Glinda Goodwitch's Profile

I'm with Jdeon -- Spray paint is your friend (I recommend Rustoleum brand; it covers more completely and evenly than the house brand at Blowe's). Just yesterday I bought five frames at Value Village, two of which are nice metal jobs with double mattes and cheesy art. Don't know what I'll do with them, but when that right graphical element comes my way, I'll have the frame ready. The other three are simple 8x10s. Took 'em apart and painted 'em yellow. I know exactly what I'll do with those.

Lots to like here. Still, I'd like to get a better sense of how the place works as a whole. Perhaps that's hard to capture in photos when the subject is a three-story row house.

Yes indeed. Candles are still a fire hazard, but not nearly so hazardous as a wood fire in a freestanding firepit on a a porch.

The overall effect here is very pleasant -- colorful, welcoming, etc. Would be a pity to burn it all down.

And why do you assume that people are assuming all that you're assuming they're assuming, Learned Foot?

Just who is being "judgey" here?

It's fine by me that people arrange (or don't arrange) their books any old way they wish. Speaking for myself only, of course. But I wouldn't show off what I fine job I did of arranging mine of they were arranged by size and color. As I said way up this thread, my system is my system, but I'd bet you that any avid reader would see the logic in it in fairly short order, and would be able to find any particular volume quickly, without any guidance from me. I accept that that matters less to some people than it does to me, but it does matter to me, every bit as much as other people's book color-coordinating skills apparently matter to them.

Well, then welcome to the club

YES, MOTHER.

And where'd you hide my pipe?

I'm right with you, xerocada2.

Alas, I fear we're a dying breed. In this Brave New Digital World, books are increasingly becoming less about their content than their appearance. Many is the bank and hotel lobby (or lounge) that features books on shelves surrounding a gas-fired fireplace. Those books obviously aren't there to be read.

In the move before last my mother-in-law, in her attempt to be helpful, took it upon herself to arrange my boxes of books on the shelves. It was all I could do not to blow my stack. She arranged them by size and color, never mind that it made it awfully difficult to find the books I actually wished to TAKE OFF THE SHELF AND READ, you know, like a person might wish to do with a book.

I have my own way of arranging my books, but I suspect that most any reader could decipher my system in fairly short order. Fiction here, nonfiction there. Religious subjects on that shelf, gardening on that one over there. Poetry in that case, et cetera.

Very nice in so many ways, not the least of which is that it is looks quite clean without being sterile. It says "real people live here -- real people of limited means but with a strong desire, and the eye, to create a pleasant and stimulating place for themselves and their guests."

I would place heaviest emphasis on Commandment Number Nine.

There's a never-ending stream of stuff I'd like to have, but if I have no good place to put it, well, what's the point? If I were a dealer it would be a different matter, of course, but I'm not, so it isn't.

I'd add a Commandment that reads something like "Don't be reluctant to come away empty-handed." Thrift shop/craigslist/estate sale shopping is an almost daily habit of mine. The vast majority of those days have me acquiring absolutely nothing. But this home is very well furnished with stuff that was almost exclusively found in such places, and that wouldn't have happened had I not been almost constantly looking there.

Having now gone back and read the text from the 2009 posting, I see that a previous owner did the major reworking of the interior, but that some of the work was less than first rate.

While there's lots to be said for "period-correct" restorations, I'm not one to live in a museum. I'm all about open, airy, light living spaces, but finding such an interior in an older house isn't the easiest undertaking. Coming across a century-old house that's already had such extensive interior remodeling carried out would solve that dilemma.