Judge Ed P. Curry

Yesterday, I spent some time in the library on Ancestry.com and discovered that the "E.P. Curry" that lived in our home from 1899 until his death in 1908 was a county judge. Still trying to fill in the gaps of the history of our home but definitely making progress!

Seeing Some Progress

Since my last bathroom update, we have completed the following:

* Replaced the portion of the floor under the tub with plywood.
* Patched up the holes left by the shower with beadboard.
* Added beadboard to the area to the left of the tub and over the door where there was no beadboard.
* Put up crown moulding (Gary is almost finished with the moulding, and then he'll put up the rest of the trim in the room).

My job is to continue getting the walls ready for painting, in other words, caulk. Then of course, it is always my job to paint, which I am happy to do since I get to choose the paint colors. My plan is to do a wide stripe around the room. I was thinking about a dark beige with a red stripe, but I'm still trying to decide. I have leftover red paint from the brick wall in the kitchen, so I'm trying to use paint that I have as we have a lot of paint we have purchased but unused.

In another area of the house...

Speaking of paint, I had purchased a gallon of paint called "Wooden Cabin" for the bathroom but didn't like it for the bathroom, so I decided to paint the bottom portion of the stairway with this color. I think it turned out nice... Take a look at the pictures. I'm trying to decide on a color for the top part of the stairway wall/landing area. Any ideas???

House History Update

Yesterday (our 14th wedding anniversary), Gary, Camryn, and I spent the afternoon in the basement of the county courthouse reviewing deed records on our home. Check out the History of Our Home link for the new information we found.

DING DONG! THE TUB IS GONE!

Those six little words are cause for celebration in the Tackert household. After some prayer on my part and manpower on Gary's part, the dreaded toilet pipe was removed out of the floor and the tub is now at the city dump! Oh yeah, we also had the help of a friend to get it into the back of Gary's truck. Thanks, Jason! The tub weighed 360 lbs. according to how much Gary had to pay to get rid of it. It had a date stamp of 5/25/1950. You should've seen the mess underneath it... 57 years of leaves and debris either blown in from under the house as there was a gaping hole or by mice or rats... oooooh! Unfortunately, my camera wasn't charged, so I couldn't get a picture of this lovely scene, but I am presenting you with a picture of the now vacant spot where the old tub sat. We are well on our way to our new bathroom!

Bathroom Blues Part II

The downstairs bathroom has been out of use since January. As per a previous post, we started working on it in January, and not a whole lot has been done since. We have our excuses (again, see previous post), but now we really have no excuses (except for a teeny tiny mouse that showed up earlier this week). That's my little excuse (not Gary's). The bathroom had been a storage area for a while, but I got everything out and pulled up the old linoleum floor to discover the wooden floor underneath it in good shape. Since we moved out the toilet months ago, there's been a pipe sticking up out of the floor that needs to come out before Gary and some friends can pull the cast iron tub out. My job is to caulk all the many cracks in the beadboard, which I started to do with Gary at my side but will not enter the room with a mouse lurking about. I started to continue with my job yesterday being assured by Gary that all the holes in the walls were boarded up, but then I saw some cute little mouse droppings on the floor. So much for that. I know, I know... I'm a grown woman. Why would I be afraid of a little bitty mouse? It's not rational, but it's a real fear that I'm not proud of but humbly admit. Here are some pictures of some slight progress we've made since January. We need motivation!!!

Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread

I custom-ordered these letters a few months ago and finally painted my scrap wood board to make this beautiful wall hanging for the dining room.

Thank You to My Students

A special thank you to my Ault students for a wonderful school year. I want to share a picture of the Southern Magnolia tree I purchased with a portion of the end of the year cash gift. I will always think of my students as I watch this tree grow and bloom just like they did throughout the year.

Updated Wish List

As if anyone would be interested but me... But if you are interested in knowing the things that I am wishing for, take a look at our updated wish list.

The Big Summer To-Do List

Gary and I recently sat down to compile a list of projects that remain to be done on the house. Some are minor and some are major. Here's our list in no particular order:

1. Fence: Pressure Wash, Prime, and Paint.
2. Downstairs Bathroom: Remove Bathtub, Remove flooring, Redo plumbing, Replace Floor, Tile Floor, Caulk beadboard walls, Paint walls, Trim work, Purchase tub and toilet
3. Kitchen: Finish painting trim above brick wall, and Install posts on island
4. Stairway and Landing: Paint, Install Handrail, put up wainscoting, Refinish stairs.
5. Dining Room Cabinet: Refinish
6. Downstairs Hardwood Floors: Refinish
7. Carpet: Replace
8. Parlor: Paint
9. Backyard: Finish Landscaping
10. Utility Room: Paint, Replace floor
11. Pantry: Caulk beadboard, Paint, Replace flooring, Redo shelving
12. Downstairs Porch: Pressure Wash, Paint
13. Misc. Electrical Work: Add an outlet to the island, add a light fixture over the vanity in the master bedroom, etc.

This list is pretty extensive, but it doesn't cover everything we want to do to the house, like building a deck onto the back of the house, building a pergola over the old brick patio in the backyard, or building a carport or garage.

The thing that we've learned about old houses is that your list never ends. There's always something else that comes up unexpectantly that must take priority, like getting rid of a huge swarm of bees that loves to camp out at our house or dealing with the paint that's chipping off the back of the house after being painted only a year ago. There never seems to be enough time, energy, or money, but we'll continue to trudge along working on our project list.

Arbors and Fences and Flowers... Oh My!

I'm attaching some more recent pictures of work in the backyard. We have now planted flowers in the circular garden, built an arbor and fence, and made a gravel sidewalk that leads to the shed. I'm also attaching a picture of a brick wall in the backyard that I have planted ferns and monkey grass in. Eventually, we will build a pergola over it.

In the Garden

Since we now have moved the shed, we have begun working on creating my dream backyard. Upon my many visits to the Antique Rose Emporium in Independence, Texas, I have gathered many ideas for what I'd like to do with our backyard. One idea I got was to create a circlular garden with a focal point in the center and six separate pieces (like a pizza) with different types of plants in each section. This is how we decided to do our circular garden: Gary had dug up this old SWB man hole lid on one of his job sites that is really quite decorative, not your typical man hole lid. I like to call it a "medallion." We placed the medallion in the center of our garden and used four landscape timbers to divide the circle into only four sections as our garden is on a smaller scale based on the size of the backyard. For the outside circle we used old brick that has been stored here, there, and everywhere on our property. We finally put some of that brick to good use!

We also used the old 1897 claw foot tub for a garden container. It came out of our old upstairs bathroom that we turned into a closet. We were hoping that it would fit in the downstairs bathroom, but it's a little bit too long. Anyway, we also used the old downstairs toilet for a plant container.

Today, Gary is building a picket fence to close up the backyard a little more and to better define the space. He is also building an arbor. More pictures to come soon...

The Big Slide

Two weekends ago, we decided to clean out the old storage shed... the one that was loaded with boxes from our previous garage that hadn't been unpacked since we moved in over a year ago. Anyway, in the process of deciding what would stay (basically tools, tools, and more tools), what would be given away (or sold), and what would go in the trash, we wondered if we could finally move the shed. You see, the antique shop owner who rented our home in the 90's re-located the shed to the center of the yard at an angle so that antiques could be displayed inside the shed. Well, with my visions of a cottage garden in the backyard, the shed being in the center of the space didn't work.

So, we decided to take a try at moving the shed. Gary bought a rope, braced the corners of the shed, attached the rope to his truck with a knot using his handy boy scout skills (although I don't think he was ever a boy scout), and pulled. And pulled. And pulled. You should've seen Camryn and I jumping up and down and screaming whenever the building first started to move. Throughout the three-hour process of pulling, we must've stopped twenty or more times. You see, we would hear a loud "crunchhhhhh," and I would yell at Gary to stop. We then had to re-brace the corners. But as you can see from the pictures, we successfully moved the shed about 20 feet. We spent the next weekend working on my dream garden. More pictures to come soon.

Bathroom Revovation Blues

I can't believe it was Jan. 20th when we started renovating the downstairs bathroom! We have done absolutely nothing on this project since. While contemplating this sad situation, I came up with these four excuses, uh, reasons why this project has been delayed:

1. The tub is too heavy to move without more manpower.
2. Said manpower (aka a friend of Gary's from work) has been working nearly every Saturday for some time now.
3. We had an extremely cold winter in which our downstairs heater only worked when it wanted to. Who wants to bundle up to go work on the bathroom when we could be cuddling up under the electric blanket upstairs?
4. Just when Gary was building up momentum to work on the bathroom last weekend, he threw his back out. I know, sounds like a good way to get out of work, but we spent 2 1/2 hours in the emergency room just to get a prescription for muscle relaxers and major pain relievers.

At this point, I can only imagine sitting in my old clawfoot tub, taking a nice, long, hot bubble bath. Hopefully, it's not too far in the distant future.

The Unwelcome Visitor

It is 4:30 in the morning, and I can't sleep. I woke up around 3:00 with a noise downstairs. I thought at first it was just big drops of rain thumping the tin roof, but mixed in with the rain drops was some other noise, a scrambling, scooting noise. Any other time in my life, I would've assumed it to be the cat. Unfortunately, for the first time in my life (outside of living in a dorm in college), I am catless. But that is a whole other story.

You see, about two or three weeks ago, I went downstairs to fetch me some lunch. It was a Sunday afternoon, and I had come home from church and went straight to bed. It must've been one of the many times this winter I have been under the weather. Anyway, as I was about to place my Lean Cuisine pizza in the microwave, I saw a little gray streak of lightening bolt out from behind the refrigerator, across the kitchen floor, and push open the bathroom door. "Aaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhh! Gary! Gary! Gary!" I screamed from halfway up the staircase. It appearred Gary had already had lunch and was napping himself. I have never screamed so loudly in my entire life. My daughter agreed that she had never heard me scream so loudly in her life anyway.

So... now we add a (hopefully only one) mouse to our list of house critters. In case you don't recall past blogs... we have had red wasps, ladybugs, fleas (the worst!), bees (second worst), a squirrel in the attic, something dead under the house in which the smell just finally went away, and now a mouse!!!

God sure does maintain a good sense of humor even after all these years!

Our Next Big Project

While we had planned to finish painting the trim work on the upstairs balcony and pain the porch floor, the weather has not cooperated. It's rained (or sleeted) nearly every weekend since December.

So, we decided to start on the next project since we're not ones to sit around twiddling our thumbs waiting for the weather to change. We both agreed that we were ready to tackle the downstairs bathroom.

Today, we tore out the light peach or beige tile above the tub. (I never could tell which color it was supposed to be). We also dismantled and removed the old toilet, dated July 10, 1984. We thought for a moment about reusing it in the new and improved bathroom. Then, we recalled that the home was a rent house for many years with many different tenants (No offense, Krista!) plus, it was previously an antique shop, so we decided we would go ahead and splurge on a new one.

We have decided to keep the old sink. It has a lot of character. Plus I like how big it is. We will just replace the fixtures and hang it sturdier.

Now, for the tub. Gary is a pretty strong guy, if I do think so myself. However, the current tub is either stuck like glue in its place, extremely heavier than we expected, or Gary is losing some of his strength. I retain my trust in Gary and his abilities, so I vote for one of the first two. I'm sure that he will come up with a plan to get it out of the bathroom and out of the house. If you remember from a previous post during the summer, we pulled out the antique cast iron tub from the old upstairs bathroom. (I use "we" lightly... our contractors did it, actually). It has been in the backyard all this time, but we believe it will fit in the downstairs bathroom in a new location next to the sink.

The new toilet will be placed where the current tub is with a shelf or closet next to it for more storage space and more privacy for the toilet area.

Next steps...

* Figure out how to get the old tub out
* Pull up the old linoleum flooring
* Caulk all the cracks in the beadboard (about as much fun as being poked in the eye with a stick, but much more tedious)
* Decide what color to paint the walls (Anyone have any ideas???)

Wish List Updated

I recently updated our Wish List to see how many items we have gotten that we've been wishing for. I was quite surprised at the progress we're making.

I wonder... does this make me...

a. Spoiled
b. Impatient
c. Extremely blessed
d. All of the above

I think the answer is probably d!!!

Oh, the Weather Inside is Frightful

Since Sunday morning, our heater has not been working. Two repairmen later, and our heater is still not working. Two parts have been ordered and due to arrive tomorrow. We do, however, have the upstairs heater working, but we're not running it constantly because we don't want it to run itself down trying to heat the whole house.

Gary went to Wal-Mart Monday night and bought us an electric blanket and warm caps to wear to keep our heads warm. We stayed under the electric blanket all day yesterday, only bundling up to venture downstairs to what we now refer to as the "freezer." We can literally blow and see our breath!

In addition, we had 6 plus inches of rain over the weekend, and the lovely built-in china cabinet located in the dining room began to leak down the middle, and leak, and leak. We filled several bowls and soaked up several towels with rain. It also leaked in the downstairs bathroom, but thankfully only over the tub, and down a corner of the utility room. We've called all the roofers in the phone book. One was promising, but he never showed up. Besides the leak, the tin roof over the upstairs bathroom blows up and flaps every time a strong wind blows. We've been asking our contractor to come and fix it for about the past 3 months. (Sigh...)

As if that weren't enough, we also have have no local phone service since Sunday, but a repairman is scheduled to come on Friday. Thank goodness for cell phones.

Oh the joys of living in an old house!

Schools are closed today, so thankfully, we do not have to worry about driving out in this mess. We stayed home yesterday even though my district was open. Our drive to school is 45 minutes away, and it was very icy along the highway between here and there. So, we will spend another day under the electric blanket. That's OK because I'm in the middle of a good book! Too bad for Gary, though. He finished his last night.

The Kitchen is DONE!!!

It's not as done as it's gonna get. It's not done for now. It is DONE! Here are the things we have done to finally complete the kitchen that we've been working on since last summer (or really since we moved in last February):

• Built and installed a new shelf to go alongside the cabinets on the sink side of the kitchen, as well as one to store my spices for cooking above the stove.


• Added crown moulding to the tops of the cabinets. Gary did the carpentry work, and I did the painting.


• Put in new matching countertops for the sink and stove areas.


• Intalled new white porcelain one-single tub sink along with a new Victorian-style fawcet.


• Added a new backsplash. I don't know what it's called but it's kinda like vinyl, but it looks like tin.


• Finished painting the dreaded brick wall. What a pain, but well worth it.


• Lastly, finished hanging all the tin signs, antique pots, vintage utensils, etc. I've been collecting on ebay, antique shops, etc.

I feel like I have the kitchen of my dreams!

Follow the Red Brick Road

A couple of weekends ago, Gary (with a little help from Camryn and I) put in a new brick walkway that leads from the front porch to the street. Our neighbor had told us that there was a Texas-shaped path stone that must have been covered up with dirt and grass at the foot of the porch. We dug and dug and found it. It is now at the end of the walkway where the walkway meets the sidewalk, right where the new gate and iron archway sit.

The American Dream... A House with a White Picket Fence

We are on our way to having a house with a white picket fence. A friend of Gary's started on it last weekend and should finish it this next weekend. Of course, you can guess who'll be stuck with painting it.