Marathon Remodel and a Do-Over

Yikes! I had forgotten how "special" this bathroom was when we moved into our old farmhouse. We rarely used it for almost two years because the entire third floor was empty, a no-man's land. Well, actually, the third floor was "tied up in other projects."



The grooviest (and funkiest) kitchen a girl could ever hope to have.



Our first priority after we bought our 200 year old farmhouse was to work on the kitchen. What you don't see here is the "pantry" to the right with a plastic pull up window blind for its door and a free-standing heater that was vented directly out through the wall above a sliding glas door. Vented, I might add, with drier vent. Nor do you see the avocado green refrigerator to the left and the matching stove we had already taken out that was- not kidding- 18 inches wide. This room too is a story all its own but in the process of trying to get the kitchen done, we ended up with the third floor all ripped up in order to run water and heating to the kitchen. My huband's viewpoint was that since we had to run copper pipes to the kitchen we may as well do it all at once. Since the pressure tank for the well system was, for some reason, on the third floor we ended up moving that as well so we worked on the third floor and the first floor at the same time.



The third floor bedroom, our Master Suite in the making.



And sure enough, when we lifted floor boards on the third floor to run pipe, we found water damage from leaky windows. We traced it back to the source and fixed it, at additional time and expense. Of course. It was a pattern that quickly established itself in our home: start one project and you never know what else you'll discover and have to fix. It's the reason we haven't replaced the siding on our house. We know that there are already two layers of siding on the entire house and the back side, the weather side, has three layers. Besides the fact that the last layer on the outside is that old asbestos cement board that has to be removed with abatement procedures (just say "money pit"), we're afraid of what we might discover if we start ripping off siding.

Anyway...

We finally made it to working on the third floor bath. People occasionally ask us if we ever found the treasure of the old man who lived here and sadly we have not. However, at the end of the closet was a hole through the plaster to the area under the rafters where we found a blue fur coat with orange satin lining and a newspaper. I would have worn the very cool coat had the mice not found it first and the newspaper was from the day before Kennedy was shot. We would have also kept the newspaper but time had found it as well and it crumbled away as we looked through it though we were being as careful as possible.

First priority in the bath was a shower-tub. The closet was very narrow, too narrow in fact to put shelves up and still be able to squeeze in, so we opened the wall between it and the bath and used that space for a shower-tub. Did I mention that by this time I was pregnant with our Zippy? I helped carry that tub surround up three flights of stairs when I was five months along. Maybe not wise but I think that Big 'Un actually carried most of it by himself.

Anyway... again....

How did it turn out? First edition looked like this ...

The scheme was all based on the shower curtain I had ordered from Coldwater Creek. I really liked the way it came out and like it all over again when I see these pictures. But, after 16years here, I got started "re-working" some of the colors in the house. The new bedroom (still in progress, of course) began clashing with the bathroom so off to the paint store I went. That's mostly all I did the second time around was paint because I didn't want to get into spending tons of money and I loved the shower curtain. Painted the walls and wainscot, painted the vanity. I was going to paint the wooden towels bars as well but then I started thinking that maybe the paint would eventually begin to peel from the damp towels so we replaced those also. Oh, and I "antiqued" the gold mirror frame. But for the cost of a couple gallons of paint and some hardware, I think I came out OK the second time.

I hope you can see the blue walls- clear and pastel, no gray in it at all.

Remember how I didn't want to get rid of the previous shower curtain because I loved it so much? Well, after all was done and over with, I found this sweet embroidered curtain at TJMaxx. Some things were just meant to be.



I replaced the green leaf dish on the vanity with this little bowl I made at a local pottery shop.
The paint job is sort of wobbly but the tip on the paint bottle and I weren't getting along that day. Oh well, it is well.



Maybe you noticed we have an atrium door to the bathroom. I love atrium doors and two of the baths in our house have them. I covered the glass with a frosted privacy film so that we still get light but not sight. There is an odd triangular "vestibule" outside of our master bath and it can be sort of dark. Not really because we have huge windows just around that corner but that's how I marketed it to Big 'Un when we were door shopping. Anyway... 

I drew blossoms to match (sort of ) the blossoms on the shower curtain on the glass side of the upper right quadrant of the door and cut the frosted film off of the other side of the door with an exacto knife. This was actually kind of tricky and not at all like cutting paper. The end result looks somewhat like woodcut prints but I'm OK with that look. It's a very subtle effect and that's fine as well. Perhaps I could cut out blossoms from some of the leftover film and apply it on top of the film that is already applied to the glass for more of a dimensional look. Hmmm.....

Even though our house is close to the road, we are fortunate to live out in the country so we can get away with no curtains on the window. One of my small pleasures is observing the reflection of the big maple out front in the mirror. I like how those big old branches change from one season to the next.

So there it is-- the final remodel for our Master Bath.

Maybe...

(Hey- I'm thrilled you visited me today. Stop by again in a couple of days and we'll get busy with some great old home cookin')

Today's butterfly pic- from my personal collection.

Sixteen Years of More or Less Steady Work. Sometimes Less.



March 1996



(I know I said we would cook something up with my next post but I've been reminiscing. Food to come, promise.)

Sixteen years ago this month we moved into our house. We had experienced one set back after another in our search for a house and so by the time we looked at this one, Big 'Un and I were hesitant to admit to each  other how much we liked it. When we came up the stairs from the first floor and I turned around and saw the stairs to the third floor, complete with what we now call our mezzanine, my eyes were literally dazzled. I swear the air sparkled for me. But I held back and didn't start planning furniture placement. Nor did my husband begin planning his man-cave in the garage basement. We just didn't want to give in to loving it too quickly only to have to deal with another disappointment.



Even when our offer was accepted without a count-offer, we still held our breath. Sure enough, questions about a lien came up on the title search and we braced for heartbreak. I remember standing in the kitchen of my little house where we lived after getting married, telling my husband that I was moving on March 8th no matter what and there had better be a house in our name somewhere. As if that would clear the title. But March 7th rolled around and we found ourselves at the bank, signing on the dotted line. The widow we bought the house from told us that that day, March 7th, was three years to the day since her husband had passed away. I didn't tell her, since she didn't recognize me, but I had actually cared for her husband during one of his hospitalizations. That had been about a year before Big 'Un and I got married.

Anyway, I've written before about working on our old farmhouse (here, here, and here for a few instances). It's the house flip that never ends. The never-ending flip. The flip from hell. The flippin' flippity flip flip flip. But I disgress...


It was colder than snot on moving day- minus 8 degrees farenheit (-22 celsius for my metric butterflies) but sunny and clear and crispy. We had gotten snow the couple of days before so we had big dropcloths around to protect the carpet from tracked in snow as we dragged in furniture and boxes. What a joke- that was the last time we put down dropcloths to protect the carpet. Once we started in working on the house and really assessed the state of the floor coverings, the carpet became just one big dropcloth while we worked on other things. But anyway, we had lots of folks to help out on our moving day. We rented a truck but don't know why because my father-in-law brought his stock trailer. He had gone out the day before, in the bitter bitter cold, and sprayed out and scrubbed down his stock trailer to use for our move. What a guy. Sorry U-Haul but Pappy wins for any future moves.

Our moms spent the afternoon putting together the bed, even managing to find sheets, so we had an actual bed to sleep in that first night instead of the sleeping bags we were planning to use. Isn't that just like a couple of moms? They're great.


So we've been working on this very old house for 16 years. The house still had the nozzles in some of the walls for the original gas lights and we later discovered, during some walling tearing out projects, that the old tube and stop wiring was still in place from when the the house was first wired for electric (our re-wiring was the third). We used to say that we wanted to bring it into the current century before it was over but Y2K came and went and we're still pecking away at it. We did have about a three year lull when Zippy came along- it was just so much more fun to play with her than rip out plaster. She has, however, been able to finish dry wall since she was four years old. Now we're down to a very manageable punch list. We have odds and ends things, generally minor though I do have one room that I would like to re-paint. But overall the really big projects like replacing windows, re-wiring, new heater, new roof, moving walls, and so forth are done. And we re-did bathrooms.  There was one full bath and two half baths in the house when we moved in and now we have two full baths and a half bath. Each one was its own adventure.

This is the bath on the third floor, which is now The Master Floor. Sink and toilet, plastic faux-marble wall paneling with striped wall paper and some very groovy but gross blue carpet. Wouldn't you have re-done this room ASAP? We did, though ASAP turned out to be a couple of years  and one baby later, and now it's been re-done a second time since then. And that, my butterfly friends, is the story for next time.

Thanks for peaking in on me and I'll be back in a couple days to show you how this bathroom came out.

Have a great day!

So What About The Bowl?



We found this lamp in one of the (now burned to ashes) sheds after we bought our old farm place. I know nothing about milk glass other than it comes in other colors besides white and sometimes has hobnails. Our lamp is wired for electric so I'm not going to go out on a limb and call it a rare, very old piece other than the previous owners of our farmhouse seemed to have been pack-rats collectors of American Stuff and I'm sure it's old. Just not Valuable Old- maybe 1950's.  I did find one exactly like it on ebay with an asking prices of $30.

Image via ebay

There is a tiny row of hobnail at the top of the shade but the lamp has the feel of a mass-produced item. There are no maker's marks on the lamp. There are no chips or cracks but I did- gasp- spray paint the brass because, well, it was rusty and ugly and I wanted to spray it. The lamp casts a nice soft light when turned on, especially with a 15-watt bulb. My husband is not a read in bed kind of guy (too bad for him) so we rarely turn it on.

I've never been particularly drawn to milk glass other than to know that it's different and sort of nice and seems like all of my older friends and family had it in their homes when I was growing up. So I thought it was for old people. Isn't that funny, because now my professional field is Gerontology....   But like I say, it was never anything special to me. Take or leave it. There is this photo, however....



Image via iNetGiant


Now that's a pretty lamp.



So the thing with our bowl lamp is, what about the bowl? It has been receptacle to the baseball that my husband caught off an Andy Van Slyke homer at a Pirates game years ago but other than that.... what? Does anyone know what is supposed to go in the bowl? I did see a photo once of one with plastic flowers in the bowl but plastic flowers aren't really my go-to decor choice. Our bedroom is currently decorated in Late Hodge-Podge: both of our childhood dressers (painted a matching field green), a treadle sewing machine that belonged to my husband's grandmother, complete with drawers of sewing notions and all the accessories, and the bed but no head board just a Chinese worker shirt hanging on the wall that my folks brought back for Big Un. It never fit him- the Chinese seamstress who was suppose to custom make the shirt for my husband refused to believe that any human actually had those measurements. Guess there aren't that many 6'6" Chinese folks with the wingspan of a Condor.

Any ideas or suggestions- seashells, ribbons, pine cones, Hershey's Kisses? Because since we think we have decided to stay here maybe two more years, I will soon be putting The Master Bedroom Master Plan into action.

Please, because Zippy is the only one who has come up with anything so far.

Lamp Shade Graffiti

I was messing around in the Family Waiting Area at work the other day-- just straightening things up so it would look nice. It's not a fancy little room but it's a good place for families to have some quiet and privacy. Or a quick nap.

Anyway, I was sorting and stacking the magazines on the end tables when I noticed one of the lampshades.

Someone had drawn a design over the entire surface of the shade with a blue ballpoint pen.

I suspect this is where he or she started. The panel to the left of "Love", maybe you can make it out, says "God". The rest of the panels are just the abstract, tribal looking design- all eight sides. I was just incredulous. It's one thing to sit in a public waiting room, bored out of your mind, staring off into space while you have an ill family member up the hall, and you think, "Wouldn't that lampshade look cute with some decorations on it? I bet I could do something clever. Maybe I'll try it when I get home." It's an entirely other thing to actually pick up the ballpoint pen and draw on a lampshade that is not your own. On the most basic of levels, that's vandalism. Thank goodness this person did a really nice job, but I'm still kind of amazed by some people's nerve and audacity. And I'm wondering where the staff was because this room is right across from the nurse's station.

If you look closely at the bottom of the shade-- sure enough our midnight Michelangelo signed his work. Even more nerve!

My next thought was, of course, "I'm going to try that when I get home!"

I bought this buffet lamp years ago when we first moved into our antique house. There was no light over the table area so we used this buffet lamp on the table until the remodeling progressed to the point where we could put a light fixture over the table. Since then it has been on the fireplace mantle, right next to the table, as supplemental lighting. The shade that came with it had a plastic lining and it was developing cracks. I was nursing it along until I could find a nice new shade when I knocked the lamp over one day as I was hurrying through the dusting. End of lampshade. Thankfully, Target had this shade on clearance for $3.00 so that's where things stood until we had to replace the natural gas line with propane, which meant that we had to replace the gas fireplace because .... oh, you can read all the nasty details here.

Anyway, new fireplace mantle means new decorating fun so away went the lamp. Enter hospital graffiti artist and a reason to play around a bit.

And.....

Ta-Dum! I used a fine point Sharpie for this and would probably go with the ballpoint pen if I had a do-over. You can see where there is a little "blop" in the places where I lifted the pen to turn the shade, but they aren't huge spots. You can see in the picture below where I started to draw the design with pencil and then abandoned that to just wing it. It's around the back by the seam so it won't ever be noticeable.

So I just sat on the couch, in the sunshine, while our power was out one afternoon, squiggling away. It did occur to me that this is exactly something I would have gotten a lickin' for when I was a kid!! And I probably would have done this too. Like the time in 2nd grade when I was admiring another girl's dress at school (we worn dresses back then) that had pretty lace along the edge so I started snipping along the hem of my dress with my school scissors, hoping to get a similar look. I didn't and got bored so ended up with about 12-inches of snipped hem on my dress. Yes, it was in the front. I can still remember hearing my mom, ironing away at the laundry, "What in the world!" Busted. Thank goodness my mom is the creative type who can appreciate experimentation. Anyway...

Then I added some trios of dots here and there around the shade, just for fun and because no one was going to bust me for doing so.

And I too signed my worked...

So how fun was that? I don't know that I'll ever use it anywhere in the house but it was fun. I even discovered another unused lampshade- I've been sitting here staring at it wondering how I can doodle on it and what sort of embellishments I could add. Rhinestones? Fringe? Oh wait, I have an idea .....!

Hey, thanks for visiting today and please remember- doodling on public property is vandalism so do a good job. Just sayin'.  

Interior Storm Windows



via Sciencephoto.org

We've all seen those thermo heat loss images that show how a home transfers heat from the inside to the outside. The idea is to show us places in a home where heat is leaking away from us and into the cold winter night so we can plug those leaky areas in order to save on our energy costs.

The more blue and green an image is, the better that home is keeping the heat where it should be- around our chilly toes. The more yellows, oranges, and reds we see, the more heat is being lost. The image above shows windows as a notoriously weak spot in our defense against the winter chill and an empty wallet.

via Ecofriend.org

This home above, all rosy and bright, has heat loss issues.

We live in an "antique" house that is pushing 200 years in age. We've added insulation where we can, caulked until the cows came home, left, and came back again, and have generally done what we can. Still, I can only imagine what a thermo image of our home would look like.

We keep the thermostat on 58 degrees. No, I'm not kidding. We have three floors but most of our activity takes place on the first floor. So we turn down the thermostat, put on snuggly socks, and close the door to the second floor. We use a vent-less gas fireplace on the first floor to supplement the boiler. When we use the upstairs computer, play in the sewing room, or read on the enclosed porch we have room heaters for those areas. It works for us, mainly because in spite of our efforts we're still a pretty drafty old homestead and it isn't in our budget to heat the neighbor's yard.



by DonkerDink via Flickr





This fall we had the pleasure of replacing our natural gas heat source with propane. You can go to this post- I've Got Gas & I Couldn't Be Happier- for all the sordid details. With natural gas, you have a pipe that comes into your house and there's always gas (unless of course things go for you like they did for us). With propane, you have a tank which contains a finite amount of liquid propane. I can't shake that uneasy feeling that we're about to run out of propane. And in spite of what the websites and pundits we consulted told us, LP is more expensive. It's price fluctuates with petroleum prices, which have gone up recently. Lucky us.

We've been known to tape the particularly leaky windows with painters tape.

Crude but semi-efficient.

So my husband decided to abandon the sporadic use of window plastic and painter's tape and make interior storm windows. He's a pretty clever guy and very committed to saving money because we have 15 windows that seriously needed attention. These aren't the original single pane windows but some "mature" replacement windows. A houseful of new windows isn't the in the budget right now either and truthfully may never be in the budget.

Here's what it takes:

1 x 2 lumber
2 1/2 inch drywall screws
Shrink film
Foam tape
You also need some sturdy two-sided tape
Clear packing tape- on a dispenser roll is super handy

If it's 18 degrees outside, set up a makeshift work bench in the already crowded Utility Room.

Stack the picnic table on its benches for an equally makeshift work area outside on the screened porch because the workshop in the garage is 50 yards from the house and each window has to be measured and cut separately and it's 18 degrees outside and a guy just can't be running back and forth that much. (Whew)

Each window is done separately because we've learned that when our house was built 200 years ago there were no standard sizes for anything. Even if there were, over the years previous occupants "did things" to the house, and a house settles after a couple of centuries as well. We highly suspect it also tilted ever so slightly when the long-wall mine went past a few years ago. Not that anything was plumb and square before that. Oh, it's been an adventure.

Run outside and cut the wood.

Each window needs 2 vertical pieces of wood and 3 horizontal, one being a cross brace in the center.

Secure the corners with a brace, drill a couple of pilot holes, and secure the frame with the drywall screws.

Run the two-sided tape around the entire frame, lay the frame out on the plastic, carefully pulled out any wrinkles (it won't be perfect), and pull off the top layer of tape.

 

Carefully pull up one of the short sides and wrap it up over the end of the board. Smooth it out and then lay the plastic back. Do both short ends and then both longs sides. Your plastic will come to a mitered-looking corner. Kind of like hospital corners when you're changing the sheets on your bed.

Trim off the plastic so that there isn't any extending beyond the wood frame.

Now- turn the frame over and repeat so that you have plastic on both sides. Tape, wrap, trim. This makes an air pocket inside the frame which helps with insulation. It's a double-paned storm window.

OK- now run clear packing tape around the entire frame. Cut the corners and fold the flaps down. This seals the entire frame. Remember, the point is to prevent heat transfer so get all of the leaky spots sealed up or it's not worth the effort. These windows are fairly labor intensive, in case the handyman in your life hasn't already pointed that out to you.

Just like you do when you put plastic directly onto the windows, use a hair dryer to shrink and firm up the plastic on the frame.

Last step- the foam seal around the edges. This lets your frame slide into each window sill and adds that final degree of insulation. Start the foam even with an edge and end the first side you do even with the other end. Start the next side by lining up the foam so that it is even with the outside edge of the foam on the side you just did and end it even with the frame. Go all the way around. If you just wrap the foam around the corners without cutting them you are more likely to get a leak on the corners.

And unless you are absolutely certain all of your windows are the same exact size, label each storm window so you know where it goes next year.

Finally, cheer your fella on as he puts up the storm windows and if he even hangs the curtains, well, he'll need special rewards.

In an ideal world we would have painted all of the frames before putting on the plastic. However, the logistics of where to paint and dry all of those frames inside the house was rather daunting. Secondly, it was already winter outside and things were beginning to cool off a bit in the house.

There was an immediate difference in the comfort level in our house, especially noticeable on the windy days. And in the spring I won't have to go around cleaning off sticky tape residue from the windows. Bonus!



via Solvent-Free Paint

The challenge will be figuring out where to store all of these frames over summer!

You can find countless Internet resources on building your own storm windows. My husband used information from Art Tec and his directions are much more detailed than those given here. This fella, Guy Marsden, has all kinds of neat things on his site from Levitation kits to electronic artwork to building a canoe to solar heating to custom furniture to, of course, interior windows. Go check him out.

You can also find vendors who will sell you ready-made or custom windows. The options are mind-numbing: plexiglas-based windows, acrylic, glass, magnetic, snap-in, etc forever. Since our old house has non-conformist windows, we would have been into custom windows almost exclusively. When we first moved in we priced them at about $120 each but that was 14 years ago and no doubt they are more now. Purchasing custom was just never an option for us. Mr Marsden estimates $9 per square foot.

Anyway, it's not every girl that gets 15 custom made interior storm windows for Christmas. Goes nicely with the 500 gallons of propane that I got for my birthday.

Thanks for stopping in today and please--

stay warm.