Over the weekend I managed to get a few things done and I noticed a few more things that should go on the to do list.

Yesterday was warm for February 1st and sunny.  I love the light that comes in through the stained glass panels in the stairwell but am bothered by the fire escape that is visible.  This is especially obvious inside when the sun is bright and always very obvious and unattractive from the outside.

The fire escape was apparently added when the oblates lived in the house and required because they had the chapel and bedrooms on the third floor.  It comes down onto the flat roof over the front porch.  Ideally, I would like to remove it or relocate it to the back of the house.  It could come out of one of the bedrooms onto the flat roof over the back porch.  While we are talking about this project, I would also like to remove/replace the Plexiglas over the stained glass windows.  I think it is such a shame that one of the focal points of our home isn’t visible from the outside. I know the plexi is there to protect the windows and to help insulate from the cold but there must be a better option.  It almost looks like someone tried to clean the Plexiglas with something that made it cloudy and opaque.  Or maybe whoever put it up didn’t want the windows seen from the outside.  In any case, changing this or removing the Plexiglas would also allow a lot more light into the house and is something I know we can do ourselves.

I’ve also noticed that the living room wall that backs to the music room has the same problems the music room had.  The plaster has disintegrated behind the wallpaper due to water damage.  I am not sure why it hadn’t occurred to us that this would have happened.  We replaced the wall behind this spot.  Of course both sides suffered the same fate from the water seeping in! Now we can hear the plaster falling and the bulge under the paper is getting more noticeable.  The biggest problem here is I am very fond of the living room wallpaper.  The music room paper was awful as you may remember.  In order to repair this wall the paper will have to be removed.  The small glimmer of hope here is the location of the wall damage.  The part of the wall that needs repair  is isolated between the music room entrance and a window.  If I can get the paper down in one piece, I may be able to put it back up.  Not really an impossible task.  There is at least one and maybe two other papers under this and since the plaster has come off the wall, the paper isn’t really attached.  I have no idea when this paper was put up and have no way of determining who the manufacture was so there is very little chance of finding it again.  I did find a company online that prints custom designed wallpaper.  They will take your design and create rolls of wallpaper.  My thought is I may be able to get them to print a roll of this paper if I send them a large enough sample and tell them where the repeats are in the pattern.  I am slightly concerned that they may not be willing to reprint a paper that belongs to another manufacturer.  I would guess that there may be copyright issues to consider.

If you look at the molding, you can see where the wall is not flush

you can’t see it very well in the pictures, but it is there.

I have hung very little on the walls here.  Partly due to the fact that I just wasn’t sure what to put where and partly due to the dust and construction that was going on so long. Since the Christmas stuff came down things are looking a little bare and I am ready to get some things up and make this feel more like home. Hanging the print over the fireplace changed how that room felt and made it feel like home.  It is time to do that with other spaces.

Yesterday I did manage to hang up my mirror collection in the study.  I knew pictures wouldn’t work against the busy wallpaper and I thought the mirrors might hide it and help it feel more like our home while I am looking for the right wallpaper.  I had the mirrors all hung on a wall in the dining room at the old house and I like the eclectic mix of old and new as a grouping. Sadly, I am unsure how I feel about them here.  It almost feels like the wallpaper is even busier than before.  I may resort to painting this room until I find the right wallpaper. I would really like the mirrors in this space to brighten up the dark wood paneling.  For now, this is what I have:

There has been a lot going on here.  So much in fact that I have not had time to sit and write about any of it.  I still can’t figure out what happened to November and soon Christmas will be here.

The big change is the heating system for the first floor has been completed.  It was a very difficult decision as to repair the first floor heat exchangers or upgrade the first floor to gas forced air.  I the end the new gas forced air system won out.  First it was slightly less expensive, it should be more economical to operate and we have the option of adding air conditioning to the first floor now.

Being the owners of a historic home adds a new dimension to the decision process.  We want to preserve and maintain the features and history of the home of course but it is our family’s home and that plays into the decision process as well.  We want to keep whatever we can original while making our family comfortable here.  A few of the decisions were forced upon us (such as the heating dilemma and master shower) because previous owners had not been good caretakers.  Many years from now when the home gets a new family, we don’t want people to come in and say the same of us.  The house is one of the gems in this neighborhood and we want to keep it that way.

Old heat exchanger

boiler pipes

heat exchangers were inside these giant wooden boxes

The pipes also in wooden boxes

Heat exchangers visable after boxes were removed

The dumpster after all the pipes and wood boxes were removed from the basement

We are still learning how to balance out the two heating systems.  The biggest problem is the grand staircase acts like a giant chimney and funnels heat from the first floor up to the second floor hallway where the boiler thermostat is located.  The third floor seems to be overly warm regardless of the temperature in the rest of the house.  Then there is the problem with heating the kitchen and laundry room.   Currently they are not in either system.  Still working on a solution for that!

New Furnaces

No more boxes

New ductwork

Boilers-still working!

As part of the street reconstruction, there were plans to plant trees in the easement.  We were told the trees would be planted in the spring.

What a pleasant surprise to see them today!  There are a lot more than I had expected.  They will provide a nice accent to our very under landscaped yard.

The ones on our side of the road are plums and across the street are elms. (The elms are not planted yet.  They will have to wait until tomorrow to be photographed)

The end of one construction job is in sight.  Sadly, it is the street construction in front of our house and none of the projects still underway inside.  Don’t even ask me about the master bathroom!

Our house is on a corner lot.  The side of the house with our driveway is on a fairly busy street and the lot extends a full block on this side.  Road construction began about 10 days after we moved in and has been going on all summer. The road has been one way in different directions throughout the project as they completely tore the road out and rebuilt it.

The neighborhood association has worked along side the city engineer to keep the project moving and preserving the historical integrity as much as possible.  I have been so impressed with the city engineer.  He is out here all day, every day.  He has kept us well informed about the project and given us much appreciated notice when access to our driveway has been limited or restricted.

The project included removal of the original sandstone sidewalk sections and the original brick road that remained under the pavement.  We were able to keep the sidewalk sections for our own use.  The brick was salvaged to use in repairing the one original brick road in the neighborhood and installed as accent pieces on the corners.

Sandstone sections that will be a new patio in our side yard

A few bricks that got left behind

recycled road bricks at cross walks

They also used pieces of the sandstone and the bricks to make a decorative base around the areas where new lamp posts will be installed.

Lamp Post Base

They have narrowed the road in an attempt to limit cut through traffic and speeding.  A bike path will be added on the other side of the road and on street parking will be allowed on the east side of our driveway which will be nice for guests.

While I really want some of our projects to find their way to completion, I will be happy to see the road construction wrapped up. (Hopefully with this project completed I can add window washing to the to do list.)  It looks beautiful and makes me happy to be part of this new neighborhood.

Our new sidewalk and driveway apron. You can see the indent for on street parking.

The other side of the driveway

Both the grand staircase and the servants stairs were carpeted when we got here.  The grand staircase had a carpet runner that was green and mauve and was probably put there in the 80’s.  It matched the area rug in the entry and the awful mauve paint on the stairwell walls.  As you know, the pink paint was the first to go.  I also rolled up the area rug and dragged that out immediately as well.  It was threadbare, covered in pet stains and the backing of the carpet was disintegrating, leaving a powder oozing out from under the rug.

I also pulled the runner off the top section of the staircase. It had the same problems.  I thought the bare wood on the stairs was beautiful and the carpet being gone would make it so much easier to clean.  Little did I know that before the runner was installed the stairs had been refinished. But whoever did that didn’t finish the stairs where the runner was going to be.  I put that on the list of crazy things we discovered here.  Why would you leave the center of the stair tread unfinished??

Stained and threadbare

Really? Why?

Matt decided we would leave the remaining runner in place until we decide what we are going to do with the stairs.  I would like to keep them bare and refinish the treads.  He wants to replace the runner.  It is so much easier to sweep and wipe the steps than to try to clean the edges and vacuum the runner.  Since we agreed to have the home on the Christmas tour we are going to have to make some decision soon.  They certainly can’t stay like they are and the old runner has to come off.

The servants staircase at the back of the house was another big problem.  They were also carpeted with an industrial gray that would have provided great training for a CSI team.  To call them disgusting would be too kind.  The smelled, they felt nasty when you walked on them and our dogs were convinced they could pee on them often enough to get the other pet odors covered up.

They actually don’t look awful in the pictures and you can’t appreciate the odor from a photo!

I pulled up the corners on the landings and found a lovely linoleum underneath. (OK, it isn’t really a lovely linoleum.)  It went up all three flights of stairs and was in the third floor hall as well.  If we pulled out the carpet I wasn’t sure if we would be able to get the linoleum up,  I was pretty sure it was glued to the hardwood.  After several months of being afraid to go up the stairs I went ahead and started ripping up the carpet.  I figured I could live with the linoleum until we were ready to refinish the stairs because I could clean it!  Something I hadn’t been able to do with the carpet.  Trust me, I did try!

It turned out that the carpet had originally been tan not gray.  Now I was even more determined to get it out of my house.  At some point the staircase from the second to the third floor had had the linoleum removed but it was glued and the glue was left on the stairs.  We were able to scrape much of the glue off and will eventually remove the rest of the linoleum and refinish all the stairs.  For now it looks like this:

without linoleum

bottom staircase with linoleum

linoleum close up

The linoleum has been here a long time.  I would guess it was put in while the Oblates were living here.  It has a cork like texture and the color is actually less offensive than I had first thought.  The best part-it is clean!!  The horrible odor is gone and nobody cringes at the thought of going up and down the stairs.

It seems crazy that in all the times we looked at the house before we bought it and in the nearly four months since we moved in that we hadn’t opened (or is it we haven’t closed them?!) the giant pocket doors to the dining room.  I would estimate that these doors are probably over three hundred pounds each.  They are eight feet tall and three inches thick. The one from the living room is off the track and we were nervous about pulling out the one in the entry fearing we would pull it off the track as well and we would be stuck with it open (closed?)

We had a nice visit with two members of the Women of the Old West End on Sunday.  We were discussing the possibility of having our home on their tour at Christmas time.  (As if our life isn’t crazy enough already!)  Matt got brave and pulled out the pocket door that is on the track and was able to pull out the other one by carefully lifting it up.

Because all the rooms on the first floor have different molding we knew the doors would match the rooms they faced.  I was still surprised at how different each of these giant doors are.  They both open into the dining room and even the two sides there are not identical.   The first floor feels very different with the rooms closed off from one and other.  Our house has a very open concept floor plan for a home built in 1901.  It was one of the things that surprised me and that I like very much about the house.

Here is your peek at the pocket doors:

The entry way/dining room pocket door. Quarter sawn oak on this side

The brass door pull

The dining room side of the same door, wormy chestnut.

Close up of this side of the door pulls. Not sure why there is one placed higher in the middle?

The living room side in mahogany. This is the one off the track.

Close up of this door pull

The dining room side of the door.

The dining room door with a plain brass plate. This door does have a brass pull handle inside.

We are on a corner lot. The front door and driveway face a busy street but that is not the street that is our address.  On this side the lot is actually a city block long.  We have a small fenced yard behind the kitchen, a small yard that is technically the front yard, a side yard that faces the busy road and a long section that stretches from the driveway to the street behind us. It is hard to know what to call each section of our yard.  The whole thing was beyond a mess when we arrived.  The lawn is mostly weeds and little grass.  The landscaping contains mostly weeds that were feet high.  There are several trees in the backyard and beside the house that had never had a trim and were taking over their little corners of the world.  At one point there had been a water feature in the long back yard and another in the fenced part of the back yard.  We also were the owners of a chicken coop.

The priorities when we arrived were to get the house unpacked and have functioning plumbing and heating systems.  Both are still a work in progress but enough has been done that we can comfortably (though slightly inconvenienced) live in the house.

Eventually our attention turned to some outside improvements.  Our suburban home we left behind had a pool and a hot tub.  I am not sure if the pool will be an option here in the future but we knew the hot tub had to be replaced.  We took down the chicken coop and built a small concrete paver pad to put in the new hot tub.

About a week after we arrived, construction on our busy side street began.  That is a separate post but part of that project required removing the original sand stone sidewalk sections.  Homeowners were offered the stones from their property if they wanted them.  We kept all of ours and then some.  More later about that!  Matt used some of the broken pieces to make a nice patio around the hot tub.

We split a bunch of the hosta from my old garden ( I may have a small hosta problem and I couldn’t leave then all behind) and planted them in the “rock garden” for now.  I am not sure this will be their permanent home but it is shady and a big improvement in the yards appearance.

Next Matt’s brother (the landscape architect!) took pity on our yard while he was visiting and he tackled the front flower beds and tree trimming projects.  The yard now is vastly improved and no longer the worst garden in the neighborhood.

Crazy overgrown tree, trimmed. Yard space doubled. Really, it was that overgrown.

There is a front door! Who knew?

“Volunteer” trees gone

Weeds cleared, ready for some proper landscaping

A few keepers found buried in the weeds

The garden is still in need of attention but it is greatly improved.  Several neighbors have been kind enough to express gratitude that we are here and that the house and yard are finally getting some love.  At least now it is a less neglected garden!