Shine A Light On It

There have been a lot of improvements at Goodin's Folly as the holidays approach and it's been really fun because all of them are things that we can see, as opposed to things that are under the surface.

We found this light fixture on a salvage yard's website.  Ironically, we drove past the place when we were in Nashville over the summer, but didn't have time to stop.

Rob hung it this morning and you can see in the background that we painted a few weeks ago.  (More photos of that later.)  You can also glimpse a bit of the refinished wainscoting, which I just love.

Swatch Time -- And I'm NOT Talking about Watches

In case you thought we splurged on a Rothko, I can assure you we didn't.

These were supposed to be color swatches for the kitchen, but the top is too light and the bottom, too gold.  We've elected to use the top one as a ceiling color throughout the entire first floor.

Happily, we do have a winner for the dining room (and living room.)  The grayer of the two greens, the one closest to the woodwork, will be covering our walls in just a few weeks.

Remarkably, we have chosen an interior color scheme that is almost identical to the exterior one.  We are nothing, if not consistent.

Stripping!

We finally hired Mary Gandsey to strip the paint in the dining room since, for the last two years, it's looked like this and left little chips of lead paint anytime anyone got near it.  Big difference, huh?  I'll post some pictures of what it looks like stained later this week.

Blooms

My orchids continue to LOVE the light we are getting in the dining room.

Rob bought me this phalenopsis seven years ago when we moved back from France.  This is the first time it has rebloomed.  Hurray!

Nancy Drew and the Case of the Mysterious Trim

We have a lot of wood trim in our house, all of which has been painted white. We've been wondering for a while what kind of wood was underneath because, if we decided to keep it, we wanted to carry it over into our basement.

Our friends Jim and Cybele, the ones we got our stove from, came over and brought a heat gun. The first layer blistered off quickly to reveal multiple layers of paint. (Yes, that is avocado green!)

Jim dug a little further to get to the bare wood. We think it's either pine or Douglas-fir.

Jim thinks our trim is of an intermediary style, a transition between the more ornate Victorian style and the humbler bungalow style. That piece of info tipped us over the edge; we're going to keep it. I bought a respirator today so I can start attacking the trim with the heat gun Jim loaned us.

Don't change that dial -- more bare wood coming soon!