Bedroom wood stove

We had a wood stove installed in our bedroom a few weeks ago. Isn't it cute?

The hearth is leftover tiles from the living room.

Sugar is also cute:

And Bill, too. This is his Princess Leah impersonation.

Would...

This weekend's activities revolved around wood. We're preparing our bedroom for the addition of a wood stove. The first step involved the unprovoked torture of some very old wood. We had to remove the baseboard around the chimney and it was unwilling to be separated from the wall due to the massive number of square head nails holding it into the masonry.

Why, yes, that is an electrical wire we found under the molding.

This is is the current state of our new hearth. The cement board has been applied and is awaiting our slate tiles. Also, yes, I know our floor is not painted in the middle. Our bedroom was our first project when we moved in and I felt guilty about painting the unpainted wood. I enjoyed pulling up the old carpet and discovering the 3 different colors of brown paint that had been applied over the years and wanted to preserve the experience for the next inhabitants of the house.

To assist in keeping our house warm this winter, we purchased (gasp!) 2 cords of wood. A very nice man from Craigslist delivered it and regaled us with stories of lumber jacking. Would it be that we had enough time to chop all our own wood. Alas...

Upon doing the calculations, purchasing wood is a more efficient use of our time than chopping it. This pile quadrupled our supply of fuel. And it makes us very happy.

Now with 50% less blue

Two of the four rooms in our house that were a tired sky blue when we moved in have been transformed into much nicer rooms that people would actually want to spend time in. You may recall our bedroom was the first to be tamed...

Bluefore and after:
And now the living room is done being painted! More photos when it's cleaned up, but here is a preview.

Bluefore:

(This, by the way is a photo of Bernie on the night before we brought Sugar home and threw his entire world into disarray. He thought the new doggy-sized bed was for him. Sucker.)

AFTER:


Two rooms are still in a state of bluedom. This was previously, I imagine, a lovely parlor before an awkward bathroom turned it into a "master bedroom." We've never showed you a photo before this moment because it is really the saddest room in the house. It will be the next to be tackled with the intent of creating a hobby room. We'd ditch the bathroom, but the walls contain the pipes going to the upstairs bathroom we want to keep. Dilemma.


The kitchen and adjoining pantry are also blue:


Eradicating those blues, however, is for another time. After a hard day of painting, some sleepy snuggles are now in order and I'm going to get in on this:

The curious incident of the bat in the nighttime.

Don't snuggle with bats.

A course of rabies shots is not fun.



P.S. Wear clean undies to the ER because they are gonna stick you with more stuff than your arms can take, and before they start in with 2 each on your thighs with those oh so large needles, they stick 'em in your rear.

I love living in the country!

La la la...

Most of the bedroom work remaining involves windows. They are mostly the original windows with the wavy glass and sash cord pulleys. They are in pretty bad shape (but we are sticking our fingers in our ears and ignoring them at the moment). When the weather turns warmer it will be lots of fun learning window anatomy making them all functional again.

Hoping that problems look...smaller...through a macro lens, here are some attempts to make the ickiness look less intimidating.

An entomologist would have a blast with our window ecology. Tons of fun stuff making a home in the large space between our inner windows and the storm windows (including 27 species of wasps currently not pictured because their nests alone scare the crap out of me).

Given all the carcuses we've seen, I theorize every lady bug in the world comes to Indiana to die.

Even Bob Cratchit would complain...

Yeah. So we didn't move into our bedroom. But we learned a very important lesson: when you are miserly with your propane and it is only 56 degrees in your house, paint won't dry.

When we moved the ladder into the bedroom to start removing the painter's tape (an invention I am skeptical of) we also removed chunks of our lovely floor paint. :( So we moved our space heater into the bedroom and are giving the paint some more time to dry. Fingers crossed.

Here are some side-by-side photos of the progress. Still much to do but more on that later. Tonight we enjoy the small victories.

The moody orange room

The Geography of Bliss.

We've been painting our bedroom...here is a preview:


This is what happens when you live in a drafty old house and select a paint color during the coldest week in Indiana ever. After 10 years of apartment white, orange seems a bit rebellious and we love it!!

Also high on the bliss scale (for us and the kitties) - full birdfeeders!



We met our neighborhood screech owl last night as we were out viewing the various wildlife tracks in our newly fallen snow. He sat placidly in a tree consenting to our flashlights shining in his face, but as soon as we turned them off he flew away so sliently it was nearly magic.

Had a blissful dinner at a DC institution this week. Five Guys just like it should be...red and white tiles, buckets of peanuts, and copies on the wall of every Washingtonian mention of the establishment in the last 10 years. I'm glad to be in Indiana, but it's nice to have this close by too.


Morning bird list:
junco
blue jay
chickadee
mourning dove
white-breated nuthatch
downey woodpecker
red-bellied woodpecker
song sparrow (so early!)
goldfinch
house finch
house sparrow
starling
house wren

Bedroom in progress

Before....



We're not going to use the curtains...anyone interested in taking them? Don't all speak up at once.

This is how the room looked Sunday afternoon...

Ripped up the carpet and removed the scary nail bars holding it down (yay for crowbars!)

The various layers of floor paint is fairly artistic.

Stripped some paint!

More photos to come...

Goals for the weekend...

1) A functioning toilet (high priority)
2) ensuring the shower drains through pipes rather than raining down on the basement floor
3) learn to use a crowbar
4) destroy and dispose of bedroom carpet using said crowbar
5) insulate heating ducts so bedroom can be at least as warm as basement
6) prepare bedroom walls for Tiger Stripe orange paint (and maybe apply paint!)
7) retain all fingers and toes