reconstruction and painting
This post is to showcase, in drastically varied stages, how the house came back together.
Now, I'm not going to get into the nitty gritty here of exactly why I did what I did; that's all reserved for the YouTube channel, but I'll give you a high-level overview of what was happening.
A lot of the "fancy" work was in tandem with the demo and reconstruction of the house. My goal was to move in roughly at the end of May or early June, but in May, I found out I would be having carpal tunnel surgery on June 6th. That gave me a deadline to get SO MUCH done before because I didn't know what condition my hand/wrist would be in post-surgery.
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| Laundry room |
The laundry was actually the first room to be remotely close to "finished," and it was undoubtedly the first room in the house to be painted. I wanted to explore texture in this house, so I purchased a hopper that could be connected to my air compressor. You load it up with watered-down plaster and start machine-gun plastering the walls. After a few minutes, you drag a metal trowel across to get the "knockdown" effect. I learned my lesson in this room the hard way, which was that you definitely need to prime the texture before using the expensive paint on it.
Also, notice the green ceiling medallion hanging out on top of the box. I wanted to dress up the ceiling lighting in the house and bring a little bit more of a historical vibe to it, so I bought these PVC medallions on Amazon and painted them in whatever color I needed. Here, I was going for a color "wash," which is where you paint your walls and ceiling (and your trim work, if you want) all the same color.
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| Kitchen |
This was the kitchen once it had been plastered, textured, and painted. I would paint it again in November, as I felt like the white was just too stark of a color. You can see part of the ceiling is fresh sheetrock, as this was where I tore the old ceiling down. You can also see the difference in height on the walls, as I had (stupidly) plastered and painted everything before deciding to rip the ceiling down. The lighting configuration I wanted was pretty involved, with can-lighting and several pendants and lights over the sink, so tearing the ceiling down saved a lot of grief.
The kitchen cabinets here are all brand new, shipped in pieces so I could build them myself. We had leveled and attached them to the walls, and I believe this was the day that Home Depot came out to measure for the quartz countertops I was putting in.
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| Kitchen floors |
A bit over a month later, I was starting to put the luxury vinyl plank flooring in. You can see in this photo that I've painted all of the cabinets in the kitchen, and the counters and lighting are all installed. On the right side, through the doorway, is the massive oven and microwave my dad was working to build the cabinets for. Across the kitchen, the windows have not yet been painted, and none of the new trim has been installed.
The wood detail around the cooktop exhaust fan has also not yet been installed. This shot is looking in from what I initially planned to be the dining room, but I have instead decided to make the Parlor and (probably) my favorite room in the house.
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| Pantry and Half Bath |
This entire space had been a gigantic half bathroom, with like... a six-foot-wide sink vanity that had matching wood towers on each side and a toilet at the far end of the room. From the suggestion of a couple friends, I decided to split this room, not really in half, more like... 30/70... with the bathroom being separated from the actual kitchen by a pantry. This saved me from using up valuable space in the kitchen for a pantry cabinet. The kitchen itself is gigantic, don't get me wrong, but I liked the idea of doing this a whole lot better. Plus, though not pictured here, there's another cabinet in the pantry with a counter that holds the coffee station.
In this photo, the pantry has been walled in, not plastered, and the bathroom is still waiting for insulation, a vapor barrier, an exhaust fan to be installed, sheetrock, additional flooring before the nice flooring, plastering, and, of course, all the paint.
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| Full bath |
This is pretty accurate to what the full bathroom downstairs looks like now. On the left is the former closet, now opening into the bathroom to be a nook with a cabinet, open shelves, and this great green-glass pendant. On the right will be the oversized walk-in shower, missing cement-board in this photo because I'm only one man and don't have much energy.
I'm very excited for this bathroom to be finished, not only to have a second shower in the house but to start the process of having a wholly curated room, top to bottom, as envisioned when I planned out the entire house.
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| The study |
This is my office, or the study. At this point, I had sanded down and refinished all of the original wood floors downstairs, so I was careful not to spill anything on them. I've always wanted a dark green study, so I started with the ceiling and worked my way down. The lighter-green color was a tinted primer that I got from Menards, which did not do a very good job at sealing in the plaster, but you get what you pay for, and that's on me.
It did spare me from doing three coats of paint, though.
Those double doors are original to the house but were altered after the fire (I don't know how, don't ask, but they're too short for the door frame). Behind the door on the right was the door into the closet, so I chose that one to get the chopping block because you had to close one door to open another, and it didn't make sense to me.
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| From the living room into the parlor |
I found out recently that this doorway was not original to the house but was actually a dead-end for the foyer (and the living room had its own opening, with pocket doors that led into the parlor but were nixed post-fire (WHY!?)). The doorway they added was maybe 6'6", barely clearing my head, and it was the same going into the kitchen (where you can see my dad standing). The kitchen doorway still had original trim, but this one had nothing, just finished drywall.
My vision was to raise these doorways up to 8 feet high, then trim them out. Eventually, I will add a transom window across each one, matching the transom windows on the front porch, but that's down the line. Fortunately, these were not load-bearing doorframes, so it was just a bit of effort and elbow grease to get them expanded.
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| The parlor |
Finally, there is the black ceiling. This was taken the morning after I polyurethaned the freshly re-finished floors. As I said, I had to rent a belt sander twice to achieve this. The first time around, I got two rooms done, but the shellac in this room kept burning and melting, leaving streaks all across the floor. That was when my mom got busy working on it. They turned out SO beautiful, and while they're covered by rugs now, I'm so happy to have lovely floors.
They were a nightmare to finish, but it was worth it.
When it comes to trim, I did not leave anything "as it was" in this house. This room and the living room were the only two rooms still in-tact, but the trim was damaged in a lot of areas, and because I was mimicking the trim throughout the rest of the house (and adding new trim to the cutout in the wall and the massive entryway), I elected to paint it all.
Sue me.
It's funny to see the brown stain against the walls, though, and that ceiling fan, which is no longer there.
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| The living room |
The living room didn't need a ton of work, and most of what it needed was due to the floor. My dad had to replace some pretty large sections of the maple floor, as evidenced in the bottom right corner, but it blended in pretty damn well. The walls in here (and every room of the house) received the same spray-plaster treatment with the knockdown effect. This did a few things for me: it hid flaws in the plaster in here, covered up imperfections, and meant that I didn't have to remove wallpaper glue ANYWHERE in the house. This alone was so amazing, because I did not want to invest the time into that task.
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| The stairwell |
It still looks this way, though the vertical boards are painted now. I mimicked the placement of those from the original wood stairwell (you'll see what I mean in the next blog). A version of that pattern will extend upward, making the stairwell a genuinely grand experience when all is said and done. But to get there, I have to set up scaffolding and all that, and I just haven't had the time recently as I've been working on the bathroom.
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| The upstairs landing |
This was immediately after the carpet installers left, and they did a fantastic job. You can't tell that there used to be a door here! Since this photo was taken, more trim is now running vertically up the wall to frame out the stairwell (and the eventual board and batten look it will have).
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| The guest room |
This photo was taken after priming the guest bedroom for the oxblood red color I wanted to paint it. I had yet to repaint the ceiling and change the light fixture, but it was hot as hell during this process and the air conditioning was not working very well on the second floor. It will most likely be replaced this summer. But apart from wallpaper removal and flooring... and trim removal... this room needed just about the least amount of work.
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| The back bedroom |
Check out that floor; it's nuts! It's all over the place, and one of my more considerable regrets with the house is that I didn't pull the floor up, level it, and replace it so that it wouldn't squeak so damn bad.
But that's hindsight.
This shows the chimney after I took a grinder and powered through the concrete that was hiding the brick. The sheetrock on the left, which is new, shows how much the wall stuck out that surrounded the chimney (and also the ceiling where the water damage was). So now, not only did I gain floor space, but I also got a pretty cool architectural feature.
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| The primary bedroom |
I wanted it to feel like a cozy cave, and I succeeded. There are a few... things... with this bedroom. Don't get me wrong, I love the color and I love the ceiling being the same as the walls, and it works wonderfully with the light carpet and my furniture.
But here's what's up.
This was a new "Designer" collection of colors at Sherwin Williams, and I loved this one specifically (called 'After the Storm'). At the time, you could only get it in the DeSiGnEr EdItIoN paint, and the bummer about that was that it was unavailable in a Matte finish.
It's not that they were out of stock; it just didn't come in it.
Now, I like a little sheen to my paint; I want it to catch the light. But I had to resign myself to buying Flat paint. Big mistake.
Not only because it's got really no sheen, but because it is so dark and has NO SHEEN, it doesn't reflect light. At all. The other problem with it, and something I admittedly did not think of, is that color drenching this dark in a bedroom, explicitly having a dark ceiling in your bedroom (with no sheen, I'll repeat it), means that reading at night is almost out of the question.
Light from the bulbs does not reflect off anything, so you essentially have to hold your book under a lamp to read.
This room may get a ceiling do-over at some point this year, but I have yet to decide. If it does, it'll likely be the off-white ceiling color I painted everywhere else. The big slap is that now, a year later, that Designer color is available in any of the paint collections they sell, so I can get it in Matte if I want to.
Stay tuned; I dunno what I'm gonna do about it.
With that, though, this very highly abridged version of all the work we've done in a year is over. I was gonna show outside, but honestly, there's just not much to show at this point.
However.
There are some before and after photos on the next page if you're so inclined.
Go Back to Part I: Introducing The Estate
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