Flora the Explorer: Finding cool stuff

We discovered that if you look through all of the drawers in various bins throughout the antique stores in Bay City, you will find some pretty cool stuff. Here are a couple of hinges and a few drawer/door pulls we found over the July 4th weekend.

Gail is very patient when it comes to searching for things like this. I just get squirreled (this is a reference to Up) by all of the other shiny objects and weird things that are found in antique stores.

Yep. It's a skeleton (with a skull between its legs).

What can I say? This is pretty eye-catching.

We purchased this great Standard Skotch water jug with an amber glass liner. It's not exactly in keeping with the interior designs we are thinking about, but for $8 I couldn't pass it up.

Standard Skotch water jug

We also found this toaster that is identical to the one Rachel's mom has had for 40+ years.

Might be worth just keeping this one at home!

Speaking of interior designs, we have been looking at retro flooring, retro fabric, retro counter tops, retro, retro, retro. The one thing I've noticed is that things that were pretty darn ugly in the 60's are still pretty darn ugly today. However, there are some great on-line sites where we've looked at lots of samples and even ordered a few. I'll post some pictures when the samples show up. We found some commercial flooring we like at Home Depot.

We got a lot of work done on Flora on July 4th, but we didn't manage to get any pictures. I was busily snapping lots of pictures (do digital cameras "snap?") and then, later, when Gail picked up the camera, she said, "I guess you didn't see where the screen says there's no memory card..." Uh, yeah, I didn't see that. There are advantages to actually reading the messages that pop up on the camera. I am usually the sign/screen/directions/fine print reader, but not this time.

It was really hot so we got as much done inside her as we could in the morning. We pulled out the cabinets and what remained of the benches, plus the front and back windows. Remarkably enough, the more we take off Flora the better she looks. No, really, she does.

This is the front left side with the two windows removed.

Last Saturday (July 16th), we were back at work, finishing removing the bed/couch, linoleum, the remaining window and the roof vent. There is something definitely wrong when you can unscrew the fasteners from the inside.

Roof vent removed (inside)

The roof vent removed (outside)

Here is the can partly full of the screws we removed in one day.

Many Scotty owners note that they pull hundreds and hundreds of staples. Well, we're pulling drywall screws, hex head screws and square drive screws. A few nails are mixed in there, too. Most of the screws we removed weren't fastened into anything more than rotten wood. Some of them were so rusted, the heads just broke off. For a couple of weeks, we have debated whether we can save the floor. No.