Trenton 1922 Bathroom Catalog

I'm poking around tile patterns in bathroom catalogs again. These are most of the worthwhile pictures from the book Bathrooms of Character from Trenton Potteries Company in 1922. I'm going to do a series of these posts over the next few days showing pictures from different catalogs.

French Drain Finished

The side yard French drain is finished.

This is what 51 bags of hazelnut shells look like

They spread out the plastic to cover the dirt before putting down more gravel. The hope is it will prevent most of the water from filtrating into the soil.

They then covered it with gravel,
then with a thick layer of hazelnut shells

I think it looks pretty nice

I called all around trying to find the hazelnut shells. After a couple hours of calling around and a few emails, I was finally directed to Happy Valley Ace Hardware where you can get three 25 pound bags for $10. We bought 51 bags, but we didn't need them all for this side of the house. We still have some left for another area in the yard.

Jeff is still planning to build a planter for this side of the yard, but it's not the next project.

Bailey is getting so big. She already weighs twice as much
as when we got her two months ago.

Long legs too

Craigslist score!

Yeah, I know I'm supposed to be selling stuff, but sometimes I can't help myself. This is a Kincaid (Amish) brand cherry mission sideboard that I got for $500. This was probably more than $2,000 originally.

It sort of makes the old one look pretty pathetic. This one is already posted on craigslist.

The new cherry sideboard looks much better next to our cherry set we acquired last fall.

Now we just need to get the rest of the tile out of the dining room so we can get this room all cleaned up again.

Random Projects

Our weather has been beautiful and the old wisteria is almost ready to burst forth.

In past years it always made more flowers when it was pruned heavily. It's going to be another beautiful year because Jeff hacked it way back a couple months ago.

I've been flitting around between projects like a butterfly between flowers. I haven't finished anything yet, which is why I haven't really posted anything. I've been fairly successful at getting stuff listed on craigslist. Now if only I would stop seeing things I wanted, we'd be in good shape. LOL

We bought an old secretary off craigslist that needs a bit of work and I've been debating about whether to show you all photos before it's fixed up. It came with shelves covered with paper. While it wasn't a terrible pattern, I didn't really like it. I started trying to pull up a corner, but it just separated the layers of paper and really didn't make much progress. Then it occurred to me to try our new steam cleaner.

I used the steamer and a putty knife to slowly work the paper loose. I had hoped the steamer would make it trivial to remove the paper and it didn't but it probably made it much easier. I don't know what kind of adhesive was used on the paper, but it was very difficult to remove. It probably took me 3 hours to remove the paper off 4 shelves and I had to stop and refill the steamer with water once.

Then I got distracted playing with the steam cleaner for a while. It worked pretty well for the things I tried to clean. It did a decent job shining up the chrome in our basement shower with little effort and it did a great job cleaning hardwood floors. I believe it will definitely be replacing our messy mop.

I've also been spending an hour or two a day sewing my sewing room curtains. I am getting much closer to being done with the 16 additional squares. Most of the problem at this point is my old Pfaff 7570 isn't working well. I think I've worn down the feed dogs as the fabric isn't feeding properly and I get annoyed after an hour or two of sewing. I really need to get a 1/4" quilting foot for the Bernina 1080S I inherited from Jeff's aunt so I can shift to sewing on that one and send the Pfaff into the shop for repair.

Oh, and Barrett, our tile guy finally reemerged. We have progress again. He says he'll finish the shower pan this week. By this week, I think he really means early next week unless he plans to work over the weekend.

Installing a French Drain

Jeff and Aaron worked on installing a French drain in our side yard yesterday. Rainfall in Portland was heavy this winter and we struggled with water infiltration into our basement. We had to pick up and deal with a wet rug three times; we finally just rolled the rug up and tucked it away. Since sloping the soil outside wasn't enough, Jeff decided to try a French drain to solve the water drainage problem.

This was our side yard yesterday morning. It took quite a while to relocate the ferns and remove two large shrubs, including the trunks. They had to come out because we didn't want their root systems to puncture the plastic.

The guys spent quite a lot of time trying to get the slope correct on the ditch.

This drain pipe basically goes from the front yard rain garden to the one in the backyard with a high point near the front of the house.

After they got the slope correct, they put in some gravel in any low spots, put down the heavy plastic sheeting, put in the perforated pipe (which was encased in a water-permeable sleeve to prevent dirt from getting into it) then filled the ditch with gravel. They used about a yard of gravel.

This is how it looks this afternoon.

They need to get many more loads of gravel. Then he'll probably put down some sort of step stones and some sort of planters, but we won't be planting large plants over here anymore. Jeff's current plan calls for some sort of staggered vertical planter on the fence side of this so we'll have a lovely view out the windows.

Backyard Progress

We've really enjoyed this great weather. Jeff and his friend Aaron have continued to work on the yard, cleaning it up. It's been a really long time since we could drive down our driveway all the way to the garage.

Rug Junky

I had a weak moment this morning and I bought another rug. Oops. Clearly I am going to need to do some pretty extreme levels of selling stuff, or maybe, think about some sort of employment. LOL

I'm a big fan of Persian Carpet's clearance rug page and I drop by too frequently. I was seriously tempted by their Tulip rug last month, but I decided there was too much green and not enough yellow. (It has since sold out.)

They've obviously been testing some new designs because they've had quite a few prototypes lately. I was tempted by this one too. (Also sold now.)

Today when I checked in they had another one-of-a-kind hand-knotted prototype rug. This design appears to be a close cousin to William Morris' "The Rose" rug design from 1897; they call it the "Essex." I've not seen this design with a green border before. I'll have to go dig thru my William Morris books and see if I can find this exact rug design.

I bought this Persian Carpet's Essex Prototype.

It's a 10x14 though, so it's going to end up in the living room which means I'll be shuffling the new Fintona rug, into the front library area. While the rug already in there is hand-knotted, the color doesn't go well with our color scheme.

The new Fintona rug.

The rug we'll now be selling off

At some point I'll be in the market for a rug for the dining room, but I better stop now. Jeff only has so much patience for shuffling furniture/rugs and I'm already pushing my luck.