Parlor

The Parlor is the next room I've started on. All of the wallpaper and trim is stained yellow from what appears to be years of cigarette or cigar smoke. A few weeks ago I started scrubbing the wallpaper and it looks like I will be able to get it clean enough to save.

I'm using bleach and a scrub pad. I still have about half the room to go.

I went ahead and prepped and painted all the trim over the last few days. I dont have a good before picture of the ceiling but here it is after I scrapped all the loose paint off:

And here it is after painting:

All the trim is now complete. I still need to scrape the paint off the windows and a few areas need some caulking.

I pulled the fireplace mantle off the wall because I intend to strip it down and refinish it. In pulling it off I've discovered that the mantle is oak. The mantle is just leaning on the wall for now:

I also found a piece of original hearth and surround tile:

The red brick looking tile was installed sometime in the 40's when the oak floors were done. The floor was laid over the original pine floor so the brick tiles were just put over the original green glazed subway tiles to bring the hearth up to the same level as the oak floor. I am going to tear up the red tile then carefully remove the original tile then lay down a new mud bed then reinstall the original tile. I need to find some salvaged green tile for the surround though since that was removed.

Foyer and Side Hall

Wow, almost 2 months without a post! Things have been hectic around here lately. I have done some work on the house though. Two of the projects I have been working on are the Foyer and the Side Hall.

I've been dying to get the foyer done because it's the first thing everyone see's when entering the house. Here is a picture of how it looked before.

What you can not really see in this picture is the condition of the paint. The white trim is scratched, chipped, and stained and the red is just way too dark for this room.

I spent most of the last two days repainting all of the trim and the walls. Here are a few pictures of what it looks like now.

In the third picture you may have noticed that the front door is not repainted. I am holding off on doing that for now because I am debating on stripping and shellacking it.

You cant see it in the pictures but I removed all the carpeting from the stairs, they were carpeted above the first landing with a nasty old green carpet. The treads are in great shape except for a few paint stains. That shouldn't be too hard to remove.


The other project I have been working on is the side hall.

 I ran a 2" PVC vacuum line in the wall for the whole-house vacuum I intend to install in the future. This runs up into the laundry room in the attic.

I also ran some string in the wall for anything I may need to run in the future. One thing I need to run is an Ethernet cable for the video surveillance system I will be installing in the near future.

With that done I started putting up the sheetrock.

The side hall is in the back part of the house where the ceilings are 11', the main hall is 10'. The plumbing from the upstairs bathroom runs down this wall but it comes out from the bathroom floor into the side hall up near the ceiling. I had intended on boxing this in but was not looking forward to it.

Instead we decided to just paint the PVC pipe black to make it look like old cast iron pipe and leave it exposed.

I still need to put up sheetrock behind it but I think it will look fine.