The boys are on spring break this week and somehow Matt is the one who ended up going out of town. I decided to tackle the kitchen while he is gone.  I asked oldest son for some help and he pretty much completed the project on his own.  I did some of the prep and all of the clean up but he took on the painting. Here are my before and after pictures!

We took off the rusted and nasty brass hardware and replaced them with an eclectic mix of hand painted pumpkin knobs I found on Amazon.  We removed the gold decorative piece from the center and I am really pleased with how they look.  The cobalt blue is similar to the blue in my sunflower tiles.  I had actually painted the cabinets in our house on Craigwood this same color. Even though the color is darker than the oak, the kitchen feels brighter.

The sunflower tiles were the color inspiration

The knobs add some fun

The old cabinets had a latch that kept the doors closed.  They were rusted and some were missing.  We solved the problem of how to keep the doors shut by adding a little magnet latch inside.

I know we will eventually do a complete remodel in the kitchen but for now it looks and feels new and I  LOVE this new look.

The week before Christmas finally brought the master bathroom renovation to its conclusion. Almost.  The shower is finished and beautiful and we now have a master bathroom that we can use.  The ceiling is new, the sink works but only has cold water and the toilet functions.  The walls have primer and I need to pick a color, we need to find new handles for the sink or replace the existing one.  This is a hard call as the current sink is original.  Matt doesn’t care for it.  It is really low especially for him.  The mirror above the sink is really high and I am not short but I am having trouble using the mirror.  I can only see my forehead! The whole set up is very odd.  I can’t believe in 115 years that nobody has changed either of these things.

The bathroom had a hallway and door from the dressing room, a door from the master bedroom and a door from the center hall.  It is the only bathroom accessible on the second floor from the hallway.  All the other bathrooms can only be reached by going through the kids bedrooms. It appears that the access from the center hallway was added by reducing oldest daughters bedroom to create the little back hall to the bathroom.  We are guessing this was done when the Oblates were here.  We removed the access from the dressing room to create a larger shower and gained a little linen closet.  We still have the old knob and tube wiring in the house.  Moving things is a big deal so the hallway light switch and the new switch for the shower are in the linen closet.  A little weird but it was the simplest solution.  The next owners I am sure will ask themselves “what were they thinking?” but it works fine for us. Although I am not sure how to put shelves in here without limiting access to the light switches!

new linen closet

The bathroom has the original bathtub which is huge and fills from the bottom.  There is no overflow precaution so you can fill this tub and actually have the water go over the edges!  I don’t think we will use it much since we have the hot tub outside but it is great that it is still here.

Finally, the new master shower. 

It has a very modern feel to it with nods to the past.  We had hoped to use the original marble in the design but it was not feasible due to our budget constraints.  In the end we were able to use the old marble as the trim for the new shower and it does a nice job of tying in the old subway tiles and the new shower tiles. There is another story that goes with this part of the project but I will save that for another time!  We intentionally chose the shower finishes to be modern.  We didn’t want it to look like we tried to match the original tiles but couldn’t quite match them.  We are very pleased with the new shower.

The old and the new

pebble floor

The original tile trim

bench

Tile trim around the cut out that lets in more natural light

Here are some before pictures from various points along the way just to give you a feel of what really went on.

I am sure there will be people who criticize us for not maintaining the original but when our only option was remove everything down to the studs to repair the damage it seemed clear to us that a modern shower was the way to go.  Our realtor for this home kept reminding us that the people who built these houses put in the most modern and expensive finishes available.  They wouldn’t want the house to be a museum stuck in a time warp.  Of course we fell in love with those original elements and plan to maintain and restore  them wherever possible but this is also our family home and it has to function in a way that makes sense to us.  In the end, we are both pleased with this major project and it was worth the wait.

I have HATED the kitchen since the first walk through of this house.  We had done a total kitchen remodel that included an addition at the last house so I walked away from my dream kitchen.  It was hard to leave something that I had designed to fit the way I cook and entertain.

Just a reminder of what I got when we moved here:

In the picture it doesn’t look bad but it is TINY.  The realtor used a lens that made all the rooms like brighter and larger than they were.  This kitchen was done in the late 70’s/early 80’s. The kitchen counters are dark green floor tile with black grout.  Much of the grout is missing. Scrubbing with a toothbrush only added to the problems.  The counters always feel dirty.  The oak cabinets were built to match the original ones in the pantries.  The hardware is all rusted, much of it doesn’t work, sticks or is missing.  The double wall oven was dated 1979.  In the top oven only the top heating element worked and in the bottom oven, only the bottom heating element worked.  Baking was impossible, roasting impossible and everything else required double the time and often switching from one oven to the other to get things cooked evenly.  The cooktop was newer but the pilot tried to light continuously so I had to keep it unplugged.  I would plug it on to light the gas burner and then unplug it again.

We had planned to do a total kitchen remodel right away and had plans drawn up.  The plumbing and heating surprises put that plan on hold.  I could not get by with the oven as it was and it was not worth the money to repair it even if we could find parts.  I decided to replace it with a dual fuel double oven stand alone range, similar to what I had left at the old house.  It required removing the cabinets near the back door, taking out the ovens and moving the gas line.  This was done in early October but it left me with a non functioning cook top on my limited counter space.

Did I mention the door would fall off?

After the cabinets came out

Wasn’t this a lovely color? It was EGGPLANT at some point also.

After a lot of consideration I told Matt I could live with the kitchen as is for now if I could replace the counter tops with something inexpensive and I got a new sink an a faucet that didn’t drip. We didn’t want fancy because we still plan to rip everything out as soon as we have the budget for that.  I plan to paint the cabinets and replace the hardware after the holidays.  Even without that change now, I am much happier with the “new” kitchen.  There is actually space to prepare holiday meals and BAKE!

cooktop gone, loads more counter space

So much brighter, even this late in the day

A cozy rug for my feet. Still no heat in the kitchen.

More open without the cabinets by the back door.

A faucet that shuts off and a deep sink.

It isn’t my dream kitchen but I can live with this and be happy for awhile.

All summer I felt like we were taking one step forward and two steps back.  After five months in our house it finally feels like we are taking two steps forward and one back.  Not ideal but certainly an improvement.

Most of the plaster repairs had been finished.  The hole in the living room ceiling was patched, the music room was a room again and oldest daughters ceiling was sealed back up.

Side note:  Did I ever mention that in June we had a heavy rain storm during the night?  Water was pouring out of the ceiling fan/light fixture in oldest daughter’s room and a huge chunk of plaster from the ceiling fell during the night.  It woke me up but she slept through it.  Her room is on the second floor so the water coming in was a mystery since the third floor was dry.   Turned out the flat roof was leaking and we had it resealed.  Just another example of the unexpected in the house that feels like we take one step forward and two steps back.

Fall is upon us and we were ready to try to start the boilers to heat the second and third floors.  We filled the boiler and waited a few days to make sure the system was holding. We had done these twice before and found damaged pipes and radiators that needed replacing or removed from the closed loop system.  All seemed well until I found a puddle on the dining room floor. I was ready to blame both dogs since I wasn’t sure who the culprit was until I realized there was a trail of water that seemed to end on the other side of the fireplace.  As I wiped the floor I was hit on the head by dripping water.  Looking up, I saw the ceiling was very wet and dripping onto the wormy chestnut  onto the mantel.  We drained the boiler, opened the ceiling and called the plumber.  Turned out this was another leak from the master bath.  This time it was the tub.  We also discovered it was another spot in the house that had been leaking before.  Rather than repairing the pipes, the ceiling was patched.  Again.

I would love to know what prior owner thought this was a good idea!  The boiler was drained unnecessarily.  Another hole was in the ceiling.

This section of the ceiling is drywall not plaster. A sure sign there was trouble before.

Another opening in the ceiling.  Also more dust.

This has been a problem for a LONG time!

The plumber repaired the pipes.  It was a two day job.  He was shocked at how rusted and corroded the drain pipes were.  He recommended not plastering over the hole right away just to make sure the problem is solved.  That is fine but our house will be on the Christmas tour and a hole in the dining room ceiling isn’t a very good way to promote the neighborhood and the historic homes here!  We decided to put a temporary cover over the hole.  This worked in part because the dining room ceiling is coffered.

The dining room ceiling had a cloud motif that we left when we covered the murals.  I didn’t hate it and changing it will be a challenge.  We tried to match the clouds when we did the patch.  I think it came pretty close.

Hopefully we are on our way to two steps forward and one back.  Ideally no more backward steps would be great but I don’t see that in our future yet!

Fall is definitely in the air.  A few trees are beginning to change colors, the first gallons of apple cider have arrived in the store and the evenings are getting colder.  This is one of my favorite times of year.  I love watching the changes to the trees, having warm sunny days but cool mornings and evenings that require getting out sweaters.  The only problem this year is the lack of a functioning heating system in our home.

Because the heat was left off last winter when the house was for sale we had all the heat exchangers on the first floor break.  Many of the pipes in the radiator system are also broken.  We have gone back and forth on our heating options.  You can’t replace the heat exchangers but they MIGHT be able to be rebuilt.  We could install gas forced air for the first floor (with the advantage of some day adding A/C) and maintain the boiler system for the second and third floors or replace the whole thing with gas forced air.  There are advantages and disadvantages to all three options.  None of the choices is inexpensive and all are much more costly than we had imagined.  We have decided to install two gas forced air units to heat the first floor and keep the second and third floors and the kitchen (if the radiator works) on the boiler system.  We have two boilers but only one is operational at this time.  The thought behind two furnaces for the first floor is due to higher efficiency from the smaller units rather than one very large one.  Which makes sense in a strange way.

The install will be a major project.  There is no duct work in our house.  Unlike an install on new construction, all our walls and floors are in place.  We don’t want to damage the beautiful hard woods or repair any additional plaster walls.  We haven’t finished those repairs that are already underway!  The first step was removing all the air exchangers from the basement.  In case you are unfamiliar with this, here is what little I now know.  Instead of radiators on the formal rooms of the first floor there are vents that brought heat up from the basement.  This vent system consists of  giant wooden boxes which cover the water pipes and the large metal heat exchangers. The vent system is all over the basement and encloses the piping as well as 115 years of dirt and dust.  There may or may not be lead paint.  It all had to go.  Matt had his brother and another friend offer to help and they spent three days removing everything and filled a dumpster in the process.

The wooden boxes

Heat exchanger

The new furnaces have been ordered.  We are waiting for the work to begin.  The install should take about two weeks.  In the mean time I think we need to get the boiler going and get some heat on the second and third floors and unpack the sweaters and blankets.  I may even have to buy some socks!

Side note:  Since there was a little room left in the dumpster we decided now was the perfect time to gut the RV bathroom on the third floor and get all that mess out of here.  A friend of our son had come by one evening and helped with the basement demo.  He was a great help and was crazy enough to offer to do the bathroom demo for us.  Thanks D.J. for a job well done!