A View of A Room

I was only going to change the dining room tablecloth, I swear! That was all. Four hours later, we had completely re-arranged three different rooms. We were so pleased with the effect, we thought we’d share.

You might think, "They have a table in the middle of the room….WHY, for heaven’s sake?" In all the pictures that we could find of interior decorating around the turn of the last century, it was very typical to have a table such as this one (from the 1860’s, I might add) in the middle of the room. Don’t ask us why, they just did. Of course, it’ll stay there till one of us forgets that it’s there and crashes into it in the dark. Until then, we’ll enjoy our little touch of authenticity. Hope you do too.

Restoration of A Different Kind

I remember the days when the mere utterance of the word "abstract," as it pertains to real estate, was followed by a sharp intake of air and a feeling of solemnity and reverence, as if someone had said "Allah," or "Yahweh," or "Carter’s Little Liver Pills." I grew tired of merely speculating about the history of the two houses that we own in one of the oldest parts of town. I wanted the facts! However, I ran into a brick wall on my first attempt. The office of Registrar of Deeds informed me that abstracts were no longer kept on houses – and hadn’t been for many years! What was once held in scriptural regard has now vaporized with obsolescence. No one even knows where they all went!

My thinking is, if we’re going to put all of this work into these houses, then they deserve to have a fleshed-out pedigree. At least, as much as possible. I had researched all the occupants of our other house, years ago. That effort yielded quite an extensive list of names – 44 in total. My source for this information was the Polk’s City Directory, and that’s where I was to return to uncover the linage of our current home.

The first time our address appears in the directory was in 1911. It can logically be assumed, then, that the house was built in 1910. This confirms what we were told by the realtor when we bought the house. What was interesting was just how long the original owners lived here. It was a married couple with two children. The husband was 12 years older than his wife, and he would live in the house until his death in 1941 (at the age of 82). She would remain in the house four more years, moving and dying, later, in 1948 (age 76).

After her death, the house changed hands rapidly, for quite a number of years. One of the original mysteries (and delights) about the house was that all the woodwork and hardware was kept in tact – never painted or altered in any way. Even the walls didn’t appear to have been painted! It was hard to believe that decades of ownership would result in such unimaginative inhabitants, to have never even made the effort to paint! We concluded that one of the children of the original owners retained the house as a rental. Because of that status, many of the fine old features unique to a house like that was preserved and maintained. There were probably strict rules about the care of the house and many strict parameters regarding decorating, etc.

In 1956, the house was listed as being "vacant." In 1957, the upstairs apartment makes its first appearance (via a "1/2" designation following the house address). My theory – and this is only a theory, right now – is that the son of the original owners was, at this time, in his early sixties. He could have been thinking about padding his retirement income by splitting the old homestead into two rental incomes.

Our appetites for discovery were whetted even more, last week, upon attending a meeting of the local genealogical society. There, we were both captivated by a fascinating talk given by a woman who works for the city’s historic building preservation office (we didn’t even know they had one!). She explained that her office still had information regarding building permits issued over the years. I later emailed her office with inquires about both of our houses, hoping that she had something on file that would give us some good leads. She only had building permits for garage additions, that were done much later, and some remodel work. No permits exist for the construction of the houses. She did inform us that there is a way to make your own abstract; and now, with this bevy of names on hand, we’re well on our way. The county holds documents that will add a few branches to our house’s family tree, so that’s our next stop.

Stay tuned!

Inner Beauty

One of the favorite features of our old home is a built-in china hutch that occupies a prominent space between the dining room and kitchen. I had started stripping the hutch last January in a "fit of good intentions," as one writer put it, thinking I could knock it off in no time at all. I only got as far as the two bottom shelves when other matters – namely, kitchen, bathroom and floors – distracted me. Brother Rob extricated several doors, when we were gone one day. He returned them a few days later so nice and clean, you could practically have eaten off of them.

For months, the hutch sat forlorn, half-naked and partially disassembled. The old finish that did not get scraped off when I last applied stripper dripped down and hardened on the bare wood below. The thick, black gunk lay in frozen rivulets across the front of the cabinetry like tear-streaked mascara. The belle of the dining room stood weeping, her shelves that once held heirloom china now a convenient repository for hammers, screwdrivers, prybars, drywall screws, duct tape, a paper plate with doorknobs and screws, caulking, paint brushes, steel wool, cat toys, weeks-old newspaper, Target shopping bags . . .

At the commencement of OPERATION FACE LIFT, I turned off the central air, opened the dining room windows, strategically positioned fans to move air both on and away from the work site, rolled up my sleeves and began. I decided to switch to a stripper that is supposedly safe for indoor use. This is not a choice I would normally have made, but I didn’t want our cat to go bonkers from the fumes, and I especially didn’t want the house to stink from now until Christmas!

I slathered on the harmless looking goo with enthusiasm, if not optimism. I was unsure that something so innocuous looking and smelling could remove anything more substantive than Easter egg coloring. The directions clearly stated that it could take up to 30 minutes to show some results, and that ended up being pretty close to the truth. Nevertheless, after about a half-hour, the old finish started swimming and mixing with the peach-colored stripper.

It took a couple of applications of stripper, as some of the varnish had crystallized, like sugar baked on a cake pan. With diligence, what was left of the nasty, old finish was finally gone; and, like a receding wave along the shore, it revealed "artifacts" of wear: An errant hammer strike from a carpenter that originally installed it, a scratch from a furniture move, a gouge or two at the bottom from hard-toed shoes or children vigorously playing with their toys on the dining room floor. But old wood is an amazingly forgiving thing. No matter how brutally it gets treated over a period of time, it only asks of us a little elbow grease to coax it back to its original state.

After I removed as much of the old finish as possible, I went back over the surface with that marvelous wash I discovered -- thankfully – early on ("CitriStrip"). This stuff takes it down all the way to the surface of the bare wood. The grain runs clear throughout the boards, each line a sentence from stories of old-growth trees.

I set aside the next day for staining. The first coat, as I anticipated, went on unevenly. It is the second coat that brings everything together. The irreparable blemishes quietly fade into the background, and the dramatic swirls of grain take center stage.

After two coats of polyurethane – this process taking at least two days to complete – it was time to put back together again. Making cabinetry is an art. Putting cabinetry back together is a science! It took the better part of a day; nevertheless, all the doors and hardware finally got put back in place.

In the space between the floor and the bottom shelf, I slipped a note explaining who did what and when to the hutch, just before sealing it up with the board that runs along the front. Now we have a pretty built-in china hutch along with a bit of immortality as well!