Kitchen countertop material was a very hot topic here….. and This Old House just put a great article up on their site. The end of the article features a great snapshot of costs and highlights for easy comparison. Thought some of you might find it helpful!

http://www.thisoldhouse.com/toh/knowhow/tools/article/0,16417,213801-1,00.html

We still haven’t decided what we’re doing with ours…. so many choices, so little time to implement any of them.

Teague and I are obsessed with home magazines. We regularly read Architectural Digest, Home, Creative Homes, Victorian Homes… the list goes on. But, sort of like flipping through an issue of Vogue, these magazines can be depressing. Like the perfection of some skinny supermodel, these magazines show interiors that are, for the most part, more incredibly beautiful (and expensive) than our home will ever be. No amount of hard work will change that fact. So while they’re great for ideas and inspiration, I like to see REAL homes too.

House blogs are great, but most of us are still working on basics like plumbing and electrical, so the interior shots aren’t much to look at. There are online tours of museum homes, but they’re more like magazine homes….. out of our league. So I went looking for some middle ground.

OldHouses.com lets you look at interiors in old homes that are for sale. Better still, they sort them by type and area. Not all have interior shots, but enough of them do to make it interesting. Worth a look if you’re a house voyeur like me!

Normal 20-something couples spend their Friday nights going to nice dinners, watching movies, hitting the bars… but oh, not us. No, we spent our Friday night swinging sledgehammers in the living room.

It all started when I brought home a funky green velvet couch from the Rescue Mission. The conversation that followed went something like this:

Him: “The couch looks funny like that. If we take down the closets, it’ll look a lot better.”
Me: “Now?”
Him: “Sure.”
Me: “Are you serious? It’s almost midnight.”
Him: “I don’t think it’ll be too bad.”
Me: “Ok, I’m game. But the next time you complain about having too many projects going at once, you better remember whose idea this was.”

Here’s what it looked like before (ignore the nastiness and focus on the closets, please):

An hour later, one closet was gone and our living room was covered with broken plaster and wood splinters. We called it quits after about an hour, and left the mess as is.

So, in the morning, we got to sip our coffee while looking at this:

Teague finished the job on Saturday while I carried used 2×4’s and salvageable drywall chunks down into the basement. I can’t swing a hammer hard enough to knock anything down, so demolition isn’t one of my strengths.

Now two couches fit nicely into our living room, and it’s lost that “reclaimed bedroom” look. Yeehaw!

Our curiousity got the best of us last night; Teague casually mentioned wanting to see inside the cupola, so I told him if he brought me a ladder and a light I’d climb up there.

Ten minutes later, I was balancing precariously on the ceiling beams with a spotlight in my hand. I’d planned on doing this during a nice sunny summer day, because it’s just plain scary getting up there… here’s what the access hatch looks like:

SCARY.

Once inside, I was surprised by how spacious it was up there. There’s a good 2 feet of crawlspace, and the cupola itself is very large. The windows are all intact and have nice arched frames. A few broken panes of glass need replacing, but otherwise they look pretty good. The ceiling is covered in nice beadboard. The floor was taken out, and everything is covered in blown-in insulation. If I hadn’t been afraid to fall through the ceiling, or if I’d had a better light source, I would have gotten better photos – but here’s what the windows look like:

The closet we climbed through must have been a stairwell at some point. Here’s a really neat find – this is the wallpaper from the old stairwell:

It’s gorgeous, although strangely matched. The top border is a mix of maroon and teal, and the bottom is a creamy gold with pink and teal. The ceiling has wallpaper too – a third pattern, with pink/teal and metallic gold. If they decorated their stairwell like that, imagine what the parlor looked like!

Thanks to all of you who have offered suggestions on obtaining/keeping insurance. You’ve given us some really great ideas. I’m working on the situation, and will keep you guys posted on how it works out.

For your viewing pleasure, here’s the neglected back room that the insurance companies despise……. as you can see, it’s not pretty.

This is the view from the back of the house. The door on the left is the rotted door they noted on our termination letter.

This is the view from the right side of the house – the door you see leads into the kitchen, so we actually do use this entrance area to let the dogs in and out. But we have a fence up out there, so no one from outside would use this entrance.

This is a close-up of the foundation, from the same angle. Another thing they noted on our letter. Obviously, needs to be removed…

From the left side. Doesn’t look so bad on this side!! (Other than that ugly roofline)

GRRRR. Just when we start to get optimistic, in comes some mail to take the wind out of our sails. We’ve been dumped from our homeowners insurance policy for the second time. The local AllState agents don’t want us either.

Almighty house gods, can’t you cut us a break?
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I’ve decided to add a category for how-to’s, so we can share some of the tricks and techniques we’re learning (and other fixer-uppers can tack theirs on as well). For the first how-to, I’m starting with something easy ;)

One of the things we’ve been working on this week is removing old wallpaper from the downstairs bathroom. The walls have 4-5 layers of old wallpaper on them, but underneath we were thrilled to find drywall. This makes the bathroom the only room on the first floor that doesn’t have crumbling plaster walls.

I don’t like buying stuff I don’t need. I never bother with wallpaper remover sprays or gels because I’ve found that hot water and dish soap works just as well – just mix some up in an old spray bottle. Spray down a section of the wall and let the hot water soak in good; you should be able to scrape off multiple layers without much elbow grease. I use a putty knife to scrape with – plastic is a safer bet if your walls are easily scratched or dented. I also keep a bucket of hot water and an old scrubby sponge nearby; when you get down to the bare wall, use the scrubber side of the sponge to get off the last little bits.

Hot water is the key; the hotter the better.

Here’s what it looked like once we got the paper off – check out what color the walls are!

On Saturday morning we stayed in bed all morning and lazily pondered what to do with the wide-open day in front of us. I distinctly remember saying “Lets do something fun – we deserve some fun.” and “I’m feeling really unmotivated.” So how did we go from a quiet slumber to demolition in less than an hour???

The magic word – electric. Every time we start a wiring project, it becomes a PROJECT. See the difference? “Project” is something fun and kinda easy, something that should take no more than half a day. “PROJECT” is something that grows with each passing minute until suddenly you look up and realize you’ve just opened a can of worms, and they’re squirming away at an alarming rate.

First, we got into play clothes – because nobody is allowed to do work without play clothes!
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Our dining room was the first room we really plunged into. It was a room that we knew would look ok with just a quick facelift, so it has been our “showcase” room, the one that illustrates our house’s potential and keeps people from thinking we are crazy folk.

I’ve been holing off on posting before and afters because it isn’t really done…. but, realizing that nothing in this place will ever be “done” to our liking, now is probaby a good time to report on our progress.

(Keep reading for photos…)
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The day that we moved into our house, we took out nearly all of the rugs covering the downstairs floors. Not because they were ugly (which they most certainly were) but because they REEKED of cat urine. Not something you want to come home to after a long day at work.

Luckily, the floors underneath are hardwood. BUT – they desperately need to be refinished, and some spots need to be replaced. That day is a long way off though, as it’ll come after the basement jacking, wall repair, ceiling painting, etc. In the meantime, we’re starting to worry that we’re damaging them further. Any varnish that may have been applied to them has been worn off. To look at them, you’d assume they are unfinished except for a spot here or there that still has little bit of shine to it.

Here’s what they look like:

(Can anyone tell me when it was cool to sloppily drip paint all over your hardwoods? Whoever started this trend should be severely beaten with a paint stick.)

Any suggestions on how to protect them, other than rugs? Our dogs like to pee on rugs, so I’m trying to stay away from that solution!

Here’s an informative article on removing stains from wood, if you’re dealing with a problem spot:
http://doityourself.com/woodfloors/woodfloorstainremoval.htm