Penelope the towel wench

Our third floor bath seems to have taken a decidedly nautical theme.  Meet Penelope.  She holds towels.

I'm not entirely sure if she's a Victorian original, but she's solid brass, weighs a ton and came out of an old house (Van Dykes Restorers has the reproduction of her here).  She's somewhat grotesque to be perfectly honest, and reminds me of a ship's figurehead - which is obviously fitting given our predilection for pirates.  Paired with an antique double wall-hung livery sink (with original brass fuller taps), navy paint, and a brass and nickel mirror with medicine cabinet (perhaps from a barbershop?) and we have the beginnings of a theme. 

I think this shower curtain will help...

From Urban Outfitters

Now here's to hoping we can find this stuff when we actually start working on this bathroom years from now, because right now, this is the space in question...

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...

she wears snow well

The weather is finally looking up, so keep your fingers crossed that the ice releases it's evil grip off our roof and gutters soon.

We've managed to stay busy though, doing something that we finally have time to work on, the third floor! When we bought the house, there wasn't a single room up there that you couldn't see through to the outside in multiple spots, the ceilings included. After living in a sieve the first winter and spring I now have a new-found fear of rain, snow and thunderstorms. These leaks weren't bucket leaks; they were put plastic sheeting on the floors and try to direct the torrents down the stairs leaks. After restoring the slate roof and copper built-in gutters we no longer have "skylights," but there is ample daylight coming through the raccoon sized holes in the soffits and eaves, which paired with the collapsed plaster walls lets in quite the howling gale. Repairing the last 5 spaces (the landing, three bedrooms and a bathroom, the fourth bedroom is already mostly done) consists of cleaning out the rooms, removing the painted wallpaper from the walls and ceiling, repairing the eaves and plaster, and doing the floors. All of the windows are in dire shape, but that's a project for a (much) warmer day. Since my hands are killing me from scraping for the past week (5 hours a day, and one room is done!), how about I just post some before pictures?

 

Bear in mind these before photos were taken from strategic angles in order not to terrify our parents (yes, these are the rooms' "good sides"). I don't know why it didn't occur to me to ever take more, but maybe someday the memories will fade without the photographic evidence to remind me.

clear a path

Getting things done would be so much easier if cool stuff didn't keep getting in the way...

We haven't had a week like this in a while. A house of antique wavy glass windows (including three stained glass transoms with a single textured purple glass pane), a tramp art parlor set, some estate sale nonsense and a rather fantastic chandelier, with extra shades... Also, since we had a trailer rented, we'd be remiss if we didn't buy blueboard too. Real work posts to come soon, you know, once we clear a path through the house again...

the doctor will see you now

So I watched Day After tomorrow to learn how to prepare for this whole polar vortex thing - apparently survival depends on how many books you have around to burn. I guess I'll be fine.

But really Pittsburgh, -15 with -26 windchill, a bit ridiculous me thinks (as has been this whole winter in fact). Incidentally, none of the foams and caulks and adhesives I need to use to seal up the gaping holes in the third floor eaves can be used in temps below 40, so, so much for beginning to repair the plaster (i.e. my house is cold folks, really, really cold, and my gas bill? We just won't talk about that here). While I'm ranting, I tried to convince my dogs to read my Facebook feed, filled with kindhearted warnings about pets being outside, frostbite and putting booties on your furry friends. My fuzzy gremlins however made me chase them around the yard for 30 minutes in my bathrobe and slippers to get them back inside (-26 folks!), they certainly don't seem to care one iota about my frostbite - typical vain, stubborn shibas, they didn't even put booties on me...

At the moment, blogland is filled with posts about New Years resolutions and such, but I never really even made a Christmas post, so behold, my 10 foot tall Christmas tree (noble fir, like every year), and if you want to be cool like me you'll cover it in rocks and glass owls. Oh, you didn't have a grandfather who was a Navajo-style jeweler and rock-hound with thousands of sliced stones, or an Aunt who sends you stunning glass owls every year (and makes you gorgeous tree skirts)? I'm sad for you...

obligatory stealth cat shot

Fun with curly tailed dogs

As for New Years, as an awesome friend said, "we rung the shit out of it." Indeed, the schoolbell got quite a workout at midnight, as did our firepit and liquor cabinet. And in a pleasant turn of events, not only did our illegal fireworks (bought when we drove through North Carolina) not get us arrested or burn the house down, they caught the attention of some fantastic neighbors who moved in over the summer (the ones I met in my paint splattered glory up on the scaffold, ahhh summer). I suppose an evening of non-stop Christopher Walken impressions and Cards Against Humanity until 6 in the morning means we hit it off just fine!

I have started finishing the last of the kitchen cabinet painting, i.e. the operating table is fully loaded.

It was going fine until I went to reinstall the worst of the doors today. It had looked like someone switched the direction the door opened, and had patched the original screw holes badly. As it turns out, at some point in it's 80 year lifespan the door must have been broken off both directions it had been installed, leaving sheared off screws in the holes. I broke 4 of my impossible to match antique screws and my favorite drill bit before I wised up. The door's installed, but I need to extract the broken screw shafts and do some patching. So very not happy...

the offending door is on the bottom left

The cabinets should be done by the weekend, so one less thing on the kitchen to-do list, and even better will be getting all the doors out of the way and the hardware installed before it gets lost for good!