Juan’s team has made fast progress in the den. Most of the paint has been stripped off the woodwork. They will start removing wallpaper from the walls next. Hopefully, the walls in that room will be in better shape. Fingers crossed!

:: Learn more about how to strip paint and refinish woodwork ::

Not Lulu’s best look.

Taken from the second bedroom/office looking into the bathroom. The door on the opposite side of the room leads to the back hallway. The smaller door is for a built-in linen closet.

The floor was covered in vinyl tiles and old linoleum. The linoleum appeared to date around 1920-1930s and must have been glued down with some old fashioned version of superglue because it was horrible to get up. The floor was black around the toilet and tub due to some serious water damage, so I stained the floor a dark walnut color for now.

Closer view of the linen closet door. It might be difficult to tell but the plaster wall to the right of the linen closet is scored to resemble subway tile. Notice the big crack in the ceiling above the linen closet. There are huge cracks all along the ceiling.

The walls were painted none too carefully before we purchased the house. The paint has peeled off in the past few years. It appears that the plaster color was originally left natural, the woodwork was painted a muted gold color (I often see it referred to as ‘wheat’ in modern paint samples), and the ceiling was a vibrant green color. The second bedroom/office walls were painted the same green color as the bathroom ceiling.

The bathtub and wall tiles appear to date from the late 1940s – early 1950s. We assume there was originally a clawfoot tub. The daughter of our home’s second owner told us that the house did not originally have a shower. Her family added a shower downstairs off the back porch. That area had been gutted when we bought the house. We now use it for our washer and dryer.

Our idea was to add a clawfoot tub with a shower attachement, but It has been pointed out that it might be difficult to get a clawfoot tub shower enclosure/curtain rod to fit into the available space because of the slanted ceiling. I’m not sure what we will end up doing?

Our duplex apartment from the 1930′s had a bath tub and a seperate shower stall which I loved, but no room for something like that in our 6ft x 12ft space.

We are fairly certain the bathroom originally had a high-tank toilet based on the holes in the floor. I found the outline of a wall hung sink. The pedestal sink in the photo is from our old duplex apartment and dates from the 1930s. The property manager was throwing the sink out so we grabbed it.

The strange thing is how high the medicine cabinet is placed. When I look in the mirror I can only see my eyes and I’m average height. I wonder how tall the original owners were?

Photo taken looking into the second bedroom/office.

One of my favorite things about the bathroom is the woodwork. The mint green register grate matches the others in the house, and was salvaged from Liz’s Antique Hardware located on Le Brea Ave. It needs to be stripped.

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!

Although we’ve made progress on the house, I still see all the things that we need to fix or all the things I’d like to change. So, I think now is a good time to take a look back and focus on just how far we’ve come in the past year and three months.

We began landscaping.

We have started the restoration of our front porch. We hired someone to rebuild the brick piers that support the wood columns holding up the roof. We removed a roof covering the pergola on the north end of the porch. We plan to grow vines over this. The failing cement steps were replaced with steps made from redwood. The 4″ thick layer of cement covering the porch floor was removed. Low walls built around the porch were removed and the original porch railing was restored.

The dining room was completely restored. See pictures.

We had a new roof put on. The dormers were stripped of their asbestos shingles. The original wood shingles couldn’t be saved so we had the dormers re-shingled.

The restoration of our living room has begun.

We are still trying to select a paint color for the exterior. Any suggestions?

Installed central heat.

Added some more electrical outlets to the upstairs bedroom which we plan on using as an office.

Had a carpenter replace the old plywood stairs leading to the top floor with nice steps made from cherry wood that was generously donated by my dad.

Before we moved into the house:

Replaced the foundation. Bolted for earthquake safety.

Connected to the city sewer line. Our sewer line was illegally tapping into our neighbor’s sewer line.

Had the wood floors refinished.

Kitchen floor: Pulled up press on vinyl tiles that covered plywood which was nailed and screwed into the floor. The floor is uneven so the previous owner had poured plaster into the lower areas to level the floor. All the plaster had to be carefully hammered out.

Upstairs bathroom floor: Pulled up layers of old linoleum. This was a horrible job. Removed the black tar-like backing that was stuck to the floor after the linoleum was taken out.

 Removed various cabinets from the upstairs bath and kitchen.

 Painted the two upstairs bedrooms.

I guess we have accomplished a lot but we still have such a long way to go…sigh.

This morning I noticed something strange on the upstairs bedroom ceiling. Since we are moving our office into that room while work is being done on our den, I have been spending more time in the extra bedroom upstairs. Upon closer investigation I realized it was mold!

Still in my pajamas, I began pulling down the paper that covered the plaster ceiling and found more mold…which led to pulling the paper off the wall and discovering even more mold. In an old house one bad thing always leads to another…

We had a substantial water leak while our roof was being replaced over Halloween. At first I thought we had lost the ceilings in the rooms where the water rained in but later realized it was paper covering the ceilings that was coming down and that the plaster may still be salvageable.

I decided I had better check the kitchen and discovered mold growing between the paper and the plaster ceiling and on part of the wall. Both the downstairs half bath and upstairs bathroom, which had also gotten wet, appeared to be fine.

The paper covering the upstairs bathroom was backed with burlap and I guess that allowed the plaster to breathe and dry out. The paper in the kitchen and upstairs bedroom are backed with a substance that closely resembles parchment paper. The parchment paper backing didn’t allow the wall to breathe so moisture was trapped between the parchment backing and the plaster allowing mold to grow. This is one of the best arguments I can think of for not covering plaster walls with wallpaper!

Armed with a facemask and my pink sunglasses to protect my eyes, I climbed on a ladder and began scrubbing the mold with hot water mixed with Clorox and a little dish soap. After I got the visible mold off with a wet rag, I scrubbed the area again with a brush and the bleach solution.

When the paper was pulled down lots of dust and little chips of paint – most likely lead paint – fell down, too. This had to be cleaned up with a shop vac with it’s Hepa filter. All the surfaces had to be wiped down with a wet rag and the floors had to be mopped.

What a way to start the day.

When Heather and I left tonight to go visit some friends, the first drizzle had appeared – signaling in the fall season in southern California. We were a little worried since our new roof is not yet complete, so we put a tarp over some of the boxes we had in the upstairs sun room which was exposed to the outside since the siding had been removed. We then headed out expecting a nice evening with friends. { Heather: Stupid or just optimistic? }

In the middle of dinner, after I had consumed my first martini and was well into my first beer, the rain started to really come down pounding on the streets and the rooftops. Heather started to get really worried because she was afraid our ceilings would get ruined. I shrugged the whole thing off thinking that there wasn’t anything we could do. After a couple minutes of debating the situation, Heather decided that she wanted to leave to check the house. I decided that I would go with her. So we cut our evening short and left.

Rain poured down from the sky on our drive home and the windshield wipers had difficulty in keeping a clear view of the road. The roads themselves were slick and the divider lines blended into the asphalt under sheets of water.

When we arrived home we quickly checked each room. The living room was ok. Our renovated dining room was ok (what a relief). Then I heard Heather yell, “We’ve got a huge problem!”

See that blue bucket on the top shelf just filling up with water?

I went into the kitchen and to my horror saw water dripping from different parts of the ceiling. Heather opened up the cabinets and brown water was dripping all over our clean dishes and glasses.

No, the horror isn’t how ugly our back porch is…it is that waterfall gushing down the wall!

We moved to the back porch and discovered a small waterfall flowing from the ceiling on the back porch and in the bathroom. We went upstairs and found water dripping in the upstairs bathroom and in the second bedroom as well.

We had a small disaster on our hands.

We scrambled around the house for buckets and I climbed up into the attic to see if I could contain the water up there. When I was in the attic I found water dripping from the roof, but not in huge quantities. Heather handed me paint trays and I put them under the leaks in the roof.

Crawlspace above the kitchen and back porch. Look at all that water! And that is knob and tube wiring!! Egads!!!

Heather told me the problem was actually in the crawlspace that was above the kitchen and back porch. As I was investigating the problem, Heather yelled “The ceiling is coming down in the kitchen! Get a bucket quick!” I ran downstairs with a bucket to find that the dripping was turning into a steady stream of brown water pissing from the ceiling.

Kitchen ceiling. The only thing still holding it up is the wallpaper.

At that point I decided I needed to get onto the roof and cover the unfinished roof with plastic. Heather called our contractor.

Heather wanted to get into the crawlspace with buckets to contain the water. I wanted to go out the second story window onto the unfinished part of the roof. I quickly moved boxes out from the crawl space and we put buckets in there to catch the water. Then I dismantled the window and tried to put a big piece of plastic on the roof. I was going to nail the plastic down but Heather didn’t want me out on the roof since it was raining.

Bathroom on the back porch flooded with water.

After some time our contractor and his father showed up to assess the situation. They then proceeded out the window and onto the roof with a big piece of plastic. They nailed the plastic down and told us they would be back tomorrow to finish the roof installation. They were very kind. They had even called earlier when we were out to tell us it was raining.

So now we have a HUGE mess. The ceilings need to be replaced in two rooms. They had to be replaced anyway, but now the need is more urgent. All our dishes need to be washed and the cabinets need to be cleaned and dried out.

Fun. { Heather: Not so much… }

After you have stripped paint off of a stone fireplace, you know how you are usually left with a fine film of paint residue? And it just won’t quite go away no matter how much paint stripper you use? Plain, white vinegar, any brand, will instantly remove the paint residue and brighten your masonry.

A few years ago I worked on a project that had a painted fireplace. The fireplace had an attached screen on it. Once the screen was removed the homeowner could see how nice the original stone looked, and was excited to return the fireplace to its original state.

After the fireplace was stripped with a chemical paint remover there was still a little bit of paint residue and a light film the covering the stone.

Our contractor told me how vinegar would remove the paint film. It is such an easy and affordable solution that really works! Vinegar also brightened the stone.

The only thing left to do is sand and refinish the little back hallway floor. I’ll start on that after the holidays.

Photo taken from the dining room. We selected a blue green color from Benjamin Moore’s Historical collection called Wythe Blue HC-143. It’s a darker version of our first paint color attempt. Our bedroom plaster was originally tinted a similiar color to Wythe Blue and served as inspiration.

Top of the stairwell. Light fixture is from Rejuvenation.

Taken at the top of the stairway landing, looking down.

Taken at the top of the stairway landing, looking towards the sleeping porch.

Photo of the antique leaded glass doors, taken from the upstairs bathroom. It is difficult to adequately photograph these beautiful doors due to the narrowness of the back hallway.

Photo of the back hallway taken from our bedroom.

This project somehow doesn’t seem as exciting as some of our past projects but it was just as much work!

Sometimes people ask, “How do you do it? How do you stay married while living in the house during the restoration?”

Well, sometimes we do it better than others. I’ve read interviews featuring other couples who have traveled down this road and when they say how they had no problems and this experience has brought them closer together in their marriage, I think who are they kidding?

Living without a fully functional kitchen for over a year like we have tends to make meal times difficult and we end up eating out more than we should.

The worst thing we face is what we term the “bathroom situation”. We have no shower. The upstairs main bath has been stripped down except for a bath tub. I feel sorry for David when I see him rinsing his hair by pouring water over his head from a cup. We have a working toilet and sink in a closet-sized half bath downstairs on the back porch, not very convenient in the middle of the night.

Plus, just the problems of an older house – bad electric, bad roof, furnace problems, mix in two busy careers equals one frazzled couple.

I will admit living with the state of our kitchen and bath has gotten easier as time goes on, a year and 3 months to be exact. It was a huge adjustment at first but now it seems almost normal. We don’t even notice it any more except on the rare occasions we get away and realize how much quicker and easier it is to take a shower, brush your teeth and style your hair all in the same room. You don’t realize how complicated a simple act like getting ready to go out for an evening really is when your bathroom is torn apart because it begins to seem normal.

We have no experience with restoration and are figuring things out as time and money allow. This leads to conflicts because, in truth, neither of us really knows what we are doing. Our approaches to projects are usually polar opposites and as different as our upbringings.

David’s father, who researched and developed different medical drugs in a lab, has more than a healthy respect for germs, almost verging on a germ phobia. I grew up on a farm, a germ’s paradise. We didn’t bother with shoes in the summer, spent lots of time climbing through years of dirt (or worse) in old barn rafters and hay lofts, playing with lots of different animals, hopefully taking a dip in the swimming pool to clean up, and if I was lucky remembering to wash my hands before eating. When you grow up on a farm you are going to get dirty. I don’t remember safety or germs being a big focus or even a focus in my house.

For Christmas David received a first aid kit from his father. My dad gave me a pry bar, a built-in saw wrench and bottle opener (I guess that comes in handy when the state of your house drives you to drink) and a rechargeable saw, drill and flashlight kit. We’ve used both the first aid kit and the tools, not necessarily in that order.

David: Wait, what are you doing with that sledgehammer?

Heather: I’m going to whack out the cement covering the front porch.

D: Wait. You don’t know what’s under there.

H: Yes, I do. I crawled under the front porch and I think the original wood floor is still intact.

D: You crawled under the front porch?

H: Yeah. I just took off some of those asbestos shingles and crawled under there.

D: Asbestos! Did you wear your respirator?

H: It’s fine.

D: It’s not fine. Wait, I think we need to make a plan.

H: I have a plan. I’m going to whack the cement floor with a sledgehammer, spray water from the garden hose on high power in the cracks to loosen up the cement and then pry up the cement with a crowbar.

D: A garden hose! What?

H: (Frustrated sigh…and a rolling of the eyes for good measure) It’s fine.

D: Put on some safety glasses! Wait, YOU ARE NOT EVEN WEARING SHOES!

These are the days of our lives…The only real piece of advice I can offer is this (the secret of our so-called success):

1) Put one person in charge of a project and let them do it in their own way without offering “help” or suggestions.

2) When you need the other person’s help with a project, let them approach it in their own way.

An example of this, again, has to do with our front porch floor. After days of backbreaking work removing cement that was 4 inches thick, rusty old chicken wire, nails, staples, and each of us getting tentus shots, we discovered linoleum glued to the top of the original wood floor. I can’t explain how upsetting this discovery was after all the work we’d done to get down to the original porch floor.

David was in charge of removing the linoleum. He tried pry bars, scrapers, heating the linoleum with the Silent Paint Remover and none of these options worked very well. After the 3rd night of working on this until 2 in the morning, I suggested that maybe we should just replace the wood floor or put down a sea grass rug but was met with, “Are you kidding! After all this I’m getting that damn linoleum up.” Man verses the linoleum. Man losing. Man finally allows his wife to help him.

D: What are you doing with that steak knife?

H: The blade is thin enough that I can get it underneath the linoleum to pry it up.

D: How did you even think of that? What leads you to think, “Gee, I think a steak knife will do the trick?”

H: It’s working!

D: We use that to eat with. I don’t want you to use it on the floor!

H: We’re not eating with it now…I just broke the blade. I’m going to go get another knife. I never really liked these knives anyway.

D: Okay, you’ve just broken the blades of 3 steak knives. How are we supposed to eat?

H: It’s fine! My technique is working. Do you want this linoleum up or not?

D: Some technique…grumble, grumble

H: What did you just say? You’re just upset that my way is working.

Finally…
3) Praise all the work your partner does even if you are less than thrilled with the outcome.

It is horrible! What else is there to say? This upstairs room functioned as my office for many years. Because it is located off of our bathroom we decided to switch the rooms, making our old bedroom into our new home office.

The truth is I have been holding out on you guys. This room is almost finished! I’ve been a little distracted lately and I’m behind on posting.

The dog matches the wall color in the above photo. Really, we didn’t plan it that way. Although, I do have a confession. Here is a picture of me starting my very first home improvement project. Notice the paint color? I take full responsibility for the orange walls.

Most of the wood trim was removed to be stripped and sanded outside. I usually advocate stripping trim in place (leaving it attached), but removing the trim leaves much less mess and smell inside the house. I am at the point where I want our lives disrupted as little as possible.

I have hated this ceiling fan since the day we moved into the house. Taking the fan down felt like a final victory of over the ugly!

Living without doors.

Stripping paint is not a fun process. Stripping paint from woodwork that was originally painted is agony. I thought I knew all about paint stripping, but what I learned is that there is hell and then there is real H-E-L-L, all caps, please stop sticking bamboo shoots underneath my fingernails hell.

The paint has soaked into the grain of the wood and filled every tiny crevice.

If you desire hours of wretched torture and are crazy enough to attempt this at home, the Silent Paint Remover and/or a heat gun are the way to go. Chemical strippers, of which I am actually a big fan, took so much product to get down to the wood that it wasn’t cost effective.

All the different colors the upstairs bathroom was painted.

All of the woodwork upstairs was painted from day one with the exception of the window frames and trim. I have not seen the combination of painted wood and varnished wood in the same room before. The original paint color on the wood trim was a muted gold. I often see this color referred to as “wheat” in modern paint samples.

Getting down to the wood…finally.

The little back hallway should be hours of fun.

Oh, dear lord…the abatement guys knocked on my door after they were finished and said sorry. Sorry? The condition of our original clapboard siding looked pretty shabby to them. They know we are restoring the house and I think they feel sorry for us.

Odd hole cut into the side of our house.

There is a gaping hole in the side of our house next to our upstairs bathroom. Why? Maybe that is how someone got the original clawfoot bath tub out, other than that it is anyone’s guess?

I immediately went outside and started pulling the black paper off the house. The front and side of our house that faces the street look pretty good. Not great, but not in the sorry realm.

Termite damage

Although, the gaping hole in the South side of our house and bobbled back porch addition is pretty sorry. I am not prepared to deal with the condition of our wood any more today because I am afraid upon further inspection I will discover plenty to be sorry about. I keep wondering, “How much? How much is this going to cost us?”

Enclosed back porch. This doesn’t look pretty.

I have a work deadline that is due at the end of the day today, but am finding it difficult to concentrate. I support our house by doing freelance graphic design work. Our friend Jeff also stopped by and wanted me to touch up his acting photographs.

Meanwhile, I am on the phone with David, “No, there is a hole, a huge hole on the side of our house. What do you mean what type of hole? The type of hole with no wood over it! It looks like birds can fly into our house.”

All of our windows are missing a bottom piece of trim.

In the midst of all this Simon was left upstairs by himself and forgotten until I heard him tumbling down the stairs and landing at the bottom with a yip and a thud. Oh, the guilt! He was rushed to the vet. He has a sprained front leg but nothing is broken. I am supposed to keep him quiet for the next few days, easier said than done.

The area around the chimney obviously has some issues.

I thought I had prepared myself for whatever was waiting underneath the asbestos. I told everyone I was hoping for the best while preparing for the worst. Even though we have ended up somewhere in between, the eternal optimist in me feels disappointed, ok, crushed is more accurate.

My newly planted flowers didn’t fair well.

I am always hopeful that one project will go smoothly like it does on all those television home improvement shows. You know, the ones where they re-do a house in 4 days or something like that. We will be lucky to be finished 4 years!

Continued from Asbestos Shingles Bye-Bye!

January
My Dad flew in to wrap up a few lingering plumbing tasks from our 2004 back porch remodel and to eat a lot of hot dogs. We finally got the downstairs toilet installed and the washer and dryer hooked up. No more trips to the Laundromat! We were so excited that we gave my dad his own corner on our website.

February
Our house made it’s television debut! The television show Restoration Realities on the DIY Network removed our metal security door and built a new Douglas fir screen door to take it’s place. We were concerned about security but the door is so beautiful that we decided not to modify it by installing a deadbolt or a metal grill. We have had no problems.

The episode airs February 19, 2006. There is a nice description of our house and the work we have done on the DIY Network web site.

March
After waiting 2 years, we were finally able to hang the porch swing I purchased right after we moved into the house.

April
We purchased a 1915 baby grand piano from an elderly neighbor. We hired professional piano movers and had the piano tuned.

May
We did absolutely nothing except enjoy all the work already completed on the house.

Our house right after we purchased it in September 2002

Our house in May of 2005

We had gotten into this mindset where we had to keep going and felt guilty if we weren’t working on the house. It was nice to take a break and enjoy life outside of the huge project that is our house.

July
We received photos of our house from Mrs. O. Her family purchased our house from the original owners. She grew up in the house. The photos she sent were taken in the 1940′s on her wedding day.

October
We had a belated house warming party of sorts. It was the first time we have had a group of friends in the house.

December
Here are some photos of the downstairs of our house decorated for Christmas for the first time since moving in 3 years ago.

Moving Forward In 2006
We will get back to work on the house but I’m not sure if we can or even want to duplicate the pace of 2003-2004. In 2006 we will take our restoration work upstairs, that mysterious place which is rarely, if ever, featured on our site. Upstairs photos are coming soon.

Mrs. O. sent us some wonderful old photos of our house. She didn’t include a date but I am guessing they were taken in the mid to late 1940s. The front porch was enclosed with glass window panes. Several houses in our area still have their front porches enclosed in this fashion. I have to confess that I like the way it looks. It reminds me of a greenhouse.

After I first met Mrs. O. a year ago last spring, we shared a phone conversation in which she asked if the “little picket fence” was still outside the upstairs bedroom window? That had been Mrs. O’s bedroom when she lived in the house. I got excited because there is no “little fence” now but I had seen a few on houses in our area. I couldn’t exactly picture how it would have looked and wondered if it was an original feature of the house or something added later? After seeing these pictures I am convinced it was original to the house because it matches the porch railing in style and proportion.

Mrs. O. on her wedding day coming down the front steps of our house

This photo clearly shows the “little picket fence” outside the upstairs bedroom window. The house had been painted white but did not yet have asbestos shingle siding. It also shows more detail of how the front porch was enclosed. That is Mrs. O. coming down the front steps on her wedding day!

Mr. and Mrs. O.

This is a photo of Mr. and Mrs. O taken on their wedding day in our front yard. She wrote on the back of the photo that the little flower girl lived in the apartments across the street. You can also catch a glimpse of Mrs. O’s dog in the lower right hand corner.

The little bungalow and palm trees in the background are no longer there. The little bungalow has either been torn down and replaced or altered beyond all recognition by an unattractive peach and cream stucco style track house.

The dining room was the first room completed in our house. This was before we started writing about our “adventures” in home restoration on the web. So, you don’t get to read all the gory details about how we almost killed each other selecting a paint color for the walls or how I caught the wainscoting on fire.

Dining room before restoration and after.

The woodwork was covered in about 18 layers of paint. We got to relive each decade as we stripped the paint away. There was a groovy 1970′s phase with purple woodwork and hot pink walls.

In the before photo, I had started to strip the paint from the wainscoting. You can see just how dark the original mission finish was.

I had originally intended to paint the dining room a deep burnt red color. We went through 9 different shades of red trying to find the “right” one. After the first 2 paint jobs, David “loved” everything no matter how awful it looked.

Before and After

In the end we settled on this warm golden color, Shelburne Buff from Benjamin Moore’s Historical Collection. Several people have tried this color after seeing our walls and been dissatisfied because the color wasn’t gold enough.

Dining Room After

When a wall is painted a dark color like red, it will need to be primed before a new color is applied or else the dark color will bleed through. Lots of people out there probably already know this, we didn’t. The red undercoat has altered our color. Our walls are not a true Shelburne Buff. But, we are very happy with the color…whatever it is.

Dining room After. The light is from Restoration Hardware. We have since purchased an antique fixture off of eBay but have not installed it yet.

After. Our box beam ceilings and Lulu just because she is a ham.

More about the resources used in our dining room here.

In any restoration there are surprises, both good and bad. The good news? We discovered just how nice our built-in storage bench is. The storage bench, sometimes referred to as a gentleman caller’s bench, is a fairly unique feature in our neighborhood for a bungalow of this size. It was difficult to see the details of the hardware and woodwork because they were hidden under layers and layers of paint. Everything seemed to blend in with the white walls. We didn’t even notice the bench before we moved in because the previous owners had placed a huge projection screen television in front of it.

It never occurred to me that anyone would paint over a mirror! I felt the bench needed a tiny mirror hung on it’s back but decided to wait until we completed the restoration. Thank goodness I waited or else I would have shattered the original mirror when I hammered a nail into it.

We were amazed to find the amount of detail present on the hooks. Each hook has a tiny face on it.

The bad news? Someone drilled holes in the pocket doors and later filled them in with plaster. The only thing I can figure out is that someone put a chain through the holes and then added a padlock to keep that room secure. My neighbor told me that our house was broken into twice when the previous owner’s grandmother lived here. She added bars to the windows after the second break in.

I’m not sure of the best way to repair these holes? The plaster will need to be knocked out. Maybe the holes can be filled in with Bondo?

:: Read about the process used to strip or remove paint from our woodwork. ::

The front door. You can see where part of the door frame was been replaced with plywood. That is also probably the result of a past break in.

The windows on either side of the fireplace are now stripped.

Built-in bookcases. The doors are missing. We hope to some day have replacement doors made.

Built-in storage bench with mirror and coat hooks.

Down with the walls! Look at all that extra usable space behind the wall. It even has the original wood flooring. For a house that is in desperate need of storage space, this is a very happy find.

The original woodwork has been stripped, although not too carefully since we intend to repaint it. We will still be using the bathroom during the construction process. This is the only bathtub in the house…and no shower!

Only the bottom portion of the walls will be removed. The walls will be white subway tile. We are hoping to save and repair the plaster ceiling and top portion of the walls.

In an online forum someone posted a link to an episode of “This Old House” which used a product called the Silent Paint Remover to strip off paint. They were using it outside of a house but I thought I would try it inside on my woodwork. Silent Paint Remover uses infrared heat to soften paint. It’s environmentally friendly. There are no chemicals involved, it works at a low enough operating temperature to prevent plumbic (lead) gases that may be present in the paint from being released and like the name says, it’s silent.

The first thing I should say is this product isn’t cheap. It’s $375 to own it or $22 a day to rent it. It’s not widely available retail yet. I ordered it directly from the manufacturer and it was back ordered for 2 months.

It’s fairly easy to use. You plug it in, turn it on and hold it over the area you want to strip for 20-60 seconds. There are adjustable bars on the side to help stabilize the tool. It covers about a 12″ x 4″ surface area. The paint will start to bubble up or blister and smoke as the Silent Paint Remover starts to work. Then you need to take a scraper and scrape off the paint. It works! It cut through about 8-12 layers of paint right down to the wood. I think this process goes a lot smoother if two people are doing it, one to loosen the paint and another to scrape it off. I was also happy with how light in weight the Silent Paint Remover was.

I did find some drawbacks though.
The Silent Paint Remover doesn’t loosen all the paint in the 12′” x 4″ surface area evenly. The middle part gets done sooner and you have to go back over the edges, several times. The company who manufactures the product recommended wearing gloves, which I didn’t, and the handle got pretty warm. The front and sides of the tool are metal and they get HOT. It’s pretty easy to accidently brush your arm against the metal and burn yourself (which I did). I had a hard time in corners and detailed areas where the surface heights were not even. The Silent Paint Remover was too bulky to fit into corners.

Overall, I like the product. I think I would like it better if it stripped the paint evenly instead of working better in the center and not as well on the edges. It’s frustrating to keep going over the edges to remove all the paint. It’s also easy to bake on some of the paint. When this happens, it looks black and I panicked thinking I had burnt the wood. I found that the baked on, blackened paint will then need to be sanded off which is additional work. Fortunately, these baked on paint areas are limited so it’s not necessary to sand all of the woodwork.

My final analysis is that this product works best on flat surfaces such as clapboard siding. On interior trim pieces I feel a chemical stripper performs better.

Look who decided to walk across the still wet cement floor, leaving tiny paw prints in his wake. The Project Supervisor, otherwise known as Jack and more recently other names that I won’t post here, decided that he needed to look out the bathroom window now, right now.

The bathroom door is being stripped in the backyard, so I put up a barricade to keep Jack out. It is going to take more than my feeble attempts to stop him. Now that he is successfully inside the bathroom he refuses to budge. I am reduced to opening cans of cat food outside the bathroom door, but he is having none of that.

He is lying underneath the window on the still wet cement, safely out of reach, and I swear he is laughing at me.

Tonight I came home and discovered a thin layer of saw dust on EVERYTHING. The contractors were working on sanding the stripped wood in the living room and the dust has settled on everything on the first floor.

Another joy of living in a construction zone.

When we were selecting the wall color for the dining room last spring, we went through 6 different colors starting with burnt red and ending with a golden yellow. This time we were able to choose a wall color in two tries. We are certainly improving. Actually, there is not much of a “we”, David usually goes along with whatever color I select. Then he loves the color even when it’s blatantly wrong.

Opps! Looks like we missed a spot or two.

My first choice was a soft gold color by Sherwin Williams that looked too green next to our dining room walls. We ended up going with Wilmington Tan from Benjamin Moore’s historical collection. It is a shade darker than the Shelburne Buff from the same collection that we used on the dining room walls. The ceiling is painted Compatible Cream from Sherwin Williams.

The new vent cover from Rejuvenation is installed.

We are almost done with the living room. There is some touch up work that needs to be done with paint and stain. Our brick fireplace got a little faded from the paint stripper so we are looking into staining it. There is some hardware to install in the room and we need to hang the antique light fixture once it arrives. I’ll post more photos once we get all the final pieces installed in the room.

A backward glance, our living room before restoration and the worst days during the restoration.

Now we are starting work on the den!

The antique light has finally arrived! Isn’t it beautiful?

Looking into the den from our living room. The new plaster walls are such an improvement.

The drywall is now up. We found a salvage baseboard that is a perfect match. It just needs to be stripped and installed.

Remember this?

We have a ceiling.

The front entry seems so much more inviting now.

The plaster wall has been repaired, the wood stripped and stained, and the walls painted.

Looking into the den before.

Looking into the den now.

Built-in book shelf and the gentleman caller’s bench.

David stripping the paint of our fireplace and fireplace today.

:: See how we brought back our fireplace’s luster after the bricks faded during the paint stripping process. ::

Stripping away layers of paint.

Lulu in the finished living room.

See Living Room Resources to learn about the products used in our restoration.

The funny thing is earlier today we were talking with some neighbors about how the neighborhood seems to be getting better. Then on our evening walk a block and a half up our quiet little street we saw this in the alley…

This car has been gutted, obviously a victim of a GTA. That’s grand theft auto for all you people out there who don’t attend block club meetings. The police officer who joined the meeting went over such things as gang activity, GTA’s, and assaults for our area. I was the dumb girl fresh off the turnip truck who raised her hand, “Excuse me officer, what’s a GTA?”

All that is left is just the shell of the car. Everything down to the lights has been stripped away.

No seats, nothing. I think this car used to be some type of a Honda. Maybe a Civic? It’s hard to tell.

This room is located directly off the kitchen. I think it was originally intended as a music room. In the past this room was used as a bedroom, although it has no closet. The previous home owner used the room as an office, which is what we have been using it for. Going forward it will become our tv room/den.

Pocket doors have been stripped of paint. Looking into the living room from the den.

Doorway into the kitchen.

Very damaged wooden baseboard. Not quite sure what is happening there?

Piano window. I can imagine a piano sitting underneath this window, can’t you?