The Cross House

In 2014, I purchased a single roll of the utterly fabulous and now globally famous 1970s peacock wallpaper by Van Luit. In 2015, I purchased three more rolls, but in a different color way. Thus, I had four rolls, enough (I guessed) to do the whole bathroom. Did I care about the different color ways? Nope….

Previously, I did a post about my eight hearths and how I hoped to repair them. The biggest work would involve the library hearth tiles (seriously damaged overall) and the dining hearth tiles (98% badly replaced at some point). Otherwise, the other six hearths could use some minor replacement tiles or were in acceptable vintage…

    When restoring a house it is common to never finish the last 10%. I appreciate the struggle. The last 10%, for reasons I cannot explain, always seems harder than the previous 90%. So, while I am aching to resume work on the cat fence I made myself a promise: finish the damn library…

The 1894 Cross House has eight mantels. You can meet them here. Each has a metal grate insert over the fire opening, with ‘surround’ tiles by the America Encaustic Tiling Company. And each has a tiled hearth, by same. Mostly, the surround tiles are in pretty good shape. Mostly. The hearth tiles range from kinda…

                Upon removing the current hearth (a mix of original and later tiles), all the tiles would get stored behind the metal fireplace grate.        

                                      I knew that to change the black to another color, there was NO WAY I was going to carefully, tediously repaint a new color around all the molded leaves. My first thought was to remove and…

        As I learned from Bo way back, 1890s picture rail was not intended to match the trim in a  room. Because 1890s rail was not installed by finish carpenters but, rather, by wallpaper hangers to complement the wallpaper. Who knew? The aim, thus, is not to match the wallpaper but to…

  In 2014, a bunch of PEX lines were run from the two west bathrooms on the second floor (servicing the Round Bedroom and Octagon Bedroom), and to the new utility closet adjacent to the original bathroom. This new utility closet though (which will offer access to the newly heightened dumbwaiter) is narrow and I…