Lego Land

Glossing Over the Finish Line

2010-01-20T10:52:00.000-08:00

We're finished....sort of. I've been saying that we're finished with the bathroom for about a month now, so why do we keep working on it? There are all those little things - touchups, caulking, decorating, installing an actual shower door...that we still have to finish up, but the "big" stuff, the stuff that kept me up at night worrying for almost a year, is finished. I'm so excited to put up our "after" pictures that I'm going to gloss over posting anything about all of the work that we did between installing the subfloor and reaching the end result, because really, I'm guessing that most people are uninterested in hearing about the trials and tribulations of tiling an intricate floor pattern and a shower enclosure for 5 months straight.

The end result isn't perfect. It never is. As a homeowner and remodeler, you notice every single paint drip, every tile that's just slightly offset, every grout line that could be just a little cleaner. Still, the (almost) finished product is incredible, and I love every inch of it. I'll post true "after" pictures after the shower enclosure has been installed, but in the meantime, here are some photos from the end of December:

"New" vanity - really an English washstand that Jasun coated in six layers of marine varnish. It definitely stands out as the bathroom's showpiece

Lights on! The stained-glass window acts as a door for the homemade recessed cabinet

Look! We have shower handles! And a faucet! What will they think of next?!

Looking in from the hallway

Hidden Rooms

2009-11-18T11:03:00.000-08:00

You may have noticed the man-sized holes in some of the previous post's pictures. We cut those holes in between the studs so that we could add some built-in shelving and storage to the bathroom (since we'd removed the closet). Imagine our surprise when we poked our flashlight into the new holes and discovered...more storage!

We should have realized that the bathroom and its adjacent bedroom would hide another kneewall storage area, but since it's the only kneewall section in the house without a door, we never really thought about its existence. We definitely plan on finishing this space off and using it for more storage once we start work on the 2nd bedroom upstairs, but in the meantime, we settled for installing about 100 layers of insulation in it.

News Flash: Backer Board Crushes Sara

2009-11-18T10:59:00.001-08:00

Yes, that's me under there, looking like a paint-splattered Wicked Witch of the East, crushed by (what else?) a house. I was trying to steer the supply lines and drain pipe through the backerboard cutouts when Jasun couldn't contain himself any longer and went to go grab the camera. I was laughing too hard to yell at him properly.

We Have a Floor!

2009-11-18T10:03:00.000-08:00

Like any home project, the concepts behind installing subfloor and backerboard are easy:

1) Draw templates for the plumbing drain and supply lines. (Hint: Try not to screw your subfloor into any PVC or copper piping. This will cause leakage problems and the ceiling below will yell at you.)

2) Layout floor so that the long section of each panel is perpendicular to the joists.

3) The ends of all panels must be centered on a joist.

4) Stagger the placement of boards to avoid four corners meeting (also avoid 3 corners meeting, if possible).

5) Create cutouts in the flooring for the plumbing drain and supply lines.

6) Using cement-coated screws, secure the subfloor to the joists. See Hint 1.

7) Repeat steps 2-5 for the concrete backerboard, laying long edge of backerboard perpendicular to long edge of subfloor.

8) Mix thinset (NOT mastic) to required consistency (creamy like peanut butter), and apply to subfloor with float, working in sections.

9) Place backerboard over thinset, tamp down gently, and screw to subfloor at 6-10 inch intervals. Again, see Hint 1.

And like any home project, the details (lugging subfloor and backerboard pieces up and down a tiny winding staircase 100 times to make cuts on the workhorses out front) are what make the work difficult. Still, Jasun and I had a pretty good time installing the bathroom floor. I mean, at the time, it felt like the first tangible progress that we'd made in weeks!

Here are some pictures showing the installed subfloor. In retrospect it's hilarious to me that we thought this looked PHENOMENAL. We were so excited to have an actual floor in the bathroom again. No wonder our friends looked at us like we were crazy when we showed them the bathroom and expected them to ooh and ah over the floor.

A New Plan for an Old Layout

2009-11-13T10:56:00.000-08:00

1970's linoleum removed - Check
Closet from previous 1970-ish remodel demolished - Check
Horrific white and gold-speckled vanity trashed - Check
Cheap gold light fixtures disconnected and recycled - Check
Almost pristine clawfoot tub moved to upstairs - Check.
Built-in bathtub removed & recycled - Check

And so it went - the list that formed a constant refrain in my head through most of March and April, 2009. Up until the bathtub switch, Jasun and I had intentionally decided not to talk about the bathroom layout, since neither of us knew how much useable space we truly had to work with until the closet, wall bump-outs, and built-in tub had been removed. Once all of those items were completed, however, we immediately saw that we had a problem: slanted ceilings. To attach a shower to a clawfoot tub, you need a ceiling with enough clearance to accomodate the shower riser, like this:

Our bathroom walls, however, only have 4-4.5 ft of vertical height before they begin to slant along the roofline. Now, we could have fashioned something similar to this system, which would have probably looked awkward, or we could have placed the clawfoot tub along the windows of the bathroom, which would have meant that the exposed piping would have been near the toilet, which would have looked even more awkward. In the end, we decided that we could squeeze in a custom-poured separate shower AND the clawfoot tub if we were creative with the space - and if we realized that we would never be able to magically transform a 6x8 foot room into the palatial master suite that you always see in magazines. What type of old houses do those people live in, anyway? Old houses with major additions on the back, I'm guessing!

This new layout meant that we would have to move some plumbing, which meant tearing up the floor of the bathroom:

I have to say, the bathroom (and the entire upstairs) smelled A LOT better after we got rid of that subfloor!

We had a few interesting Restoration Archaeology moments after removing the subfloor. First, we discovered that the downstairs bathroom, which sits right underneath the upstairs bathroom, doesn't just have one wall covered in wire mesh concrete, but is completely encased in concrete along 3 of its walls. We could actually see the inner concrete wall structures through some of the upstairs bathroom joists. If there's ever a tornado, I'm confident that we really will be completely safe in the downstairs bathtub. Second, Jasun and I had a blast pawing through some of the "trash" left behind by previous work crews/owners who had remodeled the bathroom before us. Along with the usual detritus that you might find on a work site (nails, bits of insulation, a few cigarettes), we discovered a ton of what looked like hand-shredded newspaper stuffed around the toilet stack pipe. After sifting through the paper, we discovered a few things:

1) The newspapers were Centre Daily Times, Wall Street Journal, and Charleroi issues from the 1930s. (We know that the original owners were from the Charleroi, PA area.)

2) The shredded pages from at least two medical journals were included with the jumble of newspaper pieces. (Remember that one of the original owners of our house was a doctor, Charles Dietterich?)

Nevermind the fact that we'd found all of this paper stuffed around a toilet stack; I was excited! I put on some gloves and started examining each piece in the rubble to see if I could put together anymore dates or articles. Most of the paper bits were too small to read more than a scattered word or disjointed phrase, but the few pieces that were large enough to meld together formed an obituary of the Rev. James Eugene Dietterich, Charles Dietterich's father. The first owners of our house were James Eugene and Margaret Dietterich, Charles' parents, who moved to State College after James became ill in the early 30's. According to differing obituaries, both James and Margaret died in the house (at separate times, of natural caueses). In fact, Margaret passed away on October 31st, Halloween! (I am definitely going to enjoy scaring the stuffings out of my children someday with that story.)

Maybe because Jas and I were mildly uncomfortable with the idea of two people having died in the house that we were living in, Margaret Dietterich's "ghost" became a source of humor for us early in the renovation process. Whenever the old house creaked or we felt a noticeable draft that would open and close doors, we would greet "Margaret". I knew that my imagination had gotten the better of me when, in early February of last year, the door to our bedroom opened of its own accord and Jasun said cheerily, "Come in, Margaret!" at which point I slapped him on the arm and chastised, "Don't INVITE her in!" As Jasun dissolved into laughter, I realized that I was being an idiot...and maybe we should cut out the Margaret references for a little while.

Anyway, back to the shredded paper: how did it get there? The most obvious answer is that a subsequent homeowner found some old medical journals and newspapers lying in the knee-wall storage closet near the bathroom and tore them up to use as quick insulation around the toilet stack. I find it interesting that the only shreddings large enough to be decipherable were connected to James Dietterich's obituary, but I don't think that I can draw any meaningful conclusions from it.

Bathtub Switch

2009-11-10T12:59:00.000-08:00

The original Sears plans for our house describe what is now the master bathroom as a "play room," probably because it didn't originally have a closet, and therefore couldn't be classified as a bedroom. However, the Sears Catalogue goes on to say that the owner had the option of turning the room into a bathroom, and due to the existence of our faux subway tile (which also appears in the kitchen and is, I think, original to the house), I'm fairly certain that the Dietterichs took advantage of this option. If we then assume (again, from the existence of the faux subway tile on all four bathroom walls) that the room had neither a closet nor hidden plumbing, then it's a safe assumption that the master bathroom originally boasted a clawfoot tub. Although built-in bathtubs were definitely available (and in vogue) by the early 30's, the excellent condition of the plaster subway tile along the walls (ie. no water damage) and some conversations with other Sears homeowners in the neighborhood confirmed my suspicion since a few of them had removed clawfoot bathtubs from their upper bathrooms.

Fortunately for us, we have friends who are restoring an amazing Victorian mansion in Sellersville and offered to give us their old clawfoot tub free of charge. So now we had a very weighty task ahead of us: get one massive, built-in cast iron tub down a narrown flight of stairs and get another massive, clawfoot cast iron tub up the same narrow stairway. We called every big, strong man we knew.

We bribed them with food.
We bribed them with beer.

They came.
They saw.
They kicked butt moving those tubs:

Restoration Archaeology

2009-11-10T12:09:00.000-08:00

I always say that restoration is the opposite of remodeling. When you remodel a room, it takes 1 day to rip the existing structure apart and the rest of the time to build it back up. When you restore a room, you spend 80% of the time meticulously removing decades of previous "upgrades" and 20% of the time actually building the room back to a useable state. This time discrepancy is one of the reasons restoring anything can be so frustrating. It seems like you're never at the point where you're actually creating anything. Still, restoration can be fun for other reasons - like the thrill of Restoration Archaeology.

What is Restoration Archaeology, you ask? Why, it's the act of meticulously peeling away layers of previous, ill-advised remodels to reveal the original house underneath, of course. For example, our master bathroom had a bathtub/shower and a closet recessed into the eaves of the roof:

The first thing you should notice about this picture, fellow Restoration Archaeologists, is the doorknob. It's not original to the house. You can't see it from the picture, but the hinges also weren't original ball-tip hinges. Hmmm...were the built-in tub and closet added at a later date, perhaps? Curious, I crawled into the closet one day, removed the plumbing access panel to the bathtub, and shown a flashlight into the surrounding space. Immediately, I could see that the walls surrounding the tub were "fake" walls that had been built out, away from the true wall connecting the bathroom to the adjacent bedroom. Along those walls, amazingly, were perfectly preserved "faux" subway tiles, exactly matching the tiles that extended around the visible part of the room. According to Jane Powell's book, Bungalow Bathrooms, faux subway tiles were quite popular in the 20's and 30's. People would score their plaster to look like subway tile and then paint the plaster in a gloss finish to mimic the real thing. It was a way to get the tile "look" without the expense!

Of course, we had to keep this nod to history in our "new" bathroom, so Jasun took extreme pains to restore the plaster tile. The fake wall built-outs and the plastic 70's wall-board, on the other hand, had to go:

Wow! Look at that blue! Original 1930s? 40s? 50s? It was an even more vibrant color up close! Incidentally, Jasun's heart sank when we he saw all of the damage that the wall-board glue had left on the plaster. He spent endless hours sanding glue residue, plastering, sanding, replastering, and sanding again until he was happy with the finished product - smooth, beautiful walls.

Hell Starts Here

2009-11-10T11:40:00.000-08:00

When we first removed the toilet in the master bathroom to reveal a sodden stack surrounded by rotting floorboards, Jasun relayed a story that only men in this town would know:

Apparently, in the men's bathroom at Zeno's, there is a hole in the floor near one of the urinals that has been there ever since Jas was in college. (I won't say how long ago that was.) Next to the hole to nowhere, someone scribbled "Hell Starts Here," and the etching has remained despite numerous white-washings of all of the other grafitti.

It was meant as a funny joke. We laughed about it as we donned masks and gloves, as we began to rip away linoleum that probably had asbestos on it and revealed more of the subfloor. Oh, the irony

As I look back on all of the photos that we've taken, detailing our journey through this bathroom remodel, I can't believe that we're almost finished, that it took as long as it did, that everything looks so different. Did we once really have a bathroom that putrid pink color? Did we really put up with showering and bathing in a tub with plastic walls from 1972 that never seemed to come clean no matter how hard we scrubbed? Just looking at some of these pictures is the equivalent of watching a horror movie for me: "Hell Starts Here: Remodeling a 1930 Bathroom."

Master Bathroom: Start to Finish (Whenever That Is)

2009-08-04T21:01:00.000-07:00

It started with the toilet. I stepped into our master bathroom to see Jasun scrutinizing the lineoleum, which had been discolored since we’d moved in, but had recently begun to boast an even browner, worrisome hue.

“I think we have to replace the wax ring on the toilet. It looks like there might be some leaking.”

Ew. It was at this point that Irrational Sara piped up and offered the suggestion that, instead of going through the hassle of replacing a wax ring (which, in retrospect, takes about an hour and isn’t at all difficult), why didn’t we just start the bathroom demolition that very second? Irrational Jasun, as Irrational Sara’s partner in crime and thus always more than happy to play along, agreed with a big smile. Demo! Yay! Fun!

And so it began….in January? December of last year? November? I honestly can’t remember anymore. Was there once a time when I didn’t have to stumble downstairs to shower in the morning, hoping all the while that I remembered to close the 1st floor blinds the night before? Was there a moment when there weren’t man-sized holes in our upstairs bathroom walls? Was I ever able to easily find all of my morning toiletries instead of rummaging through a bottomless basket strategically placed next to the downstairs pedestal sink? If such a time ever did exist, I can’t say that I recall it with much clarity.

Thankfully, lost also is the memory of what our master bathroom used to look like:
Look good? Love that pepto bismol pink? This picture is misleading. The reality was much much worse. The picture doesn’t capture the moldy growths that couldn’t be wiped off but instead appeared to be incubating inside the paint. It doesn’t convey the smell of congealing baby diapers that was either embedded in the very fabric of the room or else the previous owners stuffed a dirty nugget underneath of the floorboards. The image doesn’t zoom in on the battered vintage 70’s vinyl floor and matching melamine vanity, or the oh-so-chic pebbled plastic wallboard tub surround. Prior to demolition, Jasun wouldn’t even enter the master bathroom and would often wonder incredulously how I could stand to take a shower in there.

Bring in the sledgehammers!

The master bathroom is, by far, our biggest project. With plumbing, electrical, tiling, floor installation, some minor carpentry, and paint, we knew it would tax our skills, and it has! We’re about a month or two away now from completion, but to catch you up, I plan to post a few pictures each week describing the different phases of remodeling. As a teaser, here’s what the bathroom looks like today:

Bathroom Floor (not quite finished, and showing dirt from thinset dust)

Camera Correction

2009-05-26T17:34:00.001-07:00

After looking at the last "Before and After" post, I was convinced that I needed to get a new camera to replace my 5-year-old digital model. Since this was my first foray into the digital world, I figured that the technology must have been getting old. Maybe the images appeared so grainy because I'm now used to seeing the crisp photos of the swanky new cameras? Still, since megapixel number shouldn't degrade image quality unless you're enlarging images, I couldn't figure out why my little 5MP was creating photos that looked like Seurat paintings. Google to the rescue! Apparently, the "auto" setting on my Canon Powershot has a tendency to set the ISO ridiculously high the second it thinks that it's in a low-light situation, which tends to saturate the image too much and creates the grainy effect. As a test, I took a few more shots of the family room and dining room with the ISO manually set to 100, and viola, much clearer images. These photos capture the true color of the family room and dining room better than the previous post did. Enjoy!

Lego Land Year In Review: 2008

2009-04-29T11:02:00.000-07:00

When I started this website a year ago, I envisioned weekly posts, hopefully informative and funny, offering a glimpse into our sawdust-splattered lives, the restoration, and perhaps a little architectural design history thrown in for good measure. My goal was to bring our family and friends along for the ride, maybe even help other renovators tackle similar problems. I’m a huge fan of Heather’s blog, 1912 Bungalow, and I hoped (naively) for something equally entertaining. One year later, I have posted...6 times...so I think we can safely assume that this website will never reach its intended potential. That said, Jasun and I have been working instead of posting, so I offer to our readers, as a consolation prize for being so patient, the Lego Land Year In Review: 2008...

Family Room : Sept 2007-March 2008

That’s right! It took us 6 MONTHS to complete the family room (see the first post, The Rule of Three). To be fair, we were simultaneously working on the master bedroom during this time, but looking back, the duration seems excessive. Still, one mantel, 4 windows, and what seemed like miles of baseboard and door trim is a lot of wood to strip and sand, especially when you do it multiple times. I’m fond of telling Jasun that, in reality, it didn’t take us 6 months to finish the family room; it took us 2 months to finish it three times. I’m happy to say that now, after endless hours pondering rugs, photos, paintings, sconces, lamps, and other miscellaneous decorative “finishing touches” the family room is officially complete…as in, I don’t plan on changing anything in it for at least, say, another month.

Before & After: Lattice Window in the Family Room. (And it now OPENS, too!)

Before & After: Front Door in the Family Room. It's difficult to see from the picture, but the door trim's wood grain creates a deliberate tiger stripe "V" at the top of the door frame's arch. A really neat discovery!

Before & After: Family Room

Dining Room: June 2008 – December 2008

It didn’t take us 7 months to finish the dining room….did it? There was definitely some down time in there when our focus was on other projects and rooms, at least I hope so! Wow. 7 months! We had quite a few problems with the dining room stain, which I won’t go into here. Suffice it to say that weather conditions should be perfect when you’re applying a cheap stain like Minwax products, something we weren’t aware of until suffering a few pitfalls. We didn’t have to re-sand the trim like we did in the family room, but we did have to use a hairdryer several times to perform a few “emergency fixes” to the stain.

The Arts & Crafts cabinet in the corner is actually a drop-front desk. The floor-model radio actually works, and we’ve managed to get stations from France on a clear night. The chandelier is from 1910, although I’m not sure if the glass if original.

Before & After: Dining Room

Guest Bedroom: Aug 2008 – Nov 2008

2008 was a busy football season. During October alone, I think we had 3 visitors in 4 weeks! A comfortable guest bedroom quickly became a high priority. Unfortunately for our 2008 guests, I think most of them slept in a half-finished room with a platform Ikea bedframe and mattress. At one point, my brother-in-law and his wife slept there without the added “amenity” of a door! (We were the equivalent of a crappy road-side motel where things like “blinds” and “cable TV” were luxury perks.) In preparation for the 2009 football season, the guest bedroom is now open for visitors. We repaired the broken glass in the windows, stripped the paint so that they actually open, and painted all the trim in an authentic satin milk paint from Heritage Village called “pearwood”. The doors (which are now a part of the room instead of being a bonus) were stripped, sanded, and stained, and I’m happy to say that they now actually close (and lock!) without being forced. We also thought it might be neat for our guests to get a sense of history while staying with us, so the walls are decorated with the original ads for the house from the 1930 Sears Honor Bilt Modern Homes Catalog that boast “Easy Payments of $45 to $65 a month!” If only…..

Before & After: Guest Bedroom

Master Bedroom: Nov 2007-Feb 2008

Inspiration for our master bedroom design came from an Arts & Crafts design book and a 1920’s magazine photo featured in one of Heather’s meticulously researched 1912 Bungalow postings:

Arts & Crafts 1920's Magazine Home Decor Ad

The image actually depicts a child’s room, but we liked the whimsical color combination so much that Jas and I decided to apply it to our bedroom:

True to my indecisive nature, I applied no fewer than 12 different green paint samples to the dresser drawers before finding the appropriate color. We won’t mention the fact that I had already painted the trim accents with a tan-ish green and consequently had to paint all the accents twice. (I also made Jas repaint the bedroom walls twice because the first cream color had a surprising blue-ish undertone, for which I blame the energy-saving light bulbs....are you beginning to understand why it takes us so long to do everything?)

Aside from the fact that we need to strip and re-stain the wood doors so that they match the woodwork in the rest of the house and also need to hang up some more artwork, the master bedroom is officially finished. Someday, I’d love to open up the ceiling to expose the roof beams and maybe add a south-facing window with leaded glass to catch the morning sun. Check back in another decade…or two….or maybe when we win the lottery (which would be a miracle since we don’t buy tickets.)

Before & After: Master Bedroom

All Those Little Things: 2008

You’ll notice that there appears to be a gap in our dates where we didn’t do anything in April or May of last year. I swear that we were working. It doesn’t seem like we ever have free time or moments when we’re not doing some type of project, so chances are good that those months were spent decorating, performing finishing touches on various rooms, and resolving some of the house’s minor idiosyncracies that drove us nuts but contribute to a liveable home once they’re resolved. A smattering of examples:

Mailbox - The $4.99 Walmart mailbox that was affixed to the front our home was destroying its Tudor destiny, as far as I was concerned. Unfortunately, handmade Arts & Craft forged iron mailboxes are apparently traded as collateral for your firstborn child on the black market. We got lucky and scored a hammered iron beauty at an antique store in Winchester for something like $20. All it needed was a good cleaning. Now I just have to teach the postman to open it from the front instead of shoving all of our mail in the slotted top. (Picture Coming!)

Basement demo: I can’t attach a picture for this one, because we were so horrified by the basement “finished room” that we were afraid it would break the camera (and I didn’t even want to stand in there long enough to snap a photo for fear of the man-eating bacteria and huge spiders that call that area their home.) This room, which we have dubbed, simply, “the scary room”, is where the previous owners apparently chained their children when they were being punished. It boasted rotting carpet, 70’s faux wood paneling on both the walls and the ceiling, and it stunk so badly that its stench was like a living thing that would grab hold of your nostrils and then turn them inside out. When the humidity of the 2008 summer increased the stink to such a fever pitch that it started permeating through the rest of the basement, it was time to do something, so Jas and I donned our HEPA masks, work gloves, and goggles, and started tearing disintegrating carpet out to the curb. It wasn’t officially on the list of short-term renovation projects, but it’s a great outlet for frustration: pure demolition! At present, the “scary room” has almost been cleared, and the stench has been greatly reduced. Some masonry sealant and several heavy coats of primer should knock out the rest of it.

Fixed Leaky Faucets - Kitchen & Bathroom: There’s nothing quite like renovating an older house where progress is agonizingly slow and things go wrong on a daily basis. Add to that stress, however, low-grade faucets from a shoddy brand that plumbers haven’t even heard of breaking and pouring water straight through your floor joists and into your basement, and you have a classic scene from The Money Pit.

Cons: Cost of a plumber for one hour of work in State College, where all of the contractors drive Lexuses.

Pros: Plumber kindly teaches you how to sweat pipes, ensuring that you can do this sort of thing by yourself the next time….which comes in handy 2 weeks later when the other faucet breaks.

Rewired Phone & Internet Lines: This project was completely Jasun’s, and is one of the great benefits of having an IT guy in the house. We have Verizon as our internet provider, and while I can’t complain about their service, the router that they gave us cuts out periodically, requiring a manual reboot. Since all of the phone lines coming into the house are located in the “scary room” (see above), every time the internet went out, we had to bolster our courage and head down there to flip the router switch a few times. I kept thinking, “This is ridiculous. We have this beautiful telephone cubby in our hallway that would be a perfect storage area for the router.” So when we found a reproduction candlestick rotary dial telephone, Jas had the motivation he needed to rewire the phone and internet lines to route through the telephone cubby. Now if the internet cuts out, we just walk down the hall, open the cubby door, and flip a switch. Beautiful.

Added a Fan to the Downstairs Bathroom: This project was notable for two reasons:

1. Jasun’s brother, Jeff, came to help us install the ducting and cut the hole for the fan, and

2. We found out that our entire downstairs bathroom is essentially made of concrete spread onto wire mesh backing.

That’s right! The entire house could be carried away by a tornado, but that bathroom (and now probably the fan) will be there for eternity.

General maintenance: Then of course, there are all those other things that you have to do for a home even when you’re NOT restoring it: the general maintenance stuff, like caulking wet areas, cleaning out gutters, mowing the lawn, gardening, weatherstripping, repairing window screens. The list goes on and on, but I'm glad that I finally got these pictures posted! Seeing the before and after shots makes me feel as if we've actually accomplished something in the last year and a half!

Why Arts & Crafts?

2009-03-04T12:38:00.000-08:00

       As the drunk kids celebrating "State" Patty's Day stumbled by our house last weekend, I realized that it's almost Spring! Time to dust off the winter doldrums and start posting again! In preparation for a Year In Review that I've been working on, I thought I'd provide a little background about our “restoration” style here at Lego Land:

       I’ve mentioned in previous posts that we are restoring this house, by which I mean that we are repairing windows and woodwork, restoring original tile, replacing modern fixtures with original antiques, and when feasible, using paint and stain colors that would have been appropriate for a 1930 house. However, all this talk about restoration is a little misleading, because the Arts & Crafts style, which was all the rage in the 1900s through the early 20’s, had started waning in popularity by 1930. By the early 30’s, designers had adopted a Colonial Revival style, and home magazines were urging their readers to paint their “dark and old-fashioned” Stickley furniture and wood trim, so our Arts & Crafts style would have been considered dated by 1930. So why, you might ask, did we choose to decorate A&C?

       Even though Jasun and I are sticklers for historical accuracy (me perhaps more than Jasun), we’re also both proponents of the idea that a house’s interior design should match its exterior. There’s nothing more jarring than entering a colonial style house with ultra-modern furnishings, or entering a contemporary home with country furniture and stencils everywhere. Our home is a Tudor Revival bungalow, and the clean lines, emphasis on handcrafted workmanship, and simplicity of the Arts & Crafts movement appealed to us and complemented our home’s faux-beamed exterior. So before we performed any historical research or stripped our first layer of paint, Jasun and I knew that we wanted to decorate the house in an Arts & Crafts style.

       From a little investigative work, however, we do know that our wood trim was originally stained in the living room and dining rooms, and probably the hallways too, although the trim was painted in the bedrooms, kitchen, and bathrooms. This model would have been consistent with Arts & Crafts design, which stipulated that gathering areas such as the dining room and family room would have a warmer feel, with walls painted in olives, yellows, or other muted colors to highlight the richly-stained woodwork. Personal areas, such as bedrooms, however, were almost always brighter, with walls painted in cream, white, or wall-papered, and trim painted in whatever color suited the owner.

       This picture from an Aladdin Homes catalogue shows colors popular at the time.
There's something earthy and elemental about these colors, and I love the warmth that they project. In retrospect, I think that we probably should have gone with one of the lighter shades of yellow for the family room and dining room to make the rooms just a little brighter. However, our version does make you feel as if you're enveloped in a burning ember during the grey Pennsylvania winter. We call it "cozy."

A New Record!

2008-10-24T07:07:00.000-07:00

There are moments when I love this town. Of course I like living here, otherwise we wouldn’t have moved to State College. I still get energized by that odd blend of electricity and beer that spices the air when the students come back in the Fall. I get a kick out of the buzz of downtown so close by, and the fact that Jasun and I can walk to a restaurant or an array of on-campus activities at a moment’s notice. But instances when my heart swells with love for this town like it’s my best friend or family member are more rare, so I tend to stop and appreciate them when they occur. And like a friend or family member, State College is most precious to me when it reveals a characteristic of itself that is unique, something that I believe (truthfully or not) to only be possible here in Happy Valley. I had a moment like that last night.

First, let me say that I am not proud of what I am about to admit: I threw out an antique that had been given to Jasun and I by a friend (who will remain nameless for this story, because hey, it could be any of you!). It broke my heart to do it, because this item was beautiful, and fit perfectly in our home, and I loved it, but….it stank. It smelled so badly that the stench had started to attach itself to the walls and other furniture items and was slowly, stealthily creeping throughout the rest of the house. As Jasun colorfully put it, the antique “smelled like an old dead man’s breath.” When I realized last night that the stench had invaded the family room three rooms away, it was the last straw; the thing had to go.

It took about 5 minutes to haul the Offender out to the curb, attach a “Free” sign to it, and turn on the porch light so passersby could see the treasure in their midst. It took approximately 6 minutes for me to change out of my work clothes and come back downstairs. Passing by the dining room bank of windows on my way to the kitchen, I glanced outside to see – nothing! No more antique! Gone! It had taken a total of 6 minutes for someone to come by, claim it, and haul it off! A new record! You’ve got to love a town filled with students and locals who are that efficient at Curbside Shopping.

The Family Room Rug Saga

2008-09-23T17:35:00.000-07:00

Rug 1 - The rug we moved in with, too worn-looking and scratchy.

Rug 2 - Perfectly matched our color scheme, but was too small and too expensive in a larger size.

Rug 3 - Matched our color scheme, but was way too large, making it look like our entire family room was carpeted.

Rug 4 - Looked completely different from the picture in both the catalog and online, so much so that the company agreed to refund us 100% plus return shipping costs.

Rug 5 - Pictured in the first set of images below. Although it was more "dusky rose" than it was "rusty orange," it does look good in the room and brings out some of the orange tones in the lighting. Still, the colors are a little more washed-out than what I had originally envisioned for the room, so I have reservations about this rug even though it's steadily growing on me.

Rug 6 - The next set of pictures and my last ditch effort to get the color combination in the room "just right". I love this rug, but does it make the room too dark? Even though it includes every single color in the room, I just don't know which one to choose!

Jasun is equally indecisive, so HELP!!! The Legos need some assistance! Give us some suggestions, and select your choice in the poll!!!!

A Promise To Post

2008-05-07T11:15:00.000-07:00

Update

Our progress since the end of January has been exciting, but my posting frequency has been abysmal. My apologies - mainly to Michael, who continues to check this website for pictures. In that vein, below is a teaser photo of the family room bank of windows, fully stripped and glowing in all of their richly-stained glory.

I've been waiting to update until I can post photos of the family room COMPLETELY finished, with pictures on the walls, crown moulding holes puttied, and the new sash hardware adorning the lattice window, but since it might be another 3 weeks until all of those little details signify the Finish Line, I'm going to switch gears and start updating this website more frequently to reflect my original intention, which was not only to keep our friends and family aware of our progress on the restoration, but also to provide some insight into the history of our house and the architectural and decorating style of the time period during which it was built. As the King said in Alice in Wonder Land, "Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end: then stop." Since I've failed to abide by this sage advice so far, let me remedy that infraction now with a little intro:

Begin at the Beginning

After the sales contract on our house was accepted by the Sellers Who Shall Not Be Named, I had 4 months' worth of idle time to twiddle my thumbs, which were itching to peel back the layers of history in the house and unearth all of the wonders that we've found since moving in (and we HAVE found wonders, which I'll do a better job of documenting in future). Anyway, I was bemused beyond measure that we had landed a stone house in the boro with some real history. How many stories had those stones witnessed since their first placement in 1930? Fortunately for me, Centre County is a friendly community in which people are actually willing to personally assist you when you call the county court house requesting old deed records, and the records are amazingly detailed, including both the names of the sellers and buyers, as well as a lat/lon description of the property and a summary of the previous sale. It became a scavenger hunt, trailing the ownership of the house back through the years, and once I'd discovered the home's lineage, I was more interested than ever to find out about the people who lived here. Who were they? What did they do? Why did they move here and why did they leave? Sometimes the answers were predictable, easy, like the families (4 of them) where a father either attended graduate school or worked as a professor at Penn State and left when new prospects arose in other locales. Other stories, like that of the original owner, Dr. Charles Dietterich, were more murky. Why did Dr. Dietterich have to buy back his own house from the State College authorities in a sheriff sale? Why did his 1941 draft card list Jessie Dietterich, his wife, as his primary contact but a newspaper article describing a car accident decades later lists his wife as Clara (Owens) Aitcheson, who lived right down the street from him on Foster Avenue around that same time period? An intra-neighborhood affair, perhaps, or just a third marriage? And why does a 1928 Mathematics Society bulletin list 526 E. Foster Avenue as the primary address of Clara's parents, Drs. Frederick and Helen Owens, when the original deed for our house is dated 1930, and the lat/lon descriptions on all subsequent property deeds clearly indicate that our house has retained its original address?

A few trips to the local county archives, a subscription to the Centre County records database, and some research with the Special Collections staff at the Penn State library helped me unearth the answers to a few of these questions, but some are still hanging in the ether, waiting to be answered when I find the time to follow-up on leads that I've gathered. In the meantime, I'll devote the next few posts to weaving together the past of our house based on newspaper articles, draft cards, yearbook photos, deeds, obituaries, and lucky internet searches.

Progress!!!

2008-01-21T14:02:00.000-08:00

The sanding in the family room is DONE!!! FINISHED! COMPLETE!

WOOHOO!!!

AND....the painting in the master bedroom is finished as well! Touch-ups commenced tonight and, if all goes well, we might actually be sleeping in our new bed before the end of January! WOW!

(I've gotten so used to sleeping on a mattress on the floor that sleeping in anything higher than 4 inches above the ground seems daring, radical even!)

Speaking of the master bedroom.....

While stripping the windows, I called out my discoveries to Jasun as each layer of history was peeled back: "Red! This trim was painted a bright red before the white high gloss latex!" Then, "Ooooh, look at this olive green. Wow, that's pretty, almost the same shade as the color we were thinking of putting in here." And finally, the Reveal: "Oh my gosh! Jas, come look at this! This is the original paint color! It's the exact same shade as the paint color that we're using!! COOL!"

That's right! Completely by accident, we are painting the master bedroom trim the exact same shade that it was painted by the original owners sometime in the '30s. How's THAT for restoration?

Doing it Right vs. Doing it FAST

2008-01-12T13:10:00.000-08:00

"I hate this house!"

The words hit me like a physical blow, and I felt myself stagger backwards a little under the force of them. I knew that Jas was frustrated, knew that those words had been germinating for several weeks now, lodged just inside his throat, but how could he say them? Our ship had officially entered Dangerous Waters, and I had a mutiny on my hands.

"Jas, I know you're frustrated. Seriously, I know. I'm frustrated too. This has taken a lot longer than we thought, but we signed on for this. This is what we wanted...together, right?

"Well, I guess not."

So final, those words. What could I say to that? This moment would pass, just as all of the others had. We had been doing this back-and-forth for months now. One of us would get so frustrated that we'd throw up our hands and stomp into the makeshift family room in the back of the house, desperate for a break, convinced that the dust and clutter and construction would never end. The other person's job at moments like that, whether they truly believed it or not, was to say an encouraging word, provide a hug, and then continue working, with the intention of giving the other person hope that, someday, this too would pass. Today was simply Jasun's turn to be The Frustrated One and my turn to be The Encouraging One....except that he'd said the banned phrase: "I hate this house." Ouch.

"I'm tired of camping on our mattress in the spare bedroom!" he continued. "It takes me an extra 15 minutes to get ready in the morning because my clothes are in piles on the floors of two different rooms! There is dust everywhere, and I'm sick of it!"

"But you like camping!" I said, at a loss to come up with anything better. No smile met my attempt at humor. "Go downstairs," I said, softly but firmly. "Take a break. I'll take care of this."

The final straw that had released this maelstrom was the question of the windows in the master bedroom. While I've been sanding my heart out downstairs in the family room, Jas has been painting the master bedroom. Sounds easy, yes? Except that we've chosen a scheme that requires him to paint all of the trim in the room, sometimes in two different colors, and the room has a lot of trim: baseboards, closets, bookcases, a large built-in dresser, and two very old wooden windows. During the summer, the wood in the windows expands just enough that we can barely force the windows open due to several decades' worth of caked paint globules that surround the stops. Since we're restoring this house, I wanted to strip the excess paint from the stops only, which requires taking out the windows, stripping the stops, and then painting the windows and the stops separately. This process would take longer, but ensure free-sliding windows, and a more professional-looking paint job. Jas, on the other hand, was torn. I could see the internal struggle in his face as we talked about the windows before his outburst. Of course he wanted to do this right and he wanted everything to look good, but he also just wanted a bedroom to sleep in where he didn't feel as if he was living like a vagabond. He knew the right course of action. It was just a matter of doing it, and his brain was screaming at him, "I don't want to do that! That's going to take a long time!"

(Master Bedroom "Before" Picture - pretty room, but a little cave-like, don't you think?)

We (well, I) ended up stripping the window stops, and two hours later we were laughing and joking as I scraped paint while Jasun primed and painted the windows. Inevitably, the frustration (for both of us) will continue until we finish at least one room, but we'll have the satisfaction of knowing that we took longer to do things right instead of doing things fast.

The Rule of Three

2007-12-20T12:58:00.000-08:00

Our friend Michael made it sound like we had done something right instead of doing something monumentally stupid: "Of course you have to do it again! You haven't done it three times yet. It's the Rule of Three in action! Come on, Sara, you know this!"

Indeed.

For three months, we had stripped paint from the woodwork in our family room. We had gone to bed with the subtle perfume of toxic chemicals and walked on floors coated in fine layers of lead dust. Four weeks ago, we had sat around a can of stain like children awaiting Santa Claus. We took pictures of the paint can. We oohed and ahhed. We passed the can back and forth like we were sharing a particularly tasty dessert. Finally, the anticipation had grown too much for us to contain ourselves any longer:

IT WAS TIME TO STAIN!!!!!

We careened ahead like a kindergartener on their very first day of school: board the bus, heart thumping wildly, full of anticipation; don't look back. "Oh! It's so beautiful!" I squealed as Jasun and I applied the stain to the lattice window. "Look! It glows!"

"Ok, now what?" Jasun asked, lighthearted, so proud of the fact that we'd just slopped some stain on our newly-bare wood trim.

"Now we wait a few minutes, and then we wipe off the excess," I stated, still beaming, reading the can. "This is easy!" I crowed.

Pure hubris. Damn the gods and their vengeful natures!

5 minutes passed, and we took our rags in hand, wiping excess stain in long, even strokes, and then it happened - that curling knot of worry started to form in my stomach as I watched the new wood color appear. My smile faltered. My heart sank. The trim looked like we had just washed it in river muck.

"It's the wrong color," I whispered, hoping that if I said it softly enough, it would be less true.

"No!" Jasun refused to see the obvious. Discussions ensued: heated, defeated, and finally, as we sat on the floor of our empty family room, literally staring at the stained window, willing the color to be correct...resigned. The lattice window would have to re-sanded to remove the stain that we had just applied.

Mistake #1: Test EVERYTHING before you apply it to anything more than a 3 inch square.

So we tested, and tested, and tested again. We made so many different stain concoctions that we had to re-sand a strip of baseboard just to remove all of our "options." Finally, we had a color that we loved: a rich chestnut-style brown with just a hint of red and a few gold flecks. The lattice window had been re-sanded. We were ready to go.

Take 2:
This time, assured that we had the right color, we stained all of the trim in the room....and noticed something odd as the stain dried. It looked...blotchy, uneven, like trim that had developed a bad rash. What was going on? We consulted the can:
Use wood conditioner prior to staining if you have a soft wood like pine, fir, or ash. You do not need to use a wood conditioner on hard woods like oak.

Ok, well great! We had nothing to worry about, right? We, after all, had white oak trim. It was impossible to dent the wood with our nails, so it must be a hardwood like oak, right? RIGHT?

WRONG! After consulting a professor who specializes in wood identification, we found out that we have....antique heart pine, which is only 5% softer than oak, but...still pine.

The blotchy effect was not going to go away. The pine had accepted the stain unevenly. We needed to resand.

Mistake #2: Use a wood conditioner prior to staining pine. Heck, use a wood conditioner prior to staining anything.

...which brings us to the conversation with Michael, and our current situation - The Rule of Three! There was no reason to feel discouraged after all! Sure, my hands were vibrating from 5 months of sanding; my lungs were probably damaged from breathing in toxic paint-stripping chemicals; and the lead content in my body was clearly affecting my brain function, but Cosmic Law had taken over, and the balancing power of the Rule of Three was in effect. Suddenly, I felt calmer than I had in weeks.

If you are lucky enough to have never tackled a restoration/renovation project, and thus have never been bitten by the craving that makes you, like a crack addict, come back for more frustration, physical pain, and eventual elation, then you may not be familiar with the Rule of Three. It states, simply, that any home project will take you 3 times as long, cost 3 times as much, and be 3 times harder than you anticipated when you foolishly began it, filled with bright-eyed hope and wonder.

And so, here we are! Our timeline has doubled! Our frustration levels have tripled! And we are finally, after 5 months, nearly ready to start the staining process from scratch once again....on a very small test spot.

Next Post: Take 3!