Picture Hanging Adventures

We've never had a house with plaster and picture rail before so I'm learning a whole new way of hanging up art. At times, it's fairly straight-forward; there are loops on the back of the art to attach the picture wire and the picture rail is easily accessible. Like these.

But sometimes the picture rail is running at an angle, like in the den. How do you hang a picture on this? This looks stupid and we'll be reworking it.

Quite a lot of the pictures don't have hooks or rings on the back so I need to try and find some to install.

Also, some of the best wall space we have is in the stairwell where the picture rail is maybe 14 feet above the stairs. I have no idea how we'll be getting art up there.

Bye Bye Bookcases

It's taken a while, but I've finally found a new home for our gorgeous solid wood Bentwood bookcases. They've been listed on craigslist on and off for about four months. These are really nice quality, so it's taken a while to find someone who could appreciate their quality and also had the budget to take them away.

I hadn't planned to put anything in them before selling, but as the weeks passed, stuff slowly trickled into them and then when we emptied the basement bookcases, they filled the rest of the way. The buyer comes back tomorrow to pick them up so I'll have to spend some time today packing these books back up.

It will be sad to see the bookcases go, but they proved to be ill-suited to this den area. They are taller than the plate rail so had to be set several inches away from the wall and the space would do better with bookcases with smaller doors.

I'm now on the hunt for barrister bookcases. I'd really like something along these lines. In fact, I'd snatch these up in a minute if they weren't also too tall for the plate rail. Sigh.

Survived the Party

It seems odd to pass over the house's 100th Birthday party open house and not even mention how it went. I think it went pretty well. We were ready only with the amazing help of my father, Lloyd, and my stepmother, Maxine. We surely never would have been ready through our own efforts, without hiring outside help.

My father arrived and quickly hooked up our washer and dryer and installed a light fixture in the guest bedroom. I'm excited to have the laundry machines upstairs! (I guess I haven't taken a picture of them yet after they were hooked up. They're up in our back enclosed sun porch.)

Then, on Friday my Dad installed all the new door hardware throughout the house. At one point in his career he was a locksmith, so his skill at fine-tuning mortise locks is excellent. Even so, it still took several hours. (On Sunday, he also installed a deadbolt on our new garage and started installing our new solid brass hinges.)

Maxine worked pretty much since she walked through the door on Thursday until Saturday, cleaning the house. With her help, the house was quite respectable by the time noon rolled around on Saturday. Thank you Maxine!

Jeff, on the other hand, spent three days in the kitchen prepping the food for the party. All was quite delicious and there was plenty of food. I don't have a good picture of all the things he served, but here is a photo from early in the open house.

Unfortunately, Saturday was a very rainy day, so the house was not looking its best in the dreary overcast light. But we turned on all the lights and had quite a few visitors drop in. We got lots of nice compliments and it felt wonderful to show what we'd accomplished in 2½-years. Thanks, especially, to all my blogger buddies who dropped in for a visit; it was so wonderful to meet you all in person.

I didn't manage to take any photos as I was busy visiting and giving tours. But my friend, Storm, and my father took a few pictures of the rooms. Here are the best of them.

Master Bedroom

Guest Bedroom

Linen Cabinet

Living Room

Den looking toward Dining Room

Den Area (also called Parlor)

Dining Room Built-in China Cabinet

Our House is in a Magazine!

Our main floor renovation appears in the October/ November 2012 issue of Northwest Renovation magazine. Very exciting! (Thanks to Skye over at Rose City Bungalow for telling me about the article.)

There is a nice article written up by Wade Frietag, Owner/Architect for Craftsman Design & Renovation, who was the contractor for our big project last year.

These pictures were taken about a year ago, right after the bulk of the main floor had been renovated, but before we finished the new leaded glass panels. And most of the decor belonged to the contractor. They didn't like our stuff so they removed it and put their own stuff out for the photos.

The digital version can be downloaded here.

Parlor Sort

Unfortunately, we've had a fairly unproductive week this week. We really need the next deadline to find motivation to start the next big project. We did go to look at a couple things listed on craigslist, but didn't end up buying either. Oh well.

We also managed a trip to storage to bring home another load of stuff. Most of the load was stuff to list on craigslist to sell, but we did squeeze in as many boxes of books and dining room stuff as we could fit. So this afternoon, we unpacked several of the boxes. Most of the stuff went into the parlor. It looked rather sloppy when we started.

Sharon has an old glass bank collection that got put into the second colonnade (for now). She collected these about 20 years ago, but once eBay came along it was too easy to find glass banks and the challenge was gone so it was no longer fun.

We also brought home three or four boxes of old family books. Since they're nicely bound in leather, they made our modern paperback books look trashy. So, Sharon got the crazy idea that the modern books would look much better if they were sorted by color.

She spent a couple hours this afternoon shifting books. It probably will be harder to find the books we're looking for as they're not as well sorted by topic, but they look so much better! =)

Leaded Glass is Done!!

All the leaded glass panels are finished and installed. And with a whole day to spare before the tour. We are extremely excited!! We've been straightening up for days and we also had a cleaning service in this afternoon, so things are looking pretty nice right now.

We're just so happy to be done! Now maybe we can get back to our previously scheduled projects: the garage and shellacking the master bedroom.

Small Projects

As the tour deadline approaches, we have been spending time trying to actually finish projects. All the way. Done.

Today, Jeff started cutting the tiny mouldings for the leaded glass panels. These tiny pieces are very difficult to work with, but hopefully we'll finish the pieces tomorrow.

While he was working on that project, Sharon installed the little metal pulls at the bottom of the shades.

She had Jeff drill holes into the center of the wood strips. Then she inserted them into the shade casing to locate the proper place to put the hole in the fabric.

She used an awl to spread apart the fabric fibers without cutting them so, in theory, they won't fray around those holes.

Then she removed the wood strip and pushed in a larger awl to make the hole a bit larger than the screw hole.

Then she reinserted the wood strip and inserted the screw into the hole and attached the brass ring. Though, the screw is a bit long, so we'll have to locate some shorter screws eventually.

(It took her a while to locate these small, affordable brass ring pulls at tablelegs.com.)

Today, we also stopped by Fabric Depot to look for fabric to reupholster the new morris chair. The fabrics are awful right now; it feels like the 70s are back. We're definitely going to have to expand our search area.

Though, on the bright side, we discovered Fabric Depot carries Toweling. It's been difficult to find attractive glass cloths for the kitchen that aren't stupid expensive. So, we purchased the remainder of what Fabric Depot had in stock in Sharon's favorite print to give it a try. Though, it's odd they sell the fabric in yards, rather than panels, because you end up getting wasted fabric on each end that doesn't sew up into a proper towel with the borders on the bottom edge. Maybe they think that sewers won't care where the borders are placed.

Sharon already washed it up and hemmed up the three towels she could get out of the piece.

We had another big Craigslist day today. We bought a nearly new sliding compound miter saw! Now we just need to invest in a table saw and a router and we can probably start some of our outstanding woodworking projects.

Craigslist Binge

When she's not busy with other projects, Sharon has been busy scouring Craigslist for our "forever" pieces of furniture. We've had a number of "temporary" pieces and some we bought that just didn't work out as we hoped. We're slowly finding good pieces and bringing them home and selling off the temporary pieces—often for the same amount that we originally paid. (Have we mentioned how much we LOVE craigslist!!?)

The week started out with this wicker set for the front porch.

We Made Roller Shades!

This project was quite a trial for us! It seemed like everything that could go wrong--did! But, at last, they are done enough to use now. (We still have to add a small brass pull on the bottom and we have to find a secure way to attach the linen to the rod, but they're up and operational.)

DIY Stenciled linen roller shades

DIY Stenciled linen roller shades

We're not going to give a tutorial for how to make roller shades because there are already other excellent websites that do it.
Sewing 101: Roller Blinds

1959 instructions to make your own fabric roller shades

Update way later, because apparently my earlier links no longer work. This was the best description I've been able to find to show the process:

DIY Roller Shade

We will, however, include information about what worked and what didn't. 

Parlor Leaded Glass Complete!!

Woohoo! All four panels of the parlor leaded glass panels are assembled. We still need to cement and clean them and more permanently install them, but we're really excited to have managed to get so much progress done on this major project in the last couple of weeks. Though, it will be nice to have time to do something else again...

Last Set of Leaded Glass

We spent much of the day cutting glass. The border is cut and now the glass is all cut; tomorrow we'll start putting these last four panels together.

Jeff also gingerly removed all the old panels from the bookcase cabinets so we can fit in the new panels when they're done.

Another Panel Done!

We guess it's time to clean up this cabinet and put in pretty stuff. Count to date—six panels done!

Right colonnade leaded glass

Lovin' Leaded Glass

Today we built our first colonnade leaded glass panel! This is the largest panel we're doing for this project of ours.

Left Colonnade Leaded Glass

Our building process has gotten pretty efficient. Once Jeff figured out how to print the pattern pieces for the leaded glass from his computer, our speed more than doubled. And the glass pieces are so uniform Jeff was able to print out only ONE pattern piece (one of the interior rectangles) and we were able to size all the other pieces off that one.

We also successfully built this panel without the large overall pattern, saving a lot of effort. These pieces are uniform enough we can just cut them out and put them together.

Also, once Jeff figured out we should use the strip cutter, our pieces became very uniform and fit together quite nicely with little grinding.

Jeff cutting 2" strips for border

So, what we've figured out to do is to work together and strip cut all the pieces for the panel. Then we go back and do the final shaping for fitting in the bevelled squares.

Glass pieces for project before final shaping

Glass pieces for project after final shaping

Then once we've shaped all the pieces, we simply put the panel together, adding lead came between the pieces of glass.

Putting the leaded glass panel together!

It has also helped soldering three sides of the zinc border together, because then we are more likely to get an easier fit for the fourth edge.

First Colonnade Leaded Glass Panel

And now we're shopping around for tiny wood mouldings to install them in the cabinet doors.

Three wood moulding samples to choose from so far