Rosette Drama

The Victorian "rosette" is a signature element in the multi-level door and window frames that give the Victorian it's Queen Anne feeling.

Our "Queen" has equally challenging "feet" as it does "crowns".  Can you see the 5 pieces that make up this base board? Including the plinth blocks, base molding and base cap. Look how closely the Base cap and Plinth block cap resemble each other.

I was gone when the first set of top moldings were tacked up. Upon my arrival, and after much discussion, we decided we needed to try a different look. It was too flat, uni-dimensional and not in keeping with the many layered look of the Victorian. This is our final decision, a four piece molding with a wide window sill. Though it is hard to distinguish in the photo. The top is a 3/4 inch quarter round, then the 3.5 inch bulls-eye rosette, smaller than the 4.5 inch we had originally selected, but larger than the 3-inch bulls eye that just didn't seem to have enough umph!

The original windows also hold a delight of layers, textures.

The base moldings along with the plinths  flow together to make a very pleasing look. The acorn, corner block finishes the look. This simple door enclosure is a lot harder to reconstruct then it looks.

Before the Make-over.

The four top pieces of the molding include: Quarter round, rosette, 1/2 sized O-G molding, pleated window frame.

Dining room windows get dressed with sills and molding will be added below the sill to recreate the above photo of the original windows.  It took a full day to put sills, molding and complete one full window.

Rosette drama. The one on the far left is original and our aim is to imitate it as confidently as we can. The second from left is the 5 " rosette selected for all of the locations that are large enough to manage a 5-inch frame. It is not an exact duplicate of the original bulls eye, but  dimensions and thickness are perfect. The next two small rosettes inline (4 inch and 3 inch) were considered for the upper corners of the small molding areas, but both were voted off due to issues with depth (too shallow) or too little dimension in the carving. 

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The left window is complete with the sill, 3.5 inch rosette, moldings and everything except a coat of primer. We are waiting for the shipment of 3.5 inch rosettes so this can be finished up.

The dining room windows are getting dressed-out with sills, moldings and 5-inch rosettes. The wood pieces for the top molding and the quarter round haven't arrived. A hard day for everyone. Too many rosettes and plinths, not enough molding and quarter round. The people who had the patience to construct these windows in the first place either had lots of time or were paid lots of money. As my contractor says, "These houses have so much wood, hard work and sweat represented in the details".

Boxes of plinths.

Large rosettes

Original rosettes. It has become my job to organize, count, sort and categorize the rosettes. 

First baseboards are in, the laundry room is nearly complete. It has been a long day and not much progress has been made.

Wood floors!!! Is it time for champaigne yet?!

The "Floor guys" arrive early and create a ruckus loud enough to wake up the neighbors.  

The issue, "not enough wood". The challenge, do they match our existing floor down the middle (this is what I want) or do they conserve wood by starting at the side door and working across the main entrance leaving a mis-match down the main walkway. I appear, and apparently the person who is paying, gets to make the decision. I don't agree with their premise of "not enough wood". I have measured it 5 times and I am confident there is plenty. So we compromise with "start the floor down the middle" and I will call the company to see if they have more of this wood (unlikely since it was a custom order)

Lines are snapped and the work day begins. Our old forest Douglas Fir engineered wood floor is finally being installed. It has been waiting in a storage garage for over a year.

The crew uses huge U-shaped nails to secure the floor and it goes in with the help of about 6 guys, measuring, cutting, nailing and supervising.

Progress is rapid.

Despite my confidence, they leave the area under the cabinets "floor less", as they continue to think they will com up short.

Kitchen and dining room completed. It is only 9:30 am.

Bedroom finished, with a pile of 20 remaining boards!

Beautiful bedroom floor is done.

View from dining into laundry. The smell of the fir being cut was intoxicating.

The tile and wood match perfectly without a transom, so smooth it is a delight to look at.  

Sub text:  Our contractor gave the installers the wrong numbers because he was concerned they would waste it. The extra 50 square feet he didn't mention ended up not being used. I called the company and ,as expected, they did not have any extra floor available.

Spray paint and tile

Spray painting the walls and trim leaves an eerie image form the living room.

Our porcelain tile has the illusion of aged marble with flowing veins and a nearly flat finish. Our priority is to complete the laundry room. Even more than the kitchen, we miss being able to process our sweaty work out clothes.

The master bath gets the same tile application.

Once you have made a decision, my motto is "stick with it". So we dress the powder room the same.

The exterior temperatures reach above 100 degrees, so we start to enjoy the powerful cooling of our whole house fan.  As soon as the outside temp drops to 85 in the evening, we turn it on and it clear out the heat over night, leaving the house in the cool 60's in the morning. We are pretty comfortable until about 4 pm and then we head out for dinner and don't return until it has begun to cool.

Laundry room finished, now we just have baseboards and hook-ups.

Bathroom done and grouted, we chose a resin grout that will not need sealing our accumulate dirt over time.

Laundry and powder rooms side by side.

Finished shower with beautiful veining. Simple and elegant, we decide to dump our border ideas at the last minute.

Wainscotting circles behind the toilet.

Tiny grout lines and the epoxy-like grout make this option pretty indestructible. We find grout dirt is our nemesis, so we are reducing grout and opting for the more expensive, but less porous option.

Decorative wood

Part of the "finishing fun" is to see the special woods arrive. Though our house is far from exotic, appreciating the many wood designs and finding people who continue to practice wood working has been a pleasure. The door frames are so complex, we will be using seven separate wood pieces to complete each side. Until we began this process, we never even realized how much craftsmanship went into every door.

Door framing is a close imitation of the original.

Baseboards arrive crafted by a local wood worker. A blade that perfectly matches the old baseboard has been created to produce our matching baseboards.

Wall space is used as drying racks due to the extreme heat outside.

Back to doors and floors

As the temperature tops 105 degrees. We sludge along without air conditioning. Our new best item is the whole house fan. We start it up around 8:30 pm when the outdoor temp drops to 88 degrees and the indoor temp persists at 92 degrees. Sucking in the coolness of the outside world is magical. We watch the temperature drop and breath a sigh of relief. We made it through another excessively hot day.  Our night temperatures drop into the 60's. The air and walls and even the furniture drops in temperature during the night. Technically, the "thermal mass" is cooled at night to keep us comfortable during the following day. Despite this wonderful scientific cooling method, we will be thrilled to have a bit of artificial cooling next week when we fire up the air conditioner.  Why haven't we tried out our new air conditioning system yet? Simple. The saw dust, paint spray, plaster dust and general airborne debris is death to the air conditioner.  The best way to ruin a new unit is to run it and fill it with crap. So we patiently wait until the coast is clear.

So, back to the doors and floors. The doors got primed and repaired this week. Beautiful.

By-pass closet door on left, bedroom door on right. Both had suffered fire damage which has been completely removed during the priming process.

By-pass door after sanding and priming.

Laundry pocket door after being joined in the middle, prepped, primed and calked. It looks like one seamless door.

The floor and shower tile is going in. Lots of discussion about "period appropriate" textures, colors and styles. We went with a "carrera-look" porcelain 12 by 24 tile hoping to capture the marble look without the marble care. 

The laundry room is the priority. When it comes to inconveniencing friends, using their clothes washers is one of our biggest concerns. Can't wait to get this room up and washing.

Powder room gets the same floor, less is more. Fewer choices means fewer arguments.

Master bath will reflect more of the same. The shower pan is still a mess, but the floors look easy to clean and simply beautiful. 

The most exciting part of getting the tile onto the floors is that we can move forward and start bringing over the wood floor.  After it has been in storage for over a year, we can't wait to get it ready for installation. It will be installed unfinished and get sanded and stained in place.  We will lose the air conditioning once the sanding begins. But the thrill of seeing the floors appear will cool us plenty.

The Portrait of a Sub-Panel

This is our beautiful, balanced, perfectly coordinated sub panel. 

 Why do we care?  Look at these labels! Look at the exacting distances and finely coiled wires.  It is perfection!  Thank you Joe for being so careful and so incredibly talented.  This is a masterpiece.
Every time we open this box (which we hope will be nearly never) we will think of you and how you made the job easier for the next 120 years of electrical repairs in this house. A massive improvement over what was done in the past 120 years.

Painting wood windows- how do we manage the pealing and sticking?

This first photo is the PROBLEM! Freshly painted windows and all this sticking and tearing makes them look terrible.

The heat, thick layers of latex paint and infrequent opening has all contributed to this ugly window jam. I refuse to have my new windows look like this.

Have I said that our contractor, with over 20 years of experience restoring old houses, has a solution for everything? Well, he does. No problem is unsolvable for this guy.

SOLUTION: Don't use paint!  Use solid color stain. It absorbs into the wood, is white mat and will allow for smooth opening and closing of the windows without sticking. This is new wood and will absorb the stain and apparently the wood will be as protected by stain as by any other paint.

First coat of the white stain on the inside.  I am so excited to see this idea put into my house.