Party Ready

Last weekend we had a small get-together. The looming deadline to have a clean and tidy house, along with your encouraging comments from last week’s post, were exactly the kick in the pants I needed to begin creating an inviting home.

I love giving people a tour of Blake Hill House when they visit. It is one of my favorite activities when we are entertaining guests. Most people really want to see the house in its entirety, and I am happy to oblige. However, that means that the entire house needs to be presentable. We are starting to get in the groove of cleaning BHH, but it still takes around eight hours in order to make it sparkle. When we vacuum every single surface, we fill one vacuum cleaner bag about 3/4 full! I think we need a bigger vacuum. Everyone pitched in, and we used several hours during two days to get the house in top shape.

Once the house was clean, I turned my attention to the window pulls. Back in April, I used the crock pot method to remove all of the green paint from our original window pulls, locks and hasps. At that time, I found out that the locks and hasps are copper-covered steel, and they are in great shape. The window pulls did not look as good. They are copper-covered brass, but most of the copper plating had worn off. Preservationists, please do not hate me, but I decided to re-paint the window pulls only. I weighed the pros and cons and decided to re-paint based on the following criteria:

• The crock pot method makes paint removal easy if a future preservationist decides to bring them back to their original state.
• Stripped of paint, they were unsightly.
• Very little of the original copper plating remained. Re-plating is always an option at a later date.

I used Rustoleum metallic spray paint in Aged Copper, purchased from Home Depot.

Before I sprayed the screws, I stuck them into an old piece of Styrofoam in order to keep the threads paint-free.

TIP: For this kind of project, a screwdriver with a ratcheting handle, is far superior to a regular screwdriver. We have a set similar to this one. A regular screwdriver slips out of the groove and can easily scratch the freshly painted screw head.  A simple turn of the wrist with a ratcheting screwdriver will scoot the handle back to a comfortable position. If you struggle with hand strength or have small hands, give one a try.

After a few more seasonal details, BHH was officially ready to party.
Table Runner Source: HomeGoods)

(BOO source: The dollar spot at Target)

(Origami Owls folded by my son. Design Credit (L to R): Alexander Kurth, Owls 2-4 Roman Diaz)

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