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.

What Do You Call A Guy Who Hangs Out Against The Wall?*

Pardon the spotty posting-- we've been on the road.  But I did squeeze in a few quick photos of some progress in the dining room before we skipped town, and I thought I'd save them for a rainy day.  And today's rainy, so here goes:

 From the fireplace hearth:

From the front door:

From the kitchen, a better shot of what's actually hanging in there:

 

Top left and bottom right: two pieces of wrapping paper I bought for $5 each in a Portland gift shop-- the top left is a reproduction of a vintage tourism poster for New York (a special place for us because we've spent a fair bit of time there, got engaged there, etc etc etc), and the bottom right is a map of Paris with drawings of all the monuments drawn on in their respective locations (we have no connection whatsoever to Paris, other than the fact that Ray got mugged in Montmartre and I once got stuck in De Gaulle airport for like 15 hours, but the poster is pretty and it cost $5).  They're in IKEA Ribba frames ($24.99 apiece, so the total investment for these two big pieces of art was $60).  Bottom left: a painting I painted of a lighthouse near our place on the Chesapeake Bay framed in wood my dad salvaged from the deck of an old Navy ship.  Top right: A funky vintage map of the Lewis and Clark trail, found pre-framed at the local antiques shop for $29.  

I'm not quite done yet-- under the Paris map I plan on putting a little bench we can use for extra seating and accessorizing it with a stack of books and perhaps a vintage oscillating fan since we don't have air conditioning.  On the hunt for the right bench even as we speak!

*Art.

One Step Forward

Remember the other day when I posted this photo of the new screen door?

 

As proud as I was of the door itself, I kept thinking that there was something (a few things) really sad about this photo.  Suddenly it hit me: ugly, washed-out-looking, unfinished, undefined-looking concrete stairs.  I decided to do something about them.

Behold:

 

Maybe we should do a side-by-side?

 

 It's Behr Semi-Transparent Concrete Stain in Loden-- it cost me about $25 for an entire gallon (of which I used, like, 1/4 cup on this project).  I brushed it on, first in one direction and then in the other to get a sort of crosshatch finish. Nice, right?

Next up: new (not ridiculously tiny) mailbox, bigger and brighter doormat, landscaping, window boxes, etc etc etc etc.

Mock-up

I've done it.  I've bitten the bullet and ordered the midcentury-looking reversible-chaise sofa I've been eyeing / drooling over for two years:

Sort of.

You see, I ordered it, but clubfurniture.com will not start manufacturing until I give the okay.  Yesterday I received a ton of fabric swatches (about 1" x 3") from them-- which is all well and good, except I thought I was going to be receiving a larger (like, at least 6" square) swatch of the fabric I'd ordered for my sofa (which-- and this may surprise you-- is not the awful teal shown above).  So I called them and asked them to send me that instead.  Because hello, people-- fifty 1" x 3" swatches in a whole bunch of crazy colors entirely unrelated to what I want isn't going to help me make this decision.

Anyhow, I was checking out their website to see if I could find a picture of a sofa-- any sofa-- in the fabric of my choice, I discovered that I could save around $600 if I just give up on the reversible chaise idea.  I found this sofa:

Which I think is probably upholstered in the fabric I'm ordering.  And then I was all like, wow-- I really like that sofa.  And it's $550 cheaper than the reversible chaise one.  And I'm not really at that point in my life where the extra $550 doesn't really matter-- in fact, I sincerely doubt that I will ever arrive at that point.  But I have always wanted a sofa with a chaise, because (for reasons that are entirely obscure even to me) the idea of stretching my legs out in front of me while still facing the television is, like, the height of my aspirations in the world.  

Since it's not too late for me to change my order, I have a couple of days (until my swatch gets here for approval) to decide.  I called my mom for advice (full disclosure: I do this daily.  I'm thirty-one.  Sorry Mom!) and she suggested moving the furniture around the room to sort of mock up how it'd be with a chaise so I could decide how much I really loved it that way.  I may have mentioned this before, but my mom is brilliant, y'all.

Behold my mock-up:

 

I used my West Elm dhurrie ottoman, placed about 10" to the right of my current sofa (since the new sofa will be about 10" wider) help me visualize the whole situation.  A few more photos:

The whole room as seen from the dining room:

Most of the room as seen from the front door: 

 

Where's the yellow corduroy chair that is totally getting reupholstered this summer, you ask?  Here:

I like it there.  

Actually, I like this whole arrangement a lot-- it feels like it makes sense.  But as you may have noticed in some of these photos, the side tables on either end of the couch create a bit of an issue:

When you walk into the front door, quite a bit of your immediate view is a big ol' lampshade pretty much right at eye-height.  I thought I'd solve this problem by moving the lamps to a long, narrow console table to be placed behind this sofa-- I've been lusting after this not-cheap shaker drop-leaf one:

-- but this morning I tried making a mock-up and putting the lamps roughly where they'd be if I got the table above, and they look exceedingly weird silhouetted against the big picture window.  Like, just bad.  So bad I couldn't even bring myself to take a picture.

And I'm definitely not down with getting smaller / shorter lamps-- my grandmother made those mismatched fire-extinguisher lamps, and together they comprise one of The Coolest Things I Own.  They couldn't possibly go anywhere else in the house.  Those are dedicated living-room lamps if ever I've see such a thing. 

So what to do?  To chaise or not to chaise?  What's the answer to the lamps / table(s) conundrum?  How great would the chaise sofa look with a round coffee table like this vintage Lane Acclaim one?  

Help meeeeeeee!

Big Screen

When we bought our house, it kind of had a screen door.

Kind of, you say?  

Yes, kind of (per this photo from August 2012):

So, yeah.  Not cute.  It was 1) unpainted, 2) torn, 3) incorrectly installed-- see the big silver hinges screwed into the door molding?  And it didn't have a pneumatic closer (obviously), so if you wanted to hold it open, you had to do it like this:

 

Yes, what you're looking at is the old screen door TIED to the front of the house.  

My dad removed it for us (along with the dead bush that was tied to the house on the other side of the door) about a week after we closed on the house.  He tried to buy a new hinge for it and reattach it properly, but by that point both the door and the door frame had been damaged beyond repair.  There was pretty much no way to make that door work.

So we went nearly a year without a screen door-- not really a big deal except that none of the other windows in our living room / dining room area can be opened.  So when it's hot out, it's also pretty stuffy in the living area.  After a bunch of warm, beautiful days left us sweating profusely as we watched TV, on Saturday we finally decided to head over to the Home Depot and see what they had in the way of screen doors.  

Our minds were totally blown when we walked in and encountered the perfect door for $148: already the exact same color as our front door (how in the hell does that happen?), precisely the right size, in stock, etc.  And it promised an easy install (which we were not stupid enough to fall for-- we know by now that there's no such thing as an easy install).  So we handed over a $50 gift card we had left over from Christmas and coughed up the remaining $98.  Feeling cautiously optimistic, we headed home and started the install.

And really, it was easy!  Well, it would have been easy except for three tiny little things:

FIRST SNAFU: While we were hacksawing the frame pieces to fit into our door opening, our hacksaw blade snapped in half.  That left us to find the other (broken) hacksaw and change out the broken blade for the whole one.  If you've ever tried to change a hacksaw blade, you know you have to fit two microscopic pins through two microscopic holes on either end of the tiny blade, then quickly jam the whole thing into the hacksaw frame before the pins fall out.  Time lost due to the broken blade: 15min

SECOND SNAFU: We were supposed to drill the holes for the door handle with a 5/16" drill bit.  We didn't have one, but we had a 1/4" bit.  We were much too lazy to go all the way back to the Home Depot after a drill bit just 1/16" bigger than the one we already had, so we decided to make it work.  We eventually succeeded.  Let's just leave it at that.  Time lost due to our stubbornness: 30min

THIRD SNAFU:  During the drill-bit-too-small-for-the-job disaster, I somehow managed to drop the teeny-tiny spring mechanism that fits inside the door handle.  The spring bounced, and we could. not. find. it. anywhere.  This culminated in me sweeping the entire driveway and then sifting through the dirt with my fingers.  I finally found it.  Time lost due to my clumsiness: 1hr.

But now we have a functional, attractive screen door that lets the fresh air in!  And it doesn't have to be tied to our house!  Hurray!

Pardon the disgusting iPhone photo as always.  Anyway, as you can see, we have lots of work do to on the landscaping front.  We've done a ton to the front of the house (installed house numbers, chopped the 10ft hedge that obscured the house from the street, painted the mullions in the big bay window, painted the front door, weeded, etc etc) but we know we have miles to go before we sleep.  More on that in a soon-to-come post.

In the meantime, meet my new friends on the back deck:

Juniper spiral topiaries!  On the hunt for the right pots.  Onward and [outdoors]ward!