The road to our house winds up a hill towards the hospital (i.e. “hospital hill”)…and overlooks the small town. The morning light through the clouds makes it seem like a scene from a story book, like maybe from the Mitford series. You can see the Great Smoky Mountains passenger train warming up and the courthouse in the distance.   The small hill in the background is “schoolhouse hill.” The white building in the lower left is the old Nehi bottling plant…now it’s RC Cola…but you can still see the “Nehi” ghost letters left behind.  (and I mostly notice this because I love Grape Nehi).

I pinch myself each day. I really live here in Bryson City:

Left Boo with my mother and sister for a few days and Brett and I spent the day at the new house working.  This was my entire morning…cleaning grout and caulking.  A paste of Bon Ami and water did the trick and it looks like new again:

I buy the original formula…mostly because I like the vintage packaging. I’m easy to market to. Love this old vintage Bon Ami ad:

10 hours of hard labor from 9am to about 7pm today and I’m so tired this is all I can write. I’m going to watch Violette.  And maybe learn French in 2015.

The theme of the week at the House on Hospital Hill is drywall.  The metal roof is almost complete and so that means we can start fixing up the inside of the house without having to worry about water issues:

Remember the wall I decided to take out on a whim? Brett and friends put it back together for me. Since this photo was taken the new hole edges have been finished with drywall and mud. We were lucky to find a small bundle of wood flooring to match ours at a local lumber mill to patch the floor.  It was all worth it…the new opening changes the layout and feel of the whole house:

Brett ripping out an old roof leak yesterday. That’s my grandfather’s old stool we’ve dragged all over the country.

We took out all the old boiler baseboard heaters which has required quite a bit of patching in the floor and walls:

Fixing all the walls has been my job…I’m becoming an expert in matching knockdown patterns using a piece of terry cloth and a vinyl sign. I’ll share that sometime after Christmas.  Keeping my lungs clean:

Trying to narrow down a “whitish” paint color for the house but still don’t have one that works with all the natural light we get. Modern Gray was too lavender, and Tahitian Vanilla was too yellowish. Still testing.

Outside a friend has been dropping a few trees so that we can hopefully get a garden planted this spring. Timber!

Sorry these posts are just short and sweet…way too much going on with the holidays right now.  You can also follow along on Instagram under #thehouseonhospitalhill.

All HOHH posts can be found here. 

That’s our progress for now!