My 1905 Kansas Victorian

The "Home Theater"

2007-04-07T12:50:00.000-07:00

Doug started working on the "home theater" (and yes, we always do air quotes when we say those words.) I don't remember what I have posted so here is the room as it was when we moved in. This is the middle upstairs bedroom.

Note the 1970's paneling which has been badly painted and the ugly, unraveling carpet. You can't see in this picture that the ceiling is one of those drop, metal-grid, cardboard tile ceilings. It was quite an ugly room. Just as a reminder, it has double french-doors into Rachel's room, a door into our bedroom, a closet, and three windows besides the door into the hall. Big room but not a lot of free wallspace.

The first step in the redemption of this room was to remove the drop ceiling. It looked like this.

Of course, this is Doug on a ladder taking down the metal grid. It was run to hide all the electrical wires. Note that the paneling didn't go all the way to the ceiling, it was just high enough to be past the metal grid. The paint on the paneling didn't even go that high. Above the paneling you see the original plaster and wallpaper. It seems like I've shown that before but I don't remember. Anyway, most of the ceiling was in good shape. Now we just have electrical wires hanging everywhere.

The next step in our "home theater" journey was to remove the paneling.

It had a brownish/pinkish patterned wallpaper that I could easily see in the hotel of "The Andy Griffith Show". That's what it felt like when we had all the paneling down, like being in an old 1950's hotel and I didn't hate it. Of course, it's coming down but I didn't hate it.

In my next post I'll show you some of the things we saw when all the paneling came down.

Some smaller projects accomplished

2007-03-20T06:16:00.000-07:00

Doug has done several smaller projects over the past few weeks that have helped how we live in this house. My favorite one is changing the stove. This was on my to-do list and while I was visiting my parents one weekend, he did it.

The old stove-a complete piece of junk

I don't know how old this thing was but it seems you could date it in geological periods, rather than decades. I don't know if we ever successfully cooked anything in it, including Thanksgiving dinner, without burning something. Doug cut the stupid thing out and put in the stove that we brought with us. As I have said, a major kitchen remodel is probably at least 5 years away so this sure makes me enjoy the kitchen more for now.

The new stoveThis stove is about 6000 years ahead of the one we were using. It's not new, but it works! What more can one ask of a stove!

Catching Up

2007-02-17T09:38:00.000-08:00

I haven't posted in a couple of weeks for several reasons. Mainly, all work on the house ceased for about a week and a half. I don't know why, you would have to ask Doug. But moving on past that, David was sick for about a week and we dealt with that for a few days. Work has resumed in a much slower fashion than before so let's see what's happened.

Remember this? This was the door of death that opened into the basement stairwell. Very dangerous.

It now looks like his.

Yes, it swings into the hall, like it is supposed to. This definitely turned into an all-day project for Doug because of the way it was installed originally. There was nothing behind the doorjam on the right side. They had just run the sheetrock up to it and put some trim up. He rebuilt that section so that it would be done right. The door is a hideous color and had lots of hooks and locks on it. A lot of the doors in this house have hook and latches that seem unnecessary. It's a little creepy to think what they might have needed to lock in with all these latches.

Work has also proceeded in the TV room. Pictures of that next time.

Update on the temperatures in the house. Kansas is not supposed to have these kinds of winters. We thought we left all that behind when we left Wisconsin. However, we are having one of the coldest winters that people can remember for a long time. If the sun isn't shining, there is no way to get the house above about 65 degrees except in the one room that is insulated which is Rachel's room and our room which is the smallest and has two vents. We are completely use to living in 6 layers of clothes and a blanket. Yesterday, when it was cloudy, I just gave up, turned the downstairs thermostat to 55 and told the family that we are living upstairs until the sun shines again. I covered the openings to the stairways at both ends of the hall upstairs with blankets and we did manage to get it to a comfortable temperature in the bedrooms, tv room and upstairs bathroom. Comfortable meaning about 67. Today the sun is shining and the downstairs is warming up a bit. I can't wait until spring, the season of warm weather and insulating!

Update on the "to-do" list version 2.

1) Repair the hole in the bedroom ceiling-DONE

2) Move the phone cords in kitchen

3) Change the "death trap" door on the basement so that it swings into the hall instead of out over the stairs. -DONE

4) Cut out the built-in stove which is a piece of junk and put in the stove we brought with us. A major kitchen remodel is probably 5 years away.

5) Put a closer on the back door so that it doesn't slam when people go in and out.

6) Put the weatherstripping on the front door.-DONE

Three out of six ain't bad!

It's all about the insulation

2007-01-30T04:06:00.000-08:00

Doug hasn't had a chance to work any more on the TV room but today is his day off so we should see some progress. Another issue has popped up that will be our main focus, however, for the rest of the winter.

Kansas isn't supposed to get winters like this. We were use to this weather in Wisconsin but Kansas isn't supposed to have this. We have had a cold winter with lots of ice and snow that don't want to leave. We saw the results of this in our gas bill yesterday. Not fun!

We have decided that all projects not having to do with stopping air leaks or sealing up the house or reducing energy bills will be put on hold. We've been very diligent about keeping our thermostat low (far below what normal people would tolerate.) We are use to staying wrapped up in blankets as we go through our day. The one exception, of course, is in Rachel's room, not coincidentally, the only insulated room in the house. I suspect the vast majority of my posts over the next few months will be about trying to make a 100-year old house comfortable without losing any historical integrity. Any suggestions for living in a 100 year old house with 21st century fuel prices would be appreciated!

TV room ceiling

2007-01-27T04:15:00.000-08:00

As I previously posted, Doug has taken down the hideous 70's drop ceiling in the TV room. We found a couple of interesting things and one happy surprise.

The plaster on the ceiling definitely had some parts that were falling down but they were not the majority of the ceiling. When the drop ceiling was put in, I believe that the plaster would not have been too difficult to repair but the homeowners chose not to. They either were trying to modernize the house or thought it would help with fuel bills or just wanted a place to run new electrical wire without much work. Whether it helps with fuel bills is debatable from what I've been told. We believe it was the electrical wire that made them put in the drop ceiling because there is a ton of electrical wire running up there.

This was one of five rooms in our house with no overhead lights or lights that could be turned on by a switch. Very annoying to have to cross the room to a lamp for light! Now that we can see the original ceiling, it's obvious there was an overhead light in the room. It was gas. Here's what was left sticking down through the ceiling:

Doug says this is a gas line and there is one electrical wire running down next to it so the original homeowners evidently didn't object to overhead lights.

We found three kinds of wallpaper on the upper walls and ceiling. All through are basically boring brown patterns. Fortunately, we won't need to remove them to execute our current plan for the room. Here you see one type on the ceiling and another type on the top of the wall. The type that is on the ceiling is found everywhere in this house. Someone must have been having a going out of business sale on it. The bottom picture shows the kind that was on the walls before the paneling was put up. Again, a brown boring pattern. Definitely not Victorian!

The best part of the work so far, besides the vastly improved proportions of the room, is that Doug found the wire that connected to the wall switch by the door. Even though we had no light in the room, we did have a wall switch which was very annoying. We tried plugging things into outlets thinking it was one of those switches that control an outlet but it wasn't. When Doug got all the ceiling panels down, there was an electical wire laying there not connected to anything on one end. He put a cheapo light fixture that just holds a bare bulb on that wire. Eureka, we now have an overhead light fixture! It's amazing how being able to turn on a light when you walk in a room can make your day! It's obviously not the end solution but it will work until we can get one of the beautiful art deco light fixtures we want to go with our theme of a Art Deco movie theater.

Projects, projects everywhere

2007-01-25T06:09:00.000-08:00

Well, I said I would show a picture of the basement all cleaned up. Here is the before:

Here is the after:

I will actually walk down here barefooted now! I actually have no parts of my house that gross me out. Yeah! Here is my favorite part of the basement:

Yes, it's a studbay in the ceiling. But it is a studbay NOT filled with lint and cobwebs! (The little gray things in their are marks on the wood, not cobwebs.) I love knowing that every spider and piece of lint in the known universe are not about to descend upon my head. This was actually hours of vacuuming to achieve this. I would eventually like to do this to the floor.

After finishing the cleanup of the basement I moved on to clean up the attic. It is a huge space and we don't have it full by any means. As we have carried stuff up there, however, we have just piled it around the stairs. Doug wants his tool storage up here because it is so easily accessible. I have started organizing and putting up shelves so that things are easily found. Birds were using the attic as a roost for years so there is tons of cleaning to be done but first I need to get the piles up off the floor.

While I started on the attic, Doug began our Next Big Project-the TV room. It began like this:

Now it looks like this:
Doug is taking down the horrible panel ceiling. Tomorrow I'll post what he found as he took the drop-ceiling.

"to-do" list version 2

2007-01-22T06:51:00.000-08:00

Well, I did finish cleaning and vacuuming the basement yesterday. We didn't get the wall around the water heater disassembled. Doug had meetings at church in the afternoon so maybe that will happen tomorrow. I'll post a picture of the basement with all the junk cleaned up on tomorrow's post.

Doug is planning a major project in the TV room starting in February so I am starting a list of small jobs I would like done before that major project starts. I realize that is just a couple of weeks but I hope a few of these can get done. The first two are lingering from the last "to-do" list.

1) Repair the hole in the bedroom ceiling
2) Move the phone cords in kitchen
3) Change the "death trap" door on the basement so that it swings into the hall instead of out over the stairs.
4) Cut out the built-in stove which is a piece of junk and put in the stove we brought with us. A major kitchen remodel is probably 5 years away.
5) Put a closer on the back door so that it doesn't slam when people go in and out.
6) Put the weatherstripping on the front door.

This is a much shorter list than the last one but that is because we are going to start the major project soon. Getting these few things done would make housekeeping easier around here!

A tour of our "dungeon"

2007-01-20T06:09:00.000-08:00

After posting the pictures of the basement stairs, we received a comment from a friend saying it looked like the entrance to a dungeon. Well, yes, frankly, it has a very dungeon-like feel. We admit that freely. My daughter has admitted it very loudly several times when asked to work on the laundry. This is why cleaning it up became one of my priorities this week.

We really didn't take any before pictures because it was just not somewhere we wanted to spend lots of time. I'm still not done cleaning it but have made great progress. Here is a picture of the room you are in when you get to the bottom of the stairs.

The washer and dryer are on the right and the stairs comes down right between them. The heater is on the left propped up on concrete blocks. In between is junk I am trying to work through and either throw away or store in the storage room. The ceilings are about 6'4" (coincidentally, the exact height of my husband.) Some parts have the 12x12 cardboard ceiling tiles but most of that has fallen down. Doug wants it all down so he can see all the electrical and plumbing. The previous owners didn't vent their dryer outside so all the lint was just being thrown into the room. Imagine how disgusting that was! I have spent quite a bit of time vacuuming the ceiling and I'm not quite done yet. Doug, of course, vented the dryer to outside so at least the accumulation of lint is not getting worse.

The hot water heater for the first floor is down here and at some time they had evidently built a little room around it. All the walls except one are gone and that one will probably be gone by the end of today. It is so rotted out at the bottom from standing water that it isn't even touching the floor.

This area was just crammed full of old pipes they had pulled out of the ceiling, rotten wood they had left when they replaced things, trash. I have cleaned it out and vacuumed it out and you can actually stand in this area now without wishing for a hazmat suit. As I said, I believe that wall with the pink door will come out today so that the basement is one big room again. This will help light and air flow immensely.

Here is the storage room. This is the room I put all my time and effort into the last Monday. It's nothing to write home about but compared to what it was it's a palace. The amount of cobwebs, spider webs, trash, vines (growing in through the window), and undescribable stuff I swept off the floor, the ceiling and the walls was amazing. Now we can actually find things in here. Everything is on shelves and up off the floor. My daughter even said that the room looked great when I sent her down to the dungeon to bring up the laundry. High praise indeed!

Something you'll probably wish you'd never seen

2007-01-18T05:30:00.000-08:00

The basement

Unlike the attic, this is a dark, cobwebby, spider-filled space. In fact, we didn't take any before pictures. I spent all day Monday, 6 or 7 hours, trying to clean it out. It is a million times better but this is so much work to do in this space just to get it out of the "disgusting" category. I just tried to get it to the point that I don't balk at going down there because the laundry is down there.

Here are the stairs going down.

Note that the door opens into the stairway. Obviously, against modern building codes. It make going up and down the stairs with baskets of laundry quite difficult. Behind the door is this. It's a window. It's been sided over from the outside. They left the curtains and everything in place, just sided over it. Opening it up would actually help this stairway a lot. There would be light and air circulation for the basement. It's on our long-range "to-do" list.

On the wall opposite the yellow window, there is an section of the wall that looks like it was framed to be a window also. However, it's the back of the kitchen wall and would only look out into this stairwell so we don't know what that is all about. Here is some of the wallpaper that originally decorated this stairway. Only bits and pieces hang on now.

Here is the section that looks like it might have originally been framed for a window. Another old house mystery.

We'll finish our tour down the scary stairs tomorrow.

Here's something you've never seen before

2007-01-15T05:04:00.000-08:00

I don't believe I have given you a tour of our attic. It's actually one of the things that I love about this house. It has a regular stairway leading to it just like it was another living floor (which it may be someday.) I'm so happy not to have a pull-down ladder but a real stairway.

It's also a huge amount of space. Here's what it looked like the day we bought the house.

You can see that it is not the nasty, dark spider-filled space that so many houses have. It has full functioning windows on all four sides. It has complete floorboards. It has lights. Actually, it had one very week flourescent light but Doug and his dad have added several lights and outlets. It's actually a very pleasant space to go into.

Notice that the two chimneys are leaning opposite directions. They were built to do that. I think they make the space very interesting.

I may have posted this picture before when we were discussing insulation but I put it here just to show how much head room there is. Doug is 6'4" so you can see that the ceiling is a nice height over his head. Yes, it slopes but there are only a couple of feet on each side where he can't stand up straight.

This picture is looking from the opposite direction as the first picture. You can see the large windows and the light flooding the space. We have had the air conditioner moved to the side so that it is not in the middle of the floor.
This shows a little of the construction of the attic. The studs that hold up the roof are deliberately curved so that the roof has a little curve instead of a straight slope. Kind of interesting once you realize it. Also, the old sheathing is visible. It's not solid. It seems to be the original sheathing so they have never changed it when they reroofed. You can see the original wood shingles through the sheathing. We don't know how many layers of roofing we have but it's a good guess that we have more than we should. I just hope we don't have to deal with it any time soon.

My little bit of heaven

2007-01-13T05:44:00.000-08:00

OK, so maybe the title is a little dramatic but my finished closet is so much better than any closet I've ever had before. You will remember that we ripped out a old, inefficient, mildrew-ridden closet in the sunroom off our bedroom. Here's what we replaced it with.

If you have a great walk-in closet, this will not impress you. However, if you have a great walk-in closet, you're probably not living in an old Victorian.

Our house was built with closets, one per room. I know some of the homes of our vintage don't even have that. But these closets are very narrow and small. No way they were going to accomodate two people's clothes. That is why someone had put a closet in this sunroom to begin with. This room is only accessed through our bedroom. We haven't decided if we are going to enclose this with some kind of doors but for right now, I'm just thrilled to have neat, useable storage that I can see! Notice, of course, that the floor still needs to be painted because the POs never painted the floors in any closets.

This is a nice size room so as well as being my closet, I have an old dressing table that I am redoing in there. I plan to also have a nice reading chair and lamp. It feels like a private retreat for Doug and I since there is no other access to it.

Yes, this old house is a huge amount of work but the luxury of having enough rooms that you can just use some as a closet-Priceless!

Wallpaper

2007-01-10T04:49:00.000-08:00

Back on November 9, I said that we were starting to rip out the closet in our sunroom which is right off our bedroom. We finished that project before Thanksgiving so I need to post the final pictures. However, what we thought was interesting was how many layers of wall paper we found in that closet. Let me just share them with you.

This is the one type of wallpaper that I would have liked when it was on the wall. It has a beautiful deep maroon color with a very bold leaf pattern.

This was the last layer that was put on. It was the layer we could see.

This is a very weird 50's wallpaper that apparently everyone in town has lurking in their house.

This looks like maybe 30's or 50's wallpaper.

I just can't imagine how this one looked originally.

These were all layered on top of each other in my closet. It was a real voyage of discovery.

Can we visit that "To-Do" list one more time?

2007-01-09T04:51:00.000-08:00

OK, way back when, this list started with 18 things. I'm only going to list that ones that weren't done last time we revisited.

1) Move the phone cords in kitchen
2) Repair the hole in the kitchen ceiling
3) Repair the hole in the bedroom ceiling
8) Reassemble the kitchen ceiling fan
12) Patch the hole in the sunroom wall
17) Hang up a miniblind in David’s room

Wow, my 18 things were down to six. We decided to eliminate number 17. I hate miniblinds! Before Thanksgiving, Doug completed #2,8,and 12. That leaves only #3 and number 1 to be completed! I'm shocked.

That means, actually, that I need to start a new "to-do" list. It's where I keep track of those smaller jobs that are not part of a major project. Our next major project is our TV room but I'll keep a running list of these smaller "to-do's" so they don't get lost in the shuffle. Maybe I'll have that list together by tomorrow.

Another piece of the puzzle

2007-01-08T10:23:00.000-08:00

Our house has been extensively "simplified" or as my husband likes to call it, "dumbed down." We have no pictures of what the outside looked like when it was built. Apparently, according to the lady at the historical society, this was the "wrong side" of Main Street for there to be any interest in the house when it was built. There are pictures of all the houses on the other side of Main Street but nothing on this side. We have been trying to find out what kind of outside decorations there might have been since it is now all clad in aluminum and vinyl.

In the past week we have gotten a couple of clues about the soffits. We had a hole in the siding in one soffit.

You can see it up there in the corner. It let lots of birds into our attic which our cat promptly disposed of. (It was really gross.) Doug and one of our friends closed this up with some leftover siding a couple of days ago. Doug said that it was obvious that all the soffits were originally covered with beadboard. Very interesting! Is this common practice on a Victorian? Anyway, we know that when we start taking off the aluminum, we will restore that feature.

Then yesterday, we heard something metallic fall on the roof when were watching "This Old House." Some more of the aluminum soffit had fallen off in the wind. (We do live in Kansas!) When Doug went up to put it back on, this is what he found.

It would seem that this is the original soffit and it had some time of a decorative bracket on it! This is the kind of discovery that only excites renovaters but it's a thrilling discovery for us. We have no idea how ornate or plain this house was originally and now we will feel that we can eventually add some decorative brackets and they will be in keeping historically with the house! Hallelujah!

What were they thinking?

2007-01-07T16:58:00.000-08:00

Anyone who has worked on a house that has had previous renovations will say that over and over. We say it about our ugly ceilings. I left my last entry saying the ceiling in the office is still a problem. When the plaster started to fail, some PO covered every ceiling available with those cardboard tiles. We found some in the attic so when we needed to repair the ceiling where we had taken out the cabinet in the office, we almost had enough to patch it all. Almost is the key word in that sentence. We ran just short.

You can see the tiny spot above the door where we just ran short of having enough of the hideous cardboard tiles to finish.

We have three different types of these tiles in the house and some popcorn ceilings. All will be redone back to smooth ceilings and raised to their original heights. We have done Rachel's and it's beautiful.

Fresh start

2007-01-05T05:41:00.000-08:00

OK, I know everything slows down over the holidays but I haven't posted in a month and a half! I'm sure everyone has given up on my blog by now. However, even if I am the only one reading it, I am commiting to posting at least every other day because we are doing a lot of work on the house and I do want a record of it.

My last post left everyone hanging because we were just finishing the sheetrock on the wall in the office. We finished that before Thanksgiving so here are some finished pictures.
The finished wall with bookshelves built.

I realize that this probably doesn't look like much of an improvement to most people but the functionality of this room is improved 1000%. The closet that was here was full of mildew, you could only open about 2 feet of it at at time so you lost lots of useable space and couldn't see what you had in there, and the room felt very cave-like because of the big cabinet over the door. It feels huge in this room now. Also, we can actually see and store our homeschooling books efficiently, all my genealogy notebooks are readily accessible and we can store things like the dog food and coolers where they are out of the way but easy to grab.
Two problems left with this room
Problem #1-The floor

I realize this picture is very dark. You're looking at the shadow of where the closet was. The POs (previous owners) painted this floor black right before they put it on the market. It has the same good hardwood that the rest of the house has but they told us they didn't have time to refinish the floors and had seen this suggestion on HGTV. I actually like the look of the painted floor. Only problem is, our construction took it's toll on the finish and they hadn't painted inside the closet. I need to move everything out of here and repaint and repolyurethane the floor. Only one problem, this is computer central. If the kids' computers are out of operation for more than 15 minutes, their heads explode. Oh well, I'd like to get it done before we start another major project. I'll just have to be prepared to clean up their brains when I tell them the computers are out of commission for about 3 days. (Of course, I'll keep posting using Doug's laptop.)

Problem #2-The ceiling
Problem 2 will be dealt with tomorrow because I can't figure out how to get more into a post before Blogger decides my posts are two long. I really need to do some more research into using Blogger.

Playing in the mud

2006-11-14T05:36:00.000-08:00

The wall in the office has had it's third coat of mud. Doug hopes we will be painting it today. He put on three coats of mud.

Another one (starts to) bite the dust

2006-11-09T19:42:00.000-08:00

I know we haven't finished the wall in the office but we are down to taping and mudding which involves a lot of waiting so I decided to start ripping out the closet in the sunroom. Here's the only "before" picture I have of it. It's just to the right of the door in this picture.

There are several reasons that this closet is going. I don't just randomly rip out closets and yet this is the second one in this house that we have destroyed. This one, unlike the one in the office, is going to be rebuilt. One reason that this one is going is because, like the one in the office, it had small doors and therefore, you couldn't see what was in at least half of the closet space.

The other reason involves the tornado that went through here in 2000. This house was hit by the tornado in this back section and the roof was torn off. Water poured in for several days as they had quite a bit of rain after the tornado. The house was reroofed but the homeowners didn't clean up all the damage from the water. The back of this closet is in terrible shape.
Water damage

Mold and Mildew

Layers of peeling wallpaper

This should have been cleaned up right after the tornado but it wasn't so we're doing it six years later.

A little sheetrock is a wonderful thing

2006-11-08T04:30:00.000-08:00

I said that I thought we could sheetrock yesterday and it actually happened! Actually, Doug and our friend Bill sheetrocked. I spent all afternoon raking and cleaning up the back yard. Anyway, here are the "in-progress" pictures.

Sheetrock can make a room look so finished. I know that it's still several days away from painting because of the taping and mudding but it's such a step forward.

The "To-Do" List revisited

2006-11-07T09:07:00.000-08:00

OK, just a little accountability for what I said that we would do this fall. We seem to have done everything except what is on this list.

1) Move the phone cords in kitchen-STILL NOT DONE

2) Repair the hole in the kitchen ceiling-STILL NOT DONE (but definitely on the short list)

3) Repair the hole in the bedroom ceiling-STILL NOT DONE

4) Put in more electrical outlets for office-DONE! There are now 6 new outlets in the office.

5) Put up the face plates in guest room-DONE!

6) Run the electrical to air conditioner-DONE! And we have the heating hooked up and working as well!

7) Put in the plexiglass panel for screen door-DONE!

8) Reassemble the kitchen ceiling fan-STILL NOT DONE (but definitely on the short list)

9) Put in the glass for guest room French door-DONE! Doug did this a couple of weeks ago. It looks great!

10) Get a screen panel for the back screen door-DONE!

11) Shave off the door of the sunroom-DONE! and Doug fixed the latch so the door will actually latch and stay closed

12) Patch the hole in the sunroom wall-NOT DONE (and not on Doug's radar)

13) Put a longer coaxial cord on the tivos so we can move them-DONE!

14) Assemble David’s bed-DONE!

15) Build a bed frame for our bed-DONE Actually we got a frame for our bed from the Labette Freecycle list. I love getting things for free!

16) Get the dining room table and other furniture out of storage-DONE!

17) Hang up a miniblind in David’s room-NOT DONE I really think we have decided against this so it will probably come off the list

18) Cover the french doors in Rachel's room-DONE!

So 7 out of 18 are still not done. 2 will definitely be done before Thanksgiving, one will probably come off the list so it is there is light at the end of the tunnel.

Destruction continues

2006-10-23T04:31:00.000-07:00

It's been quite a while since I posted anything but getting this closet out of the room became a major battle. This closet was designed to NEVER come out of this room. The people who built it nailed in every single board from every single direction possible. I spent all day one Saturday tearing out this thing but honestly, sometimes a single 2X4 took me 45 minutes.

When it finally did come out, it revealed all kinds of bad wiring hidden behind it. There was knob and tube, there were wires running into the breaker box that weren't attached to anything. There were wires that they started to run to the ceiling fan and then decided not to, but left the wires there.

Doug has redone and cleaned up the wiring. This took SEVERAL days. He had to fish wires through the ceiling, he had to take down ceiling tiles in the kitchen to find out where things are coming from. He had to rewire the switches in the room and in the process he added three more outlets. That is a total of six outlets he has added to this room since we moved in. Again, if you live in an old house, you know how important that is. We think we are finally ready to begin sheetrocking today.

This was supposed to be a quick project, just rip out the closet and add some bookshelves to the wall. Needless to say, no such thing as a quick project. However, the room feels so much bigger with the stupid, inefficient closet gone, Doug is really happy with the cleaned up wiring, and we might even finish it this week! Don't hold your breath.

And a new project begins

2006-10-17T06:52:00.000-07:00

Since we have officially "finished" Rachel's room, I started a new project. This is essentially my project because Doug doesn't care too much about it and he has some other things he wants to do. I'm ripping out a closet and some cabinets in the office. I know for most people it is a capital offense to rip out closets but this one is very ugly and inefficient and lack of storage isn't a problem for us. I only have one "before" picture because this particular storage area was so ugly we didn't photograph it.

We don't need a closet here, especially one where a lot of it is inaccessable because the doors don't open very wide. We need shelves so that is what we are going to replace this closet with.

There was a big cabinet over the door that leads from the office into the kitchen. It was so high that even Doug had to use a ladder to get things out of it. Someone said, "You can store things that you don't need up there." I'm not even going to answer that comment. The other problem with this cabinet was that it made the entrance to the office feel like a cave. Now it's gone and it looks like this over the door.

There was a 2X4 as a header for this cabinet. I was standing on a ladder, knocking on end of it loose and the whole thing came down, smacking me right in the face. Not fun! Teaching that DIY, like swimming, is something not to do alone. Fortunately, I didn't fall off the ladder but I did sustain a wound on my nose and an knot on my head. Notice also, that there is mold or mildew on the ceiling. I'm sure that is from the tornado damage when the roof wasn't covered for several days. A lot of rain came in this back section. The previous owners didn't clean it up so now I will be. It is only in the paint, though, not in the plaster so I can scrape the paint off and it should be clean.

Grand finale

2006-10-13T13:50:00.000-07:00

This should be the last post for some time about Rachel's room. We are calling it done even though there are still several issues to address. They won't be addressed for a month or two so she is moved back in and we are saying we finished it. Here are a few shots of the "finished" room.

The floor, as you can see, is the biggest unfinished issue. We'll probably get a carpet remnant for now because we don't want to rent the floor sander until we have several rooms to do. The room is big enough that a lot of floor shows. The room is 15'x16'. Here's another picture of the floor. The center had never, in 100 years, been finished.

She wanted the "retro" look so the closet door got sent to the attic and the door beads came out. They actually look very nice.

She has real curtains over the french doors to the TV room. She also likes her fuzzy pink lamp. This room is definitely not Victorian but it fits Rachel. When she leaves for college we can change the ambiance but right now, it's kind of fun to have a teen-age girl.

Up Close and Personal...

2006-10-09T05:53:00.000-07:00

...with our trim! The house had beautiful wood trim when built. Some of it is still here, enough to recreate what is missing. Strange things have been done with some of it. We'll see how many pictures blogger lets me put up. Here is what the original downstairs trim should look like.
This is a stairway window.

Here is a closeup of the actual profile. I believe this pattern is called "egg and dart."

Instead of this beautiful trim all over the downstairs, we get things like this:

Evidently, they just took off the beautiful top cap, probably to "modernize" or "update." (I know it's hard to see because everything was just painted white.)
The one below is a doozy. They evidently took off all the woodwork over the window and just put up a board that was the right height but didn't even bother to cut it off to the right length.

Here is the door to the downstairs bathroom. Just plain old narrow modern trim. What where they thinking!

Tomorrow I'll either have pictures of our upstairs trim or Rachel's virtually completed bedroom. Tune in tomorrow to find out!

Sorry, sorry, sorry!

2006-10-01T20:46:00.000-07:00

We've been working so much on Rachel's room that we haven't been posting about Rachel's room! Sorry, sorry, sorry!

Here's where we are.

We have the ceiling and walls painted, the trim back up and the carpet pulled. You can see that the walls are a fairly bright blue and the closet and ceiling are light purple. The trim is light blue. This will actually match Rachel's new bedding beautifully.

The floor is a little curious to us. The very center has apparently, in 100 years, never been stained or finished. Evidently, there has always been a rug in the middle. Around the edges and in the closet, there is a beautiful rich red stain. This was probably the original finish. This is what I would like it to return to eventually. Around the edges, there is some strange gray tacky stuff. We don't know if some old carpet was glued down or what. Getting this off will be interesting. For now, we will be happy to just get the tackiness off and buy a carpet remnant for the center. We will refinish the floor when we have several rooms ready to do at the same time.

Here is her door into the hall. I don't know if I've ever showed this angle before. This room is now so light compared to when we moved in. It's going to be a great teen-age girl's room.

Slow down

2006-09-01T13:29:00.000-07:00

Progress on Rachel's room has slowed to a crawl as Doug and two of the men from our church (both elders, no less) have been finishing the insulation and working on another house for the daughter of one of the men.

They rented a machine and blew fiberglass insulation down into the walls of the first floor under those two walls we opened in Rachel's room. Since there was nothing blocking the view all the way to the bottom, it seemed like a good chance to get some insulation into those walls that we won't be opening for a couple of years. They also took up a number of the floorboards in the attic (which is a huge space) and blew the fiberglass in there also. It was a day and a half project.

Thad and the insulation machine

Insulation going down from Rachel's room into the walls of the room below

Doug insulating the attic

Some of the floorboards moved and insulation blown in

Now Doug is returning the favor from one of our helpers by helping him at his daughter's house. They had to cut back some branches from her roof and, starting today, will be reroofing the house. It is a small house with a fairly shallow slope so they think it will move quickly.

Doug is planning to pick up the sheetrock for Rachel's walls this afternoon and maybe get starting hanging it when it get too dark to roof. I'll get a picture if the work gets started.

Great Stuff!

2006-08-28T06:38:00.000-07:00

We've been slowly recreating Rachel's room after gutting it. Doug has been insulating and his new best friend is "Great Stuff," that expanding foam insulation. He has filled every single little gap he can find with the stuff.

I think he has used about 10 cans in her room but I don't believe that we will have to worry about drafts. He is putting up R-13 fiberglass batting in the stud bays. After filling the stud bays with batting he will be putting up a plastic vapor barriar because there isn't any on the outside.

He is also going to blow insulation into the walls of the room below (the living room) while these walls are still open. In a few years we will be ripping those walls out and putting in batting but for the few years until then, he wants some semblance of insulation in the walls.

On Saturday, Doug and one of our elders, Bill, were able to get the sheetrock for the ceiling up and start to make it look like a room again. They rented a sheetrock lift which is the only way to go for putting sheetrock on a ceiling. It's starting to look great!

Down to bare walls

2006-08-17T06:16:00.000-07:00

We have finished getting all the lath and plaster and acoustical tiles out of Rachel's room and out of the house. Doug carried the last of it to the alley for the garbage men to pick up. They are great about picking up anything we put out here. They even came in our yard with Doug and helped him carry some very heavy bags out. Quite a change from our garbage men in Wisconsin.

One of our elders (we have the best elders here) came over last night and worked for several hours with Doug. He pulled all the staples out of the furring on the ceiling so that we will be ready to sheetrock the ceiling. He took down the trim around the second window, helped Doug with some of the electrical work he was doing and helped clean up. Doug put a light in Rachel's closet and worked on some of the electrical outlets. On the two remaining walls, there is a little bit of the wallpaper border to remove. Then it's insulation and sheetrock! Yeah!

This photo is looking down in the stud bays from Rachel's room to the first floor. Obviously, we have balloon framing and there was never anything put in the bays to stop movement of air, and thus potentially fire, between the floors. We will have to correct that before we insulate.

I know I said that we were going to complete the small projects on the list I made before we started another major project. Obviously, we didn't do that but we are still whittling away at the list. We did get a bedframe for our bed so our list of small projects is down to:

1) Move the phone cords in kitchen
2) Repair the hole in the kitchen ceiling
3) Repair the hole in the bedroom ceiling
8) Reassemble the kitchen ceiling fan
9) Put in the glass for guest room French door
12) Patch the hole in the sunroom wall
17) Hang up a miniblind in David’s room

Not bad! It was originally 18 projects down to 7. We have the glass for the guest room door so it's just a matter now of Doug finding time to put it in.

We don't need no stinkin' insulation

2006-08-16T04:53:00.000-07:00

We told Rachel that we would redecorate her bedroom for her birthday. She thought that meant a new bedspread and some paint. Little did she know! We have now removed all the lath and plaster from her walls and the acoustical panels (yuck, yuck, yuck!) from her ceiling. Her room started like this.
It was a dark maroon with a border around the top that had a baseball theme. It had kind of filmy, dark maroon curtains. The carpet is a browny-orange.

Since we started the remodel, her room looks like this.
Walls:

The amount of insulation you see is the amount of insulation we have. In other words, absolutely none. Not one tiny iota of insulation. Therefore, we are now the proud owners of seven rolls of insulation all primed to go into these walls. We also bought several great cans of Great Stuff to fill the huge amounts of gaps in the walls. The construction looks very solid and straight so that is nice to see but I can't wait to see what insulation is going to do to the temperature and noise in her room.

Ceiling:

We will be drywalling the walls and ceiling. The ceiling was dropped just enough to run the electrical wires. They could have easily been run through the attic but they chose to fur down the ceiling enough to run them and then put up the cardboard acoustical panels. They ruined the plaster ceiling in the process. We would much prefer to have kept and repaired the plaster. The complete lack of insulation and the ruined ceiling made that impossible.

How's that list coming?

2006-08-08T06:18:00.000-07:00

I posted a list of the small things we would like to accomplish before we start on another big project. Here's the list again.

1) Move the phone cords in kitchen-NOT DONE
2) Repair the hole in the kitchen ceiling-NOT DONE
3) Repair the hole in the bedroom ceiling-NOT DONE
4) Put in more electrical outlets for office-DONE! These may not seem like a big deal until you've lived in an old house where there was only one outlet per room.

5) Put up the face plates in guest room-DONE!
6) Run the electrical to air conditioner-DONE! We had had a extension cord running from the attic to the outlet in Rachel's room to run the pump on the air conditioner.
7) Put in the plexiglass panel for screen door-DONE!
8) Reassemble the kitchen ceiling fan-NOT DONE
9) Put in the glass for guest room French door-NOT DONE
10) Get a screen panel for the back screen door-DONE!
11) Shave off the door of the sunroom-DONE!
12) Patch the hole in the sunroom wall-NOT DONE
13) Put a longer coaxial cord on the tivos so we can move them-DONE!
14) Assemble David’s bed-DONE!

15) Build a bed frame for our bed-NOT DONE
16) Get the dining room table and other furniture out of storage-DONE!

17) Hang up a miniblind in David’s room-NOT DONE
18) Cover the french doors in Rachel's room-DONE!

Doorknobs, anyone?

2006-08-04T14:34:00.000-07:00

We are back from our trip to Colorado. We got lost in northern Utah which wasn't a state we had actually planned on visiting. Anyway, we're back, we're done with our week of VBS and ready to settle down to a school routine.

One of the things I have found interesting in this house are the doorknobs. The doorknobs are fairly flat in front and these almost all have those fancy things behind them which may be called escutchions. Anyway, except for our blatently new doors, all the doors have one of these ornate things. Mostly of them look like this, just a little scrollwork at the top. Because these are the most prevelant, I think they must have been the originals.

The second most common set up is this...I think that this was the cheaper replacement used when the originals had to be replaced for whatever reason.

Here are the other types to be found in our house.

Well, there is more than you ever wanted to know about the doorknobs in our house!

What to do next?

2006-07-12T08:42:00.000-07:00

We've gotten to put our newly painted guest room to good use. Keith Allen, known to anyone who has been to Silver Dollar City as the Rednecker, and his wife stayed with us Sunday night. Very interesting guy! We definitely enjoyed having them stay and they said they really enjoyed our enormous claw-footed bathtub. Last night our youth minister and his wife and daughter spent the night. They had other accomodations that fell through so we were really happy to have a dedicated guest room that we could share on the spur of the moment. I always wanted a separate guest room with it's own bathroom and now we actually have a house big enough to have one.

We are leaving for Denver for our nephew Justin's wedding tomorrow. What do we start on when we get back? Do we hit that list of small but annoying things that need to be done? Do we start another large project such as the office so that it will be ready when we start school in August? Do we go in and do the other projects in the guest room such as the ceiling, the woodwork, the floors? I think Doug is voting for cleaning up the list of small but annoying things that need to be done. There are about 20 things on that list like moving phone lines and installing electrical outlets. You can get some fairly instant gratification out of those projects. I think that is what we'll do next.

Here's our list of small but annoying things that need to be done
1) Move the phone cords in kitchen
2) Repair the hole in the kitchen ceiling
3) Repair the hole in the bedroom ceiling
4) Put in more electrical outlets for office
5) Put up the face plates in guest room
6) Run the electrical to air conditioner
7) Put in the plexiglass panel for screen door
8) Reassemble the kitchen ceiling fan
9) Put in the glass for guest room French door
10) Get a screen panel for the back screen door
11) Shave off the door of the sunroom
12) Patch the hole in the sunroom wall
13) Put a longer coaxial cord on the tivos so we can move them where we want them
14) Assemble David’s bed
15) Build a bed frame for our bed
16) Get the dining room table and other furniture out of storage
17) Hang up a miniblind in David’s room
18) Cover the french doors in Rachel's room

If we completed this list the quality of everyday life would go up around here so I think we will hit this list when we get back from Denver.

The prep is the thing

2006-07-09T13:35:00.000-07:00

Well, our initial work in the guest room is finished. I won't say the guest room is finished because there is still the ceiling, the floor, the trim, the windows, etc. but we have finished the walls for now. I love the result.

Ok, here's the story. We removed four layers of wallpaper and a layer of paint. We washed the walls extensively the remove the buildup of adhesive or something that was bright red off the walls. We patched all the holes (probably 200) with spackling. Doug skimcoated the walls with plaster. We sanded the skimcoat. We taped the woodwork because I am a sloppy painter. Then we primed. We figure we had about 40 hours of work in the room before the first coat of paint went on. I'm really proud of how smooth the walls are now. Here are the walls before paint. Doug, David and I all worked on this.

Now with paint. The gold is a very rich gold but seems to come out yellow in the pictures. I'm really happy with the way this project has turned out. And not a minute too soon because we are having company stay in this room tonight.

Pictures of guest room walls in transition

2006-07-06T08:01:00.000-07:00

Here are the pictures of the starting-to-be-repaired walls that didn't fit in the last post.

How to destroy a perfectly good bedroom

2006-07-06T07:39:00.000-07:00

I decided that the guest room needed to be the first major project that I would attack. Doug contends that getting the air conditioning hooked up was a major project and I agree but I really didn't have anything to do with that so my first major project is the guest room. It has plaster walls which had at least 4 layers of wallpaper and a couple layers of paint. The room started out like this, a perfectly nice room if you didn't look at the walls too closely. Every seam and crack in the wallpaper were obvious if you looked closely.

The wallpaper was really dry and the majority of the actual paper came off in large pieces without having to apply any kind of moisture or solution to it. It went really well for a while. When we got to the bottom layer, something else appeared. I still don't know what it is. It was a thick red stuff on about 3/4 of the wall surface that had to be washed off with water. There was some brown stuff that had to be washed off but nothing like this thick red stuff. I'm assuming it was a combination of the wallpaper paste and the backing of the first wallpaper that had been on for 100 years. It was probably, literally, 8 hours worth of work to get this red stuff off.

After cleaning that red stuff off the walls for what seemed like forever, I started patching the millions of nail holes with lightweight spackling. That worked well for the regular nail holes. There were a couple of good size cracks that Doug decided to patch with actually patching plaster. As he worked on this, he came to a realization that he would rather just put a skimcoat over the entire surface of the walls. He decided that since we had put so much time into these walls, he wants them to look really good so he used what he had on hand last night and will finish up tonight after buying some more. Then we can prime and paint. These walls should look good. Pictures of the starting-to-be patched walls in the next post.

Small (miniscule) signs of progress

2006-07-03T09:02:00.000-07:00

We're back from our convention in Louisville and need to get to work on the house for a few days before we leave for our nephew's wedding in Denver. Here are the few things we've been able to accomplish so far.

One of our bedroom doors was missing. All the doors in the house are 5-horizontal panal doors so we wanted to match that style. We were lucky enough to find one at the local "antique" (junk) shop for $15.00. Not a bad price for a solid wood door! Anyway, as you can see, Doug and I are now officially room 14.

We have removed the wallpaper border that was in the living and dining room. It was practically falling off by itself and definitely not our style. I'm anxious to get some paint on the walls of our white box living room.

I took the screen door off the front door because it was just ugly and was hiding what we believe was an original front door to the house. Obviously, those strange sidelights were not original.

We took out the cabinet in the room off the living room that was blocking access to the front stairs. We believe the wall was completely open originally to show off the stairs and we will get to that eventually. Right now we are just glad we can get to the stairs without going outside. As you can see, this is the room we are keeping all unopened boxes in until we find time to open them. It's amazing to have a room that we don't actually "need" for any productive use at this time.

We've done a lot of things that don't show up in pictures like getting the air conditioning running on the second floor. That was essential. I'm in the middle now of destroying the guest bedroom. I'll put some pictures of the destruction up tomorrow and some pictures of our cat's latest adventure in home renovation.

An upstairs tour Part two

2006-06-25T16:38:00.000-07:00

From the "media room" to Rachel's room there are double French doors because who wouldn't want everyone in the house to be able to watch you sleep? Rachel's room is dark maroon at the moment.

David's room

This we call the "Cowboy Room." It has very cute but very peeling cowboy wallpaper. We will use it for the gamecube and such but right now it's just one of those "extra" rooms we have right now holding boxes we haven't unpacked.

Well, I haven't shown you the attic or the basement but we'll leave those delights for another time. I'll be gone for a week so when I get back I'll post some pictures of what we've done so far.

An upstairs tour

2006-06-25T15:57:00.000-07:00

In my last post I left everyone in the kitchen so here we are at the bottom of the back stairway ready to go up to the second floor. This is the stairway that the previous owners were using because the front main stairway was blocked off.

First we come to the upstairs bath with lovely carpet on the floor. It is a nice size for a bathroom but that carpet has got to go!

The next room is the one that we will use for our bedroom. Apparently it was an apartment at one time. The sink will be going even though Doug suggested keeping it.

Next is a large bedroom that connects to our room and Rachel's room as well as the hall. The previous owners were using it as a TV room and so will we. We grandly call it our "media room". And, yes, we do air quotes every time we say "media room."

I'm new to blogger and don't seem to be able to post any more pictures in this post so I'll continue with "An upstairs tour Part Two."

A downstairs tour

2006-06-23T06:15:00.000-07:00

The living room

The room off the living room-the main stairway is behind that ugly cabinet. It has been closed off for years.

The dining room

The guest room

Downstairs bathroom

Kitchen

Room off the back of the kitchen-maybe originally a porch, we will use it as an office

Tomorrow we will tour the second floor.

A brief tour of our new house

2006-06-21T10:55:00.000-07:00

Ok, so we closed on the house, starting moving things in and then I left for a week to see my neice graduate from high school (a great homeschool graduation) in Montrose, Colorado. Congratulations Becky!

Now I'm home for about a week until we leave for a convention in Louisville. We have done a couple of minor things to start the restoration but I will use the next couple of posts to give anyone who is interested a tour of MY old house.

You will quickly see that it's a bit rough around the edges but we love it and are anxious to get started. As you can see, most of the original outside features have been "simplified" by the acres and acres of aluminum and vinyl siding (yes, there is a mix). We have had several people tell us how lucky we are that the house has siding and not wooden clapboards! Obviously, not restoration enthusiasts.

There are two large windows and 2 doors that are completely covered by siding and can't be seen from the outside but are still completely there on the inside.

The front

East Side

Back

West side (impossible to get a view of the whole west side due to a nearby fence)

Finally!

2006-05-27T16:13:00.000-07:00

On Tuesday, we will be closing on this old Victorian. Most of the outside Victorian details have been "simplified" over the years but quite a few still exist inside. We are very excited to get to living in and working on this old house. In it's current configuration it has six bedrooms, 2 full baths, kitchen, living room, dining room, breakfast room, partial utility basement, sun room, "extra" room (don't know exactly what it was meant to be), and a full attic. We can't wait until Tuesday at 10:30!

Getting started

2006-05-13T07:01:00.000-07:00

This is my first attempt at a blog. I have really enjoyed the houseblogs that many owners of old houses are posting so I would like to try to document our house adventures as well. We haven't actually closed on our old house yet. It is a 1905 Victorian that needs extensive restoration. As soon as we actually close on it, I will start documenting progress. This was only a test.