We had always intended to use carpet tiles, or something like them, for that entrance.  It seemed easier than taking up the linoleum. The house and I have a slightly wary relationship.  I like it.  Love it even.  And I admire it for sticking around for 91 years and counting.  But I don't trust it not to do something like spring a leak or develop holes or do something else equally dire.  I've adopted a sort of respectful distance.  I will fix problems.  I will make considered cosmetic improvements.  I will not go mucking about with perfectly good (read functional) [...]

So you know how you get one project done, and then you find yourself inspired to do something else...and something else...and something else?  Yeah.  Me too.  Now sometimes that's cool and leads to scads of productivity.  But sometimes it leaves you sweaty bleeding and swearing on the floor. I know I mentioned that we had the house painted (all done, looks good).  Part of painting was getting as much stuff as possible out of the way so the painters had easy access to the house (why hello garage, you're looking rather full).  This meant coming to grips with one of [...]

Today was the first really crisp day of fall.  It was absolutely lovely.  I even put on some wooly socks. The timing is excellent...since yesterday the air conditioner decided to go on strike.  I'm sure this will be convenient and inexpensive to fix, because home repairs always are. Sigh.

Having brawny lads scampering all over your house (banging and scraping and banging and climbing and banging and thumping) is rather more distracting than I had expected.  And I had expected it to be distracting.  I just hadn't expected it to drive me stark raving mad.  And I hadn't expected it to go on for days. What I did expect (it's an old house, it has trained me well), was to find some sort of lurking problem.  Don't get me wrong.  I love my old house.  It's pretty, and it's well made, and it looks and feels like a house [...]

The town I live in has a rather...um...zealous housing authority.  They inspect all houses every few years and send out letters informing the residents how they get to spend their summer vacations.  This year, they decided that Chez Violence was due for a new paint job. Now honestly, we needed it.  And we're lazy, so the letter from the housing office was likely a good kick in the pants.  But it meant we were in for a rather expensive and intrusive project.  We've had folks climbing all over the house for days (and many more days of it to come), [...]