Upstairs Hall

We've been doing a lot of work on the house lately. One of the projects has been the upstairs hall.

This is what it looked like when we bought the house:

And here are some current pictures:

For the past two weeks I've been running electrical to new lights and outlets, putting up crown and trim, caulking the cracks in the walls and ceilings, and painting.

Here are pictures of two of the upstairs bedrooms:

The first is our daughters and the second is ours. I have not cut in around the trim in our room yet.

I dont have any in progress shots because I was too busy to get any.

I'm going to throw in a picture taken from the Parlor looking into the Foyer:

Whole House Fan

We've talked about getting a whole house fan for a long time. On cool mornings I open up the house and use a few box fans in the doors to cool the house down, I can usually cool the house down enough to last most of the day without running the air. We've talked about how much quicker and easier it would be with a whole house fan. The other day we finally decided to look into it. We searched Craigslist for a used one and found on in Atlanta for $75.

It's an Emerson 5550 CFM 30" fan. The overall dimension is 42". It had been installed as an exterior gable fan and needed to be removed.

We were able to remove it in about 15 minutes, a lot easier than I thought.

I brought it home and cleaned it up. It is composed of two main pieces, the larger part with the fan and motor, and the smaller part has the louvers. These pictures are before it was cleaned. I had to use CLR on the aluminum louvers to get all the grime and corrosion off.

Next I cut out the ceiling above the stairs and framed in a box to support the fan.

First I used 2x6's to frame the opening then used 2x8's inside the 2x6 frame for the box the fan goes on.

Next I installed the louvers underneath and then the fan on top.

I still have to wire the fan up, it came with a 3-way wall mount switch. I will be installing it downstairs in the foyer. I'm also going to paint the frame that holds the louvers. It will be painted the same white trim color the ceiling will be painted.

Dining Room

I took Thanksgiving week off to finish up some projects around the house.

The Dining Room was what I really wanted to get done the most. It has been half done since I moved the wall to make more room in the kitchen almost three years ago.

Here is what it looked like at the beginning of last week.

First I moved everything but the furniture out of the room, then I moved the furniture to the center of the room.

Next I scrapped the peeling walls above the picture rail. Once it was all scraped I mudded above the picture rail completely around the room.

With that done I worked on the door casings for the exterior door and the door that leads to the hallway.

The casings on the door that lead to the hallway had separated and were loose. I removed them and reinstalled them properly.

Next I worked on the door casings for the exterior door. You may remember in previous posts that the original doorway was closed off in the past and I reverted it back to a doorway.

First I finished mudding the area.

Next I began working on the casing and rosettes. the only two rosettes I had left were both split in half. I used my doweling jig and glued them back together with dowels.

Once they were dry I installed them above the door along with the casing.

Next I installed the picture rail on the wall that I rebuilt.

With that done I was ready for paint. I went around the room and glued down any loose wallpaper.

I really hated to paint over the wallpaper but there were just too many places where the paper was in too bad a shape.

First I primered and painted the trim.

Then I primered and painted the walls. It turned out that there was something wrong with the paint I chose, it was way lighter than the paint sample at the store. I didn't have a choice though and had to use it. I painted on Thanksgiving morning so we had to hurry and get the furniture back together for Thanksgiving dinner so I didnt get any pictures until after the dinner.

I also had to do some last minute electrical to get an outlet in for the china cabinet light.

I still have a lot of wainscoting to caulk and paint, I need to have some casing replicated for the door to the kitchen, and the ceiling needs to be primered and painted.

Side Hall Floor

This is a big project that I have been needing to get done for a while. Especially now that it's getting cold out. The cold air comes up through all the holes in the floor so this project had to get done.

As I've mentioned before the side hall was converted into a bathroom in 1928, last year I tore the wall down and turned it back into a side hall.

The Red Oak flooring on the first floor was installed over the original floor sometime in the 40's so the side hall didnt get done since it was a bathroom at the time.

I started by tearing up the plywood.

and found linoleum underneath.

I pulled that up and the original flooring under that was pretty rotted, which I had expected, so I pulled that up.

Of course most of the floor joists were rotted and hacked up and patched so I tore out the rotted ones and installed new ones. I used 2x8s ripped to a full 6" to match.


I took this opportunity to do a few other things under the house that needed to get done. I dug out a large area under the ducting so I could have access to underneath the bathroom, I ran some electrical from the bathroom, and I removed the 2 return vents that the moron HVAC guys had put in. They will be relocated to the dining room.

After that I put the sub-floor in with old 1x boards that I had.

Then I pulled up the old red oak flooring on the other side of the hall.

Then laid down felt paper.

Then I began the flooring. For the door sills that go to the bathroom and the sunroom I used 5" wide oak flooring. I kept the tongue on the sill so I could lock the flooring into it since it has grooves on the sides.

Here are some shots of the progress.

I still have a little strip along the wall to finish up. Not sure yet when I will be able to sand and finish it.

Workshop Electrical

I got a lot done on the shop over the weekend but most of it was the boring, non-picture worthy kind.

I dug a trench from the house to the shop and ran electrical in conduit.

Then I wired up the shop with lighting and outlets.

I spent yesterday and the day before arranging the layout and building workbenches.I also picked up a few new tools that I will be needing. I picked up a Wood Lathe, a 6" Jointer, and I traded my smaller table saw for a larger one.

I will have pictures of that in my next post.