New Room Available!

Guests now arriving at 83 Durant have the option of staying in our newest room!

Here's the area outside the closet, where we have the changing table. My Uncle Paul salvaged this from the Sudbury dump! Awesome!

The lovely blankets on top of the changing table right now are handmade gifts from Mary and Marlow. Thanks!

Here's inside the closet, where we've put a cheap-o cube shelving unit for now:


Here's the window and the curtains that Aunt Florrie made -- thanks Florrie!


My grandfather made the rocking horse for me, and the little rocking chair was mine, too.

We'll be getting the crib and a shelf up there in the next few days. We have a few decorating plans, too. It's so nice to have the room done before the impending arrival.

Here's a slideshow of this room's history.

Demolition in Progress
Originally uploaded by Bridget Marshall

New Additions and Status Update

No, not THAT new addition yet. But we did get our new glider/recliner, in preparation for the new addition to the family. It is wicked comfortable. Check it out:


In other news, there have been no further night-time noises from the critter, so we are hopeful that he/she has found a different home. We never got the traps out, but haven't heard any more signs since that one I mentioned in the last post.

We haven't posted much lately, as it has been a busy time. Jake has been working away in the bedroom, and I've been staying out due to the toxic mix of lead paint and new paint and whatever else is up there. But it's coming along and looking quite nice!
This is the area by the closet. You can see that it kinda looks like two different colors of yellow, but it's just the way the light is hitting it; it's really just one shade of yellow for the whole wall.

Here's the area by the entry door and built-in:

And here's the slanty ceiling/wall by the window:

Jake is up there right now painting the trim with glossy white paint.

Electrifying Goodness

No big updates recently; our jobs and my exhaustion have kinda kept us from doing much around the house on the big projects (or from blogging about them). This week, we did have our next-door-neighbor, Lisa, the licenced electrician come by to fix some stuff for us. She has been great!
She re-installed the lighting fixtures in the baby's room, including the overhead light in the main room


and in the closet.

Let there be light! She also dealt with the electrical cord that was sticking out inside the built-in, as you can see in this before and after pair:


































We also had a new problem -- the one outlet on the front wall of our bedroom blew a month or so ago. It was the one we used to power our bedside lamps, alarm clocks, and the air conditioner (perhaps that's why it blew). It wasn't just a fuse or circuit-breaker issue; it seems that it was one of the outlets with older wiring, and somewhere along the line, the wire fried. Lisa couldn't find the specific spot (without, say, ripping apart all of the walls) so we decided to cover that outlet completely and have two brand new ones installed.
Here's the old one, covered up:

And here's one of the new ones:

These are heavy-duty receptacles, with 20-amp (instead of only 15-amp) service, so we're good to go for plugging in all our power tools and air conditioners and whatnot.

Putting in the new ones involved a lot of fancy professional electrician kinda stuff, so we were very pleased to have an expert. She set things up and strung new wires from the basement, up through the wall by the chimney, overhead through the attic, and then into nice new heavy-duty outlets in the bedroom (one for each side of the bed). It's great, and now we don't have to worry about plugging in the air conditioner. [On a side note, I cannot believe that we still need an air conditioner in October in Massachusetts!]

While in the basement, Lisa showed Jake some of the fascinating wiring in our house. Most of it is more recent, and all of it looked safe to her, but it's really quite the wiring museum down there. Jake has some pictures, and he can probably elaborate further on our little piece of electrical history.



Other than that, we need to get back to finishing the baby's room; that's on the list for next week. Jake has primed all the trim, and also painted the ceiling with the ceiling white color (it has a name, but I forget what it is. Weirdly, it's not just "white.") The room is looking a bit creepy right now, with white on every surface. It's like some weird optical illusion:

Update

Things have been busy around 83 Durant, and we haven't been able to make a lot of progress since our carpenter left. Jake has finished caulking holes and edges in the trim, and has mostly finished sanding the trim. I don't have any pictures, becuase it's really too toxic for me to go in there right now. Hopefully he'll be able to get some painting done this week, but it has been hard to fit in project time with our work schedules.

Jake switched out all the air vents on all the radiators in the house, so that's a nice thing to have done before the weather turns. The new vents should make things a bit more efficient and hopefully a little less bang-y. Now we're trying to figure out crafty things to do with the old vents.

Other than that, not much to report. I can't wait to get the baby's room finished so we can move all the baby stuff up there!

Baby Room Carpentry Complete!

We're thrilled to announce that our carpenter, Bill Champagne, finished up work on the baby's room today, and it looks great.

He put the door back on, so now it's a real room! We'll need to strip and paint it, but it fits nicely.


He put in some new red oak flooring in the area where the built-in once was. It's very nice. We just need to stain and varnish it.

He also dealt with the mess at the bottom of the original built-in, adding some baseboard and molding at the edges, and putting in plywood for the floor area inside the built-in.

And we're very pleased that he was able to restore the original built-in to its original glory, with new shelves and sturdy shelf brackets. This, too, will get a good paint job, and we're also going to ask our electrician friend if she can run the wires through the wall instead of through the built-in.


It was a tricky job at several spots, such as around the original trim of the window and door. Since the drywall is much thinner than the plaster and lathe, there was a big gap around the edges of the door and window frames. Bill fixed this with small pieces of wood. It looks great:


Here's the new piece of baseboard by the closet, including the base cap molding on top.


So now it's our turn. Remaining tasks:
--sand all the trim to get a smooth surface for painting
--paint the radiator
--paint the ceiling
--paint the walls
--paint the trim
--get electrical taken care of (overhead light and re-run built-in wire)
--move in all the baby's stuff (finally!)

And then we're ready!

Carpentry Madness!

This week our carpenter has been here working on a few jobs, including installing the trim for the bedroom. So far he has accomplished quite a lot! He has re-installed the original trim around the window:


He has replaced the large piece of baseboard that we busted when we were doing demolition:


He has also started on a promising solution for the mess where the built-in once was. He's going to put in some new flooring, and has already ripped out the bungled up old stuff. You can also see here that he is fixing the problem with the baseboard and molding around the bottom of the original built-in:

And here's the top of the old built-in:


He'll be back next week to continue the job. We're very pleased with his work!

Jake has also taken up carpentry, and is installing new storm doors. Here's the U-G-L-Y (and broken, and highly ineffective) storm door for the door off the kitchen:

Here's the inside view:

As you might be able to see, the lower window doesn't fit, and the thing is literally held together with tape. The latch handle is broken, and sometimes it doesn't stay shut. We also don't have any screens for it. It's time for an upgrade!

We ordered the doors (custom of course, nothing in this house this old can be found in a "standard" size) from Lowes during the Massachusetts tax holiday. Plus there's the energy-saving tax credit. Woo hoo! After some struggles (which perhaps he will detail here himself) we have a LOVELY storm door (in "cranberry") installed. It lets a lot of light (via the window) and air (via the screen) into the kitchen. And it should provide more energy efficiency for the winter.



Of course, the most important improvement, according to one of 83 Durant's residents is the Dog Visibility Factor (DVF). Carter is really enjoying being able to see in and out (the old door was too high for him).


The pink room has a door to the back porch that had no storm door at all. It was a serious point of cold air entry, as we discovered back during our infrared report. We have another door -- much like this one, but white instead of cranberry -- that Jake will install soon.

Spare Bedroom Painting!

Today Jake put up the primer paint in the spare bedroom. We used Kilz, although with our fancy new drywall, I don't think there was really anything that needed killzing. It's nice to be one step closer to completing this room!


It's kinda hard to show what it looks like since it's all white, but you can at least see that it looks better than it did with all the drywall and mud!

And by the way, in case you were wondering why Jake did all the painting while I blogged away in the safety of the paint-free zone, it's because (for those of you who didn't yet know) we already have a long-term guest lined up for the "spare" bedroom. He or she will be arriving on or about November 17th, and apparently staying for something like 18 years or more. Thus the rather urgent need to get this room into move-in condition. That, or the kid is going to have to figure out carpentry and other home improvement tasks pretty quickly.

Today we also purchased a few new air valves for our radiators (on the advice of our heating expert). We found the Vent-Rite No. 1 Air Valve at our local Ace Hardware for several dollars cheaper than other places, so that was pretty great. I bought three just to see how the installation would go. It was smooth and easy, so we're going to try to change all of them.
There's the box for the new one, the new valve, and the old valve.

The old ones came out just fine (we worried about breaking them off and creating a serious problem) and we easily screwed in the new ones (adding some teflon tape to seal the threads). This should improve heating efficiency (or so we've been told).
Anyone have any ideas on what to do with the old ones? Any interesting craft projects? (I think they look like little metal Christmas trees).

Drywall Complete!

Yesterday Francisco finished the sanding and finishing, and this morning two guys arrived to clean up the mess. They even vaccuumed the stairs! We have walls! And we can paint them! It's very exciting. Here's what it looks like:


And here's today's catalogue of things we still have to do in this room:
--prime the whole thing

--paint the ceiling

--put up trim around doors/windows

--paint the walls

--deal with the mess that is the new built-in/old built-in area: As we discovered, there was an original built-in shelving unit behind the newer one. We've ripped out the new one but left the old one in tact. We just need to figure out how to fix the moulding around the little old built in, as well as deal with the floor in the area that was the new built-in. We're also thinking of covering this little nook up so as to put in shelves for the entire length and width of this area.


--replace baseboard: we ripped out this section of baseboard, and then decided NOT to take out any more baseboard. We'll need to put a fresh piece in here, which might be a bit tricky. It's clear that the floor here was put in AFTER the baseboard.


--fix/replace baseboard: This is one other section of baseboard that we messed up trying to rip it out. I imagine we'll need to cut it back to where it's complete, then put in a new piece, routing out the spot for the electrical outlet.


--baseboard top trim: we're going to need to buy and install the pretty top part of the baseboard that will go above this flat piece. It will hide the line where the drywall meets the baseboard (where in some spots there is a pretty big gap!)

--paint the steam radiator: as you can see, it's not in terrible shape, but will need some scraping/sanding and then a fresh coat. I've been reading that spray paint is the way to go (and that's also what we did at Ian & Elizabeth's house).


--re-install overhead lighting fixture in the room and figure out lighting for the closet (there's a wired-in flourescent tube one in there now).

That's all I can think of for now. I'm very pleased with how it looks.

Drywall Project, Day 3

There was further mudding today, and it's really looking good. Check it out:

New Walls, Step 2

Today Francisco came to tape and mud up our new drywall. It's coming along, but he will be back tomorrow to continue the job. Here are some mid-progress images:

This is the inside of the closet:


Here's the area around the old built-in. It looks like it's going to stay. We might (later) cover it over with larger shelves in this area, but for now, the easiest thing was to dry wall around it. The corner looks nice and sharp.


In the world of Bridget's Nano-Projects (TM), I did a couple of small things around 83 Durant today. First job (this has been on my mind for a while now) was to tone down the ostentatiousness of the pink room. No, re-painting the pink room a non-pink color does not come under the heading of "nano-project" (oh that it would!); I just changed the lightswitch cover from the very gaudy golden one to a simple white one:

I wouldn't mind having something a little more interesting than plain white here, but this room is already SO bright with tons of white trim (and some pink-accented trim) that simple seems to be the way to go. Uncle Ernie, please note that I learned well from you: the screws are at 12 & 6!

My other tiny project was to install a screen in our front door. Yes, it's a bit late in the summer to finally be putting in a screen, but I think it will be a big help with all the dust we're raising in this whole drywalling project. Now I just have to find a safe place for the storm window, which will be going back into the door in not too long.