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.

Primer

Well I've finally decided to start primering the house. I cant paint the house until I've rebuilt the front porch but at least I can primer it so it doesn't look so bad.

So far I've gotten most of the first floor front done:



In the first picture you can just see another project I recently finished, the mailbox:


I used a cedar post and then put on a coat of amber shellac. The numbers are oil-rubbed bronze.

I've also been working on the electrical in the house. I've gotten the upstairs hallway light wired up and also our bedroom ceiling fan:



Today I'll be back at work one the primering...

Yard work

We were back at the Woodbury house yesterday. We didn't get everything on our list done mainly because the yard work was much harder than anticipated.

First I finished removing the linoleum from the upstairs hall floor but I forgot to take any pictures of it. I'll get some the next time I'm there.

Next we tackled the yard. It was terribly overgrown plus there are small to medium sized saplings all over the yard that had to be cut down. Underneath it all you can see that it was once a beautiful yard with Azaleas, Rose of Sharon, Heavenly Bamboo, and tons of Boxwoods.

The first image below will give you an idea of how overgrown the yard is:

Believe it or not, that's a Boxwood hedge. Here is an after shot:


Inside the hedge on the right of the house there is a garden with numerous old plants. They were all almost completely choked out though. We had to cut the Azalias way back but they are a hardy plant so they should make a nice comeback.

Before:
After:


We're still not done with this area, we didnt have enough time to get to the back part of it.

The left side of the house was a jungle also:

Before:
During:
After:
There's still a lot left to clear on this side too. We haven't even touched the meadow out back or the barn area. Each of those areas will take a day by themselves at least.

We're hoping to get back out there this Friday and work all weekend.

The work begins

We went to the Woodbury house yesterday and began work. The upstairs hall has this ugly astroturf looking carpet.

I started pulling up the carpeting only to discover... linoleum.

I had enough time to remove all of the carpeting and half the linoleum before it got dark (no power yet). That's beautiful oak flooring under that linoleum.


I found the attic access and went up for a look. It's huge! The pictures are really bad because I forgot the camera the first time so I snapped these pics from the ladder after I had come back down.



The attic is so large that we could easily add two rooms and a bathroom up here. we've found a perfect spot for stairs also. We could add a window to each of the 3 gables for light. We're not sure about any of this, it's all just planning for now.

The first day of work and I've already got a mystery. When I was up in the attic I noticed that the framing is put together with wire nails! I posted about this on my other house blog a while back when I discovered that that house is not as old as I was told it was. I know the age of the Woodbury house is probably right though, 1888. I know this because first, the architecture definitely has Eastlake influences. I researched the deeds a few months back, I found deeds all the way back to 1904 before I ran out of time. The 1904 deed is transfering the house from an A.P. Dixon to a W.M. Hinton but in the deed it calls the house the J.A. Aycock place (I believe J.A. Aycock is the original owner). So in 1904 we can safely assume that it already had 2 previous owners. 1888 was only 17 years prior.

We're heading back out there this morning to get some more work done. I'm going to finish pulling up the linoleum, pull up the carpeting in the one bedroom that has it, tear down the drywall in the same bedroom (why someone would put up drywall when the walls and ceiling are tongue&groove wood is beyond me), and hopefully do a little yard work. It really looks like a jungle but underneath it all you can still see that once it was beautifully landscaped.