My First Door

I decided that today was the day that I was going to start working on restoring the original doors that are in our house...the few that have not been replaced with hollow core doors, that is. My poor husband has a busy work week scheduled, with some really long days, so I wanted to find a project that I could work on with minimal assistance.

Currently, we have four original doors - three closet and one pantry. I thought that the best door to start with would be the door to the closet in the master bedroom.

I put some bubble wrap on top of the two sawhorses my wonderful husband built for me over Thanksgiving weekend. One of the many home renovation blogs I read recommended doing this to keep from scratching the other side. Once I set it up, I started working on removing the door knobs, back plate, and innards. I put the small screws in a sandwich ziplock bag, and put that bag and the door hardware into a larger freezer ziplock bag. Hopefully, this will keep them safe and together until I can clean them up.

I just love these door knobs. I have no idea if they are original to the house or not. I have read on some sites that the glass knobs were popular in the 1920s, but what makes me suspicious is how bright and brassy the backside of the knob is. I haven't decided yet what to do about them, especially since I love the "bling" for the door!

I don't know what the interior part of the door knob is called that holds the knob and they keyhole, but it sure was tight...really tight. I struggled quite a bit to get it to slide out of the door. But I eventually got it, as you can see.

Scraping the paint off the door has been a lot easier than I anticipated. Apparently, these have only been painted once or twice. And whomever decided to paint it initially never bothered to remove the original finish. This means that the heat gun bubbles it up and the scraper takes it right off. No elbow grease required. The only real challenge is in the framing of the panels. These are very narrow and curved, as you can see in the panel on the right. However, I found a method that appears to be working quite well...

I found that if I heat the paint up with the heat gun just enough to make it warm, I can pull it off with my fingers. It comes off in really long strips. The trick is to get it soft enough to remove but no so hot as to burn my fingertips!

So far, the door is absolutely beautiful with a warm, red sheen to it and some grain. I am planning on following another blogger's process of removing the paint with a heat gun, then removing the original finish and paint remnants with stripper and steel wool. Then sand it three times and seal the whole thing with shellack. It will be my first time using shellack, but the results I have seen on other sites makes me really want to test it out. I will be sure to keep you posted, but for now, back to scraping!

One Step Forward....And Two Steps Back

Ah, Mondays! Initially, I was really looking forward to this evening. Instead of taking something apart, we were actually going to start work on reconstructing the basement stairs. The plan is to build some doors for under stair storage and a closet. Plus, we were going to add balusters, 32 of them, that we were going to make ourselves out of some of the wood that we removed when we took down the paneling.

Our basement stairs get a lot of traffic and are not made of any really nice wood. Our plan is to paint the treads a nice dark, warm mahogany brown with white risers and balusters, topped with a painted banister the same warm brown.

This picture most closely represents what we are envisioning. Something with nice clean lines, but that can handle a lot of wear and tear. I was so excited because I felt as though we were going to move from destructive to constructive....but then I came downstairs to this....

 

At our house, Monday is laundry day....and so is Tuesday and Wednesday for that matter. With a family as large as ours, combined with children that change outfits at the drop of a hat, I seem to have a never-ending supply of laundry. Unfortunately, laundry is currently on hold.  A quick look prior to running out the door for work this morning led my husband to believe that the rubber coupling (?) that joins the original clay sewer pipe to the modern PVC pipe is failing. But he's not sure and won't know until he looks at it closer. After work. Tonight. And he has to work later than usual.

So now I cringe every time a toilet flushes, or we use the sinks, or, actually, anything that requires us to use water. Apparently, the clay pipe is the main sewer line for the house. Which means two toilets, one tub, three sinks and the washer are now on a limited use basis.

Great.

Just great.

Thanksgiving....A Time to be Thankful

So, I wasn't able to get the floor done in the master bedroom as I had hoped prior to the Thanksgiving company, but that is okay. My scraping of the adhesive has been put temporarily on hold for a few other projects. To start, here are a few things that I am thankful for at the moment:

• I am thankful for a house that affords us the opportunity to work with my wonderful husband and children on a never-ending list of projects.
• I am thankful for family and friends that enjoy watching and reading about our insanity, and still love us and support us as we continue.
• I am thankful for the internet that provides so many other sites for teaching and instruction - without them, I am not sure I would be willing to do everything that we are doing.
• I am thankful that no one has been seriously hurt (yet) by falling debris, surprise bat attacks, or staples, nails, and screws (at least, no too bad)

The Thanksgiving weekend affords us such a wonderfully nice block of time in which to work on projects. These are a few that we have tackled this weekend.

While I did not get the master bedroom floor finished, we did manage to remove an "added" wall. By the way, our bedroom measures 18 feet by 14 feet, so I guess I should not be too surprised that I was able to only get about half of the floor scraped. Anyway, this is what our bedroom looked like when we purchased the house.

There are a few problems with this particular wall, such as it is not original to the house and the window opening actually extends past the wall (nice view for the neighbors, right). Also, please note the wonderful boring beige carpeting. This carpeting actually hides beautiful 2.5" maple hardwood floors. But more on that later.

After a few hours worth of work and some more electrical surprises along the way, the master bedroom now has its original footprint again.

You might be wondering how we knew that the wall was not original, other than the obvious closet in the back of the, well, closet. Once the wall was down, we were able to see the original baseboard. Yes, dear readers, a previous owner built the wall right on top of the baseboards. I guess that is one way to keep the closets looking "original", right?

We also worked on the basement this weekend, converting it into a large open workroom while we are busy with all of our projects around the house. Here is what it looked like when we first bought it.

Don't you just love the blue-gray indoor/outdoor carpet? Don't forget, we also found two more windows, cemented over, hiding behind that wonderful paneling. By taking out the walls and paneling, we were able to open the space up quite a bit. After much sweeping, vacuuming, and mopping, the workspace now looks like this.

My wonderful husband also made me some brand new, custom sawhorses just for those wood finishing projects that we can see in the future.

Aren't they beautiful? I can hardly wait to start using them.....like, right now!

I Love My Heat Gun...I Love My Heat Gun...

I love my heat gun.....if I keep repeating this to myself, maybe it will come true! Actually, I really do appreciate my heat gun. My hands and arms are just starting to get really sore. My wonderful husband has been very busy this week and some of the work necessitated him being out of town for a few days. Since there are not very many projects that I can do without his capable hands, I decided that I would tackle stripping the carpet adhesive from the floor in the master bedroom.

Oi vey.....what was I thinking?

The heat gun that I am using is a Wagner and overall, I have been really happy with it. Thus far, it has stripped the kitchen, most of the back entryway, the stairwell trim, and now a good portion of the floor in the master bedroom. Unfortunately, this wonderful piece of equipment gets heavy after repeated hours of continuous use. It is all I can do to type right now....my hands and wrists are so sore. I am so thankful that this adhesive is nothing like the black stuff on the kitchen floor. And that it is nap time for the littlest Fuller! Yeah! Break time!

The good news is that when the heat is applied to the carpet adhesive, it turns to the consistency of hot caramel and just has to be scraped off. This means I can clear a fairly good sized section in about an hour. The bad news is that the master bedroom is the length of the entire house and really wide. Thus far I have finished an approximate six foot square. I am about half-way across the room in either direction.

I was hoping to get the entire floor done by the end of the day today, but now, I don't see that happening. Maybe I will be able to get it finished by the end of tomorrow. I really want it done prior to next week since we are having some family over to celebrate Thanksgiving. With so much of our house deconstructed, it would be nice to show that we have made progress...somewhere....anywhere.

Floor Plans Anyone?

One of the most frustrating parts of restoring our house is the lack of floor plans. I mean, we have spent more hours then I care to count searching old house websites, plan books, kit home floor plans and more. To-date we have not found a single plan that matched our house.

We have discovered that our house is a Rural Dutch Colonial Revival. It is a rural because of the way our gambrel roof flares out to disperse rain and snow. But other than that, we have not learned much more.

About the closest floor plan we found thus far is the Montgomery Ward "Elizabeth". This plan is close because it does feature the shed dormers and kitchen, pantry and dining room. The stairs would need to be flipped to the living room side of the floor plan and another wall divides the living room into two separate rooms. Of course, the second floor plan does not match at all - but that part of the house has really not been modified much.

For now, this is what we are using to guide us as we continue our remodeling. This happens to be the closest floor plan to what we suspect is the actual plan for this house based on the evidence of the floors and ceilings. It will be interesting, to say the least!

A Naked Chimney

We finished stripping down the out of place wall that opened up the original hallway and continued to work on the chimney. It is finally free from the drywall and boards. We now have three sides that still have the original plaster, and one side that is, well, naked. It took quite a bit of work and I am sure that the chimney itself will need some repairs before we can hook anything wood burning to it.

What we found to be really exciting was that we now have proof that the chimney was originally exposed. On one side of the chimney, the original baseboard and chair rail are still in place, but painted.

I am hoping that we can remove these pieces whole and use them to find reproduction mouldings to use around the rest of the house. We were also able to determine what most likely was the original color of the kitchen - a pretty sage green - or possibly a really bright lime green with a sort of caramel colored hallway. I really like the color sage green and may use that for the hallway, but I am planning on doing the kitchen in red and brown with a coffee theme.

We also have the original connection hole for the wood cook stove. I wish I knew how the original kitchen was laid out, because it just seems a bit strange to us at this point. However, we may have a better idea once we start putting in some of the walls where they are supposed to be.

When we originally took the drywall down from the front of chimney, we could see that someone had put up some sort of concrete layer, which was used to provide a relatively smooth surface for the boards that the drywall was nailed to. At first, I was afraid that the concrete would prove to be too hard to remove.

Thankfully, I was able to remove one section in about half an hour. It was slow going at first because I was afraid of causing additional damage to the bricks. The only tools I had for the job were an old sharpening steel and a 4 pound sledge hammer. Not the best tools for careful work, but they turned out to be the right tools for this particular job.

I was able to get the second side off in about fifteen minutes. For some reason, this side literally came off in 3 and 4 brick sections. I am not sure what made the difference, but it sure made light work. You can see that there is some discoloration from the two cement strips. I am hoping that a quick clean with a scrub brush and vinegar will help eliminate that. Plus, once it is properly framed out with moulding, I am sure that the differences will be negligible and fade over time and exposure to the sun.

All in all, I am really happy with how the chimney looks. My husband was joking last night that our house is starting to get that "expensive" loft look with the exposed beams and chimney. I just keep telling myself that it can only get better from here.

I am not sure what we will be working on next, but I will be sure to keep everyone posted on the latest developments.

Bathrooms and Hallways

Once we removed the ceilings from the large combined space of the living room, dining room and kitchen, we noticed that the bathroom ceiling seemed really low by comparison. It was kind of surprising, since we have been living in the this house for more than a year, that no one ever noticed the discrepancy in ceiling heights.

Opening up the ceiling gave us more than an extra 18 inches in height - it also allowed us to see the piping for the upstairs bathroom. We saw a really large open corridor all the way to the ceiling upstairs. We weren't sure what it was at first. However, removing the two cupboard added to the upper bathroom gave us access to the upstairs pipes and enabled us to see the space more fully. We found more than 10 square feet of space that was not being used effectively in the upper bathroom. We could see the original studs and the lines for the lathe and plaster, so we know the old bathroom was at least 10 square feet larger. Of course, the upstairs contains more work - but that is for another day (or more likely, another year).

Once we removed the ceiling from the downstairs bathroom, we began to review the wall lines around the chimney between the dining room and kitchen.

The chimney is actually the square block area behind the light switch plate that you see on the left in the picture above.

First, Daddy and DJ broke out an exploratory section, just to see exactly what we were working with. We weren't sure if this funny angle was original to the house or not. During discussions with previous residents, they never really seemed to know what I was referring to; now we know why. This part of the house was significantly modified. We are not sure why, but we guess it was to make the kitchen about 3 feet wider. Since historical accuracy is more important to us, we are attempting to put it back to the way it originally was. Down came the walls!

So, you might be wondering how we determine if something was original or added later? In this case, it was actually quite easy. They had filled the space with their garbage - new drywall scraps, McDonald's containers, etc. We were like, "really"? It just seemed so wrong to us that this what the flippers used the space for. All of that had to be cleaned out first.

With DJ's strong muscles, it didn't take too long for the "men" to get the wall down. Once the drywall was broken off, it was time to remove the screws. Good thing he has his own power drill to make short work of those screws, too!

He is so "helpful"! Once everything was torn down, we saw that we made the right decision. We could see the original base moulding and chair rails still attached to the chimney. We also found some wonderful colors in the plaster. There is still a lot of work to do, but we have definitely made some progress today. Thank you DJ for all your hard work!

The Mystery House

This house has been a mystery for us ever since we bought it. We knew it was built in the 1920s but finding a set of floor plans has been very frustrating. In some ways, the house is similar to a bungalow, yet it has a gambrel roof and two shed dormers. Regardless, some of the mystery has been solved with the removal of the drywall ceiling.

Case in point, the kitchen. This is what the kitchen looked like when you stand with the bay windows to your back. Not bad, if you like laminate flooring, cheap counter tops, and care absolutely nothing for the historical integrity of the house. Trust me, it looks much better in the picture than it did when we actually moved in.

Yesterday, my husband removed the funny counter top from the half wall and continued removing the drywall ceiling. In the process, we discovered some new mysteries and solved a few old ones.

And now you can see it without the counter top. This should also show why that half wall should really be a full floor to ceiling wall. Anyone walking into my house gets to see the messiest parts of the kitchen! The sink and stove are directly in the line of sight from the front door. Not good, at least for an OCD person like me. It drives me crazy and I can't wait until the wall is put back....but more on that later.

One of the new mysteries is why was this floor chopped up and then fixed with cheap wood? If you look really closely, you can see the cuts made into the maple floor by a circular saw. But why? By reviewing the ceiling in the basement and looking closely at the floor, we have determined that a heat vent was in this wall at one time and was used to heat the dining room.

By examining the ceiling above the half wall, we were able to see evidence that there was in fact a wall that went all the way up to the ceiling. And you can also see that the wood blocking in the ceiling perfectly lines up with the missing floorboard under the half wall. One of these days, that wall will be put back.

As for other mysteries, we are still fighting bats. Yet another one got into the house last night and was quickly dispatched by my knight in shining armor. A second and third bat were heard later in the evening, but we could not find where they were hiding. We are praying that we were hearing them leave the house! Unfortunately, my husband heard yet another one in the walls early this morning. Maybe I should change the name of this blog to The Bat House! 

Some time ago, we had another little unsolved question. We had mysterious pools of water on the bathroom floor in the lower half bath. Not enough to splash, but enough to be absorbed by the dropped toilet paper rolls and paper - evidence that one of the kids used the last of the roll. We could not figure out where the water was coming from and suspected that our youngest son was maybe "missing the target"! The bathroom constantly had an outhouse odor to it too, no matter how often I cleaned the floor. It was all very frustrating.

And how do we solve mysteries in this house? With small scale demolition of course.

Do you see what I see? There is a slightly old, but drier water stain that runs the perimeter of the bathroom. We suspect based on evidence of water in the basement and in this bathroom that there may be a leak in one of the pipes in the full bath upstairs. This bathroom is of course located directly above the lower half bath. You can also see that we have a major water issue with the current toilet.

In this case, we are suspecting that the wax ring has failed for some reason. There is no logical reason for its failure - this house was allegedly completely remodeled a year before we bought it. The people that flipped the house either did not know what they were doing or were attempting to cover myriad issues. Needless to say, my husband is not real happy at this point.

On to more pleasant things. As part of our home restoration process, we spend a fair amount of time checking out various sites for replacement components. Specifically, Ebay and Craigslist. Today, my husband found the perfect set of wall cabinets for sale. Unfortunately, the price is not so perfect for us right now. But I can still hope and pray! As a back up plan, I saved all the pictures so that we could, as a last resort, have our wonderful Amish woodworker reproduce them.

Here again are some photos of the kitchen when we first moved into the house. While these cabinets look nice, they are the cheapest money can buy and still have the alphabetical assemble-yourself stickers on them! No wonder they are already falling apart. Anyway, this space is very long and fairly tall. My husband found an original set of 1920 kitchen cabinets for sale.

Aren't they absolutely gorgeous! What was even more amazing was how the measurements exactly fit the space we have available. Now, if we can just swing the financial end of it before some else! I really like to the two bins and the five drawers. As for the space between the two sets of upper cabinets, I would fill that with some matching open shelves for storing my prettier dishes and apothecary supplies.

We also found a lead on a collection of 1920 farmhouse doors for sale. There are between 15 and 18 of them available, and some of them even have the original hardware. For some reason, when the house was flipped, they yanked out all the original doors except for the three closets in the bedrooms and the pantry door that we rehung a few weeks ago. It would be a true blessing if we could source all the doors from the same place and start replacing the nasty modern ones. Here are some pictures of the doors that I am drooling over now....

Now, lest you think that all we do is destroy our house, I thought that I would end today's post with some of our accomplishments. I don't know how many of you remember this?

This is a picture of our kitchen floor, after we removed the laminate flooring. I am proud to share that we have finally finished removing the black adhesive. Now, our kitchen floors look like this....

Of course, it still needs to be sanded, stained, sealed and finished properly. But, in the meantime, we are really excited and pleased with how good the floors came out. We still have to finish the side entrance and then two of the bedrooms upstairs. Overall though, it is looking good!

It's Hammertime....

Anyone that thinks the pen is mightier than the sword has not seen my husband swing his hammer with such deadly force. For some reason that I did not fully understand, my husband decided to continue removing the ceiling above the dining room last night - three hours before we had to leave for church. I give the man credit; he got it done in time for me to make dinner and we even left for church a few minutes early.

But I digress. As he was removing the ceiling, he saw what he thought was just a big pile of a dust bunny. All of a sudden, he started teetering on the ladder - I thought he lost his balance or something. I mean, he looked so comical flailing around, but then he started yelling for the hammer. Apparently, the dust bunny was actually alive and turned out to be yet another bat.

Whack with the hammer and that bat was no more. Ugh....only our youngest son seemed excited by it all. He spent the rest of the time singing and dancing around the house talking about how we had seven bats but now we have eight. All I can say, is I am sick of these bats and I really want to know how they are getting in the house so that we can permanently close up their access.

What Were We Thinking....

Sometimes, I really wonder, what were we thinking...as in, what were we thinking when we bought this house? Or, what were we thinking to start this project? Case in point....

In our last post, I showed the panel wall that we opened. Remember this?

In that post, I forgot to mention that we plan on replacing the "wonderful" outdoor support beams with a reproduction of the built-in bookcases that someone chose to remove. We found an example to give to our wonderful Amish wood crafter from in the Antique Home site. Here is a the picture for you.

But I digress...back to the question of the day. One would think that we would stop with just the plywood wall, but of course not. The deconstruction continued...to the ceilings. This time, though, I wised up and made sure to improvise some drop cloths to protect the furniture from the dust - especially my 1911 upright grand piano.

Taking down the first ceiling was not bad at all and we were pleasantly surprised to see how clean it was up there. Of course, we did discover a few unanticipated things too.

A pipe runs from the outside wall of the house to the center of the room, and has old wires still in it. It is my educated guess that this pipe originally held gas for gas lights, but was then converted to knob and tube electricity at some point and then replaced finally with modern electric lines.

Here is a picture of the rest of the pipe. As you can see from this photo and the ones following, the ceiling looks really clean.

I am sure you are wondering what we are planning on doing? Well, we decided that we really like the extra seven, yes 7 inches of height that this gives the room. And, since we have no idea how any of the rooms were originally finished, but we do know that the house was built as a showplace, we have decided to go all out and really dress it up...with finished beamed ceilings.

Something along the lines of the ceiling above. We have decided to also go for this look in the dining room. We thought that this would help expand both spaces and make them feel larger and more formal. It was while starting the ceiling in the dining room that we found stuff that was not as clean or appealing.

Things like swarming nests of creepy crawling lady bugs. Now, don't get me wrong, I don't necessarily have an issue with lady bugs. They are great for my garden. However, I detest little critters of any kind (excluding children :-) of course) anywhere in my house! It just gives me the creeps. But that was nothing compared to the other "evidence" we found.

We have had so much trouble with bats in the house this past summer. If my memory serves me correctly, we were upwards of seven of them to-date. Well, we now believe that they have been somehow living in our ceiling! There was plenty of evidence since we seem to have excavated their "outhouse"!

All over the drop cloth that we used to cover the computer desk and equipment. (Uhhh, to think that this was above me each and every day as I worked!)

The insulation was absolutely coated with their excrement. I refused to touch the stuff to begin with due to the fiberglass fibers, but I really draw the line at poop!

Unfortunately, we were caught off guards and were not expecting this at all, so a bunch ended up on the floor. We cleaned it all up, but then had to stop. We had run out of garbage bags to contain it all and did not want to remove any more insulation and have it laying around. Especially with a baby that is in to everything these days!

 

Our final disgusting discovery was this dehydrated baby mouse. Fortunately, my husband saw it before it landed on me, the kids or the floor! We were able to divert this little critter right into a bag and out the door.

We are frustrated and discouraged for many reasons. Was buying this house the right decision? We feel that in part, we were misled by the quality of the "remodeling" work done. We were told that all the rooms had been completely gutted, insulated, etc. Well, it appears that the above statement is only partially true at best. And what work was done was of such inferior quality that we don't think we can trust any of it. Plywood walls? Really?

At least I can be thankful that our children are learning a lot of valuable skills - like using a hammer, safety glasses, and how to safely climb a ladder!

I can only pray that they will look back on their childhood home with fun and fond memories. Hopefully, they will also learn a lot along the way. Especially what NOT to do!