Punch list work

I know I never made a follow-up post on the exterior house painting but it will have to wait a while longer. I completed what I had to get done with the scaffolding so I could return it but that was it. I still have a lot of the back of the house to complete as well as about 3 feet of the bottom on both sides.

The reason I didnt finish is because we wanted to get our new (old) Airstream in usable condition so we could go on a small vacation. Now that we're back it's time to get this house finished already.

I had intended on coming back and removing the second story porch roof and then finish up the painting but I've decided to hold off on that for a few weeks until I have some help. It will go much faster that way. So in the mean time I decided to create a punch list of little things around the house that need to get done and have begun working on that.


I've been concentrating on the front of the house the past few days, mainly the foyer and the study. I finished staining the beadboard in the study but dont have any good pictures yet. I should be putting a coat of poly on it this afternoon.

I have begun work on the mantle in the study also. Most of the mantle is brick but it has a pine top piece. I stripped the 20 layers of paint off of it yesterday:


I will be shellacing it this afternoon. I've decided to find a brick red paint color and paint the brick for a few reasons. One, the paint is very hard to remove but also the brick underneath it is cement so it's gray, not red. I may try to paint the mortar lines gray then paint the brick red and then sponge it to make it look more realistic.

I've also been trying to finish the trim in the foyer. You may remember that the wall between the foyer and study was not original and was crooked so I tore it down and rebuilt it straight, giving the foyer an extra foot.

The old wall covered the edge of the front door frame so I used some of my salvaged trim to replace the missing pieces. This trim came from the upstairs bathroom and is the original trim design for the house so it matches the rest of the foyer:


I know I should have painted it first but I like to do stuff backwards. Besides, the door frame needed a touch-up coat of paint anyways.

By the way, the plywood is over the front door because the glass broke in the door. I'm sure replacing it is going to be costly.

Next I installed the picture rail on the new wall:


I've also installed the upper trim on the baseboards but still have to install the 1/4 round at the bottom of the baseboards. Once I do that and install the trim on the study doorway and paint everything the foyer will be completely done... well except for the broken glass in the front door that is.

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.

Previous owner's relatives visit

We haven't gotten much done on the house for a number of reasons. One of them being the new TV we got:




It's a 47" Westinghouse with full 1080P HD. The picture is incredible. It's $700 or $800 cheaper than anything else in it's class. I got it for $1299 from Best Buy. I fully recommend it to anyone in the market for a flat panel LCD.

We had a visit from the relatives of the former owner of the house, Hazel. I've mentioned her in the blog before, she lived to be almost 105 and owned the house since 1955 when she inherited it from her 2 aunts, Helen and Kitty-Clyde. They inherited the house in 1945.

The relatives brought some old photos of them over for us. I gave them a tour of the house and showed them all of the progress we've made, they seemed impressed with the work done so far. Here are a few pictures they brought:

Hazel in front of the house

Helen

Kitty-Clyde

Helen with her husband

They also brought some photos of the front porch after a car hit it back in 2001. A man that was a convicted felon got into a fight then shot at someone that tried to break it up. He then car-jacked a vehicle and didnt get 2 blocks away before losing control and crashing into the front of the house. I've found some evidence of this a few months ago when I was planting new bushes in front of the porch. I dug up what appears to be a front fender reflector and some safety glass that probably came from the drivers window.



In anticipation of their visit we rearranged and straightened up many of the rooms in the house. We completely rearranged the Parlor:



The Buggy is a recent find that we got free off Freecycle.





I'm hoping to get back to work on the house soon.

Study bookcase finished

I have not completed near as much on the house as I had hoped in the last few weeks. Most of the delay being from a hospital stay and a week of forced recuperation time. I have managed to accomplish a few things however.

I finished the built in book cases in the Study last week. I might add one more coat of amber shellac though.




It's very hard to get a good clear shot of the entire bookcase and to also get the lighting adjusted properly to show the true color of the bookcase. These images will have to do though. The one thing left to do on them is build the doors for the bottom shelf on either side.

I've been working on the master bathroom but I dont have any pictures of that yet. So far we've sanded and painted the clawfoot tub, painted the walls, and I've begun installing the beadboard wainscoting on the walls. Once the beadboard is done I need to paint it then finish building the double sink vanity. Hopefully I'll have some pictures of it soon.

Study built in bookcases and main bath vanity

Even though I havent posted any updates in a few weeks I've been pretty busy on the house. We also had to get the house ready for the big cookout on the 4th. It's hard to entertain guests in a construction zone. It turned out great though.

After finishing the deck last week I turned my attention to building the bookshelves in the Study. In this post I mentioned how I was going to use some of the front porch columns from the old Anderson house in the design. Unfortunately I didn't have enough salvaged 1x12 stock for the rest of the bookcase so I've had to use some new wood, worse yet it's not even Southern yellow pine, it's white pine. Lowes and Home Depot dont carry 1x12's in Southern yellow pine except for a few special pieces. I hate white pine but in the end I really dont think it will matter all that much. The bookcase is going to be stained dark walnut and very little of the white pine boards will be exposed once the books are in. The two main columns in the center are what will show the most and they are the old columns from the Anderson house, the two outside columns are a mix of older and new white pine but only 2" of their face shows, I'll probably do a faux grain on the face of them. Most of the shelves are white pine with the exception of the shelves that are directly above where the doors will be, those are Southern yellow pine.




I still need to build the top portion that will connect the two bookcases.

The other main project I worked on was the main bathroom vanity. We found this vanity totally by accident. We found some free old doors on Craigslist over a year ago. When we went and picked them from the couple that was giving them away their neighbor just happened to stop by. We got into a conversation about how we loved antique furniture and how we were in the process of searching for an old house that we could restore. He mentioned that he had some old furniture in his shop that he had intended to restore but had never gotten around to it and offered to give the pieces to us. He ended up giving us the vanity (an oak dresser), an old gas stove from the early 20's, and a very old, ornate victorian love seat (just the frame actually). He found the dresser on the curb years back about to be picked up by the trash truck.


Not much to look at but I knew that it could be fixed up very nicely. Once we got this house I knew it would be perfect for a bathroom vanity.

I stripped all the ugly brown paint off of it and stained it with a combination of mostly english chestnut and a little red mahogany and then polyed it.





We found the mirror frame in an antique store in Alabama, I have an old mirror that I need to get cut down to fit it. The sink is hand painted in Mexico and the faucet is brushed copper from Nottingham brass. I've already rebuilt the two top drawers to fit around the sink. The brace between the second and third drawers go will be removed. Then I'll biscuit join the drawer fronts together and cut them in half vertically to make two swing open doors. I still have to find some nice brass hardware for them.

Progress report

Well it's been another few weeks since I've updated the blog. I've gotten a few things accomplished but not nearly as much as I had hoped. I've got less than 2 months to get the major projects finished so I can get a conventional mortgage. I've taken this Thursday and Friday off and Monday is a holiday. That will give me 5 straight days to hopefully get a lot done to the house.

Last week I painted the Study walls, I took down all the picture rails and started stripping them but there are so many layers of paint and so many little grooves that I gave up after a while. I'll decide later if I'm going to buy new picture rail or finish stripping the old ones.



I painted the wall above where the picture rail will go a light olive color. I wasn't sure about it at first but after I put it on the wall I think it came out nice. The dark stain of the picture rail should give it a nice contrast.

The next project I worked on was the breakfast room floors, I pulled up the old floors and laid a new subfloor over the winter. I finally got tired of looking at the subfloor so I finished leveling the back half of the sub floor then laid the flooring.




Now I'm scraping and sanding the beadboard walls. Hopefully I'll have that done in a day or two so I can primer and paint.

I also temporarily installed the toilet upstairs in the master bathroom. A few of the gaskets are old and dryrotted so they'll have to be replaced before it can be used.



Last week we built the driveway circle in the backyard. I planted Azaleas in the circle that came from the ones along the front porch. The statue in the center is temporary, it will be replaced with a 3 tier fountain eventually. I still need to add about 40 more bags of top soil before I can plant anything else.