Last year, I discovered that a bat was tucked into an almost hidden recess above one of the curved dining room windows. This prevented me from painting in the immediate area. Then the bat, quite graciously, moved over to the other curved window, allowing me to finish the first curved window. This year, I have…

The previous owner of the Cross House, Bob Rodak, gutted the four-story servant’s stair. He remove all the door and window trim, labeled each piece (thank you, Bob), and set all that in the Aladdin’s Cave. Last year, when I was able to at last empty the cave, I sat all these many bundles back…

  I would prefer finishing the whole of the east facade. But two factors have forced a switch to the south: The restoration of the south facade is a large part of the 2017 Heritage Grant work. So, this works needs to begin, STAT. Because the south facade faces, well, south, this is SO not…

  Task #1 was to relocate the three AC condensers away from the house (they had been placed in front of the window). Task #2 was to remove all the AC lines running through the window and bury them in the ground. These two tasks cost a shocking amount of money but what choice did…

Today it was raining. Again. This precluded any work outside. So, what to do? What to do? I wandered around the house while listing to podcasts. Then I wiped off the pads on the dining room table. Much better! I wandered all the way upstairs and decided to vacuum the third floor, which is a…

As each room in the Cross House receives it restored stained-glass transom windows, I delight in making sure the room is lighted at night so the windows can be enjoyed by anybody driving or walking by. One day, an elderly woman stopped by to say that, every time her granddaughter visits, she demands to be…

Today, I arrived at the Cross House… …and had no idea of what to do. Well, this never happens. Each day, I arrive with plans for X, but now that I have finished the NE corner I was not sure of what to do next. The scaffolding is set up to do one edge of…

          I have fragments of one of the lost south windows and I go back/forth about what to do. Should I recreate the lost triple set? By doing so, I would lose the door and the Juliet balcony, which are nice features. And I am loathe to lose these features. My…

    Last year, I had the three AC condensers relocated away from the house, and the AC lines removed from the window and buried in the ground. Ahhh, much better. Then I tried to take off the plywood. And gave up. It was screwed and glued so over-the-top that it could have survived a…

So……I sat on the ground to begin painting the basement window in the NE corner. The window sash and trim were restored and primed white in 2014 by one of the guys working on the house. Thus, all I needed to do was paint on pretty colors. This assumption quickly proved….foolish. As I went over…