One of the most common search terms leading to our blog is “paint colors”. I’ve been looking at Better Homes and Gardens from the 50s. (Separtate project, to be announced later.) And I came across these presentations of the year’s colors. The first one is from 1951 (obviously) and the others are from 1957.


It made me wonder, how did you buy paint in the fifties? Did they mix a color for you? Or, could you only get what they had on the shelf?
Ranch Redo made a post today on the exact same subject. Go figure.

Shortly after we moved back into our house, we had a regular visitor. He never knocked or introduced himself, but he did park across the street and point at our house a lot with contractors in tow. We’re pretty sure we saw the same pickup truck parked in front of this house:

Seeing this little blue house stripped to the boards, I was reminded of the shock when our house was in demo. But at least I knew our house was coming back. The new piers suggest they were planning on rebuilding.
The City of Austin Permit Database says :
DEMOLISH INTERIOR AND EXTERIOR ONLY; NO STRUCTURAL DEMOLITION WILL OCCUR.
1ST & 2ND FL ADDN/CREATE DECK MST-BDRM-STUDY-BDRM-BATH-CLOSET-UTILTIY RM-RMDL-REPLACE FLOOR JOIST- 2 PIERS-REPLACE SHEETROCK, WINDOWS-DOORS-SIDING-INSLUATION-ELECT-PLMB-MECH DUCTS-
Two months later, there is still no progress. And a couple of days ago, a “For Sale” sign went up in the yard.
Ouch.
Update: Listing is now online. My favorite part: “0 bedrooms 0 bathrooms”. Least favorite part, “$249,000″.

Long story about the jelly jar lights. We wanted the Otis from Rejuvenation, but it would have cost over $1k for all the lights we have. And we didn’t like it that much, so we spec’ed cheap ($2.71) jelly jar lights for some of the lights and kept shopping for the others. The electrician installed the jelly jar lights in all the wrong spots, but we liked how they looked, so we left them there.
A porch light should light the ground and your house, but not your neighbor’s bedroom. So I thought I’d wrap cut up peach cans around each light. The peach cans started to rust before I could eat 11 cans of peaches, and I was really starting to hate canned peaches.
So a couple of weeks ago I had an idea for putting something in the glass to shade and direct the light. I found a roll of roof flashing at Home Depot and cut it into strips, and drilled some holes for a mid-century feel.
Viola. 11 cool mid-century lights, 40 bucks.

Over the weekend, I crossed one of the larger tasks off of my crushingly long post-move-in-to-do list. I finally installed the mosaic tile in the kitchen. We ordered it in a big hurry about 5 months ago.
I’ve had tile work done before, but never tried it myself. I had always considered it a black art practiced by the most elite and mysterious handymen. The kind that prefer to work alone, talk very little, and won’t look you in the eye. Reading the instructions on the grout mix, I felt myself being pulled into their world. “Dampen with a Turkish towel.” Oooh, Turkish! “Cover the grout with #40 paper to slow the drying and repel debris from other trades.” Oooh, those other trades and their icky debris! Cretins!
I chose Saturday, Sunday, and Monday nights to do the work after the kids went to bed. Saturday was gluing and cutting the tiles. The glue didn’t smell that bad. And by 2am, I couldn’t smell it at all. Not so for the rest of the family, each of whom woke up one by one with horror movie nightmares. I hope we didn’t lose too many IQ points that night.
Sunday was grouting, which takes about as long and gluing and cutting. Another night up until 2am. Christiane was getting pretty antsy about getting her kitchen back.
Monday was wiping that last bit of film off and putting all the outlet covers back on. At 24 hours, the grout film is easy to wipe off, but hard to find. I inadvertently grouted a few coffee cups, plates, and knives that were in the sink at the time. It took longer than I thought, but I was only up till 1am.

I did the work in such a flu-fever-late-night-blur that I hardly remember doing it. It looks great, but the mysterious art of tiling still alludes me.
(Modwalls Bungalow Blend)