Friends and Family,  Home,  Lee and Billy,  Sujata and Aaron

Changes at the House on Hornsby Street

Several people have given Joey and me grief over the years about our lack of furniture.  Joey is not fond of stop gap measures, even when the “gap” is five years (amount of time we have owned our house) or eleven years (amount of time we have been married), so we still have the same furniture today we inherited when my folks moved to Pennsylvania! We know what kind of furniture we would like to purchase, but somehow it is never the top priority.

Sujata and Aaron have decided that Joey is morally opposed to coffee tables.  I do not think he hates them, but he does not have a strong desire to have one either.  I, on the other hand, having inherited my father’s distaste for sitting on hard chairs, have often wished for a coffee table and a living room layout that allowed for people to congregate, and visit in the living room instead of around the kitchen table.

A few weeks ago, my dream was realized when one of Joey’s long time computer clients needed some work done.  It turns out the client was moving, and was having an estate sale to reduce how much stuff he had to move.  He offered Joey the opportunity to select items from the estate sale as payment for the work.  Joey spotted a coffee table he liked and agreed to the arrangement.  When we went to pick up the table, it turned out there was a matching end table, and we brought that home as well. Lee and Billy helped us move the furniture around the living room several times as we found the best arrangement.

Another recent change to the house involves a wall mounted coat rack in the entry hall.  Joey and I each only carry a car key and a house key.  I typically do not have the key to his car, and he doesn’t have the key to mine.  However, we often switch cars depending on what we are doing.  If one of us is carrying the dogs, or a bike, we take my car.  Just driving to the office, I take his car.  What does any of this have to do with a coat rack?  Well… Somehow I never have the keys I need to drive the car that is in the driveway.  Lee and Billy constantly make fun of me for not having keys.  Since we just pick up the first set of keys that operates the car we need, sometimes we wind up with both sets of keys, and then the other person is stranded.  What happened to the spares, you ask?  Well, those are around too, but they often wind up in the glove box of the opposite car!  After a frantic afternoon of searching for a key to drive the only car left at the house (Joey was at the park with the dogs), Joey and I decided we had to have a single location for the keys.  The problem was that we couldn’t agree about where that should be, until the idea of hooks near the door was put forward.

Joey did a beautiful job picking out the piece, and installing it.  It required quite a bit of work to hang it.  Since it has a mirror, it is heavy, add purses, coats, and, of course, keys, and you have quite a bit of weight… too much to mount it just in the drywall.  Problem was that the hooks on the coat rack were 25 inches apart, while the studs in the wall are 24 inches!  Joey solved the problem by mounting a thin piece of oak plywood to the studs, and then securing the coat rack to the plywood.  Dad says that it sounds like the coat rack won’t come off the wall, even if the wall itself falls down!

Check out all the pictures of the changes at our house below.


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