Orange-Chocalate Pudding

Stripping the stairs is, hands down, absolutely the most disgusting project I’ve worked on so far.

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Frautschi Wardrobe

Rather than a movie or dinner or something a reasonable couple would do, Missy and I took advantage of my parents’ visit to pick up furniture with Dad’s giant diesel pickup.  We’ve had to pass on so many great Craigslist/ReStore/antique store finds because a Hyundai’s trunk is only so big.  It’s a sad story, I [...]

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Get sprung already

Look spring, this chair demands to be on the porch, OK?  We’re ready, you’re ready – let’s just do this thing.

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Schedule

Back tomorrow morning – promise.  We spent a long weekend in Madison so Missy could teach, then my parents came to visit The Finest Granddaughter In Recorded History.  We’re just getting back into a normal schedule, which includes posting on the houseblog, but certainly not doing any real, actual, hard work in the house.  Nothing [...]

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Nude

It’s all coming off – three layers of paint from the stairs and one (thankfully) layer of wallpaper border from the dining room.  All prep-work for February, which is National We Get Stuff Painted Month.  The upstairs trim will be off-white (the original color – the brown you see is faux-grain), the stairwell will be [...]

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Hot or not?

Q1: Chalkboard walls – hot or not?
Q1a: If yes, where?  Kitchen? Dining room?  Kids room?  Office?  Uh, bathroom?
Q1b: If no, is it the dust?  Is that what bothers you?  Or dinner guests scratching their nails on it?
Q2: Is it functional or is it art?  It can’t be both, so no weasel-ey answers.

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Me too!

Christopher is looking at cheap rugs on ebay, and now so am I.  After I take the carpet out of the office, I want an old, threadbare Turkish/Persian rug for the room.  Like something I brought back from a foreign adventure.  From what I’ve seen on ebay, $100 shipped is not out of the range [...]

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Unfinished

Discuss: Could you live here?  Would all the air drive you batty?  Would you rather spend seven milllllion dolllllars on, say, five thousand acres of prime Idaho?

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A footstool emerges

Nice, eh?  Travis dropped off stain samples to color-match the chair this morning (at our house – how’s that for local craftsmanship?), so once the slats are in and the finish is on, we’re in business.

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Sontag on homes, terrorism

That Susan Sontag – she was one smart cookie.
On homes -
“Fewer and fewer Americans possess objects that have a patina, old furniture, grandparents pots and pans…the used things, warm with generations of human touch, essential to a human landscape. Instead, we have our paper phantoms, transistorized landscapes. A featherweight portable museum.”
On terrorism –

The [...]

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