Circa1972 vs 1906
We bought an old house, now I'm becoming an expert spackler.
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Here’s a better “Before” & “After” set of photos of the nook project.
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THE NOOK! This entryway area has been sort of a catch all. I have always wanted a proper mudroom, entryway, etc. But, there isn’t much room in this tiny footprint. To utilize the space a bit better, I removed the little dressing table that I had in the nook and temporarily displaced Emma’s litter box. Time for a nook bench! I took a cue from the adjacent bathroom and adorned the “floating” bench with beadboard and chair rail and matched the paint. I made friends with my miter saw and taught myself how to cut a self-returning miter cut for the edge. The edges are decorated with my favourite egg & dart trim and I’ll eventually get a little curtain sewn for under the bench - as Emma’s litter box will be discretely tucked back under the bench. Pretty pleased with the results, it is great to have a place to sit down to put your winter boots on. Just in time too, it snowed several inches last night!
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When we bought this house, nearly two years ago, the downstairs bathroom was creamsicle orange, had oodles of melamine shelving with plastic brackets, nasty dirty blinds, and it even had multiple cheap mirrors so that you could stare at yourself while you were sitting on the john. I had big plans for the wall of the toilet nook, but those plans took quite a while to get around to. I’m pretty pleased with the wall colour, the tile job, the floating shelf, et al. Basically, all we need to do is get new towels as my old ones look so dingy now!
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Soooooooooo close to being done with the laundryroom section of the basement. This project has been an ongoing debacle for well over a year now. I’ve had to parge the walls in sections, as I’ve gotten things moved. UGL DryLok is my hero. The walls were all scraped, then acid etched to remove the efflourescence, washed again, set up with the dehumidifier for several days and then sealed with hydraulic cement and painted with DryLok. phew…. And that’s JUST the foundation walls! I primed all the wood walls, acid etched the basement floor, primed and painted the floor with the Valspar floor paint. All the second hand cabinets we got from D’s parents were painted white and brought in and placed under my pegboard. We covered those with the white melamine countertop for a nice work surface. I’ll be excited to have a few minutes now to actually ORGANIZE all my tools and hardware on that pegboard wall. I got over to Menards to stock up on some more metal pegs. I am SO Grandfather’s Grandaughter! Finally, the basement has a useable tool surface and I can clear off my designated laundry folding table for, uh, LAUNDRY FOLDING! Woo hoo!
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I can’t resist showing a sneak peek of the 1st floor bathroom’s lantern tile installation progress. I still need to grout and frame the tile, but I was too excited with how it is looking not to share. I love this tile and wish I could have afforded many boxes of it when I found it. Alas, it is out of stock now and I’ll have to content myself with having this one splash of gorgeous tile behind my commode. I’ve found some great old trim moulding in our garage that may do the trick for the frame out. It is covered in bird poop and ages of dirt, but I’m going to pull them apart and power wash them today to see if I can give them a new lease on life. Now, where did I leave my pry-bar?
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Here’s a smattering of details from the former storage room’s makeover. There’s still a ton of work to be done, but I’ve been a bit distracted dealing with the pressing matter of bats and squirrels taking up residence in the attic!
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I am on a mission. A mission to rid our house, attic, walls, eaves, etc of bats and squirrels. It’s not bad enough that we have to kindly usher out the occasional bat (see: smacking them with a broom and throwing them out the front door) because we have crafty bats that LIKE their home and find a new way in when I slam an old door on them, then they shimmy down the balloon framing in this 1906 house and make an entrance through our pocket doors. We’ve had exterminators over before to assess the problem and all we got was “Well, we can lay paste traps, but you could do that yourself for free.” Uh, thanks! NOT addressing the actual problem - them getting in. So, I’ve climbed out windows, stuffed steel wool in holes, filled it up with Great Stuff - and that worked just fine for a while. But, they find a way back in their beloved home. WAIT!? MY beloved home.
No, it’s NOT BAD ENOUGH! We have squirrels now too. I could hear the little bastards scurrying about in the unfinished side of the attic when I was in my studio yesterday. I knew we had a hole in the soffit. We examined it, couldn’t figure out how to close the darn thing up. “When we have money….” Well, turns out you NEVER have money, it’s just a fact. So, here I am crying and beside myself, freaked out at all the possible BAD outcomes.
Bill from Animal Removal Services came by yesterday, set out these lovely live traps and we’re going to start addressing the issue from squirrel to bat. It is a process, you have to do things in order, or you’re just sealing up animals in your attic to die, rot and stink. I could NOT believe all the other holes he ended up pointing out to me as we walked around. I swear, the former owners just painted over a rotting soffit and made it look just fine and since we’re two stories down, we couldn’t see!
This is going to take alot of time and ALOT more money that we just don’t have right now. So, I’ve decreed that the ONLY animals allowed in this house are the four in this picture and any family dogs that come to visit. All you bats and squirrels are on notice.
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This is what our storage room (or, “the closet room”) used to look like. This is an odd room on our second floor. #1 It is small. When our house was built, there weren’t indoor bathrooms. So, when they decided to install a bathroom on this floor, 1/3 of this room was chopped off to make room for a loo. #2 The former owners just randomly (and poorly) hung Rubbermaid closet shelving all over the walls. Really poor use of space.
We’ve been overhauling this room for months. Floor to ceiling. Windows to lighting. Fabric to paint. One use to another. Stay tuned for details from this room and the big reveal in a couple more months!
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Yes, you may recall we started this odyssey in November. Pulling up the carpet, padding, subfloor in the attic to recess the electrical in the hallway, and to get a ceiling light box installed in the dimly lit second floor media room. Flash forward to a sweltering June, me on a ladder, cursing at the ceiling medallion, cursing at the electrician, cursing at the air. After an attempt at installing the lighting fixture ourselves, we raised the white flag and called our electrician, as the fixture would not turn OFF with the light switch in the room. Turned out to be our issue, not being wiring geniuses at all, and you know, THEN I felt bad for all my cursing directed towards our lovely electrician.
After that little endeavour, neither of us could even bear to go INTO that room for a while. Finishing the installation would have to wait. Until yesterday, when I boldly stepped into the sweltering room, pointed my finger (not telling you WHICH finger) at the light fixture and proclaimed “You’re MINE, bitch.” And, here we go, the fixture is finally installed, we have LIGHT in the media room. We can peruse the collection we so lovingly built shelves for last summer and maybe make it over the pile of boxes to the cd player to play them.
And you know what? I realized that I friggin’ HATE the way the fixture looks now. Absolutely HATE it. But, there’s no way in hell I’m taking it down now. Some other owner of the house can deal with it. I’m just pleased to have light in there… *sigh*
