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Pigsfeet on Rye posted:Is that from J.B. Van Sciver? I have a set from my parents that has a strong resemblance. I'll have to check when I get home - at some point I found a manufacturer mark on one of the drawers but don't recall what it said.
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May 7, 2019 22:59
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You could probably move the pulls from the top two smaller drawers down to fill those holes, then put something decorative on there like these. There's a lot of places making cool cabinet pulls!
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May 8, 2019 08:37
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Oh wow, totally forgot to post findings on the dresser (which I still haven't refinished because I'm still missing the proper clamp for re-gluing the busted drawer). I did get some free pecan wood stain from my neighbor, so if that looks good I might use it. Also keep forgetting to post here in general - keep telling myself I'll make posts when I hop on my computer to get a break from phone posting, but then I never hop on my computer. So I'll just suck it up and phone post. Anyhow, I did not find a manufacturer mark on the dresser, but there's some stuff on the back - stenciled lettering that reads "53-114,MAPLE.G", a handwritten "53", and a couple handwritten dates of "6/12/62". So it's mid century (but not MCM), made from maple, all solid, but thin 1/4" planks and pretty cheaply put together (all glued, no joinery). Still better made than today's particle board garbage, so worth fixing up for a project. Went on errands today, with the intention of coming back and husband replacing the corroded, leaky kitchen faucet with a near-identical cheap fixture that is not corroded and does not leak and should serve us until we remodel the entire kitchen and get a new fixture. The plan was to do the faucet today, but the plan to hit Home Depot and REI and then go work turned into going to Home Depot, then picking up friends who wanted to go to REI with us, and then going to Hofbrauhaus for beer/lunch/dinner because it was catty-corner from REI. So faucet replacement will happen tomorrow. Also addition of fixture-level shutoff valves, because currently, we will have to shut off water to the entire house to be able to work on the kitchen faucet. I'll be documenting this. Got the clamps for furniture gluing, so I'll be able to fix the busted drawer and one of our dining room chairs that's gotten super loose. Also got some more garden stuff - it's all in pots because I haven't gotten my act together on building a raised bed (which is necessary because of lead) with stone walls. The stupid overpriced fancy tomato cages I bought better yield me a shitton of tomatoes - was very mad they were out of the simple 75 cent wire ones. We've also been researching repainting our basement - all the foundation walls are made of sandstone, a lot of which is spalling, all of which seriously need maintenance, because I don't think they've ever been repainted. So the old mortar is about as good as hard packed sand right now. But because it's sandstone and it's old, we can't do Portland cement, which means we need to special order lime-only mortar (definitely not stocked at Home Depot) or order the components and mix it. Husband found a test we can do with vinegar to see if the existing mortar is all lime. I'm betting it is - our house was built right as Portland cement was coming onto the scene, so not sure how popular it was in construction at that time, and it's degraded into sand. The lime will need a high-moisture environment to cure, but in order to achieve that, all we have to do is turn the dehumidifier off for a while. I've also done some investigation into our main story flooring - it's the top-nailed skinny strip flooring that was popular in the 1910s, so 1" boards that are about 1/4" thick, nailed onto what is probably wider plank pine underneath. I think it's still the original shellac finish - tried to get a water spot off with alcohol the other day and realized I was pulling up all the finish. I'll need to clean any wax off, strip old shellac with alcohol, very lightly sand, and then apply new shellac and wax (no loving way we are doing polyurethane while occupying the house - those fumes gently caress me up and they took a month to go away after we did the attic floors). I kind of want to do this now, but it would be wiser to do after we finish the kitchen and downstairs powder room. One thing I fear doing is tearing up the walls on the second floor, because I know I'll find like four layers of paint and at least two layers of wallpaper. The colors are all awful, but the last thing we should do is put even more paint on them. Don't want lumpy walls anyhow. My dad says to just rip everything out and replace with drywall, which I think might actually be easier, but after having lived in a drywall-walled house and then a plaster-walled house, I don't know if I could go back to drywall. So I'll probably suck it up and strip and restore the original walls of all the poo poo on them. Or maybe I'll do one room and cave and just pay some drywall guys. Or the plaster company with the tagline "get plastered" on their truck. I think we need to just start punching holes in things or else we're never going to do it. I feel us getting more complacent by the day. I'll go work on kitchen designs now.
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Jun 2, 2019 00:05
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Queen Victorian posted:Oh wow, totally forgot to post findings on the dresser (which I still haven't refinished because I'm still missing the proper clamp for re-gluing the busted drawer). I did get some free pecan wood stain from my neighbor, so if that looks good I might use it. Also keep forgetting to post here in general - keep telling myself I'll make posts when I hop on my computer to get a break from phone posting, but then I never hop on my computer. So I'll just suck it up and phone post. Re: Polyurethane - did you use the oil base? There's a water base also and the fumes seem less objectionable.
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Jun 2, 2019 01:20
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Pigsfeet on Rye posted:Re: Polyurethane - did you use the oil base? There's a water base also and the fumes seem less objectionable. We used the water-based stuff and it was still miserable - I'm just particularly sensitive to it. My husband and in-laws (who had come to help with the attic floors) were just working away with the polyurethane and no masks or anything and were totally fine, while I was wearing a respirator. If I took it off I'd immediately feel faint and headachy - I don't know how they tolerated it. We weren't even occupying the house at this point and I still couldn't stand it. So yeah, bad enough for me that I'll happily deal with shellac before doing polyurethane in a house we are occupying.
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Jun 2, 2019 01:42
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So husband successfully replaced the kitchen faucet and added shut-off valves, so that we no longer have a leaky, unwieldy faucet and now have the ability to work on the kitchen sink plumbing without shutting off water to the entire house. I'll get pics up later. It's nice to have a faucet that's more easily operable and has more than two degrees of articulation before it goes up to firehose-level pressure, but this fixture is inferior to the old one in pretty much every other way - slightly uglier, soap dish attachment is plastic (which I'm disproportionately annoyed about for some reason), and the handles are too small and pointy. You get what you pay for, and this fixture was a cheapo option from Home Depot (the only wall-mount option, actually) because we're not keeping this sink in the kitchen long term (though I'm gunning to keep it and put it somewhere else in the house because it's awesome). Still not sure about the restrictor though - we won't get splashed anymore and will save a bit on our water bill, but I really don't like that I can't fill up my 12 qt stock pot in five seconds anymore. Side note: Turns out I'm a six minute walk/one minute drive from a very well equipped tech prototyping shop that a couple of my hardware startup friends use. Like, full wood shop, metal shop, CNC machines and laser cutters, 3D printers, even a powder coating booth/oven. Might consider joining if I get to projects that have requirements beyond the tools I'm willing to buy/rent from Home Depot, but it's pretty expensive.
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Jun 4, 2019 14:23
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Oh geez, been a while since I've posted (and never got around to putting up faucet fixing photos). Anywho, some sort-of updates, about our house and the old family lake house I probably mentioned last summer. And I apologize for still no (new) pictures - dropped my phone in the lake while trying to take a picture and have yet to repair/replace it (I did manage to recover it, but it spent a good long while submerged). Also I realized too late I've not seen my little digital camera since the burglary, so didn't have that with me either (if I did, phone wouldn't have gotten dropped in the lake in the first place). So we just got home after two weeks at the lake house to find our place smelling very, very musty. Went down to the basement and there is clear evidence of some recent serious flooding (at least an inch or two of water getting to places we haven't previously seen it get to) and a dead dehumidifier. Last time we got a lot of rainwater in the basement, I suggested placing the dehumidifier up on some bricks, but hubby didn't think it was necessary. So now we need a new dehumidifier, which sucks because that thing was expensive. Husband is calling people tomorrow about getting the cellar door rebuilt over the basement - we will probably need a stonemason and a custom door since this is all super old and we don't want it to look lovely. This pic shows the remnants of the old outer door that we now desperately need rebuilt:  Previous owner put in those concrete steps and landing that let all the rainwater inundate the basement like a loving waterfall. That door is also poorly installed - threshold is loose and there are holes and poo poo between the foundation walls and jamb, so we probably need a new jamb and door there too. Ugh. Can't wait to be done shoveling silt off the basement floor. As for the old lake house, oh my loving god. Seriously, if our big crappy Victorian is homeownership on hard mode, this place is death march. It's a huge old house in the middle of nowhere surrounded by several smaller houses/buildings. There are three septic systems, one of which is a hundred years old and still in use. There are two water sources, a spring in the woods for drinking water, the lake for everything else. The roof(s) need replacing. There's a metric fuckton of deferred maintenance in general. To add to the pile of problems, the other side of the family is cheap as poo poo and do cheap horrible (and sometimes pointless) work without telling anyone (like replacing the epic and perfectly functional 30's toilet with the wall mounted tank in this one period-perfect bathroom with a plasticky piece of poo poo). This was the first trip where the veil was lifted and I got to see what it was really like to deal with this place. We got in ahead of the rest of the family (since we can just drive up) and spent two days or so getting everything in working order. For whatever reason, we were the first people to stay at the place this summer, so a bunch of the seasonal setup hadn't been done, so we got to figure out how to do it. I'm glad our homeownership skills are coming in handy. And then once my family arrived, my dad got to work with some local landscapers to unfuck the lawn. I might have mentioned this last year in Crappy Construction, but what happened was that one of the buildings needed some serious foundation work, which involved driving heavy machinery across the lawn and destroying all the old concrete paver paths. Other side of the family got in touch with the local college and got some students to come out and design/put together (for free plus materials) an ugly shitpile of trip-hazard steps made out of gravel and the filthiest, most splintery mulch I have ever seen, and awkward berry patches right in the way of everything, all part of some sort of environmental engineering/anti-erosion project thing, despite the fact that the ground is full of giant rocks and the lawn hasn't eroded one loving bit in the last century. It went from being super barefoot-friendly to shoes required and treacherous to drunk people and sober people alike. Basically it was all horrible and watching it all get scraped out with a Bobcat and tossed on a burn pile was loving great. Back to dealing with our own house for a while...
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Jul 29, 2019 04:53
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Hey guys, my husband and I both landed new jobs this week and our household income will be increasing by 50%.  This means we will have plenty of money to finish paying off debt AND blow serious cash on house stuff (like a kitchen and basement moisture mitigation and also maybe a rug or something). In other, much pettier news, I’m home sick and was finally able to catch our neighbor (landlord of rental house next door) in the act of “mowing” the grass and tell him not to bother with our strip of lawn that borders the edge of the properties. Last few times he figured he’d be helpful and “mow” the part of the lawn that was ours. Nice gesture, but... This is a problem because he mows the lawn (and the sidewalk medians) with a weed whacker because he doesn’t have a working lawnmower (according to one of the tenants, there are four broken ones in the basement) and kills the grass and loving takes FOREVER (like two hours, and these are small city lots with tiny lawns) and I just don’t want to listen to drat thing anymore and also don’t like having patches of dead lawn. Also one time he weed whacked the median strip right after it rained and splattered wet grass clippings all over the side of my husband’s car. I am seriously tempted to start secretly mowing their front lawn too while we have the mower out because it’ll take two minutes with a real lawnmower and I won’t have to listen to the loving weed whacker for hours on end and/or come home to murdered grass that’ll take two weeks not to look like poo poo. Actually one of the former tenants in that house had her own lawnmower and would mow the lawn even though it wasn’t the tenants’ responsibility because she was also sick and tired of dead grass and endless weed whacking. But then she moved. I guess owning a house makes you suddenly care a lot more about stupid patches of grass.
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Aug 9, 2019 17:36
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Queen Victorian posted:I am seriously tempted to start secretly mowing their front lawn too while we have the mower out because it’ll take two minutes with a real lawnmower Yeah, just do it. When I lived in my townhouse, I would always mow my nearest 2 neighbors' grass, because it added about 5 minutes to my overall mow time. Getting the mower out and fueled was the hardest part. My one neighbor was also an older woman, almost physically disabled, and it's just the neighborly thing to do.
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Aug 9, 2019 17:44
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Provide your mower and let him do all the work.
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Aug 10, 2019 00:05
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But then it will get broken and have to be added to the pile of the four broken lawnmowers the guy already has in the basement. So I’ll just do it. They have a bunch of flowerbeds so the actual lawn part is only like 8’x8’. Here’s a pic of the aftermath:  Neighbor’s handiwork can be seen to the left, on the median strip and alongside the flowers. Looked a lot better before. And the back lawn was worse - looked like it had been trampled by livestock or a polo game. I didn’t even know you could do so much damage with a weed whacker. Our grass might be overgrown and weedy here (we’ve been busy with getting new jobs and poo poo and don’t have an HOA keeping us in line with fines, but did just get around to mowing) but at least it’s alive and green. If I hadn’t been home, that whole section to the left of the path would be dead grass and dirt. When we were out doing yard work this morning, we encountered our neighbor doing the same (she’s the one about to sell the nice house across the street) and she was mowing up and down across her house’s lawn and the one next door because she has the same exact problem - the owner of the house next door to hers does a similar poo poo job
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Aug 10, 2019 17:05
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How's the grass war coming along, OP? Have you enlisted the local cats and squirrels onto your side?
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Sep 6, 2019 19:16
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value-brand cereal posted:How's the grass war coming along, OP? Have you enlisted the local cats and squirrels onto your side? Neighbor hasn’t been back for anyone’s grass yet (his is finally alive and green again, which means he’s probably due to come kill it again soon). We are mowing tomorrow and I’m probably going to go mow at least some of their grass so I don’t have to listen to that loving weedwhacker for quite so long. As for the backyard, it’s far gone enough that I am considering black tarping it to kill all the weeds and then reseed. That’ll have to happen next spring though (I think). I had the week before Labor Day off (between jobs) and had dreams of doing all this productive house stuff, but I did nothing because what I really needed was some quality decompression time from my old job which had gone to poo poo and was making me pretty miserable, burnt out, and overall unhappy. The week of nothing ended up being super good for my mental state - overall I’m feeling much better about everything, house and upcoming house projects included. Also getting more serious about buying a pickup in the near future, which I’m sure will help the remodeling stuff.
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Sep 8, 2019 06:04
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winter kitchen basement furniture cheering for you
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Sep 9, 2019 15:58
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Hey guys, should probably make a post before this thread falls into the archive. Going’s been pretty slow the last few months, mostly from both of us transitioning to new jobs and then losing momentum because of that. And we are lazy and complacent. Currently staying with parents for the holidays and have a bunch of kitchen elevation drawings to share with my dad. He’ll probably criticize them a lot because I drew up the detailing as very traditional with rosettes on the door and window frames (he hates rosettes for some reason) so it’s probably off from what he’s been envisioning.
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Dec 29, 2019 22:30
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heckin WHAT is the new kitchen layout
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Dec 30, 2019 12:55
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Yeah, I'm interested in the kitchen layout.Is it modern, or something more period? I've been skimming through some of Gustav Stickley's books and it's interesting how he was proposing well lit, clean, convenient kitchens even back in the early 1900s. https://archive.org/details/craftsmanhome00stic/page/142
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Dec 30, 2019 23:46
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peanut posted:heckin WHAT is the new kitchen layout Right? Someone on my social medias posted this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abBQYWQ4MTo which made me really interested in what makes an efficient Victorian kitchen and I'm really goddamn frustrated that she didn't actually say anything about her planned layout that other than "wait until my next video!"
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Jan 12, 2020 00:34
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I’ve never subscribed to a YouTube channel so fast. Thank you for this!
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Jan 12, 2020 02:44
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Okay subscribed and also gonna buy that book. Anyways, sorry for the delay - had intended to post kitchen drawings once I was back from visiting family over the holidays, but husband got horrific food poisoning and then I caught a terrible cold that took me out of most of the week and am finally getting over it. So it’s sucked a lot. But now I’m better and will get elevations photographed and posted (or scanned if I can figure out which box my scanner is in). So we did end up having a nice sit down with my dad over the drawings, and the good news is that he agrees with the stove-island concept we’d landed on, and made some good suggestions for adjustments. The challenge with this kitchen is that there are very few good solutions given the constraints (like there being too many goddamn doors). Here’s a preview:  This is one of many tracing paper overlays we did (and yeah there was lots of wine involved). The creation of this was accompanied by lots of discussion about flow and dimensions. The island would actually largely fix the current flow problem because it would let people rotate around it and avoid each other (right now my husband and I are constantly in each other’s way, and we made it worse by adding a desperately needed work table). My dad suggested cutting off six inches of the stove island to give more space around the sink, which I agree with - we’d still have adequate staging for the stove. Right now, the stove has NOTHING around it and it’s the loving worst. Also he independently suggested putting 4” end grain butcher block for the island, which was exactly what we were thinking already (want to be able to beat the poo poo out of whatever surface is surrounding the stove). One thing we disagreed on pretty hard was wainscoting. I want wainscoting but my dad hates wainscoting. Kitchen currently has 36” beadboard wainscoting, which I think is nice and it’s also period correct. The thing about the new kitchen design is that it’s half-fitted - only the south wall and a small pocket of the west wall has built ins - the rest is just wall (punctuated by doors and windows, but no built in cabinets or anything). The 36” wainscoting is a good visual follow through from the sections with counters and cabinets to those without. Here’s the west elevation:  (Sorry for bad image quality - will photograph everything with some natural light tomorrow) Anyhow, you can see the visual continuity. Also, it’s a kitchen and kitchens get beat up - wainscoting could get kicked and banged on and not get damaged (unlike plaster) so it served an actual purpose beyond being an aesthetic choice. Oh well I want the wainscoting. And rosettes (which my dad also hates for some reason). In regards to old house kitchen design, I’ve taken lots of cues from those older designs, especially the old style of having a centrally oriented flow (central work table (or stove island in our case) that has everyone facing inward instead of countertops lining the perimeter that have people facing outward). The other main part was embracing the kitchen as a work space and only a work space - trying to make it eat-in would wreck everything else. Also in regards to old kitchens, when my husband and I were in Germany this fall for our honeymoon, we stopped in Weimar and went to the new Bauhaus museum. They had a “modern kitchen” prototype on display, and it was all about efficient use of space. Very cool to see. It was a major inspiration for the Frankfurt Kitchen (basically the proto-fitted kitchen). Looking through cabinet/kitchen catalogs and such, it’s amazing how the huge gorgeous kitchens pictured are often hilariously inefficient and poorly laid out, despite having acres of countertop. It’s all about the finishes for a lot of people.
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Jan 12, 2020 07:30
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I love that by your sketch I recognize exactly what trim pieces surround your windows, it's a super-common detail in a lot of the late-1800s-to-early-1900s homes I've been in. I like chair rails at 30" instead of 36" (I feel like the latter eats up too much vertical space and makes the ceilings look lower), but it looks pretty good on your diagram.
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Jan 12, 2020 20:41
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tetrapyloctomy posted:I love that by your sketch I recognize exactly what trim pieces surround your windows, it's a super-common detail in a lot of the late-1800s-to-early-1900s homes I've been in. I believe that my old house also has that same trim around (most of) our windows. Some of it is in rough shape unfortunately, time and past tenants have not been kind.
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Jan 13, 2020 00:34
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tetrapyloctomy posted:I love that by your sketch I recognize exactly what trim pieces surround your windows, it's a super-common detail in a lot of the late-1800s-to-early-1900s homes I've been in. The ceiling is extra high at 9’8”, so perhaps that’s what’s preventing it from visually dominating at 36”. I wouldn’t want to go higher or lower because I want it to line up with the countertop height. An option is to have it white to make it subtle (and cheaper). Existing wainscoting is painted white, but I don’t think it would have been originally.  I might have posted this image before, but it’s a good example of a period kitchen, and probably a good deal like the original outfitting of our kitchen. The wood and the white walls is a good combo. But I think white walls/wainscoting/trim plus wood cabinets would be great too. Actually another interesting observation I’ve made of our kitchen and others from the period (including the above period-restored kitchen) is the lack of crown molding. I’m kind of torn - I drew it in on some elevations but not others. On the elevation I posted, it was my dad who drew in the crown molding/plate rail lines (and drew the X over the wainscoting). The way he handled crown molding in the family home’s kitchen was to have like 9” of crown molding (painted white like all the trim) and have it also wrap the cabinets (which are dark wood). It looks good in that context, but would be kind of anachronistic in our house (which we intend to be Victorian AF through and through). I’m thinking nice crowning for the cabinet banks in the same wood, and then understated or no crown molding. Or maybe an understated plate rail on which I can place some neato flow blue china or something. Re: period trim: yup, using the quintessential Victorian style trim with the rosettes is 100% for the purpose of visually placing the kitchen in that very time period. While house hunting, we looked at a buttload of old houses that were varying degrees of I guess one of the next steps is refining the cabinet design - going for a subdued Eastlake vibe.
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Jan 13, 2020 00:52
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Behotti posted:I believe that my old house also has that same trim around (most of) our windows. Some of it is in rough shape unfortunately, time and past tenants have not been kind. I think this type of trim exists in the vast majority of houses built between like 1880 and 1915. It’s the default, pretty much - looks nice and is super easy to install because there are no mitered cuts required. It’s in all rooms in our house except the foyer, living room, and dining room (which have fancy dentil molding). And since so many houses were built with this stuff, it’s all still in production and available off the shelf. The remarkable thing about our house is that it seems to have mostly or entirely avoided damage by renters, so our trim is in pretty good condition. Furthermore, we’ll be able to make a trim boneyard after taking out the pantry and basement door casings. Apparently the house next door to ours, which is a sister (same builder, same floor plan), has been mostly stripped of the interior trim upstairs - I showed one of the girls living in the upstairs unit around inside, and she was amazed at and jealous of all the old trim.
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Jan 13, 2020 01:24
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Queen Victorian posted:I think this type of trim exists in the vast majority of houses built between like 1880 and 1915. It’s the default, pretty much - looks nice and is super easy to install because there are no mitered cuts required. It’s in all rooms in our house except the foyer, living room, and dining room (which have fancy dentil molding). Where have you been able to find it? I haven't looked too hard but depending on the price of it, I might look to replace some of the more worn pieces.
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Jan 13, 2020 17:27
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Behotti posted:Where have you been able to find it? I haven't looked too hard but depending on the price of it, I might look to replace some of the more worn pieces. Our local millwork shop has tons of Victorian and Craftsman stuff available. I’d imagine that any quality millwork shop would have this kind of stuff on hand or be able to procure/manufacture it. You might not be able to find there exact trim (unless you want to pay $$$ for a custom run), but surely a close approximation. This casing is extremely close to what we have in our house, for example: https://www.alleghenymillworklumber.com/moulding/moulding-profiles/product/casing-g3105/?categories=7 And here’s the proportionally sized rosette: https://www.alleghenymillworklumber.com/moulding/moulding-profiles/product/bulls-eye-rosette-w3105 And then there are also plinth block and baseboard options that would go perfectly well with our house (there are a couple rooms that need some baseboard repair/replacement).
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Jan 13, 2020 22:54
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Okay time for some plans. I’m still at the stage of just freehanding everything (it’s quicker and I’m more inclined to just go draw stuff if I don’t have to worry about getting my straightedges and whatnot). I eventually want to get drawings into SketchUp or some CAD program, but SketchUp makes me want to punch my monitor (which is surprising because I used to know how to make models of manufacturable objects in Solidworks). First, here’s an old pic of the as-built layout of the kitchen for reference (north is to the right):  This shows the pantry and all the wasted space behind the old pass-through (which we will recover). That big black block at the top is the stove chimney, which will be sticking around (too huge to remove without a causing a colossal headache, and would eliminate a very convenient ventilation shaft). You can also see the basement and butler stairs doors right next to each other (a very quick and direct route between basement and second floor, but at the expense of kitchen wall space). The major changes are taking out the division between kitchen and pantry and reclaiming the pass-through space, and rerouting the basement stairs into the hallway. So, we can eliminate 2/6 doors and be left with a much more manageable 4. Here’s the north elevation:  Butler steps on the left, fridge (that I very much want to be a built-in), and door to the hallway. Basement steps would now pass behind fridge and pop out in the hallway instead of turn and pop out in kitchen. My dad thinks the door on the butler steps is stupid because it’s up on that step (there used to be a door just like that, but it is currently missing) and says to just do away with the door frame and have it be an open staircase. I am reluctant to do this because all the heat and smells go right up the staircase and into the bedrooms, so having a door there is a good idea (also fire safety). West elevation:  The same one I posted a crappier pic of earlier. Shows the chimney. I want to leave the decorative stove port cover on it for historical reference. Counter to the left would only be 12” deep (outside door swings against it). The grate thing under the drawers is a radiator cover. South elevation:  This looks out into the backyard. Door opens to cute little back porch. By annexing the pantry, we can have a nice long stretch of continuous counter space. We definitely want a farmhouse sink - they are an acceptable throwback to giant room-dominating monster sinks from the days of yore. And I want bin pulls (husband doesn’t like so need to brush up on persuasive argument skills) - it’s funny that they’re super trendy right now because they’re totally period appropriate for our kitchen. However, I realized later that I forgot to draw a trash drawer, so that might have to happen to the right of the sink. East elevation:  Swingy door goes into dining room. These doors actually became more popular in later Craftsman houses and weren’t as much of a thing in Victorians, but they are handy, and it’s sort of a replacement for the old dead pass-through, which the help would use to populate the buffet without being seen. Also particularly important for use to have a convenient swingy door because the kitchen is not eat in (I don’t count island stools). We’ve had some folks see the walls between the kitchen and dining room and be like “hey you could totally bash out these walls and open everything up” and I’m like, “why on earth would we want to do that? The missing doors are bad enough.” I loving loathe open concept and one of the most attractive features of this house was its unadulterated main floor layout and closed kitchen. So that’s the gist of what we’ll be doing, at least on the walls. The stove island design is still a work in progress. I’m working on that, and the range hood.
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Jan 15, 2020 06:07
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Can you demo the butler stairs and get all that room back for the kitchen, and maybe room for a new bathroom upstairs? Or are those also the only basement stairs? Another fun option, if I'm understanding your description correctly, would be to just wall off kitchen access to those stairs so they literally only connect the second floor to the basement.
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Jan 16, 2020 03:44
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mcgreenvegtables posted:Can you demo the butler stairs and get all that room back for the kitchen, and maybe room for a new bathroom upstairs? Or are those also the only basement stairs? Another fun option, if I'm understanding your description correctly, would be to just wall off kitchen access to those stairs so they literally only connect the second floor to the basement.  What you suggest is heresy. The thing about the butler stairs is that they are one of the two things I didn’t know I absolutely needed in my life until I moved into this house (the other thing being the vestibule). We took possession of the house several months before we moved in, and during that time, my dad and my husband (to a lesser extent) were all about getting rid of the butler stairs to make way for more kitchen and bathroom. Then we moved in. Turns out we use the butler stairs far more often than the front stairs. Having a straight shot from our upstairs bedroom and TV den to the kitchen is loving magical. Furthermore, the basement stairs come up under the butler stairs, so taking them out gains you no space in the kitchen unless you also take out/move the basement steps, which would be a huge undertaking and make flow between stories bad (and require us to go outside to access the basement in the remove basement stairs scenario - lived that in my old apartment and never again). We could at least get more bathroom space, but a slightly larger bathroom (definitely not space for an entirely new bathroom) is absolutely not worth the price of giving up the butler stairs (and it would gently caress up the radiator size:room volume ratio and result in a less cozy warm bathroom in the winter). Even though this house is pushing 120 years old, its archaic original layout and flow, butler stairs and all, works shockingly well for us (because we are some old soul weirdos I guess). That’s why our floor plan changes are so minimal. Actually, my one beef with moving the basement access to the hallway is that it removes that crazy quick passage between basement and second floor, so I have to remind myself that it won’t be as important because we’re moving the laundry room to the second floor (to a weird little dressing room that we have nothing better to do with) so we won’t need to do all those basement <-> second floor runs anymore. So yeah, our butler stairs use case is why I now tell all my friends with newly bought houses to live in them as they are for at least six months before they embark on any major remodels. If we’d rushed in to remodel without having experienced this house day to day, we would have done SO many things wrong. Oh, and then there’s the matter of our eventual future children that we would like to raise in this house. As a child, I would have happily murdered for some sweet secret butler stairs. Being like, “oh yeah this house had awesome secret butler stairs before you were born but we wanted a bit more space to poo poo and do makeup so sorry” would be cruel. And besides, once you get rid of them you can never ever have them back.
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Jan 16, 2020 05:01
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When we were making breakfast this morning, my husband was imagining being in the new kitchen and he got very excited about it  I’m glad he can envision it now that we’re back in the actual space - my dad and I both have an exceptionally strong ability to visualize three dimensional spaces from flat drawings, which we can take for granted and leave other people behind in design discussions. Still working on island and range hood concepts. One concern I have is that in order to have the hood out of range of smacking our faces into it, we’d need to have it at or slightly above the upper bound for recommended distance between cooktop and fan. I just really don’t want to have a thing suspended in the middle of the room that tall people (which we both are) risk hitting their heads on. Speaking of non-standard heights, I’m looking at having 21”-22” clearance between countertop and bottom of cabinets. The shoddy cabinets we have now are mounted at 22.5” above surface, which is wonderfully spacious, and my parents’ cabinets are at 20.5”, which is loads better than the standard 18”, but could be an inch or so higher. My parents’ kitchen has a 9’ ceiling, so they had less cabinet height leeway. At 9’8”, we can get an extra inch or so of breathing room a still have stacked cabinets. I am contemplating commissioning a matching wooden stepladder for the kitchen that we can just have on a hook on the wall (rather than an ugly one in a closet that we have to untangle from the vacuum hose every time we want to use it). Maybe folding stools for the island, too. (Island seating would not be for eating meals, just for perching with a cup of tea or glass of wine or something).
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Jan 20, 2020 18:29
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Just dropping this in here - It seems like you and the hubbs have a good handle on trim and molding styles, but I found this FOREVER ago and it seems like a great source for getting proper proportions of them in all different rooms and outdoor areas of your house. I'm linking to it on Amazon because that is easy, but I'm sure you can get a used copy or alternately get it cheaper from the publisher direct. https://www.amazon.com/Victorian-Domestic-Architectural-Plans-Details/dp/0486254429 Edit: The third image in that Amazon listing gives you dimensions against a person so you even know what size the book will be when it arrives in your home.
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Jan 20, 2020 20:39
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Queen Victorian posted:When we were making breakfast this morning, my husband was imagining being in the new kitchen and he got very excited about it How much of a ladder do you need? If you only need a couple of steps up on occasion, and you're OK with a Naugahyde / Chrome kitchen step stool, they exist: https://www.amazon.com/Cosco-11120RED1E-Retro-Counter-Chair/dp/B0000B35GY but a Franklin chair ladder might be more period and fit in better: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/427067977138365910/
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Jan 20, 2020 21:23
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Zoesdare posted:Just dropping this in here - It seems like you and the hubbs have a good handle on trim and molding styles, but I found this FOREVER ago and it seems like a great source for getting proper proportions of them in all different rooms and outdoor areas of your house. I'm linking to it on Amazon because that is easy, but I'm sure you can get a used copy or alternately get it cheaper from the publisher direct. Ordered. Along with two Victorian millwork catalogs that came up in related products. Thanks for that link! I’ve seen cool period resources like that online, but they’re almost always grainy poor quality scans and in general annoying to flip through on a computer. Would be funny if I came across parts that are currently in my house (pretty sure the newel post is a millwork catalog piece) Pigsfeet on Rye posted:How much of a ladder do you need? If you only need a couple of steps up on occasion, and you're OK with a Naugahyde / Chrome kitchen step stool, they exist: https://www.amazon.com/Cosco-11120RED1E-Retro-Counter-Chair/dp/B0000B35GY We’d need a 5-step ladder, so as awesome as those options are, they wouldn’t be tall enough. We have a basic 3-step right now, and it’s not tall enough for me to change lightbulbs in certain fixtures, and wouldn’t be tall enough for me to securely grab stuff off the tallest shelves in the high cabinets. I actually love the chrome/red Naugahyde stool - even though we want the kitchen itself to be hyper traditional that does not mean we can’t accessorize it with stuff from other eras. For example, if I had my way, our stove would be one of those epic vintage enamel ones from the 40s or 50s (husband wanted stainless everything  ). Also, the color scheme for our small appliances is red and/or chrome so those stools would jive with what we have going already. So too bad they’re not tall enough.
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Jan 21, 2020 01:26
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Queen Victorian posted:For example, if I had my way, our stove would be one of those epic vintage enamel ones from the 40s or 50s (husband wanted stainless everything I'd tell him he's in charge of cleaning it then. 
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Jan 21, 2020 01:49
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Zoesdare posted:I'd tell him he's in charge of cleaning it then. Indeed. Honestly I really wish enamel + chrome/polished steel would come back into style - if I could get white appliances that were enamel and had killer chrome trim and detailing, I’d be all over that poo poo and drop the stainless look like a hot potato. It’s just that white appliances all look like cheap shitboxes with ugly white plastic handles and faceplates and whatnot. Why can’t those parts be metal and good looking? In other news, those Victorian architecture and millwork catalog books arrived, and now I’m thinking maybe I shouldn’t have ordered the millwork catalogs... They just made me super angry that the companies behind them no longer exist and I can’t just All in all though, super informative books and they should provide excellent references and inspiration for some of the millwork we need to get done. Also our house is pretty much a middle style late Queen Anne with Eastlake characteristics. Definitely want to push it more towards Eastlake.
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Jan 23, 2020 02:17
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Zoesdare posted:Just dropping this in here - It seems like you and the hubbs have a good handle on trim and molding styles, but I found this FOREVER ago and it seems like a great source for getting proper proportions of them in all different rooms and outdoor areas of your house. I'm linking to it on Amazon because that is easy, but I'm sure you can get a used copy or alternately get it cheaper from the publisher direct. Heckin NICE book
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Jan 23, 2020 09:19
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Oh, another good resource that I've had in my bookmarks forever is Antique Lamp Supply. I used it when I restored an antique cast iron bridge lamp several years ago, but they have everything for hard-wired lighting as well. You can get that one individual piece for your slightly broken chandelier, or an entire repro fixture. https://www.antiquelampsupply.com/
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Jan 27, 2020 17:39
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Ugh forgot to post AGAIN. A few weeks ago I started writing a post about how some of our crappy college hovel furniture was literally falling apart and our adventure to get some Ikea pieces to tide us over until we actually finish fixing the house and can unlock access to the heirloom Victorian antiques. My husband ended up with a mustard yellow wingback to replace his dead papasan. We went with the mustard yellow because it fit in with our weird red Lynchian TV den and also the other options were various shades of gray and some awful tropical pattern that reminded me of a bad Dorothy Draper knockoff from the 80s. We also attempted to buy a coffee table, but had to return it because the label lead us to believe it was brown when it was actually solid black - we thought it was a misprint but the returns guy told us that the brown color icon stood for “black-brown” which is essentially just black. But seriously so much poo poo at Ikea was gray, greige, white, and black. The options for wood (wood-look) were super limited. We will probably just order something from Wayfair. Can’t wait until this gray trend fucks off. Anyways, that update sounds pretty petty in light of the global pandemic. Husband and I are both hunkered down here, and I must say, now that we’re at home all day, we’re noticing a lot more poo poo that needs cleaning/fixing and are much more bothered by dishes and whatever piled up. When we’d get home from working elsewhere, we were tired and wanted to relax and didn’t care. Also, a big ole Victorian with a bunch of purposed rooms in it is actually a great house to be quarantined in. We can both have separate offices that aren’t also the bedroom/living room/dining room/TV den and they can be on opposite sides of the house and also on different floors. There’s always somewhere else to go. I don’t think we’d be nearly as chill in an open concept setup where we’d always be in that same one room. So, things to do while we’re stuck here: - Do yard work with the ladder we bought at the Home and Garden show (which started when things were still normal and then was shut down early a few days later when all of a sudden things weren’t normal anymore), which entails namely trimming a bunch of ugly dead branches off our trees. - Plant victory garden - Possibly build a compost bin out of dead branches and ivy vines which need to be ripped up - Obtain Japanese maple and flowers and make our front yard nice - Spring clean house over the period of time we are more or less stuck here - Strip paint off door hardware - Strip paint off doors - Small repairs (need to fight husband on this because he’s like, well why fix it now if we’re just going to rip out the whole bathroom/kitchen anyway, and then I need to explain it’s just regular maintenance and if we don’t re-caulk the tub the water is going to get behind the wall and rot everything and make our eventual bathroom remodel more difficult and expensive) - Design basement pantry. Our basement is divided into three main rooms - furnace/main, laundry, and murder. The laundry room is the one you come down into via inside steps and has the huge vintage laundry sink in it. I want to make this room actually nice and build out at least one of the walls with pantry shelving and wine fridge (we already have the wine fridge, just need a cabinet to shove it into), and restore the laundry sink. Also reparge walls and probably put some bead board on the ceiling to make it less gross and creepy looking.
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Mar 19, 2020 22:20
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Hello friends, it’s been a while. I have an old lovely wiring adventure to share. Tomorrow we are bringing these precious angels into our home:  (they are now a good bit bigger than in that pic) We are preparing the sun room for them (southern-facing room on second floor with huge bay window that is being encroached upon by the mulberry tree which is full of birds and squirrels) and as part of the kittenproofing, we needed to finally fix this hosed up outlet:  It was like that when we bought the house (husband poked it and the screw fell out). Also the face plate has been missing so long that it’s been painted over at least once. I think we haven’t been dealing so much with small stuff is because it’s all going to get rewired anyway, but this one was pretty bad. So we go out to the shopping center where there is both a Petco and a Lowe’s to get kitten supplies and a face plate for the bad outlet. So we get in Lowe’s, and pick up the face plate, but then decide to also get a tamper resistant outlet to replace the old one, and get a box for it just in case (as it was loosely hanging). And then we realized that we might need to expand the hole in the baseboard, so we used this as an excuse to pick up a reciprocating saw (not sure why we didn’t already have one). So we get back, and it turns out that we don’t need the box, but that the new tamper proof outlet is slightly too large for the hole. It just needs to be expanded by like an eighth of an inch. I’m thinking Dremel. Husband tries reciprocating saw, and it’s too blunt an instrument. I go grab my Dremel, but don’t really have the right bits for it. Husband says that there’s some sort of drill bit that could do the job of Dremel + correct bit. I go to Home Depot to get new wood carving bits for the Dremel and humor my husband by looking for the unicorn horn drill bit that somehow lets a drill do a Dremel’s job. I ask a guy and explain the job and describe the drill bit, and he’s like “Wait you already have a Dremel? Just use that.” So I get the Dremel bits and also some silver polish (because my silver plate collection is tarnished from disuse). Home Depot and Lowe’s on same day achievement unlocked. The bits get the job done! Husband is carving out the hole so that the new outlet can fit but as he’s finishing up, the Dremel catches the wires and absolutely mangles them (and twists them up together).  So.... that’s a huge setback. Husband said that maybe we should pick up the kittens on Tuesday instead of tomorrow and that sets me off, so I go about getting the wires untangled. I succeed, but they’ve been totally stripped of their casing down to a spot that I cannot see or easily access with my fingers, and there’s also not enough good wire anymore to attach to the outlet. Thankfully, due to the nonsensical circuit distribution in this house, the circuit that this outlet is on only has one other outlet on it, so we can just leave it off until we can pop off the section of baseboard and get better access to the wires so we can tape/cap/fix them. Currently taping the parts of wire we can access and installing the unconnected outlet and face plate so it’s safe for the kitties. That was sure a lovely expensive adventure that definitely didn’t have the desired outcome (a working, stable, and safe outlet). Instead we have a nonworking one and have to pry off baseboard at some point to fix it. But at least it’s safe now (as long as we keep that circuit off). The other main kittenproofing task was to pull up all this exposed tack strip:  So a while back the idea was to tear out this whole carpet, so I started in the adjacent closet/dressing room and got a bit overzealous. We ended up leaving the carpet because the floor underneath is horribly beat up (and painted) and we can’t lay down hardwood until we fix/rebuild the bay window, which is sagging. We might actually recarpet in the short term (as much as I hate wall to wall carpet), but for right now, kittens get gross old carpeting that they can scratch and barf on to their hearts’ content.  Fixed. I think I will tape down the edge of the carpet for good measure. Don’t care if it looks good, just want it to be safe and not have the kittens find any stray staples or anything. A little bit peeved that I didn’t get a chance to vacuum or set up the cat tree, but I can do that at lunch tomorrow. And for a tangentially related bonus, we were recently quarantining at the old family summer house (which makes our crappy cursed Victorian look like a turnkey dream house) and I came across this thing of beauty:  An Art Deco one to three outlet adapter! What was it about the Art Deco design era that inspired the application of the aesthetic down to the lowliest and most mundane things? Makes me sad at how ugly and bland everything is now. Hankering for an over-the-top Art Deco power strip now...
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Aug 24, 2020 05:06
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There's a problem with your post, only one of the kitten pictures is showing up And I could go for an art deco powerstrip, that sounds awesome.
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Aug 25, 2020 20:37
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