Painting the town red

October 27, 2010

Or Wedgewood gray, VanDuesen blue, bryant gold, and white 01. Today we went and bought some of our outdoor house paint. Since we had to replace some rotted siding, we are going to paint it in the colors we have picked for the house. We'll see how far we get before it freezes. Given the weather, that may be about 2 days.

While we were waiting for the paint to be mixed, Alok picked out this tile:


What do you guys think? I honestly think it's hideous (it's more hunter green than it looks here). I figured I'd put it up to see what independent people think (this is bathroom tile).

The good news is that we actually now have stairs and can use the front door. Woo hoo! Well, we still need one more stair, but we're almost done. Here it is now (warning, I took these with my new cell phone rather than a real camera, so some aren't as great):

New steps by the apartment


Front steps


Front of the house now

As you can see below, there is a bit more than needs to be fixed:


We also got the front apartment closet window (the formally leaky one) reframed, as seen here:


It looks much better than pictured!

The last news of the day is that we have some of the wood for the trim around the outside doors done. Here it is:


That's about it. I know it's not that exciting, but I figured I would give an update before we go to NYC to celebrate Ms. KMLB's birthday.

Jessica

Hay is for horses

October 24, 2010

Today, Alok and my mom worked on getting the yard/leaves under control, as you can see here:


Alok raking the never ending pile of leaves


Our yard at the beginning of the day


Never ending battle with leaves on our roof (this gets cleaned off several times a week)


One of the pretty culprits


The yard about 7 hours later (notice the yard bags in the background)

After raking up the majority of the leaves, they proceeded to plant some grass seed. Alok then realized that he needed some straw to keep the seed in place. Off he goes to Farm and Home Supply, and here is what he comes back with:


Little did he know that one bail would have been enough. He proceed to cover the ground with a very thick layer of straw.

Very dirty Alok


Alok and his straw

My mom then informed him that he actually only needed a very thin layer. Oops.

While they worked on the yard, I proceeded to scrape off more wallpaper in the apartment. We finally realized what part of the issue is. Some of it is painted wallpaper, some of it is painted wall, but some of it is wallpaper that they then mudded over and painted. Are you kidding me? This area took me about 7 hours today:

At the beginning of the day


7 hours and a major hand cramp later


Alex joining in on the fun on a very dusty blanket

That's about all for now. Oh, I do have one question for you creative folk out there. We are debating what we are doing with our heating system. We may end up putting forced heat downstairs this year and disconnecting the upstairs pipes for the winter so they don't freeze. That wasn't the question, just the set-up. Anyway, if we do get rid of the boiler, we won't be needing these radiators:


Some of them are pretty cool looking. Besides selling them/scraping them, does anyone have any creative ideas of what to do with radiators (such as making a table, etc)? Most creative, but useful, idea gets the prize. What prize, you may ask? How about the prize of helping out a blogger who is typing despite a massive hand cramp.

Jessica

Peeling away

October 23, 2010

Yesterday, Alok and I realized that there was a Harvey Chatten exhibit at the Garner Museum here in Quincy. Being that Harvey Chatten built our house, we decided to go. There was a picture of our house at the museum, but unfortunately it was a picture of our house from probably about 4-5 years ago (detaching front part of the house and all). So, that wasn't too helpful.

We also did a bit more online research, but that didn't yield much. We found this:
­ Check out the Weems (and pics) on pages 45 and 46

The Garner Museum does have a library that has information about a lot of houses here in Quincy, so we plan on making an appointment to see if they have anything.

Anyway, we spent some time today re-arranging our items in storage. Nothing to exciting, but it was necessary. While we did that, we realized that our lovely garage (seen here):

Has a hole that has been chewed in it, seen here:


Lovely. It's nothing some new garage siding won't fix.

After that, we worked on peeling wallpaper off the lovely apartment, which is a mix of wallpaper, paint, drywall tape, and other items that were used to repair walls. This is proving to be interesting. Here is the area before:


And after:


Alok had to detach the light fixtures that were on the wall here. They have stripped out most of the original items from the house, but these seem to be original. Here they are, close up:


We need to refinish them and then will likely move them to another area of the house.

Here is another part of the apartment, while my mom was steaming (I didn't get a before picture, so imagine this wall with wallpaper):


Here it is after:


You may ask why we have a snow shovel in the picture. We use it to clean up plaster, wallpaper, etc.

Here is the last area. Before:


And after:


Exciting, huh? Well, the exciting part is that once we peel off the wallpaper from the apartment (including hallway, closets, etc), we really can stop peeling until we work on the upstairs. That will be nice. Actually, I shouldn't speak too soon, as wallpaper seems to magically appear in this house.

Alok also worked on continuing to demolish the apartment bathroom.

Alok contemplating/wondering what I'm doing.

We originally wanted to replace this tub with a clawfoot tub (we have 2 upstairs), but we realized today that it wouldn't fit. We've considering making this bathroom bigger or moving the door, but we aren't sure what our best option is. The newest idea is to make a shower to go in the area where the bathtub is. I guess we'll see what we end up doing.

Alok also removed the radiator from the apartment so we could work on the walls.


The removed radiator. There's a lovely wall behind it.

You could see some of the more original wallpaper behind the radiator:



Close up


Oooo, pretty.

Alok also worked on peeling up some of the termite damaged wood, as seen here:


This was short lived, but he was excited that there weren't live termites under there.

That's all for now.

Jessica

Stairway to heaven

October 22, 2010

Or the stairway to the middle of a hall. Let's just say that before you uncover the hidden staircase, you may want to try to estimate the trajectory of the stairs a little more accurately. We'll come back to that in a minute.

First, we made more progress on the front today. Now we just need stairs (and maybe a railing...that may wait until the spring), then we're good to go. Here is how it looked today:



The siding had to come off of this area as well (this is where the leaky apartment window was). We will be replacing the window, but for now, it's leak proof.

Today, Alok and my mom worked on raking up leaves and getting the yard ready to plant grass:

Alok raking

Unfortunately, it got dark out before they finished.

While they worked on that, I worked on uncovering the staircase. Here it is when I started:


And here is the process:



Safety first? Or a Halloween costume?










Voila! There are stairs.




Climbing up the stairs..... Notice all the cobwebs (you can only see about 10% of them.... gross).


The wallpaper


What the heck is this fungus on the wallpaper?! YUCK!!!




A picture of what is above the ceiling in that closet


View from the stairs back down


Final product

Here's a bit of video, as well:



Aren't my video skills amazing?

OK, back to the statement I made at the beginning of today.... where does this lead?

We thought it led here:

and we figured the staircase ended at this closet. Well, we were wrong. I had Alok climb up to the top and bang on the ceiling, and guess where it ends?


See where my left foot is? That marks the end of the staircase. See that carpet on the left in the picture? That is the doorway, leading into the hall. Does anyone see any issues?

Oops!

The question is: where are some blueprints when you need them? (or some little elves that can shift the placement of the staircase)

Jessica