Springtime?

Well it looks like springtime is finally coming our way. The blossoms are all out on the ornamental pear trees on the street and the daffodils are starting to flower. I planted about 225 daffodil bulbs (they were on sale) last fall so there should be quite a show!

 The front bed needs to be cut in again....

This is the state of the garden. There is still some lettuce, kale, chives, onions and leeks growing from last year.

Curtains for the bedroom and some new paint

We put in some new curtains in the bedroom along with some curtain tiebacks.

We also put in baseboard cap molding, painted the trim and the walls and bought a new bedspread. 

The walk in closet was also painted to match the bedspread and new baseboard cap trim was put in.

Door handle for downstairs bathroom

The downstairs door had been sitting there with no handle on it for some time now. The original door did have a handle and lock on it but it was on the wrong side of the door than we needed (we switched the hinge side of the door). As you can see this is the original large mortise locks that take a while to cut the holes for.

When we bought the house all of the hardware for the doors had multiple coats of paint on it. After stripping the paint in a heated vinegar bath we were hoping to replate them in their original copper. Without much success they were spray painted an aged bronze color

Stair Handrail

When we bought the house this is what the top return of the handrail looked like. It was a little strange with the handrail just terminating into a 2x4 that was spaced off the wall.

An additional spindle was turned matching the existing spindles for the space. 

In addition, a new section of handrail was created that was needed because the existing handrail was too short.

An old fir return piece was found at a salvage store to be used instead of the old 2x4. We had to strip the existing finish.

The baseboard cap was applied and the end was returned. The floor was sanded and the bottom board was also installed.

The wall behind the old 2x4 had to be filled with joint compound and textured.

The spindle, new handrail and return board are installed.

The whole thing is then painted up which was a little hard and should have been done prior putting the whole thing together. The new fir handrail should get darker over time once it is urethaned and exposed to the sunlight more.

Additional Lights for the Kitchen

When we patched up the wall around the windows we wired in for two lights over the sink. We have started to look at the lights that we want to put in and we are liking a pendant style light. Most of the ones that we found that we liked were too expensive so we have been working on making some from some lamp parts. This first pic shows some copper tubing that is used at the top with two washer.



Here I am putting a test one up to see what it is going to look like over the sink.


You can see that the corner of the ceiling holes have to be filled in because it does not get all the way covered with the base piece. This is what it looks like with the light turned on. This was a 60W bulb which is way too much.

With the lower wattage bulb this is what the shade looks like.

We still have to do the work around the top and put the other one up, but this is what it looks like from the distance (with the bulb that is too bright).