The third book in my current series is nearing completion. The working title is “7 Rook Lane”. This is exciting as it brings to a close the story arc of Madeline Abbott and Scott Cooper that began with Unkindness of Ravens.

I’ve enjoyed these characters a lot and I suspect they will show up from time to time in further books. They have both had a great deal of hardships, but they have managed to handle them well—at least most of the time!

I am toying with the idea of revisiting the original characters from Unkindness, the employees Madeline first introduced us to: Nadine and Jamal, Charles and Cally and possibly Jamie Bradley, their intern.  I think they may meet with disaster while restoring an old home. I wonder how they’ll do?

In my personal life, my husband and I are concluding the restoration of our 1936 English Tudor/Cottage style home. We’ve owned it for seventeen years and have worked hard to return it to something close to its original condition. Born during the depression, this lovely home was designed as a two story family home with three bedrooms and one bathroom. The idea was that as your family grew you could expand to the upstairs when time and finances allowed.

When we bought the house in January of 2000, the house had been vacant for quite a long time, had been ill treated by past occupants and much of its original luster was long gone. Upstairs held four very large bedrooms and a full bathroom, which judging by the fittings had been done in the early 1970s. Harvest gold fixtures. Faux marble countertop. And, worst of all, no window.

The wall hung sink and built-in medicine cabinet in the downstairs bath were gone, replaced by cheap (read: Kmart, etc) sink and a wall hung mirror that covered the hole in the wall that originally held the built-in. To turn on/off the light, one had to screw in the bulb above the sink.

The house was covered in cheesy 1980s wall paper and many of the floors had cheap linoleum from various time periods. In fact one downstairs bedroom had been covered in no less than three layers of linoleum, one on top of the other.

Why, you would ask, would we take on such a project? Because we had restored two other vintage homes and could see the beauty of this house under the awful mistakes that had been made. It has taken us many years (most weekends and little time off) to complete the task, but with the recent refinishing of the original wood floors, we consider the job nearly done.

The photo here is our home as it looks today.