well, hello there...

My melancholy mood. brought on by nearing the end of scraping the wallpaper from all these old walls, was relieved by one last surprise today.

Waiting to make my acquaintance on one of the last walls I've worked on was a self-portrait of a little girl, initialed M.K.  I can only guess that this is Mildred Kelly, only child of our house's original owner, John G. Kelly, and future wife of Robert King (of the King Estate, Baywood).  She hasn't been alone on the wall all these years though, there are other profiles and initials on this section, although who they might be I don't know.

A.S.

E.S.

Cousins, workers, maids?  I have no idea.  Hopefully we'll encounter more names as our research continues.  For now I just hope we can save this section of wall before it crumbles away.
 

the drawings are on the small wall to the right of the chimney wall

I'm grateful for this discovery, in this room, as this room was home to another huge drawing on the plaster which was destroyed by our electrician before I stripped the wallpaper - the only evidence being the outer edges of sketched hills on either side of a gaping hole.  What it could have been will haunt me.  

Of course, this isn't the only art we've found in the house.  Several rooms have sported sketches of room outlines and molding profiles.  The best however, and one in a series of strange coincidences that gave rise to our house's name, is found near the floor of the guest bedroom.

snails, spirals and shibas

We're still here, still, kicking, still chasing baby bunnies.

Our much adored shiba, Cool Hand Luke, went downhill fast after that last post - ending up in full blown congestive heart failure by the following morning.  Bad enough that he had to be carried in, and the vet warned us he would likely not make it out of the office.  Every damn test was negative, except for the x-ray that revealed hip dysplasia and a rather large kidney stone...  But neither of those explained what was wrong.  We never did find out what was going on, other than it appearing that he may have had a blockage.  We took him home after he had been re-hydrated via iv, and stayed with him 24/7 for the next several days until he was able to eat again and perked up.  Just as we thought we were out of the woods he relapsed and we were back to square one.  We're repeating the same meds as before, and again he seems be to recovering - still not eating, but he at least attempted to capture a rabbit today.  We think this may be the beginning of some sort of bowel failure, and hopefully keeping him on the prescription diet will keep him healthy for the time being.

So, we haven't done much other than pet the dog and stay with him in the air-conditioned bedroom.  We did pick up that mystery couch (settle, bench?) I mentioned, and it's enormous loveliness hasn't left the entry room.  It's a curious piece of furniture, and looks as though it may have been a built-in at one point judging by how it's pieced together and has been reinforced.  It's Art Nouveau, with some Arts and Crafts influence in the carving, and looks to be solid mahogany with fruitwood inlays. I'd guess that it's pre 1910, and almost definitely European.  It has many flaws, but then again, it has satyrs, so I can forgive it anything...

Art Nouveau inlaid fauns

antique couch?  settle?  bench?  

I only just now noticed these are snails.  how utterly marvelous...

I think we've established I'm obsessed with spirals

If you couldn't tell, that's not our house.  It's been too frantic around here to even think about trying to clean enough to take photos.  But if there are any secret Art Nouveau aficionados out there, I'd love to know what you think, a piece like this definitely had a maker, and I'd love to put a name to their beautiful work.  

five feet long and luminous

Soul Coughing really pinned my mood down tonight...

A piece of furniture I loved is missing from our old entry room, and I'm absolutely ecstatic about it!  The giddiness is twofold.  About a month ago I found a piece of furniture I adored (no holds barred obsessed with).  The seller didn't reply to my e-mail and I assumed it had sold.  A few days ago it appeared again for a much higher price, but the seller was kind enough to agree to sell it for the previous price.  This in itself is a good thing, but to subsidize the purchase I decided to sell a lovely old Victorian wingback I had.  It needed work, and with so many projects around here it was languishing and taking up space.

"I'm gonna be a star!"

A day after I posted it someone e-mailed to buy it, but this was no ordinary buyer.  As it turns out he was a buyer for a production company, and would be buying it for use it an upcoming movie (yes, I know what and who, but would rather not risk ruining a good thing).  He and the set decorator went though every room taking pictures of every detail, cataloging things they may be interested in renting for future projects.  It was so lovely to meet people for once that loved my worn and dilapidated antiques as much as I do.  Even better, our house has been added to the list of possible filming locations for the company.

Now I'm not one who has ever dreamed of being a movie star, but seeing some of the objects we've rescued, let alone our home, on the silver screen would be utterly thrilling.  I'm pretty sure this is how pretty young starlets feel when they book their first embarrassing pharmaceutical commercial.

It's not all rainbows and kittens around here though, the red dog is sick and in pain, and Daphne won't shift into anything but second.  Nothing's ever simple...

baubles

We've been keeping the purse strings pretty tight around here while saving for the wrap-around porch build.  Although we still religiously check craigslist and estate sales, things like ebay and salvage yards have been strictly off-limits.  Luckily, I could start a salvage yard of my own out of my basement, and given it's state of utter chaos, wandering around down there has become a bit of an adventure.  Typically, this amounts to finding most everything I need if I just root around down there long enough - and knowing what I have somewhat determines which new projects I start.  However, sometimes my memory fails me, forcing me to actually buy pretties like these...

Antique screen door hinges, I'm a sucker for the spirals...

We had a bit of a Memorial Day party here, which prompted me to begin the EPIC painting of the house by starting with the back porch.  And since huge projects are never quite huge enough, I decided I'd begin fixing up the door, transom and screen door while I was at it - under the mistaken impression that I would have everything I needed to gussy it up somewhere in the house (really, just a crowbar made a huge difference).  Well, I had most everything, but it turns out the antique screen door hinges I had didn't match one another and were lacking in the aesthetics department.  Ebay was more than happy to come to the rescue...

One purchase however led to another, and now this month I've already bought hinges, sikaflex, a new dripless ergonomic caulk gun, wheels for my scaffolding, two new tires, and some moldings.  Ouch.  Luckily, I didn't have to buy these...

antique brass screen door knob and latch

All this, and the screen door still will never fit in the opening properly.  Oh well...

And once the floodgates opened, there was nothing to stop me from buying this lovely doormat when some wonderful person posted it on Pinterest (but why oh why doesn't anyone make nice mats for double doors?).

He never learned the art of being welcoming...

some light demolition

This latest visit by my MIL would have been the first time she was here without some sort of construction project happening, and since that's clearly unacceptable, I found some light demolition to do...

before we bought the house - the room that showed us there was hope

Of the existing fireplaces (two are missing altogether), this is the only one that had been plugged up.  We'd been curious to know if it had decorative firebacks like our others, but we feared we'd open it up to find a gaping maw of soot and collapsed bricks.  

The homasote panels or whatever they were put up a surprising fight...

But we won as usual, in the process liberating the Indian Chief.

Must be a member of the Sphinx tribe (you can see he lost his nose)

Everything else was just clean up really, a few bricks, several pounds of soot, some good slates and lots of newspapers...

WWI and...

patent cures...

1914, some of the oldest we've found in the house, suggesting that this fireplace was closed up surprisingly early - before the house had even been split up.

The back piece reads Bissell & co., a local Pittsburg (without the H), foundry and fireplace manufacturer.

Bissell & co.  not particularly legible

As for the grate, well, I knew that was there all along.  Mr. Kelly and I have a very similar sense of aesthetics, griffins, sparrows, flowers and gargoyles.

 

here there be dragons...

No satyrs in the house though, so I had to bring those in on my own.

All that's left to do is to finish cleaning up the fuzzy overspray from when they tried to insulate the homasote panel and the fireplace, too bad it only occurred to me after the fact that it's probably asbestos.

 

the undiscovered country

In our three years in the house I've made a point of never fully cleaning out the shelves in our basement. They were to be our last great hope, our rainy day fund, the last of the discoveries after finishing the rest of the house. For a person like me, living in a house like this, facing the fact that at some point there will be nothing left to find is a terrible thing - I relish the possibility and decrepitude far more than any finished room, which is perhaps why there are far more befores than afters on this blog.

no, this wasn't staged...

However, for work to proceed, sacrifices have to be made - in this case, for the electrician to work on the wiring mentioned a few posts ago, things from the sacred shelves had to be moved out of harms way. The shelves in questions are in the first room of the basement. This room includes such charming features as the "keep out room," (created in part from what we think are boards from our butlers pantry), suckers and stems from the now removed sassafras tree that refuses to go down without a drawn out battle, and a hefty helping of cobwebs and compost from decaying who-knows-what on the shelves.

The green thing is actually an antique oak pie
safe, I found part of the door frame while cleaning

On the other hand, the shelves did not disappoint. There were pieces of gas light sconces, 20 original swing arm curtain rods of different designs (no mounting brackets though, anyone know where I can get those for a reasonable price, metal shop maybe?) a copper engraving plate with the name of someone who lived nearby in the 20's, many antique canning jars, and various controlled substances - my favorite of which was a full antique bottle of chloroform.

Yes, my house plays the part of the creepy mansion to a T... While we're on that creepy note, how about this?

Yes, that would be a pinned and labeled bug collection from 1965 in a cigar box. It had been on the top shelf, and the evil monkey had just come down to see how the cleaning was going. I asked him to clear off the shelf so I didn't have to set up the ladder (he's exceptionally tall, perhaps the whole reason I keep him around). He reaches up, produces this box, peaks inside, and excitedly closes it and tries to hand it to me saying "this is so cool." To which I reply "it's a box of spiders isn't it?" I have ESP. The box has now been returned to the (much cleaner) top shelf, where it will continue to horrify owners for decades/centuries to come. Also returned to the top shelf, all the chemicals, and the hilariously labeled Fine Dry Wine from Futryk (the owners of the house from the 50's until us) Vineyards of Edgewood PA. Strange that our friends didn't want to come over for a wine tasting.....

Perhaps the most miraculous find however I have the evil monkey to thank for. Also on the top shelf, laying in the dirt in the corner (blending into the shelf well enough that I would never have noticed it while cleaning from the ground) was a piece of glass.

The glass, and also a pirate ship I stole from my cousin's
pirate themed Bar Mitzvah - it's labeled Queen Anne's Revenge,
so I clearly had to have it.

Yes, a piece of purple rippled stained glass that most likely came from one of our five missing stained glass windows (pieces of which we've been finding buried in the back yard). That folks is not the wondrous part though. The wondrous part is that the glass is an exact match to the three 5 foot long transoms I was given when I bought all those wavy glass windows a few months back.

The universe is a pretty cool place....

This is slightly better, I promise

And yes, the view from our garret remains the same, skeletal trees and mud, oh spring...

what's black and blue and sooty all over?

That'd be me folks.

Now I know house restoration is rumored to be quite the glamorous pastime, but let me tell you, I don't have enough makeup in this house to cover-up the bruises.  These aren't accidentally hitting myself with a hammer bruises, these are deliberately crawling into places I don't fit bruises.  While the goal of closing up the third floor suggests that the holes will get smaller, the fact is most needed to get a lot bigger first.

Our third floor is quite spacious, with two large bedrooms, two smaller bedrooms and a nice sized bath, hallway and linen cabinet.  Although all the rooms have 9 foot ceilings, they are still tucked in under the eaves which gives them charming sloped ceilings.  Under these slopes however, the darkness lurks.  Rot, squirrel, mouse and raccoon nests (and droppings naturally), destructive stop gap repairs, moldy insulation, and a century of soot and cobwebs and silver cream pitchers.

Let this be a lesson to you that when you're sitting on the floor scraping wallpaper with construction cat in your lap and the inexplicable urge to stick your hand in a hole and take a picture overwhelms you, listen, for it is the will of the House Gods.  This little creamer must have been in a box in the attic that was knocked over, and it rolled down the sloped ceiling into the knee wall next to the chimney.  The most amusing part of the find was the mouse nest that was inside of it, complete with evidence that said mouse had a bit of a nibble of his new abode. Actually, that's a lie.  The most hilarious part is that while I made the hole big enough to get in, it wasn't quite big enough to get back out again.  Naturally the trained monkey was several states away at the time, and I nearly resorted to sending an SOS to a friend across the street who has our key (I had, in a stroke of lazy brilliance brought my phone in with me since I was too euphoric to go looking for a flashlight)!  Some momentary panic, and some forceful rearranging of ribs, and I managed to extricate myself.  Sadly, it's not the first time, nor will it be the last.

the hole in question

Lucifer Sam - the construction cat

Other than that it's been a week of cleaning and clearing.  We've already thrown away about 20 bags of scraped wallpaper, old insulation, rotted wood and plaster etc...

see those plywood shelves in the dormer?

they didn't put up much of a fight...

The worst though has been pulling out the nests - 3 contractor bags full - the smell and dust and reaching blind into deep dark places had been some of the worst work I've done in recent memory.  Also, I've yet to find a single stick of wood up here that hasn't been clawed or chewed into pleasing (and no longer structural) curves.

Almost clean!

We've insulated and spray foamed the larger gaps, reinforced the rot and squirrel damage, and done some electrical work.  Assuming we can get the blueboard up the stairs we should begin the process of putting things back together soonishly...