Stairway to Completion

It's been a long time, eh? Not too much happening until last week. The roughed-in stairs were replaced with hardwoods. Then the hardwood finisher guy came in and, well, finished them. Surfaces were filled in with wood putty and then sanded, and finally varnished. Here's a sample of stairs from office/garage to Main Level.

Skirting boards and risers still need primer and paint but still...

More, main floor to new bedrooms:

Detail of individual stair tread

Finally, the floors:

Hallway - return air vent

Pantry

Loft

Living Room (oooh, pretty!)

Next week - the stairway will be finished with newel posts and balusters.

Remaining - some interior painting - 2nd coat in Living Room, kitchen, dining room, still haven't finalized colors. And we need to order tiles for the backsplash. I've been procrastinating on the design for months and tiles take 6-8 weeks.

We've been shopping for Living Room furniture and finding something we both can agree on is a challenge. I do not like the overstuffed, "Welcome to 1978" look. He wants a couch with a recliner at one end. Sigh. We'll get there. Maybe I'll post some of those options this weekend.

Bits and Pieces

There hasn't been much to report for the last several weeks. The finish carpentry (by others) will be done in the next couple of weeks. That is, finishing the new hardwoods on main and top floors. The stairway will be completely redone with hardwood treads, painted risers, painted skirting boards, newel posts and stained balusters. It should be very nice.

We've spent a lot of our energy the last several weeks on one of the cats. Mosa was diagnosed with kidney and thyroid disease. The issue is to get enough food into her that she doesn't burn it off within a couple hours. She is getting fed many times a day but we need to monitor it because if we just leave it out (the wet food that she can manage), then Joe, the 18-lb gorilla cat, will eat his AND hers. She seems to be slowly recovering - we'll know more after a followup with the vet on Friday.

Finally, L is doing the window and door trim himself and I have a sample to show you. This is the inside of the Master Bathroom door and I think it looks GREAT. The door will eventually be stained as well, not as dark as the trim. I think it looks crisp and vintage and it makes SO much difference in how the place will look.

Whoa!

I knew DH was going to be talking to some folks this week. The framer/carpenter was going to come over and they would figure out a plan for leveling the floors. There's a lot of elevation changes due to previous, not-so-carefully-planned "improvements" and some settling. So imagine my surprise when I came home to this:

Figuring if there WAS no floor in Living Room (where I usually enter the house), L would have told me, I gingerly opened the door to find this:

The Living Room and hallway have been stripped of original finished floor. The really bad parquet tile work, stripped off a month ago, had just been glued onto the original floor, probably in the late 70's or early 80's. This is the true subfloor and the knotholes are open to the basement.

The finish stairway guy was here (didn't expect him til Wednesday) and will work up a bid for doing the rails, balusters and newel posts. The treads will be hardwoods and the risers will be painted. There MAY be wainscoting along the stairwell wall. L's not convinced yet, but I think it would look substantial and classy.

In other news, we ordered the Celtic knotwork tile trim pieces. This is slate blue, ours will be a subtle sagey green. Yes, this is the same pix from a couple days ago.

They are probably 4-6 weeks out. L thinks the half-bath will be functional NEXT WEEK; 90% of the tile can go in. The trim and top course will be finished once it gets here. I thought we'd have to paint first, but L says we'd have to touch up after the tile guy was done anyway, so we might as well wait. Besides, then we'll know what the REAL color is.

We bought faucet fixtures for the half-bath as well. L bought the sink last week, but it's still in the box, so no good pix yet.

Did take a quick look at stovetop, but it is literally just a flat, black surface so that would not make an interesting pix.

I don't get it

For some reason, L thought we couldn't use the Kitchen for dinner tonight. Which is just silly. We haven't even started on the Kitchen yet, just the Dining Room (and the wall behind the fridge). Of course, they do have to move a few things when they're working in the Dining Room. What the kitchen looked like last week vs. this afternoon.

The stove works, the fridge works. We even have access to the most critical items:

Microwave. Vitamins. Ibuprofen. Tea. Wine.

What else do you need for dinner? I mean, really.

Here's a tour of some of the changes in the last couple of days.

South side of Dining Room. This wall is about where the stairs and back porch were before. The plan is to commission The Cabinet Guy to do a shallow reproduction of this, floor to ceiling, wall to wall. It will be finished to match the Kitchen cabinets, which will probably be a light to moderate cherry stain.

Pix courtesy of this website, which has lots of illustrations, photographs and reproductions of vintage housing catalogs, including the house kits that were so popular in the early part of the 20th Century.

Elsewhere, there are some interesting architectural details.

This recess is where the old chimney used to be. The chimney was knocked out several weeks ago. The back half of the channel was closed in to enclose heating ductwork for upstairs bedrooms. The recess will hold the cable/TV equipment with the (small) flat-screen on a wall-mount arm. Below that, we have framed in for a gas-insert fireplace, which we will put in if we don't run out of money doing the Kitchen (grin).

This recessed bit at the stairwell? I cannot believe I didn't notice it for two months until right before the drywallers started. The wall can't be flush there for some reason, something to do with tying the new construction into the existing load-bearing beam, or making the stairs too narrow to meet code. It really annoyed me at first, not that I could do anything about it. But, now, I think it's kinda cool.

We have ignition, er, stairs!

Are these not the most beautiful pieces of woodwork you've ever seen?

I have never been so pleased to see a stairway in my life. OMG.

Finally, a chance to relax, for just a while.

Some of us need to stretch a little....

and some of us are wound a little more tightly.

But, I think the worst is over.

Til the Kitchen.

We're on the "eve of construction"

Well, it's hard to believe we've gone through this much damage, er, improvement in just under a week. The entire first floor is gutted except for Kitchen.

View from Front Door into Living Room, and view from stairwell looking towards Front Door:

Closeup view of stairwell, the current "challenge"

View from office entrance door:

View from the Dining Room, through a wall that doesn't exist anymore, and a wall that doesn't exist yet.

View from center of Kitchen, and from office entrance, looking through into Kitchen:

From here, it gets SO MUCH better!

I haven't even talked about the exterior...

This is what should be happening in the next few days:

• city inspector to review and approve site for concrete pour of driveway and footpath (this AM, hopefully), going all the way around to back patio.concrete truck and crew to pour the driveway and footpath and base for new wooden steps at front porch. We then need to stay off it by foot for several days and the car has to stay off it for several WEEKS.
• build forms for concrete stairwell base in basement
• work on new load-bearing walls, which will take part of load of stairwell
• build actual stairway

If all this comes to pass, the only way to get into house for several days will be through the hole in fence between our house and neighbor's, and going through the French door at west end of kitchen. The main door, garage, side entrance and sliding door at Office will all be blocked with new concrete. There is also a small gate on the street behind the lot by the old Garage. However, there are mounds of mud that have been excavated so they could put in the patio (actually, it's just a walkway around to the office entrance.

Regardless, this past weekend and the next few days will probably be the most challenging. I got the kitchen cleaned up a little bit and L thinks the worst of the demolition / perpetual dust is over.

Remember that house we used to have? Again...

(sorry for the empty post before)

Well, words fail me. Here's a rare pix of the Living Room, clean. One from the Christmas just past. And a shot of the Living Room two days ago.

The bathroom on Main Floor, 6 months ago, and today.

The stairway to upstairs. Ugly, gray carpet had already been removed. And then, today. L is in what used to be the main floor bathroom.

The previous corner of the Master Bedroom. This will now be IN the stairwell that doesn't exist yet. Cat is optional.

Looking out south side of old bedroom.



I just don't know what to say....