Lots of updated pictures

Well, another two weeks have gone by since my last post. I really, really need to try to keep this updated a bit more than this. We've been going non-stop since my last post and have accomplished a lot since then. I finished roughing in the upstairs hall at the top of the stairs.




I still have a few small pieces of drywall to hang then I'm going to skim-coat the entire thing with mud mixed with sand. I'm hoping to finish this up some time next week.

We were trying to finish as many bedrooms as possible because we had guests staying over for the holidays. The only one we managed to finish was the master bedroom. We had to scrape, sand, patch the walls, and sand again.


We then primed the walls and ceiling.


Then painted the walls.


We were a bit nervous about the paint color at first, turns out that it just needed a second coat to smooth it out. I didn't realize that the dark colors we've chosen required a dark primer so the white primer was changing the color a bit. Once we put the second coat on it looked like we wanted it to.




I say we finished the room but we really haven't. There's still a lot left to do. We need to paint the trim the closet and the mantle, redo the electrical, and the floors still need to be refinished. Once the entire second floor is finished we'll be getting the floor guys in here to refinish them.

I finally took out the built-in cabinet that was in the Study. As I suspected it is not original to the house. It's built out of T&G white oak, the lumber yard's name is stamped on the back of each piece. From researching it online it appears the lumber yard dates to the '30's. This reinforces my belief that the house underwent a major renovation in the '30's where a lot of the original detailing of the house was removed.



I still haven't figured out what to do with the space. I was thinking of building some type of secret compartment or possibly making it into an alcove similar to what's on the other side of the wall in the Living Room. The new wall dividing the Study from the Foyer will be right where the return register is in the picture above, this will cut down on the space available to work with.

Next on my list was the dining room ceiling. It was sagging about 3" and in serious danger of falling. We're going to put a tin ceiling up in the next few weeks. We were using the Dining Room as our bedroom so we had to move it into the Study.



Pulling the old ceiling down was a hard, dirty, nasty job. There was 5/8" drywall put up over the original plaster. Our construction dumpster is on the opposite end of the house so I had to remove the debris one dustpan full at a time, carrying it through the center hall and living room to throw it out the window into the dumpster which is actually about 12' away from the window.




Once the ceiling was down and the mess cleaned up (2 days later) we began painting. We're using only Historic Trust approved colors from American Traditions throughout the house. Here's the finished product, we're really happy with how it turned out:





Of course we still have a long way to go in here as well. We have to stencil above the picture rail, hang the tin ceiling, strip all the trim and shellac it(including the mantle and doors), and refinish the floors.

Next we painted the Parlor.





That last shot gives a great view from the Parlor to the Dining Room and back to the Kitchen. In here we still have to wallpaper above the picture rail, strip and shellac all the trim, and refinish the floors.

Finally, some more progress

Sorry to go so long between posts. I've been pretty busy on the house this past week, and the week before I hardly got anything done. It was just one of those weeks where you cant get anything done no matter how hard you try.

One of the projects I finally got around to doing is tearing down the wall between the Foyer and the Study. Some of you may remember in one of my early posts that this wall had been moved and was not in it's original position. It's also crooked as hell and covered part of the front door frame.

The wall came down really easy, I took the framing apart very carefully so I can reuse it for the new wall.


In the picture below you can see where they built the wall right over the front door frame:

When I rebuild the wall the front Foyer will be a little over a foot wider. I'm also going to frame the doorway in the center of the wall for double french doors, just like the parlor entrance on the other side of the foyer. The french doors are from an early 1900's farmhouse.

I also hung the chandelier we got off Craigslist in the Study:


I've finally started on patching the ceilings upstairs. It's something I haven't been looking forward to, they need a lot of work.


This picture will give you an idea of the condition of our upstairs ceilings. We want to save as much plaster as possible so we've decided to patch the ceilings instead of replacing them. We used 1/4" drywall for a few reasons, one being weight, it's a lot ligher than 1/2". Another reason is because some of the plaster on the ceiling is pretty thin, I didnt want to have to build all those areas up.

The first two pics below are in the nursery. First we squared the area to be patched:

We then screwed up the drywall and skimmed the entire patch with mud mixed with sand:


The sand gives the mud a gritty texture that is similar to plaster. These pictures were before the second skim coat. I still have to sand it down, patch and sand all the cracks, and sand down the stipling on the rest of the ceiling in all the rooms, I'm NOT looking forward to that. If the patch stands out really bad once it's all been sanded down I'm going to have to skim the entire ceiling in every room, that's something I just dont have time for.

Heres the other big patch in the nursery:

Here's the patch in the master bedroom:



Next is the upstairs hallway ceiling at the top of the stairs, the original design was terrible. The location was an addition built in the early 1900's. The ceiling was very low and was really crooked.


The above picture was taken when the attic stairs were being installed. A few months back I tore the ceiling out.


I finally got around to it again the other day. What I decided on was a sloped ceiling. Here's a shot of the framing:

Insulation:

Some of the drywall up:



This is as far as I got last night. I'm hoping to finish the drywall tonight. We're once again racing against the clock. We need to get the flooring guys up here this week so they can finish by the end of next week. Heather's helping with the drywall and isn't happy.

Antique toilet has arrived... and is installed!!

The antique toilet came in today around 3pm. 7 1/2 hours later it's installed. First I had to go to a plumbing supply store to get new parts for it. I wasn't going to settle for some cheap plastic parts so I made sure to get brass replacement parts specifically for this toilet.


I then began sanding the tank, this shot is between sandings:


Then I gave it a couple coats of amber shellac.


When I tried installing the toilet I found that it wouldnt fit. The diameter of the flange on the bottom of the toilet was too big to fit into the rough-in. I went to Lowes and got another 3" toilet flange that had a bigger opening but it wouldnt fit either. I had to go back again, this time I got a 4" flange and a 4" to 3" reducer. Here's the result:


With that problem solved I began installing the toilet.


Everything went fine until I got to the part where I had to install the elbow between the tank and toilet. It was too long on the toilet end and had to be cut down. Like a dummy I didnt take the compression nut off when I was cutting it and ended up tearing up the washer in it. I'll have to get a replacement tomorrow but in the mean time here's the toilet:


The flash is making the oak look a lot lighter than it is, and that's a cheap $12 seat on it for now until I can buy a nice one. I cant wait until tomorrow when I can flush it with the push button!

Kitchen Cabinets... part 2

Here are a few more shots of the cabinets. I didnt get anything done last night so there isnt that much progress to show.

These are the cabinets by the stove.



I have to move to stove outlet because it was installed in the wrong place, the cabinet and stove will be moved next to each other once I do that.

Here is the design for the cabinet doors.


The wood is select pine slats in random widths.I'm hoping to finish building the doors tonight and possibly get a few upper cabinets done.

Kitchen Cabinets

We've spent the last 6 days rebuilding some of the original cabinets and building new ones. Here are a few quick shots of the work in progress.

This is the sink cabinet. The sink that goes in this cabinet is an old 5 1/2' enamel double sink with double drainboards.


This is the counter that goes next to the stove. I built the countertop from an old butcherblock that belonged to my Grandfather.


The counters are built with 3/4 sanded plywood, 1x2's, 1x3's, and 1x6's. They were only partially finished in the above photos. They've since been finished, minus the doors, and are installed along with a few other ones that I didnt get pics of. Once we build and install the doors I'll take a bunch of pictures of them to post.

We have a kitchen!!!... sort of

The floor was finally dry enough to walk on Thanksgiving morning. We still had to paint the second coat on the walls, primer the trim, move in and hook up the stove & refrigerator, and set up for the dinner scheduled for 4pm. We made it... barely. Here's a few pics of what it looks like now:







It still has a long way to go but at least it's usable for now. Next on the list is the cabinets, we've already sanded and primered two of them, We still have to build the sink cabinet, redesign two of the upper cabinets and build all of the doors for them before we can install them. hopefully then it will start looking like a kitchen.

We also had to get the main bathroom walls finished before Thanksgiving dinner:


I think it turned out great. We still need to finish stripping the remaining painted trim and stain it all, strip and refinish the vanity, install the sink, faucet, and mirror in the vanity, and install the toilet once it arrives.

I found a really cool old Victorian toilet on E-bay, it should be getting here sometime next week.



Oh, and one other thing. These pictures demonstrate the extreme importance of checking all your wiring and outlets:




This outlet failed and damn near burned the house down. Weird thing is, there was nothing plugged into it. Last week I started noticing a smell in The dining room, it smelled like an old campfire. I couldn't trace it so I just assumed that it was coming from the fireplace (even though it's closed off and hasn't been used in ages). I went out of town for two days and when I got back I noticed that some of the outlets in the kitchen weren't working, I checked the breaker but it wasn't tripped. I finally traced it back to this outlet. How it didn't burn the house down I don't know... I'm just thanking God it didn't.