The Van Gogh Is a "Go" Again

Van Gogh Guest Bedroom in 2009

Lord have mercy, it takes me longer than a month of Sunday sermons to ever get some things done. Take, for instance, the rear guest bedroom on the north side of the house, dubbed "The Van Gogh." (In a past iteration, it was decked out with various prints of Van Gogh paintings.)

Plaster Restored, Floors & Mantle Refinished, Freshly Painted in 2014

When I undertook plaster restoration, painting, and refinishing of the mantles and floors in the latter half of 2014, I decided at the last minute to include the front room that will someday be my study. That room had been the dumping ground for all my boxes and books and everything else from the time I bought the house, and then it was made much worse when I left the faculty of Wake Forest and had to bring all my office stuff home.

The study was the last room to get renovated in the fall of 2014 (well, before I also decided to finish out the attic!), and so I had to clear it out. Since the Van Gogh had just been remodeled and was barely furnished, it was the logical alternative for all that storage stuff:

In the intervening two years, it's been a challenge to find (1) the time and (2) the motivation to restore the Van Gogh to proper use as a guest room (I mean: it has its own private bathroom, for pete's sake!).  When the Christmas holidays rolled around, though, I finally got inspired enough. And it really was a full four-day project!

And another bonus: I ended up finding lots and lots of things either lost or long forgotten, and I couldn't be more pleased about that, either.

I'm pretty pleased for now with the result. The finishing touches of getting up some wall hangings and the full-length mirror were completed at the end of May. Still to do: drapes and valances...

Long-time Roediger House crew likely remember that the tall-lamped corner you see in the above picture is the corner which once held a very small full bathroom, before I added on new ones (door to the right) in 2008-2009. Here's how it looked in 2003:

Also, towards the end of this old blog post, you can see some other pictures that sort of capture it...wish I'd had my wide-angle lens back then!

More Rooms Restored to Use

As I noted back in the fall, the house has been in tremendous turmoil with all the floor refinishing and plaster restoration and everything else. I've managed to get rooms put back together to then have to turn them asunder again. For instance, after getting the dining room in shape after its repair and repainting near the end of the summer, I then had to turn it into a bedroom, then into a TV room, and then just into a storage room. I had a similar up-and-down with the South Parlour, which was set up again for the first time IN YEARS back in December, only to then be cramped again with shifted and stored furniture and stuff while floor refinishing was done.

The visits by my two sisters last week, though proved to be a powerful incentive to tackle some of those rooms again and also to simply clean up all the clutter and piles and mess that had built up in places like the kitchen and the master bedroom. Both the North and South Parlours are now open for visitors. The kitchen got a massive cleaning and clean-up from piles and clutter.

Here are photos of three more areas that have been brought back "online" for use:

Second Floor Center Hallway Sitting Area

My Study (temporarily a bedroom)

The Wyeth Guest Bedroom (from doorway)

The Wyeth Guest Bedroom (from windows)

Entryway and Foyer Plaster Restoration

The recent renovation efforts in the Roediger House have truly benefited from the fine work of Philip Lamachio of Estate Plaster, Inc., of Greensboro. Philip and his team were here for a five-month stretch from June through November, and I've blogged about some of the rooms that they have already restored and repainted:

• Dining Room
• Master Bedroom
• Van Gogh Guest Bedroom
• Wyeth Guest Bedroom
• South Parlour

Their work has been exceptional and remarkable. One part of the job that really stimulated Philip's interest was the plaster relief on the ceiling of the entryway foyer at the front door. Here are some shots of what it looked like before the guys got started:

Philip pretty much tackled this solo, while the Mearns brothers were hard at work in other areas of the house. The following shots are from the "during" phase of the restoration:

I do not believe the "after" pictures come anywhere remotely close to capturing what a beautiful end result Philip achieved, but here goes:

He applied a glaze that really brought out a very antique and aged look to this gorgeous ceiling. The entryway definitely pops now, believe you me.

The Return of the South Parlour

Another room has now come back "on-line" following all the plaster restoration and floor refinishing: the South Parlour. And it's looking mighty good, my friends.

First, a run-down of the plaster restoration:

The boys had trouble with bubbling under the paint.
This is why some areas had to be sanded and re-primed.
Hence, the juggling poodle in the floor pics below.

And then Ricky and Nubee Sneed from Clemmons Flooring LLC sanded and refinished the floors:

Isn't "juggling poodle" an apt description
of the problematic paint areas on the far wall?

This led to a heavy Cy:

This rug was in my mother's house, and it's part of what came to me from her estate:

This sofa was also from her estate, and I had it repaired and recovered over the summer:

I dug up a couple of pictures from the mid-1950s (?) and around 1960 of my parents with my older siblings on that same sofa:

Still to do: crown molding and picture rail, so that some art can go up on those beautifully-redone walls. That will just be bonus adornment, though!

Meal No. 1133: Peanut Butter Bacon Burgers and the End of the Plaster Work!

This past Monday was the final day of work for the enormous plaster restoration project that began back on June 11, 2014. Philip Lamachio of Estate Plaster, Inc., and his team members David and Richie Mearns, have absolutely and completely transformed this house over these last five months, and the results are just fantastic. Every wall and ceiling in the original part of the house (with the exception of the wallpapered walls of the north parlour) were tackled by these guys, and the rooms and hallways really are remarkable now.

After having them in the house almost daily for five months, the end of this project was understandably bittersweet. It was a pleasure having them here. And since I'd promised to give them a chance to try the signature burger meal of the Roediger House, peanut butter bacon burgers, that's what I whipped up for our lunch Monday.

Unfortunately, the bacon I had on hand was maple, and the taste was way too pronounced and really overshadowed these. I think the guys were generally unimpressed with this funky meal anyway, a bit overwhelmed by the thick slather of peanut butter, and generally taken aback that I'd do all these crazy things to a perfectly good burger. I was sorry it did not make a more favorable impression on them, but I guess we've had enough decent meals over the last several months to make up for it.

Late Monday afternoon, Richie and David put the final strokes on the wall of my study, bringing to a happy conclusion their successful labors on this great old house:

A review of key points about peanut butter bacon burgers:

• Inspired by Yo Mama's in the French Quarter of New Orleans
• First Made: Meal No. 180
• Last Made: Meal No. 1099
• Homemade Peanut Butter
• Fresh-Ground Beef from boneless beef short ribs and top sirloin
• Homemade Classic Burger Sauce (recipe below)
• Labeled Finished Burger: Guide to Meal No. 234
• Some guidance, inspiration, and tips are based on Cook's Illustrated, No. 93 (July/August 2008), p. 10.

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Classic Burger Sauce

from Cook's Illustrated, July-August 2008, p. 11.

4 T mayonnaise
2 T ketchup
1 tsp sweet pickle relish
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp white vinegar
1/2 tsp ground black pepper

Whisk all ingredients together in a small bowl.

Meal No. 1123: Hamburger Supreme for the Crews

I had a few days off this week, and there are two crews working full time while I'm home: Ricky and Nubee Sneed and Brandon Rogers from Clemmons Flooring, LLC, and the Mearns brothers from Estate Plaster, Inc. I had a hankering to put a lunch on the table for them and yesterday at mid-day I made a recipe-and-a-half of the Glynn Johnson casserole that we call Hamburger Supreme. We dug it.

Today at mid-day, the Clemmons Flooring guys insisted on bringing the lunch. Brandon had made smoked pork ribs and chops, and Nubee brought slaw and broccoli and rice casserole. They had enough to also include the Mearns brothers from the plaster restoration team. We feasted on this good Friday.

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"Hamburger Supreme," from the late Mrs. John T. (Glynn) Johnson of Buies Creek, North Carolina, via Janice Jones Bodenhamer.

Back in the Master Bedroom!

It's been over six weeks that I've been out of the master bedroom, and this past Saturday I finally got to move back into it.

During that time, a couple of very important things have happened. One was the plaster restoration and repair, which I blogged about back in mid-September. That took almost two weeks. The other was the sanding and refinishing of the bedroom floor, which was blogged about this week. The process took only about three days, but then the floors needed a three-week cure time before rugs could be put down. In the meantime, the bedroom has been temporarily set up first in the North Parlour (also, previously blogged about), and in the dining room:

I had bought a couple of oriental rugs two or three years ago at the Belk tent sale, and one of these was for the bedroom. I never even untied it because I knew the bedroom was eventually going to be renovated and restored and painted and all. It's in place now:

Another step that was necessary was to get the bed frame (that I obtained with the rest of my bedroom suite from eBay a decade ago) reworked for it to serve a California King-sized mattress. Mr. Kent Grubbs of Grubbs Woodworks took that on for me and I was able to pick it up a week ago. Part of this past Saturday was spent assembling it:

The mattress set arrived late Saturday afternoon and I'd already bought bed linens on a good sale at JC Penny a few weeks ago, and here's the finished look: