Hello dear friends how are you?  Happy spring and with the overall nicer weather,  I have made leaps and bounds on the dining room.  Sanding everything down to prep for stain as I'm sure you know is exhausting. I wanted to do the old wood staining first before I did the new wood.  Trying my best to get it all to match,  which as we know is not easy.  Taping off old and new wood because I used different tints for the wood.  Pocket doors getting their color.  Trying to match all the wood colors.  After with final color and ..read more

Baby steps!! Finally got my early gas/electric sconces wired up and with a bracket to hang. These are HEAVY brass but they match the chandelier that will go in here someday. With the pink on these lights coordinating with the stained glass and wallpaper (see later photo of the wallpaper I bought) these are going to fit perfectly but also give a calming pink glow. Gotta celebrate the small wins.  Gotta celebrate small wins when things move so slowly sometimes.  Can't WAIT to get this room all together. Sigh...it all takes time ..read more

 Hello dear friends.  Are you still out there?  Yes I am still alive and kicking,  It has been some time that I have not only written, but it has been some time since I have been working on the house.  Last I updated you all I had the dining room all gutted and drywalled and there it stayed for some time.  In the last few months I have been very productive with getting things put back in place.  Not completed fully but, getting closer.  As we know, projects like this are a marathon.   Please excuse the mess in the house, but the dining room cur ..read more

 Hello dear friends.  I hope your summer has been going amazingly.  Mine has been lovely and somewhat productive.  I have recently begun taking on the dining room.  A room that has been cold cold cold in winter due to lack of insulation and a room that has been used as a living room for much of its life as a duplex.  A room often overlooked and unloved, but it is time to change some of that. When we purchased the house this room was UGLY.  A drop ceiling with tiles, carpet in half the room, lowered windows that were 1970s replacements and just not a nice spa ..read more

My friends this post is a philosophical post.  Not one about my current restoration but my dreams of more restoration.  So it might not be your cup of tea and you might just feel on passing this post up.  I felt the need to write it to out this energy out into the world so to speak and see what becomes of it.  As I write this blog I am 6,000 miles away from my little jewel box at home.  Riding camels in the desert and surrounded by structures and history 2000+ years old my life at home is so distant and so foreign like the place I am in now.  When I am in a place ..read more

One more small project I have completed is to hook up part of the speaking tube system.  I had to open up a wall on the second floor and while it was open I decided it was the perfect time to install one of the speaking tube mouthpieces and try to see if it works.  I never knew the house had speaking tubes until I discovered two small clues. The first clue was the strange galvanized tube that was in the ceiling in the library.  It didn't go anywhere, just had an end in the library and the other end stopped in the ceiling above the kitchen.  I had no idea what this strange t ..read more

We have been having a nice warm spell here in St. Paul, MN after weeks of bitter cold.  I have been plugging away here on the foyer and my goal is to finish up the foyer in the next month or so.  I have custom milled matching trim that matches the missing original woodwork and this should be here tomorrow. Sadly it has been 2 weeks late which has made the process that much slower.  I need to put the trim in before I can move my radiator and then I can do the wallpaper.  As you may remember I bought this piece of fretwork way back in 2010, had it restored from the broken pie ..read more

Hello Friends! Long time no talk.  I wish I could say that I have completed vast amounts of projects and am currently living in the lap of luxury in my completed mansion.  Sadly this is not the case, but I continue on.  I didn't have much time to get as many projects done as I would liked and then spring is now here and so the work season slowly begins.  I have however been working on the exterior of the house.  The side nobody sees or cares about, but it needs to get done. I am always amazed when I come on this side of just how close I am to my neighbor's house.  ..read more

Hello Friends, The season has been busy for me although not too much on the house.  I have been working much of the season in Alaska and with being gone so much hardly a moment has been spent working on the house.  After getting the wallpaper and runner done I was having the stained glass window made and doing some touches on the newel post light. With the missing stained glass window I had absolutely no idea what would have been there originally.  All I knew was that it had been there, but in an absence of any photographs I had to come up with one on my own.&nb ..read more

  My neighbor took this photo the other day.  Spring has arrived and the blooms are welcoming a new season. Hello dear old house lovers.  Is spring finding you well?  Here at my house another spring has arrived for this 1889 beauty.  The crabapple tree I planted in the front yard 13 years ago is growing strong and showing her wonderful blooms and fragrance.    The cherry trees in the boulevard begin to bloom too as well as the day lilies, peonies and lilac bushes begin to awaken from a long Minnesota winter.  Spring means change, rebirth but also the ..read more