Do the dishes, do the mopping, they always keep her hopping...

I just got back from a week in Clarinda for the Glenn Miller Festival, first 2 days spent cleaning house for our Japanese guests. The house is my dream house, but a big giant pain to keep clean, especially when we haven't been there for so long. As you can see, we have 2 dining rooms, just because the parlor room is kind of a walk through and I have this huge family for family dinners, it is just easier to have the extra table there. I love how the living room turned out, the Victorian fireplace tile is black and yellow, and I thought "I really don't want a Hawkeye room", but the yellow walls and black toile curtains did the trick. The entry way is great, the house was built by a furniture maker, preacher and occasional undertaker. Every room has different wood work, entry and dining room is oak, parlor cherry, living room walnut. The house had been delegated to being the town haunted house and was slated for demolition when the Berendts bought it and completely re-did the upstairs before they succumbed to exhaustion and sold it to us. We finished the work on the downstairs, all new walls, wiring, plumbing, flooring, stripping woodwork, and no contractors, just our own calloused hands. Let me tell you, you haven't lived until you have to wash dishes in the bathtub until the kitchen is finished; spent an entire day with a sledge hammer knocking down cracked plaster, only to fall into bed realizing the dust has permeated the bedroom and a cloud of dust billows out of your once clean bed; or been on a ladder stripping woodwork when your steel wool gets too near an outlet, sparks and sends the whole wall up in flames. Ahhh, good times.