We’re mostly just catching up with all the ends that loosened themselves this year. Don’t expect much more will happen housewise until the next 3-day weekend of next year. Happy winter to all!
We did eventually install the finishing-touch trim, the stuff to hide the gap between the restored beadboard ceiling and the brick or wood vertical surfaces. We lucked out in finding a molding that has a little bit of detail to avoid it looking like we just slapped a 2×4 up there, and that also is tall enough to hide what we needed to hide (I don’t know if anyone else can install beadboard so that each piece is perfectly aligned with the one next to it, but we weren’t able to. And, o course, the roof structure is a little wobbly jawed so it wouldn’t matter if we had managed perfect alignment).
You can just see from the dangling extension cord and timer that we also installed an outlet up high in the roof structure. My manly cohort fashioned the hidey trim to embrace the outlet. Probably in the future someone will be annoyed that we chopped up “that lovely old trim” to install an outlet. But we didn’t! The outlet was there first.
Now if I can just find something appropriate to replace that lousy steel door and plywood where there used to be a side light.
In the last shot you can see the evidence that this porch used to have much wider posts—columns in fact, if an old-house friend of mine is right. If only I had seen this years ago when I bought these posts after deciding to ditch the 60s ironwork posts and railings. Ah well, maybe I’ll get around to re-installing something more resembling the originals.
In year three of the porch project, we have achieved restoration of the old woodwork long hidden by aluminum cladding (see that stuff on the eaves? it’s going next) and also—kaboom—lighting!
We still need to put up wood trim fat enough to hide the transition between brick and beadboard—and that there’s a transition between common brick and show brick that is apparent at the ceiling line. And actually, I’m wondering whether we should scale down the light bulbs a few dozen watts. Granted, I’m used to using the Braille method of finding the keyhole, but this is now the brightest light on the block! Either way, I’m so pleased with how it all pulls together.
Coming soon to a porch near … me:
After we get the beadboard ceiling back up, anyway. Seems it’s going to be a two-person job. Mr. Carpenter Cohort started working on it alone yesterday and says with the warping of the old boards, there’s no way to make it a tidy job without an extra hand. And my extra hand isn’t free for several days.
We spent most of the day on scaffolding, taking advantage of a rare day without rain to try to finish the porch-eave project. We did really well, managing to move the rig, scrape, scrape, scrape, patch, sand, clean and get the primer coat on before, uh … well not before dark. Before we collapsed! And I set myself on fire only twice—you don’t want to know how I stopped the glowing paint globs from burning through my pants. Since kids started coming around in costume a couple hours before sunset, we set a monster-head-full of peanut butter pumpkins and cups on the steps and encouraged the costumed to take one (a naive directive to children faced with a bowl of plenty) since we were busy up high. Unfortunately, we had to miss a Halloween party to get all this done, but since we shirked work so much in September we were on the spot to make up for it. Tomorrow we need to get two coats of paint on and get 3 pieces of crown molding on, caulk a bit and pull down that scaffolding since it is partially on our neighbors’ driveway. We have fabulous neighbors. I knew they might be freaked out when we set up infringing on their space (though cars can still get by and park there) since they’d just seen the rig out front for about three weeks. So I put up a sign saying we’d have it down Monday night. We’re really shooting for Sunday night. Cross appendages, and Happy Halloween, everybody!
For those of you with mid-century houses or habits, I offer this Roper with Spectro-Matic burner control. I became aware of this when a reader contacted me wondering what the S on one knob meant. To tell the truth, I’m still not sure, though I’m fairly certain it’s the broiler knob. But check out those color-coded knobs!
It’s interesting that Roper decided to highlight the simmer feature with this model because as far as I know, all Roper burners from this era and earlier have a center-simmer feature, when the inside ring of fire stays lit while the outside one extinguishes.
The brochure in this gallery was sighted at eBay, and the stove pics are from the reader in Westchester, Illinois.
Also springing from this era is the Roper Space-Master.
While I continue to not update this blog (tuckered out by trying to finish the summer projects, now that winter is creeping forth), I’d like to share this supercool Halloween embellishment courtesy of Warren Letson at the Old House Web forums. Yet another reason to hang out with that fine bunch of folks.
On the underside of the front porch roof, after we’d removed the beadboard for easier scraping and repainting, I found a nearly-century-old scrawl in pencil:
It says “no good.” Well, I’ve got to disagree with you there, sir. See, I’ve got time on my side. I am hindsight, here in 2009. That board is damn fine. Your handiwork lives on, and I thank you.
We ended up buying scaffolding to restore the front porch eaves instead of renting it because renting for a month would have cost more than buying! In between working, I shot this pic of the brickwork, also showing the roof eaves that are going to be losing that aluminum sometime next year (cross appendages).
People who told me horseradish isn’t invasive, I don’t believe you. Not that I’m complaining, the leaves are lush and lovely, and the root is fiery-licious. Ask me again what I think in 5 years when it’s invaded not only the corner but the whole garden.
