The Cross House

The other day I stepped onto the rear porch of the Cross House… …when something captured my special attention. In the corner of the porch floor there were…droppings. You know, ah, well, poo bits. Ick! But the bits were unusual. There were not rabbit bits (the neighborhood has many wild rabbits). Nor cat bits. Or…

It is great fun posting dramatic Before/After images. But this is a long post about a lot of Before/During. So, no WOW images. Yet.                                                  

Almost all the window sashes in the Cross House are original, and in excellent condition…relatively speaking. Meaning that, although the wood is in excellent condition, the sashes nonetheless require a lot of work to restore them. There are 120-years of exterior paint to remove, and 120-years of bad glazing jobs. I am quite good at…

                It is quite distressing looking at these images. One way I manage such a huge project is to simply blot out All The Work Needing To Be Done, a kinda self-invoked selective blindness. Instead, I focus on work which has been completed. I have been determined to…

THE BACKGROUND The Cross House and adjacent carriage house are surrounded by concrete, due to their being, at respective times, a motel, boarding houses, apartments, fraternities, and on and on. So, over the last 120-years parking became The Issue, and miles of concrete were laid. Miles. I think there is more concrete at the Cross…

Have you ever had a day when you feel like you are standing at the edge of a cliff, and might fall off? Well, I had such a day. You see, today I was confronted with a situation involving a titanic battle between Good Ross and Evil Ross. Good Ross wanted to do the right…

As previously mentioned, I need to create a new kitchen in the carriage house on a $1.98 budget, as I am still paying off the titanic-sized invoice to repair/restore the radiator system in the Cross House. As such, I am doing most of the work myself, although pixies seem to show up when I am…

                    It is always a huge thrill for me to discover hidden aspects of an old house. It is one of the things I enjoy about old houses. My mind races with thoughts of previous owners, previous lives in the spaces I now occupy. My mind…

      The huge L-shaped rotted 1921 front porch is gone. It will be replaced by a new porch, nestled under the overhanging tower above. The rectangular dining room is back! Whoee!!!!!!!! Note the office. Remember the triple closets from the plan above? One was originally a hall accessing the room. I restored this…

                                                    SUMMATION Not a vestige remains of the R.I.P. Home Depot never-used kitchen. This was not the plan when I started on the kitchen two weeks ago. Sigh. The current…

In a previous post I detailed how my plans to paint the north facade of the Cross House were thwarted by an unexpected opportunity to rent the carriage house, thus forcing me to redirect my attentions. When I purchased the property, the previous owner had renovated the carriage house, and this work was about 85%…

I did a previous post on the curious history of the carriage house adjacent to the Cross House. Today, I would like to present my highly sophisticated drawings using the latest in high-def 4-D imaging technology. Prepare to be AGOG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!             UPDATE: In a much later post, I detail numerous new…

Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans — John Lennon In my very first blog post, I used the above well-known quote. And now, a year later, while I have been busy making plans, life has come along, again, and shoved me in an unexpected direction. I need to start wearing a…

  I have done numerous posts about the extraordinary difficulty in finding enough drapery panels to furnish the library of the Cross House. This task, made absurdly difficult by Walmart, has been largely accomplished through the efforts of people reading this blog. Amazing. Then, last week, Victoria came by the Cross House with FOUR MORE…

A few years ago Travis purchased a matching set of lights from me for his 1931 tudor-esque style home in St. Louis. It so happened that I was soon driving from Kansas to New York, so offered to drop the set off in person. Because I am, well, a beast, upon arriving I asked Travis…

In my previous post on this subject I showed numerous archival images of kitchens from the 1890s through the 1930s. This post shows new kitchens in old houses. About twenty years ago, a new look evolved for kitchens. This look is, well, hyper-active. Less is certainly not more. MORE is! MORE! These kitchens have upper…

The Cross House was built in 1894. While 1894 living rooms, dining rooms, bedrooms, and even bathrooms are not radically different from the same rooms today, kitchens are. And few people owning an old home would want a period-correct kitchen. Kitchens in 1894 did not have refrigerators (which became common post-1920), dishwashers (which became common…

Today, we think of radiators as charmingly old-fashioned. However, when the Cross House was built in 1894, radiators were state-of-the-art technology. There can be no doubt that people, when first stepping into the Cross House in 1894, exclaimed — breathlessly  — “Can I see the radiators?” They would have oohed and aahed while standing before these…