My cat is a shitty mouser

Husband: Hon, our cat is a shitty mouser
Me: What makes you say that?
Husband: Well, come and look at this.

I came out into the hall and there, on the stair, was a mouse. FIVE FEET AWAY was the cat....biting his own tail.
I caught the mouse in a glass vase:





My husband held the cat up over the vase. "This is a mouse," he said, "your MORTAL ENEMY." The cat looked innocently up at the ceiling. "You are an obligate carnivore!" my husband insisted. The cat licked his nose.

So disappointing. The mouse was set free in the woods. No mice were harmed, even by my cat, in the making of this blog post.

Wallpaper from....okay, fine it's awesome.

Not all wallpaper is from Hell. The stuff here is so beautiful I'm considering putting up a frieze above the molding in the dining room.

After ordering the samples and putting them up to look at them in various lights, it's been narrowed down to these two:




They are much prettier in the room. Each is 16" high, and matches the wood of the house perfectly. Once whichever one is up, it will look something like this:

The Bat has Left the Building

This last weekend it got so cold in the sunroom that the water we left out for the hibernating bat froze. So, the bat absconded in the night, leaving a bat-shaped hole in our hearts.

However, I have a picture of the cat that will soon be joining us to console you with. We will be trading one furry bitey creature for a furless (hopefully less bitey) one.

The Bat Cave, er, Sunroom

Yes, this picture is rightways up. We have a bat hibernating in our sunroom. I'm not sure what to do about this...

It first appeared over this last weekend, and ensconced itself thoroughly in the Southwest corner of the sunroom. I have no idea how it got in. Then it stayed there, all day....AND ALL NIGHT.

This prompted a conversation wherein we first thought it was dead, so my brave husband went downstairs with a shovel to dispose of its body safely. Then it wriggled.

So it wasn't dead. I then suggested it was sick, and should be taken to the Vet.

Him: What?
Me: To the Vet!
Him: How?
Me: Well, you get a shoebox, and you scoop the bat into it, and you put the lid on, and you take it to the Vet, and you say...
Him: "In this box I have a very angry sick bat."
Me: Something like that.
Him: And you expect the Vet to do what exactly?
Me: Maybe give it a bat sedative.
Him: Like Bativan? Halbat?
Me: *laughing* and hydrate it!
Him: With a tiny IV?
Me: YES
Him: And admit it to the BICU?
Me: *doubled over laughing* YES DAMMIT!

Finally we wondered why it wasn't with its fellow flying fuzzies, and looked it up on the mighty internet, only to discover that brown bats like the ones in our area hibernate during the winter. They do not eat, or really wake, until Spring. They like to hibernate in abandoned houses (!) and hollowed out trees (!!).

I kind of resent the implication that our house is a hollowed out tree, but I see it. Especially since the sunroom is not well heated at this moment.

I still don't know what to do about this.

Stickley, Secrets and Snow

We are pretty fortunate to live fairly near one of the few places that sells Stickley showroom furniture "as-is", and bought this insane table. It weighs 450 pounds, which is actually one of my favorite things about it.


Prior to the arrival of the table I had stalled out majorly on the reno. The fading light of the winter and general inertia had set in, and all I really wanted to do was drink in the bath and then go to sleep.
However, the table totally galvanized me. We painted the room it was in, which was the last of the main rooms still to have the handicap of a dark color.
As you can see, it makes a big difference. It took the room from needing many more standing lights, and perhaps some track lighting, to bright and comfortable.

Yes, I know, it's another pic of someone painting, but you can see what I mean about the color. I know you can.


And after, even in the dark of winter, a pleasant room:


So, to celebrate my husband made me a drink called the "Night Marcher". Just the ingredients in a row are pretty intimidating:


But the finished product is quite pretty!


Then one of the former owners stopped by, and just wanted to see the house. Not the people we bought it from, but the people before that, who lived here for a long time. She was walking around and then suddenly she stopped and said "You know about the hidden panel, right?"
We did not!
But now we do!
It's so awesome to have a hidden panel. I always wanted a house with secret places, and so this is just too cool:


And then this morning the first real snow fell:


Eventful weekend. I am so super excited. Even after shoveling a s**tload of snow.
Here is the Night Marcher, for those of you who may be interested:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/02/dining/024rrex.html

My Kitchen iz teh Awesum!

Finally it is done!

I am standing at my beautiful granite countertop listening to 21st century breakdown on the kitchen stereo! Steaks are cooking on the range. Broccoli au gratin is cooling to edible temp from the oven.

It's all good.

Some craftsman pulls:


The copper kettle looking pretty on the silver range (yes! it cooks with gas!):


The double doors onto the deck:


The granite (note: reflection of the winter trees outside in the glossy stone):


More craftsman pulls:



As you can see we made the decision not to try to look like a restoration since none of the original stuff was there anyway, but rather to look modern in a way that was respectful of the house's age and dignity.

What is hard to tell:
The molding is all new, there was almost none around the doors previously.
The ceiling is flat now, not popcorn.
The floor, which is a lighter wood than the rest of the house, has been totally refinished.

I think it worked out great. We had a few small setbacks. Okay, and some bigger setbacks, but it was totally worth it.

Mmmmm.... and now for the steak.
http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Beef-Steaks-with-Peppercorn-Sauce-2371

More wallpaper from Hell

I have blogged a little about the wallpaper in this house, but the fact is I've kind of been avoiding it.

After the fiasco with the laundry room was over I haven't wanted to brave wallpaper removal again, although there is much of it, and much left to be done.

For reasons I don't fully understand this little town has a real problem with wallpaper. Kind of like the problem California has with medflies, or Australia has with bunny rabbits.

At some point the women in this town go crazy. Possibly after the kids leave for college they have no other way of dealing with empty nest syndrome or possibly after the loss of their spouse they hallucinate from grief, I don't know. But they go a little crazy, and they decide, "You know what'll cheer me up? Putting up some WALLPAPER!". Then up it goes.

I know it sounds sexist to assume, but I just have a hard time picturing any man I have ever known choosing any of this wallpaper.

When we looked at houses this was a trend. Crazy wallpaper in every room, often with matching drapes, and matching fabric on the couch, and once even matching fabric over the speakers. And when I say matching, I don't mean in a similar color, I mean exactly matching.

One had sparkles, one had blue fuzz, one had a raised motif of unicorns, almost all of them also had some floral elements.

This house had a little bit less of that, but it still had some. The dining room in particular had a dark red wallpaper with gigantic gold pears on it. It was high quality stuff, looked really expensive, and made the room dark like a prehistoric cave.


Shortly after we moved in my Mom-in-Law came to help us make the place more habitable and took on the unenviable job of removing wallpaper. She has a whole system for taking down wallpaper, which worked a lot better than my previous system. My previous system being a combination of scraping and foul language. I think she took down maybe 4 times the amount I did in 1/4 the time, and what she does basically is after using the little device which pokes holes in the wallpaper she coats it with really hot water and then lets it sit, but not too long maybe 15 minutes. Then it comes off more easily.

My Mother-In-Law assessing the task before her:


The room after:


What I want to point out is that even though the latter picture was taken on a rainy day in October and the former was taken on a sunny day in July, the painted room is still lighter than the wallpapered one. I love how the light colors really call attention to the woodwork! It looks white but it's actually kind of cream.

Now we just have to paint all the ceilings, so that the ceiling is not darker than the walls. Oh, and take down the wallpaper in the rest of the rooms. Do I feel like getting out the scraper today? Hm, maybe later.

New Showerhead

This is the Moen 21777. So named because it has seven patterns of water distribution. I now have two of them, one in each bathroom with a shower hookup.

We decided on this one after an extensive 1/2 hour of research during which we looked up some amazon reviews and consumer reports rankings.

However, some people did a lot more research than that.

Note the following amazon.com review excerpt for a different head advertising "hydrokinetic" action:

"I have tried over 10 showerheads recently, and this one has the 2nd best pressure of all of them. (The "best" one stings too much.) I highly recommend this showerhead. It is the one I plan to keep using. Sadly, it does not come in a handheld version."

Now that is a man (yes, it does seem to be a man) who knows his showerheads.

Well, THERE's your problem...

So the heating and cooling guy came to check out the furnace. In case you missed the previous installment I'll just say that this is the same furnace that spewed a large amount of moldy smelling air the first time we turned it on.

Given the nature of the upkeep on the house to date, I expected something to be seriously wrong with it. So, I called in some experts. They said it would be $100 to inspect and clean the furnace itself..... and $500 to clean the ducts.

My heart sank. Another $500, there it goes. But if we have no choice, it goes on the credit card, along with everything else we have had no choice about in the past 2 1/2 months.

Then when they said they had a record of an inspection order from 1991 which had been canceled I was even more peeved. I expected that no upkeep had been done on the furnace since 1959, the same time they last redid the kitchen.

However, when the guy got here and, several hours later, finished the inspection I found out several things.

1. The furnace is from 1994. So it looks like it wasn't inspected, got used anyway, failed 3 years later and had to be replaced. Woohoo! (I mean, for me.)
2. The ducts would cost much less to clean than I was quoted, because they only reach to the 1st floor. The other floors have radiant heat.
3. The ducts do not need to be cleaned right now !?!
4. The cause of the smell is......

The filter! So he replaced it! And now the heat smells okay!

And to show how awful the filter was, I put the replacement one and the old one side by side:



Just wow.

200 lbs of WHAT?

To feel like I was still doing something in the rest of the house while the kitchen was being torn apart, I called a chimney sweep.

YES, they exist! Sadly he had no Cockney accent, but he did tell me that he removed 200lbs of dead animals and composted leaves from EACH chimney in the house. And that I was lucky that he doesn't charge by the hour. When he left he looked like a real chimney sweep- covered in soot up to both elbows.

It's a good thing too, because we'll need those fires blazing if we can't afford to clean out the heating ducts.

It was just cold enough to turn them on the other day and a large amount of moldy smelling air wafted up out of the registers. I called the heating and AC company and they said they had a record of our house under a different name, but that although they had been called to do the service in 1991 the appointment was canceled.

How much slack do you think is appropriate to cut the people who lived here before? They had four teenage kids. Okay, maybe some slack.

Top Ten Reasons to Totally Gut My Kitchen

A lot has happened since the last post, which I'm posting about only now partly because I have started work and therefore have less time for DIY. The great thing about work is that I have more money for DIbyhiringotherpeople!

The biggest project is the kitchen. Which was gutted totally on the first of the month. For a while it looked truly surreal, then for a long time nothing appeared to happen but workmen (and workwomen!) were making lots of loud noises.

Then there were cabinets. Soon, maybe, there will be countertops? I live in hope.

It was necessary to do something about the kitchen for the following top ten reasons:
10. The appliances were state of the art...for 1959. Also broken.
9. The door out onto the deck was being locked with a broken hockey stick.
8. Turning on the vent hood produced smells from the same era as the appliances.
7. The bottom oven made lots of smoke but no heat.
6. The top oven had two settings- off and broil. If you wanted the bottom of your food warm you were SOL.
5. The fridge was full of mold.
4. The ceiling was popcorn (yes, in this house!)
3. The floor had water damage.
2. The garbage disposal made a sound like a Red Hot Chili Peppers drum solo.
and the number one reason to redo the kitchen.....
1. Everyone who started a tour of the house in the kitchen did a double take when the door to the living room opened. Every time.

Here are some pics:

Freezer mold:


Totally gutted:


And then there were cabinets!

You say it's my birthday....

We had the first actual party in the house, and it was excellent. Still not fully set up, so I decided to call it a BYOB party- not booze, we have plenty of that. Bring your own BED.

People brought air mattresses, and everyone had a big empty room. We got the door repainted, just in time, and the knocker installed. Happily the color turned out really nice when it dried, since there was a while before it dried where it looked pink.

My husband at work:


The red door:


Nice knocker:



It was wonderful to have people in the house having a good time. Also one guest dog, who is so cute!

Sleepy puppy:



The highlights by far were a wonderful dinner including BBQ Salmon and fresh local corn, make your own sundaes with cake mix-in (yeah, the busted 1959 oven burned the whole top off the cake, but it worked out), and FIRE DANCING!

Gorgeous Genevieve spinning fire on her knees on our back deck:


Drea looking serene in a wheel of flame:


Drea and Genevieve together:


A multi-armed Goddess of Fire:


One of the happiest birthdays I've ever had. Especially since the age at which you are supposed to stop caring about your birthdays is 21, and that was ,um, a few years ago. Fire spinning will be happening at many future parties, that is certain.