Sunday, May 30, 2010

Vintage Mill-finish Aluminum Screen Doors and Grille Guards



A few years ago I happened across a craigslist post for items being sold from a 1950s house that was going to be demolished.  I got five screen doors and all the hardware, and dragged them home and stored them.  I wanted to use the widest one on our front entry, but it didn't swing the right way, and it would have looked butchered up if I had tried to change it around to make it open the other way.

Luckily after some googling I found a source online for new aluminum screen doors with mill finish (not painted).  They look a lot like the old mid century aluminum screen doors you used to see on lots of houses, but the quality is not as good.  The doors probably weigh about half of what the old doors do.  They're not as strong or substantial.  But at least you can still find them.  And since they are available from a chain hardware store, you can order the size and swing direction you need and have it delivered free to your closest hardware store so you can pick it up locally and save on shipping.

After I installed the new door in our front entry, I transplanted one of the scroll-work guards (or grilles, or grills, or grates, pick your favorite term).  It really gave the door a finished and vintage look.


Today I installed the fourth door on a side entrance to our basement.  This door also had a grille. (I just realized that when I made this post yesterday, I didn't include the pics of the basement screen door. Duh!  Here are a couple of shots of the door I just installed.)

It looks good, don't you think?  I like giving something like this a second life.


Sometimes you can find a monogram letter or a grille on ebay, but as far as I can tell, you can't even buy a new monogram letter in the right style.  Sadly, I cannot find a single source for these screen door/storm door grilles/guards/grates. Tried every search term in Google, and found nothing.  I'd love to see this stuff available new.  If you luck into something you can afford, you still have to be sure the width and height are correct for the door you want to use it on.

(So if you run across one of these guards with an R monogram, the Uncle would like to acquire it.)


This one is on ebay right now.


Another one on ebay right now.

There's one business that makes decorative grates that are a lot bigger than the ones on my doors.  They look like they're made to go on a modern full window storm door, and they're a heckuva lot more expensive than I'm willing to pay too.

I think there's a market out there for these screen doors and decorative guards, just as there's a market for mid century doors.  What do you think?

Bullet Planter Reloaded

Last year I picked up this broken fiberglass bullet planter for pretty cheap because it had a bad break on the bottom that needed patching, and the whole thing needed sanding and repainting.  Before winter hit, I cleaned and painted the iron legs, but by the time I picked up the patching materials I knew I needed, it was almost winter and too cold to patch since the stuff lets off one heckuva bad smell as it cures so doing it inside was not an option.




 I haven't worked with fiberglass repair before, but I already had some fiberglass fabric mesh and I picked up a small can of the repair patch.  It's a two-part mix, and actually mixes a lot like automotive filler, and you can find it at auto parts stores.  You just follow the directions to add some hardener to this jelly and mix well.




I sanded along the edges of the broken area's and knocked down the couple layers of paint that had been used on it over the years.


On the inside bottom I found the Kimball trademark stamping, but I knew it would have to be sacrificed to patch the breaks.

Next I cut a piece of the fabric mesh and cut some notches along the sides of the mesh so it would conform better to the bullet shape. You can also buy this stuff at auto parts stores.  It's usually sitting near the auto body bondo patch kits.

Once I got the fabric the way I wanted it, I mixed and applied the patch.  It spreads like peanut butter.  I then added the fabric mesh and coated over it with more of the patch. It dries in less than 30 minutes, and gets rock hard.  Once the inside patch had hardened,

 I cut a couple of small pieces of fabric and repeated the process along the edges of the cracks still visible on the bottom of the outside.

Then I used some very coarse sandpaper (80 grit, but 40 would have been even better) to knock down the rough edges of the patch. Your goal when spreading the patch is to get it as smooth as you can before it hardens, so there's less sanding to do to smooth out everything later.

I limited my sanding to the outside only and saved myself some time.  Since the inside will be covered with dirt, I figured I would save the effort for other projects.  It's not like you can read the embossed Kimball seal anyway since it's covered up.

Outside of planter with rough sanding almost done.

Outside bottom of planter sanded, giving it an appearance similar to the top of my head.

With the outside sanded well all over, all I had to do was pick the right paint color. 


I already had a can of red paint for painting plastic, and the directions say it also works on fiberglass. Sweet, here we go!


Looks pretty good.  We picked up some cacti (cactuses?) to plant in this reloaded bullet.


Cacti are planted, now (I'm told by SWMBO) we just need to add some sedum and it's done!

Sod It! Grass Couch Gone to Seed

Made a run to the big box home store yesterday and picked up some sod.  We used some chicken wire on top of a 2x4 base frame, then used some landscaping cloth on top of that. Added dirt on top of the landscape cloth, then cut the sod to size and slid it in place.  Gave it some water, and now we wait and see if the grass lives, or dies. I'm not wild about the limited area for the grass, may end up pulling out the two small boards on either side of the grass and adding a little more sod.  That can come later though, I've got a lot of other stuff to do and I want to see if the grass will do OK before investing any more time in this project.

Friday, May 28, 2010

Sneak preview

Here's a little tease for some upcoming posts...the Uncle's going to be busy this weekend and most of the summer, so stay tuned.


Saturday, May 22, 2010

Day of the Living Dead: Grass Couch Revival

About 8 years ago I saw a photo in an English garden magazine (an impulse buy from the magazine rack at a big box book store).  The photo was small but caught my eye anyway.  It showed an outdoor couch/sofa made of wood and the seating area was covered with plantings.  It gave me the idea for a project (I have those ideas constantly, ask SWMBO, she'll point to dozens of my partially-completed projects! and a few of my completed projects too).

I already had a lot of left over treated lumber from a fence project that I did finish at our old home.  So one weekend I cobbled together what I call a "grass couch".  And I also made a grass coffee table to match it.  I also bought turf and planted it.  And the grass...died.  Tried a second time...and the grass...died.

So, it sat.  And sat.  I moved it with us when we bought our current home in...2005.  And it sat.  SWMBO's patience with me is nearly infinite, I know.  We both love the concept for this thing, and she thinks we can get grass to grow in it yet.  One of the problems I identified was that the arms were too high, making a steep slope from the seat.  No plantings would work there.

Finally, I went back to it, where it has sat unloved, (taunting and poking me every time I cast my eyes on it).  Anyway, I went back to it last weekend and made some cuts to lower the arms and back.  And since I was ready to add the white stain to our front-yard picket fence, I stained the grass couch too.  This morning I cut some boards to fill in gaps and cover up the higher inside angles by the arms.



Pay no attention to the bare spots in the front lawn.  It's on my projects list, OK?




And you know what?  I like it again.  We've picked out a corner of the front yard for it.  Yes, the front yard!  I'll let you know if the neighbors form a posse to come get me, if I can still type after I'm covered with tar and feathers.

Next step, add some grass and hope the third time is the charm.

OK, OK, the brassy plastic disco lights stay

The grand tally is 3 votes for the brassy plastic disco lights on the tiki porch, so they stay.  Anyway, I've been too busy to even try the other wall lamps.  Thanks everybody for the input!

Friday, May 14, 2010

Room Profile: more on the Tiki-themed screened porch

OK, before I wire up one of the 3-tiered wall lamps, here are some more pics of our screened porch.
This shows the porch from the outside. Duh. The roof is made of sloped tongue-and groove redwood, and the roof extends past the screened porch to form the roof for the carport.



Tbe room has some design challenges.  First, it has four, yes four, doors.  Two screen doors, and two dutch doors.

I have no idea why anyone installed these dutch doors side by side.  The one on the right leads into the kitchen, and the one on the left leads into the dining room off the kitchen.  A wall divides the kitchen and dining room, but there's a doorway between them.  Makes no sense to have both dutch doors, but we do like them.

Second, we have a couple of blue plastic recycling bins we keep on the porch.  It's very convenient to have right off the kitchen, but I really need to make some kind of screen to hide them from sight.


We have some vintage wrought iron and caned chairs and tables that we picked up years ago in an antique mall about 240 miles from home.  We loved them and decided we could squeeze them into our small station wagon.  It was a cramped trip, but worth it.  Three of the chairs can be moved together to form a sofa, or used separately.

It wasn't hard to clean and paint the wrought iron legs on these pieces.  I added a little shellac and they look almost new.  One chair had some caning coming loose on an arm, but a local antique store I found does re-caning, so for a reasonable price I got the chair fixed.

Yes, that's a cat-shaped bird cage.  And a vintage TV tray.

I need to clean these up some.


Right now, my light-up fu man chu tiki guy lurks on top of a rusty old milk box.

Last summer we added a couple of caned bar stools I saved from the trash one morning on my way to work.  The stools only need a little clean up and paint on the legs.  And since I had shellac left over from doing the interior walls of the Shasta camper, I just brushed a fresh coat of shellac onto the stools. 



The red formica bar top is attached to the ledge along one wall of the porch.  The bar top was a countertop out of a neighbor's kitchen.  I saved it from the trash and used my table saw to cut about 4 inches off the back of the counter to narrow it enough to try as a bar top.  Works pretty good for free.

Vintage paper mache toucan from my favorite flea market.


This pink wrought iron flamingo planter is hard to photograph well.  Not vintage, but fun, and it fits the room.






The porch had two wooden screen doors, which I replaced with these salvaged mill-finish aluminum screen doors.  Here's screen door number one.  Still period correct, and they automatically latch so they're better for keeping our frisky corgi Lucy from escaping.

Screen door number two, directly across from screen door number one.  Number two leads down a couple steps to the back of the carport and to a stairwell down to the back yard.


One of a couple of primitive masks I picked up pretty cheap at a yard/estate sale near my favorite flea market.

Small primitive mask and the string of tiki lights we have running around three walls of the screened porch.  The blinds are cheap Home Depot plastic, but they give us a little privacy and look OK.

I should add that the screen mesh around the whole porch is original, along with the white wood trim that is nailed over the screen edges.  It's all going to get replaced because the wood is rotting in spots, it's been painted too many times to look good with another repaint, and the screen mesh has some holes in it.  So, one of my summer goals is to tear off the old and replace the screen mesh with a darker tinted mesh and install all new wood trim around the outside edges.

I still may close this space in some day with windows to make it a three-seasons room. I'd love to keep it looking original, and to do that I hope to run across a bunch of old jalousie-style windows.  (They're the kind that have a crank and typically a lot of 3-inch wide horizontal glass panes that open when you turn the crank).

So, there you have it, the tiki-themed screened porch.  It's still a work in progress.  Believe it or not, we used to have a hammock frame and hammock on the porch, but it just didn't quite fit.  Sure was comfortable though.  Now instead we have my daughter's bamboo papasan chair.  No pics of that at the moment.

I plan to install one of the 3-tirerd wall lamps this weekend and do a post comparing it to my brassy plastic disco wall lamps from the previous post.  Stay tuned.

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Latest ebay score - 3 tiered Wall Lamps

Picked these up pretty cheap over the weekend.


They will replace these lamps.




Which are cool  in more of a 1970s kind of way, but they just do not work where I have them now on the tiki lounge / screened porch.  If you look closely you can see that the cutouts in the brass piece are red and yellow in one photo, and blue and green in the other.  The brass piece rotates slightly so you can select one or the other color scheme on each of the pair of lamps.

So am I making a mistake?  The 3-tiered lamps have more of a 1940s or early 1950s look, but I think they'll look better against the brick wall than the lamps there now.

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Lamp giveaway on Welcome to Deluxeville!

ME:  Hi, I'm Uncle Atom, and I'm a lampaholic.

YOU ALL: Hi Uncle Atom!

So, if you're like me, here's a chance to win a cool lamp.  (Wish Mary Deluxe was giving away that most awesome shadow box instead, but if it was mine you'd have to pry that shadowbox from my cold, dead hands!!!). 

Enter her contest here and reduce my chances for winning the lamp.  Which would look great in my living room. 

Sunday, May 9, 2010

Saturday, May 8, 2010

Old cars in my blood Part 1

I haven't done many posts so far about my love for old cars, but don't let that fool you.  I was anxious to get behind the wheel of an old Ford from a very early age.

Within a couple years I had my first experience in the driver's seat.  Somehow I got away from my Mom one day, got down the steps and out to the car.  Opened the door, got behind the steering wheel and yanked it out of Park.  Couldn't find the darn keys but early 1960s cars didn't have a steering wheel lockout so you could move the shifter into reverse without a key.  I did, and managed to coast it down hill where I took out an old aluminum chaise lounge and smashed the garage door.  I think I was about 3 at that time.


My Dad started restoring Model T Fords by the time I was 9 or 10.  Not long after that he took me on a parts search to the Antique Automobile Club of America (AACA) Fall Meet in Hershey, Pa. aka "Hershey" I was hooked on old cars.  Hershey is probably the Mecca of old car shows and flea markets.  You can wander down the aisles and find pretty much anything for any old car built in the last 120 years, or at least find someone who can help you find that part.

I remember taking a vacation from Pennsylvania to Wyoming and back in our 1974 Jeep pickup to camp, see the sights, and pick up some rust free Model T parts from a seller out west.  My Mom supported my Dad with his hobby, helping where she could and even letting him bring the freshly-painted body of his 1921 Model T touring car into the dining room through the sliding patio door, prop it up on sawhorses, and leave it set up that way for what seemed like a couple months while they reupholstered the body, seats, and installed the convertible top.  All in the dining room!  (Check out that knotty pine paneling by the way!!!)

My brother was big into cars when I was growing up (he was 15 years older than me) and he worked for a few years as an auto body repairman.  When I turned 16, he helped me pick out my first car - a 1970 Mustang convertible, dark metallic green with a white top and green interior.  It had a four-barrel 351 Cleveland engine and a Hurst 4-speed manual transmission.  I loved that car.  This is the only photo I have of it.

When the second gasoline crisis hit in 1978 and gas prices skyrocketed to about 75 cents a gallon, it got a lot more expensive for my fast food income, and eventually I parked the Mustang and took up driving a 1963 four-door Dodge Dart with a slant six engine and push-button automatic transmission.  Beige.  Ugly.  But it ran great and was a fun, simple car to own.  One winter I had it at my fraternity house and the alternator was going bad, so to keep it drivable I would plug in a battery charger and plug it in through a basement window.  I could get two or maybe three starts a day if I was lucky, but I didn't have to buy a battery.

After I graduated college Mom and Dad gave me their black 1977 Chrysler Cordoba.  (The only shot I have of that car is from my high school junior prom.  Like my wild and crazy grey tux?  Wish I still had that....much hair.)

No, the Cordoba didn't have fine corinthian leather, it had a gold velour interior. 400 cubic inch engine.  In-dash 8 track tape player and quadraphonic sound, great for cranking up the Doors or Led Zepplin. I drove it from Pa. to Arizona where I had my first real job.  It made it as far as Albuquerque before the catalytic converter crapped out.  I had a new one put in and it served me well in Phoenix for a year and a half before I sold it.  But I learned the hard way why no one in their right mind drives a black car in Phoenix.  You needed an oven mitt to open the door in the summer time!

I didn't get another old car until I was living here in the DC area in the early 1990s.  I had been looking for something cheap that would be fun to fix and drive. One Saturday I found an ad in the Post for a 1961 Mercury Comet for $600. The ad stated that it didn't run, but was in good shape and had only 5,300 original miles.  I hurried over to look at it and got the full story.  Grandma car, everyone was afraid to drive it after she got to old to drive, but they couldn't sell it until after she passed away.  I looked over the inside and there was almost no wear on the brake and clutch pedals, so I figured the mileage claim was probably true.  Heck, why would anyone lie about it to sell the car for only $600?

I got some help from my Dad when he was visiting us and we re-did the brakes, had the gas tank cleaned and sealed, rebuilt the carburetor and installed a new fuel pump and gave it new plugs, wires, and a tuneup.

After I got it back on the road, it wasn't long before I found a car I had to have, a Mercury Cougar version of that first Mustang I had sold years earlier.  The 1970 Cougar XR7 convertible had the same  351C 4v engine and Hurst four-speed manual transmission.  (It turned out that both cars were very rare - less than 70 of each were built with the 351c 4v and 4-speed combination in convertible form). There's nothing much more fun than driving a convertible with a manual transmission, shifting up and down with the wind in your face.

When I wanted to buy the Cougar, SWMBO said OK, but the Comet has to go.  I sold the Comet but have regretted it ever since.  I loved the Cougar, and it led me to buying several other Cougars and parts cars.  I'll get into Cougars more in a future post.