Baby Sweet Toes

Well baby sweet potatoes! Butters mom and sister came up to visit in the spring and got lost taking some back roads and came across this amazing nursery on a Mennonite farm, an amazing begonia was purchased as a house warming gift from mom and sis, and a promise of "I'll show you where this place is the next time I visit". The next time mom came up she took me over to the nursery and boy was i impressed, flowers, vegetable every where and so affordable! I have a soft spot for sweet potato vines, and I found one I had never seen before and had to have it. The lovely Mennonite lady told me that that plant was a real sweet potato vine, and I thought ok all I want is the vine. Thinking all along there was no way I was going to be able to grow sweet poatos in a hanging basket, well sure enough I was tiding the yard up for the cold weather and took a peek in the basket and sure enough there they were....

Jack is coming to visit

And Frost is his last name. The previous owners of the house, had many kooky ideas, the corks in the floor, broken windows stuffed with rags, and of course duct tape on broken window panes. Slowly I'll be going around the house replacing these panes one by one. There are a lot of panes that need to be replaced. So these are old fashion windows that have weights that help them slide open and closed and run inside on tracks. I watched my dad take the window out and re-glaze while growing up but never had to tackle it myself till now. I found a lot of really great how-to's online from This Old House to Domino Magazine(!) Its rather easy actually, a glazing putty is used and these cool little triangles keep the glass in place. A quick coat of paint and the window is good as new, but the window sill is another thing.....

During

I have lots of projects that are in the 'during' stage as in not a before and not quite an after. Small things have popped up here and there like working! But here are some shots of my studio/office. Its during because I'm still making shelves and finally unpacking. The usual of scraping wallpaper, spackling, priming, painting, cleaning has happened. A special window project was tackled which you will see very soon! ( I promise this time)

One Ton Tomato

I was singing that song while I was picking the first crop from the kitchen garden. A few tomatoes and some mutant cornichons, Lets hope the rest of the crop is bit more umm cornichon like.

As you can see the kitchen garden is quite healthy.....the tomato plants are HUGE!

$1

Butter has a problem with thrift stores, she visits them all too often. And has a new dollar rule, meaning it has to cost a dollar or less in order to come home.....well most of the time. This pair of birds came home the other day....

Butter hurry up!

Butter's sisters are coming to visit....so progress on her room is going full steam! Check back soon for the final pictures and the saga as to why it took 4 months!

Illinois in the Living Room

Same story wallpaper, wallpaper, wallpaper covered in paint. One side of the living room has its walls beautiful and bare, although the ceiling was a little saggy, and the plaster buttons didn't really do the job so down it came. You see the ceiling is a hybrid of old plaster and umm we aren't really sure, but in our novice opinions it looks like cement, and boy is it stuck up there. But we needed to fill the hole with a piece of drywall ordinarily you would cut so it looks like a big square or rectangle, but this one ended up looking like Illinois.


So Thread climbed up and traced the shape of the hole onto a piece of paper, so we could transfer it to the drywall. Butter cautioned her to remember to flip the drawing since the white part of the drywall should be showing........Thread said yeah yeah I got it!



Well Butter went to install this piece by herself when no else was around to help, and being that we only have one giant ladder it would have been tough to have both people up that high, since the ceilings are twelve and a half feet high.So Butter was trying to fit the drywall into place and couldn't figure it until...she realized that Thread never flipped the drawing! So Butter found a cardboard tube, cut to to the right length and used that to hold the drywall in place while she screwed it into the wall.




We are off to get the Trim paint this morning .....so check back for peek into the living room!

Kitchen Garden

Well its hot, and the garden is growing. Butter wanted to have a garden for things needed in the kitchen, herbs and vegetables. But we have rabbits and other small critters that would eat the vegetables! So a raised bed had to be made. Using the left over wood from the built in closets that were torn down on the first day of home ownership, a box was made. Using some L brackets and screws.There was this really horrible space between the two side porches full of moss and a gross plant we didnt know the name of. We kept one plant to help hide ugly porch and put the garden bed in the other space. The tomatoes, basil, peppers, rosemary, are all doing great, and the cornichons are very happy here on the side porch as well!

We still heart NY

Thread and Butter are both taking a break this week from the Royal.....we are catching up with friends eating ethnic food whenever we can and getting our city fix! Check back on Monday for more Royal updates!

Thanks to Milton Glaser for a really great logo!

log

We live in a college town, all three traffic lights worth of a college town. The last two weeks have been a challenge with the students having no idea of a 'inside' voice when walking down to the local watering hole to blow off steam from studying. Well they are now gone! The town is quiet, with no traffic and simply divine. In the wake of the exodus the students just throw things away they don't have time to deal with properly. So while taking Oscar out for his walk this weekend Butter had spied a few choice pieces. The small love seat with ball and claw feet was still there once she got Thread rousted to go collect the treasure. Once that was dropped off we decided to drive over to another large grouping of student housing; where, we as students at this same college ventured to ONCE to party. We went once and vowed to never go back ever again. Well we went back to this Levittown like development and it was a ghost town, no treasures in the garbage well except for Mr. Log here, who will be joining us in the living room just soon enough.

Now We're Cooking (No, Really!)

Thread went away for the weekend and when she came back, this is the kitchen she came home to:



Hooray! Now this looks MUCH more like a functioning kitchen.
Special thanks to Mama Butter and Andy for help moving the stove downstairs. Extra special thanks to........Matthew and Lara, who were great neighbors from Brooklyn. Butter got schooled on how to hang a super heavy shelf on a plaster wall...it's much easier than she thought.

Now of course there are lots of small things that need to be done, such as placement of accouterments that we will only know the best place once we begin cooking! So there will be a few more after pictures once we are fully up and cooking.

Re-Glazing a Funky Old Sink

Years and years of a slowly dripping faucet has left its mark via a giant rust divot. The water eroded through the porcelain and began to attack the cast iron. Thread loves the sink, but Butter isn't so sure, mostly because she thinks she can find another one floating around in a back alley or the Amish junk pile. But then again we like to let sleeping dogs lie around here. To re- do the plumbing would be a nightmare, and not in the budget as of yet. So reglazing here we come.



Step one seal off the rust. Brush all of the loose stuff off and clean it as best you can, next get some Bondo, and start patching the hole. A few thin layers later, start sanding with a bit of water and 220 grit wet/dry sandpaper till smooth. Bondo is pretty great to sand, but stinky! So wear a respirator and keep those windows open.






After smooth, its time for the re-glazing kit. Following the direction of cleaning cleaning, and letting dry completely!!! Here's the problem the faucet still drips. ( we haven't quite mastered plumbing yet) So Butter got all McGyver and came up with this:

The tubing attached with hose clamps diverts the water allowing for a completely dry surface.




Then the Re-Glazing starts. Thin layer after thin layer of this super stinky epoxy stuff. I hate to admit, but I don't think this really solved the problem the way I thought it would. That's ok right? Its a sink that works without rust, that one day will most likely be professionally re-glazed or replaced.

Batty

Butter is a city girl, growing up in Philadelphia, not much wildlife aside from the rabid raccoon every now and then. Thread is a bit more accustomed to wildlife growing up in the pine barrens of South Jersey. Actually I think Thread is getting a little tired of Butter constantly pointing out hawks flying high when we are driving to the Home Depot. But one night getting ready to get some Mexican take out, Thread was like, "Ummm, whats that?" Butter, having the case of the 'crangys', said, "Nothing lets go." But then she saw it too. A bat, the biggest she'd ever seen, flying around the side porch. His name is Bart, and we will build him a house nowhere near a door.

Warthog

We battled the Warthog, and the faucet ( galvanized pipes!) and made a pact not to get dirty this weekend but rather unpack boxes, do some laundry and take a well deserved break from the Royal. We will be back with tales of the Warthog, which loves Butter, but not Thread, a new drill, a visit from a real live plumber, oh and the skunk. Yes a skunk plus Oscar is no fun.

R.I.P.

Our drill died.


Butter's mourning its demise because she and this drill have a bit of a history together...

Mr. Drill had a good life, he was the resident drill of the Crafts Students League (CSL) in Manhattan, where Butter worked. Well when the CSL was closed after 75 years as a craft school, the drill needed a new home and it was given to me by the ceramics department. Mr. Drill you were the best and will be missed.

... but mostly we're bothered because this leaves us a bit, um, screwed -- or rather, unscrewed. (Sorry -- I could not resist... I positively love corny puns.)
A new drill is not exactly in the budget, but we neeeeeeeeed it. (shelves to hang! plaster buttons to affix! furniture to repair! cabinets to install!) I guess this is one of those things that you hear grown-ups grumble about when they curse being homeowners.

Speaking of the curse, Mr. P. Lumbing came to visit last night and he was dripping mad.

Getting Messy

We've got lots of projects underway. We're getting dirty and creating quite a mess -- but all in the process of cleaning up.

Thanks to Uncle Joe, Aunt Rita, Momma and Poppa Thread, Momma Butter and Andy who all came out this weekend to whip the royal into shape!

Poppa Thread was all about "I'm here to work rah rah" and he got the kitchen whipped into shape with a coat a primer, and bead after bead of caulk. Momma Thread cleaned! Boy can she clean, now we have a place to unpack all of our kitchen boxes!

Uncle Joe, installed some shelves into the downstairs closet that had the wackiest measurements! No right angles at the Royal! Aunt Rita and Butter attacked the upstairs bathroom, no more linoleum. But now Butter knows what she needs to do next week....replace a wax seal on the toilet (eeeek!!!) And finally all of the wallpaper; ceiling and all is off the walls in Threads room. Andy installed a shelf in the closet room above the clothes bar. And Momma Butter fresh off a flight from Dar es Salaam, made us lunch. And finally at the end of the day the mirror for the closet room got a fresh coat of paint.

Long Weekend

Thank you Mr. Presidents! We had a nice long weekend to get a ton of work done. Stay tuned for pictures and lots of exciting things! One room is almost finished!, We bought a dragon, and he is very helpful...

Plaster buttons...

...are amazing, and elusive. Apparently they are the bees' knees when it comes to repairing old plaster walls. The Royal still has all of its original horse hair and plaster walls with the exception of the bathrooms.

Remember the ceiling Butter was afraid might fall down on her?


Well we got back to The Royal on Saturday and it was still in place, but the plaster did need to be re-secured to the lath or stud behind the surface.
Last Saturday night we walked into the local Home Depot (which we like to call "d'po") with a list a mile long, but what we were most anxious to get were these plaster buttons, or washers, that our contractor friends and dads had been telling us about and that we then read up on. We figured it would be easy -- there are a LOT of houses as old as ours in the area, so we figured everyone knew about these things. It seems we were wrong, or we were asking the wrong people. We had plenty of men in d'po looking at and talking to us like we were silly little city girls who had no idea what we were talking about. The same thing happened at the local hardware store. Butter was beginning to think that they were made up, so she went back to the information super highway and googled "plaster buttons" and the first place they popped up was at a hardware store in Philadelphia -- one neighborhood over from where her mom lives. Mama Butter scooped them up and brought them to us on Saturday morning.


These little washer things full of holes are miracle workers! They pulled the loose plaster to the lath and secured the walls -- genius! Spackling over them was a cinch and now the ceiling is good to go -- no more fear of a Chicken Little falling sky.

We have lots of places to use these throughout the house -- many areas where the plaster is pulling away from the lath. But these plaster washers are the way to go -- they're saving us a ton of money and time, allowing us to keep the plaster walls and not have to go through the process of tearing out the plaster and replacing it with drywall. Yeah!

lesson #1 -- wallpaper removal

wallpaper, oh wallpaper, come off those walls! well, we have A LOT of wallpaper - not only on the walls, but on the ceilings, too - maybe two-three-eight layers! this is bringing back memories for butter -- when she was a kid the family moved into an old house in philadelphia that had a lot of wall paper, paneling over said wallpaper, and a bullet lodged into the french doors. (she loved that detail!) but anyhow, momma insisted that all of the wallpaper be stripped before the family moved in....so off it came from both ceilings and walls. and then one night maybe a few days after they moved in, the ceiling came crashing down in butter's bedroom, giving the sleeping girls quite a start -- and giving grown up butter plenty of reason for caution this time around.




so after some research on the information super highway we've found that fabric softener and water is the way to go. experience this weekend has taught us that the water needs to be HOT HOT HOT and one needs to use LOTS of it. butter went in there double fisted -- two spray bottles blasting the walls like in an old western. then, after soaking the walls and waiting (waiting is the most important part)the scraping began, and off came the wall paper -- from both the walls and the ceilings.





the walls need one final scrub to remove the glue residue, some spackle, and some plaster buttons* to secure one part of the ceiling that butter left a piece of wall paper tacked on because we are pretty sure that part will probably be on the floor when we go back.

*plaster buttons! more on those later