36. Befores and afters

November 27, 2012January 20, 2016 / Apple Hill Cottage / 9 Comments

We’ve been working nonstop here at the cottage, but sometimes, like life, the actual progress goes in fits and starts. Working on the windows is slow going; we are 3/4 of the way finished, and it seems we’ve been scraping/sanding/repairing/priming/painting them forever. And we’ve been working on the outside of the house (it is a Whole House after all, not just a kitchen…) to protect it from winter. So the BIG kitchen stuff — like walls and floors and doors — has been proceeding on hold. (I had to say that; it’s one of Mr. H.C.’s favorite sayings.) Hence this post is more for me than you. It’s to reassure me

that work IS being done;

that we ARE progressing;

and that we WILL get to the end of this kitchen project.

To that end, here are some before and after pictures:

The front entrance Before — one of 5 pairs of sliding glass doors…(We’re down to 3!

The front entrance After — at the end of the weekend and the sun is setting, but it’s in place!

It took weeks, but those cabinets did get sanded, and their hardware put in place:

One of a whole pile of UGLY kitchen cabinets Before

…and the same cabinet After

Very few doors in the cottage are staying the same:

This was the old door going down to the pantry. This photo doesn’t show that it was actually sawed in half! A homemade Dutch door…

And this is the new door After. It cost $30 at the Restore in Washington. It is primed, but still awaiting the right color of green. (Then the yellow tape will come off as well.)

This cupboard was the one item in the kitchen that I could easily picture as beautiful before it was redone:

The built-in cupboard Before…

And my favorite, the cupboard After with its beautiful paint, new hardware, and new-old wooden top.

And if you squint your eyes just right, you can almost picture the kitchen as it will be someday:

I titled this photo Lovely Kitchen 2 B. (If you look closely, you’ll see the After result of the orange schoolhouse light in one of the earlier photos. We kept the pull chain, though)

Well, I don’t know about you, but after seeing these photos, I feel better! Onward…

33. …as soon go kindle fire with snow

November 5, 2012September 1, 2015 / Apple Hill Cottage / 6 Comments

About a month ago Henrietta’s Hippo nominated me for a lovely blog award, Blog on Fire. Unfortunately, this post proves that I’m NOT on fire, as it took me this long to figure out how to work this in to my regularly scheduled posts. :-) You see, I have to say eight interesting things about me or my pet, which in this case would be the cat, Henry, as hubby, Mr. H.C., absolutely doesn’t qualify as my pet. He never comes when he’s called. (Come to think of it, neither does Henry…)
One would think that finding eight interesting things to say would be easy. After all, everyone on the planet thinks they are the most interesting person on the planet, right? That would be the problem with the planet…but that’s another post altogether. Plus, this blog is ostensibly supposed to be about renovating our cottage, although there have been tangents…

So for the past month I’ve been trying to come up with a clever way to incorporate eight interesting things about Henry and me with the cottage. There are eight rooms in the cottage, so that’s the tie-in. (Yes, it’s taken me a month to come up with this! Sigh…)

1. The Back Deck

Henry lounging on the back deck in warmer moments…

Henry found us. He appeared on the back deck two summers ago, soon after we realized the cottage was going to be ours. It took awhile for us to realize that he was going to be ours as well. Perhaps he was coming to our large, protected deck before we found him; no one knows for sure. Last winter Mr. H.C. built him a snug insulated cat box for those times when we were gone and he wasn’t. This winter he will be an inside Pittsburgh house cat and only be the country cat on weekends. We don’t think he minds. This past weekend was very rainy and cold. I opened the back door for him to go out on the deck, and he just looked up at me as if to say, “What? You think I’m crazy? I’m sleeping here on the bed in the warm!”

2. The Yellow Bedroom

Notice Henry sleeping on the bed. This was just after he declined to go outside…

Yellow is my least favorite color. I don’t have a single item of clothing that is yellow. On a short walk-thru of my home in Pittsburgh the only things I could find that were yellow were some bananas and apples on the kitchen counter, and a few yellow books in the library. So the Yellow Bedroom will be changing soon. Not only are the walls yellow, but so is the ceiling! And the bedspread does its darndest to imitate the wallpaper.

And just to add to the brightness, this is the wallpaper on the fourth wall

So here’s the big news: While Mr. H.C. and I are concentrating on redoing the kitchen and the bathroom, the duo at {rehabitat}are going to redo our bedroom for us. Online. Without them having to come to the cottage. Without me having to go to NYC. That’s part of the reason I just happen to have these lovely photos of this yellow bedroom… There will be more posts explaining the process soon; I just had to let you in on the big news. Did I mention that {rehabitat} is my sister and my niece? I can’t wait to see what they do with this Yellow room…

3. The Garage Bedroom
I like real. I confess to being a bit fanatic about it… In my last post about antiques, I called myself a 100% person — 100% cotton, 100% wood, 100% old. I’m even borderline on plywood, although I can see the uses for it sometimes… The garage bedroom is 100% paneled in 100% fake walnut paneling sheets from the seventies.

That little white fur ball in the middle of the loaded up junk bed is none other than, yep, Henry, the cat who sleeps anywhere.

It’s a sad room that used to be a garage for holding Uncle Leslie’s red and white Pontiac. Since it was built to be a garage, there are no windows except for the sliding glass doors in the front where the garage doors used to be. (There is one small window on the back wall as well.) The long windowless wall faces South, so if there were some windows on that wall, it would make a huge difference. That’s in the three year plan; in the meantime, the paneling will probably be painted as a short term solution. It will double as a guest bedroom and an office/library. For now it is storage for inherited furniture that we don’t know what to do with, old boards that we’re saving in case we need them, and a bed that any occupant might have to share with Henry…

The Bathroom

This is almost exactly our bathroom vanity. It was purchased new at the Habitat for Humanity Restore in Swissvale for $275. And Mr. H.C. was thinking that we paid too much. It’s listed here for $2600! Can that be possible?

Henry loves the bathroom. He just curls up on the rug outside the shower and sleeps. This seems to be strange cat behavior, but if you research this fact, you will discover that most cats love bathrooms. And Henry will sleep anywhere! Last weekend I found him curled up with my hair dryer and round hairbrush. The hair dryer WAS warm…

The bathroom was originally the room we were going to do over first, so we have it mostly planned and have even purchased materials for it: a round hand-hammered copper sink that we bought in Deep Creek several years ago and have just been waiting for a perfect place for it; small 1 inch travertine tiles for the shower floor; the maple vanity pictured above; and a large mission-style mirror that matches the vanity perfectly and cost $7. When we peeled up the carpet (orange-red shag), there were 3″ pine boards underneath that I started sanding immediately. I gave it up when we started the kitchen, but I can’t wait to get re-started on this room; it is terrifically ugly at this point, even with the Italianate plaster walls…(See post 32. Imperfect Little Cottage.)

The Pantry/Laundry Room

The pantry shelves are filled with paints and renovating materials for right now, but picture them with quart jars of home-canned tomatoes…

I love having a big pantry. I want to garden, store food, have chickens, bees, and have a pantry big enough to store 50 pounds of apples, potatoes, or squash. The pantry is a nice size and an interesting old-time design. There are four steps going down into it from the kitchen; built-in shelves are on three walls, but it needs a new ceiling from a long ago leak in the roof…Yep, something else for the three year plan.

From the pantry up to the kitchen…

The Kitchen
My blog is subtitled The Circle of Life, and the kitchen of this cottage is the room that most reminds me of the circles of my own life. I remember sitting at Aunt Mary’s kitchen table having a glass of cider. This memory is so foggy, I must have been really young. I also remember her taking me outside and showing me how she got water at the hand pump and letting me try. I had to hang my whole skinny little self on the long handle to try to pull it down and was amazed at her ability to pump the handle multiple times. Forty some years later, I visited Clara in that same house with my new husband. I sat at her kitchen table and she got us a glass of iced tea. Ten years later, and it is our house; there isn’t a kitchen table in the plans, and now that I’m writing this, I’m regretting it…We looked at old kitchen tables with the enameled tops but opted for an island instead. It will be okay — we have a big harvest table in the dining room.

The Living/Dining Room
I am a Jesus follower. I wasn’t always. I like to tell people that I wandered in the wilderness for 40 years, just like the Israelites, but it wasn’t really 40 years — more like thirty. During those years I tuned out everyone who tried to talk to me about God, Jesus, or faith. So if you are still reading, thank you. I’ll just be a few more lines… I had spent years rejecting God and the Christian faith; when I finished my first prayer after such a long time, I remember thinking, “What a joke! I just prayed to a God I’m not sure I believe in!” But He didn’t let go of my heart, and when I invited him to sit at my table, He invited me to sit at His. Forever. And so for the living room and dining room–everyday rooms–I want to quote a blog post I just read on Everyday faith. It’s from Sarah who blogs at Life in the parsonage.

Everyday faith. It means living for something bigger than myself. Bigger than this moment and this life. It means that my life, my choices, my attitude, my response, my everything does not belong to me. That’s what makes faith so hard. Every day I fight against wanting it to be about me. And I often find myself reaching for control of it. And that’s the miraculous part of it: He always gives grace. And mercy. He never grows weary of me. He knows my weakness, and He works within it, showing Himself… That is my Living by Faith.”

No, it’s not easy. But, wow, is it way better than my old life without Jesus! So if you are depressed, anxious, need forgiveness, or are just plain tired of shouldering burdens that are too hard, find yourself a Bible and your favorite reading chair. Turn to 1 John — it is a short book near the end of the New Testament. It is only five chapters, but it is the story of unfathomable and unconditional love. And it is for you. Amen.

The Mudroom

This one is from HGTV’s site on cottage mudrooms. Some of the newer pics are starting to be chic gray…

Has anyone noticed pictures of mudrooms lately? They are white with clean shelving, unmuddied boots, and a few jackets hanging neatly on pegs. So unlike what a true mudroom in a farmhouse looks like. We are still deciding what ours will look like. We have terracotta tiles for the floor, and small French doors to open into the kitchen. We also have a possible wood stove in the corner. But undoubtedly, it will be messy even if the walls are painted white. This next story is in the mudroom because it is a confession of how messy lives are; even though we try to whitewash them for the world…

My sweet hubby was my first boyfriend. In 4th grade. I was invited to his 10th birthday party, except he failed to inform me it was a birthday party. (The first of many miscommunications…) I thought we were just going roller skating. I was scared to go because I’d never roller skated before, but I went because I liked him! Rita, his sweetheart of an older sister took care of me that afternoon and taught me to roller skate — held my hand as we went round and round, helped me up when I fell, and encouraged me the whole time. Then we went back to his house and he started opening presents! I was mortified that I didn’t have one for him. I must have cried because Clara put money in an envelope and gave it to him and signed my name! Their whole family took care of me that afternoon! Six years later we were boyfriend and girlfriend again — for two plus years in high school. We broke up in college, married others, had children, lived our lives, and saw each other once every five years or so at high school reunions. Thirty years later, we met again…and now are happily married. A happy ending, yes, but there was divorce and sorrow in between. God is gracious and merciful to all us sinners…

Since I am so weird and have such random interests and loves — Jesus, words and books, DIY & decorating, antiques, country life — I also read a weird variety of blogs. Here are eight lovely blogs that I am nominating for the blog on fire award:
Coyote soup
handmaden
somestolenmoments
[rehabitat]
mcwissenville
the domestic fringe
Kathy’s Chronicles and
MercyInk. (Please check out this website in particular. Lauren is trying to raise a lot of money for Operation Baby Rescue in the mountains of Guatemala. Go here and be inspired. And buy your Christmas presents…)
Check them out.

The title of this post comes from Two Gentlemen of Verona by William Shakespeare. The full quote is:
Thou wouldst as soon go kindle fire with snow, As seek to quench the fire of love with words.

32. Imperfect Little Cottage

October 28, 2012January 20, 2016 / Apple Hill Cottage / 6 Comments

Last week my son-in-law lent me a book called Perfect English Farmhouse by Ros Byam Shaw. Ms. Shaw is a foremost English interior designer and has written several books: Perfect English Cottage; Perfect English; Living Colour; Old House, New Home; as well as Perfect English Farmhouse.

There were several items of entertainment and enjoyment in her book, as well as some inspirational pictures and good color ideas, so in order to adequately discuss these books, I tried to order Perfect English Cottage from the local library. There was only one copy in all of Allegheny County and it was on the holdshelf… So I forked out $$ and bought it, hoping I wouldn’t be sorry.

I will confess to loving decorating books, but I. don’t. purchase. them. I read them from my local library. Otherwise I would overspend my already large and out-of-control book budget. There is not a single decorating book on my bookshelves, unless you count Shelves, Closets, and Cabinets, a no-decorating how-to DIY. There is a lot of pressure to love this book.

I love antiques, real stuff made from real wood, real fabric, real metal, and my house is filled with them. Every one has a story. I’m a 100% kind of person — 100% cotton, 100% wool, 100% old. And here’s the thing : we think 1800s are old! When the English say old, they mean medieval — not like in the US where 100 years is old; some of these farmhouse kitchens have leaded glass windows from the 15th century. Makes the 40s cottage seem downright modern!

AGA Ranges

Every kitchen in this book has a wonderful old enameled cast iron stove called an AGA. Oh, I drooled on Pedro’s book! Turns out, one can still buy them!

This is a photo of an Aga from MurphyHeating.com.

They were originally designed and built in Sweden in the early 20th century and became a hit in England from 1925 on. They are never turned off, which makes them an extra heater in the kitchens of chilly England and Northern Europe. Chefs love them; Jamie Oliver says, “I think the AGA makes people better cooks; they’re generally technically better cooks because they understand cooking.” Each AGA has at least three ovens — a roasting oven, a baking oven, and a slow-cook oven. Devotees say they take the place of toasters, slow cookers, tea pots, and clothes dryers. I’ve never seen a demonstration, but they surely are beautiful. Perhaps luvly is the better word.

They come in gas, propane, or electric and some of them have dual fuel options — electric oven, gas “hobs”. (Burners, for all of us Yankees!) This photo is from the AGA website.

Just look at this pistachio one! There’s also one in English Racing Green! and Aubergine! Each of the traditional cookers is hand made in England after it is ordered and then shipped to you in pieces and installed by the dealer. There are nine AGAs for sale on EBay right now, and they vary in price from $1050 to $12,250 — a little over budget no matter how cheaply we got the cabinets, the doors, and the windows — A girl can dream…

Earthy Walls and Paint Shadows

One of the pictures in the book that made me laugh out loud was a photo in the chapter called ‘House of Leather’. The house is 130 years old and “…Much of Matt and Jax’s work on the house consisted of stripping off layers of ancient paint and wallpaper, and they have left this wall unpainted like a mottled map, showing the history of the various colours and patterns that have decorated it in the last 130 years.” Can you imagine? Our cottage is about 65 years old, and we are complaining about scraping off four layers of paint and one of wallpaper… And this wall they left made it into a very elegant decorating book. I love it! I have walls like this! So now I know that we can just leave the walls in the bathroom.

Bathroom wall — looks like old Italian plaster, eh?

They are kind of swirly, yellow avocado and pink–definitely looks like old Italian plaster! Holes might be a problem, but then again, they can just be covered with wall art and towels, yes?

Paint shadows around this closet showed us the original moldings. That doesn’t mean we aren’t going to paint over the shadows though…

In a similar scenario, Botelet Farm is a third generation B&B in Cornwall. As son Richard was redoing an upstairs bedroom, he found a paint shadow of a mantle that his parents had removed when they were “modernizing” in the fifties. The old paint showed the details of what had been taken off. He wasn’t sure what to do with it, so it got left like that for a time. (My kind of reno!) After a while, he decided he liked it that way and just left it. We have those too! As a matter of fact, the paint shadows show how the trim over the doors and the windows used to be, and that has helped us decide how to do the trim around the doors. And look at our fireplace…The Cottage Book

The Farmhouse book was lots of fun — I loved many of the rooms and the general simplicity of most of them. The cottage rooms are less stark, but actually, just as shabby. Maybe more so. It just isn’t what I expected. This book is not about cozy, light-filled, chintz-covered cottages. There are saggy rocking chairs with torn upholstery; there are antique pieces with big varnish blotches front and center; and old upholstered chairs draped with scarves, quilts, and antique textiles. I should take comfort in this. I have shabby antiques and sagging rocking chairs. In fact, we are wondering how to make this look better:

That is NOT a varnish blotch on the drawer! (And the fake brick linoleum will soon be gone…)

I’ll be honest here: I don’t put stock in perfect things. But I would like the bottom of this kitchen island to look a little less shabby. (I think by the time we’re finished with it, it will.) If I had a lovely old cupboard with an unsightly varnish stain right in the front, I would fix it — no matter what it did to the ‘antique value’. And I can stand a lumpy rocker, but if photographers were coming to feature my home in a decorating book, I would get out my staple gun and staple up the hanging undergarments.

That’s not to say, I didn’t like any of the vignettes in the book — many of the rooms were charming with spectacular harvest tables, luvly painted kitchen “dressers”, and huge old stone and brick fireplaces. But I’ve got a decorating book for sale, half price…

(I’d like to show you some of the pretty rooms, but I don’t want to violate any copyright laws, and I’d be scanning the book to put up photos illegally. I actually requested permission from the publisher, but I am too impatient to wait for their answer. If they ever give me permission, I’ll repost this with photos of the charming spaces.)