Our New Old House

This picture was taken by the county assessor’s office back in 1998, but the house hasn’t changed at all since then.

The window air conditioner in the back bedroom wasn’t installed very well and it left some water damage.

Back in 1918 when this house was built, telephones were still new to the middle class and many homes had built-in telephone stands like this one. It has a jack set right inside.

There’s some slight water damage on the ceiling of the bathroom, but that’s probably just from lack of ventilation. There’s no fan. There are also no electrical outlets in the whole bathroom! Definitely a house from before the era of electric toothbrushes, curling irons, and blow driers!

The built-in medicine cabinet is just awesome though! Inside is made of bead board. Those light fixtures have got to go.

Each bedroom has a pretty big closet. They’re not designed for very easy access to all your belongings, though. I foresee some creative storage containers in my future.

This is the rest of the front bedroom. It seems a tad smaller than the back bedroom, but that could just be the way it’s laid out. I’ll measure later. This room is the only one that clearly shows the beautiful hardwood floors. All the others are covered with carpet, but we’ve pulled up corners of it here and there and they all look really nice. Can’t wait to give them a good buff and polish.

The house as a working fireplace as far as we can tell. The chimney needs some serious work, though, and you can probably tell from this picture that the log in the grate is slightly damp. That’s because there was water dripping down onto it from the pouring rain outside at the time I took this picture. Clearly doesn’t bode well for the condition of the rest of the chimney, but we’re hopeful the damage hasn’t gone too far yet and that we can stop it in time.

Oh dear, the kitchen. Decades of grease coat the harvest gold walls and the tacky ceiling tiles. I hardly know what to make of this, but the whole scene makes me want to grab a putty knife and start scraping away the layers and layers of wallpaper.

Somebody started doing… something… here. Not sure what or why exactly. But the cabinets are actually really nice. They need new handles and a good cleaning, but they’re solid wood and really BIG. They go clear to the ceiling!

The basement has some water issues, but so far we’ve been able to trace them all to problems on the exterior of the house that are moderately easy to fix.

The basement is huge! And several of the foundation walls were rebuilt within 10 or 20 years ago. This is the largest room in the basement.

Here’s a shot of the living room taken while standing in the dining room. The paneling made me stop in my tracks, but I’ve dealt with paneling before, so I’m sure I can come up with a good solution here. Fortunately, it’s good quality paneling, made of real wood veneer, not the phony composite stuff with the screen printed wood patern. So this is completely paintable, if it comes to that. I will remove a corner of it somewhere and see what the wall is like underneath.

This fireplace has so much potential! Can’t you just imagine the bookcases with leaded glass doors and a beautiful Art Nouveau painting gracing the mantle? This will be a favorite project for me.

Here’s a shot of the HUGE dining room taken from the living room. The door on the right goes up to the attic.

Another view of the fireplace.

The front living room windows as seen from the enclosed front porch.

The front porch is remarkably dry except for this one spot by the window where there’s a little water damage to the paint. It hasn’t caused the wood to soften at all though.

Another view of the front porch.

And the other corner of the front porch.

We found an original storm window and two interior doors in the basement! I LOVE this window. Too bad more weren’t still here. I don’t think I’ll be able to put this back on as an actual window, but I plan to find some way to incorporate it into the interior decorating somehow. I’m open to ideas!

This is the super scary shower that’s in the basement. Ew ew ew!

And the super scary toilet in the basement. Ew ew ew!!!

This is the inside of the coal chute. Doesn’t move anymore, but pretty cool that it’s still here. It’s not very good insulation-wise, though, so I’m planning to leave it there and insulate and seal it off from the inside.

Knob and tube wiring!

More knob and tube wiring! This cord has a scary looking splice.

There’s a gas dryer, but no washer.

I love having a dump sink in the basement. Someone set up a little bathroom medicine cabinet here. Cute.

Basement work bench. This is actually one of two really cool sturdy work benches in the basement. I have a feeling I’ll be right at home down there!

Living room windows looking out on the front porch.

All the registers in the house are original and look like this.

The stove works! We have fire!

The kitchen window that has yet to be replaced.

This picture may not illustrate exactly how many layers of wallpaper there are in the kitchen, but lemme tell ya, there are a lot. I’ll do my best to take a photo of whatever I find under those layers.

One kitchen window was replaced with this lovely vinyl one. Not bad!

The dining room windows

Back bedroom window with A/C

The underside of the eaves need a lot of work. Lots of rot near the fascia.

Birds nest, pre-eviction.

A strange, glassy red rock I found in the back yard.

The door knob on the back door. This will look so great when it’s stripped!

The wiring coming into the house from the alley. Looks pretty scary to me.

More rot.

More rot. Oh dear.

OMFG more rot.

A kitty door!

Lovely alligator pattern in the flaking, chalking lead paint.

We have a serious soil erosion problem from run off water. I have big plans for this space, involving edging stones, building up more soil and planing tons of shade loving plants like hostas and ferns.

Another view of the erosion problem.

A coffee can birdhouse. It’s seen better days, kind of like the bungalow it belongs to.

The aging back gate to the alley.

A view of the back of the house

A bird house among the vines. OMG the vines!

Closeup of lead paint and vines.

I have big plans for this little spot. Some kind of flowering bush, snowball, lilac, jasmine, something fragrant.

The tragically sagging front stoop. This is going to have to be completely rebuilt.

Exterior of the bathroom window.

I love the little shelter over the back door. Anybody know what that’s called, architecturally speaking?

The back yard

Under the eaves on a corner of the house at the back I found this little porcelain insulator. Do you think it was for the electricity? Maybe a phone line?

Lead paint just itching to be scraped off (safely of course!)