My first working antique clock.

I felt this mantle needed something special, and as I have been a long time admirer of antique clocks I started looking. I found this one on ebay. An early 1900s Ingraham with gong on the hour and a bell chime on the half. I love to hear it at night and in the wee hours of the morning, and wonder how many more lives it has kept time with over the years. Its like giving the house a heartbeat. Christie and I have a small collection of oriental things some old and some newer and thats what were decorating this room with this year. I also found the black clay dragon vases on ebay and think they fit with the theme . Lastly, while cleaning the mantle and tilework I noticed that the decorative surround for the firebox is made of solid brass, so I gave it a good buffing and clearcoat and now it looks like it belongs. These rooms tell you what they need if you only listen. Thats why the longer you live in a place the more comftrable it becomes.

Tour Ready

Finished just in time for our anual Teapot tour. Sorry we havn`t posted in a while but we have pressed ourselves to get everything as done as it can get before the tour. Everything has turned out pretty good, I`ve been laid off work a couple of weeks and I`ve put that time to use finishing up projects started and cleaning up the work debris. Christie is planning on making a video the day of the tour and when its finished I`ll post it here. Heres the second parlor mantle finished.

Almost done.

Ok I see the boarder missing on the left! But we are gettin` there. Here we are trying out the Eastlake set we bought last fall. It may not stay, as we have several suites.

Jewelry for the Queen

After many hard hours of stripping polishing painting . We are lucky to have the original hardware in good working condition with only cosmetics required.

More wallpaper

Now the fill goes up!

More progress

Now we are finished with the ceiling paper and crown moulding and frieze paper and tonight we hung our antique gas/electric light.

Heres a sample of the Crown moulding , wallpaper and ceiling paper.

More stained glass.

This one was in the stair hall when we moved in and we figure it was originaly in the second parlor. its in a transome over the center window. We think it was moved to the stair hall due to privacy issues, and being as privacy isint an issue with us we have moved it back. after cleaning it up and getting it in place we noticed immeadiatly that the aqua glass border matches the side windows in this room. we are very happy with this move and feel it adds much to the room. Also the windoe we moved back to the hallway matches the smaller one on the stair landing.

Lookie what we found!

Ok, you hear that a lot from us as we are always hunting things appropreate for the house but this one is a beauty. Its an original gas electric fixture I found on Ebay. So many of these go for big money but for some reason this one didnt and its now headed for the second (ladies) parlor. We are getting close to completion of this project. Only need to install crown moulding and paper the walls and ceiling and we are also rebuilding the firebox in the chiminey, which may be a holdup as bricklayers are a little hard to get for a small job. And you should see the medallion for this light. Christie finished painting it last night and I love it! More later....

Parlor palor

Sorry about postings being slow, We have been busy with prep work and naturaly only want to post pretty photos! I`m stuck on the front porch which I believe with all my heart will go on for several more years. So many details to tend to. Its cold here now so I moved inside to help Christie with her parlor project. Well , at least I try not to get in her way while she works on it. She has stripped all the old wallpaper filled cracks and sanded the plaster smooth, then applied liner paper to make the walls even smoother, then primed again and painted with colors that will coordinate with the background color of the wallpaper she has selected for this room. All this prep work will make a nice finish and will make it much easier to repaper in future years. She is also cleaning and finishing the oak woodwork and it really looks good. The old finish was dull and had no color, so she used a light stain to make it look alive and the grain stand out like it did when new. The nine panel doors are 8 1/2 ft. tall and take quite a while to get done, plus the old finish had a lot of acumulated grime and coal dust from centuries past that had to be cleaned off. I think the hard part for me is knowing when to stop. You obviusly dont want it to look new but my nature makes me want everything as nice as I can get it. I worked on the pocket doors earlier to get them working. One had lost a roller and was sitting on the floor and the others had dragged on the floors so bad the PO`s didn`t use them. I had a friend in our shop make a set of rollers and I repaired the track and had to cut 1/4" off one door, but the operate smoothly now, and function in opening up the entire front of the house or closing it off. We are`nt decorating for the holidays as we have had to move furniture around until we can`t get to any of the front windows in which to place a tree. Hopefully this won`t happen next year. At least our neighbors have pretty lights we can look at! :)

Sometimes you just get lucky!

Our oven quit a couple of months ago and we could have got a new one but I have been wanting a classic range for a long time. So I set out checking local dealers and Ebay and got lucky on Craigslist Nashville. Found this 40" Ge for $75. Everything works except the clock and I will look into that this winter. The original owner must have been clean to a fault as this one is so minty and clean, and the chrome is perfectI replaced a couple of lights and polished it a bit and am very happy with my find. Thanks to Valerie for not sending it to the crusher!