Living Room and Dining Room: Look Up!

You'll remember that Nick did the ceiling skim coating in both bedrooms. He did a fine job, but it was difficult and we anticipated that the cove ceilings in the living room and dining room would be particularly hard, especially given the severity of cracking in the plaster. We got a few price estimates and ended up selecting a guy who had strong Yelp reviews and also happened to be the low bidder (bonus!). As you may well know by now, I'm the "unskilled labor" half of this marriage, so it was on my list to dig out the plaster cracks and prime the ceiling. This prep work would save us a fair amount of money. I covered up my hair to protect from the falling plaster sand and took a selfie for documentation purposes. I think I look a bit like a man in this photo. It reminds me of my brother, which is weird.

Clinton? Is that you?

The guy we hired to do the repair prided himself on having done all the plaster work in a very famous local musician's house (ahem...Eddie Vedder). He brought a photo album of his work, explaining that Mr. Vedder didn't want to have any corners in his house...none. So every possible 90 degree angle was altered into a sweeping curve. It was really neat!

What happened here?

The result of the work was absolutely stunning. With the cracks repaired, the room stopped screaming. It said, "Thank you, let's all take a nap now." Nick scrutinized the work with his sharp eye and improved the repair just above the picture rail. Our hired man had worked quickly and the final bill was even lower than the bid. He had completed a long week on another previous job and was anxious to give his body a rest. That meant some extra effort on our part, but since we had more time than money, the arrangement suited us well. After Nick's QA work, we primed the ceiling using the soupy, but fantastic, shellac primer.

Living Room & Dining Room: Before

Prior to moving into the house, we wisely employed a company to remove the "popcorn" texture from the cove ceilings in the living room and dining room. The removal process is relatively easy--you spray the texture with water and then it scrapes right off. Since we weren't certain what we were dealing with, we sent a sample of the texture to a lab that confirmed it contained asbestos. As such, we felt it prudent to hire professionals who could also dispose of the waste appropriately. As with many changes this house incurred over the years, we were left wondering, "Why...WHY would you put a texture on beautiful cove ceilings?" Once the job was done, our question was answered.

Cracked ceiling.

The ceiling was badly cracked! There was a grid of cracks running both east/west and north south. Texturing the ceiling was probably someone's easy solution to a much bigger problem. For us, the repair of the ceiling would have to wait its turn. Upgrading the electrical would come before the ceiling since it would likely cause some damage to the plaster. In the above photo, you'll see that we had recessed lighting installed. I was afraid that the recessed lights would detract from the authenticity of the renovation, but I actually love them. Lighting can transform a space and in dark fall and winter days, it warms the room.

Icky trim.	Water damaged window sill.

During prior paintings, the living room and dining room trim had not been protected and was splattered with specks of paint. Additionally, since the house had been vacant for a few years prior to our ownership, the windows on the south side of the house began to rot and warp, causing the sills to sustain water damage. How would we fix this? Mahogany changes color as it ages and it wouldn't be possible to just slap on some new wood and have it match. Some of the grooves in the wood were deep and I was concerned that it couldn't be saved.

To be continued...

Christmas Spirit

Several years ago, I pushed hard to landscape the front yard in the fall for the sole purpose of putting up Christmas lights. Nick complied with my request, though I'm certain he thought I was irrational. Other posts will cover the landscaping, this one is just about Christmas spirit.

Christmas - 2015

The first Christmas with lights included red lights in the dogwood tree and Japanese maple, green lights in the Italian cypresses flanking the house, and white lights along the roof line.

Christmas - 2016

In 2016, we decided to give the rapidly growing dogwood and maple trees trunks of white, using the red lights only in the branches. We also added white lights to the little weeping yellow cypress** under the front window. We bought a little Christmas tree from the Boy Scout Troop 100, which we put in our TV room (front bedroom). This was our first tree together (married 7 years at the time).

Christmas 2017

The 2017 house has added lights in the front windows and a Christmas tree in the living room.

Front Window	Christmas Tree

We hope the 2018 Christmas will include the perfect tree topper and tree skirt. It has not been easy to find just the right things! How many years until we have a Griswold house?

**Actual name of "weeping yellow cypress" may vary.

Front Bedroom: This is Home

A neglected house is a bit like a neglected animal--although you might have compassion, you don't just want to cuddle up to a dog with fleas and mange. Looking around the front bedroom, I wasn't at home, but gazing out the window with the morning sun streaming in, I imagined that I could feel at home here.

Among the first things done, the windows were replaced. I stripped and sanded the trim, and we dug out the cracks in the plaster for repair.

Things get worse before better.

We even replaced the window in the closet. It was a little removable fellow with a latch and a chain, but the clear single pane glass wasn't practical, and it wasn't necessary to be able to open this particular window. Although you can't quite tell from the photo (below right), we replaced it with a frosted glass window.

	Shoe storage!

Do recall the attic ladder project. Here's where we patched the old access hole:

The patch.	Leave no trace.

By now you know the routine: patching the plaster cracks, skim coating the ceiling, sanding, sanding, texturing, priming, painting. Crammed into a single sentence like that, it sounds like a breeze. Trust me, it took us many moons.

Cozy.

This is home.

Finishing the Hallway: Circle the Differences

As a transitional space, a hallway is uninteresting. But, as you've already seen, a lot of changes happened here. This area was so boring to me in its original state that I failed to take a true "before" photo!

SNORE!	Ooh la laa...is that a laundry chute??

I love the final product! The additions of the attic ladder, laundry chute, and picture rail give the eye  much more to take in. The picture rail turns the area into a tiny gallery, which can easily change on a whim. Like the back bedroom, we textured the walls using a knock-down method. The  musty smelling coat closet received a partial make-over and a coat of shellac-based primer that sealed in the stench and cleared the air. Yay! Interesting to note, we had to demolish a stud bay in the closet when the electrical was updated. My forward-thinking husband used the opportunity to add an electrical outlet and cable/phone jacks so that we could neatly store our wireless router hidden away. The outlet is at about 5 feet so that the router can sit on the shelf without wires strung down the wall.

Vintage lighting - so much life to go!	Switches and stitches.

With the addition of beautiful vintage era lighting and push-button switches, the hallway is complete! If you are REALLY observant, you've noticed that all the doors received new brass hinges to replace the old steel hinges that had been painted. The black and white photos on the wall are some of my favorite images from both my mom and dad's family albums. The embroidery piece traces back to my great grandmother, though its creator is somewhat questionable. Read about that on my mom's blog here.

Standing in the bathroom entrance (for reference).

Chute! There's Laundry on the Floor

Have you ever lived in a small house with small rooms and small closets? Where did you keep your dirty laundry? Perhaps it was the most logical place...the bedroom floor. We have been frustrated by the difficulty of keeping order with respect to laundry. The washer and dryer are in the basement and there isn't much  space for a hamper upstairs. During the time that we used the basement bathroom things were a little better because we kept the hamper in the bathroom where we most often changed clothes. But, we knew that someday we'd have a proper bathroom upstairs and would need a laundry solution. Occasionally, you'd find Nick or me standing alone in the basement staring at the ceiling dreaming of where we might be able to install a laundry chute. We equally concluded that there was just one place that would work, and that was in the hallway. So, before any further work, it only made sense to build the chute since it would involve some destruction to the wall.

Nick carefully pried the baseboard off the wall and marked where the chute would go, giving consideration to where he calculated the studs to be.

Remove baseboard, cut starting hole.	Nick saws.

The jig saw works well for cutting nice straight lines with minimal collateral damage to the wall. We found the perfect sized cabinet door at a construction salvage shop. It has a similar profile to our existing doors and no major dings. With some sanding and painting, it'll be perfect!

Not too bad!	Salvaged cabinet door.

Next, we got some sheet metal and a tool that helps bend it to make perfect corners. The tool is basically two steel rectangles welded together with a gap between them. You slip the metal into the gap and bend. I called my brother, a sheet metal expert, and inquired about the best tool for cutting the metal. The sheet metal scissors are $20 or $30, so we wanted to get it right.

Nick's sheet metal construction.	My, what nice seams you have!

Nick figured out exactly how to build the chute so that there would be no visible seams where the sheet metal pieces are joined and no sharp edges that might catch on our clothing. His ability to construct things so perfectly is amazing to me!

Perfect fit.	Voila!

The chute was then placed in its new home and the baseboard put back in place. The final photo represents a couple of imperfections not worth pointing out, but that will be corrected in time. We haven't actually used the chute yet because it isn't connected to anything in the basement. Although it's pretty narrow, we ensured that we'd still be able to pass our garments through. I love how it came out! It is at home in our hallway.

Attic Ladder: The Last Step (Ha!)

Installation instructions for attic ladders say that it can be done by one person, which seems incredible to me. But truly, Nick was able to do the next part all by himself. He installed some wood boards across the open span so that the ladder could rest level with the ceiling while he positioned it to his liking. Then, he shimmed the gap and screwed the ladder into the framing. Once complete, I came along and plastered the edges that had gotten mangled in the process and filled in the small gap between the ladder unit and the framing.

Bracing for installation.	Secured. Plaster touch-up.

The plaster touch-up wasn't really necessary since we put trim around the ladder to match the doorways, but we feel better having done it anyway. The door is made of melamine, which I'm not a fan of, but there wasn't any other choice. The reason why I don't like it is that unlike wood, if it gets dinged or marred, it's very difficult to patch and repair. It had a corner that was slightly squished, but I was successful in making a decent repair. It also painted up to satisfaction, so it works! 

Melamine door - pre-paint.	Post paint w/trim. Happiness!

I think it looks really sharp with its white trim and matching door. You'll notice several things in the final photo that I haven't talked about yet. Worth mentioning is the neat little exposed bulb light fixture that replaced the larger glass shade fixture at left. We put in another matching light around the corner in the hallway, which makes it a happier, less ominous place.