Déjà Vu

Our favorite saying around here is...

"Anything that can be done, can be done again!"

But in this case, or shall I say "staircase" we are doing it again, but not redoing it his time.

"what the hell is he talking about???" 

Staircase number two or Déjà Vu! The center hall awaits its plaster walls, but this can't be done until the second staircase (the stairs from the second floor to the third floor) is disassembled, stripped of all it's paint and finishes, sanded, sanded, sanded, primed, filled, painted, new treads and trim installed, and the banister reassembled. Whew! what a load of work! We have already done this once before with the main staircase, and now we are doing it all again. Yeah! what fun! (there seems to be a lot of exclamation points in my writing today, I guess I am being very expressive!) 

Take it apart, strip it and sand it...

Stripped and ready for sanding. Bondo applied to the steps where deep gouges existed.

Kind of pretty. Bare and naked old growth redwood.

Let the priming begin.

All primed and ready for filling.

Nail holes are next and it will be at least three weeks before we can move onto plaster work. But it is exciting to be up this high in the house and working away.

Last weekend found us in the first of the guest bathrooms installing, or attempting to and failing numerous times, an antique sink. The sink was purchased from the same lady we bought the marble fireplace from, and although the purchase price was a song, there are certainly reasons I would not recommend this. First would be the lack of any clear and present hardware for mounting the unit to the wall. The sink is over one hundred years old, and what ever means of mounting it once had are long gone and we were left with a trial and error situation. Scheme and plan and prepare we did, but every turn seemed to be a brick wall. After having missing pieces reproduced, tackling the issue of really short people back then, and giving up on the perfect solution to faucets and a drain, we got her in and functional. We will find the perfect nickle finished faucets, and an aged brass drain to match the legs, but for now she gives you water and sends it away.

Rocks from the Russian river became the answer to the height problem.

In this shot you really see the need for a brass drain.

Crazy chicken legs, they are kind of funny!

And now a word from our sponsor

If you need your old lighting revived and redone, refinished and rewired, reworked or recast, or simply re-anything, Be sure to call Paul Ivazes of Qualitylighting.net.

Paul has returned to us the light fixture I wrote about in my October 5th post (read it by clicking here). This Renascence Revival gas light fixture definitely has a colored past, but is truly beautiful to behold. It now hangs proudly in the Library/Drawing room, hmmmm.... we have no books in there nor have I put pencil to paper, hmmmmmm, but when we do, or if I do, I will have amazing light from which to read, or draw, or draw about reading, or read about drawing, or simply sit and drink vodka.

The spur shaped stars give it a touch of the old west.

This weekend we will be back on the second floor working our butts off. So if you happen to ring the bell of give us a call, wait a moment or two so we will have a chance to get down to the first floor, because as of this date, there is still not a butler in this house, exclamation point, exclamation point, exclamation point!

A quick parting shot for today.... as I came down the stairs from taking pictures of the second staircase I was struck by this view...

Many are asking so.... the tile came from Lundi at Villa Lagoon tile, click here to visit.

#bobvila

Ho, Ho, Ho and mistletoe, and suddenly its 2012

Oh the weather outside is frightful (actually it's amazingly beautiful), la la la, la la, la, la la, hm hm, hm hm hm hm hm hmmmmmmm....
wait... what happened to Christmas? Somehow it came and went and we kind of missed it. We did not have time to make cookies and spend endless hours in front of the fire stringing popcorn, sipping toddies, and communing with dear old friends. Sigh. Maybe next year, although it seems I said that last year and the year before. We did manage to have some fun, and get somethings done all at the same time. We made a big push in the two weeks before Christmas and accomplished a multitude of little things that had been on the list, and also began a few larger projects.

The Monday following Restoration Art our tile for the center hall arrived. We spent a day installing the marble threshold for the front door, laid the underlayment over the subfloor, and began what we thought would be a fairly straightforward and quick job of setting the tile. Boy were we wrong! In all it took seven entire days and once again I have acquired a slight limp in my right leg due to kneeling on the floor for hour, after hour, after hour.

A few days into the job I realized it would not happen for Christmas, so we tabled it until the 27th.

Tabled is actually a good way to put it because we turned our focus to that which we had asked Santa for.... a table for the dining room. The table top was built from the original ceiling joists that once held the ceiling for the dining room. When the second story was added over the rear section of the house, the engineer felt the old two inch by six inch by twenty foot old growth redwood joists were not sturdy enough for today's standards, and they were replaced. They have sat in a pile in the back yard for over two years.
Charly of Exceptional Wood Products in Geyserville, the town just north of here, picked them up and created a fifty four inch wide by ten foot long table top and delivered it three days before Christmas. Two coats of tongue oil and three coats of wax, add some antique radiators for the legs, fourteen rented chairs, dishes, napkins, flatware, and a pair of over the top candelabra, and...

Voilà, Christmas dinner!

Daylight view just after we finished setting the table

Magical and ready for guests.

Eighteen in all feasted at the first sit down dinner in the house. It truly was an amazing evening.

 Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle all the way....  And suddenly before we knew it was here, Christmas was over. Between Christmas and New Years Day we went back and tackled that tile floor in the center hall. It took us all week to finish it, all that is left is a short waiting time and then we can seal it. But I will tell you it is breathtaking in person!

As a parting shot for 2011 I wanted to share a picture of the fireplace finally finished and burning. These sorts of projects take so long to complete that I sometimes fail to post the finished product. So next Christmas we shall while away the hours in front of it, stringing popcorn, sipping toddies, and spending much needed time with dear old friends.

Now all we need is some furniture... details, details!

Happy 2012 everyone!

Restoration Art

The event of the season arrived at our home last Saturday night. A replay, shall we say, of "Art in the Ruins" that took place one year ago. Eight artists moved eighty seven pieces of art into the house on Friday and by Sunday afternoon it was all gone. There were paintings and sculpture in every room of the first floor. Somewhere in the neighborhood of three hundred local, and not so local, art and old home enthusiast came out to see, be seen, drink lovely wines, view and perhaps purchase works of art. It truly was an amazing event and a lot of art found new homes. The highlight of the evening happened for our close friend Garry, who has painted sixteen portraits of Russian River Rocks. The paintings were picked up by a gallery and will now be available to all.

The secret things that have been going on around here can now be revealed, and after you view some pictures from Saturdays event I will introduce you to our dining room.

Paintings by local artist Lar Landa and sculpture by Borris and Natasha Landau grace the fireplace

Some of the Russian River Rock portraits by Garry Tosti

Jessica Martin held court in the breakfast room, very popular as it was right beside the bar!

Tania's fascinating and beautiful photographs in the center hall

Paintings were tucked everywhere, even sipmply setting on the floor

"Tropicana Holiday" by Garry Tosti, was the first painting to be sold, and was actually fought over by two guests.

Works by Quinn and Emily Scheibal in the study.

Even the doors saw art action.

More Garry Tosti in the library.

Retitled "the dressing room of dreams" these paintings are eight feet tall and were hung in the library bay window.

The Dining Room Treatment

Before the big reveal, lets begin with the arrival of the newest member of our family. She is big and expressive, and rarely seen in this day and age, our live gas, crystal and glass chandelier. The chandelier came out of a home in upstate New York. After being completely disassembled, each piece was wrapped in blue tape and then bubble wrapped twice. All of the pieces were put into four large boxes and those boxes were put into four even larger boxes, we were not going to have any breakage this time! She made it all the way across the country without a single bit of damage. The fixture was hand delivered three hours east of here to Paul Ivazes of Quality Lighting. Paul's task this time was to take a one hundred and fifty year old gas light fixture, which had been electrified twice during its existence, and return it to burning gas. Like a wizard working magic, Paul found amazing ways to reseal and make this glass beauty safe.

The base unit ready to attach directly to the gas pipe and then to be dressed.

The upper stack in place.

After attaching the fixture to the gas pipe, Paul tests the burners.

The dressing continues.

All that is needed is the six shades, which at this point were on their way.

Shades in place.

Amazing!!!

On to the rest....

As I hope you will recall, the plaster color for the dining room came out rather dark, instead of silver gray, it is more like the color of wet concrete. We had every intention of resurfacing the room in a lighter version, but Natasha Landau, a very dear friend with talent oozing out of her very being said she was inspired and wanted to create art. Our walls became her canvas and we gave Natasha carte blanche! The results are truly inspired and during Restoration Art the room was the hit of the evening. The walls are an amazing juxtaposition of old and contemporary and rumors are flying that others are desperate to have her do rooms for them.

The room was roped off for the evening so that people would not touch the walls.

Natasha herself posing with her work.

We are truly blessed to have such a work of art in out home and will be forever grateful to the artist and her talent.

For my local readers, an Invitation

And for those far away...

A lot of things have been happening around here, and I am not allowed to write about them yet.
Not until after the revival of "Art in the Ruins", now known as "Restoration Art"
If you can make it, please join us at the house on the tenth of December.

My left eye

Rule 1.  Do not get plaster in your eye!

We set aside three days last week, Friday through Sunday, to finish the study. Gut the office furniture, finish the baseboards, trim the baseboards and the doorways, install the three piece crown molding, seal all of the seams in the drywall, and prime all of the raw wood in preparation for plastering the ceiling and then the walls. The goal was to finish the woodwork and plaster by Sunday evening so that we could move the office furniture back into the space in time for business as usual Monday morning. Friday went just fine. The room was cleared of furniture, drywall seams were sealed, and the baseboard and trims installed. Saturday started out great. The crown molding went up and all of the raw wood primed. Phillip mixed the base coat plaster for the ceiling and away we went. For a ceiling, the base coat was finished in record time, one hour and twenty minutes, and we were elated that we would not be working late into the night. Phillip mixed the finish coat and I climbed onto my ladders and began the slow and careful troweling. The mix was perfect, the plaster was just flowing onto the ceiling with little or no trowel marks. I was so excited about how well it was going that I suddenly forgot my own rules... do not trowel above your face. I was only through about ten percent of the job when my arm pulled the trowel toward my face, I saw it coming, I instantly thought you should not do that, I looked up at the trowel just as it began to slide right above my eyes, I saw the big glop of plaster sliding off of the back edge of the trowel, and I blinked. The large glop landed directly in my left eye. I will of course spare you all of the gory details, and suffice it to say that no amount of rinsing was going to solve the problem. Sound the horns, we are off to the Emergency room, where it was discovered that the plaster had lacerated my left cornea.

It is now Monday afternoon and I am not really able to open my left eye.  The vision is blurry, and I apologize in advance for sloppy writing as I cannot really see the screen very well. I did visit an Ophthalmologist this morning and although he told me I did a good job of injuring my eye, Yeah! I did a good job!, it is not permanent, and it will heal just fine. But let me tell you...

it hurts like HELL!

In my one eyed way I can share a few pictures with you today. Pictures from last weekend when we installed the ceiling medallion in the dining room, and plastered the ceiling.

The ceiling was done after the walls due to the fact that we did not, at that time, have a medallion for the room.

Everything had to be covered in plastic, and it looked like a scene out of a horror movie.

The medallion in place.

Note the gas pipe from which the Gasolier will hang in the center of the medallion.

All that missing is a secondary small rosette that encases the gas pipe.

The finished ceiling, one of our best so far.

This one eyed Pirate is off to have a lay down now and rest my eye in hopes of continuing the study on Friday, since Phillip is completely displaced and is having to work in the breakfast room.

As a quick parting shot... Our good friend Garry was here helping out for a week. He spent his time doing final preparation work, and painting of wood work in the Kitchen, the breakfast room, the gallery, and the living room. Lots of frog tape outlining everything in the picture, but it's looking more and more like a home every day.

Looking down the gallery toward the Kitchen. The bright green outline is masking tape.

#bobvila