Photographer Phyllis Stewart has a great gallery of Victorian home photos, both interior and exterior. I came across these while searching for exterior color schemes for our upcoming (hopefully? if we can afford it? and if our sanity remains intact?) painting project. Because if all goes as planned, we want to start scraping and painting the exterior as soon as weather permits. But this requires a HUGE color decision that we are going to have a really tough time making. So I’m arming myself with all the inspiration I can find. I’d always rather have too much than not enough.

Our house’s original color was a dark brown (based on the first layer of paint found on the clapboard siding) but I think it’d look totally gigantic and ominous painted dark brown. We’re definitely leaning toward muted colors, not so much the shocking pink-and-purple painted lady stuff. Like this lovely scheme from Phyllis’ gallery:

The interiors are just as good, so even if you’re not picking paint colors it’s a site worth visiting. Admit it – you’re all as voyeuristic as I am. Go have fun peeking into these homes!

When my parents got rid of all their personal belongings and hit the road, we became the proud owners of some really awesome antiques. One of my favorite pieces is the Edison Disc phonograph, which came from my father’s family and (I think) dates to around 1915. Here it is in our front entry room:

One reason I love this thing so much is that when we were kids, my brother and I had a great time playing the weird old records (which are about 1/4″ thick). We thought they were hilarious since the style of singing is so very different from the radio hits we were used to. Lots of warbling. But is that better, or worse, than listening to Hulk Hogan’s daughter limping her way through an overproduced hip-hop song? Personally, I’d rather hear warbling.

Each record has two songs on it, one on the front and one on the back. My personal favorite is a song called “Gasoline Gus” by Bill Murray (not my favorite Bill Murray, obviously). It’s a very catchy tune about a jitney bus driver. (A jitney bus is small vehicle that offered rides for nickels back in the day). Gasoline Gus is kind of a creepy guy if you listen to the lyrics closely.

I managed to find an mp3 online, so you can listen to it here: http://ia301225.us.archive.org/2/items/edba-2684/edba-2684_64kb.mp3

Isn’t that crackley sound great?

But the other reason I really love this piece is the reason I’m sharing it with you. Because we have a photo of the phonograph in it’s original home! How cool is that? And if you’re looking for real Victorian interior inspiration, this is it. The wallpaper, rugs, pictures, light fixture…. so much to take in! I think this would be considered a parlor, but correct me if I’m wrong.

I put a much larger version on our Flickr account, so you can check it out here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/fixerupper/

Here’s a closeup of the phonograph. They chose to put it in a corner, just like we did. ;)

Even though we’re taking a break from major home projects, I find that I can’t stop myself from doing something, anything, to make the house a happier place to live. We toyed around with drywall here and there, but I spent most of the weekend practicing the greatest holiday ever invented: DISCARDIA.

In the creator’s words,

“Discardia is celebrated by getting rid of stuff and ideas you no longer need. It’s about letting go, abdicating from obligation and guilt, being true to the self you are now. Discardia is the time to get rid of things that no longer add value to your life, shed bad habits, let go of emotional baggage and generally lighten your load.”

I think we could also use a little less stuff, couldn’t we?

Despite having little time or money to shop, we somehow manage to accumulate crap at an alarming pace. Primarily, I blame thrift stores for having such cheap and irresistible junk that I feel I must bring home. But I love getting rid of stuff almost as much as I love finding it in the first place; when something no longer serves it’s purpose (and I did not spend a lot of hard-earned money on it) I happily toss or donate it. I used to be a packrat, but 9 moves in 8 years has helped to keep that particular compulsion in check.

So now that spring has finally kind of sprung here in Central New York (they’re teasing us with promises of 40-degree temps today!) the sunshine and somewhat bearable temperatures sent me into a cleaning/organizing frenzy. This organizing bug came on very suddenly. I returned from a trip to the grocery store early Saturday morning and somehow ended up on the floor in our office with 3 years worth of scrapbooking supplies spread out in front of me. I didn’t even stop to take off my coat! From there, it spread to every room of the house.

Ok, so we did a little DIY remodel in our kitchen with a teensy budget last year, and it came out pretty good. But Greg, over at The Petch House blog, has a kitchen that makes my knees weak. And he did it all himself, including the design and construction of some truly gorgeous custom cabinetry. Norm Abrams, watch your back.
The pictures he’s been posting along the way were always great, but he just posted a video tour that blew me away. A must-see for all house voyeurs:

Check out Greg’s Petch House Kitchen Tour

Even though we have a giant house with far more space than two people should require, we still have storage issues. Well, maybe the issues are more mine than Teague’s. I don’t like seeing things thrown willy-nilly into a room, all ugly and piled up. I want everything hidden away in closets, tucked away in drawers, or filed under the bed where I can forget I even own such clutter.

It’s been tough having only 3 small closets these past two years, but somehow we survived. Sure, I had reoccuring dreams in which I found a secret closet we had somehow overlooked, but I was learning to live with the situation. In fact, I later found out that those dreams supposedly have nothing to do with storage and everything to do with emotional growth. But then we started the bathroom remodel, and it dawned on me that this was the perfect time to finagle a closet out of the deal.

(The old kichen cupboards – the left side is now bathroom, the right is closet.)

When we got rid of the tacky kitchen cuboards in the craft room (left over from when the house was a two-family) and bumped the bathroom wall out a few feet, we were left with an awkward bit of leftover space. Not awkward, actually, just PERFECT for a closet. It was destiny.

This past weekend, we managed to make some progress on the drywall in the closet and surrounding area. So now, the old kitchen/craft room looks more like this:

We even have a door on the closet. A cheap, somewhat crappy looking door – but a door nonetheless. It is just a closet, after all, in a craft/utility room. And we have to pick and choose our budget splurges. This ain’t one of them!

My biggest contribution was wriggling into the framing for the washer and dryer plumbing (seen in the photo above) so that I could trace the location of three outlet boxes and the supply line box onto drywall. This was my genius idea so that we wouldn’t have to take eight hundred measurements to get the holes in the right spot. Despite having to stand like a pretzel for a few minutes, it worked beautifully so I’m quite proud. See? Totally professional tracing job, folks:

Can I tell you how exciting it will be to shove a bunch of crap into this closet and never have to look at it again?

I experienced the bathroom in a whole new way last night, and it really made me wish we’d have squeezed radiant heat into the budget. That’s because I got struck with a nasty stomach bug around 1am, and spent most of the night curled up on a bathmat on the (very cold) tile floor. In between bouts of violent upchucking, that is. Made me very glad I was in the newly remodeled bathroom, rather than the old one – leaning over a nasty old toilet with crusty shag carpet under my knees would have taken all the fun out of things.

It is quite telling that while lying on the floor wrapped in a blanket, towels folded up under my head, I was still thinking about our remodeling projects!

We’ve been taking a break from nitty gritty house projects for the past few weeks. We totally earned it, and any energy that remained after our bathroom remodel was destroyed by the blank grayness of winter. This is my least favorite time of year in Central New York, and I’m sure I’m not alone. February is no peach, but by early March winter feels endless. You’re cold all day, every day. You’re surrounded by dirty snow piles and slush. It rains, it sleets, it snows – often all in the same day. Everything outside is disgusting and wet, and everything inside smells like funk because you haven’t open a window in 6 months.

If we hadn’t spent all our money on trim and tile, we’d be flying somewhere south right now to soak up some vitamin D – sun and warmth are the only thing that seem to cure my winter blues. But I’ll survive. In another 3 weeks, the sun will start shining again and CNY will get a single warm day that’ll make everything better. Until then, I’ll be on the couch moping. Chance for productivity? Slim to none.

Though I’d like to blame winter for my current house-hate, I think we’ve also hit a two-year wall. We’re just not enjoying our projects like we used to. They’ve all become “have to’s” instead of “want to do’s”. We like to pretend it’s all fun and games here at the Fixer-Upper, but the truth is sometimes renovating a house is just plain stressful and exhausting. When you don’t take breaks, it wears you out. We’ve hit walls like this before, so I know there’s hope on the other side. I am confident our motivation will come back stronger than ever, and probably sooner than I imagine. But for now, we’re slowing down the pace and enjoying a few weekends taking bubble baths.

Inspire me! What’s your favorite way to escape your house and recharge yourself?

A lot of readers are wondering how well our insulation projects have helped in lowering our sky high heating bills. Mid-winter is a good time to address these questions, since our bills are finally starting to show some long-term improvement.
Background:
We moved into our house a little over two years ago. When we showed up, there wasn’t an ounce of insulation in any of the walls. The attic space had some blown-in insulation and that was about it. Hot water pipes weren’t wrapped, cracks and gaps weren’t filled, and holes in the plaster walls meant you could actually feel gusts of wind come through from across the room. It was not an ideal situation for a climate that is arctic for 3 out of 4 seasons.

What we’ve done to lower our energy bills:

• The first winter, we did damage control and quick fixes. We wrapped hot water pipes and the hot water heater with insulation and filled every crack and gap we could find with caulk, Great Stuff, or fiberglass. We also repaired most of the holes in the walls.
• When we remodeled the kitchen, we put insulation in the new back 1/2 of the room. We also replaced a plexiglass window (in an exterior door!) with glass.
• This past fall, we filled about 1/4 of the outer walls and a few ceiling spaces with blown-in insulation.
• We came up with a creative solution for making the french doors in the kitchen a little more energy efficient.
• We replaced 4 broken windows in our cupola; they had been boarded up, but we still must have lost quite a bit of heat from them.
• When we gutted the stairwell, bathroom, and craft room, we put insulation in all of the outer walls and ceilings

I’d estimate that we now have about 1/2 the house insulated the way it should be. And the verdict is in: it’s paying off.

We’re on the “budget plan”, where they project how much your bills should be each month and then charge you an average price over the year. It’s supposed to be consistent, but it does vary somewhat. They readjust it every now and then when energy prices skyrocket or your usage changes drastically.

The Results:
Two years ago, our budget plan payments were about 25% higher than they are right now. Gas prices have gone up in that time. That’s a whole lot of money every month that is staying in our pockets – enough to cover the initial investments we’ve made in materials. To recup up-front costs over the course of two years is pretty impressive!

We also notice that the insulated rooms stay noticeably warmer than the non-insulated ones, even when they are not closed off from the rest of the house.

The french door plexiglass solution seems to be working since we rarely get condensation on the glass (which we always had, even with three pairs of curtains on them) and can’t feel any draft from them now. Best of all, we get tons of sunshine (and the warmth that comes with it) during the day.
Verdict:
We’ll keep insulating our walls and ceilings, since it’s definitely worth the effort!

Some homeowners are organized enough to track their spending monthly; they plan out how much a specific remodeling project is going to set them back before they ever start, and they can tell you to the penny what it ended up costing. (And, of course, the latter number is always double or triple the former. Always. It’s a law or something.)

Even though I’m an anal-retentive Type-A with a huge crush on spreadsheets, we are far less organized than one would imagine. With multiple projects going on at any given time, and ever-changing ideas about what it is we’re actually trying to accomplish, we don’t bother with all the financial pre-planning.
Mostly, we stick to a “pay-as-you-go” philosophy. We don’t take out loans – we have enough of those already. We also try not to run the credit cards up too much during the course of a project.  If we can’t afford something, we’ll find a creative alternative or wait till we can. So knowing the exact dollar amounts isn’t incredibly important for the short-term. I’m a frugal girl – if I had to calculate the grand total every day, I’d be a big ball of stress. This avoidance technique works well for me.

When tax times rolls around, however, I have to take all those receipts (filed away in a coupon organizer by month, because THIS at least I am organized about) and add them up. The first year I saw our grand total, I nearly choked. I thought about all the amazing things we could have done with that money, like travel the world three times over in a ship made of gold. Now that I’m an old pro, it doesn’t depress me as much. I just keep repeating the word EQUITY over and over again in a soothing whisper while I hit the Add button.
The numbers are always informative, and I’m glad that we track them. I was surprised to find that this year we spent about 1/3 LESS than last, despite our bathroom remodel (the most expensive house we’ve undertaken thus far). I never would have guessed that. And the percentage we spent on tools was much smaller, since we totally geared up in 2005. Looking at the bigger picture of the 2.5 years we’ve been here is interesting, too.  One trend I noticed is that we spend more during the colder months – probably because we have nothing else to do when it gets cold but sit in the house and stare at our projects. Good to know!

If you’re a number cruncher like me, I found a great (and affordable) Excel spreadsheet workbook from SimplePlanning.com that you’ll  have fun with – it’s a Household Budget Planner, but I have found you can tweak it for nearly any purpose.

It allows you to customize your categories and track daily and/or monthly, and automatically pulls together graphs for you so you can see at a glance where the money is all going (like, gassing up the truck for Home Depot runs). You can also compare your spending month-to-month. It didn’t take me long to figure it out, and it’s only $9.95. Worth every penny, I swear.
You can find details about it here: http://www.simpleplanning.net/Financial%20Calculators/BudgetPlanner.html

If you live in the Central New York area, own an old house, and are looking for some affordable goodies to spruce up your place, ReHouse is having a 20% sale today and tomorrow – and 35% off of sinks!

We’ve been to ReHouse quite a few times, and it’s always worth the trip. Things we’ve scored there include 2 matching doorknob/faceplate sets for our entry doors, salvaged wood flooring used to replace damaged areas downstairs, and a whole bunch of salvaged trim we used throughout the kitchen. They have good prices, a great selection of salvage things (including stuff that isn’t old-house specific, like more modern cupboards, appliances, etc.) and fun antiques scattered throughout the store. And I swear, they’re not paying me to post about them. I just like their store alot! (Though if they did want to offer me a discount on goodies I buy from them, I’d be perfectly ok with that.)
It’s located in Rochester NY, a few blocks away from the slightly more expensive (but gloriously well-stocked) Historic Houseparts – so you could really make a salvage yard festival out of it ;)
ReHouse’s website: http://www.rehouseny.com/

Historic Houseparts’ website: http://www.historichouseparts.com/