The Cross House

    A few days ago I posted about the cataract surgery on my left eye, which was done yesterday morning. For most of the day after the surgery I felt like a piece of glass was stuck in my eye. Not painful, really, but hugely uncomfortable. It would have been much worse without Advil…

        Today was 38-degees. I dressed warmly and things weren’t that bad. But I’m looking forward to Friday! A balmy 48-dregrees! And Sunday and Monday? A heat wave! Kansas has highly inconsistent weather. It can be 70-dregrees in December. Basically, I can plan on working through to January save a day or…

  The drain to the sleeping porch (lower left) has somehow managed to remain intact, even though the porch was enclosed for most of its existence, and all the shingles in this corner were lost long ago. I reopened the porch a few years previous. Curiously, even in massive downpours, I have never seen the…

  This corner will be—sigh—incredibly time-consuming, just like the inside corner which took forever. Not only will each shingle need to be custom-sized and with half of them half-rounded on the bottom, but each shingle on the outside corner will need to be vertically beveled so as to properly “kiss” the adjacent beveled shingle, creating…

      The guards exactly match other such guards in the house. Thanks, Dr. Doug! This small improvement delights me. I added the two bump-outs in 2014 to support a new steel beam in the ceiling and the guards help make this minor change look, well, right.  

    Celeste is a super-fan of this blog, and has read every post. She even remembered the names of my indoor kitties! It was great fun touring the house with her as she would gasp with delight at X or Y or Z! “Oh! That’s the termire-damaged wall!” We all went out to Radius…

Porches are highly vulnerable things, and it is common for Victorian-era houses to have lost their original porches. Like with this house…             When I first saw the Cross House in 1999 its porches were in sorry condition with a lot of bits missing including many of the columns. Still,…

MAGIC EVENT #1: Five days ago I did a post about a marble vanity. Mary, who reads this blog, found it on CraigsList and brought it to my attention. She thought it seemed perfect for the Cross House. And…it was!     However, it was a ten-hour drive away. So, that would be 2-days in…

      I’m absurdly excited about this. I mean, undressed corners is just…indecent. So, having decent corners is a thrill.  

Mary contacted me. She came across a marble vanity, and wondered f I might be interested.     It was advertised as a counter and backsplash, but the height of the backsplash seemed…unusual. I have never seen one that high. So, my excitement was mitigated a bit. I also worried that the marble “apron” was…

I love the fabulous Kelly and her Old House Dreams, and donate to her every month, automatically, via Patreon. One thing I often notice is how people comment with something like this: I love this house and if my spouse and I were younger we’d take it on. Every time I see this I think:…

Today, the draperies arrived for the dining room! Why, one might ask, did Ross order draperies for a room which looks like a bomb has gone off in it, a room perhaps two years from being restored and decorated? Because…A SALE! My friend Patricia keep telling me: “Ross! Half Price Drapes is having this incredible…