Tempus Fugit
posted by peppermint at 2:40 PM
The picture of the dining area that I was going to post last week:
We painted the common wall the same darker green as the living room ("Dill") and then the two other dining room walls two-shades lighter ("Pickling Spice"). And of course (!!) the casement is now painted bright white because wood trim sucks. It all blends quite nicely and at certain times of day it's hard to tell whether the dining room paint is actually a different color or whether the light is just hitting it differently.
Tom has the new return air vent propped up against the old one there on the left side of the room. The HVAC industry must have changed their sizing standards sometime between 1960 and today because every single return air vent we purchase is about 1" wider than the existing one, which means Tom has to take a saw to the baseboards on each side to get it all rigged up. Or in this case, he just set the fully wrapped one in front of the nasty old brown one and proclaimed "Voila! It's installed!" then walked away.
The grandmother clock in the corner was the first clock that my grandfather ever built. He went on to build hundreds more of them in his lifetime and they reside all over the country (so I've been told). After my grandpa's death over a decade ago each of his grandchildren received one of his grandmother/father clocks and this first clock was to be given to me. I believe either my sister (or my cousin?) has the last clock he ever built. This first clock was built just for my grandma, though, and for it's entire life it sat in the same place, against the same wall in her living room, where it continuously ran for every minute of its life. When my grandma eventually moved to a nursing home my father brought the clock down to my first house and after many months of tinkering I finally got it to keep accurate time most of the time. Although out of the blue, for no reason whatsoever, it would start running a little too fast or a little too slow, and I'd have to mess with it again. It was as though my house was horribly inferior to my grandmother's house and the clock was going to make this painfully clear every chance it got.
Then I further angered it by moving it down to Indiana back in 2002 and it never ran for longer than 90 minutes at a time the entire time it was down there. I tried *everything* to get it to stay running. Nevermind whether it was running too fast or two slow, I just wanted it to stay running and it was not going to give me the satisfaction. It would have just as soon transformed itself into a digital alarm clock rather than let me feel even one second of satisfaction for getting it to run. My grandmother passed back in the fall of 2004 and I never tried running the clock again after that. I wasn't going to argue with it.
I moved it back up here last Autumn and boy was it happy to be back in Wisconsin! It was going to run for me again ... but only sort of. First it ran really slow and chimed completely sporadically for no apparent reason whatsoever. Then I finally got it to keep accurate time and it stopped chiming all together. (F@!#!!!!!) Once I got the chimes working again it started running too fast. After three months I finally got it running properly and keeping totally accurate time. The weights need to be raised on it *about* every 4-6 days, and wouldn't you know it one day I ran out the door for work and forgot to wind it. Then it never ran in that house again.
::: slamming things around ::::
Soooooooo, we moved it to the new house and we secured this safe corner in the dining room for it. One evening Tom cracked one of the funniest jokes I had heard in a long time when he asked "Are you going to get that clock running?"
Sure I am. Sure. Right after I solve this pesky World Peace problem and modify my car so that it can run on vegetable oil.
One night (just for fun!) I set the pendulum in motion just because it had been a few days since I'd felt a crushing sense of disappointment in myself and I figured the clock was always good for that. Low and behold it took off running and it hasn't stopped since. It still sends out a hearty "F U!" to me every once in a while by chiming at a totally arbitrary interval, but I figure I probably have that coming.
We painted the common wall the same darker green as the living room ("Dill") and then the two other dining room walls two-shades lighter ("Pickling Spice"). And of course (!!) the casement is now painted bright white because wood trim sucks. It all blends quite nicely and at certain times of day it's hard to tell whether the dining room paint is actually a different color or whether the light is just hitting it differently.
Tom has the new return air vent propped up against the old one there on the left side of the room. The HVAC industry must have changed their sizing standards sometime between 1960 and today because every single return air vent we purchase is about 1" wider than the existing one, which means Tom has to take a saw to the baseboards on each side to get it all rigged up. Or in this case, he just set the fully wrapped one in front of the nasty old brown one and proclaimed "Voila! It's installed!" then walked away.
The grandmother clock in the corner was the first clock that my grandfather ever built. He went on to build hundreds more of them in his lifetime and they reside all over the country (so I've been told). After my grandpa's death over a decade ago each of his grandchildren received one of his grandmother/father clocks and this first clock was to be given to me. I believe either my sister (or my cousin?) has the last clock he ever built. This first clock was built just for my grandma, though, and for it's entire life it sat in the same place, against the same wall in her living room, where it continuously ran for every minute of its life. When my grandma eventually moved to a nursing home my father brought the clock down to my first house and after many months of tinkering I finally got it to keep accurate time most of the time. Although out of the blue, for no reason whatsoever, it would start running a little too fast or a little too slow, and I'd have to mess with it again. It was as though my house was horribly inferior to my grandmother's house and the clock was going to make this painfully clear every chance it got.
Then I further angered it by moving it down to Indiana back in 2002 and it never ran for longer than 90 minutes at a time the entire time it was down there. I tried *everything* to get it to stay running. Nevermind whether it was running too fast or two slow, I just wanted it to stay running and it was not going to give me the satisfaction. It would have just as soon transformed itself into a digital alarm clock rather than let me feel even one second of satisfaction for getting it to run. My grandmother passed back in the fall of 2004 and I never tried running the clock again after that. I wasn't going to argue with it.
I moved it back up here last Autumn and boy was it happy to be back in Wisconsin! It was going to run for me again ... but only sort of. First it ran really slow and chimed completely sporadically for no apparent reason whatsoever. Then I finally got it to keep accurate time and it stopped chiming all together. (F@!#!!!!!) Once I got the chimes working again it started running too fast. After three months I finally got it running properly and keeping totally accurate time. The weights need to be raised on it *about* every 4-6 days, and wouldn't you know it one day I ran out the door for work and forgot to wind it. Then it never ran in that house again.
::: slamming things around ::::
Soooooooo, we moved it to the new house and we secured this safe corner in the dining room for it. One evening Tom cracked one of the funniest jokes I had heard in a long time when he asked "Are you going to get that clock running?"
Sure I am. Sure. Right after I solve this pesky World Peace problem and modify my car so that it can run on vegetable oil.
One night (just for fun!) I set the pendulum in motion just because it had been a few days since I'd felt a crushing sense of disappointment in myself and I figured the clock was always good for that. Low and behold it took off running and it hasn't stopped since. It still sends out a hearty "F U!" to me every once in a while by chiming at a totally arbitrary interval, but I figure I probably have that coming.
Labels: dining, homeimprovement
2 Comments:
You know I can never come up to visit that house now... You know how I feel about aliens and possessed time-keeping machines.
G~
Hi Tom & Peppermint, You have "interesting" tastes in colors ;)
Seriously it looks like you guys are doing a great job!!!
~Monk~
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