Aaaaaannd...here we go again!

After a brief interlude of owning an old house that doesn't need total renovation (notice the use of the word "total" - we still had to redo the kitchen and the third floor), we have bought another lovely old Victorian home in need of some love.  But we couldn't take on another project without throwing in a few more obstacles, namely the addition of 2 small children.  Gone are the days when we do ALL the work ourselves, but don't worry, we'll still have long nights of steaming wallpaper and patching plaster (though Adam vows to NEVER AGAIN strip paint off woodwork...we'll see about that).

Stay tuned...

Bye bye beautiful home

We did it. We sold our house! We worked non-stop through the month of October in order to put the house on the market at the beginning of November, and the first people to come see the house put in an offer. All our hard work paid off! It was bittersweet, though. As happy as we were to have sold the house so quickly in this market, our blood, sweat, and tears had thoroughly soaked into that house, and it was very hard to leave it. It will always be our first home, and so we'll never forget it.

Here are some of the amazing pictures that were taken by the professional photographer for the real estate listing:

Exterior:




Front Hall:


Living Room:

Dining Room:



Kitchen:



Master Bed:

Bedroom 2:

Bedroom 3:

Office:

Bath:

2nd Floor Hall:


3rd Floor Room 1:

3rd Floor Room 2:



And there you have it. We miss it already, though our attention is now focused on getting our new house in Portsmouth all set up. What are we starting with in that house? Gutting the kitchen, of course! This time, though, we decided to go the more efficient route: we hired a contractor. If you're lucky, we'll find some time to put up some photos about that project. But that might require a whole new blog...

Thanks for checking in on us and our progress! Sorry we were so inconsistent in our updating towards the end, but hopefully you were one of the lucky ones who got to see it in person before we left.

Peace out.

Busy Bees.

Yes, we realize it has been 4 MONTHS since we've posted anything, but it's not for lack of work. In fact, it's because we've been working so hard that we haven't had time to fool around on the internets.

As some of you may know, we are in the unfortunate position of having to sell our house, as we are moving to be closer to Adam's new job. The ideal situation would be to take our house with us, but it's not so easy when your house is not on wheels.

So we have been scrambling to get the house ready to put on the market, and here are some of the improvements we've made:

Guest Room
Some of you may remember that the room originally looked like this:


With this lovely wallpaper:


We stripped all that off (sadly, it was actually a really old wallpaper that we considered keeping if it was in better condition) and scraped down the ceiling:


And gave everything a fresh coat of paint:


Now inviting guests to come and stay with us isn't such a migraine-inducing proposition! Cleaning up the old hardware adds that extra touch, too:


Office
What was previously Adam's dressing room/catch-all was finally tackled and turned into the office. Again, it was a sad day to have to remove some of these beautiful details, which someone had painstakingly removed from wallpaper with scissors:



Note also the lovely, glossy red trim that has red panels randomly painted around it. The decals are now gone, and since we loved the colors in the guest room we decided to go with a similar scheme:


Yes, the floor was also refinished and looks lovely. We've set it up as the office, and it is now a much brighter, happier place to stare down at a computer.

The Third Floor
The third floor of our house, with two little rooms, was a creepy, dark, and dusty place that we only used as storage but couldn't wait to turn into two cute little rooms (or at least Reagan felt that way). But we cleaned them up, added heat, painted the walls, and refinished the floors:
(Room 1)




(Room 2)

The rooms originally had old linoleum carpets on them (yes, a large sheet of linoleum painted with designs and used like a rug), but they were too old and brittle to save. The floors underneath came out fabulously!


(Hallway)

The one where Adam and Reagan hang out with a bunch of strippers in the dining room.

Hopefully the title of this post will boost our hits amongst 13 year old boys, a demographic which is normally difficult to attract to home renovation blogs. Now that we have you here, lads, seriously, tuck in your shirt, stand up straight and its called deodorant, look into it.

Recently, we decided to subject ourselves long periods of immobility, loud music, toxic chemicals and fumes, killing brain cells, causing skin irritation and annoying the neighbors. No, we are not going back to High School, we are stripping the paint in our dining room.

Pop quiz: What's more tedious than watching paint dry?

C'mon, can't be too bad, you say? Sure, paint stripping is not so difficult when there are one or two layers of paint. However, the trim in this room might have been painted anywhere from 6 to 235 times over the course of its life. Lucky for you, we are documenting the entire process.


Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble. Window sill after first application of toxic paint stripper. See the top layer of (gold) paint bubbling in agony.


How 'bout a little fire, scarecrow? This was early on, when I still had the strength to attempt a smile.


This much work took a full day. We finally got to wood, which looks pretty good.


This amount of work took 2 full days. FYI - there are 3 window frames, 3 door frames, 1 door, 1 intricate mantel, and lots of baseboard in this room that needs to be stripped. Multiply that out and you get several years worth of weekends working on removing paint from this room.

Why so long? #1 the aforementioned abundance of paint layers, which do put up a good fight against the chemicals we put on them (strength in numbers, you know), and #2 the impressive intricacy of Victorian woodworking. The reason we are taking this room back to wood is to reveal how lovely this woodwork is and originally was...which we now realize is both a blessing and a curse.

We finished the window frames:


And we finished (mostly) the closet door:


Then Adam finally got his wish - he started on the mantel.


Here's the action sequence for stripping paint off of one single panel on the mantel:











That's at least 5 separate applications of the stripping gel, letting it sit, and scraping it off.

The column capital looks pretty amazing, too, after a couple hours worth of work:


If you have enjoyed this post, take heart, we are only 30% done with this room.