January 2008

It's a the beginning of the New Year! YEAH... we are almost up to date!

The kids are out of school for Christmas break and we get busy painting the billiards room. This was a fun weekend, even though the kitchen is STILL not put back together and we have to eat out! It's amazing how much you can get done with lots of help.

After the kids are settled back in school Mark and I spend several weekends in Port Gibson and just about finish up the kitchen....painting the walls and cabinets, putting on new hardware, hanging curtains and a piece of stained glass in the window and getting the refrigerator and stove back in! We also found an awesome enamel top table that fit perfectly next to the stove for more counter space. I skirted it with black and white toile fabric and added some accessories and the kitchen is looking FABULOUS!

The kids come and we spend another weekend in the house and we are able to COOK in the kitchen and enjoy the billiards room. Oh, I almost forgot, Mr. May also got the new light fixture over the pool table wired and hung!

In case you are wondering, Was it cold in that big house?, YES! We bought a truck load of fire wood and tried to use our outdoor woodburning system, but it never got warm. We burned a half a cord of wood and Mark burned his new shirt Austin gave him for Christmas! haha.... So, we went back to the central heat. Our gas bill went from $10.00 a month to a whopping $300.00, for TWO weekends! I'm sure we heated the entire town with all the gaps and holes and lack of insulation.

I also included a picture of Mr. Tinsley, our sweet neighbor who always comes over and checks on us!

December 2007

We've been busy with Thanksgiving and are getting ready for Christmas, at this point hoping to have Christmas in Port Gibson. Mark and I decide to refinish the Billiards room flooring ourselves and rent a sander...After two rentals and several days Mark gets the hang of it and did a fabulous job! I replaced a rotten corner of the room with boards from the attic flooring and did the sanding around the edges of the room. While Mark was sanding and then polyurethaning, I started laying down the new kitchen floor! This is finally PROGRESS that you can see!

With the pool table scheduled to be delivered on the 20th we realize that just getting the floors finished and a new rug down is about all that we can get done and that having Christmas there is not going to happen. On the 23rd Ashton and I put up a small Christmas tree in the dining room and decorate the front door. Mark and Austin play pool!

November 2007

It's November the 5th and I'm driving to Port Gibson to meet Brian, the carpenter, who is starting work today! I arrive around 7:30a.m. and there are workers EVERYWHERE...the rotten part of the front porch has already been torn out, there are workers on the back porch and on the second story porch. I hired them to tear out and replace all of the rotten wood on the exterior of the house...then...as the day goes on and we are walking through the house he tells me he has a friend that is a painter who does plaster repair and that he's asked him to come and take a look....he also has a friend that's a roofer and he's also coming! This is great after not being able to get workers, but also sounding really expensive. NONE of these workers give estimates...everything is done on an hourly basis.

Danny the painter comes and he tells me that the plaster is not as bad as we thought and that it just needs to be patched, except a few small places, that need to be torn out and sheet rocked. This sounds great, so he starts to work the following day. They do not have the same work ethic as the carpenters and are very slow and making a huge mess. When they get to the living room they discover that this plaster is not holding as it should and that SOME will have to come down and be sheet rocked...it turned out to be the ENTIRE ROOM, walls and ceiling! CHA CHING!

We decided that since the walls were being done that we would go ahead and take up the damaged wood floors that were over the original wood so that we could have a Billiards room by Christmas!

The roofer shows up on the third day and of course he says we need a whole new roof! We decided to start with the tin roof on the back of the house. When they start the job they discover that the previous roofing materials have been stuck down with lots and lots of tar and the removal of all this is going to DOUBLE the price! haha....

By the 15th of the month everything that's getting done at this point is done. After many days of driving to and from Port Gibson and a few tears it's time to start the clean up!

I just wanted to show off some more of my stuff. I've been on a roll lately! I'm redoing my booth right now so I'll show pictures of that later. The ones I'm showing today are from last week....

October 2007

Here it is October and this is what's been done....Mr. Tinsley, our sweet neighbor, has put down a new subfloor in the kitchen for us, we have started priming the walls and cabinets and we have removed one of the two ranges that were there and both of the vent hoods. MARK ( yes, Mark has become quite handy in Port Gibson) installed a new venthood. We moved the refrigerator and range out into the hallway so that the new floor could be put down. I've included a picture of the back bedroom light fixture that I talked about in the previous entry, it actually wasn't hung until October, remember I got it in June...( my electrician is very very slow, but he's a sweetheart) We do have fun time when we are there as well, I haven't talked much about that. We went to Natchez for the Balloon Race over the Mississippi River, which was beautiful, and we decorated the house for Halloween. Also at the very end of October I got the name of a carpenter out of Louisiana that actually showed up on a Saturday to peruse the situation and AGREED to start to work on the following Monday!!! That's where November starts...

Chandelier

Okay, back to getting caught up. It's June 2007 and we are on vacation in Destin, Fl. I found an awesome antique store, called Antiques on Holiday! I walked around with my mouth open for a good 15 -20 minutes trying to absorb it all, then I went to business! I found two perfect light fixtures for the Port Gibson house. One is a chandelier for the dining room ( I took the fixture that was there and had it moved into the morning room), and the other one is for the back bedroom. Getting them home ( especially the chandlier) was quite a feat! A Big thanks to Tom for having the patience to work it out! The fixtures sat in the house for well over a month before the electrician got to hanging them, but it was well worth the wait! Beautiful

Jewelry...

I just finished a few pieces of jewelry and wanted to show it off! It's in my booth at the Antique Mall of the South, in Ridgeland, MS if anyone wants to run right down and buy a piece! ha-ha I also included a picture of a chair I just finished re-doing. I wish I had taken a before picture to show. There was no seat or back, just a frame! Notice at the very top of the chair there is a rhinestone necklace, so prissy! It sold the first day in the booth, Yeah for me!