The Cross House

I have a tragic flaw. I expect life to be like a Jane Austin novel. You know, while life can be exceedingly vexing, eventually a Mr. Darcy will come along and then one can spend the rest of their life in gracious splendour at Pemberley. But…but…I turned sixty-one last month and Mr. Darcy has still…

Last November, I visited the previous owner of the Cross House, Bob Rodak, and we went through his stash of salvaged house materials. I left with some wondrous bits.                        

Matt has been fabulously restoring his 1889 house, and he blogs about it. Recently, he partially re-installed his speaking tube system! I was SO happy for Matt! But then I thought: Why aren’t I doing the same? Indeed. Why not? The speaking tubes in the Cross House are mostly intact. One goes from the first-floor…

Now that the parlor is, seemingly, done at last, my mind has focused on the library. I have only shown the library in tantalizing bits. This is largely due to the fact that I have been unable to get any good images. The room, it seems, is just really unphotogenic! Nonetheless, the room is very…

I took possession of the Cross House in March, 2014. So, I now begin year #5! In 2014, the house was a huge and somewhat terrifying mystery. I knew nothing about its architect, Charles Squires, and little about Victorian-era architecture. The house clearly had numerous structural issues but I had no idea what had caused…

              Funny, too, how the one antique in the room, the wood chair, looks best on rug #4. I had not expected that. The two are such a contrast yet this seems to highlight the chair somehow. I had expected the marble table, and the white-framed Hillary, to look…

      The trim and wainscoting and window trim are all CAKED with paint. The original finish appears, I think, to be a painted finish, and in a nutmeg-kinda color. I will have this analyzed to confirm the original finish and will recreate the results. I am eager to remove all the caked-on white…

                      As is obvious from my favorites I am NOT looking for a rug which might have been in the room in 1894. From the very beginning, my goal has been to give the parlor a youthful, hip kinda vibe. I want to show that…

I am ruggin’ out. Ruggin’ out, man! Today I laid down the THIRD rug in the parlor of the Cross House. Yes, the THIRD. And…I like it better than Rug #1 and Rug #2. But………….I don’t love love love it. Sigh.         In the last image, you will note, too: The redone…

          All the first-floor windows are now sealed. Only the sewing room windows on the second floor remain unsealed. About half of the third-floor windows are sealed. So, progress!  

    …and she said: “Flowers?” I did not understand, and said: “Sorry?” She looked up/down the huge facade of the house, and repeated: “Flowers?” I still did not understand, and simply looked at her, clearly not understanding. She repeated, again: “Flowers?” It seemed that she was, somehow, upset about the two pots of flowers…

Recently, a reader, Aaron, wrote in about his excitement in getting his radiator system up and running. A short while later he sent a few images of his house. My eyes bugged out. Yours will, too. Wanna see? Scroll down…                              …

          I never noticed this tiny bit of history until today. The 1929 kitchens were swept away in 1950 when they were replaced by a motel room and adjacent bathroom. Today, there is not a trace of the 1929 changes… …save the cut sill.    

A huge huge huge issue with the Cross House is how, ah, porous it is. Wind freely blows through the windows/doors and exterior cracks and exterior missing bits. Then, inside, any heat is lost because the second floor plaster ceilings are so damaged that heat just vanishes up…and out. Since buying the house four years…

          Since November, I have been on a process of, it’s hard to explain, making the Cross House not so pulled apart. Not so damaged. Not quite so ravaged. To this end I have repaired termite-damaged flooring in the pantry. Doors that never quite closed or latched now close and latch…

    When I began painting the parlor, my friend Patricia advised that I do the walls in a multi-layered finish using translucent paints. “This will give the walls depth, texture, and richness.” But I blanched at how much work this would require. My goal was maximum effect for minimal effort. So, what I went…

I did a previous post about “the Snake”, an absurdly long and convoluted A/C duct to the Round Bedroom. I went to some effort in changing a bend in the Snake to help assure maximum air flow. To this end, I had to take up the just installed subfloor of the north stair landing. Then…

  I have to smile at the absurdity. For, the dining room is a wreck. Yet, I have placed in it an incredibly expensive table by Baker, from their Stately Home Collection (purchased for a song on eBay). I then added a huge crystal chandelier (ditto eBay song). And then today I added a rug….

When I purchased the Cross House in 2014, all the interior wood was dark. Dark. Depressing dark. In 2015, I accidentally discovered that most of the wood in the house had a faux wood finish, buried under later layers of shellac (shellac darkens over time). By removing the shellac, MUCH lighter surfaces were revealed. Since…