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It’s been a while since I put up full frontal pics of the house, so here’s the latest. Here you can see the two faces—both sides with that vivid red show brick. The house was built like this because it was the first one on this side of the street, so its side face was visible from the main street that crosses ours. Now there is a house to the left of it, put in by the daughter of one of this house’s owners in 1961. Thankfully, she preserved a healthy distance between this house and the smaller one she had built. The one to the right moved in in 1926.
We took these so I could ponder changing the color of the eaves (which really need a paint job; you can’t see that because there’s still aluminum up on the front) and the window trim (which is eggplant color—not historically appropriate and a whimsical addition in my jubilation at removing their aluminum straitjacket … but it still makes me happy even though it needs yearly touch-ups due to our lousy paint prep and the dark shade). I feel like the white parts blare, and I’m tempted to tint the eaves and window trim a light green the shade of weathered copper. I’ve seen some lovely old houses with this sort of red/yellow/aged copper combo. But I’m wary of adding more colors to this palette I’ve already been poking at with the light grey porch parts and window sills. However, the original roof (or the last 3 layers before we got the tear-off) was green. The red and yellow bricks carry such a saturated hue that I don’t think other strong color is needed; yet at the same time I’m having a complete block on the notion of painting the window trim white, as it originally was—even though it would likely be more durable than tinted paint. The white you see around the windows now is the backs of the sashes and the triple-track storm windows. I’d like to replace the storm windows with something more subtle, but I don’t think that’ll be in the budget for quite some time.
In these last two shots you can see the odd, partial-octagon bumpout (remember, there’s a square-sided bumpout on the other side). Also, there’s the natural-again wood around the lousy steel front door, including the blocks we had replicated. The ipe front porch and cedar lattice are still in the process of greying out to match the porch posts.
I still don’t think that porch roof looks right. But we’ll have to dive into the phase 3 of the porch project before I can peek at the original brickwork and see whether it matches this profile. If anyone has any ideas about my color conundrum, I’d like to hear your thoughts.
The New York Times writes about the “Spite House,” an intriguing 1830 house in Alexandria, Va., that is only 7 feet wide. Be sure to check out the slideshow.
I can see the charm in such a modest abode, particularly since it’s still got some outside space. It would certainly make housekeeping more manageable!
Last night while my brain was blasted out by a super-stressy business day, my laptop and I retreated to the bed and I stumbled into a delightful vortex of historical data sites. One of the places I found was Chicago History in Postcards—an addictive diversion that catalogs vintage postcards in 22 categories, including restaurants, retail, entertainment, factories and churches by denomination. I have long been enamored of the old, hand-tinted postcards, and of course I’m curious about old views of my adopted town. And this site is bursting at the seams with both. Only a few of the ones that caught my fancy:
Chicago central aerial beacon—with biplane!
“One name, one aim, won fame”—James B. Clow & Sons. “The handsomest plumbing show room in the world.”
“Chemist and assistants—Franco-American Hygienic Co. 183 Michigan Boulevard, Chicago”
Writing on the side says: “8/15/08 Are you in need of any of your preparations at this time?”
Truck Drivers’ Social Club , 1736 S. Wabash. I will meet you there.
Como Inn. “Where smart people meet,” with an arrow pointing to a jug of wine. My kind of smart people.
New Year greetings 1912-style
Best wishes to all my old-house accomplices. I am going to spend the day putting the final coat of paint on the fixed plaster at the top of the living room walls (what will be above the picture rail) so we can commence with tin ceiling installation soon! First I need to bottle up the leftover glogg, though, from last night’s celebration.
As all old-house people know, acquiring the house often means inheriting previous owners’ leftovers (or, in some cases, heaps of stuff). My house came with a nifty little collection of vintage gift boxes. I get a kick out of making use of these. And since it’s that time of year again, I thought I’d share some shots.
Here are an old Sears box and a couple with unknown provenance but excellent graphics.
reindeer … ice skating … Santa
mistletoe … angel … snowman
E.J. Korvette—one of the first discount stores. It also says Fifth Avenue; I wonder if this is from a NYC trip or a closer store.
King Size Men’s Shop—I can’t find any reference to this online.
And finally Doris, which I think is still in Ukrainian Village in Chicago, around the corner from where I used to live. I love the store motto: “Conversation clothes.” I fear that my clothes are slightly antisocial.
Those of you who have been following along know that certain parts of our front porch were scrapped or chopped down. Well, after trying and failing to find a local woodworking shop that would make reproductions for us, we tried a Michigan outfit, J.J Wohlfert’s. They were, somewhat sadly, faster and easier to work with than the locals. And they made us our 2 missing blocks for only $30 each and in only a few weeks. Here are front and side shots of our savaged old trim and the new reproductions.
I’m pretty pleased. The bottom portions are not as long as the originals, and I’m a little concerned about that. But we sent drawings of the original dimensions, and I didn’t double-check them, so there could be many reasons why the repros are not completely exact. And frankly, evolution is a respectable part of old-house renovation. If these end up looking appropriate in their new home, then everything is good even if they are not perfect to millimeters.
It’s been all about tying up loose ends around here lately, so there hasn’t been anything interesting to post. Except that I fell across this picture site the other night—Skarabej-Online Museum of Old Family Photographs. These are photos found in flea markets, attics, basements or junk heaps, mostly in the Czech Republic, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and now a few even from the U.S. Digging through, one finds family expressions, exuberance, awkwardness, preciousness—and vintage fixtures! Do feast:
If you’ve ever wondered what “Bubbly Creek, with Chicken Standing on Crusted Sewage, 1911″ looked like, you’ve got to check out the Encyclopedia of Chicago. I ran into it today while innocently searching for a bus route number and proceeded to spend way too much time lolling about looking up maps and photos and endless tidbits of historical data. I highly recommend this resource. And I should point out that the photo I linked to above is one of the least intriguing items on the site—I just couldn’t resist the title.
I’m sunk in a spate of touch-up projects right now. So I will attempt to entertain with some pics I took 3 years ago (wooooosh—yes, that was Chronos winging away) at the Vrooman Mansion in Bloomington, Illinois. We’ll start with fixtures that feature lovely old wood.
Copper-lined tank:
And a little something to stoke my push-button obsession:
I think this might be the mother of all toilet seats:
And check out the tank. I’ve got pics of the inside. It’s a little gruesome, but just in a rusty way.
Then there’s the wood-rim tub:
