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:

Parlor Redo

We ended up selling our Parlor furniture and moving the Living room furniture in here because we turned the Living room into a Bedroom in preparation for the new baby.

Here are a few Parlor pics.

The Parlor

We decided to paint over the wallpaper in the parlor. You may remember about a year and a half ago I was trying to scrub the wallpaper. It cleaned up ok but it was still discolored.

It doesnt look so bad in the picture but in person it wasn't good. So we decided to go ahead and paint over it. In the end I'm glad we decided to do it. You can still see the wallpaper pattern through the paint and the color is what the wallpaper would have looked like originally.

You cant see the wallpaper pattern in the pictures but you can see it in person.

You can see the one area I didn't paint behind the curtain. I still need to go back and paint that.

You may also notice that the fireplace mantle is different than what was originally here. We found this mantle in an antique shop and it turns out it came from an old victorian house in Fayetteville that I used to drive by every day. It was destroyed in a tornado about 6 years ago.

The mantle has many layers of paint on it, so many that much of the detail is obscured. I will eventually have the mantle dipped to remove it all but for now I put two coats of trim paint on it to clean it up.

I'm also going to be replacing the surround and hearth eventually. I had mentioned in a previous post about how the fake brick surround and hearth tiles were installed in the 40's, and that I had found the original hearth tiles underneath the brick tiles.

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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.

Back to work

I can finally get back to work on the house now that my work schedule has returned to normal.

One of the first things we did was to start clearing out rooms. We want to move in as soon as possible so we will need some living space.

The parlor has been our furniture storage space for the past few months. We emptied it out and setup our parlor furniture.


We are going to try to save the wallpaper in here, it will need to be patched in a few areas and will need a thorough cleaning.



Both of the above chairs will be recovered to match the parlor set.

The next two pieces were found at a yard sale in Alabama.



After much research I believe both pieces to be from the early 1800's (1820-1840). They are Empire style. We got the couch for $35 and the dresser for $25. I will need to replicate a leg for the dresser.

Next we turned our attention to the Living Room. This room has been a storage area for all of my tools and wood.

After clearing out the room, I pulled the mantle the rest of the way off of the wall so I could reattach it properly. Behind the mantle I found a small flyer.



Looking up info on KaDell-Kritchfield I found that they were a theater troupe that did their shows under a big top in the late 1800's and early 1900's.

The other project that we've been working on is the first floor bathroom. The floor has to be finished before the rest of the plumbing can be installed.

I decided to go with a Tung Oil finish. Here is the floor after the first two coats.


The tung oil really gives the floor a great warm color.

We have power!!

The power is finally on! We went out to Woodbury House yesterday to try to get some things accomplished and found this!



I spent the afternoon running more circuits under the house, installing new outlet boxes, and installing outlets. I ran 4 circuits to different junction boxes with an outlet to each. We now have power to the Kitchen, Dining room, Parlor, and Study.

Now that we have power we can work later and use power tools. Hopefully things will start moving faster from here.

Closing!

Today was closing day for our next house. This is our second house. I couldnt pass it up because we got it for a steal since it was a foreclosure that the bank has owned for a year. Our main house that we live in is the Oxford-Boynton House, We're just finishing up a year and a half long renovation (I dont think we'll ever be done with the renovation but I like to say we are).

The house is a 2 story Victorian built in 1888. I guess you could say the style is Folk Victorian with Eastlake influences.

This is from the back of the property. the lot is just over .5 acre.

This is the barn that's at the back of the property.

Foyer (front door is to the left)

Upstairs Landing

Main Hall

Parlor

Door to upstairs porch. Most of the detail is obscured by the paint.

Back door in the kitchen. The detail is obscured by the paint on this one too.

I dont have a shot of the front door but it's even more ornate than either of the above two doors.

I'm hoping to start work on the house soon.