orwigs, Author at Erin's Middle Niche

Door #1 or Door #2?

In what I feel like is typical farmhouse fashion, there are multiple doors going outside. The “front” door that goes to the porch would never be used as the main door because there’s no parking near it or a sidewalk/path leading up to it. The west door is easier access to the shed and may be where we end up parking our cars, but the south door will be our main entrance for guests. (And let’s not forget about the outside basement door which allows you to head to the basement or into the kitchen. There are a lot of doors.)

The South door has a tiny porch that then leads to two doors. Now, for all the years I have entered this house, there was a chair in front of the door that is straight ahead and entered the house through the one to the left.

We (aka Brandon) might also build a slightly larger landing/deck outside this door sometime in the future. That’s one of those things we will live with for awhile and see if it really needs changed.

They both look pretty original to the house, so I still can’t figure out why there are two doors.

It was always a narrow walkway with the upright freezer, plus my grandparents had the house phone on the wall to the right so they had a small table with phone books, etc. below the phone. It’s was always a cluster at holiday/birthdays to zig zag your way to the left, then right and squeeze past the phone area.

This is the view from the kitchen. You can see the phone hookup at the top left, so imagine a small table sticking out into that already narrow hall, especially with the door frame there. So yes, there was another door at some point that separated the kitchen from that small area. Another porch/entry way?

I had always assumed the door that went straight into the house was stuck and couldn’t open. But then when we had my grandma’s 90th birthday open house my parents opened that door so people could walk right in the house. My mind was blown.

One of Brandon’s first comments about the house was “we have to do something about the entry”. I went back and forth with some ideas, one of which was opening the doorway to the kitchen so I didn’t fix a crack on that wall. I’m annoyed with myself with that decision now, but I tell myself it’s just part of the character of the house and shows the difference of a fixed/unfixed crack in the plaster.

This is the view from the dining room. See the crack on the wall on the right? Might be a good place for a mirror or picture. 😉

The game plan now is to wall off the old pathway to make an entry way closet for people to put their coats and purses and have some storage for our off season coats. I would prefer to remove the door that is on the porch to leave it open and not confuse people about which door they should choose. That wall area will also allow for an extra cabinet and a little more counter space in the kitchen, which is needed. We are using the door to go straight into the house and it’s been a hard habit for me to break after 40+ years. I immediately want to veer to the left.

Obviously the strapped freezer and little cabinet will get cleared out, so it will be a good-sized space for coats, purses and extra storage. It might be my place to add a board and batten wall which is a common feature in craftsman homes. It’s also easy and cheap to accomplish, so that’s a win.

So that’s the plan, but when that plan gets executed, who knows? It may be next month or next year. It’s on the list but it’s not a super high priority. It also sounds like one of the easier “big” projects, so we may be able to slip it in relatively soon. Floors are still the priority!

Refinishing floors is labor intensive

We (mainly Brandon) have been working to refinish the upstairs floors. Once all the painting was done, that was the next step towards being ready to move the girls’ furniture, books, and toys upstairs and be settled. We had a long weekend with the 4th of July so we thought we could get them sanded and prepped for stain, maybe even stained those days.

How the floors looked at the beginning of the weekend.

In order to prep the floors for sanding, I crawled over each board with a putty knife to locate any nails that either needed pulled up or pounded down. We also had to remove all the quarter round trim and those nails as well. And of course, lots of vacuuming and sweeping of dust from all the plaster repair work.

But our plans of sanding were quickly thwarted when the orbital sander continuously gummed up from the varnish. We had to get an orbital sander because the rental place with the belt sander was closed for the holiday. It was a long, frustrating day trying to figure out what our next steps were going to be. We tried using stripper to take the varnish off, but realized that was going to be way too labor and time intensive. We finally just had to give up the idea/goal of getting the floors sanded that weekend and regroup with different equipment on a different weekend.

This was after a quick pass. We tried to remove the gummy parts but it dried and hardened quickly. So salvaging the sandpaper was impossible.

The goop we were scraping off the floors when we attempted to strip it. What a mess.

So just this past weekend we were able to get a belt sander and it worked MUCH better. It was able to take the varnish up without gumming up. Brandon used a edge sander around the edges of all the walls which was not his favorite task. I used a scraper and mouse sander to touch up the corners. The green room’s closet was too small for the belt sander to get in, so we had to scrap up the varnish with a wire attachment on his cordless drill (we also did that along the walls). It was a very labor intensive project.

Once we had the first sanding done with the belt sander that was returned and he got an orbital again. It was easier to handle and got closer to the edges, so he went over the floor multiple times with varying grits of sandpaper to get a nice, smooth finish.

The natural look was pretty but ultimately decided to go with a stain.

The sanding took a full weekend of work. Now we are going to wipe down all the ceilings, walls and trim to eliminate as much dust as possible. Then go over the floors again to look for any gaps in the boards that will mess up the stain application. THEN we will be ready to stain. The three front runners are in the picture. The floors upstairs are pine and took these stains completely different from the oak floors downstairs. So we will be using two different stains. Then the poly coat will go on and cure for several days. It was definitely a good idea to start upstairs and get some practice in before conquering the downstairs.

Can you guess which one we chose?

Gutting the Bathroom

Where to start?

Where to start would be finding someone to work on it. Contractors are really booked right now from playing catch up from projects delayed by COVID. I would really like to get this project done before we moved in since it is the only bathroom in the house.

Layout

The current layout looks okay in that picture, but what you can’t see is the shower/tub is really narrow. What you can see is how the shower curtain is not vertical because of where the rod has to be placed due to the door and door frame. What that all means is you get “attacked” by the shower curtain. It only wants to suction to you and not hang like it’s supposed to. I thought about getting one of the curved rods to give more space for now, but I’m not sure it would work with the door opening. And the shower curtain would probably have to be longer to be effective. Another fun part of the bathroom and shower is the light switch is actually located IN the shower. Yeah, that wouldn’t pass any inspections these days.

So what I’m thinking might work is to move the shower over by the window (if we lose that window it’s fine with me), move the toilet where the sink is, and move the sink where the shower/tub is now. Currently across from the toilet is a linen closet, which is great. It provides lots of storage, so I’m hoping we will still have space for something similar.

The door swing may be changed to allow more room in the bathroom as well. It swings into the room now and that takes up a lot of potential space. I’ve also looked at a split door which may work, too. The square foot area of the bathroom isn’t terrible, but the layout doesn’t use the space as efficiently as it could.

What’s next?

Besides finding a contractor, the one thing we did do was pull up the carpet (yes, carpet) that was on the floor. It had been there a long time.

I think that the original floor was probably wood and was rotting since it is a bathroom and was wet a lot. Then they put another layer of wood on top because you can kind of tell in the picture that it’s not level with the floor in the hallway and the boards are going in opposite directions. Then when those boards started to rot (there’s evidence of that) they slapped some carpet on it and called it a day.

The walls are not drywall or plaster, but some kind of paneling. It is very rough. Every time Morgan has to take a bath she says “We’ve GOT to do something with this bathroom.” I swear she thinks we are just going to redo the rest of the house and leave what is probably the worst part as is. Oh, Morgan.

Colors and decorating

I have a color picked out for the walls. It’s a dark green. Not the same as the Green Room upstairs, but it may get changed to that because I like that color a lot. I think the bottom half or 2/3 will be either board and batten or a bead board that is white. That style goes with a Craftsman house and would look nice. I don’t have a picture of the medicine cabinet, but I plan to refinish that and use it above the sink.

So, stick around and see what actually happens with the bathroom. And when it happens since it might be more in the long-term than short-term.

Ceiling Fixes

Natalie’s Room

The Pink Room/Natalie’s Room had a basketball size piece of plaster that had fallen off the ceiling. Most likely due to water damage. Obviously, that was a main repair Brandon tackled first upstairs. The rest of the plaster on the ceiling and walls was in good shape except for the normal cracks. The closets in all the bedrooms upstairs were the worst for cracks. I think that was due to the angles and temperature fluxes in those areas.

The reason Morgan chose the room with the smaller closet. I guess she thought we weren’t going to fix it?

Just like with the cracks in the walls, this had to get worse before it got better. Brandon made the hole larger until the plaster was tight with the lath on the ceiling.

I’m pretty sure this was about his stopping point for making it larger.

After this point, he used some plaster to start mending the hole. The plaster was hard to work with because it set so fast. This was also one of the first projects he did. I’m guessing if he did it now, he would be much faster at applying the plaster. After one layer of plaster and sanding, I’m pretty sure he moved to mud for the next layer. I believe it took three layers before he was happy with the blending and sanding.

We have primed and painted it. You can’t tell it was ever there. And now Morgan is questioning her decision about room choice. 😉

Looks pretty darn good for his first ceiling plaster repair.

Morgan’s Room

The Blue Room/Morgan’s Room didn’t have a hole in it, but we could see where there was water damage on the ceiling and when we pushed up on the plaster, there was a bubble formed.

Brandon really didn’t want to cut out the plaster (Natalie’s room was a lot of messy, dusty work looking up at a ceiling) so he researched ways he could repair it without cutting any out. I’m pretty sure this is the video he watched and read from on how to make the repair. He got two packs of these from Ace, not Amazon, though. 🙂

It is secured to the lath and ready for mudding and sanding.

This is from a different angle but you can see that it’s covered up and looks pretty good.

Green Room

Ugh, the green room. It (and Morgan’s room) had wallpaper. Didn’t really realize it until we started doing the crack repairs and it peeled. At first we weren’t that concerned about it. The girls had a blast using the various putty knives to peel it from the ceilings and the walls.

Besides throwing boxes over the banister, this was probably their favorite task.

Yes, Natalie was right up there helping to peel it off, too. Neither girls seem to have a fear of heights or ladders. The floor was COVERED with wallpaper shreds.

After we peeled off everything we could get with the putty knives, Brandon went over it with his sander to catch any other edges. Then did some mudding to remove any ridges. So we thought it was good to go for priming and painting. BUT when we started priming the ceiling (and the walls), that dang (keeping it PG here) wallpaper bubbled right up. It was frustrating and timewise a set back, but in the grand scheme of rehabbing an old house, not an expensive set back. So we got to get out the putty knives again and start Round #2. After that round of mudding and sanding, the prime did hold. There were a few tiny bubbles show up, but we looked the other way and kept on painting. I’ve painted over a lot of wallpaper and never had that happen when it’s felt so tight to the wall to begin with.

It’s Done and look at the “new” green in the green room. I LOVE it. I’m wondering where else I can put this color.

And to cap off the wallpaper issues, when we peeled off the tape on the ceiling to do the wall color, of course some wallpaper peeled off with it. So Brandon went around and had to touch it up in all the bedrooms. We are glad to be done painting upstairs!

Refinishing the floors

So obviously we were excited to find hardwood floors downstairs when we pulled up a corner of the carpet. We did that WAY before we had painted because we were curious. Considering the upstairs had hardwood, we were pretty sure the downstairs would as well. Although the upstairs is a wider plank and I think a different wood than is downstairs. I’ll try to get a better picture of the upstairs floors this weekend. They are currently covered in a lot of dust, so that may prove difficult.

Pulling the carpet

This part was fun for me and the girls liked it too. It was a big deal to get to the point where we could pull it up and get it out of the house. My lungs were really excited about it. Plus, it was fun to find out what was underneath that 50+year old carpet. Below is a link to a video of the girls pulling up the carpet.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/7jXflUYWfHs

Then it was pulling up all the staples and tack strips. It’s a job I don’t mind at all. Morgan and I had a pretty good system for it, too. She would pop the staples up with a flathead screwdriver and I would follow behind and get them with the needle nose pliers. Brandon worked on the tack strips while us girls did the staples. Natalie floated in and out of both processes as 3 year old’s do.

Process that we will most likely follow

Once we got the carpet up, we could see that the floors would need refinishing. The living room has a rug-sized area that is a different stain than the rest of the floors. Plus the south facing windows in the dining room and office/computer room created some sun damage to the floors.

This shows the two different stains and the “rug” that was stained around.

We are going to start upstairs with the refinishing because neither of us have ever refinished floors so we want to start in the rooms where most people probably won’t see. So if we screw up it’s not at the front door when you walk in the house. I am hoping this weekend we get the rest of the upstairs painted, so we can start prepping for the refinishing. I know we will have to get all the quarter round off, which means we will have to label all of it and try to bundle it by room/closet. Then there’s the dust that will need vacuumed, mopped, and vacuumed some more before we even start sanding and creating more dust. We will be getting the ducts cleaned after all this dust has been floating around. 🙂

Brandon and I both have longer weekends over the 4th, so I am thinking we should be making good progress upstairs those days. Once that is done, I’m going to move the girls air mattress upstairs to get them used to sleeping upstairs and farther than a few feet away from us (at either house). I think that will be a major hurdle. I predict it will take a long time before they are sleeping in their own rooms upstairs.

Stain Color

Of course with all this progress on the floors means we need to choose a stain color. I’m pretty decisive when it comes to paint because I know that can be changed relatively easy in the future. But the stain color makes me a little nervous. It’s a big commitment. I don’t think I want to match the trim exactly due to the amount of red that is in the trim. I think that I want something slightly lighter and more neutral in color if that makes sense. So going back to the “rug” picture above, I want more of the rug color, less of the border color. Anyone have any thoughts on that issue? The built ins are even a different color than the trim, so I think it will be fine if the floors don’t match the trim.

Fun Side Projects

Some of the fun projects we have started.

Fixing up the house is a lot of fun, but so are the little side projects for decorating and furnishing the house and yard.

The yard is pretty much a blank canvas since my grandma gave up gardening several years before she passed. My plan is to use some of my dad’s old hog feeders as raised garden beds. We will take the top ring off and I think that will be about the right height. We’ve read where you can fill the bottom 1/3-1/2 with limbs and leaves to decrease the amount of soil you need to put in, so I think that is the current game plan. These will be on the south side of the house, between the driveway and the house.

Outside Projects

I *think* it will be as easy as removing a few bolts to get that top ring off. Then roll them to where we want them. We’ll see…

Then I wanted to add some play things for the girls outside but didn’t necessarily want one of the huge playsets, so I perused trusty Pinterest for ideas. There are a lot of tractor tires around, so I found this idea for a climbing tower.

This is the general idea. I think ours is slightly different with the pole placement. It currently looks a little bit like below.

Actually all four poles are attached now. Next we are going to have my dad lift if with his loader tractor so we can mark the spots in the grass where we need to dig the holes. We have to do that because the a couple of the poles are warped like you can see in the picture. Then we will take it all apart and spray pain the tires some fun colors and resemble. (Can you see the girls in the distance? They were playing safari in the tall grass. Morgan goes in barefoot, but Natalie prefers some footwear.)

We are going to stain the brackets on the roof. Brandon ventured out to make sure they were in okay shape and they seem to be. That will most likely include renting a boom truck so one of us can be lifted up to stain them on the sides of the house. But I think it will really make the “pop” and give some interest to a very white house.

Morgan really wanted to get out on the roof, but that was a hard no. It’s steeper than it looks.

Inside Projects

The next one is one I’m most excited about completing, but it doesn’t need to be done until we refinish the floors downstairs. It will be the lighting fixture for the dining room. Brandon has also found a lamp for the living room he wants to build and I’ll share that once we get closer to making it. Here is the inspiration.

I have glass insulators I purchased from my grandpa Tumbleson’s farm sale, so those will be used and the piece of wood is coming from a barn my dad is taking down on this farm.

You can see the lumber is attached to my SUV to be pulled out, but Brandon ended up cutting it and pulling it out himself. He has a few others to turn into shelves for the living room.

Here they are getting all sanded and ready to be stained. They look great!

There will be many more projects to come. Brandon’s currently reading this book to Morgan at night before she heads to bed, so who knows how many projects will come from there? 🙂

Repairing the walls

So one of my first goals was to get rid of the carpet. It had been there for at least 42 years because it’s in my baby pictures at that house. It was full of dust that would cause me to sneeze, wheeze, and just be miserable for a couple of days after leaving the house. The girls playing and removing the furniture just kicked up all the particles that wreaked havoc with my respiratory system.

Prep Work

But before the carpet could be pulled up, we wanted to do all the painting so if/when we spilled it wasn’t a big deal. In order to paint, we had to fill in ALL the nail holes. My grandma loved pictures and put a lot of them on the walls. Then there were the cracks in the plaster walls. Neither one of us had ever done anything like that before, so we researched how on YouTube and This Old House. Are we experts on this? I’ll let you know after a few years if our repairs have held. I will tell you we have gotten MUCH faster at slicking on the mud and sanding it. My favorite video for repair was this one. It was straight forward, simple and made it seem less daunting.

Just some of the many nail holes we filled.

The girls got in on the work, too. They did a great job! They really liked sanding it down after it dried, too.

This is a crack in the dining room. It had what I was referring to as a “sister” crack in the office. Basically the same size and same location on the opposite side of the wall. These two were probably the biggest cracks we worked on downstairs.

So you actually have to widen the cracks first which seems counterintuitive, but it allows for the mud to grab on to more area. I just used a box cutter and followed the path of the cracks. For areas that were slightly wider than you see here we used adhesive mesh tape and then a couple layers of mud on top (thoroughly drying and sanding between layers).

This is what it looks like after it’s had one layer of mud. We tried using plaster but it set too quickly for our expertise. We might be able to do it now since we’ve nearly done the whole house but this system seems to be working. Again, we’ll see how it looks in 5 years. I’m optimistic but won’t be terribly surprised if we find some cracks pop up again.

This process has taken a long time because of the drying times, multiple layers, sanding, and then the more we looked, the more cracks we found. But the walls look really good right now. I realized I don’t have a great final picture, so that will have to wait until we head back up there next weekend! 🙂

The Beginning

The house is structurally great. The “bones” are good, but my grandparents had not done much in terms of updating since they had moved in 50 years ago.

Both my grandparents grew up in the Depression Era, so they saved EVERYTHING. The downstairs was full but tidy, but the upstairs overflowing and overwhelming. So our first job was cleaning it out. I enjoyed it because it was a job where I could see immediate progress. The girls LOVED it because they got to throw stuff over the bannister to the first floor landing. What kid wouldn’t love crashing stuff down a flight of stairs?

Here are some of the before pictures. Each bedroom is painted a different color, so we refer to them as their color.

That is the top of the landing for the stairs. Yes, that is duct tape on the windows. We haven’t tackled that yet.

This is the blue room. It was the least cluttered and easiest to walk through. Each bedroom also has a large, walk-in closet. The girls will now have plenty of room for their clothes.

This is the closet to the blue room. Morgan will be in this room. She already knows how she wants her closet and it was exactly how I would have arranged it.

The pink room was the worst of all of them. It was jam packed with basically no room to walk through it. I remember riding that horse in my parent’s house. And the baby doll crib was mine that you see in the background.

The pink room’s closet is huge. I thought Morgan would pick it based on the closet, but this room had a hole in the ceiling and she thought she was going to have to live with that, so Natalie gets the big closet! (The hole has been fixed.)

The green room was a little cleared out by the time I got a picture, but it wasn’t terrible.

We knocked a lot out in one weekend with the upstairs. It was pretty easy to toss most of it. The pink room was the worst but really the easiest to clean out because all those boxes you saw in the pictures were empty. They had kept every appliance, gift, or random box they had ever gotten. We would always joke that Grandma always wanted us to keep the box and bows off presents. Now we know where they all ended up. The pink room.

On the next few trips up the girls asked if they were going to be throwing boxes. We found a few more things they could toss down the stairs and over the banister, but it’s pretty much all cleared out. Those pictures are coming…

A Bunny Tale

Our cat, Clarence (named after the great Clarence Clemons. Someday I’ll get into my love for The Boss) is a great hunter. And he is allowed to go outside because he’s happier that way. My previous cat (Teddy) could not have cared less about going outside. He knew where his food bowl was and that was good enough for him. Clarence loves the taste of fresh meat and he’s good at getting it.

He’s really thinned out the mice/mole/vole situation around the few houses he ventures to, so he will get birds, bats, and rabbits as well. This season has been pretty slow for him so far which I’m perfectly fine with. I don’t always have time in the mornings to dispose of the carcasses. Then yesterday I left the back door open while I was letting Dexter out before picking up the girls. I came in and found Clarence with a live animal. At first I thought it was a rat because I thought I saw a long tail. For a split second I almost bolted out the door, but then it squeaked. Unfortunately, I recognized the squeak of a bunny in trouble.

So I was able to get the bunny away from Clarence and get it outside. I’ve done it before and the bunny has usually just hopped away. This bunny did not, so I knew I was in trouble. I picked it up and saw it had some nasty cuts on its belly. So nasty that I could see bits of the guts. At that point I knew I couldn’t leave it in the grass because Clarence would most definitely get it as soon as I let him outside, even if the bunny was able to drag itself to a more covered area. At this point I had to get moving to get the girls picked up from daycare and swim, so I was trying to think of something to put the little guy in and keep safe. I was slightly panicking and it took me longer than it should have to think of the cat carrier . So I got him (I have no idea if it was a boy, so I’m generalizing) settled in that while I got the girls.

This was before I realized the bunny had some pretty bad wounds.

They were both pretty excited to hear I had a baby bunny waiting for them at home. I’m pretty sure Morgan thought we were getting a new pet. We had to make a stop at CVS for some bandaging supplies and then went home to treat the patient. The girls did a great job at listening to my directions and helping to get him sprayed with antibiotic, bandaged and wrapped. I pretty much held the bunny while they did the rest. Then it was just a waiting game…

Clarence waiting for his chance to finish off the bunny.

Both girls checked on him before going to bed and as soon as they woke up the next morning. I had already made sure he was still alive, and he was looking okay at that point. A graduate school classmate had messaged me the night before after seeing my post on Facebook that the bunny would need antibiotics immediately in order to survive because the saliva of cats is deadly to rabbits. I had no idea. I found some amoxicillin we had leftover from a few years ago, but I attempted to get some in him. By the time I was taking Morgan to school, the bunny had done from sitting upright to laying on his side, and I knew that was not a good sign. I took the bunny to work with me and put him in the sun to keep him warm. He moved around a bit so I was a teeny tiny bit hopeful he might be turning the corner.

I had him on the windowsill and kept checking to make sure he was still breathing, but one time Velvet (my supervisor) came in and looked and said “I don’t think he’s breathing anymore. Is he gone?” I had just checked on him a couple minutes before she came in, but it only takes a moment. Poor little bunny didn’t make it. I buried him when I went home for lunch. Next time I’ll be quicker with the antibiotics and hopefully have a better chance of success. But this little guy had some pretty big wounds, too. I’m not sure there was really anything I could have done for him, but I had to at least try and not just leave him for Clarence’s next meal. That seemed way too cruel.

Now I’ll have to tell the girls tonight. Morgan will be upset but I’m hoping she will be distracted by her dance recital pictures and getting her hair and makeup done. Fingers crossed on that one. Natalie is young enough she doesn’t get it yet, so she will roll with it. That’s the beauty of being 3.

The New Place

I mentioned in the first blog that we have some big changes coming up and that’s all due to us moving into my grandparents house. It’s a great opportunity for us to live in the country which is something both of us want. Natalie seems to be fully onboard with the idea, but Morgan is more hesitant because she realizes she will be moving away from her friends and school. She has a definite pattern of liking it when we are up there and working, but once we get back to Macomb, she says she wants to stay there. I get it completely. And I am hoping once we are up there and she meets some friends, which she is a total extrovert so she won’t have any issues with that, she will be just fine with the move.

The house does need some work. My grandparents really didn’t do much in the area of updating. The flooring has been the same since I was born and I’m 42. My first goal was to get the main living area painted so we could pull up the carpet. It only took a few hours of being in the house before I was affected by the dust. Then it took me a couple of days to recover once I was out and away from all the dust.

We’ve already done quite a bit and I’ll continue to document that all here, but here is list of things we have done and need to do (and this is an incomplete list.)

Empty the house (it was FULL)
Fix cracks in plaster (upstairs and down)
Fill in all the nail holes (my grandma loved to hang pictures)
Paint the entire interior
Pull up carpet
Remodel bath (reconfigure)
Remodel kitchen (mostly cosmetic)
Rework the entry way
Get electrical checked
Buy new couch
Landscape
Refinish all the floors
Clear out the wasps (they seem to like all the windows)
Refurbish the windows
Outside play area for girls

Like I said above, there’s way more that we will have and want to do, but this is what we are focused on right now. There’s other “fun” stuff like adding some beehives and making the extremely large front lawn into a prairie, but those will wait until some of the other things are done. Structurally the house is great, so it just needs some attention to make it more efficient for us. Brandon and I are planning to do a lot of the work ourselves since it’s things we can do, but other things like the electrical and bath remodel will probably require an expert.

Obviously, there is much more to come with house updates!