A Room Reborn - aka "Where the Hell has Jess Been?"
Several weeks back I posted the photo above as part of my BNW Photo Challenge Series and I got a lot of nice comments on it. I like the photo quite a bit myself.
At least when I'm able to forget that's my daughter's supposed "bedroom."
As detailed at length in my post here, we live in a restoration project. Our home is 150 years old, was abandoned entirely for sixty years before we bought it, and after we worked our asses off to run new plumbing, restore the old radiator system, and run new wiring (in other words, just when we were on the cusp of being able to do cosmetic improvements) we were called away to work in Boise for two years, and our scumbag contractor gutted the place in our absence. We returned home to a house worse off than when we'd first purchased it.
And we had nowhere else to live.
So poor, darling baby girl (my eleven-year-old, Lily Rose @lilycat83) has been sleeping on the couch because the bedroom she chose as her eventual retreat looked like this:
The wall to the right has already received a finish coat of plaster and the trenches in the ceiling were patched, so technically this was an "improvement."
The "closet" to the right is the only one in the house so armoires are on the shopping list
The window has a temporary sash set in place while I reglaze the originals.
The sill in the previous pic is already painted because when we took the sashes out this was the condition of the sills, so darling hubby cut new ones which I installed, caulked and painted to prevent any new damage. You can see a glob of ancient caulk where the "remuddlers" who owned it in the fifties tried to fill a rotted piece of the brick molding.
Thank god for glazing points, because without them the glass would have fallen out of these long ago.
The sashes I removed were in pretty bad shape. You can see the lower stile fell right off of this one when I took it down. Most people would tell me to buy replacements, but I love the old glass with its green tint, waves, and imperfections.
Each sash is three feet tall and the glass is heavy as hell to remove.
I'm a sucker for the old hardware too, though I did have to purchase some new sash stays, which are little pressure clamps on the side that allow you to set the sash at any height.
Considering the condition of the old, brittle glazing, you'd think it would be easy to remove, but I learned by fracturing my first ever pane, that I need to heat it up to soften it before removal. It's tedious but eventually, I got both panes removed intact this time!
Once I've scraped the stiles clean I set a new glaze bed. I don't do DAP like you find at the Lowe's. For this I use Sarco, which is an oil-based glaze. It will literally never dry, allowing for expansion and contraction seasonally. The pane is pressed oh-so carefully down into the glaze and excess is scraped off to be reused. Glazing points are replaced, a bead of glaze goes over them, and the sash can be rehabbed and repainted.
For these ones it took a lot. I used "Liquid Wood" epoxy liquid to seal all of the wood fibers, then filled the really checked grain with a slurry I made of the liquid epoxy and the putty of the same brand. Then they sanded smooth in the areas that were really badly damaged, and they're as hard as petrified wood! I used this same method to save all of the original brick molding, cutting out rot, and refilling with Liquid Wood putty where needed.
Luckily these two windows are facing the non-weathered side of the house and aren't in nearly as bad shape. I've saved them for last to get the worst out of the way. You can see here the plaster finish coat was going on exactly like you aren't supposed to do it, but I'm a rebel and work from the floor up, using a take-down blade sort of like a rubber squeegee to maintain a smooth blend.
It was easy enough to paint the walls, but oh! The trim! What a huge pain it is when you have to do things like remove the transom window and operator to paint it!
Every princess who waits so patiently deserves a lovely chandelier, and so we installed one. And look at that one window that's done! Can't wait for the other two, which will go a lot faster since they're in much better condition!
With the paint done, it's time to uncover the floor...
And sand it down!
Well this is as far as we've gotten, but I think we'll be done by next week, so maybe I'll post some final pics after we've decorated and all. It feels really good to go from so broke down to the pretty room we're closing in on. Lily Rose is excited and so am I. And if you haven't seen me around, now you know why!
art and flair courtesy of @PegasusPhysics
With the care and attention you are paying, this should be a great house when you are finished. I love the old houses that were built by real craftsmen.
Thanks so much! I feel the same about old houses. This one was built before a blight destroyed all of the cedar in Pennsylvania. The beams are 12 inch square cedar timber. The bricks were baked and the lumber milled right here in town by the family who built it. As awful as it looks it’s solid as a rock. I’ve slid down the bannister more than once lol!
I never hear the part where you chased down those contractors, got them jailed, and got some money back. Real Life Horror} If nothing else, use their names on all your villains, and show them no mercy!
You have worked so hard and invested so much time and money in this labor of love. I wish you at least would win the lottery to recover some of this. You're giving back to the community and state history, too!
Despite the fact that nearly $10k in tools were also stolen, including a custom made infrared paint remover with an identifiable serial number, the police showed somewhere between little to no interest in pursuing a case. As far as I know they never even hit up any local pawn dealers or anything.
However, it's a small town and a lot of people across the state follow the restoration online as they were either born here or they're related to the family that built the house. So I did name the bastard online and he'll definitely never work around these parts again. Last I heard he was hit by a car in Delaware while trying to take down a tree. So I guess karma is a thing.
It doesn't restore what you lost, but karma, well, Karma owes you a very pampered next life!
Holy cow!!!!!!!!! The amount of work you have to do and how much you have done already. My hats off to you.
LOVE you got her a chandelier!!!!!!!!!! How cool is that!!!
When I took her to the store to pick lights she kept saying “Oh just a little lamp by the bed is fine.” But she’s the kind of kid who refuses to ask for the slightest indulgence. So I ordered one on Amazon and this was her reaction ❤️
Mama knows 😉
A photo to melt a Mom's heart!! I think you both are very special people <3
Dear lord, I can't even imagine taking on a project like this. And what a beautiful job you've done with Lily Rose's room! I'm in absolute awe!
Lol, thank you. I admit it's more than I expected but I am loving it coming together little by little.
Woh! This certainly doesn't involve a hammer. 😂 lovely work. You have truly invested a lot of time to get this done and your daughter has the bestest mother.
The house is going to look truly lovely when you are done. That chandelier was a superb touch. Can't wait to see the final look. Peace
Aww thanks @warpedpoetic. Most days I feel like a better mom would not have taken on such a major wreck lol. But it’s really gratifying to bring it back like this. And it sounds cliche but they really don’t build houses this well anymore so I know when it’s done it will be awesome
Sash, glaze points... I understand none of these terms. It's possible I'd understand them in Hebrew, but far from certain. Hardware work is one of my most glaring of weaknesses.
I can tell it's been a lot of work, and not only because you've told me of Discord. And I can tell you things look much better now :)
Oh yeah, two part epoxy is awesome. I used it for wargaming miniatures before.
The stuff I use is like a foam. Very lightweight but hardens like a rock. On the sashes and molding there were chunks rotted away, where I was able to take a mold of existing matching pieces and create replacement spans really easily. I was so shocked at the first sight of the trim I thought there was no way I could do it myself. But I wasn’t willing to lose the character of the old woodwork and a call to a historic restoration firm in a nearby city yielded an estimate of $1200 per window.
So I figured it out 😅
I still don't know what sashes are. But! I'm proud of you :)
Hmmm. Even with pictures for “context?”
It’s the part you probably think of as “the window.” The frame with glass in it that slides up and down.
Holy cow. I have done most (all?) of this at some point on my old house in Wisconsin, but never so much all at once. This is a huge project, but you're doing it so well. I love to see people doing it right :)
Thanks, Neg! It’s slow going when so much is in such bad shape. Not just because of the extent of the work but because it’s hard to find the right place to start. I think “Okay, I’ll do a, then b.” Then I prep for a only to discover c must be done first. Get started on it and d falls apart, lol. It starts to feel like I’ll never get to paint a damn thing sometimes 😂
*a lot of people across the state follow the restoration online as they were either born here or they're related to the family that built the house
--That's what I mean! Your work is a legacy - preserving a treasure, an heirloom, not just for you, but whoever drives by and sees this bit of history still standing. Too Cool!!!