No More Dog in the Dog House

My poor old doggie died.

He started slowing down this last fall, and by last Wednesday it was plain he was in more misery than he deserved. We took him to the vet, and it turned out he got arthritis in his back, and two of the bones near his tail broke. That meant he couldn't use his back legs without lots pain. The vet said this condition would rapidly become worse, and even in humans meant a wheelchair and lots of narcotic painkiller.

Two shot syringes and five minutes later it was all done, and we buried him out by his doghouse with his long snout pointed to the road like he always lay.

He's out of his suffering, but it's too quiet around here now. No clicking toenails or sniffing snout makes for one still damn house. No living furnace on the bed means I am up earlier because it's too damn cold to linger.



Work at the house goes on....If the basement door ever thaws out we got the kitchen floors to level.

Clocks and Desks and Cats in hats!

Long time no post! Lots of things are going on, but most of it has been pretty boring. The north half of the roof is scheduled to be installed. The junk outside has been cleaned up, and a few other little things. There may be a decrease in the mouse population-Kent & Tina's Mama cat hatched a litter of five babbies. This picture is when they were about ten hours old. If they don't find another home for it, I told them I'd take the Bengal striped one or the white one. I figure I can spend a few bucks getting it fixed and licensed, and it'll keep the mouse and rabbit numbers down a little around this place.

My Grannie moved to an assisted living, and it was time to clean up the house. My dad and I went down to help, and I got a few little things to remember the place by. I really didn't want much, and I got everything I wanted. The big thing I wanted was an old drop-front desk that was in the garage since I was a kid. It was my great-grandmother's, and it came from the old farm. It is sort of rough, but nothing that can't be fixed. My dad and I dropped it off at a place in Spencer that has done work for me in the past, and he can fix the big issues for a very reasonable rate. I need a couple of knobs, and some trim pieces and veneer work on the top. Most of the finish is not too far gone-a little Kotton Klenser and some wax and it'll look like a million. I also got a set of kitchen cupboard doors that match mine, a bunch of washers and screws, a pretty nice metal mailbox (which I happen to need) and the old sign with our name that came off the front porch.

A year ago, a clockmaker friend of mine left me an old master clock that came from the old High School in Estherville. It was missing a lot of parts (sort of a life-long project) but had good bones and a hell of a nice oak case. When I mentioned it to a friend in Emmetsburg (whom I was visiting on account of his 101st birthday he got really interested. He told me to hold on and got his car out, and we went to his "other house" where he keeps all of his goodies. He had a piece of slate with almost all of the missing program mechanism. It still needs wired and a pile of contacts, but the hard work is done. It's going in the dining room, so it can correct the clocks in the other rooms and ring bells in the bedrooms and the back yard.

The fat man lives!

Well, I haven't froze to death yet. Not from any lack of cold, this winter is a pissuwah. It's been so cold I had to put the brass monkey in the porch. Progress is slow, because I have yet to hear from the people who were supposed to bring my propane barrel, and the people to upgrade the service enough to put an electric heater in!

I did go and get my Quincy rocker from the basement where I work, and brought back the kitchen table last time I went to my mammie's in New Ulm. The rocker has a pressed front, and vaguely mission-esque sides. The upholstery is shot to hell, but it's made it this long, a few more months won't be any problem.

The table is elm, with faux-oak grained legs and apron. I get kick out of it-it looks all little and tiny, with 5 great big fat legs, then you pull it open and it'll seat ten, twelve if they like each other. Leaves. 6 of them.

I have the matching sideboard at my mother's but it's not going anywhere for a little while.

I still like the oak centre pedestal table a little more, but this this sure a good runner up! It'll fit better in my kitchen. There is no counter space in there! None! The only counter is the thirty inches or so that are between the burners on the stove, and the drainboard on the sink. Since the glass fronted built-in takes up the whole west wall, the sink and windows the whole south wall, and the outside door and fridge the whole east wall, and the stove and dining room door the whole north wall, the only counter option is a table or island. I'm nowhere near to the point where I want an island, and Miss Andrea got along with a kitchen table for plenty of years, so I guess that's what I'll do. With the leaves all in, it takes up almost the whole kitchen.
And that's all the news as I know it. Mr Chompp wants it warm, so he can go out. Boo hoo! We all want something!

Fare-thee-well to warmth.

Well, what little summer we ever had here was nice, I guess, but now we had our month of warm weather and it's time for winter again! It's too damn cold to do anything in here without the furnace hooked up, so that's next on the agenda. Here is the roof done on the south side, before the vargeboard got replaced. That porch is going the way of the Studebaker next summer, because the basement stairs are in there and the whole thing was a temporary measure ninety years ago. It's truly had the pickle.

Here is a set of plates that my eldest brother scavenged from some building in Iowa City where renovations were taking place. He used to go to school at University of Iowa, and worked there for a while, so he scavenged some goods from time to time. I think I have six, which will replace all of the plates on the outside doors. At one time I had a knob or two, but they were pretty scabby, and all of the knobs in the house are china, so they'll probably get black knobs this time around.

Also, I have a pair of these old baby gates. I saw some eyelets screwed into one of the door jambs, and sort of guessed there was a gate there, but then one turned up in the attic, and I found an identical one at a local shop for next to nothing. What on Earth does a bachelor want with baby gates? Because they also keep long-snouted hounds in and out of certain parts of the house. Long-snouted blue hounds. Like this one. It's not his fault that his nose is bigger than his brain! He is pretty well trained to respect a baby gate because we had them around when he was a puppy. I do confess that when it's cold and the furnace isn't putting forth, he is a boon to have laying on the bed. He is an eighty pound furnace.

I must be living right!

The mother lode for my house!

My cousins (who always treat me better than I deserve) generously donated this old screen door to the cause-it needs some help, but fits the front door like a glove! It was on their house in town (which my great Grandfather built) but it was not original to the house, and so they were kind enough to give it to me.

It has all sorts of fancy saw work and spindles, and looks like the screen doors on all of the old movies, and there's no way in hell I could afford a new one this nice.



The screen has been dogged, likewise the front corner, but that's all easy to fix. That and a little paint will make it an entry to be proud of!

True story: A friend that I cannot name here was at someone else's house and his dog tore the screen door all to hell. When the lady of the house confronted him with the details, he didn't offer a nickel to fix it-but did volunteer this comforting thought: "Yeah....you got off pretty lucky...he done tore the one to home apart lots worse than this!" The wooden bracing has a really nice fluted profile, and it looks like it grew up with the house. I even had six old white-painted screws on the porch that matched the hinges, and an old hook screwed into the jamb matched the eye on the door for height and location.






I also got another piece of good luck, in the form of this table, which is solid quarter-sawed oak, and forty-eight inches across the top. It has a rather ingenious, but simple little latch that holds the halves together, and they slide very easily apart to put the leaves in. One of the things I remember from my Grandmother's old house as a child was the big round oak table in their dining room. I have wanted one for a while, but they all seem to go for a fortune, so when this one was made available to me almost literally for the taking, I jumped on it. (Incidentally, they told me that it was forty-two inches across, which I measured and determined would fit into my car...turns out it is forty-eight inches, which meant some disassemble time required. Such fun. If I had a tail I would wag it, but I can truthfully say it got brought home in an Oldsmobile Cutlass. I am very happy with it though, and I'd do all of it over again to get it. The people from whom I got it thought it was from about 1920. It has modern casters on it, and at first I was going to remove them, but i like being able to move it with two fingers.

Last, but not least, a friend bought a house here in town, and I went to their sale, and got this desk. It is in sort of fixer-upper shape, but for what I paid for it I am not whinging any. It's one of those combination affairs, that have the desk and book case all in one. It is quarter-sawed oak veneer, and I think I may have some pieces to replace the missing. The mirror for the back is around somewhere, but the glass is broken, so I have that to do, and I plan on replacing the back with oak bead board or car siding.

I have been thinking about the heat situation, and remembered I have the one I bought for the farm, which I may use this year-it did all right...just look at how happy the hound was to have it!