Friday, November 25, 2011
Just like the title of the post says, we're going Black Friday shopping in Old Town, and I'm going to be live tweeting it! We may still be stuffed from Thanksgiving dinner, but that doesn't mean we'll be missing out on good deals.
Wendy has had a plan to wake up bright and early to hit the Old Town boutique district and their great Black Friday sales. The discounts occur in phases, with the early risers saving the most. From 6:00am - 8:00am, shoppers at participating stores can save 30%!! If you'd like to learn more, just check out the Old Town Boutique District's Black Friday page.
So she'll be hitting the stores first thing in the morning, and I'll be coming along to carry bags and Tweet about the experience. You can either follow the adventure on twitter, or just watch on this page as the tweets auto update. I've got to get to bed. We need to get up in only about five and a half hours. We hope you enjoy following our adventure.
Live Tweets:
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Thursday, November 24, 2011
Though the origins of Thanksgiving are rooted in celebrating the end of harvest season and giving thanks for a bountiful crop, the day is now an opportunity and excellent marker in the year to pause and take a bit more notice of what we have to be thankful for in general. Though Thanksgiving (in November) is only officially an American holiday, and one more commonly associated with overeating and football, it is still a day that can be used more generically across all audiences to take stock of personal appreciation for the things in each of our lives that we value.
Like most people in the United States, we'll sit down to a traditional Thanksgiving feast. This year we will be dining with great friends rather than family since we're staying in DC. But before we eat, we'll be going on a Thanksgiving run with Lulu (to prepare for our eventual overheating), doing some parade and football watching, working on a few house projects, preparing a dish or two for dinner including mom's famous sweet potato casserole of course, and whatever else comes along for the day.
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Wednesday, November 23, 2011
Thank you to everyone who chimed in on our little door knob height dilemma yesterday and offered their opinion and suggestions. They were all quite helpful and we appreciate them. I think we are going to swap out the knob for a black porcelain knob to start, then see what we think. Ultimately, I think I'd like to just fill the hole, repaint, and move the knob down about six inches. It's at about 39" now, and six down would put it right in line with the next muntin, but we'll see how the new knob goes first. I'm still kicking myself for not checking on it better before drilling the hole. I never do that, not sure why I did this time. Ugh.
As a follow up, here are two "renderings" of the knob with its height adjusted.
Anyhow, onto better news about the french doors. Yesterday we covered almost all of the hardware we need to complete the project, but the last item we mentioned in the list was the slide bolt, and we didn't elaborate on it. I didn't cover it in yesterday's post because I feel like it needed its own post. Yep, I'm that excited about it!
Our french doors are installed in a typical configuration. We've opted to use a locking rim lock to function as the knob and latch assembly, but to function properly the right side door with the catch on it must be fixed in its location, otherwise the locked doors will just push open. At the same time, the door needs to be able to open easily when we need to walk through. To solve this problem we turned to a slide bolt that is used to fix the door in position when the doors are shut, giving the other door something sturdy to latch onto. Sadly, we didn't have a spare slide bolt in our stash of goodies, so we needed to turn elsewhere.
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Tuesday, November 22, 2011
From the initial concept of restoring the entry vestibule back to its original configuration, to purchasing salvaged antique side lites and attempting to restore them and make them work as french doors, our vestibule project has come a long way. It has taken longer than we had ever anticipated, and it has been much harder and more tedious than we ever thought it could be, but we are finally approaching the final steps. As with most projects, the final steps typically turn to hardware. We've got a bit of a dilemma and we need your opinion. But before we get to our question, let me bring you up to speed.
While we were giving the 1 Shot paint a bit of time to dry we focused on getting the various hardware elements ready for install. Similar to the main entry door, the french doors required a fair number of hardware items to make them complete.
Most notably we needed:
- Four matching hinges
- Rim lock
- Door knob and spindle
- Lock catch
- Escutcheon
- Rosette
- Mail Slot
- Old Timey Key
- Slide Bolt (we'll get to this one later)
Many aspects of the hardware search were very straight forward due to the effort we've put forth to collecting items over the years. We always know we'll have a need for door knobs and other miscellaneous hardware, so we always pick them up when we find a good deal or two.
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Monday, November 21, 2011
There is a particular house in Old Town that I've mentioned on a few occasions in previous Open Housing posts. This house is not the largest, smallest, most expensive, or even most significant in Alexandria, but it is thought to represent the oldest and most historically accurate/unaltered home in the historic district. And though the open house was unexpectedly cancelled a few weekends ago...
...we've walked through the interior of the house on various tours enough times that we can share the home with you based on the real estate photos.
The Fawcett-Reeder House (previously the Murray-Dick-Fawcett house or the John Douglas Brown house) located at 517 Prince Street is a four bedroom, three bath home of about 3,000 square feet, centrally located in Old Town. Though the home's size/stats I just provided paint a brief picture of what the home can hold, it does nothing to communicate the uniqueness and interest this property offers.
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