Reading: Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel

Not yet given up on: John Milton, Paradise Lost

In the midst of: A.S. Byatt, Biographer's Tale; Dava Sobel, Galileo's Daughter

On deck: Suburban Nation; Invisible Man; Don Quijote

Moving: turned the compost

16 March 2002: House pix

• Paint screens } no, I'm still not done
• Paint storms }
• Pull anchor bolts in sunroom (three left, I just have to get the ladder in there)
• Spackle anchor bolt scars in plaster (which penetrate to the inner layer of exterior brick)
• Sand same
• Get bookcase box out of living room
• Remove speakers from landing to living room
• Rebuild front landing moulding
• Scrub, prime, and paint front landing
• Bleach grout in kitchen counter tiles
• Seal grout
• Rebuild kitchen window
• Rebuild sunroom windows
• Fix wiring to kitchen vent
• Scrub, repair, prime, and paint kitchen walls. With oil
• Reface and paint kitchen cupboards. With oil
• Scrub, prime, and paint sunroom
• Replaster back landing wall
• Sand edges of back landing floors

Why? Why would you paint the edge of your floor red? The red continues from the three edges of floor to the strip of moulding (on the left) that separates the plaster of the upstairs from the beaded wainscotting lining the staircase, not really masked by a single brushstroke of white--primer? paint? who knows?

• Repair step in back stairs
• Repaint back stairs from hideous black to more appealing though equally practical, thus nonexistent, color
• Remove streaks of white paint (my fault) from back door floor
• Paint RDC's study closet door (yes, it's been almost two years. We don't like doors.)
• Get a length of wood cut to the right length and painted white to put a shelf into that closet
• Hang "Starry Night" poster (this one I can do today)
• Hang other three pictures (a print of "The Unicorn in Captivity") and two photographs of Devi's Hopyard SMW had blown up to 8.5x11) that the new bookcase displaced
• Except why not paint my study too?
• Find paint color that I like and that goes with green swirly carpet or
• Replace green swirly carpet in my study and back half of family room, which would also mean
• Replace tiling with more appealing tile in front half of family room
• Make curtains for downstairs windows or at least
• Get heat-conserving window coverings for downstairs windows by November 2002
• Scrub, prime, and paint family room
• tile of back doorway

From the kitchen, the doorway into the back landing. The hanging light fixture reflects much more on the glossy-painted drywall to the left, which is the outside of the bedroom closet. Because it's drywall not plaster, it's not original; also it's not original because it covers half of the original fuse box. Now, code requires that the breaker box be outside.

From the doorway, you can better see the vacuum, firewood, and bag of clothespins that live on the back landing. To the left of the backdoor is the once-upon-a-time milk door. Now the switch to the Narnia lightposts is in there, and on the outside electric cables snake up the wall there.

It took us a long time to notice that this bit of wall (in the fourth photograph) is not painted all the way to the ceiling. This goes around the right of the new drywall, faces the back wall, and is the left side of the bottom section of the stairs. If that's clear at all. The wall in the right side of the picture is plaster. So I figure originally, the wall continued without the closet jog, making the back landing much bigger. But why would you waste that floor space on a landing? A vacuum cleaner, a box of logs, boots in the winter. I can't figure it out.

Anyway, we need to paint that, even though no one notices it. The house must notice.

More alarmingly, to the right of the back door is a huge scar in the plaster over the beaded wainscotting, first started with the doorknob and now grown to a roundish shape over a foot in diameter. JGW looked at the layers of plaster exposed, and observed that there is horsehair in our plaster.

I swear I wanted to chain JGW and EJB to the house and make them tell me how to do things. People who work in construction and at hardware stores and in lumberyards are quite valuable to have around.

The front stairs comprise the landing and the steps. For the living room to look its best, the main level of the landing should be painted the same--cream ceiling, sage walls, white trim. But below the main floor level, we can throw taste to the winds. Relatively. Whatever we do has to blend the upstairs color scheme to the downstairs color scheme. Upstairs is sage/ cream/ white; downstairs is Nothing Yet. White walls, white ceilings; Spanish-type tile in the back half of the basement, green and white tile in the front half of the family room, green swirly carpet in the back half and my study.

I don't understand tile as a floor covering other than in the bathroom. Apparently it's the thing in France, said Nisou; the French eschew carpets as unhygienic. Considering that they think Usans are unreasonable for washing our hands after we eliminate and then they tote bread by the crust in those same hands, that amused me, but whatever.

This house has another Frainch aspect: downstairs a second commode is in a tiny little room that fits only the toilet and a sink and tub are in a second room. The second set of fixtures was thus installed because that's the only way the pipes allowed. Whatever. I don't mind the Spanishy tile--I don't know what to call it, the tiles are over a foot square and kind of a tannish, rusty color--but the green and white stuff is icky. Perhaps only because the Freak had it installed and she's the one I had to deal with, who I'm pretty sure painted the red on the edge of the floor (because she proudly pointed out some weird allegedly decorative painting in the coal room too, and it's the same color), who had alphabetized canned goods, etc.

The downstairs will probbably remain white, for lightness' sake, though it needs a fresh coat in a warmer tone. Hmm. Upstairs is all cool colors, deliberately. Either staircase should give enough transition, but how?