THE CAVENDER DIARY

For some reason there is an outlet in the middle of the wall on the right of the fireplace where the previous owner had his TV. Our television is on the other side of the room, so I can watch it while I’m in the kitchen cooking. I have intended on having our electrician move it lower on the wall, because it is the perfect place to plug-in the vacum….Unfornatutely, it sits right above the water connection for the washing machine in the garage on the other side of the wall. Pretty sure that an electrical outlet underneath a water source is a not so good idea. If I can’t move it or re-move it …. What can I do? I’ll tell ya…Make it disappear. With paint

and now you don't !!!!!!

Now you see it........

 So other than the slightly wet paint….making it a little off-color, it looks way so much more better.

I have toyed with the idea of a shelf over the master bedroom door for a while now. Like all my projects…this one also required much thought before the actual labor. Our master bedroom door has a small “inlet” of about 14 inches where the hall linen closet protrudes. This seemed like a perfect place to put more shit…..and I have tons of shit to put.

It was really a quick install…a white laminate board cut to fit,  a few 1X2s…nail gun…Zap – Zap.. Done.

The part that took time was painting, and this is what I have been loathing. Let me explain. For some reason…the previous owner had painted this room , trim and walls, one solid mocha color. It’s not a bad color….just different from every other room in the house with gleaming white trim.

That scallop over the closet was removed on day 1

We painted  our “Martha Stewart Fawn” in here before we even had furniture. And of course you remember that Jamie scrapped the popcorn off the ceiling for 3 days….. See picture below…. 

The mess.....

This meant that we had to also skim coat, sand, skim coat again, sand some more, paint and then paint again…all over our heads. After all this we just didn’t have the energy to also paint the trim…so it has waited a year and a half. Did I mention the lack of quarter round here as well? Ohh, when the previous owner replaced the floors, he neglected to put quarter round back down to hide the floor board gap around the entire edge of the room. See? This simple project just keeps getting bigger….

Back to the shelf…

Before…

See the white trim in the hallway?

And the after…

Now I have a place to put travel books and a few globes….

As for the trim…….I have been slowly working my way away from the shelf with painters tape, white semi-gloss paint, and on the floor – quarter round trim pieces… So far a third of the room has white trim, and the two-thirds behind furniture…has flat mocha trim.

How unusual…a half finished project

After much delay……the company we found had trouble giving us an exact install date, then postponed after they finally did commit to a date……we now have a sprinklers system in the front yard. This Texas summer was the longest heat wave in recorded history, this past July was the hottest July on record, and we went 70 consecutive days with temps over 100. We  haven’t had any measurable rain in Dallas since about May, and even the governor has declared a “Weekend of Prayer for Rain”. We are sooo ready to stop worrying about watering our little patch of  lawn; Let the green grass begin!

Isn't this a menacing looking tool?

And here is what it does...

After a few slices with the ditch-witch...

Installing the main controls in the garage

Awesome, right? So much destruction just to make things pretty…

On a side note, the plumber finally came a full week after we called American Home Shield and snaked the drainage for the right side of the house. Now we can wash clothes and dishes without nasty back-up in the garage….”yeah”….Of course we are still waiting for the “right part” so the TV repairman can fix the TV in the living room. ” 7 to 10 days “, they tell us  …hhhhmmmm, one crisis at a time right now.

Hey, we’re headed on a well deserved vacation next week. So not sure we’ll be doing much around the homestead to document for a while..Although we certainly have several half-finished projects…they will all have to wait.

I thought I’d post a few pictures of some of the framed objects we have around the house. Not everything in a frame has to be a picture….

A baseball glove I found in an old garage a few years ago

A belt buckle Jamie won showing horses, (my favorite bacause if the coral inlay) and a childs chest X-ray drom Dolly Python

 

 

 

A collection of buckles Jamie won showing horses, over our bar

A couple of celluloid indians from various flea markets, and a hunk of quartz we found in the yard

1940's pulp western fiction picked up for $3 each...Love the graphics

A monogrammed pewter flask from a dear friend

 

 

Hopalong Cassidy and Gene Autry pocket knives from the same dear friend

 

 

Tags, colar, and scrap of embroidered bed that belonged to an even dearer old friend

It can take me days, even months sometimes, to decide on the look of a single element.

So when I saw this light, I instantly knew that I had to find a way to use one ……

“Lithonia Lighting Flush-Mount Vapor-Tight Incandescent Light Fixture”

From the long-winded description on the H-Depot website. $24.97 and one of these simple industrial factory looking  babies can be all yours. At such a great price, I bought 2.

I knew I loved them, I just wasn’t sure where we could use them. I found an image online where they were in a bathroom on either side of a mirror, but that seemed way to “hard-edge”.  I  have a definite vision of 5 or 6 hanging barn lights in the garage, like an old service station. The kitchen was a possibility, but they would only make the ceiling seem shorter…and recessed cans are now/and will be a consistent in every room of our house.

Unfortunately, we still had one “prison-yard” flood light in our backyard…well not anymore…..

Perfect place! Remember that we had the under eaves lights put across the front of the house…Well this is the corner of the back yard where the patio ends and the corner turns into the little alley of a side yard where someday we will put the tool shed and potting bench. Love it here, where the flood light used to be ….so then I climbed into the attic to run electrical cable from this one to the direct opposite corner of the garage to light both side of the patio. That was instantly a bust. Our low roof line meant I had to crawl across 60 feet of fiberglass insulation in a 130 degree attic ….guess the other light will have to wait till cooler weather or I find an electrician I can pay. (Ben, if you just read this give me a call)

After living with the thing a few weeks, I realized what it was that I didn’t like about it ….the color.

Quick fix….

Our “Bear-Rug” trim paint has a second cousin in Rustoleum exterior……this is the same spray paint I used to paint the rims on the under-eaves cans in the front so they would be easy to pop off and change the bulbs. Pretty much a perfect match….. Look now….

Way, Much, More, Better……..Now I just need the other one installed…

 Still waiting on that phone call, Ben.

So I have been toying with the idea of shutters for the front of the house for a few months now. I knew they would be cedar, but I wasn’t sure of the style. Originally when we were house hunting, we looked at Arts & Crafts bungalows and Tudors from the 30’s. That is practically all you will find in our pre-war neighborhood. My personal style is more “Bungalow”.  I dreamed of mattress ticking wallpaper over beadboard wainscoting, stained glass windows above original glass-front bookcases on either side of the fireplace, and a cast-iron claw-foot bathtub and pedestal sink with little  black and white hexagon tiles. You get the idea? Vintage charm and character. …so how we ended up with a plain box 70’s ranch is beyond me. Wait a minute… Ohhh yeah…. Now I remember, it was the attached 2 car garage with alley entrance, 2 full bathrooms, ample closet space ( for a normal persons wardrobe anyway), the already open kitchen/living room, huge back yard…yadda, yadda, yadda. Very few of our neighbors have any of these things in their tiny 1930’s Tudors. 

Back to the shutters. A few years ago, while trick-or-treating with my nieces in my brothers mid-1960’s neighborhood, I took a picture of  these beauties…….

Star Shutters

Pretty Awesome, Right?  I absolutely love, love, love the star cut-outs. Very Austin Texas.  But they just don’t seem to fit “This” house. Perfect for my ideal 1930’s  craftsman bungalow. But our house needs to stay more true to its 70’s ranch roots……Everything we change/add has to” fit the style of the house”. That has been our mantra from the get-go, I’m even thinking of putting it on a t-shirt. So I looked to our new horizontal fence for inspiration, ……and also the pile of leftover cedar ceiling pieces in the garage.

All those little cut-off bits seemed to be just the right size. Add a few 1X2 trim pieces and a quick stapling together,………….(drumroll please)………. I ended up with a 6 of these…..

Perfect. They almost  look like they would have been on the house when she was built in 1972, and at the same time they are modern. The pale one is still the natural color of the cedar and the others I stained with our “Russet” stain diluted down with only 25%  of the colorant…..We like the diluted version  much better than the dark almost paint-like stain we put on the front of the fence. Eventually, all the cedar details outside will be stained this warm light brown.

Now, if I can just figure out how to attach them to the brick………..probably next weekend..I’ll keep you posted.

I have a macabre sense of style sometimes. Unusual, Gorey, Bizzare…sign me up. Taxidermy, animal skeletons, preserved insects……I’m your man. When I found this guy a few weeks ago…I pretty much squealed with delight in the middle of the junk store…..

Unfortunately, for me anyway, he is plastic. Probably designed for medical study…I’m guessing in the 60’s or 70’s…he is pretty damn close to the real thing.  His jaw is hinged with springs and that missing incisor  makes him all the more intimidating. His skull-cap is held on with little hooks on either side and is removable …making him the perfect size to hold a bowl of French onion dip at a Halloween party. And don’t think he won’t sometime in his future……

Right by the front door.......