A Knock On The Door

This morning at about 10am there was a knock at our front door. My husband has a horrible cold but I have this policy about not answering the door if I don't know who is on the other side. So, he got the job of answering. It ended up being the second owner of our house standing on the other side of the door! She wanted to know if she could come back later today with her family to see the house. This is the lady who happened to be very good friends with my mother's best friend and we have emailed about the house several times. I had not heard from her in quite some time. So, we set an appointment for 2pm when they returned.

At 2pm the owner showed up with her daughter, husband, granddaughter-in-law and grandson. It was so interesting to hear what they had to say about the house. They seemed to like the things we had done to it. I am going to type some of the things they told us about the house so that I don't forget. We started in the living room. She said when they moved in, the living room floor had just been carpeted with wool carpet for the sale of the house. We speculate this may have been the same carpet that was in the house when we moved in. She said the living room windows had white sheer panels when they lived there. We think they were the same ones on the windows when we moved in. They also told us they used the fireplace. We were told by the inspector that he thought there was no liner in the fireplace and we shouldn't use it until we know for sure. We haven't had it inspected by a chimney sweep yet but we suspect it does have a liner!

The kitchen was still terrazzo when they moved in but they covered it in linoleum. She thought the kitchen cabinets were white when they moved in and they had been painted due to damage. I was told that the cabinet that divides the living room and kitchen was moved further into the kitchen by them because they thought it went too far into the living room. She said the kitchen had a gourmet freezer/ fridge that was very large and had wood surrounding it. It was not very efficient and when it broke they couldn't find anyone to fix it so they replaced it. We think that was the original fridge for the house. She said it was very tall and flush with the kitchen cabinets. That is what I had speculated. The original owners had a laundry off the kitchen with a washer/ dryer all in one unit. That was removed and the laundry was added in the basement by these people.

The hallway leading to the family room.
The laundry room is on the left. The laundry
room and door leading into the family room
were not always here.

The pink and blueish/green carpet that was in the two smaller bedrooms when we moved in sounds like it was here when these people lived here. The pink was added by them. One bedroom has funny marks in the floor and ceiling right above and below each other. (I have been meaning to do a post about these to see if anyone knows what they are.) All I can think is that some kind of tension unit was in this spot. Maybe a lamp or a shelf. They said they don't remember having anything like this. I had suspected these were the owners who put the wallpaper in both of the bathrooms but they said they did not. The basement bathroom has tile on the floor that was also in the entry way. They said they don't remember this tile. They think the basement hallway and bathroom had carpet when they lived there.

This is the same floor covered in white splotches
at the "floor problems" link  below.

They used our guest room as a den which is also what I think the original owners used it for. The biggest surprise of their visit was learning about the rest of the basement. The rest of the basement had originally been a dog kennel. I know these people had removed the dog kennel. So, I assumed they had also refinished the basement and turned it into the laundry room and family room. But, they were not the ones who refinished the basement. They left it unfinished with a cement floor. What is now the laundry room and family room were all one big room. At one time the entire basement had a long hall that went from one end to a door that went outside. They said that hall was still there when they lived in the house. This was a very big surprise to us.

When you walk in the family room this divider is in front of you.
We assume it's there as support instead  of the original wall. You
can see the door to the carport past this divider.

I haven't included many pictures of the basement. That is where a large part of our floor problems happened. (Remember the story about the floors that got stained purple on accident?) I figure it is about time to post some photos of the basement. I'm sorry I didn't take them in the day when there was more light. We are just about moved in down there. For those of you wondering, our other house still has not sold!! So, we aren't completely moved into this house. We still have furniture at the other house. We do have an offer on the other house. It is supposed to close on June 24th. Hopefully everything will go through without any hitches. We are now in the process of moving the last of our furniture to the new house.

This is the divider from the opposite side.
The right side of this divider was where there
was a wall that ran the length of the family room
and created a hallway.

At our old house we had a lot of built in shelving in our family room. We were wondering how we were going to make up for all of that lost space. This past winter we got a shelving unit for the family room that comes in two pieces. They are supposed to be stacked on top of each other but we separated them. One unit is being used as an entertainment center. The other unit is being used as shelving for books. The unit was originally a beverage rack. I will have more photos soon of our guest bedroom. It has also been neglected in my photos. A new bedspread comes this week and we should be about done with that room. We finally had our front yard repaired after the new sewer line. So, be watching for more landscaping photos. We also have some new patio furniture.

It is our hope to paint the exterior of the house this summer. Choosing colors is not fun!! I wish someone could just tell me what will look great.

More to come soon!

This is the new storage unit we got in the winter. The piece on the left is actually supposed to stack on top of the piece
on the right. The top of the piece on the right is actually from our old house. My cousin built it to serve the same
purpose it serves now on top of a built in shelving unit where our TV sat. The two pieces on the right are not attached.

Completed Kitchen

I think I will make a post about one room at a time. I will start with the kitchen. It is almost completely done. The only thing that is left to deal with is our hideous white dishwasher. It is the only appliance in our kitchen that isn't stainless steel. We will hopefully be replacing it in the near future. It is probably from the early 80's and not very energy efficient along with being very ugly. This past month we had the water line added to the new fridge we bought in the fall. We had all of the white paint on the kitchen cabinets stripped and stained them back to natural wood. We took down all of the white painted molding around the doors and grill. We replaced it with natural wood molding. We had the hinge on the grill door fixed so it doesn't have to be held up by a string. We then painted the ceiling and walls.

When we thought we were all done with the kitchen my husband was putting everything back in its place when the hood over the stove came crashing down. He was calling me to help him hold it back up. I had been asleep and didn't have my glasses on. Despite the fact I am very blind without my glasses I could see sparks and a little flame behind the hood. I wondered how many sparks and flames I couldn't see! At that moment it started feeling like our house was going to be a never ending project. But, my wonderful cousin was able to fix the hood for us. It turns out the screw holes were stripped and when it fell it pulled some wires and made them arc. So, that has now been repaired also.

I guess before I go I should talk about the kitchen paint color a bit. It is called Spartan Stone by Behr. It is identical to the historical paint color Serene Scholar by California Paints. I got the Behr paint because it was more inexpensive and Behr paint has done well for me in the past. I actually had this color in the living room in our old house. And, I think I had this color in my living room in Saint Louis. If it wasn't the exact same color it was very similar. As I have talked about in the past I was looking for historically accurate paint colors. I was thrilled to find out this pale olive green color that I love so much would work for the time period of our house.

Before- You can see our ugly dishwasher in this picture.

After

After- Ugly trash cans

Before

Before- Check out the red string on the door

After

Happy Thanksgiving!

We are having 20 people here for Thanksgiving tomorrow so we have been trying to get all of the finishing touches on the house before then. We still have lots of stuff at the old house to "stage" it for a showing. So, things aren't quite like we would want. Most of the walls have nothing on them. We have no coffee tables in the living room. And a lot of our stuff that makes our house seem like ours like lamps, books, pottery etc. is still at the other house. I wish we had our kitchen painted but that was not a part of the plan. We decided to wait a while on painting the kitchen and bathrooms. We have taken care of some other things lately.

We decided we wanted to get 6 stools for the built in table that divides the kitchen and dining room. I liked the idea of stools because they could be completely slid under the table and out of the way. We had been looking for a while for vintage stools. But, it is hard to find them as short as we need and even harder to find six. So, I settled on 6 stools at Bed, Bath and Beyond. I found them a few months ago and decided I would hold out as long as possible to see if anything else I liked better came along. With Thanksgiving around the corner I had to bite the bullet and order them because we need the seats. Then a week or so later I saw the exact stools for $25 less and I liked the color of the wood better. The stools I bought are darker wood than I would like (and darker than our other furniture.) but after we refinish the walls this winter and they are darker maybe the stools won't stand out as much to me. We also finally reupholstered the dining room chairs.

Almost ready for Thanksgiving. You can see the new upholstery and one of the new stools.

One of the first things that really stood out to me when we looked at this house was a wall sconce in the downstairs hallway. It seemed so out of style for this house. I'm sure it was put in when the dog kennels were removed and the basement was remodeled. I finally changed it a couple of nights ago to something more modern and the style of the house. I tried to include some photos but taking a picture of a light is quite challenging I discovered!

This is what the old light looked like in the hallway.

The new light turned off (much easier to take a picture of)

The new light turned on

I think I have already talked about accepting our pink and blue bathrooms for what they are right now. I decided we would decorate with vintage ads for pink and blue bathrooms. I really wanted to have these up for Thanksgiving so maybe people would see what we see in our bathroom.  So, this afternoon we spent some time getting photos of old ads printed, buying frames, mattes etc. One of the ads is for two bathrooms (kind of like ours) and it is being advertised with twins. I thought that was really cute. Another one of the ads has a picture of blue prints in it and it is about designing a bathroom divided into compartments with a curtain on tracks (we have pocket doors on tracks) so that 4 people in one family can use that bathroom at the same time. It is much the same idea as our bathroom. I love that the blue prints indicate that YES someone did at one time actually plan this pink and blue bathroom with intention. I have included some photos of the ads below. I will take pics of them on the bathroom walls soon.

This is the ad for two bathrooms with the twins. It is in the master bathroom.

This is the ad with the blue prints. It is in the second bathroom.

This is also in the second bathroom.

This is in the master bathroom.

 Another thing that we noticed immediately when we looked at the house was that the refrigerator just didn't fit in the kitchen well. It seemed like it was the first thing you saw when you walked in and it stuck out way into the middle of the room. As most people know refrigerators are much larger these days than they once were. So, this apparently was the problem. We were told that at one time the house had a "gourmet" fridge and the second owners put in a "normal" one. I am very curious what a "gourmet" fridge is and what it looked like. We discovered that in order to solve our fridge issue what we needed was a counter depth fridge. If you are not familiar with this concept, it is a fridge that sits flush with the counter top (which most modern fridges don't) and they are about triple the price (or more) of a regular fridge. So, you have to pay more for less space!

We had no plans to buy a fridge right away. But, we happened to be at Home Depot and my husband was bored waiting in line and started looking at a black Friday sale ad. (Apparently at Home Depot and Lowes black Friday takes place all month.) They had an insanely good sale going on for a counter depth fridge that was actually a name brand. The cheapest price up until now I had been able to find on one was double this sale price for a brand I had never heard of. So, we decided we better take it while we could get it. We were a bit bummed out to find out they wouldn't deliver it until after Thanksgiving. Then the next day we were at Lowes. I don't remember why but we have replaced a few light switches lately so that could have been the reason. Lowes had the exact same sale (well actually $1 more) and they could deliver tomorrow. Woo hoo! We cancelled the sale with Home Depot and got our fridge from Lowes. It now has an 18 pound turkey in it! Happy Thanksgiving!

I don't think this photo shows off how great it looks!