Friday, December 26, 2014

miscellany...

 Given my long absence, today will be a bit of a photo dump.  I noticed that my stats actually went up in the last week, so I'm assuming people were checking in on me, and that a failure to post would result in a search party appearing on my doorstep.

The reason for my disappearance (other than a very needy puppy); the tedium of painting our plaster moldings in the current entry room (future library).  Given that our moldings are quite simple, I was shocked at how impossibly long they took to paint.  The cove seems to have been gilded and wallpapered in its past lives, and currently sports a thick uneven coat of joint compound and white paint.  While I know it should have been fully scraped, I just didn't have it in me, especially given that there is a layer of drywall over the original plaster ceiling.  The drywall was extremely well done, and we'll most likely leave it alone until we're ready to do the final restoration of the room - rebuilding the lost built-ins and wallpapering.  I'm hopeful that the drywall is hiding original wallpaper or stenciling, and as long as I believe that, the drywall doesn't stand a chance of surviving us finishing this space.  For now, several coats of gold paint are in the cove, with a brick red picking out some of the bullnosed sections, and the ceiling has been painted a pale gloss gold.



The scaffolding remained a feature of the room longer than I care to admit as I figured out one unassailable truth - decorating a 10 1/2 foot Christmas tree becomes infinitely easier when one has jolly yellow scaffolding to do it from.



In other news, this is the most perfect tree that has ever been grown, and I don't know that we'll ever find it's equal...  Also, in just a couple of weeks our dear little Maugrim has doubled in size (now 30 pounds, and taller than I'd care to admit).  At this rate of exponential growth I fear for the future of the planet, as such growth must be some sort of Grey Goo scenario.


PRESENTS!!!!!!

And for the rest, let me present: Christmas decorations, part of a huge parlor set we recently obtained, the enormous framed antique photo of our house that we've been waiting to hang for almost 3 years, and the finished painted crown (and partially finished woodwork).



 

 




And while I had fully intended to take photos of our Hanukkah party (actually HAMukkah, because we just can't find it in ourselves to ever be normal), we had too much fun to bother with pictures.  Our lonely menorah is all that remains...