Miscellaneous Musings

February 25, 2016June 28, 2016 / lmishler412 / 1 Comment

There have been a lot of little projects under way here and lots of discussion and research on some bigger ones. I managed to find a place for all my antique store purchases. The entryway looks very inviting with my botanical prints and a fun glass top bronze table I found. I really like the way the metal on the table matches the gold leaf on the ceiling. I am still hunting for some upholstered side chairs to complete this grouping.

I did find these chairs online and think they might work:

entry chair

But then again, maybe I need something more vintage. The entry is dark so I like the yellow and I recently got this fabric for the built in seat at the bottom of the staircase.

So I think the chairs would work with the yellow tinted walls, gold leaf ceiling, the botanical prints and this window seat. I also added some family photographs to the top of the piano. Oldest daughter said it would help make the house feel more like home to have some family pictures out. I was surprised by this because I didn’t have pictures displayed at the old house. I had a few in the master bedroom and upstairs hallway but nothing in what would be considered public places in our house. I thought I would give it a try. I had the pictures all printed in sepia and used clear frames. I do like the way it looks.

I did find a place for my Willy’s advertising prints in the butlers pantry.

The other set of pictures I had picked up went in the dining room for now. The buffet is dark and these lighten up that space a bit. They probably won’t stay here forever but for now I like how it looks.

We were in our last house for 14 years and never got around to painting the master bedroom until we got ready to sell it. I didn’t want to do that again here, especially since the master is lavender! I picked a blue gray and Matt started to repaint before we moved in. Neither of us liked the color I picked and it read very green in the room. I don’t know if it is because of the purple on the walls or the yellow art deco chandelier in the room. (It is very pretty but I don’t like it and it isn’t original. It is on my find a replacement list)

Many other things got moved to the front of our to do list and we are just getting back to painting the master again. The kids all got new paint for their rooms, most of the first floor has been repainted and we used the intended blue/grey in the new third floor bathroom. It looks much nicer there.

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So we went back to the drawing board for the master. I decided the room is big. There is a lot of white trim, white crown molding, tall white baseboards, the white closet and fireplace tile all are white. My thought was go with a really dramatic and dark blue color. I picked the color but we were undecided about the finish. Matt has always wanted paint to be eggshell or semi gloss because it is easy to clean and we have kids and pets. I didn’t like it at first but after 25 years of marriage it is what I am used to seeing on the walls now and I no longer like the way flat paint looks. We tried two shades of the paint. One in flat and one in gloss. You can still see the blue gray in the middle that looks green.

We agreed the darker paint looked better but the gloss showed all the imperfections in the plaster walls. On 115 year old walls, there are a lot of imperfections. So Matt has started painting the master in the darker color with a flat finish. It is a tedious job with a lot of cutting in to do. I am anxious to see how it looks when it is all done.

We left a house with two and a half baths to move to this house with five and a half baths. Now that the master bath is finished, we are a family of six using, you guessed it… two and a half baths! Oldest son and oldest daughter still don’t have heat in their bathrooms so they have been using the master. Youngest daughter loves having a new shower that is bright and full of light so she has moved all her stuff into ours as well. Her shower is dark and I used that one until ours was completed.She does have a point about it being difficult to shave your legs in hers. Having access to the master from the hallway has made this a lot easier and doesn’t seem like such a strange feature anymore.

We still need to get heat into all three kids bathrooms on the second floor. Youngest doesn’t have heat but her room and bathroom are small and her radiator is next to the bathroom door so the bathroom stays comfortable. There isn’t heat in the kitchen or laundry room yet either. Fortunately it has been a fairly mild Midwest winter and the propane heater in the kitchen has been adequate. We had a few incidents with the laundry room being cold and water pipes/drains freezing on the washing machine and a newly installed fitting in the crawl space under the laundry room breaking. These seem to be solved with the addition of a space heater with a thermostat placed in the laundry room. These are definitely issues we should address before next winter but it was a relief to get through this winter without any additional expenses on infrastructure. Well, we almost made it through the winter. The crazy wind last weekend blew some shingles off the roof and we need to address that problem!

My parents bought an old farmhouse and did a complete remodel when I was in middle school. We didn’t have heat in that kitchen the first winter there but it must have been a much colder winter. One night my sisters and I were doing the dishes (no dishwasher in that awful kitchen) and my younger sister was the dryer that night. She stacked the Corelle dishes as she finished drying them. When I picked them up to put them back in the cupboard, the whole stack slid off and they all shattered. There was ice layered between each plate! All things considered, we have not been too inconvenienced by our whole heating adventure so far.

I started this post on Monday and titled it “Monday Morning Musings” but never got it posted so I had to change the title! It is a lot longer than I intended. Thanks for reading to the end.

A Step in the Right Direction

February 12, 2016 / lmishler412 / 1 Comment

After much back and forth discussion, I finally got Matt to agree to let me remove the rest of the 1981 carpet from the main staircase. It was threadbare and worn and impossible to clean.

The cat loved it and used it for sleeping and claw sharpening on occasion.

Laura's iphone 2 2016 176

When we took the carpet off from the top part of the landing we found that the last time the stairs were refinished, the centers did not get polyurethane applied. When we removed the rest of the carpet the same held true. They looked like this:

The centers that were untreated were really dry. I thought maybe using the lemon oil I had used on all the wood work when we first moved in might help. (All our woodwork was dry and lacked shine when we got here.) The steps still lack a shine but they look a lot better (I think) and have some protection.

The girls have a date dance on Saturday (Dancing with the Star Wars, isn’t that a cute theme?) and youngest daughter is going with a big group consisting of most of her swim team. One of her friends wanted to do pictures at our house because she thinks we can get all 30 plus kids on the stairs. That was my big push to clean them up now. They aren’t perfect and we will need to put a clear coat on them. I still prefer the bare wood to carpet. I think the wood is beautiful. I am sure we can get all the kids on the stairs for a picture and having the carpet removed is a step in the right direction!

Wall Improvements

February 8, 2016 / lmishler412 / 1 Comment

My sister in law came to visit last week. We had a lot of fun visiting a nearby antique mall in hopes of finding some “stuff” for my house. The antique place was HUGE! Overwhelming in fact. With really no idea what I was looking for I found it nearly impossible to actually find anything. I did pick up a few things to hang on the walls. Here are my “treasures:”

Yes. Everything I found goes on the wall. I had been looking for some botanical prints to hang in the entry. I thought a grouping would look nice and almost look like wallpaper. I bought a book with frameable botanical prints but didn’t like them that well and was having trouble finding frames I liked that weren’t ridiculously expensive. I stumbled on this set of nine. They were marked $10 each but I paid $4. I am not sure if they will be my forever solution but they are up in the entry I am happy with how they look for now. They sort of mimic having wallpaper up without having scary bird wallpaper!

I also found these pictures but haven’t figured out where they belong yet.

This one I decided goes in the music room:

And these I have no idea where to put but these but knew they belong somewhere in a home once owned by John Willys!

I was feeling inspired getting the entry way prints put up and decided to get my sunflower tiles unpacked and hung in the kitchen.

The sunflower tiles were the color inspiration

This is my third kitchen that the sunflowers have been hanging in. I purchased one at the Ann Arbor Art Fair many years ago from an artist who came each year with her tiles from California. I added a few each year and Matt contacted the artist and surprised me with new tiles for Christmas a few times. I often pick up pieces at antique shops or art fairs that I like and after I get home never really like them as well or am able to find a place for them. Not the case with these. I still love them and they make the kitchen feel like home. When we were still in our first house in Toledo (off Willys Parkway which I find funny now. First we lived off the road named for him and now we live in the house he lived in!) I remodeled the kitchen around the sunflower tiles. I painted the cabinets the blue in the tiles and had counter tops that were the cinnamon color in the center of the sunflowers. I am seriously considering painting the current cabinets that blue color again, or maybe yellow. In our last house I picked yellow cabinets for the island to go with the sunflowers.

Youngest daughter has been feeling blue since the Christmas decorations came down and said the house still doesn’t always feel like home to her. Hopefully getting some things up on the walls will help her feel more at home. I think having those personal touches are what will make this house feel like it belongs to us.

Things To Do and Things Done

February 2, 2016 / lmishler412 / 1 Comment

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:

My To Do List

January 28, 2016January 28, 2016 / lmishler412 / 1 Comment

I realize the to-do-list here will always be a pretty fluid list. There will be things that get added because of emergencies, things that we add as we notice them and projects that time and budget allow us to complete. Parts of it will really be more of a “wish list.” After the Christmas decorations came down, I walked through the first floor and made a list. I decided to focus just on the first floor for now since that is what people see. Or at least that is what we want people to see! Some of these are things that we can handle ourselves. It is nice to finally be in a position where many of the projects are things we can do ourselves. It was part of the appeal in owning an older home.

Here is what I hope to get finished. I haven’t put a time frame on it but none of them appears to be overwhelming or too costly. Time will tell.

Find new wallpaper for the study. I hate this wallpaper but haven’t been able to find one that I really like. I thought about painting the walls but the ceiling has the oak bema’s and is painted red, which I don’t think would look right with painted walls. I have been looking at using fabric but the installation seems challenging.

Finally decide what to do with the carpet on the staircase. I am still considering leaving the stairs bare. It is so much easier to clean them. If I do that, I need to varnish them. The last time they were refinished the center of the stairs were left unvarnished. That is just another thing that makes me shake my head and ask “why?”

Refinish the kitchen cabinets. I am really happy with the new (temporary) counter tops and the lay out with the island turned into a peninsula. I know a total kitchen remodel is somewhere in our future but not in the immediate future. I can live with it as it is now but think refinishing the cabinets will make the kitchen look and feel new. The doors are solid oak and in good shape. The hardware is rusted or missing. I would like to paint the doors and add new hardware. I know this is something I can do myself. Maybe I will tackle this next. The hard part is weather to paint the cabinets a fun bright color, stain them a darker color or paint them white. It is not my forever kitchen so I am leaning towards doing something fun with them. Plus it is just paint and I can always change it if I hate it!

Find some fun things and actually decorate some of this house. I know the house needs some “stuff.” All the design books, magazines, shows have beautifully arranged furniture and accessories in their rooms. I have always been clutter adverse. I don’t want to move stuff to dust. I have kids and pets and I don’t want to worry stuff will get broken. But this house seems to need stuff to fill up the spaces and make the rooms feel more complete. I know we need more furniture too but I don’t have the budget to bring in all new furniture pieces. So I need some “stuff” and some smaller furniture pieces. The problem is I don’t know what I am really looking for. I don’t want stuff just to have stuff. I don’t necessarily want all old or antique pieces. It is time to start figuring out what I want/need. I think it could be fun but worry it will be frustrating. If anyone has any ideas on how to do that I am open to suggestions.

Call the plumber. We need to have the toilet in the powder room replaced. We have tried repairing it and it still runs all the time. We also need to get water to the hand sink in the powder room. I hope these will be two inexpensive fixes but having the plumber in never ends without a shockingly high bill. Besides, George is probably wondering what happened to his buddy.

Patch and paint the butlers pantry. The butlers pantry has some weird things going on right now. There is a spot on the ceiling that has been patched many times before and is currently falling off the ceiling. It doesn’t appear to be wet and we can’t tell what is going on exactly but it needs to be repaired. The paint in this room also is a problem. It seems the paint that was used before was not good paint or maybe they applied it badly but it is pulling off the wall. the kids are having trouble not picking at it which isn’t helping. Fortunately it seems to be a problem with the paint and not caused by an underlying problem. Like water. Then there is the giant crack over the cabinets. This is more of a mystery. If you follow this wall up, it is the stairwell wall. There does not appear to be any plumbing behind it and it is an inside wall so probably not a leak somewhere above that is causing the plaster to crack. Matt found a plaster repair technique he has wanted to try and this might be just the place.

Ceiling peeling and falling

paint cracking off the wall

giant crack and bulge in the plaster

None of these are overwhelming and hopefully nothing too costly. They will help make the house more functional, look nicer and feel more like ours. Maybe we can get most of these things done before summer when will need to do some serious work on the landscaping/exterior of the house.

15 Lessons Learned, part two

January 27, 2016 / lmishler412 / 1 Comment

7. We live in an eclectic neighborhood. We had been told that before we moved but now that we have been here a few months we have first hand knowledge. Just a few of the people we see on a daily basis:

Very elderly gentleman who lives in the apartments across the street. He wears a trench coat, a suit and tie and carries a brief case and umbrella. He leaves home about the same time every morning and heads out for about 90 minutes. Not sure where he goes but it must be important work he is doing.
The man who goes everywhere on his unicycle. Something I see every day but you probably don’t. Unless you also live near me. He also sings while he is riding past.
Dog people. There are a lot of people with dogs in the neighborhood and they all walk them. There is a three legged dog. There are great Danes, Saint Bernards, tiny yippy dogs, people walking three dogs at once. They are all friendly and George (our dog) used to bark at all of them. Now there are just a few that he clearly doesn’t trust.
Extremely heavy set man in electric wheelchair who “walks” his tiny dog every day. The dog is always in the lead so I am not sure who is walking who.
Lots of kids on bikes
Families with toddlers on bikes and babies in strollers
Michael, the friendly neighborhood odd job guy. He is always on his way to a job and is happy to do any work you might need a hand with for a very fair price.
Occasionally there is a homeless man sleeping in the park across the street
The lady with the pom-pom hat and purple coat (even in the summer.) She heads to the burger place and will ask for change or a dollar as she walks by.

8. We expected to have guests in our house and we have actually done far less entertaining than we did before we moved. Partly this was due to the fact that we were getting settled and it is difficult to entertain when there are holes in your ceiling, walls torn out, no water in your powder room and you are without a functioning oven. This didn’t detour the overnight guests though. I would estimate that we used a guest room over 90 times. There were times when we had several overnight guests here at the same time so we didn’t have 90 nights with guests but it was still a lot. More than we had expected but great to have so many family and friends spend time with us.

9. We learned that the budget for any project should be $10,000. Or in increments of $10,000. New shower $10,000. Plumbing $10,000. Bathroom $10,000. Furnace $10,000 times two. All the big projects that are on our wish list require $10,000. A fence for the yard, a pool, a new garage, tree removal, additional plumbing repairs, flat roof repairs, kitchen remodel. All big expenses.

10. The house is about 25 minutes from our old house and we felt like we were pretty centrally located and close to all the places we needed to get to at the other house. We have found that for the most part we are a lot closer to everything here except a good grocery store. It takes less time to get to school, work, church and practices for the girls. The boys are farther from school but not so much that they want to live closer to campus yet.

11. We found that even after the exterminator comes and inspects and treats your house, a house this old that hasn’t been occupied for a long time still has pests. We have had a few mice try to take up residence. The cats took care of them. There are a lot of weird creepy crawly bugs that I hadn’t ever seen. Many only come out at night. We also have had two bats in the house. I didn’t know before but have now decided I am not a fan of bats inside the house.

12. It is impossible to even attempt to keep a house clean when there are holes in the ceiling and contractors coming in every day. Don’t even try. Just get used to the dust and know that eventually the holes will get covered. Of course there will also be new holes but don’t think about that!

13. No matter how carefully you inspect an historic home and how much you think you know about what needs to be done to restore it and what you think needs repairs you will be wrong. The list will change and the scope of the project may be more or less than you anticipate but there will always be a to do list that doesn’t get shorter.

14. We learned that a house that is 115 years old does not have enough electric outlets to adequately support a family of six in 2015. For example, there is ONE outlet in the master bedroom. Bedside lamps and alarm clocks are a challenge we still haven’t managed to overcome. The outlet is under the windows and not behind the bed. Try to make that work!

15. Finally, we have learned that this historic house is much improved since we got here but has many challenges ahead. It has turned out to be a great place for our family to live. It has been a real blessing to have all four kids here with us on this crazy journey. There are many hurdles remaining and I am sure I will shed more than a few more tears in frustration at the challenges that we will face but in the end I don’t think any of us has any regrets about making this move. Our historic house is now our family home.

15 Lessons Learned in 2015, part one

January 25, 2016 / lmishler412 / 2 Comments

I must say we have learned a lot about purchasing, living and owning an historic home this year. Here are some of them in no particular order:

Just because a house is for sale does not mean the owners want to sell it. Even if they had moved out three years ago. Even if they only lived in the house for a few months. Even is they are moving to another country. Even if they failed to maintain the house while they owned it. Purchasing this house was the most difficult thing we have done. Ever. The sellers were delusional and unreasonable nearly every step of the way. I am still surprised that we were able to buy this house. In fact, we had walked away from it several times and the sellers kept coming back to us to see what needed to happen to complete the sale. Even then they put up road blocks.
Homeowners insurance is a whole different prospect when you purchase an historic home. Nobody told us this before hand. Finding someone to insure our house was nearly impossible. In fact we really only had one choice and the premiums varied quite a bit for the same insurance company through different agents. The insurance for our house is crazy. I think my parents beach house is cheaper to insure. We have to carry insurance to cover the replacement value of our home. That is laughable for several reasons. No amount of money can replace this home. The materials and craftsmen needed to rebuild just do not exist. If something should happen to this house it would be foolish to even attempt to spend that kind of money putting a house up in this neighborhood.
When you live in a historic house people will feel they have the right to judge the decisions you will make. The very first neighbor who stopped by commented that we had removed the wallpaper in the entry. Before he even introduced himself he felt it necessary to comment on this. It wasn’t original, although people seemed to think it was. There were two other papers under it. Plus it was UGLY! This is my house and it had to go. I am not sorry I am making changes. We will maintain whatever original features we can and restore what is possible to restore. We know it is a piece of history but please don’t feel that gives you a right to pass judgment on our decisions.
Besides feeling like people are judging our decisions, we learned several things about privacy. First, people will feel it is perfectly OK to take pictures of your home. I can understand that to a degree but some people are doing way more than just taking a quick picture. A few weeks ago, a women was outside taking pictures for over an hour. She was on the sidewalk and across the street. That is OK. Not much I can do but then she was in the driveway and in the yard. She took pictures of the kids as they came home from school. This is not OK people! I don’t know you. I don’t know what you are doing with these pictures and it is never OK to take pictures of my children without permission or to be trespassing in my yard. To make matters worse, she came back the next day with another person and they both were taking pictures for several hours. There are a lot of pictures of this house on line. How many more do you need?
Our purchasing this home was well publicized. The local newspaper did a follow up piece and interviewed us after we got the house. Because of this everyone we know, everyone who knows people we know and complete strangers have asked to see inside our house. This includes random people at school and church, the road construction workers, the gas line repair crew, customers and co-workers and even the check out lady at the grocery store. It has been crazy and I never expected this. Hopefully since we opened the house for the Christmas tour and had 1,000 visitors there aren’t that many people left who still want to get inside!
Hand in hand with this notion is what happens when we do have people in. We had an open house for friends, family and coworkers last month to celebrate the holidays and our new home. We had a lot of discussion before hand about how much of the house we wanted people to see. We agreed that the second floor which is all our bedrooms and bathrooms did not need to be on display. Our kids deserve to have their bedrooms be private spaces. The house was not designed with the intention that this floor would ever be on public display. Unfortunately we had guests who decided that a closed door and requests not to go upstairs didn’t apply to them. My oldest son was sick and had to put up with these inconsiderate people coming into his room all evening. You would never go to a friend or co-workers house and feel free to walk through every room and closet in a regular house. I can not understand why these people (who will not be coming back to my house!) felt this was OK here. I am sure they would be horrified to have people going through their closets, bedrooms and bathrooms. It made me angry and made me feel like a horrible parent that my children’s privacy was invaded.
During the Christmas tour we had several neighbors comment about our electronics on the first floor. They made a point of telling us that these are historic home and the first floor of the home should be historically accurate. That is what they believe people expect. We have a different view. This is a historic home but it is first and foremost OUR HOME! We are going to watch television in our living room and the kids are going to do their homework and use the computer in the study. Just because there weren’t electronics when the house was built doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be electronics in them now. The people who built these houses spared no expense. They put in the finest things money could buy and included the latest innovations, like electric lights. If they were building them now, the houses would include state of the art home theaters and all the modern conveniences they could imagine. I really wanted to ask these people if that was how they feel then why did they have refrigerators, microwaves, coffee makers, washers/dryers and a multitude of small appliances on the first floor of their homes. Not having a computer or television does not make your first floor “historically accurate” unless you are willing to forgo all those other things that were invented in the last 125 years. Don’t judge us because we enjoy watching a movie with our kids in our living room and want to keep an eye on their computer use. The kids shouldn’t be banished to their bedrooms to watch TV or use their electronics. This is our family’s HOME!

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Master shower, finally!

January 7, 2016 / lmishler412 / 3 Comments

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.

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

pebble floor

bench

The old and the new

The original tile trim

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.

Finally, The twelfth day of Christmas

January 6, 2016January 6, 2016 / lmishler412 / Leave a comment

The Tour de Noel was a great success. It is estimated that over 1000 people went through our home. My twelve days of Christmas posts have shown you most of what was seen on the tour. We only showed the first floor. I have a hard time imagining people going through the bedrooms and bathrooms on the second floor as those are very personal spaces. Nobody needs to see where we sleep and brush our teeth. At our open house party a lot of guests took it upon themselves to open the closed doors and go into those spaces. I was surprised that our friends and coworkers forgot that this is a family’s home. Closed doors are closed for a reason. It is one of the aspects of living in an historic home that is difficult for me. Where do you draw the line sharing this piece of history while still maintaining your privacy.

In case you were wondering. I have a lot of Christmas trees. Every room had a tree and I have a collection of small trees as well. People always ask how many trees there are. If you count everything, big and small there are over 120. Of course that number is open to interpretation on what qualifies as a Christmas tree. But that is the number the kids came up with.

Here are some more of the pictures of the spaces that were on the tour:

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The Christmas decorations will start coming down tomorrow. (The kids tree did decide Epiphany Sunday was the last day it wanted to be up and promptly fell over at midnight!) The house will feel a little bare without the decorations. It was nice to have so many familiar things out that held so many family memories for us. It made the house feel more like our home. With the home projects behind us for the moment, I hope to start some of the fun things about having a new house, putting up pictures and finding the right furniture and accent pieces to make the space our own.

Did I mention that I am sitting here now waiting for the plumber?

On the eleventh day of Christmas…

January 5, 2016January 5, 2016 / lmishler412 / 1 Comment

We have the entryway.

We are also now caught up since tomorrow is Epiphany and the twelfth day of Christmas!

The entry is large and impressive. With the quarter-sawn tiger oak wainscoting, beams and pillars it feels almost church-like. One story says the wood for the entry (and study) were brought here from England. That doesn’t seem likely to me. I would think the huge oak trees required would have more likely been found in the United States. The ceiling still has the original gold leaf mostly intact. There are a few places where there was damage and the gold leaf was repaired. One spot near the front door is actually spray painted to match the original. I found that a little horrifying and hope to be able to replace the spray paint with gold leaf some day.

We did buy a new tree for the entryway as all of ours felt a little small. Oldest daughter made the tulle tree skirt after seeing something similar on line. She had a hard time leaving it on the tree at first and often picked it up and put it on. We decided the mercury glass ornaments we have which are mostly red and silver would be great on this tree and compliment the colors in the garland on the stairs. We started with light strings that are red and white. Oldest son and oldest daughter did the decorating and it might be my favorite tree this year.

The piano belonged to Matt’s grandmother. None of us play but we like having something from her in the house. Apparently (unbeknown to us when we placed it here) both Mr. Bell and the Oblates had a piano located in this same spot. We were told a story about the Oblates being woken up in the middle of the night once by a loud racket in the entry. Apparently a very tipsy Mr. Bell used his key and came in to play the piano before he went to bed! The lesson here-change the locks when moving to a new house.

The card tree now displays a collection of vintage Christmas cards that belonged to my grandmother. I don’t know why she had kept these so long but I am glad to have them.

Our grandmother clock has been moved a lot since we got here. It was a wedding gift (25 years ago last week!) from my parents and my dad made it for us. It feels a little small for the space in this house but I love it and finally think we found a spot where it looks nice. We had trouble getting it to keep time since we moved and this space is the first place I put it that it has accurately kept time. I guess the clock likes this spot too.

Midlife Crisis Mansion

…I should have let him buy the Corvette!