Laborious Labor Day

Ok, not all that laborious, but Matt did go on a small project rampage on Monday.  I think he was trying to get some stuff out of the way because he was going to be stuck on double babysitting duty on Tuesday.  I has a sedation dentist appointment and basically wasn’t allowed to function* for the entire day so not only did he need to solo-parent Wesley, he also needed to babysit me. Luckily I survived** despite a nasty fear of the dentist*** and we’re back to tag-teaming projects.

Now that I’m no longer pregnant (wheeee!) I’ve been able to get back to work refinishing the upstairs doors.  We tackled the nursery door first since it needed a little extra repair work. Matt stripped off the golden-oak stain and I re-stained and painted it.****  By Monday we were able to put it back up. Matt also replaced the mortise lock and switched out the black porcelain knobs with the glass knobs I ordered like, a year ago.

It’s also worth mentioning that the light switch cover in the hallway has seriously been off for at least a year. #safetyFirst

Our Winchester Door has also been sitting around with a gaping hole where the door knob should be.  Sure, the door can’t actually open, but I can’t remove it and drywall because I don’t have a good way to replace the baseboard.  Solution: embrace it’s complete and utter doorness. I wasn’t thinking about this door when ordered the knobs, so I didn’t have another glass one to use here.  We did, however, have this gorgeous embossed metal knob from the decaying cellar door in the basement.  Honestly, the embossed knobs are my favorite, but I thought the glass knobs would look better against the dark wood of the upstairs doors.

The final update seems really minor, but I smile every time I see it. The toilet handle in our downstairs bathroom has been acting wonky, so Matt decided to replace it.  Knowing me as well as he does, he chose the fancy porcelain handle option. It matches the faucet handles and as I said, it makes me kind of stupidly happy,

Even though I posted the Master Bedroom Plan, part of me wants to tackle our downstairs Micro-Bath before I head back to work.  It’s such a tiny room that it would actually be doable, but I know Matt wants to finish up the doors first. I may be a little ADD when it comes to projects so it’s probably a good thing he’s here to keep me in line.

 

*No driving, no attempting stairs, no being left unsupervised with small children, etc

**It actually went pretty well… although I remembered more than I expected too.  I also still panicked when confronted with needles which the dentist was apparently a little surprised by (although I did warn him that I can panic my way through nearly anything). Luckily I did not get belligerent with Matt, which is what I tend to do if someone is trying to coddle me.

***Step 1 in dealing with a dental phobia: find a dentist who’s not a condescending asshole.  This is surprisingly difficult.

****My original plan was to stain both sides, but Matt liked the doors better white on the inside and marriage is about compromise.

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Checking in on the Hallway

I had visions of being completely done with the hallway by now!  Unfortunately life and a pissy thyroid ate up a lot the time I had planned for this so I’ve very much not done yet. I thought I’d share my progress anyway though.

If you need a refresher on what I started with, check out this post.

The Staircase

One of the first projects I had planned was replacing all the busted newel caps on our staircase.  I had a good start on it but petered out.  So right now I have replaced…. one.  Yes. One.  But that one looks good!

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The chunky post at the base of the stairs in all original, but the second post has a brand-spankin-new newel cap.  Is a it a perfect match?  No.  But is pretty darn good?  I think so!

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Even in old houses I think it makes sense to weigh every investment.  Is it 100% historically accurate?  No.  Is the cost of a 100% historically accurate reproduction worth it for this particular house?  Sorry, but no.  It’s a pretty basic, standard old house for St Paul (heck, there’s even a near-perfect doppelganger house a couple blocks away!).  It’s sort of like trying to make an average 1950’s ranch a high-end MCM masterpiece. We’re also not restoring this house, we’re renovating it.  We’re just renovating it while still trying to be mindful of it’s origins.

Ahem.

Anyways… one newel cap down, 5 more to go!

The Doors

Oh the doors!  I had such high hopes that they would have been done weeks ago!  Unfortunately barely being able to get off the couch for nearly a month set me back a bit.  We’re 1/2 way there though!

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I posted about my love of black doors a while back, but Matt was adamantly against it.  He also didn’t want to paint them white (so picky!) so we compromised with a darkdark stain.  It’s a shit-ton of work, but I think it looks pretty fab.  Please ignore the orange-y railing, I’m working on it.  Slowly.

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I also ordered glass knobs to replace the black ceramic ones.  Yeah, the ceramic ones were probably original, but they just disappeared into the dark stain (the brass back-plates are more noticeable in real life, but I’m still thinking of cleaning them up a bit).  Half the upstairs door knobs were already glass anyway and I wanted continuity.  I ordered these beauties from House of Antique Hardware.  It might be my new favorite place on the internet.  I could make a shopping list a mile long from this place if I had the budget for it, but alas. I still may get the dust corners at some point because they’re super cute and cat fur clogging up the stairs is a legit problem in this household.

The Cat Tree

Why is pet furniture so often really ugly?  I mean, where are the homes where the standard fleshy-beige cat upholstery fits in?  My best guess is that it’s designed to hide most fur colors.  These are the sorts of things I tell myself to make sense of this crazy world.*

Regardless of the reason, the fleshy-beige had to go! The scratching posts sections had also gotten pretty beat up over the few years we’ve  had it.  It’s seen a lot of love from the cats and needed  a makeover.

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I dissembled the whole thing, wrapped the flat pieces with a faux sherpa fabric, and wrapped the polls top-to-bottom with jute.  I did a bit of reconfiguration of the pieces too to make it visually lighter and provides the cats with a taller section they so they stretch out and scratch. They usually only hang out on the top section anyway, so it really didn’t need the extra bulk. I still am not sure what to do about the top basket yet (helloooo weird blank space and lonely screw), but I’m working on it.

Still Working on:
  • Newel caps
  • Staining the railing
  • Refinishing the doors
  • Planning a gallery wall
  • Lighting
  • Building a new cabinet for the entryway

 

So that’s the current State of House address.  I’m planning on doing a check-in with the kitchen too to let you know how my temporary fixes are holding up. I just need to clean it first…

 

*At least I’m not alone in my “Why does pet furniture have to be ugly” thoughts.  There is a shop in St Paul called–I shit you not–Custom Cat Purrinture.   Yes, Purr-niture.  Believe it or not Matt and I haven’t checked it out yet.

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Repairing the Stair in the Lair Part 1

When I ran through the Before pictures of the stairway I mentioned that the railing was in need of some tender love and repair.  In general it’s a mighty fine looking staircase, but the finish is a little worn and most of the newel post are missing chunks of trim. Sure, it’s actually not all that noticeable if you’re not really paying attention, but this staircase deserves better.

I started by ripping off the existing caps on the newel posts.  I left the one on the large post at the base of the stairs and the one up by the attic door since it was that one would need some more complicated cuts if I tried to replace it.

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If your house has standard sizes, you can order Newel Cap kits which would be super easy.  Nothing in our house is standard though (the kits are designed for 3.5″x3.5″ or 5.5″.x5.5″ and our posts are 4.5″x4.5″) so I had to go custom. Because I want to keep (most of) the stairs natural wood, I picked some red oak to make my replacement caps.

I was lucky enough to find a small crown molding that was reasonably similar to the existing trim.  I started by staining the whole piece as close to the existing wood finish as I could.  No worries, that it’s not perfect, there will be another layer coming later on.

If you need a lot of pieces cut to the same size, the easiest thing to do is to create a jig of sorts.  Once I figured out the size I needed for the trim, I cut a bunch of pieces about 2 inches longer than I needed (I just eyeballed it).  Then I flipped my saw around so I could cut the opposite angle, and using my already-perfect piece as guide, clamped a piece of scrap wood into place.

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Now I just have to butt the short pieces up the block and cut off the excess.  Voila, perfect sized cuts every time!  I did still double check each post before cutting the trim pieces because I’m neurotic and the slightly variation in size could make this fail miserably.

I was a little worried about what to do for the top piece.  I only have the tools to cut a square block.  Laaaaame.  It would have looked sadly out of place.  While idly wandering through the hardware store* I started checking out router bits.  There was one that was super similar to our existing caps that I started eyeing.  Twenty bucks for a router bit?  Yeah, I’d spend that…. but another $200 for the router itself?  That I may never use again?**  Umm, not so much. Then I remembered a conversation I had with my dad several years back.

Dad: I got a new router!

Me: Computer or power tool?

Dad: Both actually!

Yup, dad’s tool hoard to the rescue!  Matt and I were even making a Milwaukee trip to celebrate his sister’s college graduation.  After the party Matt hung out with his family and my dad and I Got Shit Done.

Like most projects, the bulk of the time is spent on prep.  I brought a set of trim pieces with me so we’d have the exact sizing but then there was math.  The router bit we bought didn’t tell you how much it took off from the bottom, which was the measurement we really needed.  We measured a piece of scrap wood, ran one side through the router, and measured it again.  Our chosen bit took off a 1/2″ so we needed to cut blanks 1″ larger on all sides so the bottom would line up with the trim pieces.

Stair repair edging

When cutting the test piece we also learned that the way the router sat in the router table left a super skinny edge on the top of our finished piece.  Stairs are high traffic areas and take plenty of abuse.  Skinny edges will break easily.  Baaad combo. We couldn’t really lower the router, so we decided to raise the table surface.  Dad’s scrap wood hoard the rescue!  He had some left over pegboard that was perfect size, so we cut out a notch  to go around the bit and then clamped it onto the table.

Router table setup

Alright!  We had all our blanks cut!  We had the router set up!  We were ready to Do This Thing!  Aaaand it’s time to leave for dinner.  Matt and I were planning on leaving the next day right after lunch so he was a little concerned when he learned we still had to route about 90% of the pieces and we had already put in about 3 hours worth of work.

But everything was set up for the easy stuff now!

Routing newel caps

Now we just had to zip everything through the router.  Easy peasy!

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After everything was cut (and transported back home) I took my palm sander and rounded down the edges and corners so they would look a little worn.  Then I hit them with a couple coats of the stain I used on the other trim so they’d be in the ballpark of the existing railing color.

Now we just have to attach and the new caps and wait for the humidity to come down so I can stain the entire thing.

 

*Yeah, I do that.  Anyone surprised?

**According to my sister though, once you have a router, you will find things to route.

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Destroying Historical Fabric One Room at a Time

A while back Matt was reading an article on restoring old homes and it mentioned that you shouldn’t insulate because it would “destroy the historical fabric.”  It’s one of the reasons the Historical Preservation Society is often referred to as the Hysterical Preservation Society and has been a running joke with me and Matt ever sense.

Don’t get me wrong, the HPS is important, and recognizing historically significant homes is important. Here’s the thing though, not every old home is historically significant.  Our house is an American Foursquare… sort of the cookie-cutter house the early 1900s.  Is it pretty awesome compared to more recent architectural styles?  Hells yes!  It this specific house historically significant? Our neighborhood is filled with the same style houses, are they all historically significant?  No and no.

When I shared my dining room reveal on Apartment Therapy a while back, a handful of people decided to ream me out for painting the trim.  They claim I had “destroyed” the house and the final design was a “travesty” and merely “trendy” (*gasp*).  What do I have to say to that?  BAH!

Your home is a reflection of YOU.  Unless you own a house that’s on the historical register you can do whatever you damn well please (and people often do*).  I have been trying to keep the bones of the house pretty traditional, but have some fun with the fixtures and furnishings which suits my more eclectic nature.  I also don’t feel like white trim is trendy and I’ve seen it in tons of similarly aged homes including million dollar properties and historically recognized homes (ok, only certain rooms in this one–but important, public rooms).  It also lets me brighten our home and cost-effectively replace damaged trim pieces.

Which is why we’re continuing to paint the trim.

Yup.  The critics haven’t dissuaded me and we’re continuing the paint into our entry way/stairwell/hallway.

We also picked an awesome weekend to start painting.  Saturday was in the upper 90’s and Sunday was (only!) in the 80s. Keep in mind we do not have central air.  Yeah, it was boiling.

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We got the first section primed on Saturday by working in the morning and then late at night when the temps were a little cooler.  We were still dripping buckets of sweat.  Lovely.

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Notice our lack of a door?  It’s currently hanging out  (haha!) between our living room and TV room.  It’s not the locking door so I insisted we take it off so I could better paint the trim.  Matt rolled his eyes and said I was crazy, but humored me anyway because that’s what makes our marriage work.

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Big difference right?  This is just the primer, but it’s already made a huge difference on the stairs–that smaller landing was nearly invisible on the way down (leading to many missteps and trips), now you see the changes outlined against the white and it is SO much easier to see!

We continued to power through on Sunday so everything has its first coat of paint now too.  It’s been super cloudy and rainy all week so I don’t have any good pictures of that, but it won’t be impressive until the final coat of paint anyway.

 

* Sure people make crappy decisions all the time but the worse case scenario is that future homeowners will roll their eyes, mutter WTF? and change it all.  Big whoop. The less rehab inclined may just not buy the house in the first place, so it’s good to at least keep resale value in the back of your mind, just don’t let it paralyze your own dreams.

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Stairs + Hallway: Concept

The weather’s been pretty nice so we’ve been focusing a little more on the yard, but our entry/stairs/hallway is still very much on the to-do list.  It’s not getting a huge makeover* but it’s going to get a paint-pick-me-up and styling to make it blend with my look for the rest of the house.

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For the walls I’m going to stick with my go-to neutral of Benjamin Moore Paper white.  It’s a nice, fresh, ever-so-slightly-cool gray that should help brighten things up.  The trim is going to be Benjamin More Simply White (like all my other trim).  This should also really help brighten things up since our stairs are a tad dark at the moment.

I’m a little torn on what to do with the stairs… the caps on the newel posts need to be replaced (half of them are missing trim), and we need 2 spindles replaces (one’s missing and one’s broken) but I don’t want to paint the whole railing.  I like the idea of a two-tone railing because I feel like it will keep a lot of the wood but blend into the white trim everywhere else, I’m just a little afraid it’s more of a trendy look.

The plan for now is to paint everything else and leave the railing for the very last.  Paint on the other surfaces can make a huge different in how a single element stands out.  The railing will for sure being getting some refinishing work either way because not only will I have to try and color-match any new pieces, it’s kind of worn in spots and could use a little pick me up.

Because the stairwell has a nice big, open wall, it’s will be getting some art work for sure.  We have a handful of pieces that I’m not sure will work in other rooms, but the stairwell should be a nice blank canvas for them.

 

*At least by my standards

Before: Hall and Stairs

Oh hallways, another oft neglected part of the home.  Right up there with ceilings really.  While I’m a fan of neutral hallways I do think neutral still deserves thought and consideration to flow well with the rest of the house and our current hallway is just a little too builder-beige for me at the moment.

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We have these AMAZING stairs that I really want to pop, but for now they just recede into shadow.

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We also have quite a bit of open wall space, probably more here than any other “public” room.  The landing makes a great home for our cat tree (and the kitties love being able to lord over our back yard) but it’s not the most attractive feature (and I’ll be honest that I don’t actually have a good solution for this yet). Also, when this house was built why in god’s name didn’t they center that window???

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The railings were lovely at one point but appear to have taken a LOT of abuse over the years.  Most of the newel posts are missing the trim around the cap, we have one spindle that’s completely missing and another that’s held together to electrical tape.  I think we may have to get the spindles custom made, but I think I can tackle the newel caps myself.

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