Final closing!

This is a little late in coming but on December 14th we finally closed on our permanent mortgage for the house. No more construction loan! It's been a long year and a half.

We're still far from finished on the house but it's nice to be able to work on what I want now instead of what I feel HAS to be done to get the mortgage. Most of the things I have been working on are small jobs but it's the detail work that usually makes the most difference and makes the place look more like a real home and not a construction zone.

I've finished up a few things in the kitchen. First I finally hung the second pendant light and got both of them wired up.

In the above picture you can also see that I finished the doors for the final cabinet. I still need to add the crown for this cabinet and one other and then the crown for the ceiling.

The breakfast nook is slowly progressing, I have everything roughed in now. I also finally put the window trim and shutters back up, I still have to paint them though. the ceiling in the nook still needs to be installed also.

Next I stained the kitchen island and added the little magnetic door poppers to the insides of the doors. I still need to build the shelf inside though.


In the study I finally tackled the door to the closet/passage to the living room. The door was a 5 paneled door that did not match anything else in the house. You can see the door below in this picture from a few months ago.


On the first floor every other door is 4 paneled. A while back I had taken the door between the back hall and breakfast room down, we didnt like how it closed off the space. I measured this door and found that it fit perfectly. You can see the door in the picture below.

I completely stripped all the paint off the door and door frame then hung the door. Next I installed the beadboard on the wall next to the door.

I stained the doorway and beadboard with dark walnut. For the door I only put on 2 coats of amber shellac.

I still need to add the trim around the doorway. I also stained the beadboard on another section of wall.


I only have one more small section of beadboard to install then 3 more sections to stain. I still need to install the picture rail also.

While I was in the Study I decided to open up the fireplace to see what I would find.

The above picture was after cleaning all the sand, leaves and soot out. One thing I found interesting was the bricks that line the fireplace, many are stamped with the word "STEVENS" but the letter N is backwards. I'm pretty sure this is the name of the company that made them but I havent been able to find out anything about them. If anyone knows anything about them I'd love to hear about it. Here is a picture of one of the bricks.

Of the many spare doors I have some are french doors, I found that one of these was an almost perfect match for the doorway between the back hall and breakfast room. We took the 4 panel door down from here because we felt like it closed off the space but a french door wont. It also gives the breakfast room a sunroom kind of feel.

I cut the door down to size, sanded it and test fit it into place. I had to rework the door frame a little for it to fit properly.





As you can see the door is only primed for now. Also the door hardware is only test fitted into place. I still need to restore the lock and rosette. I also need to install a "new" pane of glass in the opening on the bottom.

Lots of painting

Sorry for the lack of posting lately. We've been really busy Working on the house. We decided to bite the bullet and go ahead with converting to a standard mortgage. All the work we've been doing was in preparation for the appraisal.

We did not finish the main guest bedroom or the guest bathroom but were told not to worry about it as the house should appraise for well over what we have in it even without finishing those rooms.

We've already been approved for the loan and the appraisal was yesterday. They are wanting to close by the end of the week. We haven't heard back about the appraisal yet though.

Here are some pictures of the work we've been doing on the house, it's mostly painting but it has really helped to give the house that "finished" look. A large part of the painting was going around and painting all the trim on the first floor. I had not painted the trim before now because my original intention was to strip it all and stain it dark. Then we painted the walls above the picture rail in the Parlor and the Formal Dining room. We also painted the kitchen cabinets, that made a huge difference in the kitchen.

Back hall taken from the Foyer looking back to the Breakfast room

Back hall taken from the Breakfast room looking forward to the Foyer

Back hall from the stairs

Back hall Dining room door

Parlor

Parlor

Parlor

Formal Dining room

Formal Dining room

Kitchen

Kitchen

Kitchen

Kitchen

Kitchen

There's still quite a bit left to do on the house but I will be doing it at a slower pace now. It will be nice to finally take a little time off.

One of the reasons for getting our standard mortgage now is that we might possibly be taking on a new project soon. Nothing's definite yet but if it works out I'll write a post about it soon.

Progress on the upstairs guest bathroom

I've finally been able to make some progress on the house. I've done a few other small projects here and there but they haven't really been worth taking pictures of.

I decided that I needed to get back in the guest bathroom. You may remember how it was left last June.


I've been dreading the thought of getting back in there.

A few weeks ago I finally got all the plaster bagged up and removed and yesterday I removed all the lathe off the walls and vacuumed up the rest of the plaster.





With all the debris out of the way I was able to get into the kitchen ceiling crawl space and insulate most of it with R30. I'll be finishing that up this morning.

Today I'll be taking the ceiling beams down so I can raise them up a foot like I did in the Master bathroom this past spring. You can see how the ceiling turned out in this post. I'll also be removing the knob & tube wiring and rewiring with romex.

I'm still debating on what to use for the ceiling. I was going to just use greenboard since I dont have enough wood, but I'm probably going to be removing the second floor porch roof which would give me plenty of tongue & groove boards.

Big changes

A lot has changed since the last post. I went back to the bank, got a 6 month extension and also got more money. This will allow me to get all the things I need done quickly as well as add a few other things. This extended my project time by over a month but I believe it's well worth it. A few of the things added to the list is a deck, rebuild of the front porch, painting the house, and plumbing upgrades.

The other day I finished painting the second guest bedroom. I used the same blue that we used in the dining room.




Sorry about all the spots, there was dust on the camera lens. The trim still needs to be painted and we still have to figure out what to do with the fireplace and doors, paint them or poly them.

I started hanging the pendant lights in the kitchen. Only one of them are up at this point, I should do the other one today or tomorrow.


Over the weekend we tackled the front porch. The wrought iron railings were ok but we really wanted wood baulisters and railings. In the shot below you can see the old iron railings, they appear to have been put in sometime in the 40's or 50's:


I removed the iron railings (we're going to use them in our garden) then built and installed the new railings in a day.



The baulisters are $2.29 from Lowes but they didn't have hand rails long enough so I had to make my own our of 2x4's. I put a bevel on either side of the top railing as you can see in the above picture.

The top rails are anchored into the wood portion of the column. The bottom rails had to be anchored into the brick.I used a Forstner bit on the bottom rail about 2" from the edge then used a 3/8's bit to create a channel to the edge of the board. Then I drilled a 3/8's hole in the brick and installed an anchor bolt. Then I brought the bottom rail up from underneath and thghtened the bolts. The hole will be covered with a small piece of board. I forgot to take a picture of this but you should be able to see it in the above picture. If anyone has any questions on it I can take a picture of it later and post it.

I will be rebuilding the second floor porch. We still haven't decided how we want it though. Once we do it will have balisters like the 1st floor just a bit thinner though.

The next project is the shutters. We decided on board & batten style since it's easy to build. I'm using 1" thick 1x4's and 1x6's to build them.


Once we paint the house the shutters will either be black or dark green. the house itself will be some type of pale green or olive and the trim will be an off white.

Next I'll be finishing off the shutter for the front of the house, painting the Foyer, installing the other pendant light then starting the demo for the old porch so I can begin the deck.

Foyer update and guest bathroom demo

The second guest bedroom and the foyer have both been scraped, sanded and primered.



None of the trim has been primered in the foyer because it will all be stripped and stained instead of painted. We had been thinking of wallpapering the foyer with some type of Victorian pattern but I may just paint it for now.

Next on my list was the guest bathroom. When we moved in it was being used as a kitchen for the upstairs apartment, here is what it looked like:

and this is what it looked like once I removed the kitchen:


As you can see in the above picture the plaster was in terrible shape and couldn't be saved. I wanted to tear the walls down months ago but I had to wait until I put the kitchen ceiling up so I didnt have a huge mess in the kitchen below. so yesterday I finally got around to tearing the walls down.



This was as far as I got because I had to get ready to go out of town in the morning. I'll be out of town for work for the next few days so unfortunately noting will get done on the house. Hopefully I'll be ready to tackle the rest of the house when I get back.

I'll leave you with a picture of me after demoing the bathroom: