Where to now??

Now that the upstairs hall is complete as my last post shows it's time to decide which disaster area I'm going to tackle next. there are 4 rooms left to work on upstairs, the 2 guest bedrooms, and the 2 bathrooms. Here is each room with what needs to be done with each:

Guest Bedroom 1

This has been my work and storage room for a while now. This room needs moderate work. There is a LOT of grease on the upper walls (the guest bathroom adjoining the room was a kitchen during the houses apartment life). there is heavy stipling on the ceiling that will have to be sanded off. There are some cracks and chipped paint on the walls that will have to be patched. The mantle needs to be replaced with one of our spares as it's nothing more than a few 2x4's and thin plywood (no idea what happened to the original). then of course I have to sand, primer, and paint.

Guest Bedroom 2

This room is in a lot better shape. The ceiling was replaced with drywall at one point, it's in good shape except for the poor mud job done to it. I'm going to skim just the joints. The walls are in relatively good shape, not much chipped paint or cracks in here. The only other thing to do in here besides the ceiling is a light sanding of the walls then primer & paint.

Guest Bathroom

The guest bathroom needs a lot of work, starting with the floors. the floors are sloped so I'm going to have to take them up. From prior experience in the other 2 bathrooms the floor boards wont survive this, they are just too brittle. So a new floor needs to go down. I need to tear out the plaster on the bottom half of the walls and install beadboard. The rest of the walls have to be patched. I need to install a GFCI outlet near where the vanity will be and rewire the lighting. The ceiling is in rough shape. I really want to take it out anyways because I want to raise it up a foot. If I do this I'll have to decide what I'm going to replace it with, T&G wood or greenboard, not sure yet. Then of course I have to sand, primer, and paint.

Master Bathroom

The master bathroom needs moderate work. I've actually already removed the plaster from the bottom half of the walls and installed the plywood base for the beadboard but I didn't have a picture of the room from after that. So, in here I need to re-frame the ceiling since I'm raising it up a foot in here just like in the guest bathroom. I've already removed the beadboard from the ceiling because some genius decided to stiple it at one point. I'm going to try to clean it up and reinstall it. If it doesn't clean up I still have a lot of regular 4' T&G wood left over that I can use for the ceiling. In here I also need to install a GFCI outlet near where the vanity will be and rewire the lighting. I need to patch the walls, hang the beadboard on the walls, then sand, primer, and paint.

In both bathrooms I still have to sand and paint both tubs and install all the plumbing fixtures. Plus I still have to build the vanity for the master bathroom. All that will be done after the floors are refinished though. So those are my options, still not sure where I'll start. I guess I'll find out when I go upstairs and just see where I end up.

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.

Update on the Anderson House

I've spoken with the bank. The windows are a definite no-go. He did give me the contractors number so I could find out if I can salvage anything not on the list. In my previous post Mark made a comment that the contractor might have made the blanket statement of asbestos so he could salvage what he wanted. I intend to find out if that's the case if I have to follow the demo trucks all the way to the dump.

Hopefully I should still be able to salvage a lot of things like flooring (downstairs is red oak, upstairs is heartpine), siding, stair baulisters, door and window frames and the like. I'll keep the blog updated on the status. I may call the EPA hotline to see if there's anything that can be done to save the windows.

In the meantime I'll leave you with a picture of another house near here that was destroyed a few months back. It was on the National Register of Historic Places for it's architecture. As far as I can tell not one thing was salvaged from it. I'm still way too pissed off about this one to tell the story of it right now, maybe another time.

RIP Anderson House

There's a house down the street from ours that I've had my eye on for as long as our house. It's a beautiful old 2 story with some really cool features. It was built in 1906 and as it turns out was the boyhood home of country singer Bill Anderson.


It's been empty for quite a while but it looked to me like someone was in preperations to renovate it so I didn't pursue it.

About 2 months ago I found out that a bank had bought the property and the lot behind it. The other lot is on the main street that runs through town. They intend to build their new branch on the lots. It just so happens that the bank is the same one that I have my construction loan through. I called the branch vice president and talked to him to see if it would be possible for them to give me the house and I would move it to another lot(taking out another construction loan through them of course). He wasn't part of the land deal but he said that he didn't see why it couldn't be worked out.

Well, I searched for a suitable lot and found one 2 lots down on the other side of the street. It's a 2 acre lot that appeared to have a very large old house on it at one time. It didn't pan out though, the owners were hoping to sell the lot as a commercial lot.

A house this big would be very hard to move, there are a ton of low hanging trees and power lines all over the place. the house would have to be split into 4 pieces for it to work. This would be extremely expensive. The property 2 lots down would have been perfect, level grade, no trees or power lines in the way, it could have been moved as one piece...damn.

So I had to resign myself to the fact that another beautiful old house would be destroyed. I did however hope to be able to salvage a lot of things from the house including the very cool old windows. You may remember that my windows are the crappy metal frame ones from the 50's. Here's a shot of one of the front windows, it's almost 4' wide and over 7' tall.


The bank vice president said that it shouldn't be a problem for me to take what I wanted but he had to draw up a release form first. I got a call from him a day later that there might be a problem. The contractor that will be handling the demolition has already filed with the EPA in regards to asbestos. now it looks like I wont be able to take ANYTHING. I'm so pissed right now I cant even begin to explain how mad I am.

The contractor is saying that there is asbestos in the windows. At first I thought he was crazy. How could asbestos be in a window, it's friggin wood and glass?!?! After doing a little research I found out that some old types of window caulking have asbestos in it. BUT, from what I gather it was mainly used for commercial applications. Also asbestos caulking is nonfriable so even if it did contain asbestos it's extremely unlikely that it could harm anyone. I highly doubt there is any asbestos in the windows, I think the contractor is just saying that there is asbestos in everything in the house as a blanket statement to cover his ass. It really sucks that I'm probably going to have to sit there and watch them destroy this beautiful house and I wont be able to salvage one thing because everyone is so afraid of the EPA.

Here are a few more pictures of what will soon cease to exist:

Front

Side

Rear

Bathroom with a fireplace!

Stairs

Parlor looking into Dining Room

Bedroom

RIP Anderson House 1906-2007

Fence is done... for now.

I completed the 5 fence panels today. That was just enough to tie in with the existing 6' chain-link fence. I'll finish the rest of the fence sometime in March hopefully.


I cant wait 'til spring when we can get out here and landscape the place, it looks like hell right now.

This next picture shows how little room I had when hanging the dogears. It was worth the trouble to get the fence as close to the existing one as possible.


I tied the new fence into the existing 6' fence with a few 2x4's and dogears as you can see in the pictures below. This is temporary and only to keep the "horse" from getting out.

Back to the fence...

I've had to go back to working on the fence for the past few days because our horse who just so happens to look like a dog has realized that the 4 foot chicken wire and barbwire fence at the back of the property is no obstacle for her.


I only have to build 5 sections to cover it but the new fence is less than a foot from the old one so it's real tight when putting up the dogears.

The large tree behind the fence is a pear tree, at least I think it is. It's mentioned as the property corner in the deed for the lot behind us for the last 100 years. The green leaves all over it is ivy.


I found a lot of pottery and china fragments in this corner when digging for the fence. I'm not sure if they are from the original kitchen from our house or if they are from the old kitchen from the Planters Inn. It seems a bit far back to have been our kitchen. I'm not sure where the kitchen for the old Planters Inn was but it could have been in this area, the old barn was.


I hope to finish this up today and get back to work on the upstairs hall.

Tackling the upstairs hall

My next disaster area to tackle is the upstairs hall. It's now the worst area upstairs now that the nursery is completed.

Here's a quick before shot to get everyone reaquainted:


One of the tasks I accomplished last week was to get the hall lights wired. there are two 3-way switches at the bottom of the stairs: one for the downstairs hall light(haven't wired it yet), the other for the chandelier that will hang upstairs:



Two 3-way switches at the top of the stairs: one for the previously mentioned chandelier, the other for the light at the other end of the upstairs hall(the plaster was so bad in this area that it fell apart when I tried to cut the hole).


And last the other 3-way switch next to the master bedroom door for the upstairs hall light.

Here's a closeup of the box at the top of the stairs. I always make sure to label where the wires come from so there aren't any crossed wires.


Here's the original light switch at the bottom of the stairs:


It was connected to a socket that stuck out of the wall near the top of the stairs and to another switch just like it at the top of the stairs. The knob & tube wiring connecting these had been disconnected long ago thankfully. However I do have two more of these switches in the foyer by the front door. One of them controls the porch light and still works! It has a patent date of 1906 on it.

As you may remember a while back I ripped out the horrible dropped ceiling at the end of the hall at the top of the stairs, I then framed it and started drywalling it. I redesigned it so that the ceiling sloped up to meet the original ceiling giving a lot more headroom. This is where I started back in on it. I finish installing the smaller drywall pieces and began the long task of mudding. For those of you who have not had the pleasure of mudding when sand is mixed in, let me tell you it's a pain in the ass!! The larger pieces of sand always end up catching on the trowel and gouging a huge line through an otherwise nice pass. It takes a lot of time to get it right. then of course sanding it is even worse. Just think sandpaper on sandpaper, that's essentially what it becomes when it drys. I go through a lot of sandpaper when sanding.

Anyways... To be able to finish the area above the stairs I had to build a platform to reach the ceiling.


This thing scares me to death. I'm always sure that my next move is going to send me plummeting down the stairs... fun fun.



This is as far as I've gotten. I'm hoping to finish the first skim coat tonight and start in on scraping all the loose paint off the other end of the hallway ceiling and walls.

Nursery walls are finished!

Another room down! At this rate I should be done some time in the early 22 century...

Anyways some of you may remember what the room looked like originally.



If you look closely in the first picture you may notice the original colors of the room, a light blue below the picture rail and a green above it. I'm pretty sure these are the original colors because the paint is in the skim coat of plaster and not painted on. We decided to try to match these colors. For numerous reasons we've decided to paint all the trim upstairs instead of refinishing it. One being that we dont have time to sand every bit of trim. We really need to hurry and get this done so we can get a conventional mortgage. Even so, it's very hard to paint over all that beautiful heartpine. We still plan on refinishing the downstairs trim though.

I've already posted earlier about all the work it took to scrape and sand the walls and ceilings in this room. Once all the loose paint was scraped and sanded off I patched everything with mud:


I then sanded the walls and ceiling again. Once all that was done I primered the walls, ceiling, and trim.



Next it was finally time to paint. I painted the trim first. It's much easier that way.


Then at last I painted the walls, blue first, then the green.




I cant wait until the floors are refinished! At the last minute I decided to refinish the mantle instead of painting it and I'm really glad I did.



It should look great once I finish stripping it. I still havent decided if I'm going to use poly or shellac on it though. I think poly should be fine, there's plenty of color in it already. Also, I didnt paint the doors because I'm going to refinish them too.

My next task will either be the upstairs hall or guest bedroom #2, I havent decided yet.