Things Left in Walls

I remember hearing once about odd things found by renovators within the walls of houses.

Like mice and insect nests--things that would happen naturally. We found an ancient mouse nest behind the wall that covered the chimney. A nice, warm place to sleep after raiding the kitchen.

They never lasted long after we moved in, though.

I remember one humorous English newspaper story that renovators had come across a "Letter to the mice" putting the rodents on notice to "Leave forthwith and never return!"

Especially interesting are items intentionally put within walls by superstitious people wanting to thwart bad spirits, spells, and things of like nature. Water-filled, corked bottles were common in the New England area during the early settlement period. Witches were very real to those people. Effigies, containers with hair, pins, herbs or spells thought to contain magical powers were placed in the walls during construction.

Shoes are common things found in many ancient houses and barns, although the symbolism of shoes escapes me. They are usually stuffed into the rafters or built into chimneys . (Chimneys were thought to be convenient entrances for witches.) Mummified beef hearts (???) were another common thing sealed in chimneys . No one seems to remember the symbolism, though.

I also recall stories about the hiding or burying of things under the front door step. Probably also to serve as a barrier for evil entering the house, and I can well remember horse shoes hanging on barn and farmhouse door lentils as well as talk about three rusty bent nails buried at a threshold.

Hex signs are still painted on barns and houses in the Pennsylvania farm country.

A research paper written in 2007 and found here: http://www.crossingthethreshold.org/welcome_files/Microsoft%20Word%20-%20Soc%20of%20Consc.pdf discusses many items and symbols used to protect a house.

I have a potter friend who, every year takes one of his best pots, walks out to the end of his dock on a local lake and quietly slips it into the water. He's thinking of future archaeologists. Vikings did the same things with axe heads as an offering. And, well, he lives in Minnesota. : )

In Arizona if you can't sell your house right away, bury a small statuette of St. Joseph in the yard. There is some argument whether it should be the front or back yard; whether St. Joseph should to upside down or upstanding, facing the street or facing the house. Poor St. Joseph.

I still have a chance of slipping something between the insulation and the dry wall of the kitchen. Hummm, what should it be? Think I'll go out to the studio and have a little look.

Look what we found. A beautiful ceiling!

If I haven't mentioned it before, we're doing two, count 'em, two kitchen renovations. One in WA and one in AZ.

The Washington one was planned; the Arizona one, not.

The Washington kitchen was charming, but old, decrepit and worn out.

The Arizona one was a whole-house disaster caused by a broken reverse osmosis water system that flooded the house. All the walls had to have the drywall removed, the framework treated for mold and the carpets ripped up. Built-in cabinets de-laminated and had to be removed. Thankfully, we have a very good insurance company that is replacing and repairing all the damage, but we are of necessity doing kitchens in stereo.

Anyway,

We're down to the studs in Washington. And when the ceiling got ripped out this Friday, look what we found!

A Great set of rafters. Unfortunately, we won't be able to raise the ceiling to the apex of the roof--support beams will have to be added and it will flatten the top somewhat, but hey, anything's better than it was before.

We also found a pristine wood floor under the top layers of parquet flooring and linoleum.

Should This Kitchen be Remodeled?

Here's a panorama of the present kitchen.

Shabby Chic on Steroids.

Another coat of paint won't fix it.

The drawers are all wooden and slide on the cabinet framing, not on smooth rollers. They are so worn they don't fit well anymore.

They create sawdust in the drawer below.

Several coats of white paint were also applied and I covered the swirly Kelly green linoleum(!) countertop and backsplash on both sides of the sink with off-white mosaic tile.

I do love the dough and cutting board pull-outs, but I think this bank of cabinets have to be replaced with more workable ones. The sink would remain in the same place, the idea of two drawer units on either side are just too handy to change, but new drawers are badly needed.

I would move the dishwasher (now a portable) to the double-drawer cabinet space at the left of the sink.

In this corner, I want to put a glass-paneled door in the place where the cabinet is. The door would open out to the right.

Yes, it's a Knoll pedestal table and chairs. The table is five feet in diameter, so the center area is large in this kitchen.

I would probably keep the three windows just as they are.

The glass overhead cabinets are built in place. They are not really cabinets at all. The original owner/builder, a Swedish shipwright, built them and probably the base cabinets as well.

The original base cabinets that were on the other side of the room, (sink cabinet unit) are in our basement.

I added new handles for all the cabinets when we moved in.

I like the curved ends on these old cabinets that flank the doorway. They match the high, overhead (and strange) cabinets over the sink.

The glass cabinets hold a lot of dishes are just my height. I'm considering keeping the whole wall as it is even though both the cabinets below the glass ones above are shallow.

This is a bearing wall. A new beam would have to be installed if I took out the cabinet wall. And, even though it isn't fashionable today, I rather like the separation of the kitchen and living area--at least in this house

.

The antique painting over the door says, "Guds Frid" meaning God's Peace or Peace be with you. It was painted by the original owner/builder of the house.

The tiny pantry in the corner is so small and awkward. I would like to replace it with a floor-to-ceiling, shelved space or a corner cabinet space with an appliance garage.

I want to switch the refrigerator with a new, wider stove with two ovens and put the refrigerator where the stove is now.

The watercolor over the stove conceals an old ventelator fan which must be removed. I want to install a wall of windows from the end of the cabinet on the right to the end of the cabinet on the left, where to the new door so that the entire sink area has no overhead cabinets, just window. The view is wonderful from here.

There is a small porch off this door with antique glass windows on two sides. This is the current back door.

Of course, the old ceiling and light fixtures need to be replaced. I'll find a new place for the round glass one.

And I want to keep the floors, just have them refinished.

I like the idea of engineered stone that looks like marble. It's durable and easy to keep clean. White cabinets, "marble' or steel countertops, stainless appliances, natural wood, a touch of my own tile here and there--a good clean look for the kitchen.

So, what do you think?

Keep it?

Or renovate it down to the nub?

P.S. The walls behind the rack and stove were covered with cracked, wavy plaster and old stick-on copper tiles when we moved in. The sink cabinet top was covered with swirly deep green linoleum (!) and the cabinets were painted cream, tan and pink on the outside; sky blue on the inside. The floor was grey linoleum so old and worn, there was no pattern anymore.

I popped off the copper tiles (still have them somewhere) covered the walls with a mix of spackle and straw. I love these walls; they look so Old French, but a new finish will have to be done, I think. But maybe I could repeat the wall in the new kitchen.

The Master Bath Shower Pad

I made and installed this mosaic when we put the addition on for the master bedroom.

Before the shower enclosure was tiled and finished, this was the beginning of the fish motif idea. The design thought here is as if you are looking down into a fish pool.

The fish are shown from a top view. milling around. A few round sea urchins are thrown in. The tile photographs with is variation in the color, but in real life, the range of color is less than it appears here. Even though these pieces are the same clay, the same glaze and fired in the same kiln, the subtle variations are very pleasing.

I didn't want anything that would overshadow the future floor (We installed carpet in the bath as a stop-gap. Bad Mistake.)

I wanted something that would have enough texture to not become slick with water.

When we did select the tile for the floor, both the grey-ish border and the cream field tile went well with the variations in the handmade tile.

The Tile Project that Wouldn't Die IV

I'm having trouble yet again getting back into the studio and into the unbroken time of thinking and working. I never seem to be able to get away from the house.

There are so many decisions that have to be made and problems that crop up daily. It's impossible to just nip out to the studio and do some work.

To Whit:

We're still working on the bathroom tile project. One bath is finished and I am refreshing the wall paint and re-caulking the tub. It's the only available bathroom on the ground floor and it's pretty crowded at the moment.

You see, our house was built by a Swedish emigrant who made his living there painting interior room decorations in houses and churches. There are some of his work still in existence in the house today. Come to think of it, this house has had three owners and all three have been artists. humm, interesting.

Thanks to a visit some years ago from a couple of nice little old ladies who used to visit their Uncle Sven (I don't really know his name) when they were little girls, I found out that once, the back wall of the basement held a painting of about 8' X 15' of "Dewey's Entrance into Tokyo Bay". And on the floor, now concealed by many layers of concrete paint, was a rendition of an oriental rug. (Red paint keeps re-appearing each time the current paint gets nicked.) Too bad the previous owner didn't like it.

I wasn't too crazy about this linen closet door, but the thing has grown on me. I just don't have the heart to paint over another artist's work. We also inherited many indoor decorated shutters which are now living in the barn, but that's another story entirely.



But back to the current house project: The Tile renovation had expanded to redoing the floor of the hallway powder room/bath. The original floor was ancient linoleum. So ancient that it was the marbleized, swirly green malachite-looking stuff . I hadn't seen a floor like that since I was a child. (And incidentally, the very same lovely stuff was the surface for the kitchen counter! Ugh! The countertop was complimented by a Pink (PINK!) kitchen sink. The first thing we did was install a steel sink and I tiled the countertop.)

Today, we have a new, lovely grey-ish porcelain tile floor that makes the room great. The original owner/builder decorated the walls with painted sailboats that look to me like in the style of the 1920s or 30s art. When we re-did the windows, we carefully protected the work and now I have to refresh the paint in the mural to match the new coat of paint needed for the walls. I'm experimenting with the use of friskit to block the fine lines and to preserve the coral paint. I Really don't want to redo that part of the walls just yet. You can see where I have tried to do an overpainting of one boat hull and it didn't work too well. I've since found a much better match for the original color.


Ignore the mess on the shelf. It's my catch-all place since we had to abandon the master bath.































I love that old florescent chrome lighting fixture. As well as the old iron tub spigot. They are vintage for the house--sometime around the early 1940s. I have the old mirror out of the frame. The wall under the fiber board is solid pine planking.




Would you believe I walked into an antique store and found these two metal bookends? And did I have to buy them? You bet! I didn't care what they cost. Turns out they were very cheap.

More about the Shower/Laundry/Bath addition

Um, after proofing the previous post, I realized that my description of the laundry lay-out was not that clear.

We added on a master bedroom, bath, laundry and walk-in closet. And the closet is laid out like a long hallway and we use it like that. It opens to the laundry at one end, runs along the outside wall of the house with high, square windows which we can open for ventilation. The other side of the wall is the entry deck, covered with a long glass porch roof leading to the front door. So even if it's raining, we can still keep the windows open for fresh air. It makes the closet bright, airy and light. I hate closets that are closed, dark and musty.

The opposite closet windowed wall, there are fold-out mirrored doors set between square columns. The whole closet is 18 feet long. We can go through the closet doors to the laundry area, turn the corner and walk into the bathroom. The bathroom has two doors that open into the bedroom. The toilet area is separate from the sinks, tub and shower area. So the traffic pattern in the addition is full circle. I like that.

Opposite the closet doors on the other side of the bedroom, double French doors and 3 windows open out to a side-yard deck.

The infamous shower stall. The tiles are in the kiln taking FOREVER to get to bone dry. Everything is flat, whole, and laid out on the shelves in one layer. I even remembered to make some small tiles on both edges of the fish band with my signature and date on them.

A tile contractor is coming today to start laying the floor in a smaller bathroom and hopefully, the shower tiles will be fired, glazed and ready when he gets to the master bath floor/tub surround/ shower phase.

Think I'll just nip out to the studio and program the kiln for Oh, say 90 degrees for a few hours..............

The Tile Project that Wouldn't Die III, Addendum

When I designed the addition and the bath, I wanted a shower that I could open the door, stick my hand in and turn the water control, feel the temperature of the water and THEN get in. Revolutionary, huh? It means the shower head and the control had to be on opposite walls. It only takes a bit more piping of the up-and-over kind to do this and it's SO much nicer. I really don't know why they aren't just made that way.

Just like the laundry room BELONGS between the bathroom: The location of the manufacture of dirty clothes. And the closet: The location of clean clothes. In our addition, the dirty-clothes-to-clean-clothes system is laid out in an L shape with one leg the bath, the other leg the closet with the laundry at the corner. I'm still amazed to find laundries in garages--what's with that? Or it's stuck away in basements. If I ever do another renovation or build a house, it's gonna have the laundry IN the closet!! Right next to the bath!! Upstairs!!

Hurrumph

Back to my main subject.

Beside the water control arrangement, the shower has two windows. We have a wonderful view and I thought it would be really nice to enjoy it while standing there being pounded by water. I asked my builder to put the windows in the corner. Now, you're thinking, 'Huh, that's dumb. They'll fog up right away." Nope. One window opens to let the steam out.

So the day came to frame the shower walls and I was away from the house on errands. When I came back, I went in to see how things were going. I stepped into the shower.

"RANDY!!" I yelled.

"You're back. What'cha think?" he said.

"What am I looking at?"

Randy said, "Uh,Wall".

Now, I'm 5 feet tall and my builder is well over 6 feet. The windows were 'way over my head.

The Tile Project that Wouldn't Die

The Tile Project: An exercise in frustration.

The Idea

Create tiles for my shower stall using the theme of a fish ladder. Now, I must tell you that this will (drumroll) be the third attempt at making free-form fish-impressed tiles that will FIT on the WALL after firing. (rimshot)

Really, I must have some sort of tile dyslexia. I have measured carefully, I have constructed carefully, I have fired carefully and still, they do not fit.

The Process

I made a clay ruler to measure the shrinkage. The inches were marked and I bisque fired, glazed and fired again. I calculated the shrinkage of the tile.

I then made a paper pattern to fit the three walls of the shower. A la Renaissance cartoons for frescoes, I marked grids on the walls and made exactly the same grids on the paper. I drew the pattern on the paper. I cut the individual squares out and numbered them. I used a copy machine to increase the pattern to correspond with the percentage of the shrinkage of the clay. Good analytical thinking, right?

After rolling, impressing, cutting to grid, bisquing and firing, they still didn't fit. Too much shrinkage.

I modified the design. I decided instead of making a free-flow pattern which had too much risk of warpage and poor fit, I would make a band or frieze with new design.

I am making the tiles now.

Pray for me.