Thursday, May 12, 2011

Hi,

Tomorrow is Stevie Wonder’s b’day (1950), the anniversary of the official start of the Mexican War (1846) where we lost 11,300 troops and ended up annexing Texas, Oklahoma, Arizona, Utah, California, and Colorado.  It is also the anniversary of the Philadelphia dropping the bomb on the headquarters of the radical MOVE which concluded with eleven people dead (1985).

Lots of brightly colored tents around da ‘burg lately.  Cirque du Soleil has set up shop behind the Terminal Building in the Strip with a very vivid tent.  And over in Oakland, in conjunction with Pittsburgh’s International Children’s Festival, the Labyrinthine Luminarum is set up.  This 200,000 square foot tent is a brightly colored labyrinthine for kids to play in.

How about those two restaurants in Southside’s Works with the rodent problems.  ):  The board of health stopped counting rodent droppings after they reached about 1,000.  Gross.

Today, we’re going to look at the before and afters of Allamanda.  the first image is the before of the bedroom.  If you look closely, on your left side of the bed’s foot board, there’s a round knob missing.  When I bought the property, the bed was made into a California queen (longer than standard) and the job was pretty shabby.  The bed rocked all over the place.  Grimes Interiors was doing some other work repairing pieces of furniture for me and I brought Dwayne up and asked him to make new side rails so the bed was again a standard sized queen.  I indicated the missing knob and suggested he remove the two off the armoire in the living room (see the forth picture, there’s two over either side of the mirror).  We could then put something similar on the armoire and no one would notice.  Dwayne said, “Oh no, we’ll just carve a new one.”   I’ve had wood workers go back and forth trying to find a flaw in the new knob and not able to find it. The carving and coloring are identical to the originals.  There still are craft people around.  The third picture is the other side of the bedroom (I never got a before of the living room).  If you notice that little bench under the book case in that third picture, that is actually heated.  When Mr. Rhodes had the house built, he had three heated seats (with hot water pipes underneath).  The one in Allamanda and the two window seats in Chenille and Oleander.  In the fourth picture, shows how crazy I am.  🙂  On the left, you can see the corner of the desk and I had the sleep sofa between the windows.  So my guests had to sit on the one side of the couch to watch television (which is hidden in that armoire).  This was because if I put the couch where the desk is, it would partially block that narrow useless closet you see in the fifth picture.  I hated the idea of blocking a door, thinking that it would look odd.  For two years, I tortured my guests.  Finally, you can see how I broke down and placed the couch where it should be in the fifth picture.  This is like the dilemma I had in Bougainvillea with the sleep sofa in that room.  See blog dated April 17.

Have a great day,

ed