First off, I would like to apologize to the weather people. Although I didn’t discuss their reliability in my last post/rant. 🙂 Generally their forecasts are pretty accurate. But they remind me of Rayzette she is so eager to get to the park and be off leash she drags me down the street. She’s not being a bad gerl, just impetuous. When challenging weather is eminent, weather persons are like her and can’t control themselves. When I was in Florida, it’s going to be the worst hurricane ever and this snow storm will drop lots of snow and paralyze the city. When they gave the weather the next morning, they didn’t say we made a mistake, the weather gods sent a high pressure system that pushed the storm north and it missed us. They said its snowing now and that was just some flurries. Rayzette doesn’t apologize either. 🙂
The Downtown Partnership is trying something new by luring unique small stores into vacant store fronts. Like apparel store Steel City on Smithfield Street and Moop on First Avenue a handmade handbag store that’s been selling it’s wares on line for ten years. What the Downtown Partnership should do is coordinate with the big real estate companies for free or greatly reduced rent. Investors buy a building downtown and it sit empty for a long time waiting on development plans, architectural drawings, city approval. (Look how long the former Macy’s has been sitting empty). Why not stick a small company in there with the understanding that when construction starts, or they need that space for construction, the vendor needs to move. The Partnership would know this in advance and if the start up hasn’t gain the strength yet to afford Downtown rents, maybe find another location for them.
This caught my attention partially because I lived in Atlantic City for 10 years and also because I think a major problem in America is we don’t take responsibility for our neighborhoods, white, black, brown. Ibn Ali Miller received recognition from the city council of Atlantic City for his bravery. Ibn stood between two teens that were fighting at the egging on from their peers. Ibn called out the other kids, because he lives with them and pointed out how one kid’s parents would be ashamed of his actions because they had worked so hard to try and raise their kids rightly and pointed out another kid who’s father’s in jail for life for what he did. I don’t know if I would have been as calm and well spoken as Ibn in a similar situation. Two funny stories of mine, when I first bought my place there was a domestic on the sidewalk in front of my house. The two men were telling the woman why everyone hates her, it was pretty brutal, laced with profanity and loud. Not five feet away, I called the police to report the domestic, 911 wanted descriptions and as I was giving the descriptions of the three one finally noticed I was standing there on the phone with the police and said Aw man, he’s calling the police. They left and took their domestic out of my neighborhood. My other neighborhood story is one day last summer I was sitting on my porch and two ladies obviously had had lunch in one of our local establishments. As they got in their car the lady on my side put her soda can on the curb. I said “Excuse me Miss, would you wait for just a minute while I get my car and follow you home and put that litter in the front of your home.” She quickly retrieved the soda can and they left. I guess they didn’t want some nut case following them home. 🙂
I’ve been diligently working on converting Chenille and Oleander from full/double beds to kings without loosing the Victorian look. Kings are much more popular than fulls, I’ve had several guests comment when entering the room, Oh, I didn’t realize the bed was only a full, not complaining, just observing and they ended up being very happy. Many people don’t read the full (pun intended) description and miss that the bed is just a full. They are busy looking at how attractive the rooms are. So what I decided to do is remove the side rails and foot boards, put them in the basement labeled in case someone wants to put them back together. And attach the headboards to the wall. Since a king is wider than a full, to keep that from being too noticeable, I draped lace to give a visual break. The first one I did was Oleander. Since the wall behind the headboard is brick, as is most of my interior (and exterior) walls, I had to drill into the brick and put wooden plugs held with Liquid Nails. I put two eyelets just below the top of the headboard and tied picture hanging wire between them and lifted the head board onto the hook to keep it from being top heavy. I put two plugs low so I could put lag screws through the base and not be visible without moving the bed. good friend Kerry that owns KS Kennedy Floral and Gourmet right down the street did the lace in Oleander, he has a much better flare than I. Here’s the new Oleander:
There was some challenges with Chenille. Towards the left of the bed, there was stairs that went up to what is now African Tulip when I bought the place. We took the stairs out and used that space and part of the old maid’s closet to create African Tulip’s bathroom and ended up framing the wall out to close out the door that had lead to the stairs. I wanted the hook that would hold the top of the bed tight into one of the studs, which sort of set the bed off center and to add to that, I couldn’t cover the sprinkler head, so that’s why the lace is a bit off. I had to finish both rooms, they are sold tonight. I’ve been looking at it a bit and might change things around this week, Chenille is empty most of this week. Might be a new picture next post.
One more thing I’d like to talk about is cleaning my laminate bamboo floors. When I had them installed, I was told to just use water, not chemical cleaners. They’ve been streaky since. I saw Lumber Liquidators has a laminate cleaning system. We’ve been using it for a couple of weeks now and it really works. There’s applicator sort of like a big Swifter that you spray the cleaner on the applicator (not directly on the floor) and then apply to the floor. Chenille, my most popular room (the one with the most traffic) was the worst and we started with that one. It is totally amazing. I love it when I find a product that lives up to what it’s supposed to do. Here’s the cleaning solution:
That’s it for now, enjoy this spring like weather we’re having,
ed
