Pentimento, THE FINAL CHAPTER

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!!!!!!!!


Two videos for your enjoyment, Linda!

First the School room, guest bedroom, kitchen, dining room, living room:



Next, the hallway, laundry room, master bedroom with a cameo of Bernard sleeping, master bathroom, boy's and girl's bedrooms and bathrooms.

Enjoy!

Pentimento, Part VIII - The End of the Road?

Here are some pictures of the outside of the house after Nathaniel decorated it. Pardon my iPhone and the low quality pictures.

Here is the outside of the house:


Here is a detail of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph at the Nativity. Jesus will be lit up for Christmas.


Here is Our Lady of the Mysterious Decapitation, flanked by a couple of lighted trees:




A detail of The Blessed Mother, showing that Our Lady of the Mysterious Decapitation needs a new coat of paint:


Seeing as how this is a Texas manger scene, there just has to be a John Deere tractor close by the manger.

Pentimento, Part VII - Stabbing Westward

The renovation has hit the school room with full force; the books are all on the East side of the house. In addition to repainting, we are adding more shelves and some permanent desks to the room. Here is an interval picture of the new desk/shelving:

Apparently, my textbooks will be moved here because they do not look as impressive on the bookshelves in the living room.

Above is another look at the bookshelves, a ladder, and a green chair. Below, the guest bedroom awaits the painters.

A bit of romantic graffiti adorns the chalkboard in the school room.

Speaking of romance, since we are running out room for books in our house, we have asked for advice from our interior decorator, who has advised us on how to manage our book purchases prudently.

She advised us to only shop for books during certain periods when we are unlikely to complete online credit card purchases. This takes some sacrifice for both of us, but it makes the times we do manage to purchase books more meaningful for us as materialistic consumers.

Speaking of materialism, it is time for another musical video. This one comes from Japan, and is a tune we all recognize. It was a big favorite in the family last year, and so it will be the second video for Advent:

Pentimento, Part VI - Floor Tiles and Friday Night Dinner

The picture above is facing South, with the morning sun lighting up the room. I love having our bedroom on the south side of the house, so that we get a lot of light throughout the day. The picture below is taken by the windows so one can see the floor and walls better. The tile is down but not grouted yet.

We anticipate being back in our bedroom by Thanksgiving.

Note the fan in action.

Below is a picture of Friday night's dinner on call at the hospital. It was the second time I had ever gone to the cafeteria, and I got a vegetarian wrap. I basically asked for everything on it, and the lady kept piling on stuff. Just before wrapping it up, she asked if I wanted some black beans on it.

"Of course," I said.

She stared at me for a second, then put some on and proceeded to wrap it up. Beads of perspiration popped out on her forehead. She called for help from a co-worker. I wandered off to grab an apple, and when I came back, it was done.

"There you go. Enjoy," she panted. Her colleague leaned over the counter, breathing heavily. He looked a little pale.

"Never again. Don't ever let him order that again," he said.

Pentimento, Part V - The Saga Continues

No videos tonight, Linda. Perhaps this weekend we shall run the video camera through the rooms to give you an idea of what it looks like. Colors are a little bit off.

Is it not beautiful, Linda? It is beautiful....

This is the younger girls room. It used to be hot pink, now it is cooled down a bit.

It reminds me of Neapolitan ice cream or the color that original Bianchi bicycles were painted....

I am getting hungry.

Here is the view into the bathroom. Let's go to the bathroom, whether you think you need to or not!


The girls bathroom:


Here is the older girls room. The colors are a bit off. The lower wall is a nice brown color, not black:

The iPhone doesn't do justice to the colors of the walls:

On to the master bedroom!!!!!! Purple maroon on bottom, some sort of brown on the top.

Another view. Note the scaffolding. We are really into the 'industrial waste' look in our house which was really in vogue in the early 2000's in Dallas:

Speaking of waste, here is a view of the master bathroom. Note the stark contrast between the light brown walls and the gently used stepladder in the foreground. What a statement!

As I have said before, Linda, you must come and see it in person. All of your many friends in Dallas are hoping you will be able to see the 'unveiling' before New Years!

Pentimento, Part IV - The End of Phase One

Phase One of Pentimento is complete. The boys' wing is complete, as is the hallway. All that is needed is some touch-up painting. The tile looks so good, I could eat off of it.

Phase Two will consist of working on the girls' rooms as well as the master bedroom. This requires that we move out of our bedroom and stay for a while in one of the boy's rooms. They will stay by the school room until the bedrooms are all complete.

Even poor Mr. Walrus has to suffer the imposition of moving....

So we have our king-sized bed in one of the remodeled rooms. Not much room for anything else, except for Bernard's crib, and a rocking chair.

Here is where our bed used to be. If you look closely, you can see why carpet was not such a good idea. Oh well, live and learn; we'll do better on our next house!

For the present, Bernard will be so close we could almost reach him without getting out of bed....

Phase Two starts proper on Wednesday; tomorrow I have to move this monster out of our bedroom. I have to remember how we got it in the room in the first place:

Pentimento, Part III

This is for Linda to see what is going on in the house. I took some pictures with my iPhone, but Carolyn took better pictures, complete with a flash, so I trashed mine and loaded up hers.

I thank God that we are able to do this work to make our house look a little nicer, last a little longer, and make more pleasing to Carolyn. It gives me tremendous joy to make Carolyn happy.

First pictures, then a movie.

Here is a picture of the bedroom hall. You can see one of the girl's bedrooms open at the end of the hall.


Here is a look down the boy's bedroom hall, showing the wall colors:


The big boy's bedroom:


Dominick and Theodore's old bedroom, complete with TILE!! We are really excited about that:


Another shot of the same room:


The boy's bathroom:


Detail of the wall and the counter colors. A perfect match!


More of Dominick and Theodore's old room, showing more of the wall:


The little boy's room:


Another shot of the boy's bedroom, complete with Benedict and Jacinta posing. Jacinta is holding a pillow sham which matches the wall color:


MOVIE TIME!

As you know, Linda, you are always welcome to come and see this for yourself. Hopefully soon. Now on with the movie version of this little photo tour:

Pentimento, Part II

Space is tight in the old homestead, as we had to get creative with our storage ideas. Note the bookshelves in the school room double as gun racks:

Just kidding. We have a gun safe for the air guns, and the toy guns are free to be wherever they are left.

Seriously, a few pictures of the project as it is into week #2 are shown below.

Here is the hallway to the bedroom wing of the house, complete with paper on the floor, a 'chair rail' along the wall, and 'mud' on the wall. I never heard of a chair rail until Carolyn mentioned it to me. Now I can't blink without seeing them everywhere. The 'mud' on the lower part of the wall is some sort of base or primer. Needless to say my main contribution to this work is to sign checks and voice my opinion.
Here is another room with the chair rail in place...

...and another room. This one has a brick on the floor:

Okay. These might not be exciting to you, but we are really excited about this project!

We have noticed that, in the past, changes in the home often lead to a new addition to the family. While we are not expecting at this time, we hope that perhaps our prayers, the disorder and confusion, and the smell of paint will lead to God blessing us with another little Noisykid. We can only pray for this, and we ask for your prayers as well.

I thought of re-writing some lyrics to a popular song to go along with our prayer:

One More Child

Last night I had a crazy dream

A wish was granted just for me

It could be for anything

I didn't ask for money

Or a mansion in Malibu

I simply wished, for one more Donahue

One more boy

Or girl child

Maybe twins, then I'd be satisfied

But then again

I know what it would do

Leave me wishing still, for one more Donahue

First thing I'd do, is pray for time to crawl

Then

...you get the idea

The original lyrics for 'One More Day' were written by Steven Dale Jones and Bobby Tomberlin.





It's a Library Thing


Going back to the school room, I want to point out how Carolyn has the books organized so the children can re-shelve them neatly after reading them. Note in the picture below that the books have green and white tape on the spine. This is the adventure/history section(note they are a collection of the Laura Ingalls Wilder books) and so putting books back in the right section is easy. It also helps facilitate retrieval of books.

Please do not think for a moment that the children re-shelve books without being told to do so.



For those of you who are interested, I recommend using LibraryThing online to record your books. Clicking on this link takes you to my home page there, where you can peruse the 2,000+ books we have listed. You can also reach my LibraryThing page via the link on my sidebar. The website allows you to see people who have the same books as you, and it gives you an opportunity to contact them if you wish. We have a lot of the same books as other Catholic home schoolers.

Since I am in the mood for shameless advertising, and I mentioned praying for more children, and because the economy needs a boost, please watch this commercial from one of our future sponsors:

Pentimento, Part 1

Pentimento is an artistic term by which an artist changes his mind or plan for a painting while working on it. I use the term loosely for our present situation; we are revising and repainting part of our house.

We built our house almost six years ago. At the time we thought some things were a great idea when we signed off on them; in other things we were just ignorant. Regardless of our thoughts at the time, thirteen children and six years have shown what will and what will not stand the test of time. So, during this last week of vacation for this year, we are staying home in order to prepare the house for an invasion of builders, painters, trim carpenters, and other skilled workers.

This is a good time for renovations. Most of the subcontractors don't have much work, so they have time for what is a relatively small job. We had tried to get some of this work done a few years - even a few months ago - with no takers. We are taking advantage of the economic conditions to start our own little stimulus package.

On with the pictures. Above and below are photos of one of the boys rooms, with the carpet stripped for tiling and the surfaces ready for repainting. The picture above includes part of a bunk bed which we had to dismantle to move it.



Here is a nighttime shot of another one of the boys rooms - this is the one which became the 'gym' after Dominick went off to college.



Where did all the stuff go? Most of it was moved to the West side of the house, in the school room. This is where the refugees will live until the rooms are done.

The little boys got the guest bedroom to sleep in. Here is said bunk bed put together again. Here also is Marc - the famous 'flaming scalp' Marc. Note his left knee is red in the picture below:


Consider that I am on vacation, so there must be illness in the house in honor of my enhanced presence. Marc started by getting stung by a bee or wasp on Monday. He came in screaming in pain. I thought it was a cactus needle, but then I noticed there was the tail end of some insect on the end of the stinger. I gently took it out of his knee without squeezing more venom into him, and then I showed the kids how it was still twitching and contracting before I threw it out. Motrin and Benadryl for you, and some baking soda on the sting.

By the next day it was red and angry looking, so I put some marks around it to monitor it for cellulitis.


Then this morning Bernard woke up at 4:30 with a fever. After treating him and going back to sleep, I checked his ears and made the diagnosis of otitis media - an ear infection. Carolyn confirmed my diagnosis; she is much better at looking at the children's ears than I am. Now our little one is on antibiotics.

Of course I only mention this because tonight was supposed to be 'Date Night' for us. Instead I got carry out Italian food and we ate it at the dining room table while drinking a bottle of Pellegrino. Any possible romantic atmosphere was erased by the smallest children coming by to mooch("are you going to finish that?") and by a gaggle of fruit flies which came out of nowhere to sample the Italian food. I suspect they wanted something more than banana in their diet.

It's my life, and I love it!

I am reminded of something a friend said to me after finished building the house. I had started to say, "The next house we build - " when he cut me off.

"Don't say it, man! You only get one of these, and anything you don't like you'll be changing for the next twenty years!"

If only it were paid for by then....