Adventures at The Bunny Manse

Took advantage of global warming to clean our yard and porch. Harris cleaned out the summer kitchen. For some reason, we had three bags of charcoal. We don't own a charcoal grill. A bunch of other stuff on the curb, in the trash, in the recycling bin. Madeline and I used the leftover trim paint on the benches that Harris made last year from the bedframes left in the house when we purchased it.   Margot napped. And played. And pinched and screamed at Madeline for not letting her run into the street. Then they shared a granola bar and we're ok again. Madeline and I also scrubbed, sanded, and spray painted the ice cream parlour chairs I bought last year while Harris was in rehab. I don't know what went wrong. we scrubbed and sanded until there was no more rust, then when we started spray painting, the paint started flaking even more. It's very odd. This will get them through the summer and we'll work on them again this spring.

Phase 1 - purchase, demo, create kitchen, create space we could live in. Resulted in Kitchen, Bath, bedroom, living area.  Funded by sale of former primary residence. Phase 2 - Complete the plaster, floors, and bathrooms - expanding living space to 3 bedrooms upstairs, art room downstairs, dining, living room, 4 bathrooms in service (not complete). Installation of HVAC. Funded by sale of investment property + 0% lines of credit. Phase 3- Slate roof replacement, chimney work, exterior carpentry work. Funded by mortgage on house. Phase 4 - Paint exterior, paint interior, interior carpentry, punch list items. Funded by home equity line of credit. Remaining items from punch lists above - Fix tile in 2 bathrooms.  Paint kitchen walls again.  Paint pantry again.  Finish girls bathroom (we have all materials, just need to do the work) Fix basement access  Create butler pantry or half bath or laundry room thing. Plans change with sobriety.  fix worst aspects of the yard and

Our perfect little infant daughter has an elevated lead level. When we painted the interior we actually moved out of the house. When we returned, the crew had cleaned and Harris and I then spent three days cleaning. Of course there was lead paint - that's why we were painting all the trim. After we confirmed Margot's lead level, we set about a full wholesale cleaning of the house. We have a grid of ceilings, walls, floors, literally every surface in our house needs to be HEPA vacuumed and then wet washed. This is in addition to the HEGA filter we run upstairs and the two Trane Clean Air Effects units we had installed with the HVAC last year. We are on a mission to get the dust out of our house. It's not just about being neat and tidy, it's about neuro-cognitive effects for our daughter. So on Saturday, when we woke up and I looked at the areas inside where they had completed touch ups and saw a fine layer of dust I literally lost it. I sat down on the bed and just

Morning at the Bunny Manse

Cause if you say Aunt properly it sounds like Ain't. Ruby was my grandmother. She was one of several middle siblings (9 total) who every Christmas converged on my Aunt Susan's home. At least 100 people would show up and eat, talk, cackle, and swap presents. It was only as an adult I came to realize how odd the whole thing was. Women my age have grandkids which means my mother's cousins have great great grandkids.  My Aunt Susan's house is nice, but 100 people meant half in the yard, men out in the shop, and tripping over kids. As a child I most remember that there were only two bathrooms and I wasn't really supposed to use Aunt Susan's and Uncle Jim's. No clue if that was an official rule or something I came up with in my own mind; I came up with and self imposed a lot of arbitrary rules on myself as a kid. Anyway, one of Barbara Ann (Virginia's daughter and hence my mother's double cousin)'s girl folk loved Christmas because she got to eat A

Our view has dramatically improved from this ...  Our front door. Harris recently removed the wire screening that covered the larger grey panel.   And then we thought - wait a minute... we have painters here... what if we... Crap. There's a ton of glazing and crap from where they took the original panel out and all that. Better clean all of that out.

Thoughts and opinions welcome. The upstairs porch looks...off somehow.  With less direct glare of the sun.  Even less direct glare- the sashes will soon be SEQUIN yellow. That same faded butter on the porch trim you can barely see because overexposure.  Isn't is weird to talk about exposure when there's no film involved?

I just posted a ton of pictures without any content. This is because I see this as a place to collect and frame my thoughts about the house process with some images to trigger the ideas. We're so close. After this last stage (paint, gutters) we have some tile repair in one bathroom, some tile work in another bathroom + installing new fixtures, and then we just have PHASE 4 which is master bedroom + sunroom. We're not doing PHASE 4 for awhile. We need to pay off some credit cards and the like. Oh? You didn't know that at some point everyone who is not independently wealthy puts part of their renovation on credit cards balancing who has to be paid in cash and who you can float? You didn't realize that 0% interest for 12-18 month cards will provide you an interest free loan to buy materials that you then pay off in installments or move the money to other 0% cards? Yeah. We've got probably $30k of our project sitting out there on 0% credit cards right now + an equ

Harris is working his way around the house fixing little bits of carpentry here and there. I guess in our zeal to get the porch and roof fixed last fall things like cracked weather boards and inadequate drip cap missed our gaze.  Harris put in new drip cap above the windows, fixed a sill and did something else. All window work here.  Here's where he put new weather boards up the side of the house by the porch. The originals that are unbroken will get used around in other places. 

Lots of pictures of the painting process. It needs to stop raining so they can finish.  These are pictures over October. Prepped, then interrupted by rain. Primed, now interrupted by rain again.  The blue you see here is the tinted primer. 

Link and zelda (queen Bernice, queen if France, just a princess)

South side of the house with about 70% prep work complete. That is the tinted primer for the walls. Overall the house will be dark blue, soft yellow, and white.  There are also like 4 different grays for areas of the porch. 

"Reminiscent of E.K. Powe house (same architect or builder?); tall ceilings and beautiful curved stairs to left of front door; short fluted Corinthian columns, leaded glass transoms and rondel, terra cotta capitals. Now used as "wino house" run by Ma Kerry. She takes their social security checks and doles out food and shelter.  Markham was in clothing business" Notes from the preservation file from February 1981.

Looks just like her Daddy, wearing her Mommy's old dress.

Dream book photos   Because we need to paint the exterior of the tubs upstairs and downstairs.  Cool brick patio. Imagine moss growing in the cracks Cool laundry room - could we do something cool like that in our butler pantry? Girls room, dual small sinks