Knobs and Turkey

Our doorknobs finally arrived! Yes yes yes!  

We had placed an order in the beginning of November with a sub-seller through Amazon.  Not shipped or fullfilled by Amazon. I should have known better. The knobs were to come directly from the company. Ugh.  

After waiting 2 weeks of nothing happening on the UPS tracking information, I contacted them.  They said wait wait wait.  Still nothing.  The tracking information never showed the box leaving their address.  It had never been picked up yet by UPS. 

Then a second time they furnished us with a different tracking number via the post office this time....   and twice those tracking numbers showed that the items only had a label created... both times the box had not even left their address.  Either number didn't show any progress. They were not listed as even being processed within the UPS on the first box nor the US Postal Service on the 2nd.

 It's like they created and printed up the labels but never shipped out the box. Finally after 3 weeks, and multiple messages back and forth, I gave them a a bad review on Amazon. Suddenly they sent me a message insisting the box was on it's way. Two days later we got tracking information about two different boxes: one coming from Kentucky and one from Las Vegas. Their company says the tracking was coming from California? But sure enough, here came the boxes. Three knobs came from Kentucky and two of them came from Las Vegas. I didn't care, at least we finally got them!

They were very well packed and seemed to be a very nice quality. They were heavy and well-made and everything was absolutely perfect. No damages incurred during shipping, thank goodness. I cannot imagine trying to deal with that company again trying to get a replacement.

Even though we were still feeling somewhat under the weather, Steve went right to work with adding one of the knobs sets to his new French doors. Had to do a little fine chiseling work around the latch plate. He used to install doors and locks and mechanisms all the time at the University, so this was no big deal. He just has to be precise and exact so the door will latch correctly.

"And there you have it", as he would say. The French doors now have a very nice latch and pretty knob set. We could try to order some kind of a dummy knob for the right-hand door. It also opens but is not a latching type door, but the company does not offer a dummy knob in this design. So we will just have the single door knob and that works well.  The other door has a latch hidden in the jamb, that locks it up into the transom to hold it secure.

I really liked how they looked. Last month we already bought the additional smaller knobs (from another company who shipped them out right away) to compliment all of the bi-fold closets and the cabinet doors in the bathroom. We bought enough of the bigger door knobs from this troublesome company to replace all of the interior door knobs in the house.

Soon he had them all replaced around the house, and I am very pleased with the results. Sometimes it's just these little things that add that extra touch to the design. It makes me smile.  We have ONE original old glass knob on ONE door in the house, the rest had all been replaced over the years with plain old average run-of-the-mill contractor grade door knobs during the rental period of the life of this house.  Now it was time to restore some things back to it's more original grace and style. To make it a home.

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Now on to the turkey part of my blog. Earlier this month, when turkeys first started going on sale, we managed to snag a 22 lb bird for only $0.39 a pound. That was less than $9.00 for a big turkey! It has been taking up a lot of room in our freezer. We decided that we would start thawing it out on Friday in the refrigerator, and cook it up by Sunday. Steve and I were mostly feeling better, just a lingering cough. Our older daughter with hubby and kids could come attend Sunday evening meal and watch the Packer game and stay for a turkey dinner. Our younger daughter and her family had opted to stay home, trying to avoid any contact with sick folks or illness, so we promised to bring them leftovers later.  She has an important job interview coming up on Wednesday, and didn't want to jinx anything by getting sick.  We understood that.

Sunday morning I started cooking a little of this and a little of that. We took our time, there was no rush rush rush.  It's not like it was a big huge party with a lot of people or anything. I made some of my famous calico beans and Steve worked on mashed potatoes. Pretty soon we did up the stuffing and the sweet potatoes, and there was a nice festive feeling in the air with the smell of turkey cooking in the house. Although we missed out on the big Pfundtner family gathering with Steve's family, it was so nice to do a little something at home.

Granddaughter Chelsea helped me in the kitchen, and we put together a nice little spread across the island. I like when the kids pitch in and help.  Plus they learn good kitchen skills for when they have a place of their own. 

Steve took care of carving up the bird when it was done. It was absolutely huge! I think it's the biggest turkey I've ever cooked.  He only cut up one half of the bird and it was more than enough for the seven of us. 

The grown-ups opted to fill their plates and go back down into the she shed to watch the Packer game on the big TV. I didn't mind. It wasn't like we were setting up a formal fancy dinner or anything. It was just mainly to get this bird cooked up and that we could all have some leftovers!  

I decided to forgo the game for the third quarter and join the three grandkids up in the dining room --- along with three sassy begging dogs that were so excited about having turkey. Here I caught Chelsea sneaking some to their little white dog Biscuit. They both look guilty! 

All three dogs soon figured out that Chelsea was the "easy mark" to get treats from.  Binney and behind her in the background is the dark black dog called Ewok. I suppose, after having to smell all that wonderful turkey cooking for all those hours, they deserve just a little bit of snacks.

After dinner, littlest Claire got out some colored pencils and paper and was busy doing some drawing and writing letters. I think she is practicing for writing letters to Santa.

Clayton also had to have some colored pencils and was doing some intricate fill in coloring pages that he found on the internet. I was able to print them out for him so he could work on artistically filling them in. He also did a nice free hand portrait of a fish, with with great detail and coloring and shading. He has such a nice long attention span for a nine-year-old boy.  And now I proudly have some new artwork hanging on my fridge. 

After an hour or so, when our dinner settled down, it was time to eat some pumpkin pie. I had baked up three pies earlier in the week, and sent two of them down to the Pfundtner Family gathering on Thanksgiving Day. This was the last pie I had hidden away in the fridge. I was very tempted to dig in and cut out a piece on Friday or Saturday. But no no no, I was good and I left the pie intact until Sunday.

The best part of the evening was that the Packers won the football game. It was rather touch-and-go for a while and we were happy that they pulled it off! Any win is a good win.

After the family went home, we filled up some containers with a lot of leftovers to bring out to the other daughter Heather's house. When we got there, dropping it off at the door, their sassy Corgi Radar decided he was going to hop in our back seat and go for a ride. He knew where that good turkey smelling food came from, and he wanted to go back there and get some. LOL  We had to take him out and he grumbled and humphed and complained all of the way into the house that he didn't get to go for a ride with Grandma and Grandpa.

So that is how we spent our Thanksgiving weekend. Being sick, finally feeling halfway better, then about three-quarters of the way better, and cooking up a meal. I spent the rest of Sunday evening picking everything off the carcass, it got out in the trash by Monday morning so it wasn't stinking up the garage all week

I'm so glad that we have some leftovers in the fridge and freezer. I love having warmed up leftover turkey white meat on cold buttered bread for sandwiches as lunch for the next few days. We took a lot of the little pieces and put them in a pot and simmered it up for soup.  We even managed to take the wishbone off the carcass, and I have it drying on the window sill by the kitchen sink.  My mom always did that for us kids too. Both Chelsea and Clayton were asking about it, so next time they come I will let them make a wish.

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We were very pleasantly surprised on Tuesday morning to get a beautiful snowfall. They had only predicted about 2 inches, and we got probably a good six inches of softly falling crystal sparkly snow.

We woke up in the morning to a beautiful fairyland scene out of every window. The clear blue sky just made the snow even more intensely white.

There were little icicles dripping off the edge of the roof that were sparkling in the sun.  The first major snowfall of the year holds such beauty and serenity.  The outside sounds are now more muffled, and the whiteness of the landscape is so pleasant to the eyes after the browns and greys of earlier in the month.

We even had little patterns where the snow was clinging to the wire cages we put around each of the new trees that we planted this past fall. Here is the Burr Oak Tree, stately claiming a spot in our backyard, surrounded by wire fencing. This tree is in memory of my mother and was a lovely thoughtful gift from our brother Pete and wife Cindy.

After a couple hours of sipping our coffee and looking out the windows at the beautiful snowfall, Steve decided it was time to fire up the snowblower and get it out to do it's work. The snow plow had gone through twice, piling it up at the end of the driveway. The temperatures had warmed up and the road was all slushy and wet because the snow was melting. If we don't get this stuff moved now while it's wet, later on at night it will freeze hard and we will have a solid lump of ice across the driveway for the rest of the winter.

I have more to tell about our next two "adventures", but I will wait until the next blog do that. This one's getting long enough. 

Here is a hint:

Wonder what we are up to next? 

Demo Day!

It's too cold to go camping this week.  Days in the 40's and nights in the 20's. There were even a few snowflakes yesterday.  So we will stay home and work on projects ... INDOORS! 

This week is finally the week to see what is what with the big demolition on the wall in our living room. This double wide doorway had been reduced down to a single door size in the past. It was time now to remove it! 

If you look at a couple blog posts back, Steve found a beautiful set of French doors to put in this space. He has always wanted to remove this temporary single door and the foot wide walls around it. The first step was to remove the heavy wooden single door that was in the added door frame. He removed it carefully off of the hinges and stored it in the garage. We will see if our kids might need it for their cabin, otherwise we will put it on Facebook Marketplace and see if anybody wants to buy it. As a last resort, we will drop it off at the Habitat for Humanity ReStore and they can deal with it.

Now comes the really fun "discovery" part. Steve is removing the trim and the framework from the single doorway. Piece by piece, he removed it carefully without cracking anything. That way the trim and the frame can be reused with the single door in the future.

Well well well, look at this. When they built the little temporary walls on each side to reduce the doorway size, they built them right on top of some carpeting! Why on Earth would someone do that? But, it's a really good thing they did it, because that means it might be easier to restore or repair the hardwood flooring underneath???

Steve removed the drywall, section by section. He carried it right out to the front porch and kept stacking it into a large trash can so we had the least amount of mess possible. I kept the vacuum cleaner and the broom and dustpan busy, cleaning up the mess so it didn't spread around the house. In the pic below, you can still see the bedroom furniture all intact in the background. I wanted to keep the mess down as much as possible during this de-construction phase.

After he pulled the studs and framework away, we could clearly see the two hunks of carpet left behind on the hardwood floor. They stick into the room about 12 inches on each side into the doorway.

Amazingly, much to our surprise, we discovered that there had never been original French doors in this doorway! There is no evidence of ANY type of door hinges or latches or swinging door or anything in this opening.  Not even a suspended curtain across it. I guess originally it had just been a wide-open doorway. We can only assume that it was closed off long ago to a single private door to make this room into a bedroom. The house was turned into a rental home in the 1970's after the Heise family built a new home out of town.  It was possibly a parlor or den or even a diningroom in its original state?

At one time the woodwork must have been all stained and varnished a darker brown.  Oh how we wish it still was!  But to strip and restore all of the woodwork in the house is wayyyyy too time consuming.  Plus, it never looks as good as the original would have been. Instead, we will caulk the nail holes, sand it down, and give it a new coat of paint to freshen it up before we install the doors.

We carefully peeled up the 2 pieces of old carpeting. Some of it was stuck to the floor, but most of it came off intact. Amazingly, underneath the wood is all in really good shape. No replacement patching or weaving in replacement boards needed. Whew!  I will put some putty in the 2 nail holes where the walls were secured. Just a little bit of light sanding to clean it up and a coat of poly should bring it all back to its original beauty.  Hopefully I can disguise it so it doesn't even look like there'd ever been a temporary wall built over it. I had done some pretty good work with the stain on the floor where we have replaced some hardwood pieces in the kitchen, and I hope to do the same here as well.

Now I thought we were done for the day. That was a pretty big project. Steve hauled away all of the extra pieces of wood and the garbage can full of drywall. I cleaned up (again) and vacuumed everything and dusted things down.

Were we done? Nope! 

Mr. Zoom Zoom decided it was time to swap around the contents of the guest bedroom and our smaller office room. That meant I needed to remove absolutely everything off the large bookcase before we could move it. So now I filled up the dining room, a stack at a time, taking everything off of my shelves. I was trying to keep it organized as best as possible. But you can see from this picture, it was crazy!  He just kept cracking the whip to Git Er Dun! 

We removed the full size bed out of the guest room and the end tables and lamps etc. The only thing we left was the barrister bookcase that we had moved in there the week before. There is still a steamer trunk in an alcove underneath the front window. And the rug. 

Steve brought in the furniture dolly and we carefully put the heavy bookcase on top of it. This thing is really heavy. It was left here by the previous owners in the garage. I had painted it up and used it as an office bookcase when we moved in.  It just fit on the wall in the smaller office off the diningroom. We rolled it effortlessly with the dolly into the bigger room. We then decided the best location for it is on the long eastern wall. 

Once we got the bookcase settled into place, Steve moved some of the artwork up higher on the wall. Granddaughter Chelsea and I had spent an intricate time using a laser leveler to hang these original paintings in a row a few months ago. They are spring, summer, fall and winter. So now we had to move each one up another 16 inches to clear the bookcase and still make them look nice. Steve is good,---he did it by eye and using a carpenter level instead of the laser level that we used.

Now that the bookcase was moved over, it was time to start hauling things from the dining room and reloading it again. Steve helped carry each load from the diningroom. This time I bought little fabric square cubes from the DollarTree store. They were only a dollar each, and able to help sort out some of the clutter and make it visually appealing. I took up my little Dyno label maker, throwback from the 70s, and made little labels for each bin.

They are not the sturdiest bins in the world, but for a dollar each, they will do. The shelves are only 10.5 inches high, and the more expensive and more well-made ones at other stores are 11 or 12 inches. Maybe somewhere down the line I will find some really pretty woven baskets of the 10 inch height to invest in. For the meantime, this will suffice. 

I got all of the things stacked back up onto the shelves. It's amazing how much stuff you have, even in a small little office. We moved the mattress and box spring from the guest room over into the little office.  We are planning to do some other stuff to the walls in there, so we didn't set the bed up. We just stacked it against the wall for now.  Soon I had all the small office stuff moved over into the new larger office. This is why we needed the extra room. We have an antique office chair, but we don't have a desk yet.  I have a really good idea in mind. I will save that for a future blog.

So far so good,

we can now stop for the day. 

Whew! 

We have to wait a little while for the installation of the two French doors. We had to order some special swing away offset hinges because of the configuration of the door frame. Down on the bottom near the mop boards there is what's called a "plinth block" that necessitates it to swing even wider for the door to clear the plinth. The special hinges would take care of the situation. They are not carried in the local stores, so we had to order them.  This is the plinth block and see how it's wider than the door frame?

We decided to go with the oil rubbed bronze color that will match with our darker furniture, the table lamp, and the fireplace screen in the livingroom. These are the hinges that are set to swing the door out wider and hold it away where it swings into the open position. They are often used for people needing to widen doorways for wheelchair access. They should be here within the week.

On the French doors, there is a drilled hole opening for a doorknob. Steve said we need to think about what kind of door knob we are going to get. Well, an original door between our master bedroom and bathroom has this beautiful glass door knob. The rest had all been replaced with modern brushed nickel ones. I said someday I would like to find more of those glass door knobs for all of the doors in our house. I just love the old-fashioned look of them, plus I like the elegance.

We looked around online and I was hoping to find something with the oil rubbed bronze finish on the metal backplate part behind the crystal door knob. On Amazon, I found these really beautiful oval crystal knobs with the most interesting shaped backplate, sometimes called the rosette. They are absolutely stunning! They had a lot of good reviews and the seller offers them in combinations of one or five.

Steve said, why should we just order one? If you order all 5 you get a better price. And then we can do all of the doors in the house! Well, not the one special door between the master bedroom and bathroom. We will leave that original. So we ordered all 5 and they should be here next week too. How exciting!

I even found some smaller cabinet type knobs to match. Those we ordered for on the bifold closet doors and the cabinet in the bathroom too.  Now it will all coordinate.  Can't you tell, I like "Matchy-Matchy" stuff?

It's good that we kinda put a hold on construction things right now.  Steve is coming down with an awful head and sinus cold.  He is getting progressively worse since yesterday, and today he will hang out in his jammies and take it easy.  Although, he did jump up and grab a tape measure when I told him about my desk "idea"...  But we can't tackle that until I get in a shopping trip to Marinette to the fabric store. Hmmmmm?    You will just have to wait and see.