T.J. and the Paw Thing

Susan has been getting on me to get this video up.

So now everyone can see the unbelieveably cute thing that T.J. does when he sits in Susan's lap. Look out "America's Funniest Home Cats"! We're gunning for you.

Scraping By

After a nearly two week absence from the Blogosphere, we return with news of progress with regard to working on the house. We have successfully completed the whole house. No...that's not correct.

We have successfully completed scraping the texture off the ceiling in the entry way. Susan spent about three hours yesterday and together we spent another three hours today and got it done. That is a good feeling. Minor victories that lead to ultimate exhaustion.

We are happy because we thought this was going to take several brack baking hours to finish.

Next, we replace the trim.

Now a word about textured ceilings. It is the waste land of the poor craftsman. It allows you to cut corners and not concentrate very hard on making things square. Textured ceilings hide all kinds of imperfections. I know because we uncovered some today. We however, will be diligently attempting create a ceiling free of flaws and bumps and grooves.

May God have mercy on our souls.

Another Weather Update

There are a few inches of snow on the ground this morning. I must commend the weather gypsies this morning as they did a fine job of accurately predicting this snowfall. There was three to four inches at home and the drive to work was slow but uneventful. I did have to pull off the freeway at one point and clean off my wipers. The snow froze to them and created a blurry sheet of thin ice on my windshield. I finally figured out that I was better off not using the wipers.

The gypsies continue to prognosticate that this snow will fall for a while today and then turn to rain later in the day. That will make for a lovely drive home.

I was right! It was a lovely drive home. I was crossing the freeway, about to enter the on-ramp when I saw the traffic was backed up for as far as I could see. I diverted to Trent Avenue, which was slower but moving. My 20 minute commute turned into a little over an hour.

A Journey of a Thousand Scraps

The project in the entryway continues. We have been on sabbatical long enough.


The next thing to tackle is preparing the walls to be papered. We are going from the entryway we have finished all the way to this arch. The wall papering will continue around the arch to the left and down the hallway to the bathroom and alternate entrance to the TV room.

One of the nightmares that has kept us from starting this portion is the ceiling. We have agonized over what to do with the textured ceiling which we find repulsive and not at all Victorian. The section of the ceiling shown below that is at a 45 degree angle will be papered. I have a couple of hours invested into scraping to remove the texture. More scraping is to follow. It is a messy job that travels throughout the house. Taking it in baby steps is the smart way to go for us.

Another project we shall embark upon is the continued restoration of the stairway. It is all but complete except for this little corner shown in the next photograph.


We surmise that sometime around the time when this house was turned into an upstairs and downstairs apartment, they butchered the woodwork shown in the picture in order to build a wall to separate the upstairs from the down. You can see in the wall the pattern of the molding that used to be there. That piece of wood adjacent to the stairs was broken away, perhaps with a chisel in order to accommodate the afore-mentioned wall.

We are getting back to the staining and varnishing soon as well. Stayed tuned to this blog because, well...what else are you gonna do?!

Thaw in Progress

The thaw is well under way and we could have a great deal less snow by tomorrow. Then it is supposed to get much colder for a few days. Whether or not snow will fall during the chill remains to be seen.

It can't be very interesting to read this and only find updates of the current weather conditions. I suppose I should return to the subject matter for which this blog was originally intended...the freakin house!

I did a little maintenance work in the driveway tonight. As sloppy as it is out there, I was able to skim a layer of snow and/or ice from some areas. I like a tidy driveway.

I then removed a few more remnants of Christmas from around the house. The last big thing I need to do is get the ladder out on the balcony and remove the lights I put up on the roof line up there. That's a Sunday during the day kind of job.

We are in talks now to arrange the continuation of the entry way roject. We have trim to put up but it still needs another coat of stain and then varnish. Anyway, we'll be getting to that soon.

Two More Inches

The snow fell steadily pretty much all day. Steady but not strong. It was an easy trip with the snow blower and I completed my rounds quickly.

I met a neighbor who lives behind me. His name is Joey and he lives in one of three apartments in the house across the alley, second one from the corner. He thanked me for clearing the sidewalk and said how much he appreciated it. I told him the Spider Man credo: With great power, comes great responsibility.

I've have come to realize that I am much better at maintaining my yard in the winter than I am in the summer.

The thing that you never know in this snow control game is what is coming next. They are predicting snow turning to rain tomorrow and there's a good chance that the rain will wash all this snow away. If that is the case, it is going to get sloppy again before it gets washed away and I am glad I have removed a lot of snow.

The last time it thawed (about a month ago) that sloppy thick street slush was very hard to navigate through. Susan's car, being as low to the ground as it is, has a real tough time when the snow gets deep.

Here is a picture I took of the house tonight. It's a nice winter shot.

A Day of Rest

We took it easy today and removed just a few of our Holiday decorations. We got the tree down and out, we removed most of the exterior Christmas lights, and susan stowed most of the decorations around the house. The village is still on the mantle as it depicts a wintery scene as well as a Christmasy scene.

Here are a couple of pictures I took of the house today when it was bright and sunny and freezing cold.

The First Day of the Rest of our Year

As commented upon in the previous post, we spent New Years Eve in Wallace, Idaho...a small mining town in the Silver Valley of about 900 peoples. We left Spokane yesterday and drove the hour and a half to lovely Wallace where we checked in to the Brooks Hotel. It's clean, it's cheap, they don't know what four stars means...and that fine.

We got ourselves settled in and then took off to explore the town. It's the perfect time of year for exploring as the temperature was around 9 degrees. In Wallace, you walk as everything you want to see is within a few blocks of wherever you are.


We were most pleased to discover that the Jameson Hotel has reopened. We have stayed there before and really like it. I think I have described it here as the most authentic reproduction of what an old west hotel must have been like. There are six rooms on the third floor. There are bathrooms down the hall. there are no TVs and no telephones. The telephone is no biggy in this day and age because everyone already has one with them at all times. The no TV thing can be a problem.


Fortunately, the Brooks has TVs and we used ours after our night on the town. More about that to come.


We had a drink at the Jameson and then walked over to the Wallace Brewing Company. It is a local micro brew establishment and the bartender was locking the door as we walked up. He reconsidered and let us in. We only had a beer so we didn't keep him long. It was seven and he hadn't had any business for an hour and this twenty something clearly wanted to get his New Years Eve under way.

We finally ended up eating at the 1313 Club and stayed there until about ten. They were actually shutting down and I'm not sure what other bars stayed open until midnight in Wallace.

We walked back to the Brooks and drank screw drivers and mamosas for the rest of the evening. Once the ball in Timesquare dropped, we fell asleep.

We woke up this morning to a report that it was 4 degrees at Lookout Pass. We got up there about ten and were surprised to find a relatively empty parking lot. The sun was out and we got in nine runs throughout the day, which is good for us.


We hit the road about 2:30 and amnaged to roll home and enjoy the hot tub for a nice long while. This is the time of year when it is great to have a hot tub.