and I wish you could see the glass, closeup. It's incredibly wavy and wiggly, as the glass has melted over the decades into charming patterns. I haven't been able to get good closeups of the wavy glass in any of the rooms. Any hints?

Well I could keep posting pictures till I ran out of them, but

I will close with the picture that started it all:

Back in March 2007, I was browsing through Internet real estate listings, and a picture popped open of an old yellow house, slightly abandoned looking, with crooked dark green shutters, some scraggly landscaping -- and my heart actually skipped a beat. It was love at first sight.

I told my husband that evening that I'd found "our house."

"Fine," said he, "but we've got a contract to buy another house."

Fate intervened, and 12 months after I first saw this listing, we bought That Old House. The honeymoon isn't over yet.

I think it looks a little more lived-in now, but we've got a long way to go:

end of old post

See you Monday! I'm hoping to sneak out to a rummage sale at a
local historical society today. Sshhh... don't tell Howard! -- Cass

Hang It All -- A Craigslist Pairing

A little late in the day, but I'm chiming in with a Metamorphosis Monday post. Thanks to Susan at Between Naps On The Porch for hosting. Visit her here for more transformations.


A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about ordering mirror hangers to hang a large mirror in our dining room. Turns out, we didn't need the hangers, just strong and long brass screws and good wire.

This isn't much of a metamorphosis, but it made me happy.

Here is our Before... below, a sad and lonely sideboard, waiting for love and a humongous mirror:And the other half of our Before: a humongous mirror, waiting to hang over a lonesome sideboard. Clearly, a match made in Heaven.

It was time to unite these two Craigslist bargains. . . . and here's the After:

The sideboard is happy, the mirror is happy, my husband is happy because I'm not saying, "When are you going to hang that mirror?" and I am happy.

Almost.

I am not sure what to put on that old marble top. Any suggestions for a "sideboard-scape?"

Am I Blue? Not Anymore! A Blue Monday Metamorphosis

It's another Metamorphosis Monday, and a Blue Monday as well. I've combined these two into one, with a metamorphosis tale that moves from the blues, to . . . well, seeing red!

Visit Smiling Sally for more Blue Mondays, and

Between Naps On The Porch for more magical Monday Metamorphoses.

Thank you, Sally and Susan, for being such gracious hostesses!

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I love flowers in clay pots.
I love brick walls.
I love blue skies.

But, sadly, I didn't love them painted on these walls. This was our powder room, when we bought That Old House nearly a year ago:

This little half bath is at the end of our "butler's pantry," (the rather grand name we give to the passageway between our kitchen and dining room, which we hope to restore someday). There is a walk-in pantry on the other side of that pocket door.

I felt guilty, wanting to repaint this room,
because clearly a lot of time
and effort went into creating it.
But, I got over it:

Goodbye to the blues!

We painted the powder room to match the dining room, Tucson Red, #1300, from Benjamin Moore, with the beadboard wainscoting and woodwork in Moore's Atrium White for some relief from the intense red in such a small space.
A crystal sconce that matches the dining room fixture replaced an undersized brass-plated one. The vanity and sink are serviceable and in good condition, so while I'm not crazy about them, they will stay for now. We replaced a worn faucet with a simple, classic polished nickel one. I love polished nickel; it has the look of old silver to me. My Dad thinks I am nuts. He is a very practical fellow, and told me, "Nickel tarnishes!"

Yes, Dad... that's the whole point! :-)

There is a window over the sink, so I needed a mirror on the opposite wall, and was looking for an old fashioned sort like my grandmothers had in their homes. It needed to be fairly large, and (of course) cheap.

I found it at Home Depot, of all places:

It was only about $30. It's beveled, and there is an
etched-glass floral border around it -- just like I remember.

You never know where that just-right article may come from, do you? I'd spent months looking for the right mirror (sometimes finding the right mirrors for other rooms but not this one!) and there it was, waiting for me, just 6 miles away at the big box store!

Still to be done: curtains!
I'm thinking a nice chintz, or maybe a red & white toile; what do you think?

Next post: Color! And my panic at choosing it
and using it, when I had to choose and use a LOT!

Master Bedroom Metamorphosis, Part One

(I am participating in Metamorphosis Monday with this post, even though it was written on Saturday! (Is that cheating?) Thanks to Cindy at Applestone Cottage for her encouragement! You can find other Monday Metamorphosis stories at
BETWEEN NAPS ON THE PORCH: Welcome to the Fourth Metamorphosis Monday! Many thanks to Susan for hosting!)
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When you buy an old house, you usually buy a whole load of ... shall we say "unique" decorating? Take our Master Bedroom ("Please!" as Henny Youngman used to say).

Below, "before" and "after" pictures:The stripey wallpaper in this bedroom made me dizzy, and since we'd chosen this room to be the master, that was not A Good Thing. I felt as if I were going to tip over when I looked at it. It was really the oddest effect. The vertigo-inducing stripes had to go.
Built-ins are lovely, but this one (above) was an exception. It was built across a door into a walk-in closet. To get to the closet, you had to go out into the hallway. Go figure.

A hundred years ago, that closet probably had a different function. It is large enough that it could have been a sewing room, a nursery, even a box room. (Houses should still have box rooms; how lovely to have a room piled with boxes, for which you needn't apologize!)
Work in progress. The painters have stripped off the wallpaper, bless their hearts, and I no longer get dizzy when I enter the room. However, removing the paper reveals some fairly funky areas of old plaster.

Again, painters to the rescue. They work on the walls -- a lot -- and then cover them in a tinted-to-match oil primer, and then, it's more work, and plaster repair. Gapping moldings are caulked, and the old, odd built-in cupboard is removed. We find out we can't use the old door as it won't fit properly in the opening, so there is no door on the closet. It is an old house; we are not surprised.
Interesting effect, no?
Ah, the light at the end of the tunnel (below). Benjamin Moore's Palladian Blue (HC-144) covers walls, which have been restored but not made perfect; we don't want our walls looking new! Like us, they wear their years with pride. (Or so I tell myself.)
This room is directly above the dining room that's featured in previous blog posts; same triple windows, same bay.
Oh my, those windows are dirty! Oops. Look instead at the lovely blue walls and crisp white woodwork.
And there we have it, the metamorphosis of the master bedroom at That Old House, Part One. I have to start sewing for this room, too. I bought a wonderful Greef/Schumacher cotton and can't wait to make the curtains, and I think perhaps a dust ruffle for the bed.

For home dec fabrics, I heartily recommend www.fabricguru.com for their amazing selection, cheap shipping, and really really good prices. I love a bargain! I paid less than $4.00 a yard for the Greef cotton, a teeny fraction of its original price, and it is first quality.

Speaking of bargains, I found a rice carved mahogany 4-poster on Craigslist. Very cheap. I need a step stool to climb into it. I do love to recycle!