On Saturday, it looked like this!

Actually, that picture is from after I’d cleaned up after the party a bit. But you get the idea.

Friday night Brandon put up the last of the wallpaper border in the dining room.

I’m very pleased with how it came out.

On Saturday morning he put the attic door back on with freshly painted hardware.  (I still have a little more clean-up work to do on that door, but it looked pretty nice having it back up.)

On Saturday night Our New Old House was full of friends and laughter. We finished all the projects on our list in the knick of time and it was a wonderful party.

We’re so grateful for everybody who came and celebrated with us! Our house is so much warmer with friends to share it with.

I think we can.

We’ve made some good progress on the dining room. Here’s how the dining room windows looked mid-chemical strip:

And with chemical stripping done, waiting for wood filler to dry so I can sand it.

The rest of the woodwork in the dining room is coming along nicely. I finished stripping one side of this door.

And the rest of the woodwork on the doorways:

Here’s the kitchen doorway mid-chemical strip:

Brandon took off the door so I could get the rest of this doorway stripped. It’s pretty much done now except for some minor clean up of putty between the pieces.

And the kitchen doorway very close to finished:

In the living room we still had a section of wall that needed priming.

So Brandon primed it.

Also, I heat stripped the paint off the window frame and baseboards on that side.

There are still sections of the floor that need to have the carpet padding scraped off so I’ve been finishing that job this week.

Finally, in preparation for the party, I made a batch of cookies. Ok, really this batch was just to motivate myself to keep working. Well, ok it was to bribe myself to keep working. Whatever. Cookies rock.

Last night I painted the whole living room with the same bone white that is in the dining room. I was only able to do one coat, but it’s a huge improvement from the stark white primer. Tonight I’m going to finish scraping the dining room floor (finished the living room floor on Tuesday,) do a couple of touch ups on the wood work, and possibly heat strip the woodwork around the living room front door and front windows. Brandon started putting up the wallpaper border in the dining room last night and we’ll finish that tonight. Then Friday will be for arranging furniture and cleaning up.

Phew! There’s nothing like marathon house fixing!

• CitriStrip
• Mineral Spirits
• Fabric Softener
• Laundry Detergent
• Bleach
• Rustoleum spray paint
• Tea tree oil & lavender
• Nachos

It’s been a busy weekend in Our New Old House. We set ourselves a deadline of Dec. 19 to have the living room and dining room done – or at least done enough to host a big holiday party. That meant we have to get the following list of things done:

• Strip paint off woodwork
• Finish scraping up crustified carpet padding
• Paint the walls
• Rearrange the cables and electronics in the bookcase
• Paint the cold air return grate
• Make everything tidy and pretty

I think we’re on track to make all of those things happen. Dining room is painted. Today Brandon primed the last bit of the living room that needed it. I spray painted the grate. Woodwork is done except for a couple of troublesome spots with stubborn paint. Sections of carpet padding in the dining room are soaking, to be scraped tomorrow after work.  I bought the supplies I’ll need to stain parts of the woodwork and polyurethane it, but I think those final steps will have to wait until after the party. For now, the woodwork looks lovely just stripped of paint. It’s got a nice rich color and a smooth finish so that’s good enough for now.

It’s time for me to take a shower and get to bed. I’m exhausted, but I can’t wait to show off our progress. I’ll have some pictures soon of our living room and dining room, as well as a little treasure Brandon found behind one of the built-in bookcases.

See, we’ve got these bookcases on either side of our fireplace and they’re not quite deep enough for the stereo components and other electronic gadgets we want to put in them. The bookcases had a false back but I could tell there was a good 10 inches of additional space behind them.  What was behind that back wall?  Bare lath? Rats nests? TREASURE?!!!  I had to find out.  I cast a sideways glance at Brandon, grinned mischeviously, and POW!  I kicked out the bottom.  Then POW! POW! I kicked the rest of the nails loose!  I was masterful in my kicking.

What’s behind that wallboard? I must know!

Nothing. Oh good.

So I took out the wallboard and took some pictures inside this hidden part of my house that hadn’t been open since the house was built!

Ooh! I wonder where that hole goes! Oh, right. The basement.

Here’s the underside of the mantle. Don’t be alarmed by the water stains. We did that when we washed the wallpaper residue off the walls.

So, with the shelves back in we have room for the electronic wires behind the shelves. I’m going to clean up the inside and paint and make the whole thing presentable. But I’ve got some other projects pending first. And while I can close the cabinet doors and hide this mess, I’ll do it.

I had to do a lot of plaster work in this room. I’m particularly proud of reconstructing this corner that had crumbled away as the house settled.

Here’s a before picture:

One side of the wall over the fireplace needed some major repair:

I started attacking the gunk on the floor with a new vengeance, doing garbage bag sized sections rather than grocery bag sized ones.

Mom came over with some of my friends to help me put primer on the walls.

We bought a new rug, cleaned everything up, and arranged the furniture and here’s the result! It’s not finished, but I can see the finish line from here!

Phew! We can actually live in the living room now! Paint colors for the wall are being planned, also I’m going to restore the bookcases with leaded glass windows.

[tags] built-ins, photos, plaster, furniture, paint, future plans, ceiling fan, flooring, living room, fireplace, cabinets[/tags]

Oh, that’s Zoot the cat in the foreground.  The top of our coffee table lifts up on arms and leaves these two apparently cat sized boxes.

[tags]cats, random, furniture, photos, living room[/tags]

Isn’t that a nice, cozy fire? I’m so thrilled with our new fireplace insert. We need to buy some less expensive wood than the couple bundles we picked up at Quik Trip ($3.99 for a bundle of about eight pieces). I’ve been calling around to a few places and I’ll let you know what we ended up spending and how much wood we got once we get it.

We haven’t really run it long enough or hot enough to seriously heat the house yet. It was still curing the first time we burned in it so we didn’t want to fire it too hot right away. I’ll see what it can do tonight since it’s going to get pretty cold.

I also told you about Grandma persevering at scraping the wallpaper in the living room and dining room:

Yesterday and today she worked on that and now she’s only got one little section left before she’s all done. Unbelievable!

Yesterday I sallied forth to Menards to find the coupling I needed to hook the shower extension onto my tub. Silly me, I thought I could measure both ends, walk in, find the piece I needed, and have made a successful trip. Not so. Trouble is I suck at measuring, so I bought the wrong size coupling. I had one coupling that had been used to attach a hand held spray nozzle and I knew that one end of that fit into the faucet. So when I went back I took that coupling with me. I also took the shower extension with me since I didn’t trust myself to eyeball it any better. I couldn’t get the threaded end of the shower extension to fit any of the couplings they had! So I asked a trusty Menards associate. He scratched his head, tried to fit the threaded end into a few more couplings, had no success, scratched his head some more, and consulted with his youthful protege. “Looks like garden hose thread, not pipe thread,” the lad said. “Maybe it’s metric,” the elder pondered. I took back my shower extender and took another close look at it. I scraped away some of the pipe tape that had crustified around the joint and discovered that the oddly threaded coupling was actually screwed into what appeared to be 1/2″ pipe thread! “Have either of you got a wrench handy?” I asked. We found a wrench and the stronger of the two associates gave it a few good turns and sure enough, the odd coupling (sorry for the bad pun) came out and I was left with a perfectly standard 1/2″ pipe thread which would fit perfectly onto the coupling I started with in the first place!

So here it is connected:

As swimmingly as that all worked out, it is actually a little too short for my tallish husband so I’ll be looking for another section of pipe to extend it a bit, but for now, he’ll just have to stoop a little.

So now on to more recent developments:
It rained in Des Moines today. A lot. When I got home one of the downspouts had come detached from the gutter and was streaming water straight down at my foundation! I got up on the ladder and hammered a nail into it as a temporary fix, only to find that the downspout was leaking a stream of water from the elbow. I took the elbow apart and surprise surprise, it was totally clogged with years of composted leaves. Yummy. In the process I re-sliced open the cut on my hand from the razor blade, so I’m putting that wound on infection-watch. Don’t worry, I’m current on my tetanus shot. After I got that whole contraption put back together I still had a big pool of water threatening to seep down into the foundation, so I took the bricks the chimney sweeps had removed from our chimney and used them to displace some of the water. I don’t think it really did all that much, but it was a way for me to at least feel like I was trying in a futile situation. When I got back inside I looked like a soggy sewer rat. BUT! I noticed when I was changing into dry clothes that a mud splatter had landed on my face and looked JUST LIKE Marilyn Monroe’s beauty mark. My grandma said I should leave it on, but I had to wipe my face.

The good news is that there wasn’t much water in the basement at all. Just a couple damp spots on the inner foundation wall where water was starting to seep in, but nothing like the puddles we found when we first bought the place.

While Grandma worked away upstairs I went down to the basement to start picking out the recyclable copper wire from the pile the electricians left me.

That was a dirty job because the cloth covered wires were all coated with several decades’ worth of coal dust.

Mmm sooty:

Here’s a really scary connection I found in the wire I was untangling. Remind me again why my house didn’t burn down long before I ever had a chance to buy it…

My bucket o’wire for Craig. He’s going to burn off the insulation and take the remaining copper to a metal recycle shop and they’ll apparently give him money for it. Can’t be that much, but hey, recycling rocks in all its forms. I admire his motivation.

Since I was already in the basement with my camera I thought I’d poke around some of the nooks and crannies that having a digital camera makes it so much easier to explore. Most of the original foundation of our house was built of these hollow cinder blocks. Where they come together at a corner or at the end of a wall, they often open sideways into a series of little pigeon holes. My grandfather used to store tools and owners manuals and things in the ones in his house on E. 14th St., so I thought I’d see if there were any little treasures left behind in my walls.

I found a spool, or something resembling one:

I found a ginormous rusty nail:

And I found several pockets of coal left behind in the furnace room:

Once I’d grown tired of spelunking in my basement I went back upstairs to clean up a bit and feed the cats before fleeing to my mom’s house to take a shower. I actually found a pre-made shower curtain rail that is big enough to encircle my WHOLE tub, but I need help installing it so until that’s up, no showers at my own house yet.

Phew! This post has been a doozy. I’m ready for bed.

P.S. Happy International Talk Like a Pirate Day! I wonder how many people will blog in pirate-speak today.

The house is in various stages of disarray, but no worries!

This is the light fixture that was removed from the basement hallway. Pretty gross huh?

The ceiling fan we picked out for the living room:

The light in the dining room that compliments the ceiling fan in the living room:

New light fixtures in the bathroom. We’re going for a chrome and white look for all the bathroom fixtures. These lights look a little out of place amongst the 70s wallpaper and dingy yellow paint. Just wait until everything is crisp and white! (Additionally, we have had them install a ceiling fan + light, but since that wasn’t fully installed yet I didn’t take a picture.)

The wood burning stove insert is all done, the chimney is re-lined, and the part above the roof has been rebuilt completely. It all looks GREAT and I’ve never been so excited for cold weather to arrive so I can try this out!

Just a quick plug for a really great business here: The company we hired for this, Alpine Chimney Sweep, was simply awesome! If you have any chimney or fireplace or wood burning stove issues at your house and you’re anywhere near Des Moines, I really recommend looking them up. They’re friendly, efficient, clean, and even bumped up our installation day because they had an unexpected opening in their schedule.

Here’s the stove unit ready to install:

While they had the chimney and firebox all cleared out, I took the opportunity to take a few pictures of an area most homeowners never really get a good look at: the inside of the chimney and ash dump.

Here’s the firebox all cleaned out:

The damper had rusted shut and debris from the crumbling chimney had fallen on top of it. It had to be removed anyway, so here’s what’s left of the broken pieces, leaving room for the new liner and stove pipe:

The view up the chimney:

I put my camera in great peril to get this shot looking down into the ash dump:

The front of our new wood burning stove:

A wider view:

I’m really glad they put the original flue damper handle back in its place. It’s not needed anymore, but it’s better than having a big hole in the brick where it should go. I can’t wait to clean up the area around the hearth and maybe paint the brick a different color. I have big plans for this fireplace area of the house! Big plans, I say!

Sadly, by the time we got around to looking at the chimney outside we’d lost too much light for me to take a picture. You’ll get your picture though, never fear!

I am absolutely thrilled at how much progress was made this week. I never imagined everything would go so smoothly and so fast. Here’s hoping for continued good fortune in the rest of our projects to come.

Oh! And another quick shout out to a damned decent guy, Matt, who works with Brandon, at least for the time being. Matt is headed back to Omaha to rejoin his lovely wife there and since he’s moving, he graciously offered us his futon, no charge! That’s great because we can use all the free furniture we can get! Thanks again, Matt!

[tags]bathroom, ceiling fan, chimney, contractors, dining room, electricity, fireplace, light fixtures, living room, photos, wood burning stove[/tags]