We just celebrated our 5th year of home ownership last week. We are a little over halfway done with the house. What a journey this restoration project has been! We often receive questions about buying and restoring an old house. So, on the occasion of our anniversary with homeownership, here goes…

Would we do it again? Hmmmm. Halfway through our restoration I started to have fantasies about building a completely Modern house, something that you would see on the pages of “Dwell” magazine, where everything would be brand spanking new and streamlined. A few months ago I would have said NEVER. EVER. AGAIN. But, you know what they say about never saying never. 

What have we learned from our experiences? If you are going to restore a house with someone, have a conversation or two about how you actually plan to accomplish this before buying the house. When we talked about fixing up the house, I imagined us lovingly working on it together. I had no idea the images floating around David’s head were of us interviewing general contractors…lovingly together. What can I say? We were young, in love and not so focused on the details. It never occurred to me that David wouldn’t “like” working on the house. 

Things will cost so much more than you expect and take much, much longer than you imagine.

Know your limitations. Sometimes it is much cheaper and safer to hire someone than to attempt to do a project for which you have no skill or aptitude. Hire a licensed electrician, plumber, roofer, or foundation contractor.

It is just a house, just a paint color, just a piece of furniture, just a light fixture, or just a kitchen design. Try to keep things in perspective. If only I could have back all those hours spent pouring through magazines, books, and on eBay. I spent way too much time, and probably too much money, on things that seemed important at the time, but really didn’t matter all that much in the bigger picture.

If I could do it all over again.
1. I would spend more money upfront and purchase a house in the best condition that I could afford. We thought we would save ourselves money by purchasing a fixer and we were worried about house payments. We ended up spending MORE money fixing our house up than if we had bought the nicer, more expensive house.

2. You will save yourself so much money and frustration if you find a house with unpainted woodwork, if that is important to you. Stripping paint is a horrible, horrible process. It is not fun, it is not exciting…it is hard and expensive work.

3. Get to know your potential neighbors. We were lucky that we ended up with great neighbors. If I had been smart, I would have knocked on some doors and met my future neighbors before we bought our house. In my neighborhood, there is not much that happens that my neighbors don’t know about. Your potential neighbors can probably give you the lowdown on the owner of the house, the other neighbors, who or what you should watch out for, and probably some history about your future house.

4. I will not live next door to an apartment complex. We saw some really great houses but didn’t make an offer because they were next to 2-3 story apartments. I like to live next to people who own their houses and have more invested in their upkeep. Plus, I don’t want people to be able to look out their windows and have a bird’s eye view of my backyard.

5. Look for homes that still have intact original features such as moldings, beamed ceilings, hardware, original wood doors, light fixtures, wood framed windows with wavy glass, etc. The more original features the better. Yes, all these things can be added back if they are missing but it is costly – especially to put back wood framed windows.

6. Make sure you get a thorough home inspection, but be prepared for surprises. The home inspection won’t turn up all the problems in your house. Until you take a room apart and put it back together again, there are things you just won’t find.

7. Spend time in the area. Drive around and get out and walk. Is this somewhere where you want to live? Do you feel safe? Make sure you like the block before you buy a house on it.

8. Be patient. It takes a long time to fix up an old house and a good amount of money. Try to be realistic, although, if you have never fixed up a house before it is hard to even know what is realistic. Here is a hint, most of what you have seen on tv about fixing up a house is not reality. It occured to me the other day that it took our house almost 100 years to get so run down, so why did I think it would be completely restored in a few months or even a few years?

9. After you buy the house, invest in an alarm system and take the burglar bars off the windows. Alarm window screens are completely worth the money.

10. Nothing will change the look of your house like a good paint job!

Two more salvaged wood framed windows are in.

I can’t believe what a big difference they make, especially from the inside. The windows stand out and really frame the views. Our old windows had fake window panes running through the glass. I didn’t realize how distracting that was until we put in the wood framed windows.

Our new-to-us wood windows that were purchased from a local salvage yard.

I wish I could say that more has been accomplished but that’s about it for now. Only one more window to go…

Photo taken from our bedroom. It’s difficult to get a good shot due to the narrowness of the back hallway. These photos were taken at night so things look a little dark.

At happy accident – the doors are the same width as the stairwell opening. Um, I mean, I planned for this all along.

Being enamored with the idea of opening up the back hallway to the sleeping porch and letting in more light, I decided to have another door built to match the antique doors. I thought it would look more symmetrical with four doors instead of three. We met with and hired a carpenter to build another door. The carpenter didn’t show or call to cancel.

I decided to keep the project going and use the doors we had. This is one time I am happy to have been stood up by a contractor! One thing I have learned through our restoration experience: Going with the simplest, most straight forward solution is usually the best choice and always the cheapest one.

Close up view of the doors framed by the stairwell.

The bathroom project is finally complete. Whew! We are thrilled with the results.

Starting with an inspiration photo, to picking out all the fixtures, to taking the room down to the studs and slowly putting it back together again; this has been the most difficult project completed in our house. So many decisions…

The updated bathroom is the project that has increased our enjoyment of the house the most. It is hard to believe that such a little room can have a big impact.

Our contractor built a door to match the original closet door and framed out a larger storage space.

For the first time in 98 years our house has a shower!

The ceiling fixture and sconce from Schoolhouse Electric help pull the room together.

My favorite things about the remodel? The marble floors…

the additional storage space…

and the color…

All the soft white tones make me happy!

We decided to enlarge the opening of the linen closet and add another door. Our contractor found a salvage door that he scaled down and rebuilt to match the existing linen closet door. In the photo above, the original closet door is on the left and the “new” closet door on the right.

Painting the doors will hide a multiple of sins like the wood grain going in different directions and patches around the door handle. We are thrilled with the new door.

The opening for the linen closet is ready to be framed in.

Our bedroom is finished! Out of all the rooms we have completed, I am enjoying this room the most. It feels so nice to finally have a little haven, a place to rest, after basically camping out for all of these years. Why didn’t we do our bedroom first?

The room was in awful shape before with peeling wallpaper and holes in the walls.

This room was my home office for years. How did I ever work in here? Lets face it, the room before is not at all inspiring.

The bedroom feels very warm and inviting now.

I framed and hung artwork over the bed from a printmaking course I took while in college.

I am in love with the little closet we had built into the dead space behind the wall. I like that the closet feels like it has always been here.

Our contractor did an amazing job building the door and matching the trim with the existing trim in the house.

This room was missing baseboards and some of the original trim.

New baseboards and trim were installed, replicating the rest of the trim in the house.

These windows were salvaged. We had added them to the house when we worked on the exterior. They needed some attention.

The windows are now working smoothly.

Open bedroom door and closed bathroom door.

Closet door, bedroom door and bathroom door.

The armoire survived being pulled through a second story window and is just slightly worse for the wear.

The bedroom ceiling has been repaired. The plaster was filled with numerous cracks. I’m just glad to say good-bye to the hideous ceiling fan!

Closet before and after. The elfa closet system is working out well.

Details
Paint Color: Dunn Edwards called Chocolate Milk (DE6059); Restoration Hardware Empire Rosette sleigh bed; Crate & Barrel Jules accent table; West Elm organic cotton sheets; West Elm Lexington quilt and shams; Overstock silk curtains; flor tiles rug; Restoration Hardware fan; eBay ceiling fixture; etsy table lamp; sarah & bendrix artwork; Luke Stephenson love bird prints; artwork above the bed is from a college print making course; elfa closet system; and last, but certainly not least, our contractor Juan Reyes 626.793.7091

It has finally sunk in that we don’t have the stamina to have house projects going all the time, one after another, lets hurry up and get everything done so our house is restored all ready. Our what seemed realistic at the time plan, the one where we complete all the work on our house within five years? It’s now the 10 year plan or the hopefully we get the house done before we die plan. Considering this is our fourth year in the house and we are barely halfway done, I think the new plan is a good call.

We have decided that completing one project a year is a more realistic pace for us. Although, it would have been nice to have restored the kitchen and our main bathroom before we hit upon the one-project-a-year-for-a-more-balanced-life approach. I think it is going to be a while before I have the ever changing kitchen of my dreams.

January
My dad came to visit and finished some plumbing work he had started the year before. This culminated with hooking up the sink in our downstairs half bath. It only took us 3 years to actually have water running out of a faucet in one of our bathrooms. Yeah!

February

The episode of “Restoration Realities” featuring us aired on the DIY television network. Along with the show’s host and carpenter we built a period appropriate screen door and weather stripped our windows and front door.

Heather + Dave on Restoration Realities Part 1
Restoration Realities Part 2
Restoration Realities Part 3
Restoration Realities Part 4

March
Did absolutely NO work on the house.

April
Did absolutely NO work on the house, but may have scared a very nice sounding family away from the idea of restoring a rundown Craftsman home of their own.

May
Did absolutely NO work on the house. Starting to see a theme here?

June
Did absolutely NO work on the house.

July
Did absolutely NO work on the house, but I finally resolved the ownership issue of the oil and mineral rights to our property.

August
Finally, some work on the house! Stripped the woodwork and doors of the stairwell, landing and upstairs back hallway. I purchased leaded glass French doors from the early 1900′s off of eBay for the upstairs back hallway.

September
I publicly confess that I have resentful feelings towards the house for the first time. I think I used the word “hate.” And, in certain moments I do hate the house. There, I said it again. We are at an odd point in our restoration experience. The honeymoon period with the house is definitely over.

Maybe this is normal? Maybe around year 4 of an extensive restoration project everyone starts hating their house a little bit, or at least all the time, money and energy that goes into it? After all the work on our house year, after year, after year, we are barely at the halfway point of having our home fully restored.

It’s not like I hate the house all the time. It comes and goes. There are moments when I also love our house. Most of those loving moments are spent in the completed portion of the house.

October
We discovered that the upstairs sleeping porch, a 1918 addition, was inadequately framed. I’m not sure if inadequate is a strong enough word to describe opening up a wall and discovering two 2×2′s as the sole support for a load bearing wall. Shocking comes to mind, so does what the hell were they thinking, quickly followed by I wonder how poorly the rest of the sleeping porch is built?

Pablo rebuilt the wall and installed the leaded glass French doors.

November
Ah, November…November was a month chock full of resentful, or maybe even hateful feelings. There was a lot to hate.

Getting right to it, we both hated the color I selected to paint the stairwell and hallway. I was going for silvery sage but ended up with baby nursery mint green. We received alot of wonderful paint color suggestions, but in the end decided to go with a blue green color that matches the original 1912 wall color of our bedroom.

This leads us to the most mysterious occurrence that has happened during our entire restoration process. Two weeks after the woodwork was stained and sealed with several coats of varnish the woodwork faded. Drastically. Overnight. We have no idea how or why this happened. It’s so unbelievable. I didn’t even know that such a thing was possible? We are hoping that someone out there might be able to provide an answer.

December
Our stairwell and back hallway project is completed. One more down, seven major projects left to go…

Lulu and Winston underneath the Christmas tree

David and I spent a quiet Christmas in our little bungalow, just the two of us.

Looking forward to 2007!

Our house has it’s own quiet language. The rooms flow into each other; the spaces are intimate yet provide views into other rooms so they don’t feel enclosed. The arch of the living room fireplace is repeated in the curve of the dining room china cabinet. Seeing these repeated elements provide consistency and a sense of security to the house – nothing is jarring, nothing seems out of place. When making a decision, I consider if an alteration is in tune with the house.

We recently had to decide between adding a wall to separate the back hallway from the sleeping porch or leaving the space wide open to form one big room. I am planning on using that space as a studio so having a big, open area is appealing.

Pros For One Big Room
1. We feel comfortable with the idea of leaving the wall out because the sleeping porch is a 1918 addition, granted that’s an early one, to the original structure.

2. This room is on the second story in a private area verses the public rooms downstairs.

3. The room feels larger and lets in more light without the wall. Being a product of my time, I understand the desire to tear down walls and open up living spaces.

Cons For One Big Room
1. The space will be out of character with the rest of our house.

2. If we decide to use the room in a different way, for instance as a guest room, the space will have limited privacy.

3. Noise from downstairs could be an issue because the space is open to the stairwell.

4. We won’t use the beautiful antique doors I found on eBay. This reason is not as practical but it’s still a major consideration. I’m also aware that doors this nice would have been used in a public area of the house, not in the private area of our humble bungalow. So, even this choice is not historically accurate.

Continuity and those beautiful antique doors won out. We decided to have the wall rebuilt.

Pablo and crew framed in the wall and added drywall.

We get to use the beveled glass doors.

Related Topic: Historical Accuracy: Where Do You Draw The Line?

The old adage “No news is good news” doesn’t always ring true. I haven’t written in a while because we ran into some problems with our back porch that required us to rethink our exterior restoration. We halted work completely for the past month so that we could figure out what we are going to do about our back porch and how much we can afford to do.

Back porch appears to have been enclosed with wood scraps and odds-and-ends, but no real framing.

The back porch used to be open. It was enclosed sometime prior to the house being shingled with asbestos tiles in the late 1940′s – early 1950′s. We discovered that the enclosed wall and windows have NO framing! The walls, windows and door are all different depths from the house. The back porch is a hobbled together mess inside and out.

Detail of the “construction”

One of our dining room windows looks out onto the ugly back porch. When the view was open to the outside I am sure a lot of light streamed in but now the dining room tends to be dark and the view leaves much to be desired.

View from dining room window

Our goals are to let in more light and to relocated the washer and dryer to one end of the porch and enclose them in a cabinet. We want to put in new windows and relocate the back door to the middle of the porch.

Window juts out 10 inches from the wall.

Another concern is an upstairs sleeping porch that was added to the house around 1918. The porch is built to the end of the roof rafters right on top of the old cedar shake roof. We are concerned that the porch isn’t adequately supported. Prior to buying the house we had a structural engineer look into this and some other problems with the house. The structural engineer felt that the support for the room was adequate.

Several other people, who are knowledgeable about old houses, have told us that the room is sloping downward and we are at risk of having it fall off the back of our house during an earthquake!

Sleeping porch built to the edge of the roof rafters

We also found evidence of termite damage along our new foundation. All this had me sticking my head in the proverbial sand because, in truth, I just “didn’t want to deal with it.”

Wires hanging off the back of our house. How ghetto is that?

It is hard to get excited about spending money on the back porch, a room that we use for washing our laundry, housing the litter box and our Sparkletts water dispenser, especially when our kitchen has holes in the ceiling and plaster falling of the walls and we are still brushing our teeth in the bathtub.

I had decided to reside the back porch and to revisit it in 5 years when the rest of the house was completed. Unfortunately, that won’t really work since the walls aren’t framed. Our neighbor, an old house buff, assured me that residing the porch would be like trying to “fix a skull fracture with a band aide” and that our back porch is a complete mess that should be gutted and rebuilt right away.

Exposed plumbing pipes.

So here we sit, we two, trying to decide just what we want to do with that back porch anyway?

All advice and opinions, especially regarding the sleeping porch support, are welcome and greatly appreciated!

I wanted the doors to be centered on the opening that you see from the landing (see first photo). The center of the opening was measured and marked with a pencil line to make sure the alignment of the French doors will be dead center.

Photo taken from the sleeping porch looking towards the landing. Plastic was put up over the bathroom and bedroom doors to try to contain all the dust and debris. You can see the French doors in the foreground.

The wall was framed with 2 x 2′s.

We were dismayed to find two 2 x 2′s functioning as the sole framing for the wall. Not good!

You can see the original clapboard siding and stain color. The original green house color is actually brighter then we had thought. The sleeping porch was an additional made in 1918.

And yet, without the wall the fairly small sleeping porch and even smaller back hallway seem…so large.

So open…

Light fills the normally dark stairwell and back hallway.

David and I kind-of like the idea of leaving the space open – not rebuilding the wall or putting in the French doors. Just goes to show that you can have a plan, but once you get into a project you are sometimes confronted with other possibilities.

The lack of framing between the addition and the existing house also continues into the attic. Check out the ceiling.

I can move the whole ceiling by pushing up on it with a board. There is no support between the original house and the sleeping porch.

2 x 4′s have been put in to temporarily shore up the wall.

When you are married, of a certain age and childless by choice a strange thing starts to happen. It sneaks up on you slowly, over time so that you don’t recognize what is happening to you.

Suddenly, it’s Christmas time and you find yourself also booking a ticket for the dog because it wouldn’t be fair for her to spend Christmas at the kennel. It is cold in Salt Lake City, of course, the dog will need a coat. It becomes a little clearer as you realize there isn’t enough room for your clothes because the dog’s Christmas presents and four different dog coats fill most of the suitcase. The dog almost has a different coat to wear for every day you will be on vacation.

You decide that blue is the dog’s color and get her a matching collar and leash in the shade of blue that will contrast best with her fur. The dog has a special dog seatbelt that will keep her safe in the car. The dog has a basket overflowing with toys that she never plays with. You rotate out the toys to better grab her interest.

You start taking her to dog parks so she can have playtime and become socialized with other dogs. You insist that your husband speak to her clearly and not in baby talk so that she can learn more words. You decide the dog needs a larger more comfortable dog bed and start searching online for one that is down filled.

It doesn’t dawn on you that maybe it is a little odd that your dog has a middle name and you use it when the dog is in trouble. “Lulu Bell Chiu, stop chasing that cat this instant!”

It becomes a little more obvious when your family starts sending you Christmas gifts for the dog, although you did send them her Christmas list. Once your Mom starts referring to the dog as her grandchild and has her photo up on the refrigerator next to pictures of her human grandchildren the truth is hard to avoid. Lulu has become a surrogate child. Lulu seems perfectly happy with the arrangement.

My conversations with friends and family usually include the inevitable question, “How’s Lulu?”

Looking down at the framed photo of Lulu and my husband on the desk, “She’s fine.”

“What has she been up to?”

I’ve come to terms with having a dog for a child but a house? We spend a lot of time planning and saving for our house’s future. We want to make sure the house reaches its full potential. We have taken numerous photos to document all the stages in the house’s development. When friends pass around photos of their children we pass around photos of our house.

Questions about Lulu have been replaced with questions about the house. “How’s the house?”

“The house is fine.”

“What has been going on with it?”

“We are thinking of giving it a middle name.”