Powder Room

We recently had to replace the original 1927 toilet in our downstairs powder room. Once the toilet came out, we realized that the water that had been dripping from it now and in the past had caused the floor underneath to rot out. We had to have the vinyl pulled up, underneath that the linoleum, then the hardwood, all the way down to the subfloor. They put down new plywood on top of the subfloor, and then we put new 6" porcelain tile over that. The new tile resembles sand, and we painted the walls a deep bright navy blue. The white trim on the wood moulding really pops nicely.

Here is the powder room over the years:

 Original wall-mounted 85 year old toilet removed, rotten floor exposed:

And here's after they ripped the floor down to the subfloor! Yes, that's light coming through from the basement in the bottom right corner or the picture.

 New tile, new potty, new paint! (still need towels, towel rack and artwork)

Front porch through the years

You don't know how awesome I think this is! The top left is Ralph's great-grandfather (Savinetti) who built the house in 1927. The top right photograph is Ralph's grandfather and father in the 1960's. The bottom left photo is when we first were moving into and renovating the house in 2007. The bottom right is Ralph on the porch, present day. We will have to re-create the two older ones with Ralph sitting in his suit; and then Ralph and Jake dressed up for Easter Sunday (maybe first communion?).

Garage before and after

We removed the sagging old wood garage door, replaced it with a shiny new vinyl one. Then we repainted the garage and replaced the roof. It looks like a brand new building! (Our neighbor cut down their enormous oak tree too.) Next up is a new driveway in the spring to complete the exterior renovations (for now).

Final Exterior of the House

Here is the house after the painting was all finished, and the new roof was put on.

Quite a change before and after!

Condensed version of front elevation being painted

I'm going to keep a running commentary on the post previous to this one, but I think this is a good place to just post the day-by-day changes to the front of the house:

(If it really looked this grey in person, we wouldn't be repainting it)

Exterior Painting

We have been toying with the idea of painting the house for a while now. Almost all of the houses on our side of the street have a similar brown or tan or beige color and I really didn't love the shade of ours. Add to that an outdated-looking green roof, of which I am not a big fan. So when the roof started leaking this spring and summer and fall (it's been a real treat, trust me), we decided to replace the roof (I say that like we had a choice).

Once we realized we didn't have to stick to green for the roof, we could easily change the color of the house altogether. Things are happening pretty fast. The painters actually have a bigger deadline since it needs to be above a certain temperature to paint, but the roofers (they say) can work at any temperature. So the paint is happening now, and the roof is hopefully happening next week. I am posting the pictures hopefully daily as the progress continues.

Day 1 - prior to any work starting (except the powerwashing). We'll call this the 'Before' picture. Sorry for the wide variety of colors that are showing up, I'm taking these with my iphone in all different lights.


Morning of day 2 - paint has been stripped/sanded off the wood on the porch and the front of the house (the former sunporch, currently my office). This foggy morning photo probably best shows the true color of the house before.


Afternoon of day 2 - trim is primed to go from green to white. Big difference already! Downspouts removed, gutters painted white.


Evening of day 2 - trim has been primed white, I decided to have them paint the wood on the front of the house white also. Ralph and I are still debating over whether or not this will stay white. He is usually pretty good with trusting me when it comes to color and design, but I don't think he'll be convinced until the front of the house is primed gray.


Side view of house with primed white trim, and the edging has begun with the gray primer.


Closeup of the first coat of tinted primer and primed window trim:


End of day 3 - whole front of house primed, both sides of house primed. Still not sure about the wood on the front of the house staying white. Ralph is lobbying for gray. I'm still thinking. For the record, this is the absolutely ugliest I think our house has ever looked. The people driving by must think we are insane. It looks so awful right now. Hideous. Ralph and I joked about putting a sign in our lawn saying "We know the green roof looks hideous! We're changing it to black next week!" I'm really really looking forward to seeing the finished product. Because while I'm pretty good with envisioning the final, well, vision, right now it looks pretty bad:

Here it is a few days later. Ralph convinced me to paint the front gray, and he made the right call. The trim is all done being painted white. The only major thing left (besides of course the new roof) is to have the porch painted. We need to do some major maintenance (including pulling down the ceiling and retexturing the wall) before that can be primed and painted. The also need to paint/stain the floor and the door.

Here is one of the side elevations so you can see what it will look like when you can't see the hideous green roof.

They started on the new paint today. They finished the front of the house but I wasn't able to get a picture of it yet. Here is it witht he front of my office painted, and the bottom wall trimmed out:

It's somehow subtle and massive all at the same time.

And a before picture of the detached garage, also getting a new paint job and a new roof.


Day 2 progress of the garage, trim primed:

Garage on day five(ish). Somewhere under all of that mess below the left window is a poor little hydrangea bush that is having a really tough time at trying to survive. And one of my sweet little boxwoods out front was snapped in half by the painters. :(



So at some point we realized we hated the color. Ralph questioned the color from the very beginning. I thought the green roof might be tricking our eyes into thinking the paint looked too blueish, but I was willing to give it a chance. And then I just wasn't. I texted Ralph a day or two ago with something along the lines of "I officially hate the color." This morning was the final nail in the coffin. I said hello to my neighbor and told her jokingly, "Don't worry, we're not keeping the green roof!" and she turned around and looked at the house (for the first time I guess) and said, "Oh, wow, you painted your house blue!" This afternoon, Ralph and I picked up some paint samples and painted a few shades on a small area on the back of the house. We selected a new color that is very similar in shade/brightness, but is without any hint of blue. It's a more silvery gray. Here is the photo Ralph took of the new color painted on top of the old color. this is very very close to what it looks like in person:



The next post will (hopefully) be an update with the house totally painted with the more silvery shade, or with the new roof going on.

2011 Update

So I guess this blog has been a little neglected while we've been busy with renovating, making another person, running a business, and the daily goings-on of a busy family of four. I have had this blog in the back of my mind for some time. Just because I don't update regularly - or even yearly - doesn't mean I haven't been taking pictures and recording the transformation our house continues to experience.

In the last year, we did a lot of work in the kitchen - installed recessed lights; a new countertop, sink, faucet and backsplash; new dishwasher. Our kitchen previously had a makeover in the 1960's. When we moved in, we really just painted, put in a few new appliances, and changed the lighting. That was a good bandaid for a few years until we could afford the sink, countertop and backsplash. I still would ideally like new mission style cabinet doors with hidden hinges, but for now that's just a "would like" and not a "need."


When we did the recessed lights, we also had the kitchen completed rewired. We had to put in a new electrical panel in the basement last year also. The electricity needs of a modern home is a bit more than they imagined in the 1920's. I hear there were no such things as microwaves, Keurigs, laptop and desktop computers, iPads and flat screen TVs in 1920's. I have no idea how they passed the time ;)


Here are some pictures of the living room in its current layout. I didn't like the previous flow of the room and thought the focal point in the room should be the fireplace, so we placed the TV above the mantel, flanked by two storage cabinets. Ideally, I would love for the cabinets to be built-ins (hanging rod on the bottom for coats, bookshelves above), but it's not really in the budget. $100 Ikea cabinets however, are totally in the budget! We moved the furniture around a bit, and there are now two seating areas - one across from the fireplace, another on the right side of the room in front of the windows. I need to post more before and after pictures, but the living room is messy right now (I'll blame it on the kids and their toys) and I don't have the time or energy to clean it up, photograph it, find the old pics, and post them. Someday maybe.


Here are two of the bathroom. I had previously posted some pictures of the bathroom in its' mostly finished state, but here it is again, completely finished.




Ralph and I looked into Alex's room this morning, the curtains open and sunlight streaming in, and remarked what a pretty baby's room it is. I realized I had never gotten around to posting what the room looked like finished. The baby's room is probably one of my favorite rooms in the house - while it's the smallest bedroom, it is the only bedroom with a large closet therefore it's usually the most organized. This was of course Jake's room when we first moved into the house, but he moved last year when Alex was born. He has a rock star bedroom. I need to take pics on a sunny day when it's cleaned up, because it is a really really cool bedroom for a growing boy. I had a lot of fun designing it with him while I was pregnant. I wanted Jake's transition to a new bedroom (and a new family member) to be a relatively easy one.




Finally, the room we spend the least amount of time in, the dining room. I'm not much of a chef or an entertainer, but it is still nice to have a room where we can have our family or friends over when we celebrate birthdays or holidays. We kept the furniture that Papa Joe had in the dining room. While it's a little ornate for my taste, it's actually in really good shape and better built than anything we could afford. We toyed with getting a new table recently (a slightly different shape would fit the room better) but I knew once we got a table, I would want a matching hutch and sideboard, and so the costs began to skyrocket. As an update, took the brass cross-hatched insert out of the hutch and we moved it to the other wall, and that seemed to work pretty well. Once our dishes were in the hutch, your eye went to the dishes more than the furniture.


We did replace the chairs - very simple clean lines. Took down the curtains in favor of simple shades, took down the wallpaper in favor of neutral paint on the walls, balanced with the pop of white woodwork. The re-done hardwood floors are one of my favorite things about the house.



I am excited that the next phase of updates will be to the exterior of our house - the new garage door will be delivered Monday, and we have plans for a new sidewalk. These two projects are really really needed, as both are crumbling. Do you see the hole in the garage door in the top right of the picture below? That's where the handle used to be. One day Ralph went to open the garage door, and the handle just came right off, with about a foot and a half of rotten wood attached.


We still need a new roof, a new driveway, and the entire exterior of the house needs a new coat of paint. We continue to prioritize the needs. When we bought the house, we found out that it was built in 1927. So when we moved in, the house was 80 years old. It's a good old house, with good bones, but not without it's share of upkeep. I guess all houses come with a lot of needs, a lot of projects to do. If any one still has this blog on their Google Reader, or happens to check in here randomly (Ade? You out there?), I hope you enjoyed the new updates.