The Waiting Is The Hardest Part

THINGS WE ARE PRESENTLY AWAITING:

1. Results

I finally sent off samples of the ceiling tile from my third bedroom and laundry room to an independent lab for asbestos testing, since we're planning on gutting the third bedroom when my parents arrive for their Second Annual Help Our Daughter With Her Crazy House trip in the third week of August.  My stomach is in knots.  If we have asbestos, we're screwed.  If we don't, we're going to rip the entire room apart and coax it from the ashes, phoenix-style, reborn as something beautiful.

Wait time to results: Five-ish business days.
Wait time to beautiful, useable, insulated third bedroom: Too damn long.

2.  Flooring

I''m now on my second try for engineered hardwood for the third-bedroom floor.  The first try was waaaaay too orange.  It looked like George Hamilton.  The next attempt, Bruce engineered hardwood in Wheat Oak, should be arriving shortly for inspection:

Fingers crossed for us-- if this one's not a close-ish match to our sixty-some-odd-year-old original flooring, we're back to the drawing board, and the drawing board is a really expensive place to be.  This stuff is $2.39/sq.ft., and if it doesn't work we're going to have to try the $4/sq.ft. option.  Please, no-- not that.  Anything but that. 

Wait time for flooring: I'm guessing 7-10 days.

3.  Windows

The huge picture windows in the living room and third bedroom can't be opened at present, so a sunny summer day turns our home into an oven.  After two weeks of roasting at 375°, turning occasionally, we called around and got some quotes.  The first guy came in at $4000 for both windows.  Right, dude.  The second guy was a significant improvement at $2K.  We're going with the third company at around $1500 after rebates from the Energy Trust of Oregon.  We'll be meeting our new windows on or around August 13.

Wait time for windows: Two weeks, give or take a day.

4.  Doors

In order for our new windows to make sense, we need to get screens for our sliding glass doors.  Cross-ventilation is a go.  Fortunately, our new window company hooked us up with an awesome retired shop teacher who makes beautiful sliding screen doors.  We're getting ours for $337 (that would be $500 cheaper than custom retractable screens, woot) soon.

Wait time for doors: Two-ish weeks.

5.  Sofa

I'm told my new beauty will arrive in mid-August.  I feel so guilty about buying the damned thing at this point that I'm having a tough time even being excited about it.  

Wait time for sofa: Two weeks?  Seriously?  There's a pattern here.

6.  Celebration

On August 13th, we'll be celebrating our one-year anniversary as official homeowners. So I guess it's fitting that so many exciting things are happening I've bought so much stuff that's due to arrive in mid-August.  I'm going to convince myself that all the money I'm wildly throwing at like a million things is okay because it's for our anniversary.  Right?  That's okay, right?  Debtor's prison isn't even a thing anymore.  I mean, this is totally fine.  I'm not panicking at all, so don't worry about me.

Refresh

My dining room chairs, purchased from Craigslist for $20 apiece last fall, have been many colors.  They were red when I bought them, and then I tested two different shades of gray before realizing that I needed to stop trying to make gray chairs happen.  Gray chairs are not going to happen, Gretchen!

So yesterday I picked up a few cans of Rustoleum in Heritage White.  After a quick sanding, my first chair got what I hoped would be a nice, flaw-hiding coat.  Except white spraypaint doesn't hide flaws:

 

Pardon the dizzying bird's-eye angle.

See all the splits in the wood there on the top rail?  Se how the reed-strapping is starting to unravel in spots?  I don't know how old these are or who manufactured them, but these babies are showing some mileage.  

I thought I'd do a little experiment, and before I sprayed the second chair, I sanded it thoroughly and used half a tube of wood filler on it.  I filled the unpaintable gaps around the rattan joints and forced putty into the splits and dings (the chairs are made of really soft wood).  It took, all told, a couple of hours.  I was kind of hoping it wouldn't make much of a difference so I wouldn't have to do it three more times.

Of course, it made a huge, visible-to-the-naked-eye difference.  The refurbished chair is (obviously) on the right:

Back detail, un-refurbished:

Back detail, refurbished:

Better.  Now please excuse me while I go buy more wood filler.

PS: Found a gorgeous cotton blanket in TJ Maxx that perfectly matches my nightstands.  I bought it:

I love you, TJ Maxx-- two x's and all.

Dork-knob

We've talked about my doorknobs before.  A few times.  Half of them are original brass, perfectly petite, and the other half are a random assortment of butt-ugly orange monstrosities.  One of my first projects upon move-in nearly a year ago was to clean years of paint off the pretty (little) brass rosettes of the original knobs, and one of my most recent was finding vintage knobs to replace the ugly ones.  I wasn't sure if it'd work, so I started small with two sets of knobs-- one half-brass and half-chrome for the bathroom door and one brass pair for the guest room door.  If it works, I thought, I'll get another passage set for the guest-room closet and one for the soon-to-be-reno'd third bedroom; I'll also need a locking set for the door between the kitchen and the laundry room.

I'm just going to stop you right here, because I know what you're thinking-- only a total weirdo would spend $30 per door to replace ugly-but-functional doorknobs in a 1350-square-foot house.  You're right-- it's hardly Versailles, and the next buyer probably won't be quite as doorknob-obsessed as I am.  So from an investment standpoint, it's pretty stupid.  But from a mental-health standpoint, this is an absolutely mandatory upgrade.  And in case you doubt how truly hideous some of these knobs are, I present Exhibit A:

Gooooooo!  And if that's not enough, allow me to introduce a side-by-side shot of the bathroom knob (left, obviously) next to the vintage one I bought to replace it:

See?  SEE?  Now if that's not worth $30 of vintage door hardware, I don't know what is.  

Unfortunately, my worst fears were confirmed when we got back to Oregon last week and discovered that the ugly doorknobs were, in fact, attached to new-style guts-- so of course my spindle knobs weren't going to work.  We spent a hilarious week with no bathroom doorknob while Ray's parents stayed in our house with us.  If you really want to get to know your family, share a knob-less bathroom with them.  It's an experience, I assure you.  Fortunately, my wonderful in-laws handled it with grace and never once complained that I'd seemingly removed the doorknob immediately before they arrived just to make their seven days in Oregon as uncomfortable as possible. 

Meanwhile, I started doing a little research on houseofantiquehardware.com, and I thought I'd found the piece I needed to make my knobs work.  Here's what it looks like.  I still wasn't sure it was the right thing, but I ordered one for the princely sum of $5.95.  I also ordered some 3" rosettes, since the hole that'd been bored in my door to make way for the HUGE modern knob was too large to permit me to screw in my pretty little (2.25") vintage rosettes. 

What I didn't know is that House of Antique Hardware is located in Portland (yay Rose City!) and I got my hardware the next day.  I think my mother-in-law was a bit bemused when the package came and I started jumping up and down like a maniac and interrupted our conversation to run to the tool closet for a Phillips head.  But she shared my excitement when, two screws and fifteen hot seconds later, my bathroom door had functional vintage knobs on it:

Love.

Unfortunately,  I don't love the look of the bigger rosette:

 I really prefer the smaller vintage one as seen ob my entry closet door:

 

And I think I know how to make it work, so I'm currently planning an ambitious door-retrofitting project that I'll report back on shortly.  And the big rosette doesn't bother me nearly as much on the chrome bathroom side:

But at this point, after tracking down the perfect doorknobs and rosettes (they're an exact match to the original knobs I already had) and traveling 3000 miles with them, I'm inclined to see this mini-project through as completely as possible.  So retrofitting it is!  And I also need to order about a million more Standard Back Set Tubular Conversion Latches (say THAT five times fast) from House of Antique Hardware so I can do all the other doors.  And I have to find more sets of matching vintage knobs.  One thing at a time, right?

  

[Caravati's] Is A Wonderland*

Hello from the East Coast!  We're currently in my hometown of Richmond, Virginia.  As always, I'm thrilled to be here.  Though we're Pacific Northwesterners now--and there are plenty of things to like about the left coast-- I will always be a Virginian.  

 

I'm sorry I'm not sorry, but I'm insufferably snobby about where I'm from.  After all, American history is Virginia history.  Since the first colonists settled at Jamestown in 1607, Virginians have been making it happen, and Richmond's illustrious history is reflected by its incredible architectural diversity.  Only here you can stroll along gorgeous Monument Avenue (lovingly nicknamed "Avenue of Losers" for its statues of Confederate military heroes) and then pop over to Jackson Ward to check out the home of Maggie Walker, the first African-American female bank president in the country and by all accounts an exceptional woman.  The River City has everything from antebellum farmhouses to suburban colonials, Federal rowhouses to forties bungalows. You name it, it's here: nineteenth-century tobacco warehouses, skyscrapers, a relocated fifteenth-century Tudor estate, Neoclassical and Italianate train stations, an igloo house and a milk bottle building.  A quick one-hour trip out of town takes you east to colonial Williamsburg and Yorktown, from whence our very own George Washington sent the British packing, or west to Charlottesville and Jefferson's Monticello (and our alma mater, the University of Virginia, where we met).  I mean, there's a reason we Virginians are proud of our state.  

Anyhow, a lot of historic buildings equals a lot of architectural salvage.  And if you like salvage like I like salvage, you should check out Caravati's.  Today we went there in search of a few things for our old house, and we left with our pockets full of doorknobs.

As I've mentioned before, the crazy-doorknob situation in my house is out. of. control.  There are three doors in the house that still sport their original brass knobs:

 

I love those.  There are also a million doors in the house that have huge mismatched shiny orange eighties knobs.  After discovering the exact knobs and rosettes I needed over at houseofantiquehardware.com a few months ago, I filled a virtual shopping cart with them.  I emptied it when I realized they cost $90 per pair.  I've been patiently waiting, cringing every time I grabbed a massive cheap doorknob, for my opportunity to check the stock at Caravati's.  I knew they'd have what I needed.  And they did:

 

Blurry iPhone photo.  Anyway, check out all. those. brass. doorknobs.  We picked up two pairs: one for the second bedroom and one for the bathroom.  The bathroom set is especially cool-- brass on one side (for the hallway, where it'll match all the other brass knobs) and chrome on the other (so it will coordinate with the chrome fixtures in the bathroom).  We were also on the hunt for a brass mailbox, and we struck out.  But while we were there we decided to poke around a little, and these were a few of my favorite things:

Safety first, right?  Next up: a blurry photo of some clawfoot tubs.  Pardon the terrible photography-- we stopped at Legends for lunch on the way to Caravati's.  I had a beer.  Sue me-- day drinking is what the South is all about.

Ooh!  Multicolored forties porcelain toilet-paper holders!  Too bad we don't need these.  I really like the Tiffany-blue ones:

Vintage toilets vintage toilets vintagetoiletsvintagetoiletsvintagetoilets:

And a rack of multicolored toilet-tank lids in the stairwell because why not:

Corbels and corbels all day long.  I love 'em:

One tenth of one percent of the windows you can find in Caravati's:

More windows?  Right this way:

So we'll be heading back to Oregon with some very heavy vintage Virginia doorknobs in our luggage.  I'm always thrilled when a little bit of Virginia makes it out to the West Coast, but I'm never happy when my baggage is overweight.  Cross your fingers for us.  I'm shooting for 49.9lbs.

*Do forgive me for paraphrasing John Mayer.  He is both a racist and a no-talent asshole.  His songs and dress sense are aggressively awful, and I will say ten Our Fathers and one hundred Hail Marys tonight as penance for the title of this post.

Sofa King Nervous*

As we've previously established in this space, I am a cheap, cheap person.  Which is why I changed my mind and went for the $1200 sofa instead of the $1800 one.  Yes, I've always wanted a chaise-- a reversible one, no less-- but in the end, I did the responsible thing.

So here's what I'm getting:

I could be wrong, but I think that's the fabric I'm getting too.  Anyhow, I think it's a nice mix of traditional and modern, and if I want to stick my legs out in front of me (and I do, I do, a thousand times yes) I can just use my dhurrie ottoman.  Maybe a few years from now I'll suddenly not have to care about money anymore and I can buy the reversible-chaise sofa of my dreams, but for now I'll have to settle for the fiscally responsible option.  Especially considering I already feel incredibly guilty for spending money on something we don't strictly need.

Delivery should be mid-August.  I'll keep you posted... 
 

*Don't pronounce this out loud if you're at work and/or have small children and/or if you are my grandmother.