Finished, and Christmas!
It feels so good to say that we’re finished with the living room. Yes, there are still a few small details that we’re going to take care of after the holidays (quarter-round shellac and re-installation, a few bits of trim around the transom that need to be shellacked and reinstalled, and the hallway side of the door trim needs to be sanded and shellacked. We decided that the trim around the door would be an interesting thing to show to people coming into the house to see the new room, so that they could see what things looked like between stages. The quarter-round and the window trim bits need a good bit of sanding to clean them up, and need to be shellacked. Most of that is going to have to take place outside due to dust issues, so we decided to hold off on getting them re-installed until the temperature moderates a bit. Oh, the cold air return louver needs to be painted to match the wall (and maybe replaced–it is in pretty bad shape), and we need to decide what to do with the warm air inlets. The existing louvers were pretty ugly. They were essentially long metal boxes that covered large portions of two walls. We think that the idea was that they would help to diffuse the incoming warm air. Unfortunately, being large metal boxes underneath windows and on a cold wall, I actually think that the metal does more to cool the air before it enters the room than it does to help diffuse the air. Right now, they have some makeshift louvers installed with some screening to keep things from falling down inside the ductwork. I hate to cover up all of that nice baseboard with metal crap again. Hmm.
The last couple of days were a flurry of activity. Final cleaning of the floor, getting the rug in, getting all of the furniture in place, putting all of the electronics into their new home, then working on getting the dining room restored to a dining room, then working on getting some semblance of Christmas decorations up; this describes the past few days of life here in our little household. It’s been a busy time, but we made it. Today saw the dining room return, after a decent scrub with a carpet cleaner I rented from a local grocery store. Tonight brought out the Christmas decorations (though in a limited sense, just due to time). We now have happy humans and happy cats.
Christmas decorations this year are a little toned-down. I was trying to finish the room in time to get a big tree again to surprise Jenny, but we just couldn’t get it all to work. I was working as fast as I could on things, and just couldn’t get it all done. So, we resorted to plan B, which is what Jenny was already expecting: We put her old apartment tree on the dining room table, and decorated it with a small selection of ornaments. I also had time to retrieve and put up the Santa and snowman collection on the dining room mantle. I put up our wreaths outside, using a slightly more traditional hanging method–wide ribbon from the upper sash. In the past, I had hung them from the lock lever using a little bit of floral wire. This worked fine and made the hanging method mostly invisible. After seeing lots of Victorian houses using the ribbon method, though, it just didn’t look right anymore, so I bought some ribbon. Sadly, this method wouldn’t work completely on the third floor window, as there is some bent aluminum flashing from the siding that is preventing the upper sash from coming down. I want to fix that, but tonight when it was getting late and daylight was fading was not the right time to do it.
Jenny has been busy wrapping Christmas presents in really interesting ways. The cats, meanwhile, have been surprisingly quite content in the new living room. I guess it is as comfortable for them as it is for us.
There’s a new photo album for the “after” shots of the living room and dining room, and some of our interior Christmas decorations. Sorry for the color variations–I wasn’t satisfied with some of the pictures with the flash, and the natural lighting was coming out too warm, and I don’t have good photo manipulation software on this computer. Argh.
I picked up the luminarias I had ordered from a local family organizing this sale in our neighborhood. They’re doing it as part of our community organization, the Parnassus Civic League. They should look nice. I’m excited to put them together, but I’m going to wait until Christmas Eve, since it might rain tomorrow.
That’s all. I’m tired. Check out the pictures, if you’d like. As for me, I think it’s a good time for a long shower and a long sleep.
jonathan
