Deforestation

Benjamin and Allison's Guestroom had a fern-overgrowth problem. Ferns and Grasscloth actually. Perfect for those times when you can't decide between the forest floor and the Savannah.

Thankfully we have been able to get it under control, and it should be a lovely guest room soon. The first photo is the former wallpaper in this room, which Sariah has mastered the art of removing. She has gone from one room taking 4 weekends to one room taking 2 hours. Live and learn.

Creating a Master Suite

The left side of the first floor has a small hall that connects two rooms and a bathroom. This area will be the master suite. One room will be decked out as the master closet, and the other the bedroom. The bedroom portion also opens directly into the living room, so we are closing it off to make a very private and cozy master suite. Jody started framing it off today, and Charlie helped.

Tiananmen Square

...no it's the other square. Red Square. We just can't figure this out. In the midst of demolishing the kitchen Joel and Jody uncovered this Red Square rectangle painted on the wall. There is nothing else painted red anywhere else (that we have uncovered yet). Just one more thing that we have absolutely no clue about.

Oh---and there are roughly 6 layers of wall paper under the panelling. Someone in this house must have had a wallpaper fetish.

Rough Set of the Mantel

It's an exciting day. We finally are to a point where we will be framing in for the antique mantel, and did a rough set of it. We are both really excited about this particular mantel. It is huge, gorgeous, and very very heavy. We found it at 8th Avenue Antiques in Nashville.

A Blank Slate

The kitchen is in the midst of complete demo, and turning into the blank canvas needed for the new install. It looks like a huge room with the cabinets gone.

Time Travel Made Possible

We're back to wallpaper (sort of). We started stripping the wallpaper in the master bedroom; all 7, yes SEVEN, layers of it. It's like going back a decade with every strip. It starts with a solid baby blue, moved to flowers, one layer is a very cool art deco pattern that we actually wish they would have kept, then there are little tiny flowers, some stripes, and then a beige and gold top coat with a few other things intermingled in between. Rather than remove all of this, we're just going to resurface the walls.

The Dining Room Walls

Re-painting is complete--no more baby-poo splattered ceiling. It really did look awful before. Jody will install the coffered ceiling when we get to trim carpentry, and we have a plaster medallion for the ceiling light. The dining room lights are on order, and should get here in about 2 weeks!

Paint By Numbers

The first painting has started. Sariah attempted a faux finish on the ceiling, but it kind of ended up looking like a diaper exploded on the ceiling. Not really something you want to look at while you are eating, so the base coat will be repainted, and we'll stick with a solid colored ceiling. It was a worthy attempt.

The colors in the dining room are Toffee Glaze on the ceiling and Homestead Resort Gold on the walls. We are using all National Trust for Historic Preservation colors, and we chose Valspar Signature for the paint (eggshell on walls and flat on ceilings). This paint has incredible coverage, and is self-priming.

Demolition Derby

Knotty Pine Cabinets. Yep---again. Installed with nails. Yes---again. We aren't really sure what the story is with Knotty Pine Cabinets in old houses in Tennessee, but they seem to be pervasive. Thankfully, once they are ripped out, they do burn easily.

Plaster Thick, Some Will Stick

The dining room now has a plaster finish, and is ready for paint!

Construction Buddies on Holiday

Charlie took a little vacation for Christmas. His union rep insisted that he was given the day off for R&R.

HVAC is Awesome

Whoever invented Central Heating and Air was a very very good person. You really don't know how much you miss HVAC until you don't have it. We finally have central heating and air in the house. The upstairs is a 2 ton split system full electric heat pump. The downstairs is a 4 ton All in One Gas Forced Air system. It is massive and amazing. You could easily rent out an apartment in the down stairs unit. It's just that big.

In order to do the install we had to rip out a lot of the floor in the living room so duct work could be run, and the installers had to knock out part of the brick foundation in order to install the 4 ton unit.

Outdoor Updates - Back

Windows, Siding, and More!

Outdoor Updates - Front

Lots of new siding. The house is starting to look like it is not falling down. We consider that to be an improvement.

Victory in the Dining Room

FINALLY! The wallpaper in the dining room is entirely removed. Joel and Sariah can now install plaster, and bring the walls back to their 1926 glory days. The small area of wallpaper remaining will be covered when the antique mantle is framed in.

Porch Swings and Lemonade

In order to keep the peace with Sebastian, a screened-in porch is an absolute necessity. This is the start of the porch framing. Once we have the construction dumpster moved we will be ordering concrete for the garage, drive, and the back porch. It's a small porch, but Sebastian just really needs enough room for a chair to sit on so he can watch bugs outside and hear all the nighttime noises of summertime.

Bricklayers Union

Joel has become master of the hammer drill and sledge. We are knocking out all of the brick corbels on the fireplace so they can be re-framed in for antique mantles. We were able to find three gorgeous antique mantles that will be gracing the dining, living, and master bed rooms.

Windows 14

We've put 14 new windows in the upstairs now. THANK YOU ROS FOR HELPING US FIND ALL OF THE WINDOWS! This one is right at the top of the stairs (I just hung a fire extinguisher there, too---not that anyone has ever let a fire get out of control at the house or anything....).

The other photos are the upstairs loft. I love how forward thinking they were in 1926 to make a room perfect for Wii use.

If you note the ceiling fan on the first photo, it's not your eyes, it is just randomly placed in the ceiling. It's not centered with anything. It's actually not even centered with the window, which is what we first thought. Once the electrician phase starts, we'll have it moved over to the right about 6 inches to center it up.

A Bath Room With A View

This window, is right next to the toilet in the upstairs bathroom. Can you say "Bad Placement"? We purchased a smaller casement window, which was installed over the weekend, to replace it. We will put a stained glass insert in the Casement, and this bathroom will have a much better level of privacy.

Ode To A Dying Kitchen

We found out at closing that Mayzell thinks this kitchen is just as gross as we do. She was very excited when we told her we were gutting it completely. Tomorrow Joel and Sariah are going to start taking down all of the upper cabinets, as well as the lower sections that we aren't using the counter-space on at the moment. The new kitchen design is done, and we'll be ordering it in two or three weeks.

That Really Puts a Damper on Things

With the freeze we had last night, Joel called Al the Plumber in to install gas lines to each of the three downstairs fireplaces, and wrap insulation around the pipes. We already have the gas logs ready to go, and can heat the house with them until we get the new furnace installed.

All got there, and was looking at the setup, and found that there are no dampers in the chimneys. The flues are just wide open. Jody is going to Prince's Harware to buy flashing and seal them up, since we bought ventless gaslog replacements for each one. Just one more weird surprise!

Stronger Than Dirt

Jody picked up all the Debris, and Joel and Sariah spend Friday evening cleaning. The construction zone was just getting to be too much, with tools and empty soda cans left everwhere. All workers now know that one of the #1 rules is to keep a clean jobsite. We want everything put away at the end of each day.

While We're Discussing Trees

I love this big tree in the front yard. It's a perfectly formed Maple, and the tire swing is awesome. Charlie and I hang out there when we are ready to take a break. It looks even better when it is green.

Vroom Vroom Firestarter

This is the big dead tree that Joel caught on fire. In fact, if you look at the upper branches, you may still see some char. We do need to remove the dead tree, but burning it from the top down, probably is not the best way to do it.

Apparently 100 year old lapboard siding is backed with tar. It was used to waterproof and bug-proof the house. It's also highly flammable. One match, and about 20 seconds later you can experience flames shooting 30 feet in the air. Jody got his ears singed getting it back under control. It was very very funny----after we knew the house wasn't going to burn down.

Something was out of Synch

This is a wide angle shot of the South side of the house. What you see are the upstairs windows, which are all evenly spaced, and the downstairs windows which should be evenly spaced. Note the middle lower level window. The hole is where the window used to be--for some reason, it was too high, and scooted over to the right. It threw the whole side of the house out of balance from the exterior view, and we just can't figure out why it was done that way. There is no real reason from the inside. It's in the master bath, and there is plenty of room for it to be centered correctly. So, easy solution--with the window replacement, we just had the window moved. Now everything is back to being even and symetrical, and Sariah can stop stressing about it.

The Power of Metabo

A few posts back I showcased our favorite new tool--the Metabo Paint Shaver. This photo is a close-up of the window trim, in all of it's glory with about 6 coats of chunky lead paint. Yum Yum, Tasty.

The photo below is about 30 minutes later. We were able to take the trim around 5 windows down to bare wood, like it was brand new in about an hour. It's literally like 80 years of coats of paint just evaporate.

The greatest thing about this tool is it is designed to remove lead paint. All of the discharge goes through a spout in the handle that is configured to take a shop vac hose. We still wear a respirator and goggles, but for this type of work, you can't get a better solution.

Herron House in "Rear Window"

Or we could say Rear Windows in Herron House. All of the upper rear windows are now done. Yeah!

Free is Good

We'll be adding a small screened in porch on the back of the house. Jody had a friend who just happened to have two columns sitting in his garage that he wanted to get rid of, so they were graciously donated to our house restoration (Thank You!). These will flank both sides of the porch, and will tie it in architecturally to the front porch. Sebastian will love it.

One Day, This Will Be My Office

This room is in the 1 story partof the house on the rear, where the roof was never built correctly. With the roof sloping inward, water ran into the house, rather than out of the house. To make matters worse, when we were fixing this problem, and un-scheduled rainstorm came up--dumping about 3 inches of water into this room while the roof was completely off.

Joel pulled the nasty old carpet out of the room on Saturday. The door is going to take some refinishing, as you can see the water damage at the bottom. This is the only room in the whole house that we are going to have to completely re-build on all sides, to that is possibly a little bit on the lucky side. We are keeping our fingers crossed that the plywood planking on the floor will dry out ok, but we may have to remove it, and just start over.

One day, we'll wrap this up, and it will be the office. It's going to be really nice once it's done...trust us.

There's A Ribbon Tied Around My Finger

....to remind me to bring the camera home. It appears to have been forgotten at the house this afternoon. That said, there are no photos from the house today. We do however love this product. After a lot of hesitation because it is a very expensive tool, we bit the bullet, and bought the Metabo Paint Remover. It works FANTASTIC. Of course, it is made in Germany, rather than China, and there is a lot of truth in the quality of German Engineering. Sariah was able to strip down the trim on 5 windows in an hour to the point that it looks like brand new wood. The video on the website shows it just ripping through paint, and claims it can cut through up to 8 layers of paint in one pass, and clear 1 square foot every 20 seconds. It's an amazing tool that works exactly as advertised.

Everything Old is New Again

The new fascia boards are up on the porch, paulonia is being installed, much of the wood has been scraped, and the skirting around the entire perimiter of the house is new. Joel has removed the storm door from the front door, and Sariah already started refinishing it. It is much better, just needs a little bit of buffing and a fresh coat of polyurethane. In some of these photos, the new windows can also be seen.