Today's Wow did I just see that?

First we all go out and buy a ton of toilet paper, now we’re all watching birds! Lol.

 

You don’t want to know how much I fit this profile.

 

The funny thing is, we were all just discussing birds the other day, without realizing that most of the country is doing the exact same thing! I guess everybody else is also caught up on binge-watching all their shows, and now they’re looking in their yards for entertainment! Lol

 

Nah, I am only half way through "Justified" and "Deadwood has not been touched yet. Only 36 more hinges and 2 door handles to swap out in between the binge watching.

 

Oh yeah, you did mention that you were watching “Justified” (great show, BTW) and changing out those doorknobs. You know, when we women get dissatisfied with things, and start having our husbands do those kinds of chores around the house, you might find yourself living in a NEW place before you know what hit you! That’s usually how that goes. Lol.

 

That was barely dodged. Her mother is early dementia and refuses to move out of her house. I offered to buy a piece of property with a log cabin for us and one for her if she would move, but she did not commit and I let it slide. I believe the tract is now under contract so that offer is gone. I hate moving anyway and having so much tied up in two houses not knowing how the market would go on the current house, since I would not sell it until after we got everything moved to the new house might not bring the current value of the house. One house in the neighborhood sold for close to what I would ask for ours, but it was in the works before the lock down. Of course, she has mentioned that my dog would love a bigger property to roam and since I bought her a car to ride to work with me I might want to think about moving to something with acreage.

 

Only 20 of these and 60 hinges to match.....

 

Buying a property with two houses sounds like a good idea, especially if your mother-in-law needs some additional help down the road. That’s my husband’s dream - to get a larger property and have our son, and his maybe his brother build their houses on it, and while it sounds nice, I have a feeling that I’d be cooking for everybody. Not sure about that. And yes, it’s hard to tell what’s going to happen to the housing market in the coming months. I think that here in NC, we should be okay, but who knows. The good thing about selling a house around here is that they tend to sell quickly because of high demand, and don’t stay on the market very long - unless the homeowner has painted the interior weird colors, or maybe slapped some hideous wallpaper on every wall that might send most buyers running. Having acreage is nice unless it’s all grass that has to mowed all the time. Of course, you could always get a few goats to do the job!

 

Beautiful doorknob! Where’d she find that?

 

She told me what she envisioned and I did a lot of searching to find them. There are some specialty antique hardware suppliers and a couple had modern knobs with the more antique look. Our old ones were the standard brass used when the house was built. I wanted to get one with an emblem in the center, but 20 interior knobs made me wonder if the emblem was really worth that much more. I am expecting new bathroom fixtures next. We retained them when we remodeled the two master suites because they were in such good shape and I could not find a suitable replacement. Bathroom fixtures that have extension hoses like in the kitchen. Replacing the shower with a steam shower was the best thing except for the water temperature control that eventually failed and getting a replacement was a bear. Everything had changed voltage between the install and the failure.

 

Goats can be hard to contain, but I did look at tractors a little. My son bought one for his place so I just looked at all of his brochures. We had discussed a cabin on the farm in Virginia but my son thought I might shoot one of the folks. He had been after the property I bought and tried to close my access. One of the neighbors was so tickled at the situation that he gave me another shorter right of was across his property. Since I bought the land to have enough range to sight in my long range rifles, I was always armed when I went. I had bought a commercial greenhouse and a travel trailer for my son to live in while he built his tree farm and he knew all of the stories the neighbors told better than I did. One of the "good ole boys" stole a few thousand dollars worth of timber from my property when he had his logged. He liked to try to intimidate folks by shooting his AR, which is not that loud compared to the noise my .300 Weatherby makes. Kind of shut that down for a while, but I finally just listened to my son and sold it after my closest neighbor sold out and went into a nursing home and things got interesting. One half of his property became a landing strip for a pilot and the house went to two gay goat farmers. The goat farmers were eventually run off by the prejudice in the area. at least my son got his greenhouse and is setting up half of it on his farm, as he is not looking at commercial growing and a 150 structure is a little much.

 

Well, she did a nice job finding the right one. They remind me of a similar doorknob that we had at our first house, which was a little cottage built back in the 1930s. The doorknobs were in very bad shape when we moved in, and we thought about replacing them, but the design was so unusual, especially the Art Deco etching on the back plates, that I ended up getting them replated in an antique brass finish. I think it was around $5 per doorknob, so it turned out to be a good value to keep the originals. For such a small cottage, (750 sf) I could never get over the kind of details and craftsmanship that was put into that little house when it was built in 1939 - 8” wide, coved crown moldings, hardwood floors throughout, a wired recessed niche for a telephone, and the prettiest handcrafted tiles surrounding the fireplace. It even had a little laundry chute inside of the tiny bathroom closet, that led to the basement below. But my favorite thing was a little speakeasy window on the front door that you could open whenever a stranger came to the door, without having to open the door itself. And I don’t know how many postal carriers I scared half to death by opening that thing while they were delivering the mail on the front porch! Lol. These days, I’m dealing with a major “Pinterest Fail” in that I followed some questionable instructions on Pinterest last year and then sanded down and spray painted all of our brass doorknobs with an oiled bronze color paint, but now the paint is all wearing off and looking pretty bad. Probably should have left them alone in the first place!

 

I decided to paint a decorative design in the plastic screen door, against my long standing hate of painting, which involved the special spray paint that adheres to said plastic. The design was curved so masking it off requires a lot of sections of paint, but it was something I had done before and it went well. Until the paint went on and the tape was to come off. There were some small places where there was bleed that looked messy. Since the door was plastic I went with a wheel on the cordless Dremel to remove it. The Dremel "spread" the paint instead of removing it. I finally had to use the multi-tool to sand it down and a magic eraser to remove the paint tint. It just reinforced my dislike of all things painting.

The second floor master bath has a dark wall paper that is now being mentioned as something which could be replaced to make it brighter. The only thing I hate worse than painting is taking down wall paper. I have countered with a coat of light paint, but there is a chair rail border of wall paper that would be visible. Maybe if I just remove the border I can convince her to do paint. I know how it will go though. I tried the same thing on the downstairs master bath and would up doing a two color tile with a "hat rack" border with the tile turned 45 degrees. If you have connections that can watch or you visit the tile store often you can pick up pallet sales at a very reasonable price. This is tile that is left over from a builder or over order of some type. I picked up a couple of pallets of travertine that went in the living room, the half bath on the first floor, and the fireplace hearths in the sunroom and family room.

 

Some friends bought a 1920's Tudor in Durham (the house next door was later featured on "House Hunters") for what they thought was a low ball price to start a negotiation. The seller took the offer and ran. After a few years and a few hundred thousand in renovations it was a beautiful house. it had a small room off the living room for the phone, a dumbwaiter between the kitchen, the basement, and the second floor, a curved staircase in the entry going to the second floor ..... and no AC, windows that were drafty in winter, and the "upgraded electrical" that fed the original fuse box from the 400 amp service panel. They became friends with the plaster guys, the custom millwork guys, the guys that replaced the copper gutters and the downspouts about three times when they were stolen.When they finally sold it they almost recouped their renovation investment ...not including the initial purchase price. But, it was a beautiful house. The bar in the old servants quarters in the basement could not have the brick walls sandblasted so she painted each and every brick to the shade and pattern she wanted. She was an artist and did a wonderful job, but it had to have been a huge pain to do. It is very easy to put more into an old house with character than can be recovered in a sale, especially if the house is listed in the historic register.

 

Battery died just as I finished the first floor..... except for the closet in the laundry room where I forgot the knob and hinges. It hit me that I have some 21 brass pass and bed/bath knobs, 2 exterior keyed to the same key, and 6 dummy knobs for closet French doors that I was going to donate to Habitat. If you want any or all of them I can give them to you and any extra hinges you might like too.

 

We’ve always done our own painting, and found that Frog Tape works well to make a nice clean paint line. Paint is the cheapest thing anybody can do to improve their place.

 

Ive never heard of a “hat rack” border before, but I have stripped wallpaper which is the worst job ever, especially when you’ve got 5 or 6 layers to steam off. Ugh. Each wallpaper design is like uncovering history, and it makes you wonder how pink calla lillies on a gray background ever became something you’d want to see on your walls every day, like the paper I found in that cottage we had. Hopefully, your house is newer, so you won’t need to do all the steaming and scraping like we had to do in that old cottage.

 

Yep, I have had landscapers come up and try to get me to hire them, but landscaping is my escape I do not have to think about work or anything other than preparing a hole to plant, laying out a dry stack planter, or just cutting grass. Sometimes work does intrude but generally after I have cleared my head and some solution to a problem pops up. That is better than the 3-4 AM wake up solution that is generally the alternative. I hate hiring a contractor because I wind up going behind them and they do not take the pains that I do. The only problem is that I know where the mistakes are and even if nobody else can see them, I know. Then all of the neighbors pick up on that and before I know it I am doing odd bits of repair for them. The neighbor on one side just dragged me out yesterday with an electrical problem in his house. The GFI breaker in one bathroom had tripped and knocked out the power to all three. His wife's night light had gone out and he could not get it to turn back on. They are from Lebanon so his English is not that good and she has issues that impact her ability to speak clearly now. It took just a few minutes tracking down the outlet to get them back to where they needed to be.

The woman across the street was quoted $150.00 to swap out her microwave over the stove. I did it in about 15 minutes and discovered the last installer had not connected the vent to the microwave like it was designed. So, she got it cheaper and better. I got a thank you, a hug and two Alleve because that thing was heavier than I expected.

 

Nope, I think the honey-do list is closing out. She just asked me to make an appointment to see a log cabin about the size of this house, but on 27 acres with a pond. I imagine I will be making up an offer in the coming days instead. I am not looking forward to any move as there are some big pieces of furniture to get out. I bought her a log bed made by an artist out of Chapel Hill that takes two men and a boy to carry the foot board and it is in the second floor master. I hope the movers do not do any damage getting that monster downstairs. Maybe someone will make an offer before I do and I can by pass that for a while.