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? 

The Doors

The Doors.

Not The Doors rock band, you silly. This is about the french doors we are putting in our house. Steve decided to start the process of mounting the french doors into the frame. 

This is really his project, from start to finish. But I am here to help along the way. And take pictures! He is the one that didn't like the singular doorway that someone made out of this double wide opening years ago. So now that he removed that hodgepodge doorway, and we fixed the floor, it's time to mount the two french doors.  He carried them in before I even had a chance to get up, get dressed and have some coffee. 

We ordered these interesting hinges called "Swing Away" or " Offset Hinges" to allow the door to swing back beyond the plinth block down by the mop boards. 

Without these special hinges, the doors could only open about 90 or 100 degrees before hitting that trim wood. We would like them to open up a full 180 degrees and lay flat against the walls in the office if we want them to. It also saves on them getting accidentally pushed beyond their capacity, and straining the hinges or cracking the door frame wood.

Using his router, he carefully made a new mortise section for each hinge in the doorway framing. There had never been any hinges on this doorway before. So this was all new territory.  I stood with the shop vac hose nozzle set right next to the router, to keep down the sawdust in the house. He did pretty good for standing and holding the heavy router in a horizontal position to do such a precision cut.

Of course, now the problem with an old house, the openings and doorways and floors and walls are never square. We temporarily screwed in the hinges with one screw each to start holding the door in position.  Now he can level side to side, front to rear, and top to bottom.

Careful measuring, checking, leveling, and adjusting at the hinges is necessary to get them to swing just right and not be out of square.  The doors need to also meet up in the middle with just a perfect even gap, and also meet at the top and bottom.

Most people just buy a set of doors already set into a frame and hanging on hinges.  Not us. LOL...  It was time consuming work. We took the door off, carried it out to the front porch, and back in to put it back on a couple times, taking time to adjust things and plane it down just a little bit more with each try.

Steve borrowed this power planer from his dad earlier this week. (Thanks Dad P.!)  It sure was a lot easier than trying to do it by hand with a manual one.  We set each door out on the front porch against the railing to work on the edges.  Also to keep down the mess in the house. 

He took down the woods layers a little bit at a time from the edge of the first door and make sure it will open and close properly and fit right at the hinges and the center where the two doors meet. 

Once wood is cut off, it can't be put back on again!  So he worked a small bit at a time, trying to be as careful as he could be.  I was the "front door opener/door closer" person each time we carried them out and back in again. 

Steve was concerned that the planer may take off a little too much with each swipe. Once he got down to about where he wanted to be, he was getting worried. What he really needed was a belt sander. And can you believe it? He doesn't own a belt sander!

I never ever deny Steve the opportunity to buy new tools. He uses them for everything and it will come in handy again at another time, I am sure. Well...  we ran downtown to get our flu shots (more on that later), we buzzed next door to the little Ace Hardware store and picked up a inexpensive little Skil belt sander.

He said it doesn't need to be a high quality top of the line tool, we're not sure how often he'll ever use it. He got by this long without one. But it was needed for this project and it will serve its purpose and be easier on the budget.

Now he needed to carefully sand down any wood that was too high so each of the doors could fit the uneveness of the existing doorway.

It worked great 

and we got them both mounted perfectly!!!!

The Brass Black solution I ordered from Amazon came. I tried it on 2 sections of the brass caning. Nope, it doesn't do a thing, other than some blue colored run-off.  So we will settle for leaving the brass between the beveled glass panels (for now).  It's not what I wanted, but it's not that noticeable.  The beveled glass panes look so nice and they shine and glisten in the sunlight. 

The new glass door knobs are on their way! UPS says they were sent on Nov 4 from California and are still enroute. Somewhere. I hope soon....

Next comes the cross piece, called a transom.  Steve is measuring for that right now while I type this. Last night we ran and got some trim wood called "stop" material to make sure the doors aren't extended too far into the livingroom beyond their range.  That would result in cracking the wood of either the doors or the frame.  Once he gets the transom in on top, the stop material goes around the edges (so little grandkids can't over swing the doors in their opening).  

In the top transom space, I am working on a creative idea, using an old broken stained glass window that I am going to reconfigure and restore to fill up the space above. I am excited to start that, but can't until I have the exact dimensions of the transom opening. 

We look at the doors now, and they seem to be what the space needed, and they look like they were always meant to be there. I am glad that we changed that room over to an office.  I have a few ideas of what I want to do in there yet.  And the old office will soon be a more "fun" bedroom for the grandkids. 

As for our flu shots, it was one year to the date that we got them last year.  We go to our local pharmacy and they run it through our health insurance prescription card, so there isn't any out of pocket fee to us. 

I was teasing Steve that he flinched wriggled and squiggled and was being a big baby....

I swear that I see HUGE crocodile tears coming out of those baby blues.  My friend Ida said he was only faking it so he could get a lolly pop!!

I took my shot with a smile, but you can't see it under my mask.  Yes, we still mask up wherever we go. And we wash our hands with sanitizer as soon as we get back into the car.  Even though we are both fully vaccinated, we set the appointment to get our covid booster shots in 2 weeks.  I have to wait 90 days from when I got my monoclonal antibody IV after getting covid in early September.  Hope that the booster can protect us for the rest of the winter. 

After supper last night, Binney was all excited to see one of her big brown friends come into the yard.  The deer have been hiding since bow season began, so we haven't had too many come in. The gun hunting season starts on Nov 20, so we will see even less during that time. This one had been drinking out of the bird bath.  Blurry pic, sorry.

Once all of the excitement died down of her backyard visitor, then Binney decided it was cold enough to come up and cuddle with me and my quilt in the She Shed. She is doing quite well being an "only dog" since losing Finnegan.  It will be a year in January that he is gone. Sigh. 

 

We watched some HGTV shows and waited for the forecasted snow to start.  It never did.  But tonight we might get a few inches, which will be fun for tomorrow's Packer Game. It's always more fun to watch it when they play in snow.

Today I have a pork roast to pop in the oven, and maybe bake a pumpkin pie. I want to try out a new recipe before Thanksgiving, so this is far enough in advance to have some pie and not be sick of it near the end of the month. LOL. 

Brass. Brown. Brass again. Now Black?

The weather is starting to turn cooler, and our nights have been down in the twenties. I'm glad that we took time to get our outside chores done, even though I would have preferred to do some more camping in late October/early November. 

Steve is finally feeling better from his head cold sinus thing of last week. Fortunately, knock on wood, I didn't get it at all! How is that? I always catch whatever he has. And I usually get it worse.

Well, as far as our French doors go, I had reached a point of indecision. We are waiting to get the electric power planer from Steve's Dad.  We need to plane down two of the sides of the doors so they can close properly in the allowable space.

In the meantime, as mentioned in my last blog, I decided to cover all of the shiny brass caming strips with a layer of brown fingernail polish. I painstakingly painted all of the thin brass strips on one door and it took quite a while. As it dried, it was looking pretty good. But the problem is that you can still see the shiny brass part where are the brass channel meets meets the glass. There is no way to get the fingernail polish in that channel. Plus, it doesn't look right. To me it looks "messy".

So I did what any good indecisive person would do, I removed ALL of the brown fingernail polish with acetone and cotton balls. What took me 4 hours to put on, came off in 5 minutes flat! Oh well, lesson learned.

Then I started calling a few stained glass shops and a window repair place. I asked them what could I use to tone down the bright brassy color. They said that there is a product that is called a "patina" that I could use. I looked around online and there weren't any specifically to make brass darker other than one that said it may age it somewhat, but it did more of a Verde green and not really a dark brown or a black. The other ones work for zinc, lead and copper --- or there were ones that would make things shiny! That was the opposite of what I was looking for,

Then one person at a glass repair place (in my old neighborhood in Green Bay) suggested a gun product. It was used when they restored guns and wanted to make things brownish tarnished and blacker instead of shiny. It's also used for things like belt buckles or cabinet latches. It's a liquid that will ooze down into the channel grooves and not hurt the glass. He said to apply it with a Qtip and it will turn the brass a nice deep brown. He has used it to do exactly what I am looking for. It is sold in gun supply stores, and he has ordered it online.  

I didn't want to wait, so I hoped to patronize a local business and buy it right away. 

Well, I called at least over a dozen places that sold guns and nobody carried it. I called sport shops, gunsmiths, even shooting ranges if there was a gunsmith there. It was amazing the amount of customer service or lack thereof. I would call places and they would immediately say no they don't have such a thing. Or they would say I don't know. Call back another time. Or they would say I should just order it online because we don't carry it. Oh well, after wasting almost an hour on the phone, I decided to go on Amazon. There it is -- Boom  --  it'll be here Friday. No wonder why Jeff Bezos is so rich?

In the meantime, the doors are waiting patiently out on the sawhorses in the garage. Now that I removed all of the fingernail polish on one, I also went around on all four surfaces and removed any type of coating that might be on the brass caming. I know the doors look pretty the way they are but it would be the only thing brass in my living room. Everything else is oil rubbed bronze. That is why I am trying to change it. 

With the acetone, I accidentally removed a couple spots of painted surface on the edges of on the freshly painted wood. So I touched them up. While I had my paint out, I decided to also paint the front door of the house on the inside in the livingroom. It had never been painted since we bought the house. The inner surface was the original primed steel which has a slight grayish color. Now it looks a lot better. It was something to do while waiting for the brass black product to arrive.

Note, the leading between the panes of glass

 on this door are also black.

I'm not the only one that's being antsy. Mr Steveio kept talking and talking about the French doors and wanting to see how they would look. Remember, this is "HIS" project. So what did he do? He had to carry them into the house and stand them up! Even though they're a tad bit too wide for the opening, he kind of layered one over the other just to get the effect. He held them up from behind in the office while I took pictures from in the living room.

They are a tad bit too wide, but at least we get the idea. You can also see that my floor patching and staining worked out pretty well too. Once the doors are in place you really aren't even going to notice that the floor had ever been repaired

At the top where he is holding it, we will build a cross transom support board with some nice trim around it. We will put a horizontal piece of glass in there for now, but I am working on some stained glass that I am going to put together from a rescued vintage window. I'm going to put it together and place it up there, after I know the exact measurements.

The opening is a bit out of square, so it will take a bit of fudging and planing of the wood to make the door not only fit the space, but meet at the top and the bottom evenly across as well.  Steve is good at that kind of thing.  I am just there to help hold things while he takes measurements and uses the level. 

Steve also wanted to try out the other possibility of having the doors swing outwards into the living room, instead of inwards into the office. It's kind of a "Speak now or forever hold your peace" time.  LOL We either have to make them swing one way or the other way. Once the hinges and doorstop pieces are mounted into the door frames, it will be really difficult to change it.  We weren't sure if we wanted them to swing into the living room. 

They will swing clear of the furniture but I also wanted to hang artwork on the wall to the left, and I have a beautiful hand-painted plate from Italy that I normally have hanging on the wall to the right. With the doors opening outwards, I think it would look way too cluttered.  But he set them there to see how it would look.

Speaking of artwork, I have four beautiful original watercolors by Bambi Papais that I have been meaning to put up. I wasn't sure if I wanted them in the living room or wanted to put them into the bedroom.

They're absolute favorites of mine. I got them from a lady when we went to her home to buy some lamps. She was ready to move and didn't know what to do with all of the extra artwork that she had to move. Some of it she did not want to package up for shipping across the country. She gave me a very nice price to take them off her hands. They're some of my favorite colors and of course my favorite fall season. We weren't sure exactly where to put them or how to arrange them so I made up blank pieces of paper the exact size by taping some together. Then we taped them to the wall in various arrangements in places around the house. We don't have a lot of wall space. We decided to put them back in the bedroom where they had been previously. But in a new space on a new wall.

Steve carefully tacked up the hanging nails and use the level to put them all back into place. I am glad they are finally put back up again. 

I am glad they are there where we can see them from in the bedroom or from one walking through on our way to the master bath. We can even see them from the living room when sitting in the chair by the fireplace. They make me smile.

 

Today is a work day for Steve. He left early with his brother Pete to go up to Door County. Their Pops has a whole list of things for them to help with to get things ready for the winter season. They're carrying in firewood for the fireplace, and prepping all of his lawn and garden machinery for the winter. A quick check on the snow blower and arranging some of the needed supplies for winter are also on the list. I'm sure they will go out for lunch and come home sometime later this afternoon.

This evening might be spent with a couple of the grandkids coming over. Little Whitney and Claire were asking about making Rice Krispie bars. With sprinkles of course!

So we will see...