We begin again...

We have been "on a break" since Christmas Day 2015. During that time we have used an 18-inch opening to move from the kitchen to dining room, walked on plywood kitchen floors, enjoyed the challenge of minimal kitchen cabinets, no counter space and the occasional power outage due to overloading the circuits.

Today, that all ended.  The 18-inch opening was closed, the kitchen was demolished and now we have a temporary kitchen without the luxury of a sink or dishwasher and we consider ourselves lucky.
Here is how the day went.

Pre-demo "future dining room view" Ceilings 8 feet high. Adjacent bathroom still in tact.

Post demo "future dining room view". Original ceilings (10 feet) revealed, the lead paint is in remarkably good shape. A pre-existing boarded window is exposed on the right.  Original back yard window height can be seen where the ceiling and plaster is removed.  This  was a double-hung, 8 foot window. (so strange that they darkened the kitchen as part of a 1960's remodel)

Pre-demo "future laundry room" view shows the existing  cabinets, dropped ceiling and the little over-sink window.

Mid-demo (above on right)  cabinets and plaster removed, but dropped ceiling still in place. The sink window's  full footprint exposed and goes higher than the dropped ceiling.

Post-demo "future laundry room" with 10 foot ceilings and exposed double hung, high window on right. Plaster is gone, lath remains on one wall. We can see some Douglas Fir original, old forest  wood floor that was below the cabinets. This wood will be reclaimed.

Tomorrow all of the plaster will go.

Pre-demo view of "future open concept" into living room. This is the 18-inch walk through (on the right)  that has allowed us to continue to access our kitchen. The opening will be sealed off during construction to keep our living space (on the other side) dust free.

Post- demo view of "open concept". A temporary plywood wall has been installed to seal us off, washer/dryer removed and message wall removed. This area will eventually be completely opened up. Our 18 inch walk-through as become the "walk-around". Around the house, that is. The only way to get from front of house to the back is out the front door and in the side door.

Pre-demo last look from the "clean side" before the divider went up. (Below) We now have our refrigerator, microwave and all of the comforts of home packed into our "temporary kitchen". At least the wine cabinet is on our side.We expect to live with our temporary kitchen for about 4 months.

Post demo close-up of the over-sink window. They literally put a piece of plywood on the exterior, painted it and called it an exterior wall. The window frame was left in place and covered with a bit of drywall, strategically placed cabinets, and the dropped ceiling to cover the scar on the inside. (Look back 7 photos to see the "pre" of this area above the sink. No idea why anyone would board up such a nice, high, sunny window.

Color note: A rather soothing fern green was uncovered on the hidden kitchen ceilings. Not that different from the gray-green we have chosen for our future kitchen. The circular trend in fashion demonstrates itself once again. Kudos to the unfadeable quality of lead paint.  If you don't know if you have lead paint in your house, the big hint is it that looks perfect after 60, 70, 80 years.  

I could really appreciate it if it wasn't so darn toxic.

First dumpster load.

Grouting

Just a few photos of the finished tile.

The picture rail has been removed and the walls are being re plastered, ceilings painted and the original woodwork is having a face lift.

 The holes in the tile are the heater vent and a wall plug.

The floor makes you dizzy if you look too hard, love the 1890's look of the tile.

Tedious Tile

Lesson learned: Subway tiles are hard to install, even for the most talented contractor. It has taken a week to get to this point, and still no grout. Though it seems a flushing toilet is just around the corner, I'm afraid the wall repairs, door jams, paint and clean-up will take us to Thanksgiving and still no flush. We will see.

Wall tiles go up, seat stills needs a fill.

Seat is filled and look at that straight line under the window sill. Seems like a little luck and a lot of magic.

What is wrong with this photo? Does the wall seem to be bigger on the right? 

Picture rail lower? What the heck?

 Turns out the tile is level, picture rail higher on right to make up for the ceiling being much higher on the right. What to do with this mess? Now that the tile is in, the irregularities pop!

Guest bedroom gets a new coat of paint. Love the new color.

The closet door on opposite wall is gone, drywall, primer and paint is going up. Still needs baseboards. So many details.

Colors, Curtains, Cubicles

The walls are getting their final coats of paint. Curtains and rugs have been ordered, and the tile is started. Our goal is to have a comfortable living room by Thanksgiving.

We went from 100 degree days to 36 degree nights in a matter of a week and now our "no heat" situation has become rather uncomfortable. We are gathering space heaters, blankets and searching the storage unit for our winter clothing. (no luck yet) There is snow on the mountains and frost in the air. We only live in two rooms, so it is pretty easy to keep those warm with the oven and one space heater. We have started baking cinnamon rolls in the morning and drinking hot toddies in the evening, to keep us warm.

We hope to be looking at our final 3 weeks for this phase. Progress photos....

Wool rug has interesting texture using loops and cut edges. This one will go in office, away from spills and blueberry stains.

The coordinated gray version will go in the living room, where we don't want to fuss too much over spills.

Cubicles: Our two tiny bathrooms are finally getting finished up. Tile is going in, slowly and methodically. Subway tile certainly has turned out to be challenging. Our contractor measures, checks horizontal and vertical position, preps and secures each tile individually with great care. They worked from the opposite sides of the bathroom and had to meet in the middle and hope that everything lined up perfectly. Here is a series of photos starting at the right side and working around to the left. You can see that one row of tiles touches to make the connection. They are hopeful that the process will go faster once they have a full horizontal row to build on.

Toilet side hugging the door.

moving around to the bath/shower.

Behind the bath, the tiles meet up with the one row coming from the other side.

The tiled "bathtub seat" is  giving them problems. They will build the seat up with more cement to allow for a clean corner from side to top.

The tiles continue under the future console sink and end back at the door opening. You can see how many levels, measures, cutters and tools this takes. It will last forever and be our bomb shelter if we ever need one. 

The other cubicle is 4 feet by 5 feet with 10 foot ceilings and has nothing in it except a beautiful coat of paint. The cabinets should be ready soon, the old re purposed door has been reframed, and the toilet is "at the ready" in our kitchen. It makes a nice conversation piece.

Picture rails and paint

The original picture rails must have been removed when the ceilings were dropped back in the 60's. Getting replicas of the originals has been a bit of a challenge, but they arrived and were installed today. Without any paint, they seem rather small and irrelevant circling the room, but with the white "cap" and the taupe walls, they will stand out, I hope.  You may wonder, why picture rails? The idea is that plaster walls are fragile and easily marred with nails, so the rail is placed so pictures can be hung without ever placing a nail in the walls. Art galleries use rails so they can move pictures frequently without having to remove and patch lots of holes.  We hope to preserve our new walls by suspending our pictures.

I am taking on the job of painting, since painters seem to be hard to employ and we are getting anxious to move ahead.

The color selections are nearly final and I am so tired of looking at colors I am moving ahead anyway. If we hate them, we will repaint. I promised the contractor that I would not attempt to do the final prep on the new rails. He is skeptical about my ability to fill holes and caulk. Fine with me, those are not my favorite chores.

Tomorrow we start working on getting one of the double-hung bedroom windows opened. It has been painted shut for years so we may have a struggle. The last attempt we made to fix a window, ended with a window that will open, but is now broken.

The tile sits in the back yard, the tile guy went AWOL on us.  As things get closer to being finished, it gets harder to wait for these specialists to get their act together.

Final October notes

We have finally arrived at some of the fun stuff. I met with our interior decorator and we are selecting paint colors, area rugs, drapes and kitchen tile. Here are a few of the front runners. I like the way this tile has already been aged. Each tile is different and they have been pre-scratched. It would be nice to have something that looks as irregular as our old wood floors. The main thing I am "looking" for in the area rug is a soft texture. Nothing like a dense Persian rug under my toes on a cold morning. Nothing like a cold morning for that matter, haven't seen one of those for nearly 6 months.

Wall color samples, still looking for the right tone.

Tiny drapery swatch doesn't really give us much to work with.

The lighter tile for the kitchen is getting the most votes.

When the floors were being refinished, our front porch became another hasty storage unit. We thought it would be 3 days, turns out it will be more like 3 months. We really missed sitting out there so I finally dragged it all to the back yard where it is still sitting under a tarp. The final floor treatment won't be done for another month. Someday we will look back and find this entertaining.

The short windows were removed and the original window openings re-opened. It won't even be noticeable once the windows are in and painted.

Windows in, framing on, awaiting exterior paint.

Stage 2 is about to begin, the plans are almost final and will go to the City soon.

Latest version of the plan.

Powder room update

It is small and simple, but required the same care and attention as the bigger, full bath. Back to back, the powder room will be open to the main house, while the guest bath will open to the guest bedroom. I was originally against this plan, seemed to create two tiny bathrooms when we could have one big bath, but in the the end, I am pleased with the concept and will be glad when G keeps the extra bath clean for guests (that was our compromise when we decided to expand to three baths). The interesting items regarding the powder room are:

1. it occupies the space that was previously the attic stairway. I'm thinking this was a good trade-off.
2. It is twice as high as it is wide.
3. We are re-purposing an original solid wood closet door to serve as the bathroom door and creating a lock using skeleton keys from my mother's house.
4. Since this bath opens into the "new" side of the house. The floor won't be completed until we are ready to do the kitchen/dining room floor. This way the flow of the tile will terminate in the bathroom rather than originate in the bathroom.
5. The cabinet style for the rest of the house is being set in this bathroom. Once this little cabinet is made, I hope to follow the inset door, Shaker style cabinet throughout the rest of the house.

So, even though it is just 20 square feet, it is setting the tone for the rest of the addition. The future ceiling height, door framing and pattern, 8-inch baseboards, floor tile and cabinets will all mirror this little room. Almost all of the wood pieces are being salvaged from the demolition pile. It is an exciting step to take.

View looking up where the stairway used to terminate in the attic. Bathroom light and fan sits with tankless water heater on the left.

View of powder room framing from kitchen. The guest bedroom can be seen through the other side.The pile of salvaged wooden rosettes is on left. 

You can really see the lath pattern in this photo. The lath has been left with drywall covering it.

Drywall day, plastic sheeting on the right is helping keep the dust away from our living area.

Drywall in, light fixtures and plumbing is peaking through.

Mudding process is underway. Good to have the walls closed and the finishing is moving ahead. That toilet better fit.

This is the guest light, but the ladder gives an idea of how high these ceilings are.

With the drywall finished, we are just waiting for paint, cabinets and the door.