Oliver’s Bungalow Blog

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Just Call Me the Piemaker

Christine
My dear friend Josh brought me a ton of apples the other day. His grandparents have an orchard, and he picked a whole basket of York apples for me. They have this wonderful crisp, tangy flavor. Of course, it was far more apples than I could eat, so I turned them in to pies. Six pies, to be precise. I even ran out of pie plates and had to make the last pie in a 9 by 9 square casserole dish!

Weak from hunger, Oliver is too tired to hold his head up to beg for apple pie. He decided he likes York apples, too. We shared lots of bites of apple with Oli during the peeling and slicing process.

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My Perfect Spice Rack

Christine

Really, I’d given up on ever finding a spice rack that I like. Over the past few years, I’ve checked out every kitchen shop, and flipped through endless pages on eBay. I was after something with a vintage feel, but kept coming up with dingy, rusty, or country.

That is, until Lewis and I popped into this little kitchen boutique in Portland, Maine. It was Sunday, the day we were supposed to fly home, we had already checked out of our hotel, and we were looking for something dry to do in the pouring rain. That is where I spotted this great little spice rack. It is terrific. The shiny chrome wires give it a retro-diner feel. Just the right balance of clean and vintage-y. I didn’t buy it; I’m completely broke right now, plus we would have had to transport it home. So I snapped a picture of it with my cell phone. I’m sure stores just love it when people do that, but hey, what’s a girl to do? As it turns out, I can get this spice rack from Amazon. It isn’t cheap, so it’ll have to wait a while.

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House Tour: Side Bedroom After

Christine

Now, here we are in 2008. Not much has changed. The floors were refinished. The chestnut trim stripped and refinished, the grain in this room much darker than most other rooms, due to the purple paint that could not be picked out of every crevice, and therefore had to be dyed to blend in. A new, fancier ceiling fan. The walls were skim-coated to give them a bit of uniformity. The spot under the windows was repaired. We thought we fixed the water issue, but apparently we have not found the true source because the new plaster is effervescing there, just where the plywood was damp and damaged. Now we think it may be the flashing on the roof to the dining room window bump-out. Once we get that taken care of, we can repair the plaster and repaint the area. We were in the midst of cleaning when these pictures were taken, so the curtains were down for washing and the area rug was rolled up to clean the floor. It doesn’t really show in these pictures, but the walls are a soft, creamy white, and I have future intentions of painting that bitter-apple-green furniture in an antique black shade. I just love the high contrast between light and dark.
Sir-not-appearing in these photos: the spot where I am currently sitting. The computer table. I doubt I will ever photograph the mess that is the computer table, much less post it on the web for all to see, so just forget about it!

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House Tour: Side Bedroom Before

Christine

Well, I guess most of the trouble with this room was merely cosmetic.

The chestnut trim in this room received its first coat of paint in the 70s- purple. Yup. I’ve spoken with two grown-up ladies who lived in this house as teenagers during that time, in fact their mother was the first to paint the woodwork, and they told me that this had been their room. So when their mom was in her painting frenzy, the girls got a purple bedroom. Well, purple and white are our school colors, you know. In fact, my aunts are about the same age, and they also shared a purple bedroom. Go figure.I’d say, aside from the ugly ceiling fan, hideous curtains, and the bad stenciling, this room was in fairly decent shape. Oh, yeah. Except for under the windows. You see that strip of paint off the wall under the left window? Well, that paint has peel off, not off of plaster, as you might expect, but off of plywood. Yes. Plywood. Painted to blend with the rest of the room. Hardly noticeable. Only trouble is, hmm… why is there plywood under the windows? Could it be… a water problem? Ding, ding, ding! That’s right! A water problem. Now, P.O.s, why would you address the cause of the water problem, when you can just cover it over? Why go to the added expense? I’ll bet you already had that hunk of plywood lying around, too, didn’t you? Idiots.
And that little Wal-Mart gem of a carpet should look just fine in the basement someday. Nice generous closet here, too. This one seems to be a bit bigger than the others, and has a bit more headroom, therefore, Lewis claimed this one for his own.