Projects on the Horizon

Wow. It has been so long since I posted that blogger has changed!

Well, I thought I'd get caught up a bit. We've been pretty preoccupied with family issues the past few months, but I think things are going to get back to normal soon.

I have been working hard behind the scenes, doing some major clear out and de-cluttering. I feel very good about this. When I'm done, I can reward myself by redecorating the side bedroom. Very much looking forward to that!

We are also going to start working on a few new big projects around the house. Sometime this spring there will be new siding and insulation, a few new windows, hopefully a new sofa, and finally a fence for Oliver. I can't wait to see him romp around his yard!

Currently, I'm interested in the James Hardie siding products. I'll most likely go with the greens as pictured above. I am waiting for a couple more color samples that caught my interest before I make my final decision. It will be a color. I've always been happy with the green siding, crisp white trim and black accents.

We will not be installing any stone, though, because damage to non-structural stone or brick is not covered under my earthquake insurance. Those areas will probably get a fresh coat of stucco, but I'm not sure yet. There could be other options out there that I'm not aware of.

While we have the house torn up outside, the plan is to install insulation from the outside in. At some time, several decades ago, someone had fluffy blown-in insulation installed. We found out when we were restoring the interior that fluffy stuff settles down to about knee level! Well, if we had walls open, Bill put insulation in, but there were plenty of places we didn't get to. At the time we had no idea just how much of a mistake that would be.

I've always joked that I didn't ever want to see my house in one of those infrared photos, because it would just be a big, glowing blob of red. You may have heard me refer to the house as a sieve? Many of you old house owners know just what I'm talking about. Those mysterious breezes you feel on your ankles in the winter? Yeah. Good times.

Anyway, I'll tell you more about the windows when I have more details. In the meantime, I'm open to comments or suggestions about siding.

Radiator Revitilization

When I bought the house there was no source of heat on the second floor. Just gravity. I thought I would give it a try, and I froze the first winter.

So I asked my dad and grandfather to put radiators in the three bedrooms. My dad looked around and eventually found four steam radiators. He got them from some guy he knows who hoards junk. Apparently hot water radiators are easier to come by than steam. So this guy has four, I only need three, but we have no idea if they even work. So daddy buys all four for $100. (Do you know how much new ones cost?) This was a steal. Well, they installed three, and they all work just fine. We now have a spare in the basement. No idea if it leaks.

Eventually we got to a point in the house where we were ready to start painting. Have you ever tried to paint behind a radiator? No? Well, neither had my previous owners.

Our first idea was to get oil paint from Sherwin Williams and paint each radiator the same color as the rest of the room. I was never thrilled with this idea. What if I get tired of the color in a few years? I'm sure I don't want to keep repainting them. Plus, we've read that more layers of paint on radiators just act like insulation, keeping the heat from warming the room. But they needed something, all those old layers of paint (mostly on the sides that faced the room) were chipped and flaking. A big mess. Mom and I tossed some ideas around, I perused houseblogs, and we decided they should just look like radiators. Radiator-colored radiators. How novel. Why try to make them blend in? Let them be what they are.

So, we had all the radiators taken out, hauled away, sand blasted, and spray painted with high heat engine paint. I'm thrilled at how they turned out.

We had eight radiators of various sizes, and they charged us just under $1000. I think it was money well spent. That included transportation. (My dad and grandfather did the disconnecting and the reconnecting.) We couldn't find anyone in the local area who did this kind of work, but daddy suggested someone he knew who did engine repair. So we had an auto engine repair place do the radiators.

We knew that the sandblasting was risky, because if there are any weak spots it can create holes, and then it is all over, folks. But we decided it was worth it. New radiators for the second floor were out of the question. I'm so glad we took the chance.I sincerely hope this paint job will last for years, decades even. About a year after the radiators were finished, I saw pictures (I'm sorry, I don't remember where) of someone else who had done the same thing, only they had their radiators painted a dark metallic bronze. They were really gorgeous. Now I have bronze envy. I briefly wished we had thought of the dark bronze, but I am very happy with the engine silver anyway. Maybe we will go bronze if it ever needs done again.

I couldn't find any before pictures specifically of the radiators, but I'm sure you can all picture them. You might be able to spot some in my before series of each room. Check out the details that were lost under all those layers of paint!

House Tour: Upstairs Bathroom After

I think I'll just let the pictures speak for themselves.
Compare to the before photos posted yesterday. Details to follow.

House Tour: Upstairs Bathroom Before

I can remember the first time mom and I walked through this house. The owners were showing it themselves, because it was up for auction. I stepped into this bathroom, turned and said to mom, "we're going to have to factor a bathroom remodel right into the budget for this house." She agreed. We both knew it couldn't stay like that for long.

Once the paperwork was finalized and the P.O.s moved out (five weeks of me renting to them), I finally got the house all to myself. Little did I know then... But I always knew this bathroom had to go. I've even thought it could have made a good entry for American Standard's Ugliest Bathroom Contest. But they don't seem to do that anymore.

These photos were taken in September 2003. Once upon a time, there was a claw foot tub in here, but it was long gone by the time I arrived. I'd guess 1970s?

The ceiling was low, the lighting was ugly, the floor was squishy, the tub was shorter than normal at 4-1/2', its faucet leaky, any natural daylight was almost completely blocked by the weird shower wall addition, daddy couldn't even get to the plumbing access panel...

...that's about 10" there, people.
If your eyes can get past the nasty, teal with gold veins ...laminate?... wall panels, you can see they butchered the poor header on the medicine cabinet with that hideous 80s lighting.
The toilet also leaked. Alot. We woke up one morning to water dripping from the ceiling right onto the kitchen counter! I would have been a whole lot more disgusted if we had actually been using the kitchen at the time. Anyway, the downstairs bathroom wasn't yet completed, so my dad's solution was to turn the water off to the toilet (luckily it was the ingoing water that was leaking, not the, erm, outgoing). This did not render the bathroom unusable, however, because all we had to do was collect water dripping from the tub faucet into a bucket, and voila! Instant use of wasted water. The tub faucet was leaking about a gallon of water every two hours. Daddy intended to fix it, but he said the whole thing had to be replaced, he couldn't reach the plumbing, and we were going to gut this room in less than a year, so...

Check out the gold vein on that counter surface. Not matching, but coordinating.Just wait till you see all we did to this room. You may not recognise it. Once we realized how bad the water damage was, this room had to be torn down to the studs. And then some of those even had to be sistered. We bumped two walls out, raised the ceiling, leveled the floor, well, you'll see...

House Tour: Back Bedroom After

Oh, boy. I am embarrassed to show you all this room. It is baaaaad. But everyone has a junk room, right? Right? Someday I'll get this organized. Really, I will. If you can believe it, there was twice as much stuff in here about a year ago, so that's progress. And there is a wide path from the door to the closet on the left, both dressers are accessible, as well as the window on the left. Can't quite get to the window on the right just now, even though there is a large empty space in front of it. You just can't get there.


And if you can imagine it, three years ago, pretty much the whole house was in this state. Or worse. So if you look at it like that, we've made progress. We've just stalled here. This was the landing spot for everything we didn't know what to do with.

You may notice that this room is slightly less peach than before, but it was supposed to be a lovely light mushroom color. But our less-than-fab painter, who shall go unnamed, decided he's a one-coat-Joe. So, some day we'll need to paint in here again. The color isn't as deep as I had wanted, and because walls are not perfectly smooth, peach paint shows through where the roller skipped over the concave spots. Idiot.

Also, the this is the only room in the house with painted trim. I'm happy with it, I think it looks nice painted a nice white. Really, it was the only way to go here because both windows were later additions, as well as most of the baseboard, so they weren't chestnut, and it was all already painted, so... I don't feel bad.

Carpet is another only-in-this-room. Some stupid P.O. had glued carpet down to the floor at some point, and while, maybe, maybe the glue may have come up, it would have cost a fortune and been very labor intensive. Besides, only half of the room had hardwood floor, the other half now has new plywood that replaced the rotten sleeping porch floor.

Another someday we'll get the walls painted to match the carpet. It'll look nice with the white trim. The doors themselves were refinished, though, in keeping with the rest of the house.

The closet is reasonably organized......do I at least get points for that?

Okay, so, remember that space behind the door I told you to make note of in the before pictures? Well, here is the final result:That second "cubby" door was built by Bill, and it leads to the plumbing access. That bump out? Well, that is just small space lost in a large room, a small price to pay for much gained elbow room in the bathroom...

House Tour: Back Bedroom Before

Oh, my, folks. Here we are, nearly at the end of our house tour, and we find ourselves in the room where it all began. This is the back bedroom. It fills the back dormer of the bungalow. Once upon a time this was a rather small bedroom, with a sleeping porch. Somewhere along the line, a P.O. (a stupid P.O.) enclosed the sleeping porch to make a larger bedroom. Okay idea in theory. In practice, however...

Porch floors are meant to be sloped away from the house, so that rainwater will drain off the floor, much like a roof. Well, this particularly lazy P.O. couldn't even be bothered to level the floor, or replace what were most likely already rotten floor boards. Nah, let's just glue cheap office carpet over the whole shebang. And never mind the drop in ceiling height. Doesn't that look ridiculous? Unfortunately, at this juncture, there is nothing reasonable that I can do to fix this. It would cost an arm and a leg to do what I'd really like to do: recreate the roof over this section so that it blends seamlessly with the rest of the house. Oh, well. Maybe if I win the lottery.

So this section of roof and ceiling is more problematic than just aesthetically displeasing. It had also been leaking for a very, very long time when I got the house. In fact, before Jeff the electrician had put one tiny hole in the wall, this ceiling came a-tumblin' down.

I wasn't even living at the bungalow yet, but stopped in daily to check on progress. One evening, late, I popped in just to see if Jeff had gotten started yet. As I was looking around the upstairs bathroom, I kept hearing this dripping sound. I followed it to the back bedroom, where a great sheet of drywall from the ceiling had come down from the center, almost like it was on a hinge. I couldn't even comprehend what had happened at first.

As it turns out, my P.O.'s P.O.s had known the roof over this section was bad more than a decade before. My dad and grandfather actually submitted a bid to do the repairs, but when the owners saw the price tag, the balked. Apparently they decided no action was the route to take.

Fast forward to November of 2003. So I see this huge section of drywall hanging onto the ceiling by nothing more than drywall tape at one end, and I hear the sound of dripping water, the carpet is saturated. Then I look up. The insulation is all wet, dripping. And dark. Really dark. Oh my God. Black with mold. Panic. Frantic call to mom, cutting up large trash bags to cover the floor, as if that would protect it. Little did I know, that floor was way beyond saving.

Over the following few weeks, all the rotten and moldy stuff was torn out by Bill, who then replaced the rotten floor with one that is solid and mostly level. It is an old house after all, and while Bill is great, there is only so much one can do in some situations. Bill also tore out all the wet drywall and moldy insulation, swabbed the remaining structure down with Clorox, allowed it to dry, then replaced the insulation and installed blueboard. Many months later the plaster guys gave that blueboard a nice skim coat.

Notice that little door there? Well that leads to a storage cubby under the eaves. The other three eaves are utilized by bedroom closets, but this one is next to the bathroom. It is a pretty cool feature, kids seem to think it is cool, and Oli always insists on following me in there, even though it is a small space.Take note of that dead space behind the door. When we get to the after pictures, you'll notice a change. And of course, another giant closet, complete with loose, real linoleum.

House Tour: Side Bedroom After

Now, here we are in 2008. Not much has changed. The floors were refinished. The chestnut trim stripped and refinished, the grain in this room much darker than most other rooms, due to the purple paint that could not be picked out of every crevice, and therefore had to be dyed to blend in. A new, fancier ceiling fan. The walls were skim-coated to give them a bit of uniformity. The spot under the windows was repaired. We thought we fixed the water issue, but apparently we have not found the true source because the new plaster is effervescing there, just where the plywood was damp and damaged. Now we think it may be the flashing on the roof to the dining room window bump-out. Once we get that taken care of, we can repair the plaster and repaint the area. We were in the midst of cleaning when these pictures were taken, so the curtains were down for washing and the area rug was rolled up to clean the floor. It doesn't really show in these pictures, but the walls are a soft, creamy white, and I have future intentions of painting that bitter-apple-green furniture in an antique black shade. I just love the high contrast between light and dark.
Sir-not-appearing in these photos: the spot where I am currently sitting. The computer table. I doubt I will ever photograph the mess that is the computer table, much less post it on the web for all to see, so just forget about it!

House Tour: Side Bedroom Before

Well, I guess most of the trouble with this room was merely cosmetic.

The chestnut trim in this room received its first coat of paint in the 70s- purple. Yup. I've spoken with two grown-up ladies who lived in this house as teenagers during that time, in fact their mother was the first to paint the woodwork, and they told me that this had been their room. So when their mom was in her painting frenzy, the girls got a purple bedroom. Well, purple and white are our school colors, you know. In fact, my aunts are about the same age, and they also shared a purple bedroom. Go figure.I'd say, aside from the ugly ceiling fan, hideous curtains, and the bad stenciling, this room was in fairly decent shape. Oh, yeah. Except for under the windows. You see that strip of paint off the wall under the left window? Well, that paint has peel off, not off of plaster, as you might expect, but off of plywood. Yes. Plywood. Painted to blend with the rest of the room. Hardly noticeable. Only trouble is, hmm... why is there plywood under the windows? Could it be... a water problem? Ding, ding, ding! That's right! A water problem. Now, P.O.s, why would you address the cause of the water problem, when you can just cover it over? Why go to the added expense? I'll bet you already had that hunk of plywood lying around, too, didn't you? Idiots.
And that little Wal-Mart gem of a carpet should look just fine in the basement someday. Nice generous closet here, too. This one seems to be a bit bigger than the others, and has a bit more headroom, therefore, Lewis claimed this one for his own.

House Tour: Front Bedroom After

Now here we are, in September of 2008, five years after I bought the house. I need to make tiebacks for the curtains, which are a beautiful shimmery dress fabric, it has this 1940s deco look to it, and just has the loveliest drape. I bought these way back when I worked at Penney's, and I have them in several colors. I just loved the fabric so much, I snagged them when they went on clearance, packed them away in a bin, and hoped I would have a place to use them someday. It is kind of funny, really. I think I always knew I wanted a house that had multiple windows per room. And this house sure does!
I still need to stain the curtain rod (a someday project), which is pieced together with parts from different places. I snagged the eight-foot pole from the clearance bin at Linens-n-Things. I chose the brackets from Country Curtains because they have a second notch behind the big one, in case I ever want to hang a second layer. And I ordered the pineapple finials from VanDyke's. They are a pretty close match to the finial on the four-post bed.All of this beautiful furniture came from my Grandma Millie's house. It is mahogany with a dark finish, and while they are not antiques, they are old. She got most of her furniture in the 40s, when she got married. I think my grandparents must have gone to the store and kitted out the living room, dining room, and bedroom all at once. The pieces are almost interchangeable, all the same wood and color, with similar styling. It certainly makes it easy to move things around. I intend to stick with the dark wood furniture, as you may have noticed from the recent yard sale buying frenzy.
Oliver makes himself comfortable in my bed, but when we get tired of each other, he often settles in his comfy chair by the window.

You may have noticed the elephant theme. You see, while I'm not too wild about the Early American Colonial style, and this furniture is undoubtedly Colonial Revival. Reproductions. I'm trying to give it a little twist, going for a British Colonial feel. Think British India. Hence the elephants. Yeah. It still needs some work.

As for the room itself, the floors refinished beautifully, with few repairs needed, and the chestnut trim was cleaned and hydrated with Formby's Deep Cleansing Build-Up Remover, followed by Formby's Lemon Oil Treatment, which I use on all my furniture. Never Pledge, which causes a cloudy build up. Yuck. Always the Formby's products.

House Tour: Front Bedroom Before

Welcome to the front bedroom. This bedroom is the front "dormer" that you can see in pictures of the front of the house. This is the only room in the whole house whose trim work was never painted. The floors were in pretty good condition, too. Now, the curtains hiding that beautiful chestnut trim had to go. As well as the cheap and ugly ceiling fan.
Gotta love the basketball hoop attached to the back of the solid chestnut, five-panel door. And the commercial grade garcy strip shelving system. Neanderthals.
Someday I'll get around to removing the paint from that brass collar on the glass knob. I can't even figure out how it got painted, since that door is in original condition. P.O.s baffle me.
The attic access is through the closet, which is under the eaves. I'm really lucky to have such big closets in a house this old. It was definitely one of the selling points.

New Front Doors Installed!

It has been a long time coming, but it was worth the wait. Bill was able to come up yesterday to install the new front door and the screen/storm door. It wasn't all easy going, we ran into a couple of problems, but Bill was able to make everything work. Now we just have to do some touch-ups, and it will be perfect.
Also, some cleaning. Bill made lots of sawdust, and the glass needs a serious cleaning. It still has lots of sticky residue from the stripper, the stain, and the finish.
Oh, and Oliver is enjoying the breeze coming in through the screen door.