family home pragmatic historian projects tips work in progress

Breaking the Keys & Leaving the Mess

Removing the plaster and lath in our dining room continues. I’m doing most of the plaster removal and cleanup while Hubby removes the lath and some of the harder-to-remove plaster. Back in the early 2000s, when we were remodeling other rooms in the house and removing the plaster and lath, I learned one trick that could help remove the plaster more easily: Breaking the keys. That sounds mysterious, like snapping a bunch of skeleton keys…

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family history home pragmatic historian projects

Dining Room Renovation Surprise

Only two rooms in our 1894 house still have plaster and lath walls. Soon, only one room will have plaster and lath because we are renovating the dining room. The plaster in our dining room was cracked, buckled, and coming away from the walls in a couple different areas. As we ready the house for sale, this had to be fixed. Also, the room needs insulation and new wiring. We emptied the room of furniture…

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art challenge design process

Owl or No Owl?*

Several weeks ago I made a necklace with an owl pendant for a friend. Because the package of owl pendants I bought contained four pendants, I decided to try my hand at another. Here is the result. While buying the owl pendants, I purchased the pink glass beads (2 tones of pink beads in the package) specifically to use with this owl pendant. There were only 8 pink beads in the package, so I had…

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family history pragmatic historian

A Culmination of Ancestral Traits

Yesterday, Hubby and I hosted an informal Zoom event with the kids in celebration of a new grandchild soon to be entering the world. (Yay, another grandbaby!) Our first grandbaby was part of the event, periodically hamming it up for the benefit of those gathered. First Grandchild is very mobile now. There is no rest while keeping track of him. He will find the tiniest fleck of dirt and put it in his mouth. He…

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family health music observations

$8 Million Tickets, Or Why I’m Too Old for Concerts

I had a dream the other night that tickets for an upcoming Duran Duran concert were $8 million. I woke thinking that if someone could afford that much for a concert ticket, they could just buy the band for a few years. This dream was prompted by a couple of recent concert-related pieces of news. One was Duran Duran announcing their upcoming North American tour. The first date on the tour is in Minnesota at…

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