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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.
My steampunk heart goes tick-tock at the sight of this clawfoot laptop.
It’s based on a Hewlett-Packard ZT1000 and can boot either Ubuntu Linux or Windows XP. To start it, you turn the clock-winding key in the lower left part of the picture.
The creator is Richard R. Nagy (yay for Hungarian roots).
He also builds custom keyboards, like this hexy beauty.
These pieces have got to be one of the coolest uses of old materials ever. I imagine I might be building such things myself if I weren’t so engaged in shoring up my dear abode.
Check out this great Chicago Reader article about a fabulous idea—deconstructing old houses and selling the parts at a reasonable price rather than demolishing them and trashing all the beautiful old parts. Sure, I’d rather old houses were being restored rather than removed in any way. But if someone’s going to get rid of a house for some stupid reason, it’s certainly better that the old-growth wood and wavy glass get saved.
On the way to work the other day, I noticed a neighbor scraping paint off the old windows on the fabulous bungalow nearby. Scraping paint! As in fixing the old windows—not ripping them out. It fills me with glee, this sight that is so very rare these days.
I hope this helps inspire our other neighbors to renovate rather than trash.
Apparently shellac was the first layer on the upstairs doors. And they slapped it on right over the hardware. Hmmmmm.
Only 1.5 more to strip but 5 more to refinish. But it’s worth it. Love that old wood.
For those of you feeling a little overwhelmed by life and house work, I recommend the story of a clever couple in Akron, Ohio.
Be sure to look at the photos. They restored the bathroom instead of ripping it out—hooray!
Happy holidays to everyone with some inspiration to preserve old house details like these from my parents’ 1915 house in Cleveland:
I’m pretty sure this is why I was obsessed with having marble in my bathroom renovation here.
