A Newel Post

Get it? A newel post? Ha. 

I will be honest.  The hall is not done, and I started a new project.  Why? Well, it turns out, trim installation is a lot harder than it looks. In the twenty minutes I attempted it on Friday night, I cracked two boards and a wall.  Ouch.  Lucky for me, Kevin is a much more patient person, he is more methodical, and he doesn't mind finishing my abandoned projects.  We tend to compliment each other well when working on the house. He is really our detail man, whereas I am the blunt force.  I am good at removal and power-tooling; he is good at finishing and picking paint out of cracks.  He is good at power-tooling too, but only after I've destroyed something enough that he is over the fear of wrecking it. Without me, projects would take months to get started.  Without him, they would never get finished.  


More on the trim, installations and decisions in another post.

Anyway, we need to get the trim installed today because the furnace is finally going in on Wednesday, and we can't have stuff everywhere in the basement.  So Kevin is installing the trim, while I begin the hall stairs. There are five stairs from the main floor, then a landing in which you make a 180 degree turn, then go up the rest of the way.  I am focusing on the stairs on the main floor, and leaving the top half until we are working upstairs again. Kevin and I are getting sick of feeling like we live in a crackhouse whenever we have guests, so main floor first. 


Here is a before shot, taken on the day we bought the house.  You can just barely see the carpet on the stairs...mmm minty green goodness.

Here is What we did to the stairs on the day we closed on the house:

Why is it that new homeowners always feel the need to rip out carpet the first day?  It's like a hazing ritual from the house. 

Anyway, here are the stairs about midway through the day yesterday. 

I took off the trim around the newel post and I am planning on trying stripper on it, as they are small pieces and I don't want to sand them too much.  Our stairs have this glossy yellowish finish from the 50's.  Here is a close-up.  

Anyone know what this is? You can see the grain through it, so it's not paint. We know it was put on circa 50's because the crappy built-ins in the dining room also date to the 50's and the finish is on them too.  It reminds me of a glaze.  


I would love to hear from you all: 


What was your first project after the keys of your house were handed to you?  

Burning down the house....

Okay, so it just smoked a little. That's right, Kevin started the house on fire. Seriously, with the nice work on the fence and our finished bedroom, I was beginning to think we needed to change the name of the blog to reflect our mad skills. But I was brought back down to Earth today.

We were maybe ten minutes into the project when Kevin, who was on the ladder tackling the beadboard with the heat gun calmly asked, "Sarah, would you get a spray bottle?" I was busy into my own work, and told him just a second, until he asked again, this time with a little more urgency. That's when I looked up.

A comic (if you weren't us) routine followed, including a mad dash for the hose, running over to the burning corner, realizing the water wasn't on, and finally spraying from all angles and getting everything wet in the process. In case you are wondering, everything is okay (I can't even see where it's burned), and we live two blocks from the fire department, so even if we tried we would have a hard time doing too much damage. Needless to say, Kevin has been working with the heat gun on a much lower setting.
This is a shot of Kevin's progress for the day. The very corner, in the upper left of the picture is the infamous burned area. See? You can't even tell. The black area closer to the house in the photo is not from us. Wood rot??
Here's my progress form the day. The window is pretty close to being done, and will probably be done tomorrow, after I make a run to my sister's new house (they bought a Victorian) to give her rhubarb and onions. Finally, here is a close-up of the clapboard we stripped. It looks like it's in great shape, no?

House Colors

So at the risk of sounding obsessive, I am having major exterior paint issues. The paint on the majority of the trim on the house is flaking off. Literally. A scrape and repaint is in the plans for next summer. Also, our house is covered in the infamous asbestos shingling. See it here in all its wavy ugliness? That's actually the garage, but you get the idea. In a weak moment last fall, I gave into Kevin's pleading to peak under the shingling to see if the original clapboard was there. It is. In an even weaker moment (he's a persistent one) I agreed to the removal of the shingles as we paint the trim. To my credit, at the rate we finished things last summer, we won't go broke doing this project because it will take us so long. See, I think these things through.

What, you ask, does this have to do with now? It's the middle of winter. Why are you even thinking of painting? Don't you have better things to do, like strip paint?

You may recall, I mentioned the storm door having issues. It's getting worse. We have it's replacement, and have had it for some time, (we dumpster dove for it from a foreclosure a few blocks down), but I haven't wanted to put it in. Why? Because our current storm windows are this color:
That would be bright cherry red. The color we are painting them is this color: Dark grey-blue. Which is what color I would have also painted the storm door, except bright cherry red plus dark grey blue (it can look VERY blue when the light hits it) plus white house equals red white and blue house. Which I just couldn't do. So here we sit, storm door falling off. Did I mentioned that my mom invited like fifteen people to our house this Sunday? Which, by the way I am thrilled about, becuase they are some of my favorite relatives, and I am excited for them to see the house. However, I don't want the front door to fall off in anyone's hands, and although I know there is absolutely nothing we can do in three days to make this place look fit to live in, I still what the house to make a good first impression. So back to the paint.

If I am going to paint the storm door a different color, then I need to have it match the color that is currently there (or at least not look horrible) and still match the new, because once I paint the door, I am not doing it again. So really, I need to be making some decisions here about paint color for the whole house. My artillary includes Sherwinn Williams Arts and Crafts Collection swatches, the book Bungalow Colors: Exterior by Robert Schweitzer and my own crazy ideas. By the way, yes, I know blue isn't a traditional bungallow color, but look how pretty it looks from the inside: Besides that, when I picked that color, I hadn't yet researched bungalow colors. The white trim is staying too, because there is evidence which leads me to believe it was original. Now our roof is gray, so our colors so far are:

Roof: grey
Storm: blue
Trim: White
Body one (for the lower part): ?
Body two (for the upper part): ?
Storm door: ?

Ackkk! I just can't deal with this decision. I have trouble deciding what to have out of a vending machine.

An open letter to my sister

Note: My sister moved into our house the day after we did to do an internship in the cities. Yesterday was her last day at our house.

Chris,

We, Sarah, Kevin and Arlo, would like to apologize for robbing you of your innocence. Parts of the life you once pictured, an old house to fix up, a dog to play with, have been tarnished in the short time you've been with us. These are the specific incidents I feel like we need to apologize for. If there are others we've forgotten, please remind me.

We're sorry the floors of the first room you lived in were so slanted your furniture wouldn't stay in one place. We're sorry that when you tried to clean the tub, it turned into a two-day project requiring plumber's putty and a gasket. We're sorry that you came back from a weekend away to find extension cords running throughout the house and wires sticking out of your walls. Most of all, we're sorry that when you left a month later, there were still extension cords running throughout the house and wires sticking out of your walls.

Arlo would also like to apologize for ruining your idyllic visions of life with a dog. He is sorry for throwing up all over your window. And eating it when you went to find something to clean it up with. He's sorry for jumping on your bed and getting mud all over it. He is sorry for sucking on your pillow, stealing things and running away with them, and getting dog hair all over your bed.

Anyway, I hope this covers most of our wrong-doings. Understand that we meant no harm and truly enjoyed your stay. Know that you're always welcome, and that future visits will not be so painful. We hope.

Love Sarah, Kevin and Arlo

Floored

We researched extensively on home restoration. We read other blogs, heard others' tales of misery and woe. Our house wouldn't be like that-- it would be easy. The same family had lived there for 5o years. They bought it when their first son was a month old, and went on to raise four children in it's 1100 square feet. It had been loved, not abused. Yes there were problems, but they all seemed straightforward, like cracked plaster and an ugly kitchen. Things we could easily fix.

We've grown a lot since then.

Picture us, two young twenty-somethings and their mixed-breed dog, turning the key in the lock of their very first home. We go inside, dance around, open every cupboard, window, door and appliance. The dog runs in circles, creating dangerous levels of static electricity from the carpet. The carpet. That was our first project. There were hardwood floors underneath, which meant it had to go. We pulled up a corner in the foyer. Guess what we found?


That would be vinyl flooring. Covering the entire main floor of our house. The hardwood floors were under it. Now, what gives this particular event a major twist is the fact that most vinyl flooring from that era contained asbestos. Because we're cheap, we didn't pay to get it tested, but because we're cautious, treated it like it was hazardous. This meant quarintine. We bought respirators, sealed off the rest of the house, sealed off the vents, turned off the heat, and started working.

The Minnesota Department of Health has a great website on do-it-yourself asbestos removal. The key is a lot of water, because it's only dangerous when particles float into the air. To get water, we had to decontaminate (strip down to nothing) in the back porch and trudge into the basement to fill 5 gallon pails. It was below zero, so we had to work until the flooring was gone so we could turn on the heat. It took thirteen hours. Want to see the floors we found underneath?


Like I said, we've grown a lot.