The Great Column Adventure! Part 1.
Porches have a short shelf life For two reasons: 1) Wood does not respond well to being left out in the elements. Its rots. So, a porch built in the 1890s was normally in poor condition by, say, 1920. 2) As with clothes, cars, and hairstyles, houses are either fashionable…or not. A house built in the…
Continue ReadingThe Waiter Has Been Butchered! EEK!
It was a mystery. I felt compelled to solve it. CLUE ONE There were some old boards hidden inside a wall adjacent to the kitchen. Why were these boards there? Why were they inside a wall? Why had they obviously been cut? Why had they been stained? I mean, this indicated that they were…
Continue ReadingMy Babies Find a New Home!
It thrills me when one of my buyers sends images of my babies in their new home. David and Angel purchased four matching Colonial-Revival sconces from me, and recently sent images. They wrote: “Purchased these from you in the spring. They are perfect. Everyone thinks they are original to the house. Mission accomplished. Thank you!” …
Continue ReadingA Splendid House in a Limbo State
In the late 1980s and 1990s I lived in Newport, Rhode Island. Providence is the state capital, and a wonderful city. Of course, its urban fabric was damaged after WWII, like when two highways were rammed through the city. Sigh. Providence is an old city, and during the Colonial-era one of its elite neighborhoods was…
Continue ReadingRefinishing The Wood Trim. PART 6. ANNOUNCEMENT!
Welcome to Part 6 of the Great Refinishing Saga! In Part 2, I posited an idea. What if, if, I had actually uncovered the 1894 finish on my trim? And what if, if, the finish was not varnish or shellac on stained wood, but rather…a faux wood finish? In Part 2, I wrote…
Continue ReadingWinter? What Winter?
In Kansas, they say if you do like the the current weather, wait an hour. This has some truth to it. One December, we has a blizzard in mid-December. Then the day after Christmas, until January 3rd, a 70-degree forecast was predicted. Whoee! So, the day after that Christmas, I (being a sensible person) demolished…
Continue ReadingFavorite Houses: 526 Exchange
A block directly to the east from the Cross House sits 526 Exchange. The house is, without question, the work of Charles W. Squires, who designed the Cross House, and who lived just down the street at 613 Exchange. While I have no confirmation as to this attribution, the house abounds with signature Squires design…
Continue ReadingRefinishing The Wood Trim. PART 5.
Soooooooooooo…all along I thought I was dealing with a 120-year-old finish on my woodwork. And I was fretting, big time, that maybe my refinishing was not, you know, right. Yet in plain sight all along was proof that I was dead wrong about my finish assumptions. ABOVE: What you are looking at was behind…
Continue ReadingA Matching Set!
Matching sets are so cool. I collect matching sets, and finding enough fixtures to do a whole house can take years. The largest set I ever collected ended up with 27 companion fixtures! Today I listed a set with just three fixtures, a chandelier and two matching sconces. Such a set would have often been…
Continue ReadingA Sweet Pair Of Virden Fixtures.
I enjoy learning about my vintage light fixtures. What company made them? During what period? Is the company extant? If not, when did it close? Where was the company located? A very popular lighting company for decades was the John C. Virden Company. Virden was Canadian-based, at 19 Curity Avenue, Toronto. They also had a…
Continue ReadingA Lovely Spanish-Revival Pair
Because I sell vintage lighting for a living, obviously I buy a lot of vintage lighting. One criteria is that the lighting have something distinctive about it. Such as with this lovely pair of Spanish-Revival sconces from the late 1920s. The fixtures are brass, but this has a highly distinctive silvery original…
Continue ReadingRecreating the Cross House in…Ireland?
THE BACKGROUND I love learning new stuff. I really love learning new stuff. It should be noted though that I am a picky learner. So, if somebody says: YOU SHOULD LEARN THIS, I will, most likely, be an unenthusiastic learner (and who does not react as such?). However, if something captures my special attention,…
Continue ReadingRefinishing The Wood Trim. PART 4.
So, continuing the Great Wood Refinishing Drama! I think (hope) the drama is now over. I think. I hope. Today I finished one section: I used denatured alcohol to “liquify” the original shellac on all the door trim. You can see the result at the top, horizontal piece of trim. Then I used…
Continue ReadingFred Flintstone at the Cross House
One day I pulled up the 1970s vinyl flooring in the Cross House kitchen. Under was 1950s flooring. I pulled that up. Under was a thin layer of Masonite-type boards. I laboriously pulled all that up. Under was…wow. Wild! Weird! ABOVE: The very first layer of linoleum in the kitchen of the Cross House,…
Continue ReadingRefinishing The Wood Trim. PART 3.
Two posts previously I was freakin’ out man. Now I am chillin’, man. This was my concern two posts previously: ABOVE: I had started to refinish the trim and ended up with wood WAY lighter than I had intended. So, yea, FREAK OUT! After some most excellent advice from readers and friends, I did this:…
Continue ReadingRefinishing The Wood Trim. PART 2
I have a wood mystery. Take a look at the image below: NOTE: when I took the image I had not finished stripping off the old finish. It now looks much neater. Look at the gouges. They mystify me. If I were to toss out a guess I would say that my trim…
Continue ReadingRefinishing The Wood Trim. HELP!!!!!
This post is a cry for help. You see, I started to refinish the trim in the living room of the Cross House. I have done this many many many times previously over the decades and have never encountered what I did the other day. All my woodwork has an alligatored finish. And it has…
Continue ReadingFLASH NEWS! Wallpaper UPDATE!
OK! I am freakin’ out, man! FREAKIN’ OUT! Recently, I did a post on the wallpaper discoveries at the Cross House. In particular, I found scraps of the original 1895 wall paper, wall frieze, and ceiling paper in the two-story stair-hall. Were these scraps, I wondered, enough to recreate all three papers? I mean, how…
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