Redistribution of Wealth

We have been very busy this past weekend redistributing the "wealth" of previous owners. When we took down all the "added" walls to the house, this left us with a huge pile of wood. By huge, I mean the pile was wider than me and almost as tall.  The longest boards measured over 80" and consisted mostly of 2 x 4s and 2 x 2s. So, we redistributed this wealth of wood into a new pantry...with a lot more space!

This blank wall now features a wonderful set of shelves and a beautiful curtain! (Thanks mom for the apple tree fabric....it is perfect for the pantry!).

Much better! The best part of the whole project was that it cost us four boxes of wood screws. That's it!

Previously, we had a couple of old shelves to use, but these were starting to bow pretty badly and I was concerned about all the weight on them. In addition to the shelves, we had re-purposed a bakers rack to try and store everything. This worked for a while, but now we have room to expand.

We have designated this area for the home canned vegetables. Previously, some of these had to be split onto different shelves and on different sides of the pantry just to contain it all. Each shelf can hold 56 jars of goodies. A huge improvement....so I can definitely plan on canning even more this coming summer!

This nine-cubicle storage unit has also been replaced with more custom shelves, thanks to my wonderful husband! And while the gray shelving worked for a while, they simply did not provide us with enough space and resulted in a lot of "dead" space above. All of this is now fixed!

All of the canning shelves measure approximately 8" high, which is perfect for all sizes of canning jars. We decided to divide the canned fruit section into two so that I could store all of the jams, butters and preserves together and all the syrups and processed fruits together. All of the shelves consist of four boards, with some spacing in between each to ensure good air flow.

The bulk of the original shelves were on this wall, but the spacing did not work really well for us. We did the best we could with what we had, but I like my new shelves so much better. I now have plenty of room to stock up on what I consider to be staples for any pantry.

All the way around the pantry, we started the first set of shelves approximately 20" from the ground. This allows us to store rolling carts, like you see above, as well as some wine and whiskey half-barrels for long term root storage. I am hoping to order a few of those over the summer. It also gives us plenty of room to store water and so much more.

The final wall was originally empty and so we had used some more gray shelving to hold the additional canned jars that I processed this summer. As you can see, just about every square inch of available space was full and I did not know where I was going to expand to when I went shopping this month. Believe it or not, we were starting to scrape the bottom of the wood pile once we got to this wall. Anxious to finish it up and surprise me, my wonderful husband worked late into the early morning hours....

I now have everything categorized and every food item not only has its own place, but I have room to add to some essentials. I am hoping to buy some more "pretty" boxes or baskets for the top shelves and a few other things, but for now, this space is finished and I love it!

Our redistribution did not stop there. Oh, no it did not. My wonderful 18 month old daughter has learned to climb stairs. A feat that she is quite proud of herself for accomplishing. I have spent most of the last couple days running to the sound of an older sibling that "Harley is on the stairs!". As if that were not enough, our 5 month old black lab has decided that he likes it upstairs....regardless that it is forbidden territory for him! All of this has been solved by re-purposing the door that we removed when we took down the extra wall in the basement.

This is only temporary but it works. Someday we will have an original styled door, with beautifully stained trim and charming original hardware.  Someday. But today, I can rest easy and relax. For a moment. While I may not agree with the redistribution of wealth that our wonderful politicians like to speak about, I definitely like redistributing the "wealth" of previous owners!

Staples and Cracked Beams

We have been working on the house, but at a much slower pace this past week. There has not been a lot to share as cleaning and scraping have continued. The changes have been so slight, that there is not much to show for it (or share, for that matter). One of the problems is that as we continue to clean up the varnish and paint from the stairs, we continue to discover staples...and more staples. Some of these staples are in so tight that it takes my poor husband 10 to 20 minutes to remove just one! This makes the improvements on the stairs move at a snails pace. This picture shows the staples collected from just four of the steps!

It also includes a bunch of threads from past carpets (yuck!).

We also got curious about a few things about the house, including the two beams that support the living room wall. These were previously covered with baseboard, quarter-inch round trim, and some kind of filler. Kind of cheesey, if you know what I mean. Plus, the materials used were pre-primed and meant to be painted. Whoever installed them must have thought that they were already painted, since nothing was added to them. When I tried to clean them, the primer turned kind of dingy gray - a rather unattractive color. We  thought that there might be some steel support posts underneath the trim, as this is basically supporting the master bedroom.

You can manage our surprise to find out that the support poles are actually wood beams. That is not necessarily a bad thing...unless one of them is severely cracked!

Which of course it is. This picture only shows part of the crack. There are actually five of them in all. Neither pole has been installed exactly straight either. My husband thinks we should replace it with a different type of pole...one that I can use for "exercise". Not a chance!

In the meantime, we are researching some options for better supporting the second floor, keeping in mind that we eventually want to have the opening to the living room flanked with bookcases. We think we may have to shrink the opening to about 60", which would be okay. Bigger bookcases means I can have more books!

We Have Landed...

We worked on the landing today and got a lot done. Needless to say, my wrists and arms are a little bit sore from all the scraping and scrubbing. These first pictures show the "before" and "after" of the left side of the landing...

Here are the before and after pictures of the right side of the landing...

And a closeup of the floor. 

All the surfaces still need to be sanded down and some residual paint needs to be removed; however, overall, the project has been going much faster and smoother than we originally anticipated. We were pleasantly surprised by how much lighter the floor became relative to the stairs. Where the stairs remain somewhat tinted red, the landing flooring is much blonder in tone. Once it is finished, I think it will be beautiful and well worth all the effort. Now, to turn the corner and complete the remaining steps.

Old(er) Photo

Dave contacted the auditors again today and asked them to send us the picture that they had on file. They were actually willing to do it, which greatly surpised us. We are so thankful to them. While this picture was obviously taken after the siding was put on (we think about 3 owners ago, according to one of our neighbors), we at least now know what the brickwork looked like around the porch. We can only assume the exterior of the house was similar when it was originally constructed.

I wonder if my paint removal process will work on masonry or if we should try pressure washing or sandblasting first. Believe it or not, someone actually painted the beautiful brickwork the same color as the vinyl siding on the house so it completely blends in!

We also happened to recognize the realtor's sign in the front yard. So I gave them a call today and asked them to check out any files that they might have for this address for pictures of the interior, as our search for the original floor plan layout continues. I will be sure to share if they do happen to find any.

In the meantime, work on the stairs has continued. The process has gotten easier, though. The trick was to use a lot more of the stripping gel - you almost have to paint it on so that the stairs look like you painted them orange. It only took me a couple of hours to get four more completed today. We are now at the halfway point to the landing (which I am NOT looking forward to). I can only pray that the landing comes as clean as the stairs and as easily.

Stairs, Stairs, Stairs

So we began to remove the paint from the sides of the stairs, as well as the varnish from the steps themselves. What a pain! I have refinished furniture in the past, and have now realized that bigger pieces are easier than these little stairs. The process we are currently using is to put on a stripping agent and letting it sit (blocking off the stairs from access to keep the kiddies safe). After a few hours, we then manually scrape all the gunk off. And I mean gunk. I don't know of any other way to describe this stuff. It's like rubberized paint and it can stretch and even gum up the scraper. For now, we are putting all this gunk into any empty ice cream bucket. Thanks to my husband's love of mint chocolate chip, I have a few to spare! Anyway, once we are all done scraping, we then scrub the surfaces with  denatured alcohol and steel wool. This removes residual rubberized paint and smooths out the surface a little. Finally, we rub it all down with more denatured alcohol on a lint-free cloth. It took me two hours to do two stairs and risers. This is going to take a lot longer than I originally planned - however, isn't that par for the course?

Here is what the stairs look like without the carpet and after being cleaned with soapy water.

You will have to forgive the poor picture quality - I am using my camera phone until we find the cord to download pictures from our digital camera. Regardless, you can still see the wonderful paint on the side and all over the steps. Apparently, the painter(s) knew the steps were going to be carpeted and so were not as careful as they could have been.

And here are what the steps look like that I was able to finish tonight.

I think that they look much better, but still need a lot of work. Once all the steps have been cleaned up, we will need to sand down everything and make a few minor repairs. Two down, 13 to go! Does anyone have any recommendations of a better, less messy process? Just wondering.

Our Black Friday Purchase

We closed on our first house yesterday, which just happened to be Black Friday. And of course, we could not wait to get started on all those "want to fix" home projects. We decided that the first area to refinish is the main stairwell between the first and second floor. This was carpeted with a heavy shag beige carpet. And of course all the trim has been painted - white!

One of the fascinating things about fixing up your own home is the odds-and-ends that you find during the process. Of course we did not expect to find anything our first night! For some reason, the stairs have an air vent on the second stair. We are not sure why as it is not connected to anything - like furnace ductwork. While looking around behind the vent, we found...a single black tennis shoe and a wig. Weird. We can't help but wonder if the other shoe might appear somewhere else.

While taking a break from the stairs, we also exchanged the upstairs hallway light with the downstairs dining room light. Here is a picture of the old dining room chandelier which now graces our hallway.

And here is the old hallway chandelier which now graces our dining room! Much better, don't you agree?

It will be interesting to see what we can get accomplished next!