Summer Time

I have taken a little break from the posts but want to get back into it. When I look back at the blog I realize that our last post was actually the day we moved in. I think for me the project became more personal once we moved in and the house really became our home. It is very different to see the house full of our belongings. We have made a lots of progress this summer so here’s an update.
Its been a great summer full of visits from family and friends, trips and weddings among it all we have made some progress with our renovation. Lisa’s visit was the great motivation to get us into the house and get a bathroom up and running. Andi and Rod came to visit and showed us the miracles of Windex and razor blades. The windows we had long wrote off as needing to be replaced were given new life with a little elbow grease and a whole lot of scraping. I have found the reflection from the nearly hundred year old wavy glass is one of my favorite attributes of this old bungalow. Zanna has even taken the shadows as a departure point for a new print pattern currently being developed.
Meanwhile in off hours we pulled all the nails and staples that littered the tight grain fir clabber siding. The siding that lay almost dormant beneath the vinyl was in great shape on the east and north faces, only scared by nails and staples holes used to install the haphazard vinyl. The south and west faces did show there years of exposure to the sun and is currently our primary project. More about our paint prep in the next post.
In addition, we have taken to tile work and have found it to be a beautiful finish. We also had a claw foot tub that we got tired of bumping into in the middle of our bed room so we have done a large push to get the master bathroom up and running. We laid cement board over the sub flooring and around the shower surround and used an paint on vapor barrier, much like the down stairs bathroom. Again we used the 1” hex tiles on the bathroom floor but this time we decide on a much darker grout for higher contrast with the small white tile. I also wanted to protect the walls around the tub/ shower so we decided to tile that with large 12 x 4-1/2” tiles; again we used an almost black grout to give the tile a high contrast finish.
I had salvaged a lot of random width knotty pine wall board and re-milled it to run as bead board around the bathroom. I capped the bead board with a vintage craftsman chair rail from Rejuvenation, a great local lighting, millwork and antiques store. Finally, we were able to get the claw foot tub out of our bedroom and it could live in its new home. The tub which we found second hand from the rebuilding center for a steal price had brass plated cast iron feet. We did not like the high gloss brass finish and used a brass ager to give the feet an older patina. Lastly, I set the toilet, a Flowise American Standard, which uses 1.28 gallons per flush as apposed to the typical 1.6 gallons which can save hundreds of gallons of water per year. We ordered the claw foot tub trim from Sunrise Specialty and hope to install it in the coming week.
In addition, I have become an amateur electrician and have built and wired all the houses lighting. We bought some beautiful fixtures for school house electric which is a Portland institution for period lighting but were shocked at how much fixtures and globes could be. So we hit the salvage stores and re-building center and were able to build the rest of the houses lights from old sconces, fixtures, wall mounts and globes. There is a local lighting supply store loving know to us as the light bulb lady who sells modern lighting parts. For the cost of a single school house globe we were able to outfit about twelve other complete fixtures.
One of our prerequisites when we were searching for a house was a place that would allow both of us to have studio space. We have converted the basement into Zanna’s Studio while my wood shop is out in the garage. Both the spaces are quite spacious and we have honed there layout to allow both of us to work at home while still having a true separation from our living space. I recently built zanna a second 4’ x 8’ print table which allows her to now print fabric yardage up to 16’. In my shop I was being inundated with salvaged wood and built a storage loft to clear the work space and provide more room.
Finally, the planning of our kitchen cabinetry is well underway and I have my cut sheet to build the first unit that will house the kitchen sink and dish washer, both additions will be welcomed by us as we are growing tired of busing our dishes down to the shop sink in the basement. Though our friend Rich told me he would surely do more dishes if he too had a garden hose to do them with. I’m excited to get going on the cabinetry but have been postponing while the weather has remained good. We have been prepping the house for painting and have focused on the truly beaten up walls, the south and west faces as well as our west facing 2nd level dormer and the garage. Our paint prep has been an arduous task and will go into it in further detail in the next post. Until then please see a slide show of our summer of family, friends and play and work. Thanks for checking back in.