Actual house work!

Yes, this weekend the weather cooperated! No rain! It looked like this on Saturday:

Downtown Ridge Spring on a fairly quiet Saturday morning....

So, since we had no more excuses and the yard work was briefly caught up, we decided in the afternoon to tackle a job we'd bought the supplies for 8 months ago! When we bought the house, the attached one car garage did not have a garage door. One had been there at some point in the house's history, but like most things with an old house, who knew when and why it had been removed. In it's place was this:

Pardon our mess. As part of the process, we cleaned out the garage a bit!

 

 

What you see is three (well,technically 2 1/3!) sheets of barn board that were framed out, nailed up, lined with insulation, then had plastic taped over that. While effective in keeping out the weather, I believe that for what they spent in time and supplies to do this, they could have bought and installed a new garage door and been better off. This is at the start of the demolition process that involved Vince and his trusty 10 pound sledge hammer, known affectionately as "The Motivator" removing all this in record time. I don't have a shot available of the area before we cleaned and began demo! Sorry!

 

The inside looked like this...

 

Sorry for the dark photo. This garage was added in 1960 or so and is just a basic framed out wood construction garage with one single light bulb that does not shed much light at all. Our goal is to insulate the entire garage, drywall and paint it, and add fluorescent lighting. One step at a time! You can see the tracks for the previous garage door here. Looking at them, it appears that someone smacked into the door and damaged the tracks. We're assuming that's why the door was removed initially. 

Basically, all we got done was the demo part before I started dinner and we stopped for the night. Working inside the garage makes for a very hot, close job so we take it in short stints! I will post more photos as we go along with the install.

 

In other news, I piddled this weekend and worked on my bird plate project for my dining room wall. Nope, it's still not finished but it is closer! I need to get some plate hangers that I trust will not drop my ironstone to the floor and break it and I need to remove two immense bolts that are currently located in the area where I want to hang the plates. 

I saw this idea on another blog and on Pinterest and I LOVED it! Hers was done much better then mine but you get the idea! The file box there in the background is part of the whole clean-up-the-garage-so-we-can-install-the-new-door carnival of fun.

 

I monogrammed one glass just to see if I could do it. 3 more to do! This one did not turn out perfectly but it was my first shot using glass etching cream so it was a learning experience! Why, yes, I do have the attention span of a yellow lab! And Pinterest is evil! Just kidding!

The "before" and "after"...well, technically, the "after" then the "before"!

 

And I dragged this chair out of storage to stare at and debate whether I want to strip it completely and repaint it with milk paint or leave it as is. I don't mind chippy but this has reached a level of chippiness where there is barely any paint left on the bottom and legs! On the good side, the chair is nice and strong and sturdy and sits well so I want to incorporate it into my kitchen. I love it's lines. The hose there was my weapon of choice to remove the HUGE spider that was apparently using the chair in it's kitchen! I also washed off approximately 32 pounds of pine pollen...which is about 4 years worth. Pine pollen is the bane of the South in the Spring!

 

I have a ton of furniture to use milk paint on for practice purposes. I need space and time for these projects which, right now, I don't have. One day, I will take an entire week off and work on these things....that week will occur in approximately 2052.

 

This is Hobbes. He's helping. He's guarding the porch....or the chair....or something. Looks an awful lot like a nap to me, but he thinks he works very hard so we just go with it! He showed up as a gangly skinny 6 month old kitten last June 1 (our first night in this house) and stayed on. As you can tell, skinny he did not stay! His nickname is Jabba the Hobbes. He is on a diet....but don't tell him that!

I'll leave you with a shot from Juniper at lunchtime on Saturday. It is a lovely, unique place and well worth the drive to Ridge Spring. I recommend the Triple Decker sandwich!

Aren't they pretty?

 Tomorrow: We're off the the Edgefield Archives for some more research fun!