There are moments when I love this town. Of course I like living here, otherwise we wouldn’t have moved to State College. I still get energized by that odd blend of electricity and beer that spices the air when the students come back in the Fall. I get a kick out of the buzz of downtown so close by, and the fact that Jasun and I can walk to a restaurant or an array of on-campus activities at a moment’s notice. But instances when my heart swells with love for this town like it’s my best friend or family member are more rare, so I tend to stop and appreciate them when they occur. And like a friend or family member, State College is most precious to me when it reveals a characteristic of itself that is unique, something that I believe (truthfully or not) to only be possible here in Happy Valley. I had a moment like that last night.
First, let me say that I am not proud of what I am about to admit: I threw out an antique that had been given to Jasun and I by a friend (who will remain nameless for this story, because hey, it could be any of you!). It broke my heart to do it, because this item was beautiful, and fit perfectly in our home, and I loved it, but….it stank. It smelled so badly that the stench had started to attach itself to the walls and other furniture items and was slowly, stealthily creeping throughout the rest of the house. As Jasun colorfully put it, the antique “smelled like an old dead man’s breath.” When I realized last night that the stench had invaded the family room three rooms away, it was the last straw; the thing had to go.
It took about 5 minutes to haul the Offender out to the curb, attach a “Free” sign to it, and turn on the porch light so passersby could see the treasure in their midst. It took approximately 6 minutes for me to change out of my work clothes and come back downstairs. Passing by the dining room bank of windows on my way to the kitchen, I glanced outside to see – nothing! No more antique! Gone! It had taken a total of 6 minutes for someone to come by, claim it, and haul it off! A new record! You’ve got to love a town filled with students and locals who are that efficient at Curbside Shopping.
Friday, October 24, 2008
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
The Family Room Rug Saga
Rug 1 - The rug we moved in with, too worn-looking and scratchy.
Rug 2 - Perfectly matched our color scheme, but was too small and too expensive in a larger size.
Rug 3 - Matched our color scheme, but was way too large, making it look like our entire family room was carpeted.
Rug 4 - Looked completely different from the picture in both the catalog and online, so much so that the company agreed to refund us 100% plus return shipping costs.
Rug 5 - Pictured in the first set of images below. Although it was more "dusky rose" than it was "rusty orange," it does look good in the room and brings out some of the orange tones in the lighting. Still, the colors are a little more washed-out than what I had originally envisioned for the room, so I have reservations about this rug even though it's steadily growing on me.
Rug 6 - The next set of pictures and my last ditch effort to get the color combination in the room "just right". I love this rug, but does it make the room too dark? Even though it includes every single color in the room, I just don't know which one to choose!
Jasun is equally indecisive, so HELP!!! The Legos need some assistance! Give us some suggestions, and select your choice in the poll!!!!
Rug 2 - Perfectly matched our color scheme, but was too small and too expensive in a larger size.
Rug 3 - Matched our color scheme, but was way too large, making it look like our entire family room was carpeted.
Rug 4 - Looked completely different from the picture in both the catalog and online, so much so that the company agreed to refund us 100% plus return shipping costs.
Rug 5 - Pictured in the first set of images below. Although it was more "dusky rose" than it was "rusty orange," it does look good in the room and brings out some of the orange tones in the lighting. Still, the colors are a little more washed-out than what I had originally envisioned for the room, so I have reservations about this rug even though it's steadily growing on me.
Rug 6 - The next set of pictures and my last ditch effort to get the color combination in the room "just right". I love this rug, but does it make the room too dark? Even though it includes every single color in the room, I just don't know which one to choose!
Jasun is equally indecisive, so HELP!!! The Legos need some assistance! Give us some suggestions, and select your choice in the poll!!!!
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
A Promise To Post
Update
Our progress since the end of January has been exciting, but my posting frequency has been abysmal. My apologies - mainly to Michael, who continues to check this website for pictures. In that vein, below is a teaser photo of the family room bank of windows, fully stripped and glowing in all of their richly-stained glory.
I've been waiting to update until I can post photos of the family room COMPLETELY finished, with pictures on the walls, crown moulding holes puttied, and the new sash hardware adorning the lattice window, but since it might be another 3 weeks until all of those little details signify the Finish Line, I'm going to switch gears and start updating this website more frequently to reflect my original intention, which was not only to keep our friends and family aware of our progress on the restoration, but also to provide some insight into the history of our house and the architectural and decorating style of the time period during which it was built. As the King said in Alice in Wonder Land, "Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end: then stop." Since I've failed to abide by this sage advice so far, let me remedy that infraction now with a little intro:
Begin at the Beginning
After the sales contract on our house was accepted by the Sellers Who Shall Not Be Named, I had 4 months' worth of idle time to twiddle my thumbs, which were itching to peel back the layers of history in the house and unearth all of the wonders that we've found since moving in (and we HAVE found wonders, which I'll do a better job of documenting in future). Anyway, I was bemused beyond measure that we had landed a stone house in the boro with some real history. How many stories had those stones witnessed since their first placement in 1930? Fortunately for me, Centre County is a friendly community in which people are actually willing to personally assist you when you call the county court house requesting old deed records, and the records are amazingly detailed, including both the names of the sellers and buyers, as well as a lat/lon description of the property and a summary of the previous sale. It became a scavenger hunt, trailing the ownership of the house back through the years, and once I'd discovered the home's lineage, I was more interested than ever to find out about the people who lived here. Who were they? What did they do? Why did they move here and why did they leave? Sometimes the answers were predictable, easy, like the families (4 of them) where a father either attended graduate school or worked as a professor at Penn State and left when new prospects arose in other locales. Other stories, like that of the original owner, Dr. Charles Dietterich, were more murky. Why did Dr. Dietterich have to buy back his own house from the State College authorities in a sheriff sale? Why did his 1941 draft card list Jessie Dietterich, his wife, as his primary contact but a newspaper article describing a car accident decades later lists his wife as Clara (Owens) Aitcheson, who lived right down the street from him on Foster Avenue around that same time period? An intra-neighborhood affair, perhaps, or just a third marriage? And why does a 1928 Mathematics Society bulletin list 526 E. Foster Avenue as the primary address of Clara's parents, Drs. Frederick and Helen Owens, when the original deed for our house is dated 1930, and the lat/lon descriptions on all subsequent property deeds clearly indicate that our house has retained its original address?
A few trips to the local county archives, a subscription to the Centre County records database, and some research with the Special Collections staff at the Penn State library helped me unearth the answers to a few of these questions, but some are still hanging in the ether, waiting to be answered when I find the time to follow-up on leads that I've gathered. In the meantime, I'll devote the next few posts to weaving together the past of our house based on newspaper articles, draft cards, yearbook photos, deeds, obituaries, and lucky internet searches.
Our progress since the end of January has been exciting, but my posting frequency has been abysmal. My apologies - mainly to Michael, who continues to check this website for pictures. In that vein, below is a teaser photo of the family room bank of windows, fully stripped and glowing in all of their richly-stained glory.
I've been waiting to update until I can post photos of the family room COMPLETELY finished, with pictures on the walls, crown moulding holes puttied, and the new sash hardware adorning the lattice window, but since it might be another 3 weeks until all of those little details signify the Finish Line, I'm going to switch gears and start updating this website more frequently to reflect my original intention, which was not only to keep our friends and family aware of our progress on the restoration, but also to provide some insight into the history of our house and the architectural and decorating style of the time period during which it was built. As the King said in Alice in Wonder Land, "Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end: then stop." Since I've failed to abide by this sage advice so far, let me remedy that infraction now with a little intro:Begin at the Beginning
After the sales contract on our house was accepted by the Sellers Who Shall Not Be Named, I had 4 months' worth of idle time to twiddle my thumbs, which were itching to peel back the layers of history in the house and unearth all of the wonders that we've found since moving in (and we HAVE found wonders, which I'll do a better job of documenting in future). Anyway, I was bemused beyond measure that we had landed a stone house in the boro with some real history. How many stories had those stones witnessed since their first placement in 1930? Fortunately for me, Centre County is a friendly community in which people are actually willing to personally assist you when you call the county court house requesting old deed records, and the records are amazingly detailed, including both the names of the sellers and buyers, as well as a lat/lon description of the property and a summary of the previous sale. It became a scavenger hunt, trailing the ownership of the house back through the years, and once I'd discovered the home's lineage, I was more interested than ever to find out about the people who lived here. Who were they? What did they do? Why did they move here and why did they leave? Sometimes the answers were predictable, easy, like the families (4 of them) where a father either attended graduate school or worked as a professor at Penn State and left when new prospects arose in other locales. Other stories, like that of the original owner, Dr. Charles Dietterich, were more murky. Why did Dr. Dietterich have to buy back his own house from the State College authorities in a sheriff sale? Why did his 1941 draft card list Jessie Dietterich, his wife, as his primary contact but a newspaper article describing a car accident decades later lists his wife as Clara (Owens) Aitcheson, who lived right down the street from him on Foster Avenue around that same time period? An intra-neighborhood affair, perhaps, or just a third marriage? And why does a 1928 Mathematics Society bulletin list 526 E. Foster Avenue as the primary address of Clara's parents, Drs. Frederick and Helen Owens, when the original deed for our house is dated 1930, and the lat/lon descriptions on all subsequent property deeds clearly indicate that our house has retained its original address?
A few trips to the local county archives, a subscription to the Centre County records database, and some research with the Special Collections staff at the Penn State library helped me unearth the answers to a few of these questions, but some are still hanging in the ether, waiting to be answered when I find the time to follow-up on leads that I've gathered. In the meantime, I'll devote the next few posts to weaving together the past of our house based on newspaper articles, draft cards, yearbook photos, deeds, obituaries, and lucky internet searches.
Monday, January 21, 2008
Progress!!!
The sanding in the family room is DONE!!! FINISHED! COMPLETE!
WOOHOO!!!
AND....the painting in the master bedroom is finished as well! Touch-ups commenced tonight and, if all goes well, we might actually be sleeping in our new bed before the end of January! WOW!
(I've gotten so used to sleeping on a mattress on the floor that sleeping in anything higher than 4 inches above the ground seems daring, radical even!)
Speaking of the master bedroom.....
While stripping the windows, I called out my discoveries to Jasun as each layer of history was peeled back: "Red! This trim was painted a bright red before the white high gloss latex!" Then, "Ooooh, look at this olive green. Wow, that's pretty, almost the same shade as the color we were thinking of putting in here." And finally, the Reveal: "Oh my gosh! Jas, come look at this! This is the original paint color! It's the exact same shade as the paint color that we're using!! COOL!"
That's right! Completely by accident, we are painting the master bedroom trim the exact same shade that it was painted by the original owners sometime in the '30s. How's THAT for restoration?
WOOHOO!!!
AND....the painting in the master bedroom is finished as well! Touch-ups commenced tonight and, if all goes well, we might actually be sleeping in our new bed before the end of January! WOW!
(I've gotten so used to sleeping on a mattress on the floor that sleeping in anything higher than 4 inches above the ground seems daring, radical even!)
Speaking of the master bedroom.....
While stripping the windows, I called out my discoveries to Jasun as each layer of history was peeled back: "Red! This trim was painted a bright red before the white high gloss latex!" Then, "Ooooh, look at this olive green. Wow, that's pretty, almost the same shade as the color we were thinking of putting in here." And finally, the Reveal: "Oh my gosh! Jas, come look at this! This is the original paint color! It's the exact same shade as the paint color that we're using!! COOL!"
That's right! Completely by accident, we are painting the master bedroom trim the exact same shade that it was painted by the original owners sometime in the '30s. How's THAT for restoration?
Saturday, January 12, 2008
Doing it Right vs. Doing it FAST
"I hate this house!"
The words hit me like a physical blow, and I felt myself stagger backwards a little under the force of them. I knew that Jas was frustrated, knew that those words had been germinating for several weeks now, lodged just inside his throat, but how could he say them? Our ship had officially entered Dangerous Waters, and I had a mutiny on my hands.
"Jas, I know you're frustrated. Seriously, I know. I'm frustrated too. This has taken a lot longer than we thought, but we signed on for this. This is what we wanted...together, right?
"Well, I guess not."
So final, those words. What could I say to that? This moment would pass, just as all of the others had. We had been doing this back-and-forth for months now. One of us would get so frustrated that we'd throw up our hands and stomp into the makeshift family room in the back of the house, desperate for a break, convinced that the dust and clutter and construction would never end. The other person's job at moments like that, whether they truly believed it or not, was to say an encouraging word, provide a hug, and then continue working, with the intention of giving the other person hope that, someday, this too would pass. Today was simply Jasun's turn to be The Frustrated One and my turn to be The Encouraging One....except that he'd said the banned phrase: "I hate this house." Ouch.
"I'm tired of camping on our mattress in the spare bedroom!" he continued. "It takes me an extra 15 minutes to get ready in the morning because my clothes are in piles on the floors of two different rooms! There is dust everywhere, and I'm sick of it!"
"But you like camping!" I said, at a loss to come up with anything better. No smile met my attempt at humor. "Go downstairs," I said, softly but firmly. "Take a break. I'll take care of this."
The final straw that had released this maelstrom was the question of the windows in the master bedroom. While I've been sanding my heart out downstairs in the family room, Jas has been painting the master bedroom. Sounds easy, yes? Except that we've chosen a scheme that requires him to paint all of the trim in the room, sometimes in two different colors, and the room has a lot of trim: baseboards, closets, bookcases, a large built-in dresser, and two very old wooden windows. During the summer, the wood in the windows expands just enough that we can barely force the windows open due to several decades' worth of caked paint globules that surround the stops. Since we're restoring this house, I wanted to strip the excess paint from the stops only, which requires taking out the windows, stripping the stops, and then painting the windows and the stops separately. This process would take longer, but ensure free-sliding windows, and a more professional-looking paint job. Jas, on the other hand, was torn. I could see the internal struggle in his face as we talked about the windows before his outburst. Of course he wanted to do this right and he wanted everything to look good, but he also just wanted a bedroom to sleep in where he didn't feel as if he was living like a vagabond. He knew the right course of action. It was just a matter of doing it, and his brain was screaming at him, "I don't want to do that! That's going to take a long time!"
The words hit me like a physical blow, and I felt myself stagger backwards a little under the force of them. I knew that Jas was frustrated, knew that those words had been germinating for several weeks now, lodged just inside his throat, but how could he say them? Our ship had officially entered Dangerous Waters, and I had a mutiny on my hands.
"Jas, I know you're frustrated. Seriously, I know. I'm frustrated too. This has taken a lot longer than we thought, but we signed on for this. This is what we wanted...together, right?
"Well, I guess not."
So final, those words. What could I say to that? This moment would pass, just as all of the others had. We had been doing this back-and-forth for months now. One of us would get so frustrated that we'd throw up our hands and stomp into the makeshift family room in the back of the house, desperate for a break, convinced that the dust and clutter and construction would never end. The other person's job at moments like that, whether they truly believed it or not, was to say an encouraging word, provide a hug, and then continue working, with the intention of giving the other person hope that, someday, this too would pass. Today was simply Jasun's turn to be The Frustrated One and my turn to be The Encouraging One....except that he'd said the banned phrase: "I hate this house." Ouch.
"I'm tired of camping on our mattress in the spare bedroom!" he continued. "It takes me an extra 15 minutes to get ready in the morning because my clothes are in piles on the floors of two different rooms! There is dust everywhere, and I'm sick of it!"
"But you like camping!" I said, at a loss to come up with anything better. No smile met my attempt at humor. "Go downstairs," I said, softly but firmly. "Take a break. I'll take care of this."
The final straw that had released this maelstrom was the question of the windows in the master bedroom. While I've been sanding my heart out downstairs in the family room, Jas has been painting the master bedroom. Sounds easy, yes? Except that we've chosen a scheme that requires him to paint all of the trim in the room, sometimes in two different colors, and the room has a lot of trim: baseboards, closets, bookcases, a large built-in dresser, and two very old wooden windows. During the summer, the wood in the windows expands just enough that we can barely force the windows open due to several decades' worth of caked paint globules that surround the stops. Since we're restoring this house, I wanted to strip the excess paint from the stops only, which requires taking out the windows, stripping the stops, and then painting the windows and the stops separately. This process would take longer, but ensure free-sliding windows, and a more professional-looking paint job. Jas, on the other hand, was torn. I could see the internal struggle in his face as we talked about the windows before his outburst. Of course he wanted to do this right and he wanted everything to look good, but he also just wanted a bedroom to sleep in where he didn't feel as if he was living like a vagabond. He knew the right course of action. It was just a matter of doing it, and his brain was screaming at him, "I don't want to do that! That's going to take a long time!"
(Master Bedroom "Before" Picture - pretty room, but a little cave-like, don't you think?)
We (well, I) ended up stripping the window stops, and two hours later we were laughing and joking as I scraped paint while Jasun primed and painted the windows. Inevitably, the frustration (for both of us) will continue until we finish at least one room, but we'll have the satisfaction of knowing that we took longer to do things right instead of doing things fast.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)