Restore|House

work at my brother's house

I walked down to my brother's house on Saturday to see what everyone was up to. Judging by the amount of cars in the driveway, I knew everyone was there :)

I could see my dad was hard at work....

....across the street chatting with Matt's awesome neighbors.

Princess was out back watching my brothers who were trying to get a paint sprayer working.

That black void on the 2nd floor is where a weird window was added at some point. Matt recently  removed it and it makes the back of the house looks SO much better! ...more symmetrical.

Trying to fix the paint sprayer...

Matt and Princess trouble-shooting.

Stephen and Matt working on it some more.

 

In the end, they concluded it was a busted o-ring.

Dad came back from the neighbor's and tried to demonstrate something to Stephen, which resulted in this awesome action photo of 2 people who hate having their photo taken.

As  I was walking out the door, my father had started mudding the ceiling in the entryway....it's getting closer!

On an exciting note, my brother mentioned today that he's going to really try to start a houseblog. He has way more pics and can probably provide better commentary on everything he's doing.

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When I was young, the things I remember most about my Great Grandma's house were:

1. She had a horse skin  blanket on the back of a couch in her basement.
2. She had sparkly sequined wall calendars that my aunts embroidered when they were young, which were WAY out of date from when I remember them.[like by 10 years]
3. She had a small cuckoo clock in her kitchen.
4. She had a bowl of fake grapes on the dining room table in her basement that looked SO real I would always go up and try to twist one off to eat it.

The grape thing really upset her. My grandma [her daughter] would come running over and try to re-attach the grapes to the plastic stems, but it never really worked, so she would just lay the loose grape in the bottom of the bowl.

Over time, the grapes looked really worse for wear.

Looking back on this, I feel really bad. But I was like 4 at the time, and I don't really know what else there was to entertain me there. My grandma watched me when I was little, and when she had errands to run, she'd drop me off at my Great Grandma's [her mom's] for a little while. My poor Great Grandma. I don't know if I could handle pre-schoolers running around my house when I'm pushing 80.

Anyways, here's a pic of my great grandparents on their wedding day in 1925.

I showed this pic to a friend once, and he said "God, who are these people? They look so grouchy!"

That kinda hurt my feelings, since I'm related to these people....but I guess I'm biased.

I've put so much time in to asking relatives what ever happened to Great Grandma's wedding dress. No one knows. I'd even take Great-Great  Aunt Lorena's bridesmaid dress.
Supposedly my Great Grandma took a street car into Omaha to taking sewing lessons, and made her dress.

The whole point of this post is that yesterday I went to an estate sale, and I bought a bowl that was filled with plastic grapes and other random wax fruit. I just wanted the bowl, but the grapes came with it.
When I got home, I was getting ready to wash the bowl, and throw the plastic grapes/fruit into the trash, but then I remembered Great Grandma and her grapes that I tormented years ago. I washed them in the sink and put them in a crystal bowl on my dining room table.

I've  not seen any plastic grapes gracing tables in any homes lately,  but when I come home and see these, I think of her, and smile.

My Brother's House

We just got back from my brother Matt's house. In case you forgot...he bought a big project house a block down from me :)
Matt went to Home Depot today to take advantage of the sale they're having - all trees/shrubs 50% off.

This is the view of Matt's house as you're walking down the sidewalk from my house to his.

This is the mailbox post he made last week..to replace the multi-unit apartment style box that was there.

View of the front of the house. Shutters removed.

The side of the house - with side porch.

Corbel details

Side of the house - clapboard, fishscale, clapboard, fishscale.

back of the house

Side porch door with ledge detailing

details

the view across the street

Beautiful house across the street

Lilac planting [left to right - Princess, Rob and Matt]

 

and planning.

inside of front door

Standing in front door, looking straight ahead. When they made the house apartments, they closed off the area under the stairs and made a bathroom. Matt opened it all back up and it leads into another room now.

Arched window in front parlor, with orphan door. Ceilings have been removed because they were barely staying up.

Standing by arched window, looking straight back.  With the walls that were put up to make the apartments were removed, you can now see straight to the back of the house from the very front.

First bay window area. The PO's took the right window out and put a door in.

Second bay window area. Matt is removing plaster that's cracked AND fixing window weights that had their ropes cut at some point. The right bay in this set was replaced with a door also. They are also removing all the trim to strip.

This was a back apartment bedroom. See the wall above the door? See the lathe boards on both sides of the studs and the angles? This is where the back servants staircase once was. Matt's putting it back in.

This is looking thru a window that looked into this room. This room is on the back of the house and has stairs to the basement. The walls and ceiling are all beadboard.

Another room on the main floor, on the other side of the open staircase.

These are the cornerblocks in the house. Much different than the lions and bears in my house. :)

That's a partial tour of the main floor. I didn't even get upstairs because it was so hot. Please have patience with the layout of this page. I'm experimenting with using pics off of the flickr account. Thank you.