The Victorian floors in the Roff Home have been a mystery, especially the front parlor’s baffling combination of plain plank flooring and ornate trim. My restoration of the flooring and my own use of the room helped the mystery be unraveled.
It sounds as though the border was not part of the original flooring and was added on later over top to enhance the existing floor, but believe whoever did this failed miserably. The border, although somewhat nice, doesn’t go with the original floor. I would consider getting rid of it altogether and just concentrate on restoring the plank floor to its original state.
For Justin Kaiser, in memoriam: “Another World” by Antony and the Johnsons
Justin Kaiser, a long time friend of the owner of the Roff Home, passed away unexpectedly this weekend, following complications from a surgery that was to improve his life. He was too young to pass so soon, and this has been a shock to everyone who knew him.
Just before his surgery, he had posted a comment on the Roff Home blog. Privately, we communicated about doing some work together after he recovered from surgery.
Justin worked at WGFA, a regional radio station based in Watseka, Illinois. He was a joy to listen to on the air.
Among the many good things that Justin did throughout his life, he helped promote a local summer opera festival that I am involved with, called Sugar Creek Symphony & Song. He recorded voiceovers and invited us into the studio for on-air interviews. He was a pleasure to work with, and his enthusiasm and willingness to support our efforts to bring the arts to this area will always be appreciated.
When I would go out to the radio station to do the on-air interviews, it was so easy to just sit down and talk to him. Even when we were on the air, everything felt so easy-going. He would always greet me with a smile, and he was so easy to have a conversation with.
The tragedy of his death is that it is so unexpected and came far too soon in his life. It is so cliché to hear someone say that you have to live for today, or live like it is the last day of your life, but Justin’s tragedy makes these tired sayings real.
Rest in peace, Justin.
In memory of Justin Kaiser: “Another World” by Antony and the Johnsons.
I need another place. Will there be peace?
I need another world. This one’s nearly gone.
Still have too many dreams never seen the light.
I need another world, a place where I can go.
I’m gonna miss the sea. I’m gonna miss the snow.
I’m gonna miss the bees. I miss the things that grow.
I’m gonna miss the trees. I’m gonna miss the sun.
I miss the animals. I’m gonna miss you all.
Since redoing the plaster and floor in the front parlor of the Roff Home, a Victorian home built in 1868, I’ve wondered what shape the interior design of the room will take. I would love to keep the Victorian front parlor feel, and then segue into a more modern feel in the rest of the home.
With much renovation and restoration still left to be completed, the days of decorating the Roff Home are still a long way off. But it never hurts to think ahead.
Here’s a video clip from Christopher Lowell’s Work That Room in which he adds an upbeat, energetic retro feel to a young couple’s Victorian home, combining Victorian flourishes with 60s-style mid-century modern.
It’s about midnight on Christmas Eve, and my phone dings with that lively iPhone chime: I have a new email, perhaps a special Christmas message! I run my thumb over the face of the phone, and my smile immediately droops to a frown. The message isn’t from a person, but from an automated spammer.
The most frustrating thing about this blog — other than the WordPress blank screen of death — is the spam. Of the 140 messages that have been posted to the Roff Home blog since October, 111 have been spam. Here’s a smattering of the best of the worst spam comments, as well as my spam smack-down rules: →Read more
Refinished radiator in the front parlor of the Roff Home
This summer, as floors were being redone and windows repainted, we took out the cast iron steam radiators from the first floor of the Roff Home and hauled them to a guy who does sandblasting in Stockland, Illinois. Afterward, I repainted the radiators, first with a couple of base coats of primer and then two or three coats of a silver metallic spray paint.
First of all, let me say that I had no idea what a radiator weighed. Holy cast iron. I knew they would be heavy, but the biggest ones must have weighed 200-300 pounds. Lifting those things was like dragging a cast iron corpse through the house. →Read more
Peeling paint, cracking and peeling plaster, and the general malaise of the Roff Home's walls prior to replastering.
Over the summer and fall, we took on the task of plaster restoration at the Roff Home. Water damage over the years had destroyed far too much plaster for us to just take on the task of patching or repairing plaster walls. Whatever we chose to do, it would have to be a complete reconstruction of the plaster coatings on the walls.
It was quite an ordeal this summer: taking up the plywood that covered the floor, removing varnish and paint covering the planks, and then sanding and sanding and sanding. (Read more and see photos before varnish removal.)
The biggest decisions in this process were:
How much to sand both the border and the planks? When was enough, enough?
Yikes! The planks and the border are made of woods that don’t match. Should I stain the planks, and if so, what color?
I sat down this evening to update this blog, and when I logged into WordPress, I find a message to upgrade the Atahualpa theme for the blog.
“Click here to upgrade automatically,” it states so plainly and unassumingly. It might as well have said, “Click here to waste the next two hours of your life.” →Read more
