It started a several months ago with an email from our realtor asking if we wanted to be on the DIY network? I wrote back telling him maybe, depending on what we would have to do.

This led to discussions with the show’s producer and an in-home visit. Last Friday we learned that our house has been selected to be on a new show for the DIY network called Restoration Realities. We’ll also be on the show doing a project on our house.

I found this description from a “Do It Yourself Network Fact Sheet” posted online:

Restoration Realities
Follow homeowners as they face the step-by-step challenges of restoration and share the beauty and history that make restoring old homes so rewarding.

Restoration Realities travels across the country in search of restore-minded homeowners and their great old homes. One home is featured in each half-hour episode.

I have to confess that we don’t get the DIY network so I’ve never seen the show. Has anyone out there seen it?

Now, if I was going to do a show called Restoration Realities it would be a little different:
1. Show the homeowner leaving to go shower at the gym because that easy do-it-yourself plumbing project wasn’t so easy after all.

2. See the crazy homeowner breakdown sobbing on the phone to a plumber, begging them to come after showering at the gym four days in a row because every plumber called was either too busy or never showed for their scheduled appointment.

3. Watch as your befuddled homeowner realizes that her 92 year old front door lock is broken and that no amount of key turning or praying is going to open that door. Watch her almost have a heart attack and cry out “Absolutely NOT!” when a locksmith pulls out a hammer and chisel to use on the 92 year old door handle.

Capture the stress on the homeowner’s face when she realizes that she is going to have to make a decision of ‘Sophie’s Choice’ like proportions. Should she enter from the back door and ruin the still wet finish put down on the wood floor only two hours earlier, after days of sanding and prep work, or should she sacrifice the front door or at least it’s original hardware?

Stay tuned because after the commercial break your crafty homeowner and her locksmith sidekick will break into the house through a window causing much dog barking and an ear shatteringly loud house alarm to go off. To make it even more special, make sure it happens to be the homeowner’s birthday.

4. Have an animal trainer on set to direct the cat to run up the stairs the second after the homeowner finishes shellacking them. Allow the homeowner to think the cat is quarantined and that her spouse is watching him to make certain the little escape artist doesn’t make a run for it.

Zoom in on the homeowner with paint brush in hand, standing there with her mouth agape trying to form the words…hear her scream (insert spouse name here, for our purposes lets just use Dave), “Dave! I THOUGHT you were watching him!”

Edit out the ensuing swear words for primetime viewing.

5. Have your home owner start a “little project” and watch how quickly that “little project” grows into a HUGE project resulting in taking a room down to the studs, ripping out a floor and basically rebuilding that room from the ground up.

6. How about a restoration fashion show? Have your homeowners sashay down the catwalk modeling the latest in tool belts, hammers in hand, clad in paint splotched tee-shirts and sooty, ground in dirt and grease stained jeans. The voice over can proudly say that no amount of washing, bleaching or use of stain removers will ever get these clothes clean again!

7. Feature the best fast food restaurants in a 30 mile radius around the homestead. Your homeowners aren’t going to be cooking any time soon because, chances are, on any given day they won’t have running water, electricity in the kitchen or everything in the house, including their dishes, will be covered in dust. Sealing rooms off with plastic helps but dust won’t be contained. It’s “The Invasion of the Dust Mites…”

8. Set up hidden cameras to capture the expression on the homeowner’s face when she looks in the mirror after an important business meeting and realizes she just gave a presentation to a room full of people with green latex paint in her hair.

9. Today on Restoration Realities watch as our homeowners come to grips with the Golden 3x Rule: Projects cost 3 times more than you had estimated and take 3 times longer to finish.

See our homeowner pick her spouse (insert spouse name here, for our purposes lets just use Dave) Dave up off the floor after he adds up exactly how much money they have spent on the house. Listen in while they try to figure out line item by line item how this project got SO FAR off budget. This episode is a fun one!

10. Ok folks, get ready for Restoration Survivors. Our new spin-off pits young couples against the most challenging circumstances, the most perplexing restoration problems, and the most annoying tasks. Will they be able to work together to overcome the stress, day after day, week after week while they are hit with unforeseen and unexpected difficulties?

Who will run out of money? Who will decide to sell? Who’s marriage will survive, who will split up? Who will be the last couple standing? Who has the strength and cunning to be our next Restoration Survivor?

All winners will receive a 30 year mortgage, plus their home’s resale value.

We recently received an email from a couple considering buying a house that sounds like it would need a good amount of work. I wanted to be supportive and encourage them, but I also felt that I needed to be honest about our experience. I’m left wondering if I just ended up scaring them away?

I question if someone had told me upfront what I was in for if I would have wanted to go forward with the house? Who am I kidding? Of course, I would have still wanted our house. I would have assumed our house would somehow be different, our experience would somehow be easier. Kind-of like when David tells me that the screaming child having a fit at the mall because he wants a cookie is an anomaly, that if we ever had children they would never act that way.

Fellow house restorers, what would you have said? Do you have any advice, caution or encouragement for someone considering undertaking a fairly extensive restoration with 3 young children?

Email:
Subject: Should we do this crazy thing?

Hi Heather!

We came across your site when doing research into a 1912 bungalow located in Southern California that we are considering buying. It has always been our dream to buy a Craftsman home, and we found this one and can’t believe how beautiful it is. We have three small children who would have to live through a major “cleaning up” of the house, and we have spent the last week stressing about all of the pros and cons of buying it.

Your site has only added to our problem with this big decision. It looks like a LOT of work, but you sure do look happy doing it! The house we are looking at needs tons of work and is WAY overpriced. I guess the days of buying a fixer upper at a fixer upper price are long gone. Our question is, would you guys do this over again if you had the choice? Do you think your type of remodel would be doable with kids in the house?

Thanks so much.

My Response
Hi!

Thanks so much for contacting us. First of all, I have to say that I am glad that we got the house. After 3.5 years I feel like I have some perspective. There is nothing like bringing a house back to life and these old homes are so special. When we get our house done I am sure I will think it is all worth it.

That said, this process is much more difficult than I had imagined when we first purchased the house. The main thing I didn’t realize is the amount of time it would take. I don’t just mean the amount of time it takes to complete the projects, I also mean the amount of time it takes away from your “normal” life. The first year we were in the house we didn’t go out to dinner, movies, see friends, watch tv (ok, we watched less tv) or all those little things people do without giving it much thought. Yes, we could have still done those things but it is so hard to enjoy time away from the house when you know there is so much to be done just to make your house livable. In the beginning it isn’t so bad because everything seems like an adventure and is still fun.

I also didn’t factor in the amount of dust and dirt these projects generate. We had 2 shop vacs going around the clock and plastic partitions up to try to contain the mess but it doesn’t really help all that much. Be prepared to have a layer of dust covering everything you own no matter what you do.

Then there is the money. In our case we grossly under estimated how much the work on the house would actually cost. A little bit of money spent here and there really adds up quickly. In our experience, you can start out doing a little project and as you get into it, you discover a structural problem or a plumbing problem. You delve into that problem and find something even more expensive behind that. The whole one step forward two steps back has led me to tears many times.

The best way I can explain it is to think of the house as a child. A very demanding child with special needs. Because that is the kind of focus and dedication the house will end up requiring. The house does add strain and takes the focus off your primary relationships. Because you are so busy working on the house you aren’t able to give your other relationships the same amount of time and energy as before the house. There is a constant level of strain. There have been times when I am washing the dishes in the bath tub, taking a shower at the gym or going to the Laundromat for months because of a plumbing issue when maybe I would rather come home, kick my shoes off and relax. But, I can’t kick my shoes off because everything in my house is covered in dust. It’s that kind-of thing for months or even years on end that just gets to you.

Then you get to where we are now. We have the house basically livable. But, we still have lots left to do and I can’t get geared up to go through all that again. I just want to live in the house and enjoy a semi-normal life. I don’t want to deal with the dirt, dust, energy and cost that I know will come with more work on the house. We’ll get to the point where we will work on the house again but we haven’t worked on the house for over a year and it’s very hard to get back into it once you stop.

I hope I haven’t scared you completely away from the idea but I am trying to be as honest as I can be. Personally, I would not go through a restoration as extensive as this one again unless we had the money to bring in a team to do the work and complete the project in 6 months – before we moved in. At the time we bought this house, I think we would have been better off finding a Craftsman house that was in better condition and spending more for it. We ended up putting that money into fixing this house up anyway.

But, it has been rewarding and we are now at a place where we can enjoy the house. I just wish that the house was completely done but we still have lots left to do. Even though we have done all this work, we are only half way there.

You have to go with your heart. There is nothing that anyone could have said that would have stopped me from buying this house. I fell in love with it the first time I saw it. It hasn’t been easy and I do think it would be even harder with young children unless there is a way you could bring in help to get the work done quicker.

I hope this was helpful. I wish you and your family all the best!
heather

This month we will celebrate our 4th year in the house. What a journey this has been.

Buying The House – Are We Really Doing This?
Gee, I can’t believe we are actually going to do this. What if we want to move to another country someday, you know, like next year? Are we sure we really want to do this? 235K is a LOT of money. Oh my God, I can’t sleep.

I can’t believe we have to go through all this paperwork just to buy a house.

What happened to our house? Why does the house look so different now that we own it? It looked so much better at the open house. Why didn’t we notice that the floors are all black and the house is so dirty? Wow, just look at this place. It’s kind-of dumpy. Make that totally dumpy. I can’t breathe. I need to open a window. Oh crap, all the windows are painted shut.

First 6 months – Euphoria and Unrealistic Expectations
I can’t believe we finally have a house to call our own. I’m so happy. Oh, what a beauty it will be someday when we get it all fixed up…like in 6 months from now. Hmmmm, it does need a lot of work. Well, maybe in 8 months then. This place just needs some tender loving care.

Man, we are so busy all the time now. It is hard to stay in touch with friends and family. All this unpacking, looking at paint chips, trolling eBay for antique light fixtures, reading everything I can find on bungalows and home decorating really takes a lot of time.

How romantic that our second wedding anniversary is spent together in our own little home. I’m so lucky to have a husband who is as excited as I am about starting our very first restoration project. I love my husband. I love our house.

The Rest of the First Year – All That Glitters is not Gold
I can’t believe that David is acting so mean! Why did we even buy this house if he is going to get angry at me every time we work on it? How could I know that stripping paint would be so damn difficult? It’s not my fault that I caught the wainscoting on fire. The heat gun got super hot.

We should be able to restore the dining room in a month, six weeks tops.

2nd Year – Reality Creeps In
I can’t believe we are STILL working on the dining room. How could we have spent six months working on one room? I can’t believe I actually thought we could restore a room a month! I was so naive. We might need to get on a five year plan.

I had no idea it would be so expensive to fix up the house. How did I think we were going to be able to restore the whole house with 15K? I mean, our house needs EVERYTHING. Why does everything cost so much?

All the cashiers at Home Depot greet me by my first name. We gotta get out more. I mean to someplace fun. I can’t even remember the last time we went out to dinner or to a movie.

Wow, our house has really appreciated in value and we have only been here a year. Interest rates keep on dropping. Lets refinance and take out a Home Equity Line of Credit so we can afford to get our roof fixed and to hire some plasters.

David started a web blog about the house for me. I’m not really sure why. I mean, what could I possibly have to say?

3rd Year – Restoration Full Steam Ahead
I can’t believe how awesome these plasters are! They can do everything. They can strip paint, plaster, do carpentry work and so much more. I think I’m in love! With the money we got from the Home Equity Line of Credit we should be able to swing lots of work on the house. Everything is going so much better now.

All my free time is spent on the house. I’m trying to schedule the carpenter, plumbers, electricians, oversee all the work being done and balance the budget. It really upsets me when these people don’t show up or even bother to call to say they can’t make it. What other industry does business like that?

David is refusing to talk with me any more about what colors to paint the house. Just because I change my mind once or twice a day, and maybe I am being obsessive, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t talk about it. I need to consider all the possibilities and all he wants to focus on is the end result.

Wow. The back porch needs to be completely ripped off and rebuilt. Our little back porch project has somehow spiraled into a full-on exterior restoration. This is crazy. I don’t think we can afford this.

Good thing interest rates are still low, but everyone says they are going to rise. Lets roll our Home Equity Line of Credit into a fixed second mortgage and take a little extra cash to finish up the work on the exterior.

It’s hard to remember how horrible our house used to be. I’m feeling really good about the house. It’s so exciting to see my vision for it coming to fruition.

4th Year – Maybe We Should Sell?
I can’t believe that we have spent all this time and money and are only half way done. I hate this house and all it’s problems. I am SO over working on the house and all things house related. I will never, ever take on a restoration project this extensive again. I must have been out of my mind!

Wow, the house across the street listed for over 600K and it needs lots of work – like our house needed lots of work when we bought it. Maybe we should sell? We could travel or move to Europe.

Hmmmm, I’m getting really bored. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to do some work on the house? It was really nice of David to clean out the back hallway so I can start restoration work upstairs.

5th yr – Who knows?

Update: 9th yr…oh, why didn’t we sell the house in year 4?

Juan, our carpenter, retrofitting salvaged casement windows for the
upstairs bedroom. This window was originally a casement window and
it is once again.

Primed and ready! The primer is on. All the salvaged windows are in
on the top floor.

Back side.

And the green goes on…After a long struggle trying to select a house
color and changing my mind many times, it all comes down to this. So,
this is the color I picked? Wow, the painted chimney looks bright – add
that to the list. Remove tacky red paint from the chimney bricks…Check.

Simon (the one with black on his back) and Lulu. I don’t make them do
these things. They naturally pose whenever there is a camera around.

All ears.

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!

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!

Never having owned or restored a house before, I thought I could single-handedly restore a room a month. Now here we are 3 years later with 3 completed rooms and 1 almost finished back porch and powder room. Our garage and sleeping porch are still filled with boxes that we can’t unpack until we restore the rooms where those items belong.

We never had that house warming party.

It’s a little embarrassing that we have no working sink in either of our two bathrooms. When people visit they end up washing up in our kitchen sink. At first it seemed like an adventure, then sort-of like camping and now sadly, it just seems normal. The “bathroom situation” has caused a few awkward explanations to friends and family.

The bathroom situation was never supposed to go on this long. We kind-of left each room “as-is” and intended to fix it up completely when we got to it. The problem is we haven’t gotten to the bathrooms yet. If I had known I would be brushing my teeth in the bathtub 3 years later I would have started our restoration in the bathroom! Instead, we focused on the main living areas that people see when they first walk in our house – the living room, dining room, and den.

David and several friends are working on an independent film project. Over the weekend they filmed a few scenes in our garage. For the first time our house was filled with people. Actors waiting for their scene to shoot spent time on our front porch while others congregated inside. Several people played the piano, others sat around the dining room table, people broke off into several small groups in the living room and den.

Our house filled with activity and life. It occurred to me how great our house is for entertaining, bathroom situation aside, because of the way the rooms are open and flow into each other.

It was house warming party that we never had.

David’s experience:
On Thursday of last week, the crew for the new DIY network show, “Restoration Realities” rolled into our house at 9am bringing cases of cameras, lighting equipment, audio equipment and power tools.

Our garage was transformed into a mini workshop, the back porch became the equipment staging area and our kitchen became the craft-service/break area. People whirled about setting up lights and cameras while the hosts planned out the projects and constructed the pieces needed.

We never knew how much work went into producing a show like this. Not only did they have to get the shots for the show, but off camera, they also had to do construction work. It was non-stop action that lasted till 11pm the first day, where at that point Heather and I were left with “homework” to complete for the next day.

Our job was to stain our newly constructed screen door. We stayed up till 1am completing the job and fell into bed knowing that at 7am it would all start again.

The second day proved to be even more hectic with the pressure to finish both projects (weather stripping the windows, the door and installing the new screen door) plus get all the rest of the shots done for the show.

In the end, it all came together. Although we did not get the security door we wanted, we did end up with a beautiful screen door that fits the period of the house, plus weather stripping. Everyone on the crew was really nice and we had some good times. We can’t wait to see the show!

Our metal security door. The bolts had to be cut off with saws.

Heather’s experience:
When I was a child, I was once in a television commercial for the Carson Perrie Scott department store based out of Chicago. The tv spot was an ad for Father’s Day. The fact that the father in the commercial had red hair and that my Mom was the Art Director made me a shoe-in for the part.

I don’t remember much about the experience except for the fact that the ad ran right after the television show “Gunsmoke.” What 7 year old, growing up in a small town in Indiana, wouldn’t be thrilled to be ON TV right after “Gunsmoke”?

When I was a little older I was on the local public television station’s morning show along with my dad and uncle. We were there to talk about the practice of raising and farming ducks, something that my family knows a thing or two about since that’s what they do for a living. I’m sure that was one riveting episode!

Yet, this impressive background in television didn’t begin to prepare me for being on a home improvement show, albeit a restoration minded one. First of all there is a whole crew of people that descend on your home. There are people in charge of lighting, sound, the cameras, a director, several producers, a production assistant, a lighting assistant, a carpenter and the show’s host. Most of these people come with equipment, large boxes of it.

Then there are the lights. These large, hot lights that are on tripod frames and ceiling height. A lot of time is spent adjusting the lighting and getting the correct angles. But, oh, the first time I saw our house on the monitors used to show what is being filmed, I was taken in by how the lighting made all the colors come alive and appear more vibrant, richer. All the wood trim seemed to almost glow. I wish our house always looked that lovely.

Bungalows are comfortable houses but rarely spacious and they feel much smaller once filled with a film crew, their equipment and all the towering lights. For someone who tends to feel claustrophobic in small spaces and shy around groups of people that I don’t know well, it was a bit overwhelming.

Some of the crew setting up a shot on Day 1.

I discovered the best thing hands down was something called “craft services” which consisted of every type soda pop, Doritos, Pringle, M & M, Kit Kat bar, crackers, nuts, and coffee imaginable. Our kitchen was converted into the craft services area and we were greeted with fresh out of the oven cinnamon rolls for breakfast, warm chocolate chip cookies and milk for a snack, and our lunches and dinners were picked up from local fast food restaurants.

Restorations Realities shot three episodes in Los Angeles. Our house was the second location. We felt a little sad when all the treats and sodas were packed up and moved on to the third house. It was easy to get used to such a great spread and someone to take our food order at meal times.

Even though the show is for the Do It Yourself network our screen door was pre-built and shipped in pieces to Los Angeles due the tight two day shooting schedule. If all we had to do was build a door that would be have been entirely do-able within the two day shoot. But, that doesn’t take into account the whole process of filming, and it is a process.

There is an outline or rough script that they follow as far as what needs to be said and shown on camera. The first day someone would tell us where to stand, give us an idea of what they would like us to say and how they would like us to move. Things like you’ll start at Point A and walk to Point B, positioning your body in a certain way so that you aren’t turning your back to the camera.

Each “scene” would need to be filmed several times to make sure the correct shots were captured with one of two cameras used. The scene would need to be reshot if someone flubbed a line or the lighting wasn’t just right. Or maybe you didn’t have enough “energy” after you had done a scene a few times so they shot it again to get a better reaction.

A big problem we ran into was noise from the city. We experienced all types of disruptions from planes flying overhead, to obnoxious horns that toot to a tune, lawn mowers or people in the neighborhood stopping by to ask what we were filming. Each of these disruptions required that we stop filming a scene and then start the scene over again after the noise had cleared.

I was most surprised by how much time and work it took to set up the scenes. The cameras had to be set up for the shots and the scene correctly lit. It sometimes took up to an hour to set up a scene and do the run through of where we were to stand and what we were supposed to say.

David and I were split up into teams. I worked on weather stripping with Bill the show’s host, while David worked with Chris the carpenter on the show to put together the screen door. Everything went well except for when I accidentally sanded Bill’s thumb with a power sander. Fortunately, he wasn’t hurt and possibly even benefited from the high-powered manicure.

Weather stripping the front door on Day 2.

The first day I had a wonderful time. The crew was very nice and joked around a lot off camera. The mood of the day was light hearted and playful. The first time I saw our screen door I was thrilled to see that it was finely crafted out of thick fir wood and beautiful. The quality of the craftsmanship was very high.

But, the second day just didn’t seem to go as well. I was too keyed up to sleep much after our first day of filming so I was tired. There was also some tension between people on the show which kind-of made the second day less fun. Things felt rushed and there was a lot less time spent explaining to us what was going to happen or what was being done to our house.

The way a door is to be hung or a threshold installed probably didn’t seem like a big deal to people working on the show but to someone who has spent the last two years of her life painstakingly restoring her house, those seemingly minor details were HUGE details to me. It just didn’t seem like there was enough time to explain what was going to happen and that caused me to feel very anxious.

About half way through the second day I really had doubts about why we decided to do the show and truthfully, I wanted everyone and their equipment out of our house. It is difficult to really describe what it is like to have people that you don’t know very well in and out of your house, moving around in frantic activity to adjust huge lights and cameras while projects are being done to your house. Projects that you are a part of but more in a secondary role because the projects have been planned out and are mainly being carried out by someone else.

The homeowners agree to the overall project idea upfront but in our experience, they have little say so as to what shape that project takes or how it is carried out. It is a strange feeling to be relegated to the role of sidekick after being the driving force in the restoration of your home.

It wasn’t that I didn’t like the film crew because that couldn’t be further from the truth. They bent over backwards to be nice to us. They are wonderful people who I genuinely enjoyed meeting and getting to know.

Having all this activity in the house was such a drastic change from my quite days spent with the dogs working from home. I started feeling very overwhelmed by the experience and upset because I didn’t understand how the projects were going to progress and come together in the end. Most importantly, I didn’t know what we would be left with after the film crew packed up and moved on to the next house.

Halfway through Day 2. If you know me well you can tell by the look on my face I’m stressed out but trying to play it off. This is my “just smile” only half a day left to go look. David is having a great time and going with the flow!

It was at this tense, meltdown moment that I had to film my personal interview. This is where they film you individually and ask you questions about your house, your hobbies and other get to know you better type of questions. It didn’t go well. If you watch the show I will be the woman with no hobby.

You mean that people who have full time jobs and restore their houses full time also have time for hobbies? Huh, how does that work? Watching television and sleeping didn’t seem to qualify. David, on the other hand, apparently sky dives in his free time! They say the wife is always the last know.

This is from a man who won’t tackle any home improvement project unless he’s clad head to toe in a hazmat suit, yet he wants America to believe he is jumping out of airplanes on the weekends. The David that does home improvement projects on tv is a very adventurous guy. In addition to sky diving he also engages in rock climbing. He might think this is really funny until he gets sky diving lessons for his birthday. That’s right, my husband thought it was fun to make up his hobbies, recounted bitterly by the woman who has NO hobby.

After my meltdown moment which I tried to play off, it is never a good idea to completely freak out in front of people you barely just met who are there for the purpose of capturing your likeness, house and spouse on film, I pulled myself together. It was 9 p.m. or later by the time we wrapped up the final shots which made for a long day for everyone. The crew had arrived at 7 a.m.

Filming the final shots on Day 2.

After having a week to reflect on the experience of being on a home improvement television show, I feel overall doing the show was a lot of fun. There were some tense, not so fun moments or hours, but in the end we were left with a beautiful screen door that we both love and a front entrance that is weather proofed. The show left our house in a better state than it us in when they arrived, were super nice to us and our dogs, plus they fed us tasty treats. Really, what more could any homeowner ask for?

I’m not sure how the screen door is going to work out for us long term from a security standpoint? We have considered putting a double cylinder deadbolt on the screen door but couldn’t bring ourselves to put a hole in our new door. A deadbolt also kind-of takes away from the welcoming aspect of a screen door.

The television show is called “Restoration Realities” on the DIY network. This is a brand new show and the first episode airs around March 6th. We don’t know when the episode we are on will air, they said it might not be until 2006, but we’ll keep you posted!

Our front entrance with the new screen door.

See more pics of from filming the show.

Read about how we were selected to be on the show.

Simon and Lulu photographed through the new screen door. So far they have been pretty good about not scratching it. They spent most of the two days we filmed upstairs and out of the way. Although, they were not very happy to miss out on getting attention from complete strangers – one of their great thrills in life!

When I was a little girl, for a short time I lived in a 1920′s house that was painted olive green. The house was called the Bilz Farm but to me it was always “The Green House.” When David and I started looking for a house three years ago we weren’t even sure what type of house we wanted, but I knew I wanted to paint our future home green.

Olive green body color, cream trim, brown and ox blood red accent colors

Above is one of my favorite green exterior paint jobs in West Adams.

We removed some beadboard panels in the sleeping porch of our house and discovered original clapboard siding that was stained green! It seemed like fate. I spent my free time looking at paint samples, pouring over books, magazines and historical publications agonizing over just the right shade of green to paint our house.

Two toned green exterior with cream trim and peach colored accents. West Adams.

After driving David crazy for months, “Are you sure you like this shade? What about this one?” I finally selected what I considered to be the perfect shade of green. I painted the siding around the bottom of the porch in what became known as Favorite Green. One of our neighbors stopped by to let me know it was the ugliest shade of army green she had ever seen. Two weeks later, another neighbor 3 houses down painted their house almost the same shade as Favorite Green.

Olive body, dark olive brown trim, and burnt red accent color. West Adams.

We began to notice all the green houses in our area. A surprising number of restored houses in our area end up painted some shade of green. We are considering replacing all the cedar shingles along the top story and staining them a chestnut color and painting the clapboard siding on the first story creamy tan. We would do this so that our house would be different, but I’m having a hard time letting go of green. In my heart I still desire The Green House.

Green exterior. West Adams area of Los Angeles, CA

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.

To say that the organization gene doesn’t run in my family is too kind. I come from a long line of hoarders and pack rats. I have never stumbled upon a pile of papers, stack of books, or box of magazines that I didn’t want to keep, just in case.

The first step to recovery is admitting that you have a problem. With this in mind, I contacted organization expert Dawn Sutterby to help cure my clutter addiction.

1912 Bungalow: Everyone wants an organized home. Why don’t we all have one?

Dawn Sutterby: I believe organization is a habit we either take on or discard, early in life. As a child, I loved helping my Mom keep the house clean and organized. Oh, to fold those soft, warm towels or to dust the precious knick-knacks in the living room. Both chores completely lost their luster when Mom yelled at me for folding towels the ‘wrong’ way. Did you know you could dust the ‘wrong’ way too? You can, and I did. This childhood disillusionment can lead to a life of clutter.

As an adult, one of the biggest obstacles to having an organized home is feeling too overwhelmed to start de-cluttering. The key is, get started! Then you can form better habits like getting into a ‘clean routine’, so you’re not overwhelmed again. 

1912 Bungalow: Once you’ve made the decision to clear the clutter, how do you get started?

Dawn Sutterby: 

1. Get ready.

What’s your goal? Cleaning out an office/attic/basement/closet/garage?

When can you start? Set aside some un-interrupted time when you can make progress on your project. Notice I said make progress, not necessarily finish the project. Real-life example: I’m going to cleanout & organize my bedroom closet, next Sunday afternoon!  

2. Get Set.

What’s your plan? Whatever you are tackling, break it into small groups of tasks.  This makes the project much less overwhelming! 

Real-life example: Cleaning the closet can be broken into: Floor, Overhead Shelf and Hanging Racks.

Each section can be done at separate times, yet completing each provides a sense of accomplishment and some motivation to finish the entire closet!

• Are you really ready?

• Do you have enough hangers, trash bags and storage boxes?

• Are you moving some items into another room or closet? Is that space ready?

3. Go!

When it’s GO TIME, turn on some music and stay focused on your immediate set of tasks.

Real-life example:  Do use the standard “Keep”, “Trash”, “Donate”, “Mend/Clean” piles to keep your focus. Don’t get side-tracked by that box of old love-letters on the floor, under a pile of sweaters; set it aside for later & clear that floor!  

Congratulations!

Celebrate your success. You can see the closet floor? Hooray!  

1912 Bungalow: How do you keep from feeling overwhelmed?

Dawn Sutterby: Focus on a small area of your project or small set of tasks. Clearing off a desk-top, the floor, or the stairs does wonders for your motivation. When you see you’re making progress, you’ll want to keep going!

By the way, I still fold my towels the ‘wrong’ way.

1912 Bungalow: Thanks Dawn! These tips should help me to conquer the clutter in my home office. Stay tuned…

I will be talking with Dawn in the future about tackling day-to-day clutter and organizing old family “treasures.”

Ok, I admit it. Once I get excited about something it is hard for me to stop focusing on it. Some might call it an obsession, I think of it more as enthusiasm. Last night I found myself recording a scene from the movie “Catch Me if You Can” filmed in an old fashioned kitchen.

“Catch Me if You Can” is a good movie, but I became more engrossed with the kitchen than the storyline. The kitchen had built-in cupboards and a sink in the same configuration as in our house. I kept wishing the camera would pull back so I could see where the refrigerator and stove were placed instead of a close-up shot of Leonardo DiCaprio. You know your priorities have changed when you are more excited by a kitchen than a heartthrob!

I did a little research and found a list of bungalows and Craftsman homes in the movies and on TV:

All in the Family: TV series, the classic 1970’s family home of Archie and Edith Bunker.

Back to the Future: movie, filmed at the quintessential Arts and Crafts home, the Gamble house in Pasadena. It was the setting of the professor’s house and the science lab. For a lover of older homes, it doesn’t get better than this!

Beverly Hills 90210: TV series. Dylan McKay’s gorgeous California bungalow. This house was also used in the 2002 movie Clockstoppers. Read about how the house was saved from demolition and see more photos.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: TV series. Here is an exterior photo of the house Buffy lives in with her mother. The interior is full of period furnishings, has nice tile work and wainscoting, too. The town of Sunnydale is full of California style bungalows.

Grumpy Old Men: movie, starring Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau, and Ann-Margaret has some great bungalows.

Hanging Up: movie, starring Diane Keaton, Meg Ryan and Lisa Kudrow. Meg Ryan’s character lives in a Spanish-style bungalow that has some interesting interiors; mostly Monterrey/Western furnishings and a great Bauer, California pottery collection in the kitchen.

LA Confidential: movie. The whole movie is filled with period homes. This is Bidwell’s house.

My Life as a House: movie, starring Kevin Kline. Tear jerker.

Monster-in-Law: movie, starring Jane Fonda and Jennifer Lopez. Jennifer Lopez falls in love with a doctor and moves into his house…this house. The house steals the show: gorgeous woodwork; green subway tiled bathroom; beautiful tiled fireplace complete with a wood mantel, flanked by a built-in bookcase and more. Watch this movie just for the house.

Multiplicity: movie, starring Michael Keaton. Michael Keaton creates clones of himself to help in rehabbing his family’s bungalow. Hmmmmm…that doesn’t seem like such a bad idea.

My Dog Skip: movie. A coming of age story starring Frankie Muniz, Kevin Bacon and Diane Lane.

Old School: movie, starring Luke Wilson, Will Ferrell and Vince Vaughn. Who can forget their frat house?

Radio Days: movie, Woody Allen. Set in a bungalow and the interior shots had craftsman influences.

Six Feet Under: TV series, funeral home. This house is located in my neighborhood on Arlington Ave in the West Adams area of Los Angeles.

Swing Shift: movie, starring Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell. Goldie lives in a gorgeous bungalow court. This location was also used for the Alvin and the Chipmunks movie.

The Man Who Wasn’t There: movie, starring Billy Bob Thornton and directed by the Coen brothers.

The Shining: movie, famously starring Jack Nicholson. The hotel interior. I spent a good part of my childhood being afraid of “red rum, red rum…”

Training Day: movie, starring Denzel Washington, Ethan Hawke and Scott Glenn.

What Lies Beneath: movie, starring Harrison Ford and Michelle Pfeiffer. This gives you a glimpse of some of the built-ins you will see throughout the house.

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 beautiful flowers that David gave me.

Lulu enjoys them.

Getting ready to leave the house for the evening. We actually had a house sitter come over! Because the alarm screens aren’t in yet, David and I can’t leave the house alone without being concerned that someone will break in.

Happy 4 years, baby!

We really did leave the house together (the first time in 2 months) and enjoyed a nice evening without speaking about “the house.”

Technology on the other hand, is my thing. That is why Heather mentioned that if I wanted to do any wiring or run any cables, now would be the time to do it. I also had a limited time since the contractors were trying to finish construction soon. So last week I spent the time making a list of what needed to be done:

• Remove the hanging coaxial cable from the OUTSIDE of the house that connects our cable modem in the office to the basement and re-wire through the walls on the inside of the house.

                              Before                                       After
  
  See how much nicer it looks without those ugly wires running down the side of the house?

• Remove the three coaxial cables connecting the satellite dish to the basment on the OUTSIDE of the house and re-wire through the walls on the inside.
• Cut three unused phone lines connecting our house to the telephone pole.
• Remove the ghetto installation of satellite cable through the cracked wood floor of the sun room connected to the dish on the roof and install the cable in the walls from the basement.
• Remove the unused hanging cable on the other side of the house which goes from the basement – through a hole in the shingles – through a hole in the closet wall – stapled around the door…
• Connect the DirecTv dish to the existing multiplexer switch in the basement and run cables to the bedroom and den.

  and to be adventurous…

• Setup and install Vonage VoIP phone service so we can stop paying expensive phone bills.

I honestly hated the thought that I would have to crawl on my back in the dirt and debris underneath the hardwood floors. The crawlspace under the house is very tight and cluttered with heating ducts, electrical wiring (old and new), phone wiring (old and new) and coaxil cables (old and new). As I was laying in the dirt underneath the house I thought to myself – “This would be a great place to film a scene about being buried alive”. Great thought huh?

On Sat I managed to rewire our cable modem and DirecTv service in the den. The bad part is I didn’t wear a mask while I worked in the basement so I breathed in a lot of dust and dirt. Definitely not good for the lungs. Tomorrow I would do better.

Sunday I started with the “easy” stuff first. I setup and installed the Vonage phone service which didn’t require me getting dirty. Once that was up and running I found our old gas mask and proceeded to the basement crawlspace for more crawling in the dirt fun. Everything went pretty smoothly. I was surprised that all the cables that I “made” actually worked. I was smart to test all the cables before running them in the wall by hooking the cable up to our old DirecTv receiver and connected the video output to my video camera. That way if I had a bad cable I wouldn’t have to rip the wire out of the walls and re-install.

After all the cables were installed and working I finally cut the remaining unsued phone cables from the back of the house.

Whew! I did it! I rewired all the cables to the inside of the house through the walls and under the floors. Plus – everything works!

Now I just need to tack up the wires to the wall studs and patch the holes in the walls and floors where the cables used to be.

It took all weekend to accomplish everything on the list but I’m happy to say that DirecTv, cable modem AND Vonage phone service is all up and running!

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!

All of her childhood memories are wrapped up in this house. She lived in the house until she was married. That fact was interesting to learn because I had been told by neighbors that the Santos had rented out the house and never lived here. She shared a few amusing stories about her childhood, her family and the neighborhood.

She thought her family had purchased the house in the 1940′s. She recalled that this area was considered one of the elite neighborhoods in Los Angeles during that era. She seemed saddened by the current state of this area and not entirely convinced when I told her that things were getting better and that people were buying these old homes to restore them.

She told me that when she was young the house was painted white and that later her father put on the asbestos siding. I just smiled. Her family had enclosed the front porch with glass.

I couldn’t wait to take her inside. She seemed very surprised. I imagine all the woodwork was painted white when she lived here. I showed her the kitchen and asked her where her family had placed the stove? The kitchen looked very different to her than the way she remembered it. She didn’t recall the built-in cupboards being there. She thought that the stove was placed along the wall between kitchen and back porch where one of the built-in cupboards is now. Hmmm, another mystery to be figured out. She said that there was a table in the middle of the kitchen and her family used to eat there.

What we have been referring to as the den was a library. The family also used it as another bedroom at times. Her bedroom growing up is the room we are using as our master bedroom.

She asked me if I had found Ray and Roy’s names in the cement outside? I haven’t and I suspect that the cement has been removed or covered over by the slab of concrete that is currently our backyard. Ray and Roy were the grandsons of John Welsh who built this house.

She was excited to see Lulu because her son had given her a female corgi two years ago that she named Baby Girl. Her son thought it was an interesting coincidence that we both owned corgis.

She spoke of photographs taken on the front lawn after her wedding. I want to stay in touch. I would love to see some old photographs of the house. She and her family were so nice. It was a pleasure to meet them. I don’t think they realize how exciting this was for me.

It just occured to me that we are the 4th family to own this house.

“What else do you do besides work on your house, I mean for fun?”

Wow! Good question. I was a little thrown the other day when I was asked. The sad truth is nothing. A better question might have been, “What do you do when you are tired of working on your house?”

I think I am facing Restoration Burnout. It occurred to me that other than working at my job, I am either working on the house or planning for work to be done on the house – which is still work. I can’t remember the last time David and I had a conversation where something about the house didn’t come up.

Our house is very needy and it has all these problems that can’t easily be ignored. But, I sometimes wonder what I am doing here? Why have I invested so much time and money into this house that has so many problems? I do love the house but it gets hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel. It gets hard to hold on to the image of how the house will be someday when you are living in the here and now and one more thing stops working or you find one more expensive thing wrong with the house.

I look into the mirror and wonder what happened? I used to be cute but I don’t recognize this person in sweatpants and a paint splotched tee shirt wearing flip flops, disheveled hair pulled up in a ponytail. All my cute clothes hang in the closet from days when we could afford to go out and I worked in an office. I could still wear them but it wouldn’t be practical to do home repairs in heels – although David might consider it an improvement.

David and I have been having the House Cleaning War. We aren’t very traditional when it comes to gender roles and usually share the cleaning responsibilities equally. But, lately David has been very busy with work and freelance projects. I have been less busy with work, so David felt I should be picking up more of the cleaning duties.

On the surface, this sounds perfectly reasonable. What I found objectionable was his approach, the way he expected me to clean. I don’t like being bossed around and decided not to not clean…at all…for the past 3 weeks. My decision has not been well recieved.

David would do a little cleaning here and there, getting angrier and angrier every step of the way. This made me want to clean even less, although, there really isn’t much less than nothing at all.

This impass may have continued indefinately except for a business card with “Please call regarding possible filming for TV show” written on the back, left on our front door by a location scout yesterday afternoon. I called the number on the card and set up a time for the production crew to do a walk through of our house today. Of course, I cleaned the house before they came. But, and here is the important thing, I did NOT clean because David ordered me to.

The production crew felt the scale of our house is wrong for their scene and they are looking for bedrooms on the ground floor. They took several pictures of our front door and may want to use it for a different scene. I felt a little sad that our house wasn’t picked. They are going to be filming in two houses on our street.

All minor power struggles in my marriage aside, thank God this TV thing came along. The mess was really starting to get to me.

Their original building permit was applied for by Henry Gatz, who is also listed as contractor, on November 23, 1911. The house was completed in 1912. The entire cost of the building is listed as $1950, about what we pay for our mortgage every month. The home was built for John L. Welsh. He lived on our street at 2938 Hobart Blvd at the time this house was being built. I wonder if the 2938 Hobart house was an earlier home that John Welsh had built or if the family was renting?

In 1916, a sleeping porch was added by extending the present dormer on the rear of the house. That work was done by H. V. Wright of 3933 S. Hill St. John L. Welsh applied for a permit to build a private garage with a dirt floor and a paper roof in April of 1919. He is listed as the contractor and architect. The garage is no longer standing so we can’t see his handiwork.

Those are the facts but they don’t shed much light on the personalities of our house’s original family. I can get a sense of their preferences or at least the prevailing tastes of their day by peeling through layers of old paint and wallpaper to the home’s original color palette. They chose fairly dark, masculine colors: a dark orange-brown color that looks like the spice cinnamon for the living and dining room walls with a dark, dark brown-black mission stain on the douglas fir woodwork. The den was a medium orange, terra cotta color with a similarly colored wallpaper ceiling that has hand painted silver designs on it. It’s still intact but badly damaged and more than likely unsalvageable. The kitchen, in 1912 a woman’s domain, was a more feminine salmon-pink color – at least on the ceiling.

I get the feeling of a strong male presence having lived and left his mark in this house. Maybe because John L. Welsh’s name was the only one listed on the paperwork we received when we purchased the house, that’s who captured my imagination? I wonder if he would have approved of the choices we are making?

According to the 1920 Federal Census John L. Welsh was the head of the household, a white male aged 53. He was born in Pennsylvania (I guess around 1867). His parents were also born in Pennsylvania. He was a furniture salesman. By the 1930 Census, he had begun selling carpets. I wonder what beautiful furniture and rugs our house was decorated with? I would love to see a few photos of what our house looked like in its heyday or to be able to put faces with the names. Ida K. Welsh was listed as John’s wife. She was a white female aged 44 in 1920. Her place of birth as well as her parent’s was Pennsylvania. There was no occupation listed for her.

Magdalen Catudal was listed as what appears to be wife’s daughter or perhaps it is wife/daughter, white female aged 22. Her place of birth was Pennsylvania. Her occupation was listed as music teacher with own students. There is a beautiful piano window in our den which I can imagine an upright piano sitting under. Dan (or Don) F. Catudal was listed as son-in-law, white male aged 23 with a birth place of Nebraska. His father was from Canada (English) and it looks like his mother may have been from California or perhaps Canada? It’s very hard to make out since all the records are hand written. Dan was a shipping clerk in the automobile industry.

By the 1930 census Magdalen and Dan had 2 five year old boys, Ray L. and Roy F. This might explain all the marbles I find as I open up long ago sealed walls, remove layers of linoleum from the floors and once while digging in the yard. The house has only two bedrooms. I wonder how a family of 6 managed to live within its 1800 square feet? Maybe the downstairs den was converted into a bedroom? Or maybe the boys slept on the sleeping porch? The boys would have been born in 1925 and they could still be alive at almost 80 years old. Catudal is a fairly uncommon last name so maybe I.ll be able to get in touch with either Ray or Roy to find out what happened to the family who built our home?

We have large rafters on our house and the birds build nests in them. I asked the men to cover the open rafters with chicken wire to keep the birds out. There is a nest outside of our bedroom window that I wanted left alone because it has babies in it. The men speak mostly Spanish and a little English, I speak all English and no Spanish. The language barrier causes confusion sometimes and the men ripped down the nest.

When I saw the nest laying on the ground my stomach dropped. I didn’t see any baby birds in the nest or around it, so I hoped that the babies had already left the nest (they were getting old enough to fly).

While the men were eating their lunch on the front porch I decided to look for termite damage on the back of the house (another problem we are dealing with). I bent down to pick up some debris and was startled by a little black eye looking at me. I realized it was a baby bird who was alive but frozen with fear from the day’s events and a giant redhead looming over it. I went inside to get a pair of gloves to pick it up with and wondered what I would do with the bird once I managed to pick it up?

As I crouched down and tried to cup my gloved hands around the bird it flew about 2 ft. away, low to the ground. That is when I discovered the bird could fly; not well enough to fly to safety but well enough to fly away from me and to prevent me from catching it. I would get close to the bird and it would fly a few feet away. It flew under our fence and under a parked van. I searched under the van but couldn’t find the bird. I don.t know if it flew further away and out from under the van or somehow is hiding underneath the vehicle?

All the activity caught the attention of my neighbor’s Siamese cats. They are sisters who are outside cats and slightly wild. Their owner likes to keep them a little hungry so they hunt the numerous messy birds around her house.

The braver sister came over and started to look for the baby bird. The baby bird.s parents were close by in a tree and started screeching and dive bombing at the cat who in return started jumping in the air trying to catch and kill one of the parents. I chased the cat away but she kept sneaking back and lying in wait. I think she was trying to get the adult birds to fly at her so she could kill them. I put premium cat food in cat’s yard to make sure they were well fed and to distract them from the birds.

I haven’t been able to find the bird and don’t think it will survive with all the traffic and wild cats here. Watching the mother and father birds flying at the cat to save their baby was heartbreaking. They are sitting in the tree, chirping in a way that sounds mournful. Today they lost their house and who knows how many children? I feel like I made things worse by drawing the cat’s attention to their baby.

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!

Our home inspection turned up many things, none of them good, but the strangest discovery was, to quote my husband, “a body-sized hole” in the crawl space underneath the house. I never actually saw the hole but made my husband describe it to me several times in detail. The hole was as wide as a man’s shoulders and at least 6 feet deep. How did David know it was that deep? Because the building inspector crawled over to the hole and poked a long stick into it. They didn’t discover a body, just some discarded rubble.

All old houses hold their mysteries but a body-sized hole wasn’t exactly one we wanted to know more about. Lying in bed that night, David and I speculated why anyone would dig a big hole underneath their house? Being a secret fan of true-crime murder novels (a guilty pleasure) and Court TV’s Forensic Files (a morbid fascination), all kinds of wild thoughts sprang to mind. The home’s present owner, Mr. Jolly, said he inherited the house from his grandmother and his uncle. Did we really know what happened to them? Plus, who has the last name of Jolly anyway? Maybe it was an alias or an attempt to hide a darker side? What if there were bodies buried under the house?

In the light of day, rationalism took over and we pushed those thoughts aside. We requested that Mr. Jolly have the hole filled and forgot all about it during the hectic time surrounding the move into our first home. Going back through the paperwork we recieved from the title company a contract to lease subsurface oil and gas caught my eye.

On February 1, 1957, John V. E. Santo and Antonia N. Santo entered into an agreement for the duration of 10 years with Union Oil Company of California “for the purpose of prospecting, exploring, mining, drilling and operating the land leased for oil, gas and other hydrocarbon substances” lying below a depth of 500 feet. The Santo’s would collect a royalty share of 1/6th of whatever was found. Although we don’t know for certain, we speculate that the body-sized hole was where they drilled for oil. For those of you who are wondering if it would be noisy or troublesome to have a search for oil going on underneath your dining room, the Santos owned the house but they didn’t live here. Their residence was in Pico, CA. This is probably around the time the upkeep on our house started to decline.

The house changed hands again and on April 20, 1964, Mr. Jolly’s grandmother, Winona M. Jolly, entered into the same contract with Union Oil Company of California for the duration of 10 years.

I don’t know if any oil or gas was discovered during those 17 years? Judging from the condition of our house, there didn’t seem to be a lot of money available to make necessary home repairs. I don’t think anyone struck it rich!

Spending so much time restoring the house and peeling through all the layers to learn about it’s history, I thought a lot about how the house was when it was originally built. It was natural that this would develop into a curiousity about the family who lived in this house 92 years ago. Who were they and what were they like? What happened to them after they sold the house?

Of course, we would LOVE to see some old pictures of the house and the family. Sometimes I hope that maybe the Welsh family or John L. Welsh himself are looking down at us and glad that we are working so hard to restore the house.

I think that a house is more than a place to live. To me a house is about family roots, beginnings and endings, a context for our lives.

Last year as I sat amongst all of our belongings still packed in boxes stacked upon boxes and thought, “Wouldn’t it be nice if we could set up the tree next year?”

We still have lots more work ahead of us stripping this fireplace! We started this project last fall.

Well, next year has arrived with the den no closer to being ready. Sure, some of the boxes have been unpacked or moved out to the garage for the time being, but our house still isn’t Christmas tree worthy. But this time next year things will be different. We’ll be decorating our tree in a room that’s restored because I’ve decided that we need some additional help if we are going to complete our house any time in the next 10 years.

Fairly large hole on the side of our fireplace.

I have seen some amazing restoration work done in the West Adams area and the work I like was all done by the same craftsman. He is very busy and we have been on his waiting list since last summer. Juan and his team began work yesterday. They are starting in the living room and moving on to the den. Progress!

Two of the window frames have holes in them. God, I hope they weren’t from bullets.

Our realtor called the built-in seat a gentleman caller’s bench. That sounds so romantic. Although, only one gentleman caller at a time at our house!

If you find yourself in a similar situation and are looking for a contractor here is Juan’s contact info:

J & C Home Repair
Juan Reyes
626.793.7091

Believe me, we wouldn’t post his contact information if we weren’t extremely happy with the quality of his work. He does plastering, wood restoration, carpentry and painting.

The best surprise so far has been these gorgeous Victorian coat hooks. They were covered with so many layers of paint that we had no idea they had faces on them or any type of detail.

Look at that little face!

The vent cover is missing.

Pocket door handle looks so much better when it isn’t covered under gobs of paint.

The wall is severely cracked around the pocket doors. This must have happened when the house was elevated to replace the foundation.

The walls in the living room were originally a cinnamon color.

I love how the living room window is so large. It is nice to see some wood tones instead of white paint everywhere.