Last Day of 2014, Celebrating 100 Years

Our Rescue Mutt at Howard House

100 years ago my great grandparents built this lovely old home. I'm so pleased with how far we have come and cannot wait to see where we take it in the future.

Raise a toast to: Old Houses, Old Dogs and Old People.

Grandma's Toast to 2015 

Minnesota in Winter...don't let the cats get bored.

So that was the plinking noise I heard from the kitchen.

Thanks, I was looking for that pen.

Trip east- A bit of Geneaology

The great trip East (Craptastic by the way, never again with 80 people) had a few highlights.

On the Brooklyn Bridge getting to see the area owned by our ancestor Cornelius Meyln.

At Plimoth Plantation, watching a reenactor playing one of our many ancestors who lived at Plymouth Colony. 

William Beamsley's Grave in Boston!

Disney Princess Steps, Behold the Power of Paint!

The Power of Paint shall be with you!   I had an old gallon of Disney paint from my house in Minneapolis and have transformed the Icky red painted steps and green walls of the central hallway.

You don't realize how bad it was, until you see it painted. 

No doubt I'll have to paint these every year to keep them looking fresh. 

Face lifts and Other Stories

2014 Was all about the room facelifts as we continued our futile search for a contractor.

The kitchen and breakfast room received a good scrubbing and paint job as I hold out hope I can have a new kitchen sometime this decade.  My Kingdom for a Contractor!!!  Now, don't get all uppity on me, this kitchen is not original, it was added in the 1930's into a back porch and the original buffet was moved into what had been the kitchen.   I'll keep the buffet as I have the original stained glass windows.  

Our great find was an oak floor under the breakfast room vinyl flooring.   I'm still amazed at the great condition that is in having been hidden for decades under layers of ugly.   Unfortunately that meant, we could tile, so right now we have an extremely cheap peel n stick floor. 

Here you can see a bit of the oak floor under all that nasty!

This is John he gave up...

It's amazing what a bit of paint can do for a room.   That and a new counter and tin backsplash.

A "NEW" 1914 bathroom

Way back in January on a freezing cold Sunday, our middle child was showering for church in the second floor bathroom, when suddenly it began to rain on the first floor breakfast room.   After some careful research that involved cutting a giant hole in my breakfast room ceiling, we discovered that the pipes had been leaking for some time and that a wise repair man had stuck a metal coffee can under said leak and towels had been stuffed under the toilet.   Now I'm not sure what decade this occurred in, but I am going to guess the 1980's.   Finally the can gave way or the pipes just finally gave out completely.  Faced with rotting and broken pipes everywhere we decided it was time to gut the 1950's and restore 1914.

About a year ago, I had picked up a claw foot tub that has just been taking up space in our storage garage.  Once the weather stopped gifting us with snow storms, the tub was pulled out, cleaned and the exterior spray painted black.

Before...bask in the watermelon rind 1950's bathroom. 

Custom Vanity Circa 1950's

Bathroom door circa 1950's

Look a Bathroom Window to an interior room!!! ? 

I am not even sure why my great grandparents decided to put in a window to an interior sun room, but I am sure glad grandad covered it up in the 1950's.

Subway Tile from Home Depot...Loving the Dark Gray

Subway tile = cheap and period appropriate for a 1914 home.  I cannot say enough how much I love the subway tile.  We used a dark gray mortar and grout from Home Depot to get the effect we wanted.   My only issue was the spacers, trying to get "T" spacers in South Dakota is darn near impossible, I ended up cutting one side off of every single spacer.    We also ran into an issue with a week long warm up that ended up shifting the house and creating a huge gap between the subway tile and the floor.  DH nearly had a conniption!

3/4 inch Merola Hex Tile with Dark Gray Grout 

Adventures in Merola Hex Tile. Installing the Hex Tile was an exercise in frustration.  While the tile from Home Depot is period appropriate and affordable, it is not the greatest quality for spacing.  Try as we might, we could not get this product to align.   End results are still "ok", not stellar.  I will opt for a higher quality tile next time.   We did not use a wet saw to trim down the edges, just quarter round to match the subway tile which created a nice finished look.

My lucky find! Door Molding, found during City Wide Clean up

Done! Color is "Ancient Stone" from the Valspar Paint collection.  This is a favorite of the "Rehab Addict" Nicole Curtis.

On Sale Toilet from Menards (cheap) with a fancy handle from Lowes, and grandma's mason jars.  All this is missing are more of my insulators. 

Home Depot vanity with blue milk glass knobs, from D. Lawless Hardware

Restored!

http://www.dlawlesshardware.com/   Blue Milk Glass Cabinet Knobs

http://www.kohls.com/ Sonoma Life + Style towels in Light Aqua and shower curtain

Basket: TJ Maxx

Bathroom accessories: Glenshire by Moen. 

Valspar Paint:  Ancient Stone, 347-2

Lowes: Universal Chrome Toilet Handle: Item 247903

Bathroom number 4, the long forgotten realm

What happens when you leave me alone for a weekend?  Paint Paint and more paint.   In preparation for the 2nd floor bathroom, I decided it was necessary to update the 3rd floor bathroom as I now need to use that daily while we update the main bathroom.

It must have been a "thing" in BHG in the 70's to make a bathroom look tiled, by adding peel and stick paper.  Nasty.

Peeled off the peel and stick, caulked, removed the doors and the medicine cabinet and painted the entire thing this last weekend.

Forgot the entire "before", but you get the idea.  Yellow and nasty, was probably white at one time. 

Wow that's a lot of ancient razors!

I call this color "Random Blue Paints I Mixed Together." Everything with the exception of the lights is from the 1950's and 60's.