Tuesday, December 22, 2015
The story of my new favorite Christmas decoration began last year on Christmas day. After a fun afternoon of enjoying my family's famed potato soup, eating too many cookies to count, opening gifts, and the annual visit from my uncle Santa...
...my Aunt Margie surprised my cousins and me by inviting us around the dining room table. Years earlier, my Gram handed down a box of old family ornaments that had been passed down to her.
The box contained beautifully tarnished orbs, in different shades of antique glass, and my aunt announced that she wanted each of the grandkids to have one of the ornaments for our trees. I was ecstatic! I was so excited to not only have a piece of our family's history, but since we decorate our tree in glass ornaments I knew it would be a perfect addition to our home.
To maintain order and fairness (our German ancestors would be proud), the cousins drew numbers and then in the order of our numbers, each selected an ornament to take home. We selected until the ornaments were all claimed, and I ended up with a beautiful pink ornament, smaller in size, with a beautiful old silver cap.
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Friday, December 18, 2015
While I may not have given you a 12 DIYs update the last few days, that's not to say I've not been working my tail off to make my 12 projects goal a reality. With my somewhat limited time during the week I've been working to knock as many of the small tasks off of my list that I can. So today I present you with three fairly minor things that are surprisingly a pretty major deal to us. DIYs four, five, and six.
On the 4th DIY of Christmas I did for my true love to see, some working shutters in our front window.
Back in 2003 we purchased our home and almost immediately launched into what would become the longest renovation project we could ever imagine. Shortly after, we started work on the front parlour/living room (the very first project room of our decade plus renovation).
Almost as soon as we started the project, one of the very first things we did was to remove the window shutters and window sash stops. It was a necessary aspect of the project, and we had high hopes we'd be able to get things put back together in no time.
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Tuesday, December 15, 2015
On the 3rd DIY of Christmas I did for my true love to see, patching the hole in the side of our house.
This large and unsightly hole has been in the side of our house for more than a year and a half, since July 2014 to be exact. It's the remnant of the removal of our house's old main waste stack, which was abandoned many years ago and was left sitting on the side of our house. After the cast iron stack cracked during the Virginia earthquake, it was time for it to come out.
Though I had long debated how to remove it myself, Wendy really didn't like the idea of me hanging off of the roof while trying to wield large sections of cast iron pipe. So instead we hired a plumber with a few guys to take it out. After the vertical length of cast iron stack was removed from the house and the tee was broken as close to the wall as the plumber could get it, he said "I can't get the rest of this out, you're going to need to hire a mason."
My thought at the time was something along the lines of "Hey, you did the hard part so that's no problem. I can probably do this myself...I'll take care of it in the next few days."
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Monday, December 14, 2015
On the 1st DIY of Christmas I did for my true love to see, a chiming clock next to our Christmas tree.
Over the last year or so our task list has grown exponentially. We've taken on new project after new project without properly finishing and marking old projects off of our list. That list is getting so big that it feels like Santa's got nothing on us. I know this is a tired old trend for us: too many projects, too little follow through, takes a million years to get things done, blah blah blah. (Where are the storm windows, Alex? Yeah, I know, I'm working on it!) So this Christmas I've decided to do something about our lengthy list...other than stare at it.
Our blog post last week about fixing the grandfather clock was just the first of many little DIY tasks around the house that have been begging to be checked off of the list. More importantly, it was one of those nagging tasks that has been bugging Wendy (and me as well) and really starts to get us down when we think about how long it sat undone.
So, in honor of it being Christmas, and my never ending quest to give my spouse thoughtful holiday gifts that brighten her day and bring a smile to her face (seriously, it's a general life goal of mine), I've decided to launch a lofty endeavor to accomplish 12 legitimate DIY tasks this holiday season.
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Our lovely antique grandfather clock has been sitting at 4:43 am for over five years!
It's crazy to think about it, but if you've seen our clock, either in person or in photos since 2010, it's always read the same time. This means that the clock has actually been at 4:43 ever since we've been writing for this blog! Lulu has never heard this clock's chime, and for Mel, over 1/3 of his life has passed since he last heard the bell ding. Our dining room was even on the cover of Old House Journal a few years ago, and the clock was sitting at 4:43! But how did we get to this point?
This beauty came into our home after a lengthy search for a clock that would both meet our tastes and tight budget. After years of searching Wendy found this magnificent clock on eBay back in 2005. The tall case clock is an American case custom built in the 1840s for a French Morbier "Sun Burst" movement from the 1830s. After we won the auction and nervously had it shipped from Colorado, we carefully assembled it in our home to get it up and running in the dining room, where it ran flawlessly for about five years.
It's an eight day clock, which means we have to wind it once a week, which is not too bad. For a chime the bell rings the hour count on the hour and a single ding on the half hour. It was fully restored but it has tons of original character while remaining in excellent shape. In short, we absolutely love this clock!
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