Hall Tree

This is a small project we worked on last year but never completed. It sat in the Laundry room since then. Recently I moved it out into the Breakfast room and then just yesterday added the hooks to finally finish it off.

It's a Hall tree made from a heavy old door from a textile mill and some old, reclaimed boards. The seat lifts up for storage underneath.


In other house news, I've been working on stripping the stair railings, it's slow, boring work. I also added some low-voltage lighting to the front yard. No pictures of either project yet.

A few odd jobs

We've managed to get a few things done over the weekend. I started stripping the paint off the Dining room mantle. Here is what it looked like when I started:

And here it is after over 2 hours with a heat gun and a scraper:


Once I'm finished scraping I'll remove all the old shellac the put 2 coats of amber shellac on it then a coat of poly to seal it.

We also started on the stairs. They were too dark completely stained so we decided to paint the risers and baulisters white. First I sanded the risers to give the paint a good surface to adhere to, then I painted the risers.

Here it is with half the risers done, you can really see what a difference it makes:

And here it is with the risers finished:

Next we'll paint the baulisters.

We also went outside and started decorating the house:


You can see the Christmas tree in our Parlor window. I was going to post pics of it but I forgot to upload them to my server so it will have to wait for the next post.

There are a few other things I have in the works for the house, one is what to do with the floors that need refinishing. Another will drastically change the exterior appearance of the house if I decide to do it. I'll be posting more about these things later.

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.

Upstairs hall painted... finally!

Well once again it's taken me longer than expected to finish a project. I really am happy with the results though. Remember that dramatic change I was talking about?



There is still a lot left to do, the painters tape is still on the walls because I need to put one more coat up to finish the paint. I have to strip and refinish the stair railings and doors, and the floors need to be refinished.

The upstairs hallway was one of the grungiest rooms of the house so I'm glad to get it behind me. Now I only have the 2 guest bedrooms and the 2 bathrooms to finish up so the floor guys can do their stuff.

Here's a few more pictures of the hall:

Upstairs hall nearing completion

I've been working on the upstairs hall for the past few days. It's been rough going. After finishing up hanging all the drywall patches I started scraping the ceiling and walls. the ceiling had a really thick coat of stilping on it. I scraped most of it off and what was left I sanded down smooth. I then skimed the entire ceiling with my mud/sand mix. then I skimed all the rough areas of the walls.



Though you cant tell from the pictures, it has come a long way. today I'm going to sand everything, hopefully I'll be able to primer by tonight. That is when the dramatic transformation should take place.

These next pictures are close-ups of what was once the worst areas:


I still need to build some type of frame for the attic stairs out of trim.



I scraped some of the paint off the top of the stair rail to see what the wood looked like underneath. The grain looks great!



The paint came off surprisingly easy. I'll probably end up using amber shellac on the railing, I haven't decided on the stairs yet. I'd like to use garnet shellac but it would take too long to get the dark color I want and it's not all that durable. Depending on how the wood looks when it's stripped I'll probably use a red mahogany stain and poly.

The Back Hall

Here is the back hall:





The first pic was taken after we cleaned. I love the heartpine floors in the place, they're awesome!

The big piece of wood in the last pic was used to block off the first floor from the second floor.