The Last Bedroom

4 July 2020

Happy Fourth everybody! This past month has been slow for me in terms of working on the house. Projects for customers and friends have taken priority. Not that I'm complaining. It's nice to have a change of pace, and projects that have a clear beginning and end.

Amy keeps moving ahead though. After she finished the parlor, I put in a light fixture and we started moving furniture in.

Some long time friends and customers of mine had started to think about downsizing their household. They were a little worried about the fate of one of their family heirloom pieces, a Chicago Loreto pump organ. After Amy and I embarked on this journey, they thought that if we were interested, our house would make a great home for their pump organ. Our answer of course was yes! They have been waiting patiently until we were ready with a place for it, and now it's in our parlor. Thank you Roger and Rosemary for your gift. We think it's perfect for our home and will always appreciate it.

They even had some music books with it, including one that, hopefully, will let us teach ourselves to play a few simple tunes.

Amy's next project is the upstairs back bedroom. There are some significant issues with the framing and and the window in the north wall, but those will have to be addressed when we rebuild the south east porch.

Before the bathroom addition in the early 1900's, there used to be a window where this door is now. The window was higher, so they had covered up the gap with an extra piece of trim. I removed the extra trim and filled the hole with bead board.

The window on the north wall is covered with plastic, and a curtain, because there are no window sashes there, or window sill, or stool. All rotted away some time ago.

In order to make some of the other rooms in the house look nice and consistent, we salvaged some of the rosettes from this room. I put in place holders (painted green) until we got to work on this room.

Amy cleaned everything off, scraped away loose paint, primed and painted the ceiling, walls, and trim. I got to choose the colors for the front bedroom, so this one is hers.

The floor is next. It has had paint on it for a long time. You can just see it in this photo where it's not quite worn away. Amy's plan is to paint it again.

There are always potential hazards one faces when one is out and about in the world, this year in particular. One of those hazards impacted me this week when some sort of bolt got stuck in Otis' (our truck) driver side front tire. While driving home on the interstate, that bolt blew out of the tire, subsequently allowing all the air in the tire to escape, in the span of about 30 seconds. I pulled over and drove another mile or so to get to my exit, and a safer area to effect repairs. This is what was left of the tire.

Ah well, the tread depth was near the end of its useful life anyway. Time for a new set of tires.