New Exterior Paint

One of the most exciting things we have done to the house over the past 2 years is painting the exterior. I didn't mind the original colors of our house but I was anxious to have the trim painted more like the original trim which can be seen in the architect's rendering.

Architect's rendering of our house

I really like the way the architect's rendering has the brown trim around the windows and only the panels above the windows are not brown. If you look at the photos of our house when we bought it the entire area around the windows were colored. The windows looked like one giant color block instead of separate smaller color blocks.

The exterior paint when we bought our house

While trying to pick out colors for our house someone on a mid-century modern message board pointed out that the windows in the artist's rendering are noticeably taller than the windows our house ended up being. I had never noticed this before! It was even suggested to me that after the house was built someone took out the taller windows and put in smaller windows but we can see no evidence that this was actually the case.

We spent a lot of time trying to pick out colors for the house. Even though I didn't mind the colors we had, I felt the brown was very faded and wanted a more chocolatey brown. And, instead of the cream color I wanted something that was more stylistic of the time period. We talked about turquoise, mustard yellow and olive green. I ended up being scared to try turquoise. I knew it would have to be just the right color to look retro and modern at the same time. I just couldn't decided what that color was and didn't trust myself to pick the right one. I really like mustard yellow but we ultimately decided on olive green.

I liked olive green because it is close to the blue family which I believe was the original color of the colored panels on the house. And, I thought the green also fit in with what I feel is the philosophy of the our house's architecture of blending in with the landscape. I think we are quite happy with how things turned out. Right now, I only have a photo of the paint job from last winter when snow was on the ground and another taken at night. I need to get one on a bright sunny day. You might also notice that we pulled out all of the bushes along the front of the house when we put in the new sidewalk. We have since planted some low, ground hugging juniper bushes that will allow the brick to still be seen.

I will add a photo of the house on a sunny day with no snow just as soon as I can. I'm looking forward to having our leaning light post straightened out! You can also see our new sidewalk in the photo above. We had to get a new sidewalk after our new sewer line was put in which you can read about here. By the way, I have spent tons of time Googling trying to find out the name of the colored panels above our windows. This architectural characteristic must have a name but I can't find one anywhere. I know these colored panels were popular in the mid twentieth century and influenced by the artist Piet Mondrian. If someone can tell me what they are called, I would be so grateful!

Where Do We Stand?

It has been a while since I have written a blog. I need to do a little update on where we stand right now. I haven't blogged because not a lot has happened since my last post. We have basically been trying to recover financially from the expense of all the work we did last winter. We also still have the financial obligations that come with still owning our old house. On top of those things I am feeling a bit poor due to the number of shoes I have purchased over the past year. For about a year now I have had very painful bursitis in both of my feet. (I think all of the cement floors in this house could be exacerbating the issue.) I have really struggled with finding comfortable shoes.  I would have much rather put the money I have spent on shoes into a new house project.

We were considering having the house painted this past summer. But, we did not get the roof damage I posted about here fixed until this past summer. We called in October of 2013 about getting the roof fixed and it took close to a year to finally get it repaired. The leak from the roof caused a lot of damage to the door frame of the storage shed in the carport. So, there was no point in painting until the roof was repaired. By the time the roof was fixed the weather wasn't very conducive to painting. The painting will most likely be next summer's project. We have no plans to make any drastic change to the color of the house. We just want to freshen it up.

We also have not had the yard and sidewalk repaired after putting in the new sewer line. We had to wait to let the ground settle. It has now settled and doesn't look quite as much like a giant mole went through our yard. Since the weather is cold this is most likely something that will be taken care of when the weather warms up. We would also like to eventually have some landscaping done to the yard. We are not planning to make any major changes but all of the bushes are very old (maybe even original). They have gotten very woody without having much green. We would like to freshen them up. There were also a few trees that were lost in the yard during large storms. There are some really key spots where trees are missing that we would like to have replaced. We also need to add some rock around the house to protect it from standing water.

Inside we still need to get a new dishwasher. Ours is really ugly and doesn't do the greatest job but it is limping along for now. Eventually we would like to get a stainless steel one to match the rest of the kitchen. We need to put new ceiling tiles in the family room (former dog kennel). The tiles that were there were sagging and didn't look very nice. Then when the toilet flooded last year some of the tiles got water damage. We also have yet to tackle the pink and blue bathroom. We finally have furniture in the guest bedroom. I will make a post about that later. Our family room is without a TV which is still at the other house. We need to eventually paint the laundry room. This isn't a pressing issue but when they stained the floor they got one large splash of stain on the laundry room wall which kind of annoys me. We also need to eventually get a new mailbox. Ours has an issue with collecting water. I will have to do a post about mailboxes at some point. I have found a cool one that I want.

As you can see there has not been a lot of action here so no new photos. Oh yes! I forgot to tell you that we got the door on the indoor kitchen grill repaired. It is now in great shape. Thank you to my wonderful cousin for taking care of that for us. I forgot to add the fireplace to our list of to dos. My husband would kill me if I forget to list it because I think it is at the top of his list! When we had the house inspected we were told they didn't think our fireplace was lined. Apparently not having a lined fireplace is extremely dangerous even though the fireplace has been used in the past. We need to have it inspected by an expert (along with the chimney to the kitchen grill) and then decide how we will proceed if it is not lined. There is a pretty good chance we will turn it into a gas fireplace.

Thirty Minutes Later

After making the last post I started thinking about those louver doors in the bathroom. I couldn't imagine them originally being wood because the trim is all painted. I couldn't imagine them being originally white because there was no other white in the bathroom. I am pretty sure the original trim was blue but I also couldn't imagine the door being blue. So I decided to get a flashlight and do some investigating. I am pretty certain the trim around the doors and the entire bathroom was blue to match the walls and tile. And.........drum roll..........I think the closet door was originally pink!!!!! I see a little bit of pink paint on the door hinges. I can totally picture it! I'm sure in 1960 it was the hippest bathroom in town. As much as I would like the house to be as original as possible I don't know if I can bring myself to paint the door pink with blue trim! Help!!!! What do I do???

Still Pink & Blue

I still haven't posted about all of the work that was done this winter. I decided tonight I need to post about the bathroom. As of now it is still pink and blue. The cabinets used to be a gross orange color. I think the lacquer had yellowed over time and made them look that way. Now they are a nice brown. We also had a new shower door put in. I love it! With a curtain we were always leaking water on the floor somehow. I am such a messy shower taker! We also had to have an extra long shower curtain because our rod was really high. It was too long and drug in the bottom of the bathtub and was always covered with nasty soap scum. This is so much neater and cleaner. We also got a new toilet in each bathroom. To flush our old toilets you had to spin the handle 360 degrees. I never had seen a toilet like this before. We were told they were the first low flow toilets and not designed very well. They were very dangerous. If they accidentally only went 180 instead of 360 (basically stopped while pointing up instead of down) they ran constantly. We ended up with a $99 water bill because of this once. More recently our bathroom got flooded because the toilet was stopped up without us knowing and the handle got left up. Bad combo! To avoid these two major problems again we got these awesome new toilets that can supposedly flush 16 golf balls at once! I haven't tried out this unique little feature. But, we have had no floods or $99 water bills since their installation. They do have the smallest toilet seats ever. I am hoping our old toilet seats will fit on the new toilets but we haven't gotten around to installing them yet.

The guest bathroom before and after. These cabinets turned out nicer than the master bathroom.

These are the master bathroom cabinets before and after. The colors don't show well in these photos. Very strange light on this day.

The shower before and after. You can see a glimpse of the shower curtain in the before photo. It really didn't even match very well.








We still have the weird metallic wallpaper in the master bathroom. As strange as it is I have come to appreciate the work someone put in to somehow matching the pink and blue together. It isn't in the best shape and will need to eventually be pulled down and painted. I am still not sure on what color to go with. I kind of like the idea of white. It seems like a nice neutral way to tone down the pink and blue. But, I also worry about the idea of adding a third color to the bathroom even though the toilets are white. Maybe it would look a bit sleeker if I stuck to one of the colors that is already in there. I will not have more pink in that bathroom but I thought about a blue that is the exact same shade as the tile. I believe that is the original color of the bathroom. I think originally the trim was even blue. I think all of the trim in the house was the same color as the paint. I wasn't sure how I would like that and have had a hard time imagining it. I have previously posted about painting the bedroom trim white. In the kitchen we painted the trim around the windows the same color as the walls because all of the other trim on that floor is wood so I was afraid the white might stand out. It turns out that I really like the colored trim!! It looks very sleek! I would like to try it in the bathroom. My only concern is that there is a white louver closet door in each bathroom. I'm not sure what to do with those. I can't imagine trying to paint them. And, I don't know if I can imagine them being blue! So, I'm still open to bathroom suggestions! You can see my other bathroom posts here and posts about bathroom colors here and here as well as a post about the bathroom wall hangings here.

Bathroom Closet Door

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

Paint Palettes

We are STILL not quite done painting. We have some trim in the hallways and family room to still do. Thankfully we have had some help from my mom because my back is about shot from painting. We are close so I finally decided to take a few photos. I just tried to get photos of paint colors because we still have dressers with no drawers in them and boxes piled up and weird things like that! I took photos this afternoon at 3PM but the sun was already starting to go down I realized.  :(  So, the photos could be better but at least you get a sneak peak for now. All of the colors were picked from California Paints 20th Century Colors Of America which are authentic shades used from 1900-1985. All of the colors we used were from the year our house was built.

Our bedroom is my favorite color! In our old house our bedroom was a very deep burgundy color. Everyone hated it but me. I was finally convinced to ditch the burgundy because it was not appropriate for our house. But, I wanted something that still would compliment the bedspread, wall hangings etc. from the burgundy room. I decided I wanted a pinkish brown color but I DID NOT want pink. I was scared to death I would think I found something then get it on the wall and it would be pink. It is a miracle that I somehow found exactly what I had hoped for!! It has just a touch of pinkish and I think it also transitions nicely into the pink and blue bathroom. (I keep saying "I" because I tried to include my husband in picking colors but he didn't seem to have a lot of interest. He did give some input but he mostly let me choose.)

 I settled on University Square by California Paints. Unfortunately, the photos of our bedroom are the worst. I don't think they nearly show off how great this color is. I will have to get better ones later. You really should click the University Square link above to get a better look. I really like the way all of the colors we picked bring the outside colors inside. I believe this was one of the architectural goals of the style of our house which is one of the reasons for the large windows. Outside our bedroom window is a Japanese Maple Tree. The pinkish brown paint really brings out the pinkish purple colors in the tree. Unfortunately I didn't realize when I took the photos that the tree is quickly turning brown and shedding for the winter.

Japanese Maple tree outside bedroom window before it turned cold.

The view from our bedroom. The Japanese Maple is looking a bit sorry now. Just the other day it was still beautiful.

I wish this picture showed the paint color off better. I LOVE it! Ignore our horribly wrinkled bedspread.

For the second bedroom (originally the girl's room) that we are using as a dressing room, the family room and the upstairs and downstairs hallway I chose Gobi Desert by Behr. This was a neutral color that was much easier to get from Behr than trying to get a copy from California Paints but there are several similar historical California Paint Colors. It is kind of a khaki color. I love that it is very neutral but just dark enough to have a punch of color. It also goes with the burgundy items from the old bedroom and compliments the colors in the beautiful trees you can see outside from the large window in the bedroom.

The dressing room, family room and hallway colors. I'm not sure if the white trim was the right choice.

The downstairs of the house is a bit more modern than the upstairs since the family room was done almost 20 years after the house was built. I wanted blues in there and thought since it was more modern I might paint it a deep blue color. But, we have lots of blue pillows, wall hangings etc. so I came to my senses and decided to do the Gobi desert down there also. I decided it would compliment the blues nicely. And, my husband was more anti-blue basement than anything else having to do with paint.

The family room is not finished but here is a glimpse of the color inside a white trimmed shelf.

Our "hobby room" (originally the boy's room) is a steel blueish grey color form California Paints called Industrial Steel. I thought this color might go well with some black and white photos I would like to hang in this room. I can see some of the original blue paint color that was in this room peeking out in places. It looks like it might have possibly been a very similar color at one time. There is a beautiful deep, deep green magnolia tree outside the big window in this room. It is so green some of the leaves almost look blue which again makes the blue paint a nice frame for this window.

The kitty looking outside at the Magnolia tree.

The "hobby room"

We have our new dining room set home and we really like the way it looks in the family room. Even the orange seats which I immediately wanted to change look so nice with all of the wood and the style of the house. I would almost be tempted to keep the orange but it just isn't me. It is too vibrant and not peaceful enough. And, we already have olive green living room furniture in the same room so the orange and green would really be over the top! I already have fabric to cover the dining room chairs. Maybe this weekend I can do that. I need to do a little bit of research on upholstering tonight.

New dining room set. Can you spot the sleeping kitty?

New fabric for dining room chairs.

New fabric

Now that all of the colors are starting to come together I am getting really anxious to paint the kitchen. We saved it for last since it has no furniture in it that we will have to work around. Also, we were trying to decide what we were going to do with the cabinets before we painted. I think this winter we are going to have the cabinets stripped back down to their natural wood instead of white. So, I think it would be best if we paint before instead of after they are stripped. Then we don't have to worry about getting paint on the cabinets as much.

The kitchen will be an olive green color from Behr called Spartan Stone. It is another match to a historical California Paint color. I love the olive green and it will go with the olive green furniture in the dining room and living room since the rooms are all open to each other. My husband might kill me if I ask him to paint that room before Thanksgiving. We have done so much painting!! There are some really high walls in there and he has to do all of the high parts since he is 6ft 5in. But, hopefully someday soon I will have kitchen photos for you! And, some full house photos!! Hopefully you caught a few glimpses of the floors in these photos. Taking photos of the floors requires them to not be covered with boxes!!! Still coming!

Weekend Finds

Hopefully someday our art glass shelf will look something like this.

OK, I said I would post more about our weekend finds. Besides the dining room table we also found four pieces of art glass. There is a shelf above a kitchen cabinet that divides our kitchen and living room. It catches the light nicely and we thought we would fill it with mid-century Blenko and Viking art glass. My grandma had a lot of Viking glass when I was a kid and I always thought it was neat looking. Orange seems to be a very popular color. (That is what my grandma had a lot of.) We are trying to collect greens (especially olive), yellow, amber, browns and blue (turquoise). We have not done a lot of research on the glass at this point but it seems that most of it was marked with stickers that have long ago fallen off so it can be hard to identify what is authentic. Right now we are just collecting whatever strikes our fancy and has the right price and we aren't worrying too much about authenticity. Apparently the kitchen cabinets they sit on are not original to the house. Everyone was telling us we should tear them out because they block the light that comes in the living room windows. At first I didn't like that idea but I am becoming more open to it. I think even if we do eventually decide to remove the cabinets we will keep the shelf. I have a Pinterest board for all of the Blenko glass I love.

The newest pieces of glass are the farthest to the left, fourth from the left and the two farthest to the right. The two turquoise pieces came from my grandmother's house when she passed away.

Our new olive green Catherin Holm enamel pot.

We also found a Catherine Holm enamel pot yesterday. We first got two hand me down Catherin Holm bowls from my husband's grandma. After doing a little research we found out how collectible they are. I really like the way they looked and I was especially fond of the fact they were olive green. Right now our kitchen is still white but soon the kitchen and living room colors will be olive green. So, when my husband found this Catherin Holm pot at a reasonable price I was all for it. It comes in several colors like blue, yellow and I believe orange. I am partial to the green. We found some yellow china yesterday that looks very similar. I would have snapped it up if it was green. I wish we would have taken a look at the brand so we could look it up and see if it came in green. We may stop back by tomorrow and see if we can get the name.

This evening we made an attempt to go shopping for fabric to recover for the dining room chairs.  We arrived just as the fabric store was closing. We are supposed to pick up the table and chairs tomorrow. Maybe tomorrow I can post some more pictures of the house. I haven't really posted finished photos of the floors or paint because things are still a bit of a disaster. But, maybe I can post some small peeks. I will save the overall photos for when ALL of our stuff is finally moved. (Hopefully that will be sooner rather than later.) There is a big hole in the living room right now because my piano is still at the old house. Last night as I was getting ready for bed and brushing my teeth I thought of another little odd thing about this house we didn't discover until we moved in. The bathroom sinks are REALLY low. It is very strange. I'm not really sure why they were made that way. Maybe I will have time to post again tomorrow and break a record by posting three days in a row.

Slowly But Surely...

Slowly but surely we are making progress. We are moved into the house.....sort of! We had an open house at the old house on October 6. We wanted to be living in the new house by then so we no longer have to deal with trying to get the house ready every time there is a showing on top of trying to work. So, we moved the weekend before the showing but we still have a lot of stuff at the old house. The floors at the new house are FINALLY done! We are not 100% pleased with the job but at least they are done. We are extremely pleased with the overall look of the floors but the attention to detail was horrible. There are lots of little things we are going to have to take care of ourselves. We are going to have a lot of their less than stellar work finished this winter.

We finally found someone to refinish all of the wood in the house. He actually builds house and does really great work. We called him just hoping for a referral. He said if we could wait until this winter he would do the work himself. We are so thrilled to have someone who does such good work. All of the paneling throughout the house is badly faded from the sun. It also has a blonde wash on it. We have been trying to decide if the wash is original. We don't think it is. He is going to refinish all of that. He will also strip our kitchen cabinets back to wood. Right now they are painted white. He is also going to put in new stair treads since the work the floor people did on them is NOT pretty. He saw them and said, "What are you going to do with your stairs?" What a sure sign that they need help! He is also going to make us thresholds going into the bathrooms and he will probably do a few more odds and ends.

Right before the move we painted the entire house. That is why I may appear to have dropped off the planet. The painting took about 10x longer than I expected. The whole entire house has painted molding which I decided to paint white. I am starting to think that may have been a mistake for several reasons. First of all, oh my gosh!!!! Who ever thought of painting trim white (or any color for that matter) is a crazy person. It takes for ever and a day!!! This is the first house I have ever lived in with painted molding. Why would anyone think this time consuming craziness is a good idea when you can have natural wood. There were some places were I could literally only reach by putting my back to the wall, bending over and looking under my right arm upside down!???!? I feel like my insides are permanently damaged from all of the contorted positions I had to get in while painting. I am now thinking it would have been in keeping with the style of the house to paint the trim the same color as the wall. It looks like that is what was always done in the past. All of the painting is pretty much done. I do have to finish a small amount of trim in the family room and both hallways. We decided to wait a bit on the kitchen and bathrooms. I am extremely happy with our colors. They are all authentic colors from 1960.  I will do another blog post later on the paint with photos. Right now there are still too many boxes for photos but they will come soon.

We are making lots of new little discoveries about the house now that we are living here. While we were painting my husband was up on a ladder and noticed that the top of the bedroom doors are labeled in pencil "Boy's Room" and "Girl's Room". I want to get a photo of that and post it. I am getting much more used to the pink and blue bathrooms. We think we will keep them for a while and decorate with ads of pink and blue bathrooms from the 1960's.  I already have a few picked out. I have been trying to decide if I should paint the bathroom walls white or blue to match the tile. I noticed just yesterday that I can see old paint around the windows and it looks like the walls may have originally been blue like the tile. There is a blue surround over the tile in the shower. I have been wondering if this is original. I assume it is not. I'm wondering why it was added. Someone thought maybe the tile underneath is bad. If that is the case I would like to look into replacing it someday. The den has a smell that I love. At first I thought it was the smell of wood. Then I decided there is a smokey smell. But, it doesn't smell like nasty cigarette smoke. Tonight I decided it kind of smelled like my grandma's church which would maybe be the smell of incense. I mentioned it to my husband and he said maybe it is the smell of the wood and someone who had smoked a pipe in there.

Our new dining room table and chairs. 

 

 

 

 

We have a long weekend this weekend and for the first time in ages we were able to have a fun carefree day with no painting or moving. We went to several antique shops and had a lot of success. Our greatest find was a dining room table for $100!!!! It has six chairs (Two of the chairs in the photo are not a part of the set.) and two leaves that can be inserted. It is not exactly what we are looking for. It is just laminate and not solid wood. The chairs are also not as "interesting" as we would like. But, it is pretty close to the style we are looking for so we decided that for $100 we could take it until we found exactly what we want because we think it's going to be a while. And, now we can have people over for Thanksgiving dinner!!! We are going to re-upholster the chairs. I am hoping I can find some inexpensive fabric and do it myself. I will try to make another post tomorrow on some more of our finds from today. Hopefully very soon we will have some more boxes out of the way and I can post some photos of the new paint.

Still Here

I have not dropped off the face of the earth. It has just been too overwhelming to think about rehashing everything in a blog post. Tomorrow it will be two months exactly since we closed on the house and the flooring people STILL have a key to our house. : ( They think they are done with the floor. We are not in agreement! The overall look of the floors we are satisfied with but their attention to detail has been less than stellar.

After the last post about how upset we were with the look of the polished cement due to the flaws left from the dog kennel we spoke to them about our options. We decided to have the cement floor stained a coffee bean color. Because they had already sealed the floor before we got to see it that meant they had to strip it all again. We made it very clear that it was not their fault (even though communication could have been better and time could have been saved had we been given the opportunity to see the floor before it was sealed) that at one time there had been a dog kennel in the basement. We felt good about the decision and decided we might like the stained floor even better.

We then got a call one Friday night telling us not to freak out but if we went over to the house the basement floor would be purple and there was purple stain sprayed all over the carport. Apparently the container of stain they used was labeled correctly but had the wrong color stain inside. I was questioning the truth of this to myself but we then saw the container and it WAS labeled correctly. THEN apparently the sprayer broke in the driveway and got purple stain all over the place. We were assured that it would all be cleaned up and rectified on Monday.

After this we felt like they gave up on our house and quit putting in a lot of effort. We could tell they would go days without working and the attention to detail was very sloppy. They had to strip the basement floor a second time and re-stain it. We are quite satisfied with the overall look of the correct stain color but they were very sloppy with it. They sealed the walls around the floor with plastic to protect it from the stain. A spot of the floor about the size of a baseball got covered by plastic and has no stain on it. They went ahead and sealed it!

They also had me go over and look at the floor before they sealed it. (I wasn't able to see the spot mentioned above because the plastic was still up.) I confirmed with them it was safe to walk across the floors. They said yes. The grass had just been mowed and I tracked in a lot of cut grass. They knew I had been in the house and I assumed would sweep the floor one last time before sealing. Nope! I was wrong. We now have grass permanently embedded in our floor. It's not really noticeable but for the price we paid it shouldn't be there! They also didn't finish some of the chipped spots in the terrazzo correctly. We are going to have to add some extra speckles to it ourselves just because we want to be done with them.

The last thing we are waiting for is a spot in front of the doorway to the furnace room where the stain doesn't go all the way up to the door so there is a strip of bare concrete showing in front of the door. It is a shame they were willing to have unhappy customers over such silly careless things. I could go on and on with the little nit picky things they didn't do correctly but I could go on for days. Many of the small things we are just forgetting about so these people will be out of our lives. We had asked them for an estimate on refinishing our living room walls. They never gave us one and never finished the test patch they said they would do on the walls.

Right now we are trying to find out what would be entailed in having the walls refinished now by someone else. We would like to have it done now before we move in but it will depend how much it costs and if we can find someone to do it. It has been a challenge! Yesterday we started painting. We have almost all of the ceilings done and the trim in the family room. We also have paint colors picked out. We have chosen authentic historical paint colors. The only rooms we aren't painting right now are the bathrooms and kitchen.

We had an offer on our house and thought we might have to be moved by October 1 which was going to be pushing it. The offer ended up falling through. The girl didn't really seem to know what she was doing or what she wanted so we weren't too upset about it. Though, we are hoping to sell our house sooner rather than later. We would also like to be in the new house ASAP so that we don't have to deal with getting the house ready for a showing while school is in session. We did get our new living room furniture reupholstered which has been one bright spot in this ordeal of trying to get the house ready for moving in. The guy from Saint Louis who did the cushions for us did an awesome job! You can see the completed terrazzo floor in the photo of the furniture. I will post more floor photos soon.

One Month...(I think)

Basement floor on Friday

So, (I think) today is one month exactly that they have been working on our floors!! And, yes, they are still working. There have been some minor hurdles but at this point we are really not sure what is taking so long. Every time we go check things out it looks like things have very minimally changed. I am starting to feel like I might never walk in the front door and see gorgeous terrazzo that reflects like a mirror. The glue that they expected to have problems with came up fine we were told. We were told it would take an extra day to get the white circles (floor leveler) up in the basement but it wasn't a problem really. The cork has been done for almost 3 weeks! The terrazzo looks pretty fabulous but the other day they said it has been giving them fits. We don't really know why. It looked pretty darn good to start with. They said something about yellow glue stains from the tack strips around the edges. We saw the stains. They weren't that bad. After many weeks there are still numerous chipped spots where the tack strips were that need to be repaired. They aren't that bad and there has never been any indication they will be a problem. They just need to be done!!! The terrazzo still doesn't have that mirror like shine. I think it still needs to be buffed or something.

Friday we went and the basement was finally done (or close to done). It was very disappointing. There were dark grid lines in the cement where the old tile had been. There were white holes that had been filled with floor leveler. Because they were white they really stood out and looked horrible. It just DID NOT look good. I was very unhappy and felt like I could cry. They had already put a layer of epoxy down. We were a bit disappointed that no one called to communicate what the floors looked like before they proceeded with epoxy. It wasn't their fault it looked so bad but they should have communicated what it was looking like. After several phone calls and finally a stop by their office on Monday we decided to have all of the epoxy stripped off the basement floors. We will have the cement stained a brown color which will hopefully help a lot of the imperfections blend in better. Then another top coat will be added. They acted as if they thought we were going to be angry about something which we were a little confused about. We just wish they would have communicated better before proceeding. We then discovered they put a big gash in our fridge. We were planning on replacing it so it's not that big a deal but it is still a bit upsetting. At this point we are feeling frustrated and concerned with what the final product will look like. We are thinking they surely have not been working straight through for the entire month. Luckily we aren't paying by the hour!!

Strange front door lock

It is hard to sit by and not be able to do anything else like paint or move anything into the house. In two weeks I have to go back to work and the summer days I had planned to work on the house will be gone. All of the floor work is so messy. We just have to wait. We have been looking at paint colors. We made a trip to Saint Louis to get some samples of some historical paint colors. We also planned to go to several retro antique shops looking for living room furniture. They were all closed! Don't go to Saint Louis hoping to look at antique shops on Tuesday. It kind of feels like that is how our whole summer has gone. We went to a few antique shops around here today and saw a few promising items. We did find another unique little item in the house yesterday. There is a funny little piece of metal on the front door frame. It kind of looks like the strike plate but there was nothing on the door that would strike it. It also kind of stuck out past the door frame a little bit and could be flipped back and forth. We finally realized it is a strange little lock! You close the door. Then you flip the extra piece of metal over the door. Then you can push it down to hold it in place. It creates a lock. On Sunday we were able to go to the house and get some of the windows that had been painted shut open with a razor blade. In the process we think we uncovered the original exterior trim color of the house which was kind of interesting.

Strange front door lock closed and locked

Waiting, Waiting, Waiting

Well, I have not fallen off the face of the earth. We are STILL waiting on the floors to be finished and we can't do much else until that happens. They were supposed to be done in 2 weeks. So far it has been 2 weeks and 2 days. It is supposed to be another half a week to a week. At this point I'm not sure what is taking so long. The glue in the basement seemed to come up fairly easy. I didn't hear of any problems like they expected. There was a bit of a scare with the cement in the family room. I got a call to come over and discuss our options because they didn't think it could be polished due to those big white circles I posted photos of. It turns out the spots were just floor leveler that was put down to make the carpet lay smooth. It popped up fairly easy and ended up not being a problem. So, again, I'm not sure what the delay has been. I see very little difference every time I sneak in to take a peek in the evenings. There is always some progress but it never quite seems like a day's worth of work. Thankfully we are not paying by the hour! We have been told there will be some extra labor added on for the basement glue and the floor leveler. I hope it isn't excessive.

Right now the curtains have been pulled in the basement so I can no longer peek in the windows to see what is going on down there. The cork upstairs is done I think. It doesn't look as nice as I had hoped but it will do for now. After they sanded it I expected it to look much newer. It looks very much like it initially did when we pulled the carpet up. It now just has the polyurethane coating on top. You can still see a lot of wear but most of it will be covered with furniture. We will eventually put in newer cork I think. There is a spot in front of each bathroom door where there is a gap between the cork and the threshold. I'm not sure what is going to happen there. I was supposed to get a phone call to discuss the plan but I haven't received one yet.

On the main floor the terrazzo looks really good. The spot we were told about in front of the stove is hardly noticeable. I don't think I would have noticed anything if I hadn't been told. The terrazzo is not done and doesn't yet have that super glossy look like I am expecting. They have been working on it since almost day one so I'm not sure why they haven't gotten further with it. It looks great. It just needs to be finished!! They have pulled the laminate off of the steps but I can't tell what the plans are there. The stairs will be wood but I didn't completely understand how they are going to do it. They are also going to sand a small patch of the wall next to the stairs so they can get some idea of what will be involved in refinishing the paneled walls. We were not going to jump right in to painting but now we are changing our plans. There is a big spot along all of the baseboards where it wasn't painted due to the carpet. It doesn't look great so we are going to paint sooner than planned. Hopefully soon I can update and say the floors are finished. I feel like it is never going to happen.

Owner Number Two

This week I received an email from the second owners of the house! We will be owners number four. So, I have now had communication with every family that has lived in the house! It turns out that the second family to live there was very close friends with the family we grew up next to until I was in the fourth grade. The old neighbors are still close friends of our family. When they heard about the house we will be buying they contacted the second owners who they still keep in touch with even though they have moved from our town. Our friends had shared this blog with the previous owners and then they contacted me.

Owners number two lived in the house for only 6 years. They seem to be the ones who made some of the more obvious changes to the house. They said, "We did not cover the terrazzo floors in the kitchen but remember that the terrazzo was damaged in front of the double ovens - perhaps by a spill of some sort.  The rest of the house was carpeted though.  The great room was newly carpeted when we bought it and the rest of the house had wool carpet from the original owner.  We removed all of the indoor kennels and two of the outdoor kennels. The outside of the house had been painted (not stained) a redwood color before we bought it. We then painted it brown. The small room off the kitchen contained a washer / dryer unit. We removed it and put a washer and a dryer in the basement.  I used the small desk for a sewing machine. The kitchen had a "gourmet" refrigerator and freezer (two separate units built in). We removed those units and replaced them with a "normal" refrigerator / freezer."

We will be very relieved to see what the condition of the floors are under the carpet. Hopefully the stain mentioned can be sanded down. I also started thinking that there might be flaws in the basement concrete where the kennels once were. We were at the house the other day and noticed for the first time there are the remnants of old fencing posts from the kennels in the patio concrete. Again, hopefully anything like that inside the house can be ground down or filled in with new cement. I took some photos of those places in the concrete were the posts used to be and the places in the brick where the old outline of the doggy doors can be seen.

If you look closely you can see the outline of the three doggy doors in the brick. One is behind the pile of stuff. One is directly under the middle of the window and the last is to the right of the water spigot. We believe the window was added when the kennels were removed but we are not sure. It is definitely a newer window than the others.

You can see at the edge of the patio, next to the cracks, a circle that is the remains of a metal post from the kennels. There are several of them along the edge of the patio. I am wondering if there are more of these inside under the carpet. Or, maybe the kennels inside had walls instead of fencing. Another mystery!

The patio- You can see three circles from old fencing along the edge of the patio and you can see the doggy door marks in the brick.

We also decided that there were definitely trees that were lost in the big storm four years ago. The fence in the back has been damaged by a tree. Someone told us this but I can't remember who. It was very obviously crushed by a tree falling right on top of it. It was obviously a large tree. You can tell right where the tree used to be by the way the ground slopes, the grass grows and where some ornamental rocks are placed in the area. Yet, there is no stump to be seen. The owners must have had all of the stumps removed after the storm. We have also been told that so many trees were lost the day of the storm because the ground was so wet from a previous storm the night before. All of the trees came over with large root balls still attached. It would make sense that a tree in the spot fell since it is a low spot where water would collect. We have talked about planting another tree in the same spot.

In this photo you can see where the fence is leaning next to the gate. It has been crushed and is no longer attached. We think there was a large tree in front of the rocks in the sloped area that fell on the fence.

No More Imagining

I no longer have to try imagining what a redwood stained house with aqua/ blueish trim would look like. The woman who grew up in the house sent me a photo of the framed architect's rendering of the house.

Hmm, it's not quite as crazy looking as I was imagining. I wonder if there is any way this could work in 2013. I actually found this webpage where someone is trying to figure out how to keep the turquoise doors on their house and make them work.