Tag: Before

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House Tour: Staricase Before

Christine
In September 2003… Bland carpet, painted balusters, painted woodwork…
The view from the upstairs hall, showing the landing and its window. Nice curtains, huh? Gotta love that skinny wallpaper border, too. Really. The crooked, aged plaster ceiling is where you want to draw the eye, right?
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House Tour: Downstairs Bathroom Before

Christine

The downstairs bathroom in September 2003… I was very glad to have a second bathroom in the house at all. And it served its purpose. But when we realized we were going to have to tear out the whole bathroom upstairs, I decided we needed to have a place to shower during the renovation of the upstairs bathroom.

This teeny-weenie sink and toilet would go, and they would be reversed in position before it was all said and done. This was the only way we could fit a sink, toilet and shower into this tiny space. Plus, it kept all the hot water lines along an interior wall.
Also, I’ll never understand why they would have gone out and purchased a cheap, hollow-core door for this room when there were two five-panel doors, original to the house, in perfect condition, stashed away in the attic. Duh.

This disgusting little pantry closet (part of the back hall) would become the spot for the shower. I really can’t believe they kept food there. It had no ceiling. It was just open at the top. Open to anything that might be living in those two feet above the drop ceiling. Ew.

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House Tour: Oliver’s Room Before

Christine

In September 2003…
The view from the kitchen to the back hall. The open back door leads to the back yard.

This is the back hall, a tiny space with a big radiator, 70s paneling, vinyl flooring, and drop ceilings.

I suspect the wire hanging above the radiator was a place to dry clothes.
The back hall is adjacent to this room, which we called the back porch room for the two years before Oliver arrived.

The back porch room suffered many afflictions: 1950s paneling, no lighting, an ugly ceiling fan, no heat, another “trailer window” which did not open, a lowered ceiling covered in tiles. Remember my previous owner’s affection for wall shelves?
However, this room did have some snazzy built-ins. Monsterously heavy drawers, built out of plywood and paneling, sometime in the 1950s. These had to go, but we kept the drawers, built new frames for them, put them on heavy-duty gliders, and they now house tools, painting supplies, etc. in the basement.
Take a close look at the floor in the photo above. That is a change in the flooring. On the left is the portion that used to be part of the dining room, then there was a transition strip of duct tape, then the original porch floor. They just had a piece of carpet loose over this floor- no padding.
The lovely French doors, painted white, that lead to the dining room.

I certainly wouldn’t have wanted to use this room as my bedroom: no heat, no ventilation, no natrual light, no privacy. Nice, huh?

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House Tour: Kitchen Before

Christine

The kitchen in September 2003…
While the kitchen had a lot of cosmetic issues, it had one good thing going for it: all those cabinets.

Now, I don’t think they are original to the house, but I suspect they date to the 1950s. The hardware that was there was that black stuff often seen between the 50s to the 70s, which wouldn’t have been so bad, but at some point someone decided it would all look better if spray painted gold. But then the gold started to rub off and you could see the black again. Nice.

Then there is the “trailer window”. It was placed too high for me to see out of, didn’t open for ventilation, and didn’t let much light in. I would hate to think this was original, I sort of doubt it, but I have no way of knowing for sure.

Speaking of the lightning, there were only two light sources in this kitchen: the fancy swag light, not placed near any work surface, and the scary flourescent tube above the sink, with its brittle cord you had to plug in to turn on. The previous owners left all of the kitchen appliances. The fridge, which is on its last legs, the electric stove, which was in full working order, the gas stove, which had never been used (did I mention they had a fear of losing electricity?), and the roll away dishwasher. I did appreciate the dishwasher, but it really made for a crowded workspace with all these extra appliances.

Also, please note the lovely laminate counter and walls. They had streaks of “gold”. That must have inspired the repainting of the knobs and hinges. While we are talking about the surface coverings, don’t you just love the 1970s paneling on the walls? And the ceiling tiles? How about the vinyl flooring, with the rectangular cut right in the middle? Really special.

I took great pleasure in tearing the flooring out myself. The ceiling tiles came down after we realized the intake water supply to the upstairs toilet was leaking. Right onto the kitchen counter, right about where the green fan is sitting.

Have I mentioned how much the previous owners liked shelves?

And there is a good shot of that swag fixture, casting more light than it did in real life.
The door way above leads to the back porch room, now known as Oliver’s room.

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House Tour: Dining Room Before

Christine

The Dining Room, as it looked in September 2003…

Really, no too bad. Bland wall color. Really poor treatment of that beautiful bank of windows. The glass shelves across the windows were really special, too. These people really had a thing for wall mounted shelves. They were all over the place. The plate rail around the top wasn’t bad, but it had to be removed when we moved the wall, and we discovered that it was definitely not original, and was very cheaply made. Also the chair rail was added at a later date.
It took me a little while to figure out what was wrong with this room. The proportions were wrong, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. In the picture below, to the left of the French doors, you’ll notice a strange lumpy line running down the wall, right above the radiator. It is hard to tell from these pictures, but that is the edge of the bump out. You see, sometime in the past, probably in the 1950s or 60s, someone enclosed the back porch to make a bedroom. And they moved the dining room wall to make the bedroom slightly larger. Once I figured out what threw this room off, I knew it would bug me until I would be able to move it back to its original location. I just didn’t know it would be so soon…
Note the fabulous press-board entertainment unit the previous owners left for me, mostly because they couldn’t fit it on their moving van.

There are two radiators in this room. They should be about the same size, and they flank the window bump out. As some point, probably when they moved the wall, someone swapped the second small radiator from the dining room and put it in the living room. They took one that was almost twice as big and made it the second one in the dining room. I can only assume this was done to provide extra heat to this tiny, make-shift bedroom. Even now, it is cold back there, and before we rearranged walls there was no heat source in that space, which is also over an un-insulated part of the basement. Burr.

The doorway to the kitchen was also no longer in its original location. It should have been about 32″ wide with a swinging door. The door is still here, and it is in beautiful condition. I was very lucky. Many of the original doors were still tucked here and there around the house. Also, don’t you just love the 60s-70s “chandelier”? Brass AND wood.
Although I like the plate rail, we never put it back up after we moved the wall. We would have had to replicate the brackets (which I have hung on to), and by the time we were even at the stage to even think about it, almost all of the shelf board had been re-purposed.

For such a simple room, it really looks different today.