I mentioned in my current Giraffe Call (LJ) that we’re going to start working on our Foyer soon.

I’ll do my best to post “before” pics this evening, but in the meantime, I’d like to lay out a bit of what we’re looking at.

The foyer is a 8×4 space with doors on three sides: the front door, the doorway to the utility room, and the doorway to the kitchen. The fourth side has an open “closet” space with a fold-up bench.

It was covered in hideous wallpaper when we moved in (Much of the house was covered in hideous something.) We’ve stripped the wallpaper off, leaving bare walls, and done much of the mudding and sanding.

To finish the foyer, we will need to:

• tape, mud, sand, and finish the upper edge of the room
  
• paint the entire room, including ceiling
  
• paint and install trim around all three doorways
  
• install a door in the doorway to the utility room (possibly but less likely, also in the kitchen doorway)
  
• replace the over head light
  
• repair the floor
  
• remove the extant, rotting-out, header for the closet (where there were once hooks)
  
• replace the header with overhead storage
  
• remove the lovely fold-up bench and replace it with one in better shape
  
• re-install the closet rod, re-install the hooks or get new ones, or paint the old ones and re-install
  
• stencil a phrase between the overhead header and the seat: a caelo usque ad centrum (see here
  …and I’m sure there’s more. But, when we’re done, we’ll have a welcoming, lovely entryway in which to invite people into our home.

  Once the snow melts, we can really get started!

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Our front door is a bit drafty.

More than a bit, really: during the recent windstorm, water was blowing in under the bottom seam.

And that’s after we (T) have fixed the threshold.

In the long run, the whole door needs replacing, as well as the frame. And we need a storm door. But in the short run, I hung a curtain.

Not just any curtain!

I bought two lengths of heavy upholstery fabric on clearance at JoAnn’s, and then a layer of batting (the stuff that goes in the middle of quilts). I sewed a giant tube, inserted the batting, and then sewed a border to hold the batting down.

Then I sewed up the top so that I could slide a curtain rod through it, and hung a swing-arm curtain rod (this) above the door, so we can swing the curtain away to get out the door.

The difference was immediately noticeable.

Next up: the back door!

Is your house drafty? Too warm in summer? Too cold in winter? How do you deal with it?

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/466532.html. You can comment here or there.

So, I have a pinterest.

And I’ve been putting a lot of house ideas on there.

That, and talking to friends talking about their dream houses, leads me to thinking about that dichotomy.

So, over here, we have ~~the ideal house~~ Mine is a 2-story-with-attic in a style common around here which so far I’ve been unable to put a name to, with 3 bedrooms and a closet office, a wide, open kitchen, and a lot of light.

And over here, we have the house I own. It’s a short squat farmhouse that currently has very bare walls – unpainted drywall in one room, bare “studs” in another- bad linoleum, and strange room shapes (It does have, technically, 3 bedrooms and a closet office).

Of course, the advantage of the house I own is that it’s mine. And I’ve been working on thinking about Dream House that way – not about the house I might have some day, but about what I can do to my current house to make it My House.

(First step, as soon as we can afford it, is obviously getting someone in to fix the walls.)

So when I think about Dream House, I’m going to work on thinking Dreams For This House.

But that’s me. What about you?

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“When we bought our house, my father gave me my grandfather’s hammer.”

“My mother brought her pick-up truck down and we went to the hardware store to buy lumber.”

(T:) “If we’re going to be hoarders, I’d rather hoard something we can just take to curb and they’ll take away for free.” (re. our growing collection of glass jars)

(Hob:) [If I was getting a wedding present] “You guys would get a home depot gift card.”

<3 my life

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