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

It Arrived!!!

We can finally live in our living room again!! All of the walls have been stripped and stained. We put a very thin molding around the ceiling. You can't even really see it. It just makes it look finished and the edges look sharper. We had new vertical blinds put up last Friday. Our awesome guy who did the walls came back and put them up for free so we wouldn't mess up his work by accidentally drilling holes in the wrong spot. Now our walls will be protected from more sun damage. The kitties can also stick their heads through and look out whenever they want. I have decided there is a lot of green in the room. I love green but we need something else. I think I will eventually make some pillows that are a different color. Maybe I will blog about pillow ideas next. I still need to do a blog on the bathroom.

Today my piano came!!!! I have been so anxious to get it here and see how it looks in the room. But, we decided to hold off until the walls were done and new blinds were up as long as our old house hadn't sold. The mess from the construction would have been very bad for the piano. We have a few little things we would still like to do in this room but there is no rush. We will most likely eventually take the ceiling fan down. We think it detracts from the fire place. We will live through all of the seasons and see for sure if we can do without it. We are under the impression the fireplace is not lined. At some point we need to have a chimney sweep look at it. If it is not lined we will look into our options. We may possibly put in a gas fireplace. I read about unlined fireplaces. It sounds like they are a very bad thing. We have a pretty low open shelf that we are going to put against the window in the open space in front of the piano. We also have four more chairs for the table. We are waiting to move them back into the room because we still have some spots where stripper got on the floor that need to be scrubbed. If we are lucky we may even get our intercom system working again!!

Before

After

Our New Little Guy

Our spring break wasn't super exciting. We spent a lot of time dealing with house stuff and some work issues. We did have one fun day where we went to a local estate sale and got quite an exciting find for $8. I have posted before about our plan to collect Blenko and Viking glass to put on some of the tall shelves in the house. On the shelf between the kitchen and living room we have green, amber, blue and yellow glass. We decided to get some bigger pieces for some of the tall built in shelves upstairs. My husband has been reading a lot about the glass and other mid-century furniture online. He is getting quite good at spotting things at sales and in shops. A lot of the glass is very similar and hard to identify. We are just starting to learn. At the estate sale he eyed the cutest little blue glass bottle with a topper that has a face on it and the bottle has arms. This bottle is the cutest looking little guy. He had seen it online and recognized it. He took a photo of it last night with two great big glass pieces. The tall skinny one with the yellow stripe (the Mommy) was a gift to my husband from my parents for Christmas. The big fat bottle (the Daddy) has a broken topper but we got it for $1 at an antique shop. It will be very hard for us to find a bottle that size for a reasonable price. It is so high up you can't tell the stopper is broken. I decided for $1 I can live with it until something more exciting comes along. The new cute guy looks like their baby!!

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

A Mess Until March

Wow! Things have been a mess! On January 22, the work finally began on our house. We had 3 workers here every day until February 25. A whole month!! Our house was a DISASTER the whole time they were here. All of our furniture was piled into every room they weren't working in except our bedroom. There was dust everywhere. There was paper covering much of the floor. That paper was coated in stripper or stain. It was a yucky, yucky mess. We were unable to use our kitchen or sit in our living room for a month.

Our living room a couple of weeks ago

We actually ended up spending a lot of time at home with the workers. I have completely lost count of how many snow days we have had this winter. There were many days we did not have work and stayed home. My husband stayed home with them for a week after suffering through the beginning of anaphylaxis. If you don't know what that is, it basically means you quit breathing due to an allergic reaction. He didn't quit breathing but he was headed in that direction.

Thankfully we loved our workers. They did an awesome job on our house and they were fun to talk to. We don't have one single complaint. It was kind of sad when they left. It was depressing on the last day when they walked out with their radio. I knew they would not be coming back! They were also quite handy to have around. They helped us figure out that we had a basement full of water due to our sewer backing up.

A week later they saved us from having a completely flooded house. The toilet backed up after I left for work. Water went in the bathroom, bedroom, down the hall and through the ceiling into the basement. Luckily, one of them was in the basement and saw the water pouring through the ceiling. They had a shop vac and they were able to clean it up quickly and call me at work to come home and deal with it. So, on top of everything else that was done we now also have a new sewer line. So, not only was the inside of the house a mess but the outside too!

The giant mole hill in our front yard after getting a new sewer line.

 Finally,  everything is done except the two new toilets we will be getting Sunday because of their contribution to our sewer problems and the new roof on the carport which we can't get until the weather warms up. Believe it or not we are forecast to have MORE snow Sunday night. Today we got new vertical blinds in the living room to prevent having so much sun damage again. We also had the walls refinished in the living room and guest room, new very thin molding added around the ceiling in the family room and guest bedroom, new floor molding added in the family room and downstairs hallway, refinished stairs, kitchen cabinets and molding refinished, painted the kitchen, built in grill repaired, stove hood repaired, basement door repaired, new thresholds leading into all bathrooms, bathroom cabinets refinished, all inside doors to closets, bedroom etc. refinished, and new shower door. My next post well be lots of photos of all the new work that was done.

Would You Like An Update On Our Wood?

The very first time I looked at our house I walked in the living room and thought wow this is awesome! Too bad this wood is so pale and ugly. The living rooms walls are redwood paneled along with the stairwells, ceiling beams in the living room and kitchen and walls in the basement room that was once a den and will now be our guest bedroom. I don't know anything about wood but we have been told our walls are heart of redwood which is very, very expensive and we would probably never be able to afford them today. Unfortunately, they were a very pale blonde color. They were covered in some kind of blonde wash that we don't think is original to the house. Then the blonde has faded even more due to years and years of sun damage from a complete wall of windows. The stairwells, which really catch your eye because they are right next to the beautiful fireplace, were extremely worn from years and years of people running their hands and who knows what else (feet, dogs, kids, toys, suitcases etc.) up and down them. Some of the living room beams were almost white from the sun. You could point out every spot on the wall where a photo had been hanging due to the sun damage.

So, we decided we would have the walls refinished, re-stained etc. as soon as we could afford it and find someone to do it. We had a very difficult time finding someone and everyone we spoke with had a different idea about the best way to complete the job. Some people thought the walls should be sanded. Other people thought the walls should be stripped. And, of course, the most common solution was that we should just make it easier on ourselves and paint the walls. We were both so opposed to the idea of paint. Why in the world would you want to paint when you could have natural wood that would require virtually no upkeep. I'm finally just recovering from all the painting I did this summer. I don't want to paint more!!! When we were looking at houses I almost got to a point where I quit looking at the photos if I didn't see any wood paneling in the photos. I KNOW I am probably the only person in the world that feels this way. But, I just love the look of the natural wood. I finally got so frustrated I called a guy from my mom's home town who builds homes. He comes HIGHLY recommended. He is in high demand and known for his very reasonable prices.

I called him in hopes of getting a reference for someone who could refinish our wood. I never thought he would be interested in doing such a little job. I just hoped he wouldn't completely blow me off. He came and looked at our house in September and seemed to really like it. He told us he would the job himself (and several other smaller things we needed done) if we could wait until January when the weather was colder and he would need inside work. We agreed to happily wait. After the fiasco with our floors we were absolutely thrilled to find someone of such high quality to do the job. He stopped by last week and tested out several strippers on the wall in hopes of finding one that was not as toxic and would work well since it is the middle of winter (4 degrees this morning to be exact!) and opening a lot of windows is not practical. He then tested out some stain. In the photo below you can see the original wall color. It actually is more pale than in the photo. You can also see three strips where he tested stripper and stain. To the right is the stain color that we decided upon. You can see the drastic difference in the wall and the stain. Also at the right above the stain you can sort of see a faded square in the wood. It looks like there may have been a file cabinet or similar sized item there for a long time. There are spots like this all over the wood.

Test strips

 As January grew closer I was starting to second guess my thoughts on having the walls refinished. I was starting to get used to the blonde. I worried that maybe I was ruining the original style of the house that we were working so hard to maintain. I thought maybe we were going to waste our money. I was really to a point where I thought maybe I would be just fine with the wood if it didn't have so much sun damage and wear. He finally started the job on Wednesday and the downstairs bedroom (formally den) is basically done except trim and detail work. It looks AMAZING! The walls are finally a beautiful brown color. They have done such a professional job. We haven't had one complaint yet! This has been such a change after the floor people this summer. After the first day of work on the job it looked great but I still wondered if we were going to all this work for a change that wouldn't be that great. I asked the workers what they thought. They said all that mattered was what I thought because I had to live with it. I told them I knew that but they looked at so many houses that they know what looks good. Then they let it fly! They said it was a huge improvement. They said you couldn't even compare the before and after. Then they said it looked like someone had smeared mustard on the walls previously! After seeing the completed room today I think we are very happy with the results.

This is a completed wall in the guest bedroom. You can't completely see how it looks because there is nothing else in the room to compare it to in the way of color except the vent and the outlet. But, hopefully you can see that it looks much better!

The people doing the work are so good at what they do we feel like we need to get as much work out of them as we can afford because we will probably never have an opportunity like this again. They are going to put new stair treads on our steps that are finished to match the walls better. The work the people did on the stairs this summer was awful. They look orange now! As I said above, the stairs really catch your eye because they are next to the fireplace. We are looking forward to having stairs that actually look good! If we can afford it we also plan on having them do a few more things. Our kitchen cabinets are white. They will refinish those back to wood. They will refinish our bathroom cabinets that look orange because the varnish has yellowed over time. We will have transition strips added as you go into all of the bathrooms since the flooring people did not finish that this summer. Our basement door is having some major issues so that will be rectified. And, we are looking forward to putting a shower door in so that we no longer get water on our shower floor. I have always preferred shower doors over curtains and was very excited to find out the bathroom originally had one but it was removed. Before I knew that I felt like I was "ruining" the original bathroom if I added a door. I will try to post more updates as the work progresses.