If you noticed our suspisciously long absensce from the blogosphere, fear not – we’re back! I didn’t want to alert every burglar in town that we’d be away from our beloved house, so I didn’t mention that we’d be going on vacation. Cause you know, burglars just can’t wait to get their hands on our gobs of hand-me-down and thrifted goods. They’re probably casing the joint as I type.

We spent the last week and a half touring around the south-west corner of the US in my parents’ deluxe RV. We stayed in Las Vegas, Long Beach, San Diego, and LA. Visiting the LA area made me realize how much I really loved the Northeast. We saw hundreds of multi-million dollar beach homes and deluxe hilltop mansions, and 99% of them just bored me to death. The neighborhoods were a sea of sameness. Nice, fancy sameness, but sameness nonetheless. I’d take their weather any day. But their architecture? No way.

Vegas, on the other hand, was an architectural dream world. It was completely surreal and overwhelming. The casinos were so over-the-top extravagant that each seemed wackier than the next.  Everything was so grand in scale, from the fake Eiffel Tower at the Paris casino to the giant Sphinx head at Luxor……… it felt like one HUMONGOUS theme park. Which I guess, essentially, it is. With free alcohol, “full service asians”, and slots at every gas station, hotel, and super market. We played penny slots with chain-smoking old ladies for 5 days straight. Despite our dilligence, we failed to hit the jackpot.  I was desperately hoping to win enough to pay off the mortgage, or at least the Home Depot bill, but we barely broke even. Ah well…. lady luck failed us yet again.

Paris Casino – gorgeous exterior, but kinda disappointing and sketchy once you get inside!

New York, New York casino – complete with a working rollercoaster and Irish pubs!

Mandalay Bay, one of the swankiest casinos we visited.
I was sad to leave my parents, who I don’t see nearly enough, but it does feel good to be home. Waking up in a different city every day is disorienting. Time floated, days merged, and even the locations seemed to become one blurry jumble. Being in constant motion was a great distraction from our regular every-day life, but driving down our street and opening a familiar front door was comforting after so much traveling. And now that we’ve had a break from the rigors of fixer-upper life, we’re mentally renewed and itching to get back to work!

We’re gearing up to start our master bathroom soon, so I’ve been gathering design ideas and inspiration. We have approximately 1,254 “kitchen and bath” magazines lying around the house, which helps. They are pure house porn, fueling dangerous fantasies of the very best in fixtures and furniture. Similar to the way flipping through Cosmo leaves me daydreaming about $350 designer handbags, flipping through home magazines makes me long for $5,000 sink and vanity combos.

If we happen to get lucky in Vegas, I’ll be sure to purchase one of these beauties for the master bath:

They’re both from a company called Catchpole and Rye – you can see many of their other products on their website, which is definitely worth a look!

Visit now: http://www.crye.co.uk/

I mentioned yesterday that we’d gotten some new toys at our house in the past week. The first is something I’ve been lusting after since the day we moved in. An adorable, bubble-bath worthy clawfoot tub. It’s the perfect size – not too big, not too small. It’ll be going in our master bathroom (yes, that means it’ll have to make it up the stairs) but for now it’s resting quietly in the backyard, sans Madonna despite local customs.

As you can see, I haven’t gotten around to cleaning it yet ;) The ball and claw feet are sitting in our kitchen waiting for cleaning too. It does have all 4 intact though, which is great. I noticed at the salvage shop the feet were going for $50-$60 a piece!!!

Thanks to our good friends the Byrnes’, who gifted this to us and helped us hoist it into the truck. When we get the bathroom done, maybe I’ll invite them over for a soak.

The other fun thing we finally got around to buying is a matching set of doorknobs and plates for the front entry doors. I found them at one of our favorite Rochester salvage shops, ReHouse CNY. They have an egg and dart theme, which I chose because it matches the egg and dart tin ceileing molding we’ve found throughout the house.

Adding new (old) doorknobs to a door is a very easy way to dress it up. BeJane has a good tutorial, with diagrams, if you’re wondering how to do it!

Changing out door knobs – BeJane 

Us housebloggers have discussed our love of secret hiding spaces before… maybe we watched too much Webster growing up. Maybe it’s the uniqueness of it that appeals to us. Or maybe it’s just an unconscious desire to have once place that feels safe and private in an age when privacy is anything but. Whatever the case, hidden rooms and secret passageways are on the rise.

A few companies specialize in bookcase doors, but where’s the fun in buying something readymade? If you’re looking for a fun project, Simon Shea gives you the basics on how to build your own, and includes photos, in his post titled “Holy shelf unit, batman!”

Gary Katz has another good writeup with detailed pics – and he uses some very nice molding: http://www.garymkatz.com/Charts/pivot-bookcase.htm
In other news, we acquired a very exciting house item this past weekend, but I forgot to download pics so stay tuned to see what we’re up to next……..

Wave goodbye to the boring old aluminum mailbox we used to have, and say hello to our newest pride and joy – an antique cast iron mailbox made by Griswold Mfg of Erie PA:

The photo is a little fuzzy, but you can see that it’s marked “Standard, No. 2”. The little floral piece at the bottom flips up, probably to let you know the mailman has indeed left you a very important letter of correspondence. Or in our case, a Home Depot bill.

I found it at our favorite neighborhood antique store, The Silver Lining. I was there browsing when a dealer brought it in to show the owner, and I’ve been craving a cool antique mailbox for a while now. Obviously, it was destined to be mine!

I am completely in love with our homemade tombstones. They came out great! We only made three this year, but if we make 3 a year for the next few years, we’ll have a full-on cemetary in no time. The neighbors will love us, I’m sure.

After carving them out, we rolled gray primer on them nice and thick. Then we spray painted them black, and layered gray spray paint back onto them to get that rough look. They’re life-size, and pretty darn creepy considering they started out as pink foam!

Here’s the results of our Halloween crafting:

This is going to be a random, but useful, post. I’ve been coming across some good stuff lately, so I thought it was time to share some links with all of you….

Last weekend, we installed new baseboards in the kitchen. We were too lazy to share the full process, but This Old House has a great step-by-step article that’ll show you everything you need.
– Want a Room With More Stature? Start With the Baseboards

We don’t have a garage; our work spaces include a very small shed and a dirt floor basement. So Taunton Press’ suggestions for small workspaces.
– Three solutions for small workspaces

Old House Journal introduced me to a new way to remove paint – steam! It looks even easier than the heat gun! Has anyone tried this?
– Get up to Speed on Steam

Also, I found an easy way to save on cleaning supplies. I’m addicted to the Swiffer WetJet. It’s the best $20 I ever spent. I love it, since we tend to make messes daily and it saves me from having to all-out mop every time dirty footprints gets tracked from one end of the house to the other. But the little bottles of cleaner cost $3-4 each, and we go through two (one for hardwood, one for tile) about every 2 weeks.

I ended up wrenching the top off of an empty Swiffer bottle (literally pulling it straight up with a wrench – they’re stuck on their good!) and filling it with a mix of Murphy’s Oil Soap and water for the hardwoods. Pay no attention to the warning on the back that specifically tells you NOT to do this. Nothing exploded, I swear; they just want your money.
Not only is refilling the bottles much cheaper, the Murphy’s didn’t leave any dull residue on the floors unlike the Swiffer stuff. So save your old bottles and refill them with the cleaner of your choice.
Ok – that’s the end of the randomness. Enjoy!

My rug obsession is ongoing, but the demons have been quieted a bit thanks to our newest purchase – a semi-nice oriental rug from my favorite discount store, Marshalls.

I couldn’t resist since it matched the dining room paint color perfectly and was the perfect size. See?

You can tell it’s not quite as fancy as our first (and most lovely) rug, but the colors are gorgeous and I’m in love with it. Here’s a close-up.

My rug obsession stems from the fact that we refinished our hardwoods back in June, and I am deathly afraid we’ll ruin them. They don’t have another sanding left in them, so we’ve got to take very good care of what we’ve got. And even the fancy rugs are much cheaper than new hardwood floors, if you know how to shop right!

This weekend was extremely productive, unlike the last few where we were either sleepy, hungover, traveling, or just plain bored with fixing the place. Our house-energy has a definite ebb and flow, and right now it’s at a high point. We’re taking advantage of it while it lasts.
For starters, I finally refinished our second front door. The first was done about two years ago, and since that time they’ve been wearing me down with their annoying unmatchiness. I started the project two weeks ago, but of course it was more time consuming than I had planned on. And, we made one BIG mistake; we tried to rush it. Which resulted in really crappy results:

Generally, the steps I take to refinish a door like this are:

1. Heat gun to remove the paint
2. Paint stripper to get the leftover bits of paint off
3. Orbital sander to smooth out the finish
4. Wood conditioner
5. Stain, multiple coats (this door has 2)
6. Varnish, multiple coats (again, this door has 2)

The above photo illustrates beautifully what happens when you get lazy with the sanding. Even though the door appeared to be clean, I didn’t get all of the original shellac finish off so the stain didn’t soak in evenly. It looked truly awful. Sooooo, we ended up taking an extra day to resand and restain. The skimping on sanding did NOT save time. Exactly the opposite. So learn from my mistakes, people!

Here’s the door at that same point in the process, with better sanding:

Major difference, right?

The door looks great now, and it’s officially done. One more thing off the giant to-do list. Yeehaw. Here’s a photo of it all shiny with wet varnish, and in need of some paint to make the glazing compound blend in – it’s not perfect yet, but you get the idea:

In that photo you can see how the two doors are set up. We basically have one front door, the tiniest little mudroom ever, then another door. I have a feeling at one time they might have been together as a pair. But where? I have no idea.
In other news, Teague put baseboard molding up in the kitchen. This is one of the last few kitchen tasks we’ve left hanging for over a year… we couldn’t decide on how best to match the existing baseboard found elsewhere in the house, which is actually 3 seperate pieces. It was partly a budget issue, partly logistics. We debated about having a local carpentry school cut it for us, then searched for ways to replicate it ourselves. In the end, we came pretty close to matching it by using 4 different pieces of ready-made wood – a regular board, a 1/2 round, a 1/4 round, and a piece of fancy molding.

The pieces were glued together with construction adhesive, then finish-nailed into the wall. They’ll look very purdy once they’re painted. Having this molding up makes a huge difference – the room finally feels “finished”.

This isn’t the full extent of our weekend activities, but I’m going to save something for later – this is excitment enough for one post ;)

One of my goals in life is to make our interiors look Victorian, but not too Victorian. To come up with some type of modern take on all of it, something romantic and creative and fun… and not quite so fussy. A decor that requires very little dusting of knick-knacks and does not involve overwhelming wallpaper patterns.

I got my Brocade Home catalog in the mail the other day, and it is exactly what I’ve been looking for. It’s full of pretty Victorian housewares that don’t look tacky or overdone. The goods they stock do not scream “I am a chipboard replica of a once beautiful piece of furniture.” They use very cool fabrics and colors to put a modern spin on traditional shapes. Of course, they’re a little bit out of my price range – but if nothing else, the catalog gave me some great visual inspiration.

You can flip through the catalog on their website, then go ahead and request one delivered:

http://www.brocadehome.com/