Carriage House Door Headers

The opening and the ceiling are at the same height, so without modification a standard garage door won't work. Nor will the "quick-turn" short radius tracks.

So Johnny was here last week putting in headers that create the necessary clearance. They are all clear cedar, just like the doors and should last at least as long as I do...

The doors have been built and are being primed at the shop. The final coat of paint will go on in the spring. As will the paint on the headers.

The doors should be ready to install next week.

Carriage House Doors

From the time we moved in, only one of the carriage house doors has worked.  The others have various problems and don't open so we can't get all the cars in.  The one pictured opens, but it is in bad shape along the bottom edge.

The doors are traditional carriage house doors.  The rightmost panel swings open like a normal door while the two on the left open into the garage like bi-fold closet doors.

Being a lazy slug, I'd like to not have to open and close the doors manually.  So keeping the existing mechanism isn't going to work.

As we've been looking at different options, a company looking to get back into the midwest market approached us about using their product.  It's a single piece garage door that kicks outward at the bottom before rotating and sliding back at the top.  The reason why it works well in California is because they don't have to shovel the snow out of the way to get the door open.  Needless to say, that style of door isn't an option for us.

We did find a company who can reproduce  the look of these doors, but use a standard multi-panel rolling mechanism.

And the HPC has approved it.

So the project has begun.

Music Room - Part 5

I made it - it's done!

I painted the doors yesterday and re-hung them this morning.

While waiting for the paint to dry we moved all the furniture back, hung artwork, etc.

Other than the kids' bedrooms, this is the only room where all of the furniture came from our previous house.

Now I just need to put away all the tools, etc before the family comes over tonight.

Music Room - Part 4

I started on the music room back in July.

Life and other things conspired against me, so this has taken longer than expected.  It was my father-in-law's favorite room, so I'm sad he's not here to see it nearing completion.

It took forever to get the woodwork prepared for a new coat of paint.  I tried to disturb as little paint as possible - before starting I'd tested the paint for lead and the top coats were fine, but the oldest coats were lead-based.  So I followed the new EPA guidelines, just to be safe.

The room was an off-white color with a peach undertone.  We've gone to a historic color called "Georgian Green".  It's similar to one of the early woodwork colors in this room.

The ceiling effect is similar to a cloudy sky.  It is made up of several layers.  Two are the same as the woodwork (Ivory Tusk) and the other two are a metallic silver.  I did the first two layers and got frustrated, so She Who Must be Obeyed did the final two layers.

Some of the screws for the window and door hardware were missing or broken (what a surprise!).  So I've had to go to Seven Corners to get various replacements.  Thus the need for more antiquing solution to get the new brass bits to look like the old brass bits.

Hopefully I can get the last bit done tomorrow to meet my goal of having it done by Christmas.

Kid's Bath - Part 13

The linen cabinet arrived last week.  Bill and Johnny picked it up from the cabinet maker, painted it, and installed it.

It looks great and is a pretty good size.  The tall ceilings make it appear shorter than it actually is.

I had to scramble around a bit - I'd forgotten about knobs. I found some at Rockler while I was up there getting some more solution for antiquing brass (for my other ongoing project; blog post coming shortly).

We're nearing the end of this project.  All that's left is for me to install some window hardware.

And the tissue-paper window treatments have to go....  ;-)

Kid's Bath - Part 12

Mirrors!  We finally have mirrors!

We'd ordered some online a while ago.  A long while ago.  After several days, we received the *first* email from the vendor saying something along the lines of, "We value customer service and have received your order.  We anticipate that it will ship on [... some date about a month in the future]."



As the estimated ship date rapidly approached, we received a second email saying something along the lines of, "We value customer service.  Your items are anticipated to ship on [... some date about a month in the future]."

Really?  Good customer service is two emails in the span of a month with no explanation as to why the items are delayed?

So I had She Who Must Be Obeyed cancel the order.  There's only so many times you can shave without a mirror before you slice off some important part of your face.

And I went searching...  and found some different ones at Just Vanities.  So I placed the order.

And within *minutes* I received a response saying that they'd received the order, the items were in stock, and we should receive them within the week.  Oddly, there was no mention of "valuing customer service."

The next day I received another email saying that the items had been picked from the warehouse and would be shipped shortly.  Again, there was no mention of "valuing customer service."

The next day I received another email saying that the items had shipped.  Late in the evening I checked the tracking number, assuming that they'd just have started their journey.  I was surprised to see that they'd already arrived at the Fedex facility here.  Again, there was no mention of "valuing customer service."

They'd shipped them overnight at no cost.

But it gets better.

When we opened them the next day, they looked better in person than on-line and really tied things together in the room.  But... one had a manufacturing defect; the paint was bubbled along the edge of one of the frames.

So I called their customer service line.

The person said that they would ship out a replacement.  And that we should keep the old one; if the manufacturer wanted it back, they'd send a pre-paid shipping label to us within two weeks.  If not we can dispose of it as we see fit.  Again, there was no mention of "valuing customer service."

The replacement arrived within two days  Again via overnight Fedex.  At no charge.

It is interesting to contrast the behavior between the company that started every correspondence with "we value customer service" and the one that never mentioned it once.

Kid's Bath - Part 11

There a a few things left, but it's done enough that it can be used.

It's great to finally have a real shower.

With water pressure!

We're waiting on the linen cabinet, a little window hardware, and the mirrors. I can't recommend the place we bought the mirrors from yet - they've been slow and haven't communicated much.

The vanity came from Premiere Vanities, the plumbing fixtures from Faucet Direct, the sconces are vintage from Art and Architecture, and the ceiling fixture from Creative Lighting.

The fan is amazingly quiet.

I love the in-floor heat.

Click on the photo to get to the album that contains more pictures of the finished work.

Literature and Life

Not only is it fun to have a house with a name, it's also fun to see it mentioned in various literature.

I stumbled across another reference to our house recently in Minnesota 1900: Art and Life on the Upper Mississippi, 1890-1915, by Michael Conforti.

It's good to see that the house is always cast in a positive light.

I hope we can do it justice.

New Switches

The latest packages arrived from House Of Antique Hardware and Kilian Hardware.

When we moved in, most of the switches were of the standard kind. One stood out however.

In the Music Room, there was an old push-button switch. It was very cool and had a nondescript brass cover-plate covered by many coats of paint.

We decided to go back to push-button switches in the "public" areas of the house. The twist is that we found more decorative cover-plates. We also found some dimmer switches that mimic the old push-button switches.

So in my spare time I've been installing these as well. They coordinate well with the antique sconces.

New Sconces

We've never been enamored with many of the sconces in the house. They (top photo) sort of look like someone found a 24-pack on sale at Home Depot.

We've found some replacements at antique and salvage shops over the years and have finally finished enough re-wiring so that they can be controlled by switches in convenient spots.

The fun part about hunting for stuff is that you can find sets that work for an area, but don't have everything "match" all over the house.

While the electrician was here for the bathroom, he installed a few (bottom photo) in the main staircase and second floor landing.

These look much better.