From the Archives......

An.....OMG moment....

This is one of my favorite pics from the archives.... I am standing in the front bedroom looking through the half bath into the middle bedroom. Beyond Chris, it the main bathroom. He has completed the demo of all the rotted area and has started to replace the wall between the bath and middle bedroom. You can see the new 2x4's. (Or maybe those are just temps.... to keep the ceiling from falling in?)

This area around the bath was a total rotted mess. The floor joist was split completely in half under the tub and the sub floor was completely spongy. If someone would have filled the tub with water for a bath. I know they would have found themselves in the basement once they sat down.

The combination of the afternoon light and the expression of Chris's shoulders (Yes, shoulders have expression.) tell the story.

Yellow Finch Wallpaper...

You know I am not a fan of wallpaper, after scraping, and scraping, and scraping, and scraping for months. Really months. The foyer, the dining room, and the hall.
Remember this? I do.

I haven't scraped the final layers off the middle bedroom. I really, really want to take of the old layer of wallboard, down to the plaster, then the wallpaper will come off with the wallboard.

Truthfully, I pretend the middle bedroom doesn't exist. I keep the door closed.


(That pic is old. See, the hall is still pink, it did coordinate with this layer of wallpaper in the bedroom. We really use the room to store trim, baseboards, the kitchen cabinets, still not finished. Chris's Drums, boxes, paint, tools, brushes, and so on. I guess we could say it is our staging room. That sounds nice and all. )

However, I am a fan of pattern. Good pattern. Creative Pattern. Historic pattern. Maybe that comes from the days, as a youngster, I worked for a carpet designer. She taught me so much about pattern. She also spent years restoring a fantastic Victorian House in town. ( I need pics of that house.) Who knows maybe that rubbed off a little as well. Her sister was my 6th grade teacher, and one of my cousins went out with her other sister's daughter. Or maybe they were just friends? (You know --small town)



While blog surfing the other day, I found a wallpaper website. Ooooohhhh! the patterns.



Historic patterns.

Adelphi Paper Hangings looks to be a great source for historic handmade wallpaper.

Looks like a yellow finch to me..


You can see similar patterns to this and this color way is just about any clothing store this spring. It is yellow hot. I am loving all the yellows mixed with blacks, and greys in fashion right now.


At one time there was a slight delay between the colors you see in fashion at clothing stores and when it turned up in interiors. But today, the merchandisers really have to be at the top of their game. There is little to no delay in the trends moving from clothing to interiors.

Look at West Elm. The current catalogue is full of the hot yellows. In order to have those products in the stores, they had to be specked out, ordered, manufactured and shipped out months and months ago.

Also look at this great post. Showing the yellows and blacks, and grays.

Who knows? All the yellow bombardment may have told my little voice to tell me to go with yellow for the door.

I just don't think I could install wallpaper anywhere after all that scraping. But if I did, a handmade block printed paper would be so much better than that vinyl stuff.

Old Patterned Wallpaper

This is a piece of the wallpaper that was behind two layers of wallpaper and a layer of drywall in the middle bedroom. Under this was a layer of "Blue Willow" looking wallpaper (very poor condition) and two shades of Robin's Egg blue paint directly on the plaster. I held on to this scrap, because I thought it to be pretty, in a retro sort of way.

Like many old houses, ThirteenEleven has had it's fair share of "improvements" (butchering) over the years. The only room that still had any of it's original plaster was the sun room. The rest of the house has a very old version of drywall applied directly over the plaster. This was done by removing picture rail and crown(if there was crown) in the house. The sunroom has picture rail, but no crown, which was not to uncommon at the time. The base trim was also removed,however the base board remained, leaving a slightly odd looking profile at the base of the walls.

I believe that the drywall was added to the house when the Worthy's bought the home in the 50's. From what I understand, they preformed renovations in the 50's and again in the early 70's. The drywall in our house has an odd very thick cardboard covering on both sides. And this would have been a quick fix for plaster that was probably showing it's age and cracking at that time. For a quick drywall history click here.

Day 1 Pictures

Day 1 at ThirteenEleven..... The long awaited beginning, starting point pictures of our home 15 months ago. The pictures give you an idea on just how dirty was this place. Probably the second dirtiest place I've been, maybe the third. The thing the pics don't show is the smell. Eugh!!! I couldn't get it out of my nose for days. Then Mom suggested using the ol' Vick's in the nostrils trick. ( Yes, the very one the police use to hid the smell from murder scenes.) EUGH!!! AGAIN !!! ----- Well it worked.
Day 1 at the house was really Day4 after closing. The dude living here just would not leave. Then he left stuff here and kept coming by to pick up other things. I think we were very generous with the time we gave him and the fact that we allowed him to keep coming back to pick up stuff. But, considering the bullets and bullet holes found everywhere in the house, it was probably the best idea to let him take his time and not to anger him.....Yikes.

So here they are...

Entry Hall ( looking from front door)

*note* Pepto Pink.. Lovely choice of color.

Also note this is the wall paper didn't want to come off the walls,and made me a true disbeliever in all the store bought paper removal solutions and systems.

Living room to sun room ( left)

to dining (right) Yep, it really is Pink Carpet.

Dining Room

See that moldy moisture spot to the left.

Yes, anything like that means, whole walls have to be removed and re-built.

Including replacing the interior workings of the double hung windows.

Keep that in mind for future projects.

Main Hall back to front, then front to back.

*Notes*

-The carpet was really dirtier than shown in the pics.

-The wallpaper covered the well known Pepto Pink.

-Why would anyone place sconces on the moulding?

-Lovely drapes covering the washer/dryer area.

(To date... no doors added to wash dry area)

Front Bedroom.

"That is a Groovy light fixture, dude."

We sold it at the yard sale and the lady was going to paint it red.

Dining Room.

Why are there bricks on the hearth? Is that blob near the hearth the reason Puppy won't go in this room?

Living Room

Wow what a mirror! and it was PLASTIC !!! We were so lucky it came with the house.

Note* The mirror was not glued to the wall. It was hung on a nail and they painted around it. See the pink peeping through underneath. It went well with the pink carpet. See the logs crammed in the coal burning fireplace. They plugged in and had a red light bulb inside. Lucky Again !!! That is a bug bomb on the vent.

I insisted the former owner to set those off before he left.

Half Bath

Note* Each door in the house had a dead bolt lock.

Middle Bedroom

I forgot about the top layer of wallpaper. Two other layers were underneath.

Why was stuff left in the drawer? This is the cabinet, when removed revealed a fireplace and the infamous hearth the fell to the basement.

Back Bedroom

Showing the carpet that was over the vinyl that was over heart pine floors.

Bath

Last Cleaned in 1989. The black stuff around the sink was facial hair ( Maybe?) where the dude shaved.

Many Thanks go out to Mom, Aunt Lynne, and Marlene who cleaned this room before it was demolished for re-building. We were able to use it for a while, while we were here working. Then it became a hole in the floor for 3 months, complete with a ladder providing quick access to the basement.

I've saved the best for last.....

Kitchen

Words really won't describe the status of this room. It is best described using guttural noises. Go ahead, give it a try.....EEUUGHH, EeeeE, Augh!!! UGH.

Notes* That is cat food left for the cat he left here for two weeks. I told P.O. "Puppy hates cats". Thankfully, the trap provided by the animal shelter caught the cat before Puppy. I am not sure what the trails of splatter goo are on the floor and carpet. Did I tell you, This room made me gag. There was a pot left on the stove that had something black inside. Shout outs go to Uncle Irv, who helped take down the cabinets and 'hawl them to the street. In the pic showing the pantry, there is a door above that was full of beer cans. Beer cans were in most of the hollows in the home.

Hidden Disaster

Fireplace behind Cabinet
Hearth Fell to basement/crawlspace.
Ad in paper stuffed in fireplace.
Danger ! don't step here....

Helping out

Demo.............

ROT
Bedroom
This the the cabinet that I took
out with the fireplace behind it.

(and the floating hearth floated down to the basement) ka-boom.
Could we have placed anything else on that cabinet????
Junk Pile------one of many!!!!!!!!!!!
Bedroom