Little Windows

I am drawn to little windows placed randomly in old houses. I have been searching for this image of a little window at the top of a staircase and finally found it.

Our one bedroom at the top of the stairs is a pass through to another bedroom and I have debated taking out the wall completely to make it more of a sitting area or putting in a little window. We also are planning to change around the dormers in the back of the house so that may change things. But for now I can dream of this cute little window. It certainly would look better than this:

And yes, that door is made of plywood.

Leaded glass windows

I am in love with leaded glass windows of the 17th century and would like to have a pair above my sink in the new kitchen.  The problem has been how to get energy efficiency with leaded glass windows.  I think I have figured out how to go about this and A-not break the bank and B-get the look I am after. I am getting it down here so I don't forget by the time we are working on the kitchen.

I first did a Google search for "double pane leaded glass windows" and came across a company that makes leaded glass panels for insertion into Anderson windows.  They send along a special wood trim kit that attaches the panel to the Anderson window, allowing you to remove the panel if you move and keep the energy efficiency of a new window.

This revelation got me to thinking about making my own leaded glass panel (I did a bit of stained glass window work many years ago so am not afraid of lead came and soldering.) We could certainly make our own trim pieces to attach the panel to the window.

But then I came across this product. self-adhesive lead strips  Cool, the look of lead without the soldering.  But the glass has to look right as well.  Just placing the lead strips on regular glass won't get me the look I am after.  But if I place the lead strips on this restoration glass: Bendheim restoration glass I will have old looking glass with the look of lead panes for considerable less $.  Hmmmm.

Friday Favorite- Lockset

With all the work happening at the old house I have to keep reminding myself that soon we'll be able to start on the new house.  The scale of the old house did not lend itself to the changes I really wanted to make to my living space.  Tall, narrow schoolhouse windows just can not be made to look 17th or 18th century no matter how hard you try.  The new house's bones are much more suited to the look I want to achieve.
While shopping at the Fort Frederick 18th Century Market Fair last month we bought this lock:

This is the outside knob.  Just a simple wrought iron knob.  The amazing part is the inside:

I am not sure where we will use this latch, but wherever it ends up I will be happy just looking at it.  It was made by a blacksmith at or near Prickett's Fort in West Virginia.  The mechanism is very cool.  Every time I walk by this lock I am reminded of all the interesting things we have planned for the new house. 

So many ideas

So many ideas flying around in my head.  I really would like to make our new house look much older.  A friend has a great timber frame saltbox from the late 1700s that I have always loved and I would like to incorporate some of her design elements into our new house. Consider the current living room/front room: looks OK now, has a cute corner cabinet, nice light, floors are alright.  But I want it to look like this:

So if I paint the corner cabinet (I think the glass can stay and I can paint the inside a contrasting color) and add some wide board paneling below the windows and beams at the top of the wall I think it would look pretty good.  I wish it was in the budget to replace the windows.  Well, we'll just have to see how much we get for our old house.
Here's another room with more of the timber frame detail:

The corner posts are actually wider as they go up the corner of the house, so cool!
The current house has all flush luann doors, yuck.  I would love to have doors like this:

The patina is incredible.  I have to experiment to see if I can replicate this on new pine boards, or go on the hunt for old doors and wood.

The interior walls of my friend's house are wood and the exterior walls are plastered (the downstairs rooms have wood boards below the windows. We could easily do the same. And I already have the spinning wheel!

How do I make metal kitchen cabinets from the 50's look like antiques?

This is the kitchen I need to work with while we do more important things to the new house; like moving my husband's shop into the garage and insulating it, putting in a second bathroom, building a new chimney, turning the family room into a master bedroom suite, etc.  So renovating a kitchen that is already functional is low on the priority list.  Searching on-line brings up many examples of repainting, but somehow I can not see pink cabinets in my kitchen.  All the sites are going for a retro 1950s look that just doesn't do anything for me.  Years ago I saw a kitchen with Rufus Porter type paintings on some of the cabinet doors.  While we did not use the Rufus Porter mural idea we did incorporate many other elements into our existing kitchen; particularly the ones that give the look of existing cabinets brought together for a new kitchen.
So for this kitchen I would like to have my son paint some small mural elements onto canvas that can then be attached to the upper cabinet doors to give the look of a mural.  I am considering painting the bottom cabinets a dark green or red colonial color.
Here are some ideas I am kicking around:

Rufus Porter murals

Ian, please make me a new bake oven!

 I started hearth cooking in the late 1990s and fell in love with cooking with fire.  The woodstove in the house is great for heating things up, but I can make a four course meal in a hearth.  The next step up from cooking in a hearth is baking in a bake oven.  When I found out about clay, or cob, ovens I wanted one.  My son, the artist, came home from Ohio and got my cob oven started.  He dug the hole for the foundation, built up the rock support, laid the base of fire brick, built the inner clay layer over a mound of sand (which is later scooped out), and built the fire brick arch.  The photo below shows the oven up to this point.  The fire is to help the clay dry in preparation for the next layers..

We followed the directions in Kiko Denzer's Build Your Own Earth Oven http://www.amazon.com/Build-Your-Earth-Oven-Edition/dp/096798467X/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1338681351&sr=8-4

and even made the "test" oven to gauge the mix of clay and sand.

 Here are more layers.

 We still needed a final coat at this point, but the oven was useable.

 The pizzas came out great once we placed the dough on parchment paper to make it easier to get the pizzas off the peel and into and out of the oven.

 Yum!

Bread comes out great as well.  The finished oven has a final smooth coat and a little decoration.  My husband built a roof over the oven to protect it from the rain (since it is only made of clay) and we cover it for the winter.  Unfortunately there is no way we can transport the oven to the new house.  Maybe it will help sell our old house.  So Ian I need a new oven, please come and make me one.  I think I would like a brick one this time.

Our new wood cook stove

We are now the proud owners of a Waterford Stanley wood cook stove similar to the picture above.  Thank you Ted for all of your help as we could not have gotten it onto our trailer without you.  It took 2 1/2 hours to get the stove apart and onto the trailer.  800 pounds of cast iron as a complete unit.  We may have gotten it down to 400 pounds after taking every part we could off the stove.  Thank goodness for levers, dollies, 2x4s and brute strength.  All together the trip took 10 hours; a long day of driving and hard work for the guys.

The original owner of the stove bought it because her grandmother had one that was close to 100 years old.  She had a lot of memories of visiting her grandmother in Ireland and many memories involved the cook stove.  She is selling her current house and can't take the stove with her; and the new owners don't want the stove.  She seemed happy to know that her stove was going to a good home and will be cherished for many years to come.

Now comes the hard work.  First, we must put the stove back together, minus the legs, before we forget how we took it apart.  Thankfully my husband found the manual online so we now have a very good diagram of how the whole thing goes together.  We also need to clean out the insides as I don't think the stove has been cleaned in 3 years.  All that creosote and ash around the cast iron firebox while it's in storage would invite moisture and lead to rust.