RANTS + new photos!

Dear Blog,

I am sleepy. We've had a busy last few weeks since my last update, working on our yard, painting the face of our garage, and we've also finished installing the quarter round in our bedroom.

We still have to: touch up the nails with wood putty, sand and touch up with paint, install our closet rods/shelving, and finish refinishing the hardwood closet door. THEN, INTSTALL A NEW CEILING FAN! we're getting so close!

I've also had to keep up with my vintage shop, and manage to stay on top of laundry, and cleaning. It's very tricky to juggle all these things, but I'm glad I keep busy. I feel like some moms. The house is really our baby.

I want to grow some tomatos in the sun-porch this year too. I think I'll be too busy to actually start a garden until next season.

Yes, we still have things everywhere, but that's all part of the process. Isn't she really coming along though? Check out that closet door, reclaimed 80+ year old pine, and birch I believe with some oak (I think it had a repair at one point with some plywood on one side because that closet was altered- during the 1950s perhaps.) It's nearly finished on one side! I have to rub it down with some steel wool, and I intend to apply a couple additional coats to the plywood edge.

FACT: Our house would be worth a quarter million finished if she stood in say, Philadelphia...but alas, here she stands in poor ol' Cleveland. Well, down the street we have some valuable big old estates, but we're at that crucial border, where the poverty is just creepin' in! It's in your backyard, it's right up your driveway. It's coming. It's already here. Properties going for $50,000. (Properties that sold in the $130's less than 5 years ago.)

Well, she'll just be the nicest house on the street, and she'll raise everybody up. She'll stand there with her flag, and say "C'mon ev'body we can do it! Yes we can!" She stands proudly here and out from her chimney cries, "Thou shall not pass!" and poverty, will just turn its back. You've got to believe she has a soul now, that she is rising up. She is the roaring spirit of Cleveland in 1928, when Cleveland Heights was an infant city. Dirt roads were being carved out of the fields, and she was watching the big school built across the street. Long live the American Dream!

We're saving one house. We're fighting for one neighborhood. That's really all it takes though.