nursery in progress

Well today was my day off and I got back to work on the nursery. I hit it hard from the moment my wife left for work to pretty much the moment she got back. I was hoping to get a bit more done today, but I guess it's a good start. I'm about 1/3 the way through scraping down all the paint minus the doors which I'm sure are going to be a fun little side job in and of themselves. I psyched myself up to have the whole room scraped down by the end of the day, so it was a bit of a let down to not even come close. This is going to be harder than I thought. :) I'm thinking a few more solid days of this and I'll be able to try out some citri strip or something to get the last layer of paint off.

office desk

I'm still trying to find time to work on the nursery and the dining room windows. My actual work has had me busier than I would like. Oh well. In the meantime, here's the office desk we had custom made a while back by a local carpenter here in el paso. This guy's good. You may remember me mentioning him here. We're still waiting for our file cabinet and sofa table, but I have hopes I'll get it sometime before xmas. I hope.

Back to the desk. We had it made in quartersawn oak with a mohagany stain. The hardware pulls are a pretty cool craftsman style my wife and I picked out. Solid hammered copper with the pyramid screws. I love this desk. I'm into the whole heirlooms thing. It's taken a while to actually furnish the house because we've been stubborn to buy things that are good quality & solid wood. The design for the desk was something I got off the internet and my guy was able to reproduce it beautifully. The chair's from pottery barn. For anyone in the el paso area wanting custom furniture, Octavio of D.O.G. prestige woodworks is the place to go.

new template

What the heck I was bored. I've seen a few blogs with the same template as mine and decided to mix it up a little. Hope y'all like it! :)

dining room windows

I've decided to ignore the rear basement window for now and move on. I tried grinding the damn thing off, but I need smaller tools to give me the angle to wrench the bolts off. I still plan to get these done by the time I finish painting the 1st floor. This time I'm working on the dining room windows on the adjacent wall. These windows are in considerably better shape than the rear dining room windows, but are still a little beaten up. I started scraping them down a bit and while the condition of the paint is pretty good, the wood I have uncovered is a little soft and punky. Nothing my de-rot stuff won't fix. Last night I got the majority of the loose paint off, so I'm thinking one more once over and some light sanding should do it. Then I need to fill in the holes where the iron bars were drilled into and reinforce a few pieces of wood that had been chipped out with epoxy. While these windows were in pretty good shape, I think the last time someone tried prepping these for painting, they gashed out a few good chunks of wood while scraping. Hopefully when I'm done with this set of windows you won't even notice.

the magoffin home

Today I really wanted to do something different and check out some of the touristy things around town I've always wanted to do. I've been trying to coordinate going to the Magoffin home with my wife for the past few months and today we finally went down and checked it out. I'm always a sucker for an old house and this was no exception. The Magoffins are commonly regarded as the first family of present day El Paso. They are largely responsible for putting this dusty town on the map, bringing the railroad and the ecomonic boom that followed in the 1880s. I tried to get some pics, although it's kind of hard to see the actual home with all the trees. I borrowed the 2nd one from the TX state parks website, since I failed to get a better detail shot of the exterior. Built in 1875, it it a prime example of territorial victorian architecture. I would have loved to get some interior shots, but no flash allowed. Take my word, though, if you're ever in town and have an inkling for old houses, you got to check this out!

For those interested, you can read more about it here.

We don't really go over to the magoffin historic district often as it's kind far from sunset heights, but I love the architecture in that neighborhood. Sunset heights is pretty old, but Magoffin is even older. Meaning, there are a lot more examples of victorian homes there. I'm not one to anger a hungry pregnant woman, but I did manage to get a pic of the house across the street.. A bit weathered, but still an amazing house!

the nursery (aka the tv room)

Our friend Sarah alluded to "the nursery" a while back. The temperature has started to drop and I'm beginning to focus on my plans for this room. It was probably a freak cold front we had a few days ago, but it got me thinking I need to start knocking out a little at a time here. Time is something I don't have much of before our bundle of joy comes home so I gotta get started. Here's the plan. Strip all the paint and refinish all the wood detail. We plan to paint the walls something a little more interesting (color still undecided). Going by my other refinishing projects this could go slow as hell or relatively smoothly. I'm hoping for the latter.

You'll notice the tv happens to be situated in this room. This has been designated the tv room since we moved in, but we always had plans to make this the bedroom of our first child. The tv will eventually be relocated across the hall to the sleeping porch (we use it as the office). You can see a bit of it in the 2nd pic.. Now to the question of, should I refinish this room?

The upstairs bedrooms were originally painted. You can see the straw-yellow color in the bottom pic, so I was concerned maybe I should leave it as is. The new paint matches pretty closely to the original. That thought lasted about two seconds after I uncovered what the wood looks like. I've heard that wood that was destined to be painted wasn't as a high a quality as that which was stained. I was worried about knotty wood and the like, but judging by the little bit I've uncovered, it should look great. :) The master bedroom had previously been refinished (albeit not very well), but well enough to want me to continue the look throughout the upstairs. I don't have the heart to cover it up again.

The Two Republics Life building

I first discovered the original owner of this house to be Joseph H. McBroom a few months ago and have since been wondering about who he and his family were and what their life was like 93 years ago. I know if I stroll a few blocks to the downtown library I'd surely uncover tons of info about Mr. McBroom (hopefully). That hasn't happened yet. That's on my to-do list. But I did find a few little tidbits in the 1927 city directory. One, the McBrooms were still living in this house in 1927 (13 years after it was built). Two, Mr. McBroom was an attorney (I already knew that) and his offices were in the Two Republics Life building downtown (Didn't know that).

After doing some websearches on this building, I found somebody that sells vintage postcards and lo and behold, I finally get to see where this man worked. It's a beautiful victorian era building. Unfortunately, it's no longer standing. In it's place is a forgettable 60's era hotel. Oh well. I ordered me a postcard and plan to proudly display it in the house. Hopefully the Two Republics Life building will live on in some small way here in the old McBroom house.. :)