A few little projects

Today, I was able to finally finish putting poly on the back part of the hall. I did not take any pics. It looks just like the ones a couple posts down. When it is all dry and I move my furniture back in, I will take pics of the final project. I want to install my pew and picture rail first.

Any-who…in between drying times, I caulked the front hall wainscot to ready it for paint. I also pulled out quite a few misc. boards for holiday and other projects. Here is my line up:

A couple of them I’m turning in to holiday decor for the porch. I distress painted them and I’m going to put JOY and NOEL in red letters on them. I will lean them on the front porch.

One of the other smoother boards I am going to make into an oversized chalkboard. Kinda like this one I saw, but much larger.

I also took some of the old 100 year old wall boards (that were taken down in order to add our bathroom) and made a low hanging coat/book sack rack for the kids. The top piece is a leftover piece of baseboard painted with chalkboard spray paint from Lowes. I will probably write on it too. The knobs were some ugly brass ones I took off of my night stands when I painted them many moons back. I painted them with spray paint leftover from some project or other. The coat hooks are from Target and the chalkboards are from Hobby Lobby.

Steven painstakingly primed the new back porch rail he built. It took him allll day just to prime them….ick. I also pulled up all the horrifically ugly floor registers and cleaned, rust primed and painted them.

Overall, it was a very productive day and I’m pleased with what we accomplished.

Thanks for stopping by…or sticking with us! It’s been a long road, hasn’t it?

Back dormer?

Here are pictures inside the attic. Someone left a comment that there was a back dormer at one point. None of my records reflect that, and the carpentry does not reflect it either.

The first picture is of another dormer in the front of the house. It is really big, and leaves a really big footprint. When you go to the back of the house, in the attic, none of the carpentry in that area of the roof has ever been changed. It is all original to the house, has never been refitted. There is no discoloration of the wood where you would expect to see newer wood (newer than 100 years old) grated into the old.  The supports and cross wood that make up the roof, are all the same color and thickness as the rest of the 100 year old roof.  There are a couple places in other areas where you can see work was done.  But, this entire back portion of the house is intact as it was built 100 years ago.  Also when viewing the floor, underneath the piece of plywood there is no dormer footprint.

I really enjoy when people tell me stories about my house. Of course, since I’m investigative, I always check them out. Thank you Mr. Smith for commenting, but I really do not think this house ever had a back dormer.

The Great Hall Makeover Part 1

We decided a couple days ago to tackle the floors in our massive hall. After a trip to two home improvement stores plus a tool store, I finally got underway about 1 pm. I really had some ambitious plans today. It didn’t help that the stain color we did the rest of the house in was discontinued…along with the brand of polyurethane that I love. Argh! Lots of reading cans, looking at color samples and deliberating later, I came home with some stuff I think will match pretty well.

Here are the pics from the day. I’ll finish staining the other side tomorrow and maybe poly Monday or Tuesday.

Cleaned all the stuff out the hall.

Sanded with a high grit, down to a low grit.

Cleaned all the powdery dust. This is the most annoying part. I have to sweep several times, mop, tack cloths, the whole nine yards.

All clean

Starting the stain…more tomorrow. Time to eat!

PS: Right after this pic, I told fuzzy to get off my floor!

Kitchen finished

Here is what the kitchen looks like now. Ta-da! In a couple days, I’m going to put together a slideshow of the kitchen evolution from the realtor walk through 6 years ago to present.  Here is what we did in the first phase which included taking out cabinets and creating the laundry room.   Also, here is a link to all of the posts about the kitchen through the years if you would like to see them.