House Update - Little Hallway Done

 

A quick update - 

This week's progress was slower than we anticipated. We started the week in a 7 car pileup on the freeway, and our car was totaled. Amazingly everyone was ok. I have a minor concussion,  which make naps more appealing than working. I have a lingering headache, but otherwise, we're both just fine. 

So back to the updates..

Faded Clergy Shirt Black/Green

I'd purchased a dark green that was named Juniper, but it should have been named Faded-Formerly-Black-Now-Dark-Green-Clergy-Shirt. 

That was too dark, so we went up the next lighter color.  It's still dark green but light enough that we liked it. 

Slightly lighter dark green

There's a hallway between the dining room and the kitchen that we decided to also paint this accent color dark green, so I prepped that hallway. That work involved cutting square holes in the plaster so I could patch jagged holes with drywall. Then I spackled the seams of the patch, and all of the other little holes in the plaster and on the wood trim and doorways. 

I primed the walls and trim, then painted the trim and wall. The trim is a color that will match the new Pella windows that will come in someday, a light cream color.  The walls were the slightly darker light green. 

Battery remote art light

There was no power in that little hallway and we had enough of running electric in the kitchen so I got ingenious.  I purchased a battery powered remote control art light and put it up high in the little hallway. 

I purchased a 24" x 36" frame and mounted it on the wall in the hall.  We will swap out pictures as the mood strikes us.  Right now, I have a great wintery tree.

With the little light, and the dark paint, I'm deeply satisfied with the hallway.  Another space done!  

This weekend, we plan to prime and paint the kitchen.  Coming along nicely. 

Here's the little light above the
opposite wall

This is the hallway during
daylight hours, and lights on.

This is the hallway at night 
with the art light on

View from dining room into kitchen

Home update - February 2022

It has been a while before any updates. That's definitely not because we haven't been busy.  Quite the contrary. 

Dining Room

We painted the dining room, and patched and painted the ceiling.  The problem is that shortly after finishing the dining room painting, we started in the kitchen. The dining room became the de facto kitchen, complete with a working refrigerator, air fryer, coffee pot, and converting the sideboard to a dish cabinet. 

In addition, it's become the storage place for all of the things we've yet to put in the kitchen, including cabinets, a dishwasher and range. So the pictures are a little underwhelming, chock full of kitchen food prep materials, as well as kitchen building materials.  But peeking around and behind the clutter, is our beautiful dining room.  

Mantle, complete with two leaded glass containers. 

Dishwasher in dining room, waiting... 

Sideboard with coffee maker, air fryer, cabinet doors  and drywall 
leaning against, plus every dining room needs a refrigerator.

Meanwhile the kitchen is progressing.  Here are some 'before' pics. 

This is the north wall that will like an accent wall, with 
dark stained cabinets, exposed brick (behind the stove above)
and a new broom closet in the cut-out to the right of the stove. 

Since those photos, we have:

• pulled all of the pink and brown plastic tiles off the walls
• pulled up all of the pink and white floor tiles
• pulled out all of the brown mental cabinets, except the one the sink is sitting on
• Using a plaster chisel, I removed all of the plaster to expose a brick chimney that runs up through the room. We'll leave it exposed. 
• Took off all of the built-in cabinet doors and drawers, stripped and stained them a dark brown. They'll look great with the antique copper pulls.
• Went to the construction re-sale store and bought a 90" x 24" door, that I stripped and stained to match the built in cabinets. We built a frame for the door, so the north wall of the kitchen will include the built in cabinets, the exposed brick chimney and a new broom closet, with a matching tall door.
• filled up 4 waste management bags, nearly 12 cubic yards of junk

Once we were back to the studs, we

• cut and installed insulation on the walls (where there had been none) and ceiling to reduce the noise between floors. 
• put a plastic roofing membrane down on the wood floor. There were holes and cracks, and we could see into the basement. But the floor wasn't level so we needed to put some self-leveling stuff on, without it all running into the basement
• poured in the self-leveler, which is basically like quick setting thin concrete. It does the job!
• Purchased and installed subfloor, over the newly level floor
• added new electrical wipres for ceiling lights, rather than the single garage-style fluorescent fixture
• cut and fit drywall for the ceiling, and now working on the walls. 

Once the drywall is in, we'll:

• prime all of the drywall
• paint the ceiling white and the walls a dark sage-green
• Paint the north accent wall a darker sage green, and install the cabinet doors and new closet door
• Install the other three pendant lights over an island which will contain the range.
• install cork-backed floating floor, that looks like distressed wood
• install cabinets (that are all in boxes in dining room)
• Call to have the countertops measured

Pouring in the self-leveler 

Some of the demo debris

Copper pulls and handles

Beginning to pull of the tiles and plaster
to uncover the brick chimney

Exposed chimney. We'll keep the former pipe cut outs.
It's all part of the historical charm...

Drywall coimng along

     

    

Drywall in kitchen and new flat led lights and places 
for new pendents

Meanwhile...

As the big work is progressing in the kitchen, there's a hallway from the kitchen to the bedroom, and another from the dining room to the kitchen. They were both in crummy shape, so while my husband was measuring sheet rock, I started working on the two forgotten hallways. If we had gotten the kitchen done, it would be depressing to enter it through the icky halls so it was important to me. 

Each of these halls required the following:

• stripping wallpaper off plaster walls
• washing plaster walls and painted floor, door and window trim
• filling cracks and holes in walls and ceiling
• Removing door hardware to get grime and paint off
• scuff sanding the painted trim
• priming all surfaces
• painting and reinstalling hardware

After photo - close up of the trim and hallway color for the hall 
into the bedroom

Close up of door frame with lots of places
to sand and smooth from years of 
locks, and an old switch box in the plaster

Hole in plaster where box was removed

Cutting out the plaster

Hole in plaster in hallway between kitchen and 
dining room. Using a multi-tool, I cut a rectangle
out of the plaster, and an equal sized piece 
of drywall and patched it. 

Doors with stripping agent on them, and 
a little plastic wrap to keep them 
from drying out

Stay tuned, and I'll try to provide updates more frequently, so it's not an epic read. Note to self, it doesn't have to look 'finished' to share.  

Now, off to spackle.   

 

House Improvements, paint, mantels, clocks and candles

Shiny grimy walls and dark dinged up trim

Dinged up trim with mismatched paint

 And so the house project continues.  We are nearly done with the first room, or at least as done as we want to be for now.  The front room, which we're using as a living room was dingy, dark and all sorts of cracked.  The wall paint was a semigloss, probably ot one point white, but now a dingy and greasy gray.  The trim was dark, and not especially pretty.  We have ordered new double paned windows for the room, and they'll be a cream color, but for now, we're stuck with the single pane, wavy glass.

Filled in holes from too many sets of blinds

Painting the trim to match the eventual windows.

We decided to lighten the room up by painting all of the trim the cream color that will match the windows. We also purchased insulating honeycomb blinds and installed them on the window

T

Taped walls and ceiling

here were some big cracks in the plaster. Some experts suggested that with plaster and lath, the only way to assure that it's repaired is to drill holes, and insert glue in between the plaster and lath, and then clamp it, so it's reattached firmly.  That was more than I wanted to do, so instead, I went with the other advice I'd seen which was to tape the cracks, and then mud and sand them.  So, that's what I did. There was one big hole in the ceiling that is the result of a leak we haven't yet stopped, so we left the big hole and we'll repair it once we figure out the water. 

Gap between mantel and plaster

There were also cracks between the plaster and the really neat mantel that contains the built-in clock.  Those were spackled and sanded.

Taped and mudded ceiling cracks

Painting begins.  Ceiling white, and a yellowish green. 

Meanwhile, we have this beautiful mantel with a clock built in. The clock didn't work, and the face of the clock was dingy and parts of the numbers were missing. We found an antique clock repair man who came out to our house, took the inside of the clock out, and for $250 will return a clock that works. Either it will be repaired with its springs and keys, or if he can't get it working, he'll install a quartz time mechanism and a battery for the pendulum. Either way, it will again work. 

Broken 7

While he's working on the inside of the clock, I worked on repairing the outside. I went to a local craft store, and purchased some gold paint, an exacto knife, and a thin wooden Christmas ornament. 

Broken 3

Cut pattern for the three

I traced the missing pieces of the seven and the three and cut them out of the ornament. Then I glued them on to the face of the clock, and very carefully, repaired all of the numbers with shiny gold   

And now the clock outsides are  ready to join with the clock insides.  

One interesting thing about the mantel is that it had these interesting places on either side of the clock that had nice detail, but the previous owners had covered the plaster with contact paper, that had long since gotten brittle and yellowed, We took the contact paper off, and were left with sooty, dingy plaster walls, and we couldn't get in to paint it to match the walls.  We thought about nailing something against the plaster, but it's an outside wall and it's not plaster, but rather cement. Our fancy nail gun couldn't do the job so we were left with plan b.  We glued little pieces of wood below the trim, so if we slipped something down, it wouldn't fall behind the mantel.  Then I took two pieces of thin finish plywood and cut them down to the size of the spaces previously covered in contact paper, and painted them the same color as the walls. Finally, we slipped them in the spaces, and voila, it looks finished.  

I'm finally done, or 99% done with the door to the bathroom.  After discovering bring that the beautiful wood grain was fake and painted on, I tried my hand at fake, painted grain. I used gel stain, and before it was dried, I used fingers, q-tips, and a cloth covered screw driver to make patterns. When I look at it, I see finger-painting.  But when I look at the other woodwork, I see finger-painting, where I used to see beautiful wood grain.  Once I realized it's fake, it's hard to unsee the fairness. Hopefully my door will not look any faker than the rest. I painted the side of the door that will be in the bathroom to match the bathroom trim. The fixtures on the stained side were cleaned up to their original shiny brass, and the figures on the painted side, I spray painted to match the bathroom fixtures, satin nickel. 

So the living room is nearly done.  Here are a few views.  

One final crafty thing I did that I'm pleased about again involves the fancy fireplace. I believe these were all gas fireplaces, as they're too shallow for a wood box, and there's an abandoned gas pipe in the middle of the firebox.  In any case, until we figure out the chimneys, we aren't likely to have real fire in these beauties, all six of them.  Starting with this fireplace, though I decided to purchase a bunch of remote-controlled LED candles, the kind where you can't see the fake flame, but they still flicker.  Then I made the rounds to the various thrift stores around, and bought things that either were originally intended to be candlestick holders, or could serve as one. I spray painted them all a metallic iron color, which sort of matches the inside of the firebox.  I've got them all ready for the arrival of my candles.  My plan is to set up the candles in the fireplace, on the mis-matched, but painted to match holders, and push a button, and have light.