Shave anyone?

We've had to do quite a bit of demolition work in the upstairs bathroom. When we were removing the lathe a couple of nights ago, we found a big pile of razor blades. This bizarre mystery was quickly solved by Wife's mom. The razors were probably dropped through the razor disposal slit in an old medicine cabinet and piled up over the years. It sounds like this isn't the first time this has been discovered during renovation.

Lydia E. Pinkham's Vegetable Compound

Remember our previous post about the newspapers on the kitchen floor? Well, one of them has a interesting little advertisement for Lydia E. Pinkham's Vegetable Compound. The newspaper is dated 1918. Here's the ad, and since the text is hard to read in the picture, we've typed the text too.



OVERDOING - How American Women Break Down

Owing to the modern manner of living and the nervous haste of every woman to accomplish just so much every day, they overdo and as a consequence develop ailments peculiar to their sex, as indicated by backache, headache, nervousness, the blues, displacements and weakness.

Women who find themselves in this condition should slow down, and depend upon that good old-fashioned herb and root remedy, Lydia E. Pinkham's Vegetable Compound, to restore them to health and strength, for there is no other remedy known that quickly restores a healthy, normal condition.

Slow News Day

There isn't much to report in renovation news. The wallpaper removal saga continues, but should culminate in the foreseeable future. We removed beaded board from one of the kitchen walls and all of the board in the upstairs bathroom today. The board from the kitchen will probably be re-used elsewhere in the house.....of course, not until it has been through a thorough cleaning and disinfecting session and repainting.

In other news, the cat hid under the bed in one of the bedrooms and ended up getting shut in all day.

Cartoon

Salad Shooter

Once again, we have been to the local rent-all. Not having been satisfied with erecting what was quite possibly the heaviest extension ladder on earth, we had to get something even more exciting....a wood chipper. These dandy little items are basically industrial strength Salad Shooters that can make quick work of vines, branches, small stumps, and limbs. Fortunately, we only chipped backyard flora, not fauna (aka Husband and Wife) or fauna's limbs. The result is a lovely mulch pile that we can use in landscaping....if we ever get to that point.







Since we have a cooking theme, well sort of, we should update everyone on our kitchen design progess. We met with a kitchen design/custom cabinet company last week to design a layout, pick cabinets, etc. We are waiting on the initial design and estimated cost. Hopefully the cost will not be at a stroke-inducing level.

Wondering how we plan to celebrate Independence Day? Well, we hope to have a grand ole time removing lots of paint from trim, etc. at the house. What a treat this will be. We plan to rent an infrared stripper. If its any good, we'll buy one. If not, we'll have to use caustic chemicals to strip paint. Cross your fingers on the infrared gadget.

Sometimes Cute...or Not

Sometimes the girls are sweet little angels......


and somestimes, they're not.

New managing editor

Wife has decided to resign from her position as managing editor of the blog. All future posting and editing duties shall be handled by Husband.

Father's Day Weekend Update

Nora's parent's came up to visit this weekend and we promptly put them to work. Saturday was hot and sunny and we decided to work outside. We mowed the front lawn and cut down the overgrown weeds and grass in the backyard. We also cut down and cleared out a lot of the brush and scrub trees in the back.




We spent Sunday afternoon scraping wallpaper. Being Father's Day we decided to give Nora's father the day off. Her mother also took the day off as a belated Mother's Day gift.

Tiles

Each of the four bedroom fireplace mantels has a decorative tile.

Scraping Wallpaper

Wallpaper, wallpaper, and more wallpaper. We spent the majority of our time at the "money pit" this week scraping wallpaper. We've finished the living room, entrance foyer, and upstairs hallway. We've still got the stairwell, master bedroom, small bedroom, and the ceilings in the dining room and two front bedrooms left to do.

Back To Work

With the holiday weekend over it was time to get back to work.

Nora has spent the last several days pursuing her new favorite hobby of wallpaper scraping. She's making a lot of progress but it's a never ending task. She keeps scraping and scraping and scraping.



John has spent the last several days gutting the lower porch rooms. At some point in the past the porch was added on to. The foundation and construction isn't that good and probably isn't strong enough to support the master bathroom that we plan to add to the upper porch. Because of this we plan to tear down part or all of the porch and plan to add on to this section of the house. This will give us the space for a master bathroom and closet space on the second floor and a half bath, mud room, and breakfast area on the first floor. But that's a long ways off and there's a lot of demolition work still left to do.