A Homage to the Past

We had a banner day yesterday, with lots of stuff getting done. I just can't say enough about Matt and his crew. They are amazing! Matt put the electrical box on top of the mantel, then got it hung. It is spectacular. The corbels are from a house that Peter's grandmother grew up in. Our neighbor's owned the house and did like we had to do, built new and had to tear the old down. They offered us whatever we wanted from the house, so we had someone take the corbels off that were under the eaves on the two story house. I had stripped one of them, but it took me so long and was so tedious, that I had a professional do the rest. He also thought they were tedious and teased me that he didn't want me to walk in his door again. Ron T did a poly coat on them and Matt hung them. We will also use them to hold up the island granite and in the mudroom to hold up the message center cabinet. I am thrilled to have part of history in my house. We figure the house was built in the 20s, just like the farm house we took down.


We have another homage to the old with a window that we took out of an upstairs walk in closet in our old farm house. That house was built in 1922. I stripped it and put in new seed glass, as the old glass was a replacement glass. We put it in on the small studio wall that goes out into the hallway by the stairs. It is so cute! This is from the studio and the third photo is from the hallway.




Josh, Matt's worker, put up a wall of extruded Styrofoam on my design wall. I will add a layer of thin batting and then have the base board added on top of that. I will be able to pin into the Styrofoam and also fabric will stick to the batting.



I am a bit frustrated with the front door. It is a steel door, it is just not practical to use a wood door in Minnesota, and has a fake wood grain on it. They only offer the wood grain in oak and only offer about 5 colors. We chose the one we thought would look the best with the cherry, but it looks bad. I wasn't that pleased with it anyway, because the staining job was just awful, so the rep came out and he agreed and was having it replaced anyway. I talked with Borge, our painter, and he said he could paint it to match the cherry. We will have the replacement door sent without paint. I might be kicking myself if Borge can't get it right, but I just can't live with it if it is not perfect. It is just too nice of a door to have the paint look goofy. Chad put the transom in yesterday. I just love the glass.



Josh replaced the builder's stair treads with the final treads on the stairs going down from the garage. They also put the skirt on the side of the main living room stairs. John stopped in to sort out knobs and handles for doors. He gave us nice, warm, thick hooded sweatshirts with his lumber company logo on them. What a treat!