5 Years... and Counting!

It was 5 years ago today I started the Hall House adventure and what an adventure it's been! There's been plenty of ups and downs... and things have never quite gone as planned... but looking back, a hell of alot was accomplished and I would say for the better! Let's see how far things have come...

The Foyer

Dining Room

Kitchen

Powder Room

3rd Floor

Outside

Maybe I"ll be done before the 10th anniversary!

A Hall House Painting

For Christmas this year my parents had their very talented neighbor paint a portrait of the Hall House to hang in my foyer. As you can see Jim did an amazing job!

On a bad note, apparently somebody didn't have any Christmas spirit. I wasn't the only one hit Christmas night on my street. The one arbor isn't bad, but the other will need a few pieces replaced. I'll wait till spring to deal with this mess. Meawhile the first big snow of the season is hitting the area and I have a snow blower that needs fixin.

Another Festivus Season at the Hall House

Progress has been slow again with some leftover problems at work keeping me busy and the holidays. I needed ornaments to do a tree, so in the true spririt of the Hall House... I went old school! That's right, what old house would be complete without Shiney Brite X-mas ornaments on the tree?! So I went on an EBAY hunt and found a few dozen from the 40s era.

I learned that during the war metals were obviously in short supply, so ornaments of those years were not silvered.... so if you find a clear one, chances are it was made during the WWII. I found a few of these as well.

Then of course there's the lights. Yep... vintage too! I actually had about 6 boxes of these given to me a few years ago and bought a few more sets to do a complete tree. These are early 40s era NOMA and Peerless sets. A wooden bead is threaded through the wires at each bulb... creating a loop for a brach to go through. Then you just slide the bead up against the light and this fastens it to the branch. Amazingly all the sets are in great condition.

Finally my grandfather's Lionel set is underneath that he received for Christmas in 1947.

....and of course the leg lamp is proudly displayed by the front window!

Tedious Table and Other Projects

So the loose ends of the kitchen are slowly coming together. The kitchen table restoration is coming along. I finally have the table stripped and repainted and finally in use. It cleaned up great and definitely adds to the retro feel of the kitchen. It's not too big or too small, but does have a nice added feature of two leafs that can be pulled out on each end if I ever need the extra table space. This is why the set has 6 chairs, which is an unusual find for one of these sets! I'll start working on these next which will take some time to do. Oh, and I still need to finish the utensil drawer which inserts under the table... the open slot can be seen in the pic. I painted it the same color as the trim and wainscotting. The black I masked out and spray painted as it was originally

Next I finally found and installed a neat Western Electric wall phone. It's 1920s-30s era with a dialer.... and yes, it still works!

Finally the upstairs kitchen demo continues before each trash day... some more of that "lovely" panelling has been exposed.