The Cross House

During the last few days I have made significant and fascinating discoveries in the former servant’s room in the SE corner of the second floor of the Cross House. This post details one discovery.   The room was originally a servant’s room accessible via a door off the servant’s hall. To the immediate west was…

    See the closet, lower right? Adjacent, was a small dressing room. A door is shown to the dressing room but this was never installed. Rather, a portiere was. There was a door between the dressing room and closet though. In 1929, the closet and dressing room were combined into a bathroom. Read here…

When buying the Cross House in 2014, a huge huge huge concern was how to heat it. The house is scary massive: four floors totaling almost 9,000 square feet. Terrifying! In 2014, wind blew freely through the house, and snowdrifts inside were common. Even though the previous owner, Bob, installed $$$$ new boilers for the…

  Originally, the first-and second-floors were covered with wall-to-wall carpeting. On the second floor, it appears that oak was laid down in 1929, when apartments were created on the second floor, and numerous bathrooms and kitchen were installed. During the ensuing decades there was a lot of damage and all this needs to be repaired….

Yesterday, Tuesday, was a hard day. I had gone to bed around 2AM, when the outside temperature was a terrifying -13 degrees. Would my power go off? Would my pipes then freeze? Would the kitties be OK in their heated winter cat house with no heat? I fell right asleep. It was 72-degrees inside. At…

Like many parts of America, bitter cold weather is gripping Kansas. Tonight will be -13 degrees. Eek. For a week now I have been preoccupied with assuring that my yard kitties will be safe. They have a heated winter cat house, and a heated water bowl outside. And, numerous stray cats have managed to find…

WARNING: Do not read this post I implore you. Why? Because, if you read this post, you will not like me anymore. Why? Because…I am going to do a bad thing. Sigh, please scroll down…IF YOU MUST!                             NOTE: 1 ) Most…

After 4,279 years… After much fretting and worry… After much work… (Scroll way down)                                              

2021. 2021. 2021. 2021. 2021. This is year that…ROSS WILL MOVE INTO THE CROSS HOUSE! After buying the house in 2014, I have not spent a night in it. Seven long long long and expensive years. Seven years and not a night in the house. How insane is that? All this will change though in…

    Since buying the house in 2014, I had planned to order Austrian-style shades for the nine curved-glass windows in the house. Such shades are ideal as they can follow the curve, unlike normal shades. The problem? They would be about $500 per window, and will rot out in 10-15 years. In images of…

    OK! How exciting! It is like vanished history springing to light! The problem, as I have been pondering, is all the wood in the room. It is CAKED with paint. CAKED. So, trim, wainscoting, and doors. I have been blessed that in most of the house this is not an issue. But the…

        The kitchen, like most rooms in the house, looks like a bomb went off in it. The ceiling is gone. There are holes in the walls. There are dangling wires. However, I have an odd way of seeing things. My eyes do not really see all the damage. Rather, my eyes…

              In short, Kyle offered to reupholster the settee. It is now in the entry hall, in front of the staircase. I think I will keep it there. For the last two years though, upholstering the settee has been a LPI (low priority item). But…of late…I moved this to…

  But…there is a problem. Most of the mantels in the Cross House had a pair of sconces to each side. Very close. Too close. Meaning, that the sconces had to be swivel sconces so they did not bash into the overmantels, particularly so when the mantel is on an angled wall. And, you know,…

  The mantel is a catalog piece. It was not particularly expensive in its day. The wood had a tinted shellac finish originally, making the wood look better than it was. In time, a roof leak developed, and for many decades a steady drip drip drip fell upon the left side of the mantel, eroding…

    It is odd. Even though the “after” image still looks scary, the room feels less damaged. And it looks less damaged. Yes, the plaster is missing but this area no longer looks…brutalized. And this makes me smile. For a little something, somewhere, is a tad bit better.    

  See the lower red chimney? See the upper red chimney? But you cannot see the middle red chimney as it is covered in four layers of thick plastic, and a blue heating blanket, all carefully taped to the house to keep the newly done pointing (new mortar) of the middle chimney from freezing. The…