Close[t], But No Cigar

When we first looked at our house, I was majorly impressed with the closets. For a 40's house, it has an epic amount of closet space-- the entry closet, a huge master closet, the halfway-decent one in the second bedroom, giant built-in bathroom cabinet, and three oddly-shaped closets in the laundry room. But the prize for Best Closet Of All goes to the one in the hallway-- it's L-shaped, maybe four feet deep by five feet wide in front (where the "L" is) and three feet wide in back. It's the most awesome linen closet ever!

Except at the moment we can't store any linens in it because it's way too funky in there. The shelves are oddly placed and made of old unfinished plywood, the walls have never been primed or painted and are full of holes, it's lit by a bare bulb sticking straight out of the wall. And before I show you photos of what's going on in there right now, please promise not to judge me-- since we can't use any of the kitchen cabinets for reasons that will become abundantly clear to you when I get around to a kitchen-related post, and we can't use the attic for storage (obviously), basically everything we own EXCEPT our linens is stuffed into this closet:

See all the holes in the walls?  See all the crap stuffed in here?  Ugh.

I do love the IKEA doormat on the floor in there-- it's herringbone-patterned jute.  In fact, it's pretty much the only thing in here that's staying.

So the closet currently holds: the vacuum cleaner, our dirty-clothes basket, an old hamper full of craft supplies, my sewing stuff, a bunch of old pillow covers and shower curtains, our spare paper towels, a huge rug pad, a plastic two-drawer thing full of lightbulbs and picture-hanging accoutrements, our mop and buckets, my gift-wrapping things, everything but the kitchen sink and  our linens.  They're in the master closet taking up valuable real-estate.

The plan of attack (after the entry closet debacle, I'm aware this is probably going to take a million years to accomplish):

1. Repair, prime, and paint walls and trim. In keeping with the blue-closet trend (it's totally a trend because I did it and so did my friend Courtney), I think I'll paint it with the leftover pale blue-gray from the guest bedroom.

2. Reposition shelf brackets, replace shelves with nice dark-stained wooden ones.

3. Line shelves with pretty, non-sticky shelf paper.

4. Replace the plastic two-drawer thing with a nice 3-4 drawer wooden piece that will hold a bunch of the crap that's just floating around in there right now. There's a furniture-share in my town I've been dying to check out...

5. Buy wall caddy for broom and mop. Relocate mop buckets to tool closet in laundry room.

6. Organize gift wrap on the wall by doing something like this.

7. Replace light fixture with sconce with on-off switch rather than pull-cord (possibly like my cute cheap bathroom one?).

8. Organize linens in new functional linen closet, and

9. Move dirty-clothes hamper to master bedroom closet floor.

All-in-all, this should be a cheap makeover that makes our house easier to live in, and hopefully it will impress prospective buyers when we're ready to sell. Baby steps.

Moving Right Along

I'm in the middle of, like, a million projects at the moment, but I thought I'd take a break from doing my final pre-paint finishing on the bathroom ceiling and show you what's happening in the guest bedroom.

After transferring all of my clothes out of the old dresser and into the new, I enlisted Ray's help to move the old one into the third bedroom, where it will hold our out-of-season stuff and Ray's soccer gear.  Then I moved the new dresser from the south wall to the west one, and here's what we're working with now:

Pardon my Nikes and that storage bin under the futon. I still don't really know what to do with all this crap, and just as soon as I think of something I'll move it all.  See that pillow on the futon?  I made it out of the sample yard I ordered of the fabric I'm thinking I'll use for the curtains in here.  What do you think? 

And the southwest corner.  I don't know what to do about the art in here-- the white piece with the round navy design is a blueprint for the Rotunda at the University of Virginia, where Ray and I met in grad school.  I bought it for $20 from Etsy, but I can't decide how I want to frame it, so for now it's dry-mounted and sitting on the floor.  The map (a One Kings Lane impulse purchase) was going to go in the dining room, but I can't make it happen in there.  Maybe it'll wind up in here, maybe it won't.

That chair actually goes with my tiny desk/vanity, but I'm hoping to get an awesome upholstered slipper chair or something to go in that corner and I thought I'd see how it felt over there.  I'm thinking something along these lines:

World Market Fern Floral Erin Chair

Not the right colors, but I'm crazy about the shape, and I think its traditional turned legs and caster-feet would play nicely with the new midcentury dresser.

Or this:

World Market vintage Floral Gray Reading Chair

I kind of love the palette here, but again, probably wrong for the space.  Super-cute shape though.  

This would work-- it also comes in about a million colors, including a nice navy:

 Urban Outfitters Madeline Chair

And this has a really cool shape and comes in a really nice soft orange:

Urban Outfitters Modern Chair

Anyway, here's a wider view from the doorway to help you envision what I'm talking about / smell what I'm cooking / pick up what I'm putting down:

Progress is slow but we're getting somewhere now.  Oh, and this thing:

  

My vanity table / messy beauty basket.  I think it's going to get a coat of white or pale gray paint (I'll be looking through the thirty-six million paint samples I've brought home from the Home Depot) and maybe painting some kind of geometric Hollywood-Regency-esque  design on it.  I've been feeling kind of inspired by some awesome makeovers of the IKEA Rast dresser, like this one:

From Apartment Therapy

I love absolutely everything about this photo, and you should really click through to see all the other awesome things people have done with their Rasts.  I'm kind of contemplating getting a pair of them to use as nightstands in our bedroom-- we really need more storage in this house-- and a quick Googling of "IKEA Rast makeovers" yields about a million and a half reasons to buy them (they're only $30 a pop, and if that AT post wasn't enough to convince you, check Pinterest).  

Here's a slightly more literal inspiration photo of a Regency-style console table like mine:

 from customnurseryart.com

Isn't that darling?

Let There Be Light

You guys. YOU GUYS. I no longer have a desk lamp attached to my dining room ceiling. Now I have this baby instead:

 

For the moment I've reattached the giant ball on the bottom of it, but I'm not sure it's staying.  And as you can see, I need to paint the ceiling where the old fixture used to be.  And yes, that IS a garden hose and a spray bottle of moss killer in the corner of my dining room, thanks for noticin'!

View from kitchen:

Which I think is definitely an improvement over the view before the new chandelier:

As for the chandelier itself: do I love it? Meh. I don't know. But I think it will grow on me, and/or I'll do something to it that makes it look a little more special. I think part of the problem I'm having with it at present is that everything else in the dining room looks like shit. Let's talk about it.

PROBLEMS WITH THE DINING ROOM THAT WERE NOT SOLVED BY THE NEW CHANDELIER:

1. The chairs are still too light, and they're going to be that way until it gets warm enough to spraypaint them again. Also, I think I need to add a bit more reed-strapping to all the joints before I spray them again-- I'd like the joints to look a bit chunkier. I still really like the chairs, though. I wouldn't strictly MIND if two Chinese Chippendale armchairs appeared on craigslist tomorrow for around $50 or less each (I seem to be having a lot of luck with this approach, so I'm just putting it out there for the universe).

2. The walls are still bare. I can't seem to hang anything on them. Nothing looks right and it's making me crazy. I think I could solve this problem if I had room to put a skinny console table on the "long" wall, and then I could just pop a vase and a white ceramic animal onto it, center any number of big pieces of art over it, and call it a day-- but I really don't have enough space to do that. Poo.

3. I've never really liked the table-- it was very cheap (like, $125 with free shipping from amazon.com) and it happened to be the right size, and I'd gotten super tired of staring at a completely empty space so I bought it. I like the idea-- round but extendable with four legs instead of a pedestal-- but I really wanted something older and a little more Danish-looking. Add that to the list of Stuff I Want Craigslist To Provide For Me ASAP. Anyway, I don't know why I don't love it considering it ticks all the boxes on my checklist, but it's probably because I prefer old furniture to cheap amazon.com furniture. Think about it-- have you ever seen an amazon.com table in a House Beautiful feature? Nope, didn't think so.

4. I have no idea what to put on the table. Yes, an awesome vase with a gorgeous fresh flower arrangement would be perfect! Alas, I am too cheap to buy fresh flowers, and I'm also not a florist. I have no idea how to make flower arrangements.  Our nice neighbor dropped off the daffodils that are currently in my great-grandmother's silver pitcher, by the way.

5. Those $9 IKEA Vivan curtains would be awesome as sheers, but they're totally underwhelming on their own. Unfortunately I have like forty-seven crazy rugs and a kilim ottoman and a funk-ass brown couch and a beat-down yellow corduroy chair to contend with, and I don't know what kind of curtains could possibly complete the picture. Especially since I will someday get a new sofa, either ditch or reupholster the chair, and maybe swap out all these rugs for something slightly less insane.

6. Yeah, the dining room rug. Hatehatehatehatehate it in here. This looks like the home of a stodgy 80-year-old grandma. Ugh.

But really, I'm happy about the chandelier. I can't help but think we're going to have to do something to make it look a bit more contemporary, but for the moment I'm just glad it's not the weird spot-lighty thing. And I'm glad we hired an electrician, because as we'd feared, the wiring in this place is JACKED. UP. There were three transformers hidden inside that old fixture. Yes. Transformers. Not the Optimus Prime kind, which would have been cool, but the converting-volts-into-other-volts kind, which are decidedly uncool.

--------------------------------------------------

PART II. [Refill wine before proceeding]

You know what is genuinely awesome in a completely unqualified way? My new bathroom sconces:

Ooh, weird distorted view of my kelly-green sweater and blue plastic shower surround (ugh) in the backplate! 

And a wider view (crap iPhone photo):

 

Better pictures to come after I paint the wall where the old sconces were, and when there's some natural light-- obvious problem here is that I can't turn on the bathroom lights, because then I'd be taking a picture of the only light source in the room and you wouldn't see the sconces, only the light.  

Anyhow, remember these babies (please enjoy this seven-month-old photo of the bathroom in its completely unrenovated state, which is the only photo I could find in which the bathroom lights weren't turned on, rendering them impossible to see)?

Ugh, I can't BELIEVE the bathroom used to look like that.  

Those dudes not only hideous, but they also contained the only electrical outlets in the entire bathroom. Yes, that's right-- there was an outlet built into the base of each monstrously ugly "sconce" (scare quotes because these things were actually designed to hang horizontally OVER the mirror, not vertically on either side of it).

Our electrician (who we really liked and who charged us a VERY reasonable fee for rewiring our bathroom, adding a circuit to our breaker, fixing the dead switch in the guest room, and helping us hang and swag the chandelier) gave us a nice new GFCI outlet that is independent of the switch that controls the lights, so now we can plug in a nightlight and we won't have to turn on the lights when we get up to pee in the night. Yay! (TMI?)

I picked these sconces for a whole bunch of reasons, the first being that they have very narrow backplates so they'd fit on either side of the mirror without requiring that we move the junction boxes up or out. Most sconces have a 5" diameter backplate, and we needed one no wider than 4.5". These fit the bill.

Second, they're period-appropriate-- the ruffled, half-frosted glass shades are so 40's. Also, they're chrome, which is weirdly hard to find-- everything seems to be brushed nickel these days. Not in MY bathroom, uh-uh.

Third, they were dirt-cheap at $12 per. Yup.

Ask And Ye Shall Receive

So, remember last night how I was saying I wanted a midcentury six- to eight-drawer dresser for my guest room?  You know, something long and low with tapered Danish-modern style legs?  Something like this, maybe:

That's right, ladies and gentlemen-- craigslist has been kind to me once again.  Literally seconds after I posted last night, I checked the local furniture listings (like I do every couple of days because you just never know) and there it was-- long, low, six-drawer, tapered-legs (adorably offset so the back legs are set wider apart than the front ones) still sporting its original 60's brass hardware.  It set me back $50, which is crazy-awesome since it's vintage Bassett and in gorgeous shape.  We picked it up at 5pm today and I'm so in love.  As you can surely tell (and are obviously already admiring), it fits perfectly in front of the big window on the south wall of the room without blocking any of the glass --it's exactly sill height.  Now I just have to figure out what the deuce to do with the rest of the furniture in there...

And I hate that lamp (love the shade, hate the base) but I have my eye on a pair of these sexy coral/driftwood-base babies I found at TJ Maxx earlier today:

 

Love the squared off, vaguely Asian-looking plinth and the stylized, sculptural base-- plus they have nice fabric drum shades.  Sadly, they are $40 each, and I might be too cheap to buy them.  Then again, I could totally talk myself into it.  Next up: curtains, rug, art on walls, cute slipper chair, khbfljsadnshbfnvgv I am full of ideas.

Also, I found for your viewing pleasure a photo of what the guest room looked like on the first day we ever saw it in early June of 2012:

      

...And now you know why we didn't realize that these bedrooms didn't have baseboards.  Anyway, please try to ignore all the clutter (erm.) and look at how far we've come.  See how enormous and saggy those cheap blinds were?  Check out the tan ceiling.  And if you look very closely at the very top border of the photo on the right-hand side, you can see that the vent cover was dangling from one screw.

Sometimes I feel like we'll never, ever, ever be done with everything we want to do in this house, and then I see photos like that one and I remember that we've come a very long way in a short period of time.  Go us!  

And the electrician is coming tomorrow to rid the guest room, bathroom, and dining room of their hideous fixtures!  YAY!  Exclamation points!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thisclose

Please pardon the lack of a weekend post-- I've found, as it happens, that I'm a terrible blogger.  I can really only post once or twice a week, as:

1) this blog is about our house projects and in order to write a post I must first complete a project, 

2) I have a full-time job that requires a considerable amount of my energy, 

3) blogger.com doesn't work with my iPad for some reason so I have to use my husband's laptop to post, 

4) we live in a place where it's generally pretty dark (hence its attractiveness to roving bands of sparkly-skinned vampires), and there's rarely good natural light to photograph completed projects, 

5) our camera is old and crappy and takes HIDEOUS yellow flash photos, and its shutter speed is too slow to go flash-less unless there is glaring natural sunlight flooding the space (see number four), and

6) a lot of the projects we do aren't cool or glamorous enough to warrant an entire post.

But this week's lack of a post wasn't due to any of those reasons.  It's because we actually took a quick, desperately-needed vacation to Northern California's redwoods with some friends this weekend.  It was great-- we stayed in a cute bed and breakfast and hiked miles and miles through old-growth redwood forests.  We walked along a herd of grazing elk (it was the only way to get back to the car) and, post-hike, ate an awesome alfresco feast of bread and cheese.  Epic two-day vacation if I do say so myself.

And now we're home, a little sunburned and pretty tired, to enjoy a week "off" between semesters (it's not really a week off when you have to grade finals and make syllabi for the next term's courses, is it?).  And I was really, really happy to walk into the new, fresh, white-ceilinged, fully-baseboarded, Groban-walled guest bedroom.

As always, please pardon the shitty quality of these photos:

Which brings us to the next set of decisions: what the hell are we going to put in this room?  As I may have mentioned once or thirty-seven times, this furniture is beat.  My mom and I were discussing the other day that we have a tendency to keep furniture we hate, and we decided it's time to make some changes on that front.  Mom stepped up to the plate by getting rid of an enormous armoire that had been hogging all the real estate in one of her guest rooms, and now it's my turn.  Presently in the guest room and soon to possibly make their debut appearances on Craigslist are:

1) The dresser you see in the top photo above.

It has three big drawers that make it entirely impossible to be organized-- who only has three categories of clothing?  Other than that, there's nothing wrong with it, and I really don't dislike it but I can't make it work in that room, so I think it's going to get the boot in favor of a low, six-to-eight drawer midcentury modern piece to go on the long wall.

2) The little side table in the second photo.

I use it as a desk and vanity, and it's just too damned small to be of any use.  Its tiny drawer is crammed with crap, and the basket underneath it (which holds my blowdryer, makeup bag, and a tangle of cords and phone chargers) looks sloppy.  I'm hoping to find something cool to use in its stead.  Ideas?

3) The futon you can't see in any of those photos, but it looks identical to this:

It's not horrible, and really, it has to stay for now because we're not on the market for another queen-sized bed.  But just for the record, I don't like it.  It came with my husband.

4) The rug that's in there.  

I actually really like this rug, but I don't like it in this room.  So it's off to the third bedroom too.   Eventually.

I'm kind of attached to the little bookshelf sitting under the window-- it used to hold my grandmother's Encyclopedia Brittanicas, and now it holds all some of my Spanish literature books from grad school.  It's kind of nice to see Pepita Jiménez every morning while getting ready for work.

Several months ago, I went to turn off the overhead light in the guest room, and the switch broke-- meaning that the light was still on even though the switch was in the off position.  Normally I'd totally try and fix that myself, but not in this old house-- we have an electrician coming on Wednesday to take care of a whole host of electrical issues / ugly lights.  So anyhow, new ceiling fixture going in there this week.  

And the hunt for new furniture is on!

Be Our Guest

I've got to admit that the guest bedroom has been bothering me for a long time.  When we moved in, both the ceilings and walls were badly damaged and painted a shiny, yellow-brownish white.  There were no baseboards, and the quarter-round that was there in their stead had been abused by countless sloppy paint jobs.  But I thought that once I painted the walls, I'd stop getting that sad, icky feeling when I walked in there.  It didn't happen.  I tried rearranging the furniture (all of which I hate), thinking that might change the vibe.  No dice.  I tried the big jute rug I bought in October, hoping that maybe a nice neutral ground was all it needed.  Nope.  

But this weekend I figured out what was so awful in there.  I'll provide the following photo and see if you're smarter than I am:

I'd tried all my tricks: new wall color (which I like), fresh white trim, new blinds, you name it.  But if you look at the picture above you'll see what I now know was the root of all the evil in there:  the ceiling color.  Here's another view, this time over the entry door, so you can see the contrast between the trim color and the ceiling color:

I knew it was bad, but I didn't know HOW bad until Friday, when I second-coated the walls (just one month after finishing the first coat-- whatever, I don't have a lot of free time).  Then I moved all the furniture into the center of the room and began to cut in around the vents and the walls.  Here's a view in which I've cut in with the new white ceiling paint.  I think you'll agree the difference is drastic:

Please forgive if the paint has a bit of a pink tinge-- it goes on pink so you can see where you've painted, then dries white (brilliant!), and I was too excited to wait for total drying before I took the picture.  I mean, it is a HUGE difference.  

Yesterday I cut in again (the ceiling clearly hadn't been painted in a long time and it was pretty thirsty) and first-coated it.  Again, once I realized what a major change it was, I couldn't stand to wait for it to dry completely before I photographed-- but I think the following photo, pink-tinged and all, shows how much more light the room seems to get with its new matte white ceiling:

[And don't worry-- that boob light is on its way out.  The light switch in that bedroom died, and we don't want to mess around with the electrical in this old house (last time we tried to change a fixture, we found ELEVEN WIRES stuffed into a junction box, and I'm not trying to burn this place down) so this week we're calling the electrician to 1) hang our new dining room fixture, 2) fix the guest bedroom light switch, 3) hang the guest bedroom fixture I bought months ago, and 4) uncouple the electrical outlets from the sconces in the bathroom so we can change them out for something slightly less hideous.]

Today, I second-coated the ceiling and here it is drying in all of its pepto-pink glory:

  

Oh, notice anything else new in that photo?  BASEBOARDS!  We're half-done with the install at the moment-- we sprayed some Great Stuff (jury's out on whether or not it is actually great) in some HUGE gaps between the wall and floor on the south wall, and now we have to wait for it to fully cure before we can install baseboard over it.  Here's a picture so you can see what I'm talking about:

 

See it there at the base of the right-hand wall?  When we sprayed it we didn't realize it needed eight hours to cure-- we just got all excited after we pried off the ugly quarter-round and started spraying it in there-- and you can't sand it flat until after it cures.

So I was hoping to have a completed guest bedroom to show you tonight, but I think we'll be baseboard-ing that wall tomorrow.  After that, curtains, rug, maybe cute slipper chair, maybe I sell the old furniture on Craigslist and buy myself a cool midcentury dresser or a nice antique writing table.  Slow and steady wins the race. 

Tristram Chand-y*

Today I dragged Ray to the Habitat for Humanity Re-Store and, fifteen minutes later and $17.50 lighter, we left with this baby:

Yes, it's currently hanging in the unkempt covered courtyard outside our kitchen window, where it's awaiting a few thin coats of spraypaint, but its eventual home will be the dining room.  It's going to replace this freak-ass monstrosity:

So, as I've mentioned before, I've been having a lot of trouble deciding what to do about that thing, because the dining room is kind of a tricky space.  It's small, it's basically part of the living room, and it's really visible from every room in the house except the master bedroom and the third bedroom.  I've been looking for something fun and quirky, not too dressy but definitely dining-room-ish, and cheap.  And I kept not finding anything like that.

So I scrapped it all and bought the brass thing.  It was marked $35, but when we arrived at the register with it we found out it was half off.  Score.  I definitely feel okay about experimenting on an $18 light fixture, so let the games begin!

First I removed the giant ball that was at the bottom of it.  Maybe I'll put it back on, but at the moment it's looking like I probably won't.  Then I unscrewed the three curly twirly side pieces than ran vertically down the stem, because I'm not really a twirly-chandelier girl:

 

That's better, no?  Next we took off the shades (we'll probably use them or replace them or maybe cover them with fabric or stencil them or something):

It's lines are okay, and it's a good size for the small dining room-- it's kind of overscaled, but since it's pretty clean it looks like the right size for the table (we took turns holding it up to the ceiling so we could make sure we liked it).

Next I decided to do some experimenting.  I took the ceiling plate off and sprayed it navy blue, then I carried it inside (on a scrap of drywall like a DIY boss) so I could check out the navy color with the rest of the dining room stuff:

 

It's dark and matte, which I think I like.  But after it dried (in the meantime I painted the hallway ceiling, but more on that later) I taped off half of it and sprayed the other half with a glossy gray:

Please don't mind my crappy tape job-- I didn't want to stick the tape down too firmly since I'd just sprayed it a couple of hours before.

At this point we have some options, and I'd love your help with the decision-making (which it definitely not my strong suit).  Here's a photo for reference with a quick glossary so you'll understand what the hell I'm talking about as I explain the options:

 

See those little knobs about halfway down the arms of the chandelier?  We're going call them knobs.  There are also knob-things where each arm meets the stem (see 'em?) and where the candleholder-y things meet the arms.  Without further ado, your options are:

OPTION A: NAUTICAL NAVY

This would involve painting the whole thing matte navy except the aforementioned knobs, which we'd tape off so they would still be brass.  At the moment I'm leaning towards this, as there's a lot of brass in the rest of the house (the original doorknobs, etc), and I kind of like the idea of some exposed metal to give the whole thing a slightly less spraypainted-cheap-chandelier feel.  We would possibly also leave the candleholder portions brass-- so basically we'd be painting the stem and the arms navy.  This version would probably mean keeping the ivory shades or finding more drum-shaped ones in a plain ivory.  Maybe we'd paint a narrow navy or metallic-gold border around the top and bottom of each shade? 

OPTION B: SOLID NAVY

Matte navy all the way.  This would likely involve covering or replacing the shades with something more fun, though I have to be careful with "fun" patterns since I'm already working with two crazy rugs, a kilim ottoman, and ikat-striped chair pads.

OPTION C: DARK GRAY

Solid satin-finish dark gray.  I don't think I'd like the exposed brass knobs with the gray as much as I would with navy, so I think if I go gray it'll be all gray.  Problems with this plan: I'd like to spray the chairs dark gray, and I don't want to be all matchy-matchy chairs and chandelier.  Also, I'm a little worried that it might look like we bought a chandelier that was made of imitation metal or something-- the gray paint might look like faux pewter.  Or it might look totally awesome.  I have no idea, and I can't really tell based upon the half-gray ceiling medallion.  On the other hand, the thing cost $17.50 so if it looks irredeemably terrible I can just sell it for $15 on craigslist and pretty much recoup my entire investment.  Shades or no shades?  I don't know.

OPTION D: BRASS
This option involves not worrying so much about it and just hanging it up as-is.  I'll be honest-- I don't find this option terribly appealing.  But several people whose design opinions I trust (mostly my mom-- she's always right about this stuff) have suggested that I leave it brass because that's probably what was originally here.  A plain ol' brass chandelier is appropriate for a 40's house, doesn't feel too dressy or too casual, won't compete with the rest of the decor, etc etc etc. 

And now for something completely different!**  While I waited for the navy spraypaint on the chandelier's ceiling medallion to dry so I could spray half of it gray, I painted the filthy hallway ceiling with a product that I'd say is probably the second-greatest invention of the modern era (number one being the internet, naturally): ceiling paint that goes on pink and dries white.  That stuff is amazing.  It's not totally dry yet so there are still some disconcerting pink blotches in there, but it is already SO MUCH BETTER than the icky sticky yellowy mess that was up there before.  Slow and steady wins the race!

Please email or comment to weigh in on the chandelier situation.  Can't live with the weird office fixture for for much longer before I die of spontaneous interior-design-related combustion.

*Laurence Sterne joke!
**Monty Python joke!