University of Here

Because he's found many of the Portland Community College (PCC) classes were often not what he was hoping for, Jeff decided this next quarter he would plan and "take" some courses at home of his own devising. He has a number of landscape-related books he's been wanting to read for a while, but never had time because he was busy with work or classwork, so next quarter in addition to his one PCC course, he is also going to take two or three at-home classes. (This also has the benefit of saving us a bunch of tuition; the PCC courses, at about $250 each plus books, start to add up.)

Sharon decided to join him in her own University of Here class. Like Jeff, she wrote up a syllabus with a schedule and goals. Her class: Introduction to Arts & Crafts-Style Stenciling. During the quarter, she's going to read three of our stencil books, practice stenciling on paper, and practice stenciling on fabric. She's hoping to make a stenciled decorative pillow. Then, once she's done with that, she's going to advance to stenciling on the plaster walls.

Temporary Study Space

We spent today packing up the last pile of stuff out of the "library" and nearly managed to get it set up as our temporary parlor/study space. Presumably we'll both have school next quarter (maybe) and we'll need at least some place to study that isn't total chaos. And the basement gets too dreary since the windows down there are so small; it's nice to get at least some natural light.


We've got the closet nearly cleared out, and there's still a few boxes that are waiting to finish getting filled when we pack up the master bedroom, but otherwise this room is done.

We're looking forward to a break tonight visiting with friends at a birthday party.

Soapstone Unveiled

Sharon got a chance to go see the soapstone slabs for the first time today—and she loves them!! The soapstone is so gorgeous and a very beautiful green color; she's looking forward to seeing it installed this summer.
For those who are interested, these slabs are Green Minas Soapstone and we purchased them from Teresina Soapstone in the Sacramento, California area. They were excellent to work with and safely got the slabs shipped up to our fabricator in Portland, Oregon.

A New House—A New Sewing Project

Sharon is already looking ahead to after the remodel and has realized there are a lot of curtains to be made for the main floor windows. The stuff that the prior owner left behind is not terribly period and is also not to our taste, so she has undertaken the project to replace all these curtains. She is planning to make curtains which mount inside the windows frames (so you can see the wonderful woodwork); something along these lines.But, really, she's hoping for something more like this; we'll see how good her stenciling and/or embroidery skills turn out to be. After the triple-pleated curtains and the Roman shades, she's sure she can manage the sewing of the simple casing curtains.

From Craftsman Magazine, May 1910.

For inspiration, there are some examples by Dianne Ayers over at Textile Studios. She makes some really gorgeous curtains, but they no doubt cost a fortune. Sharon is hoping she can manage to make curtains that are nearly as nice looking. =)

Today, we received a large order of linen for this project. Several months ago, Sharon calculated how much fabric she would need for all these windows (it was 28 yards!), but she didn't get around to ordering until last week, when she got an email saying the linen was on sale. So, last week she ordered 30 yards from Fabrics-store.com.

She ended up choosing a medium weight linen in a very pale yellow color, called Krista Natural. She didn't like the bleached, it was way too white, and the natural (unbleached) colors were all too dark, so she compromised and got one that was probably bleached and then colored. Here is the linen next to a piece of white.

Sharon also bought some remnants to practice the stenciling and embroidery by making throw pillows.

Craigslist Score!

Sharon found another craigslist score yesterday and went and picked it up this morning. (She was cruising around shopping on craigslist when she should have been studying!)

She actually found someone less than a mile away that was selling quite a few old, probably handmade, douglas fir pieces of furniture. They'll surely look great on our main floor after the house douglas fir woodwork has been stripped and stained. She got all 5 of these pieces for the bargain price of $100! They obviously need some cleaning, but they're in really good shape for the price.

Door Stripping

We retrieved our doors from Houck's Process Stripping today and Sharon thought she should write an update for anyone thinking about undertaking a similar project. The doors were $120 each to strip, including the waste disposal fee. (We also brought in one of the sets of French doors separating the living room and the entryway and they'll be $735 to strip. This project is really going to add up.)










Houck's did a mediocre job, as there is still quite a lot of paint in some of the crevices. These doors are definitely not stain-ready; we'll still have to work out the rest of the paint from the crevices, or figure out how to touch them up with a paint/stain to cover the light paint. Also, as we've been warned, we'll have to sand these doors before we stain and shellac them.














We also got a not-quite-a-surprise that one of the doors had been altered to make it wider. Sharon had realized it had the joint, but didn't realize the fix had been so poorly done in a light-colored wood. We're also going to have to fix this door. It seems sort of weird that Houck's didn't even bother to strip the paint off this edge.

Found a Pot Rack!

Sharon is pretty excited because she thinks she finally solved the last puzzle we had for our kitchen remodel! Jeff wants to recess a portion of our dropped kitchen ceiling to install a pot rack and we needed to know by April 4 what pot rack we would be buying. Sharon's been shopping for a while now, but everything was either crummy made-in-China crap or very expensive. Today, she finally found a locally-made pot rack that appears to be quite affordable. The website is Yardley Forge and according to Google they're even located in Portland!
We are hoping we can get this modified a little bit so that it doesn't hang quite as low, but otherwise this is just what we've been looking for.

Here is our period picture of a kitchen pot rack—taken in the White House kitchen in 1901, according to the original source.