Vintage Home and Farm

While working on remodeling our downstairs bathroom, we removed a giant mirror that had covered the entire upper half of the wall over the sink and countertop. After setting the mirror down in another room of the house, we went back into the bathroom and discovered several old messages taped to the wall where the mirror had been. The tape around the messages had yellowed with age. Cobwebs and dust drooped over the surface of the wall. What are the messages about, we wondered, and why are they here? The first one appears to be of a political nature. It says, "Vote for Tricky Dicky [Tricky Dicky is crossed out], Crafty Richard, and Zorba the Veep!" Who is Zorba the Veep? We had to look them up. Apparently, this was the nickname given by Democrats to Spiro T. Agnew, who was the 39th Vice President of the United States. The second sign says, "Attencion por favor, Odoriferous material is deposited within these catacombous hollows." I guess we can all figure out what that...

Nine months ago, we offered to become foster parents for the Olympic Peninsula Humane Society. There weren't any foster opportunities then, but we stayed on their list in case they needed help. Then, in mid-July, we got the call. They had a momma cat and three kittens for us to foster. The momma was found in a barn when she was pregnant, and now that she had given birth, the kitties needed a foster family to take care of them. They would be with us for 8-10 weeks, and then the Humane Society takes it from there. It has been a great experience, of course, except I forgot how crazy kittens get when they are big enough to crawl out of their pen. They were only in their pen for about two weeks. Since then, it's been total wild chaos in The Corral, which is the room of the house that they are in. Luckily we have a big enough house that it's not too overwhelming. The kittens love to race like bandits around the room, climbing up the furniture, clawing, and chewing on everything. ...

  Yay, we are finished painting!  The exterior of our house is now a cheerful yellow with a crisp white trim.  The dormers were probably the hardest part of the house to paint.  The roof is pitched pretty steep along the front, which meant that to paint the dormers we had to sit on the roof while holding onto the boom lift so we didn't fall off!  It was also excessively hot up there during the recent heat wave.  But we got out there regardless of the hot weather and got it done.   Every muscle in my body is aching.  My hands and arms hurt the most from gripping the sander and the paint brush for eight days in a row.  I don't want to hold another paint brush for a long, long time. Now that the painting is done, we have moved on to other projects including harvesting and preserving cherries, blueberries, garlic, peas, broccoli, fava beans and all kinds of other things from our garden.  We also need to check on the bees.  Blackber...

Could this be 10 years worth of paper wasp nests built up in our attic vent? Every shelf in this vent had wasp nests like the one you see above. We had sprayed the nests two nights ago with Hot Shot Wasp and Hornet Killer, and then yesterday evening, thinking they were all dead, we went up together in the boom lift ready to begin scraping and sanding this side of the house.  My husband used his scraper to start removing the nests from the vent. Yikes!!!!! An angry swarm of bees came charging out of there, circling us and stinging him.  I don't know how I escaped their wrath, but luckily I did as we quickly maneuvered the lift back down.   After tending to the wound, we went back up in the lift with another big can of Hot Shot. We sprayed a whole bunch more in there, and then waited until the next morning to make another attempt to clean the vent out. That next morning, we also brought a can of Hot Shot up in the lift with us, just in case.  I held the Hot Shot s...

We're excited to have the boom lift here so that we can more easily and safely paint the upper level of our house.  You may recall that last year, after many days of painting, I fell off the ladder while trying to paint a portion of the second story; the ladder slid away from the house and I came crashing down, paint bucket flying and globs of yellow paint splattering all over the place. With a badly bruised leg and hip, and my arm and back wrenched out of whack, I decided to put away my paint brush and work with my husband to come up with a better plan. We finally realized that renting a boom lift was the only reasonably safe way for us to accomplish this task.  The rainy fall season was approaching at that time, and so we had to put off the task until now. We rented a Genie TZ-50 trailer-mounted articulating boom lift from Sunbelt Rentals.  It has outriggers that come down to help make it very stable.  There's a power plug in the bucket so you can run a sander...

When we first toured our property before we bought it, we came across these hooks in the ground near the back door of the house.    Upon seeing those, my first thought was that perhaps one day long ago people used to hitch their horses up close to the house so as to go inside for a spell.  But I quickly learned that those unusual-looking hooks in concrete blocks by the back door weren't used for hitching horses. Nope, that there is the septic tank.  The hardware is used for lifting the concrete lids up so that you can pump out the sludge inside.   Yesterday, we had the unfortunate experience of getting up close and personal with the septic tank.  While there are three lids, I learned that there are actually two tanks. One tank has two lids and the other has one bigger lid.  The whole area was completely covered by moss until yesterday.  The area closest to the house had mud on top, at least for a while I thought that was mud. It wasn't. I lea...

I realized we haven't given an update on the exterior paint in a while. We're about two-thirds of the way done. What's left is mostly up high, reachable with a ladder. Eventually we may need to rent a cherry picker to reach the highest corners.   It's been a painfully slow and tedious process painting our 1940's house.  Mainly the slow-down is due to how much paint is peeling and sloughing off in big chunks when we run a scraper across the surface.  Huge chunks of paint are falling to the ground, yet we are not finding any rot so far (knock on wood), which is a testament to the use of high quality paint years ago.  I think the last time this house was painted was in the late 1980's. While we could have hired someone to do the job for us, there's something to be said for the pride we'll feel when we accomplish the job ourselves. (Yep, you're right - that does sound like crazy talk, I hear it now, too. Perhaps I've been exposed to paint fumes too l...

A few weeks ago, I painted the ceiling in our formal entry and then over the weekend we installed a new ceiling light fixture. The light that was here was not original to the house; it was an inexpensive eyesore of a light fixture that was seriously losing its luster.  We thought a more formal Tiffany-style light would go well in this space and would complement other light fixtures throughout the house. With the wood of our knotty pine walls, isn't the green ceiling light reminiscent of tree leaves? This room makes me feel like we live in a forest. The last step to finish off this room will be to find a different area rug for placing in front of the door.  Perhaps something with green to go with the light?  This House with Knotty Pine See many more photos of our house with its wood walls in our e-book,  This House with Knotty Pine .  Click to download your copy  from the Amazon bookshelf (for reading on iOS, Android, Mac, and PC using the  free Kindle ...