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Barn wood accent wall

By Lula
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  Several years ago we enclosed the other two sides of the porch. I couldn't decide what to put on the wall until Roy started tearing down a hundred year old barn. When we went to help him, I almost cried watching good barn wood burning in their trash pile! I grabbed a whole bunch of it. What you see is about a third of the wall and I installed barn wood on all of it. Most of this wood is oak, but I found one piece of cedar. It was still aromatic when I cut it! The wood is a uniform inch thick. Some of the ends were damaged as well as some sides. No problem. I have a table saw. I prepared the wood and cut it to fit. Then I drilled pilot holes and used three inch drywall screws to attach it to the studs. Oh, I'm not finished with around the windows. My table saw died and I can't see well enough to rip any length.  You can see the wood stove in the picture. That box on the flue is a heat reclaimer called magic heat (Amazon) and it is amazing. I don't think you can see the...
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What do you do with a piano?

By Lula
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 A friend collects scrap metal. Last summer he showed up with a piano on his trailer. I asked him, "What are you gonna do with that?" He answered, "Burn it!" He only wanted the metal inside it. I was dismayed. This was one of those really old upright pianos and the wood appeared to be well maintained. So I talked him into letting me salvage as much wood off it as I could before he burned it. Have you ever tried to remove 107 year old flathead screws? Ones that had not been touched in 107 years? I did what I could. Roy and Eugene helped. This is the piano cabinet I made. I have not refinished the wood. It was that beautiful! I designed it to fit in an odd corner of the dining room. You can see half of my pantry behind the cabinet. I used it to hide an unsightly piece of plywood I used to cover where a door had been before my kitchen renovation. The entire piece is made out of parts of the piano. I didn't want to cut the legs down to fit so they are at an odd angl...
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It Begins

By Lula
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 Over 25 years ago I bought eleven acres and a mobile home. A few years later I found a house... to be moved. Long before Texas Flip and Move became popular on television, my home was cut in half and the second floor rood was removed to be moved thirty-two miles. The mover slapped the two pieces together, put half as many cinder block piers under her as she needed and told me to have fun. I have been having fun ever since. This house has good bones. It was converted from a barn into a house and office by a physician from Chicago a hundred years ago. I found some of the rubber tubing he must have used in one of the walls. It measured 25 by 28 feet and was two stories. Some time later a ten foot wide addition went up on three sides. One side was enclosed and I turned it into my kitchen and dining room. Whoever did this failed basic carpentry. While the floor was suitable for a porch, the rafters were two by fours and the ceiling joists were the same BUT instead of removing the origin...
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