We took a few months off from working on the house, as it gets pretty hot down here in the summer. The new heat pump being broken didn't help much, so we spent much of our time elsewhere. In about a month it should be cool enough to go into the attic again, where I have some wiring and demolition for the bedroom closet planned. In the meantime, we're doing things to the outside of the house. Last weekend we tried out paint colors.
We picked a blue and white scheme similar to our own a few months ago. One day on the way to work I realized we liked the scheme because it was on a nearby 1920s building, a glass-cutting business. I couldn't have us copy something so nearby!
Jason gets really impatient with me all the time. I know I like mulling more than doing, but when I give in to his pressure it usually costs us money. To chose our new scheme, we picked up a small shrub's worth of swatches at the paint store. As I was being indecisive, he said he would end my agony by picking the colors himself and that would be that. He picked a trim color called Seahawk, which instantly made me think guy = dark colors = couch = beer = Seattle Seahawks. It looked alright against the house, especially with a copper color I chose. He said, "Let's go get it now" and against my better judgement we bought 2 gal of Seahawk rather than a sample quart. Of course, on the window trim it looks like the teal of our local NFL team. I tried to blacken it, hoping I had picked a similarly lamp black-pigmented paint, but it turned mucky instead. Now, blue is out and brown, red, green and beige are next, to match all the red brick houses around us.
Our house is so small and plain, with not much ornamentation. Our neighborhood is becoming bad. I'd like a careful but friendly scheme that doesn't imply "rental" or "it's okay to break in". Did I mention that a month after J was held up, someone tried to steal my 20-year old car? Since there is truth to the statistics saying painted houses and trash in appropriate receptacles helps with decreasing crime, I want to do all I can. It's a bigger issue than what colors I think are pretty. That's what is holding me up. This week we'll try some new colors, in sample sizes.
Plans for an (IKEA) 1920's kitchen
The current plan for the kitchen is to restore the gas service and install a 20's-30's stove. Photos from the last trip under the house show the gas oven installed where the modern electric one is, and the water heater in its same spot in the laundry room as well. Space is very tight in the laundry room - I believe it used to be a sunporch, perhaps screened, with the security back door in the kitchen instead. With this in mind, it would be a neat thing to get a smaller, on-demand water heater which wouldn't take valuable laundry floor space. At the same time we would restore/re-install the stove line, its business end being only 6 feet away.
This plan is just in its beginning phase; I haven't contacted a gas plumber yet. The supply pipe coming from the mound of dirt under the laundry room is corroded through at the surface, as happens here in Florida, and it may need replacing to the street. No longer do we have a meter, although our neighbors do and I'm going to check to see if it's still moving. This could cost $$$$! We would receive about $800 in cash rebates from our local gas company, though, for replacing those two electric appliances.
This is my rough drawing for the kitchen, pretty similar to the original kitchen of this house. I did a bit of research in the past year, including peering into windows of old houses for sale, looking at available period apartments, ebay sales, books and internet resources like Indiana Historical Society's model home collection; also online state photo collections from MN and FL. Much of it was surmised from house archaeology, like the 2, 12" deep upper cabinets, unpainted areas behind the current cabinets, and the rotted hole below/behind the kitchen sink.
It's clickable, but huge. The bottom drawing, a little undecipherable, is the other side of the room with the intact ironing board cabinet on the right. Somehow the drawings remind me of a Calvin & Hobbes setting.
Just reinstalling the chair rail will add instant 1920's value, cheaply. I can reuse our one intact base cabinet shell (1970's plywood) in virtually the same spot, with a new face frame. Multiple doors on a single compartment are annoying when those doors are separated by a face frame. I'm ready for demolition!
Cat count= 5 outdoor, 2 indoor.
House History, Part II
Previously, I discovered the first owners of this house were the Mercks of Jacksonville's Merck Drug Co. I found out a little more about them from online research this weekend. Frank was 26 and wife Marion was 25 when they bought the house for about $7000, some months after they married in 1927. Marion was from South Carolina and was 18 when she married a produce salesman named John, living near the future Merck drugstore in the Springfield neighborhood. Frank was born in north Georgia in 1901, and died in 1983 in Ocala (about 1 1/2 hours southwest from here). Marion died in Ocala in 1988, days short of her 87th birthday. Frank's store partner, Edna Hullinger, was born in 1878 in Georgia and lived in an apt. next to their Main St. store. A theater couple, in scenery and box office, lived in the adjacent apartment. It does not seem Mr. Merck was of the Merck & Co. family; sorry, Mom.
Big Red Fish
About this time 7 years ago, my friend Ali and I were between semesters of grad school, and with nothing interesting to do that night in a small Mississippi town, we went shopping at Walmart at 11 PM. I found a 6' long plush alaska salmon for $3. It was so weird ( sane people might say tacky?) I needed it. I wandered to the fabric section as I'm prone to doing, and found some flat brown netting which I thought would be ok curtains for my brown 80s apartment. I wanted 4 yards and the woman at the cutting table said "Now, some folks from a church just bought a whole lotta this for a play." That gave me the idea to put the fish in the netting and hang it from my living room ceiling. More like art installation than interior decorating. Now I agonize over authentic 20's paint color and curtains, and butterfly hinges vs mortised, and where to put electric outlets. And it isn't nearly as freeing or amusing as a giant toy fish stuck to the wall.
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