Griswold and friend(s)

Remember Griswold?

Griswold is our mailbox, a ca. 1920s cast-iron mailbox from Pennsylvania. You can read more about him in this entry from February.

[Before: Griswold and his old digs]

Since we're keeping our original entry door in its non-original location, using the smaller entrance door formerly leading to the upstairs apartment as our actual entrance for now until our budget has recovered, we had to make sure to send the right signal. Mail, numbers, light, even paint - they all had to point to the smaller of our front doors to signalize that that is indeed the door we want you to use when you're coming to visit us.

We painted the door Valspar historic red, added a light, moved Griswold over and painted the house numbers black (for now; we're still undecided which style of house number plaque we want)

[After: Meet Griswold and friends]

Since we do have the luxury of an actual door bell - don't laugh; we've been living without one for the past 6 years - I went of in search of a button that'd be good company for our vintage mailbox. That shabby plastic door bell button just wouldn't do. Van Dyke's Restorers to the rescue. Among their fun Victorian twist bell buttons I discovered this fun button. It even comes with instructions, in case you've been sans door bell for as long as we have and need a pointer on how to use it:

[Close-up: door bell button]

So there you have it: Griswold and friends. They do get along well and look great together. And we're tickled pink by their vintage quirkiness and character!

The best laid schemes of mice and men

The best laid schemes of mice and men go oft awry ...
- Robert Burns-

Just like the livingroom went through a design modification, things didn't go quite as originally planned with the adjacent diningroom. This is the design board from waaaay back in November, I believe, when we were muddling over color choices and design ideas as a way to pass the time until closing.

[Original design board for the diningroom]

Toasty brown and warm ...and maybe a little boring. Right? I didn't know what but something was missing. Not like I could put my finger on it, oh no, it was merely a gut feeling that this wasn't really it .. or us. Then I came across this color

[source: Valspar]

Lyndhurst Duchess Blue. My Lord, it's so pretty! And the diningroom pictured painted this color in the Valspar brochure just kept yelling at me: "Pick me! Pick me! Pick ...." Yeah, I get it. It was a hard sell but by God (and with a lot of His help, I suppose) I sold it to the husband. Last weekend we did the deed. Wearing my big girl pants, all giddy with excitement over this beautiful dusty aqua color we started painting over this room's swine-ish glory

[Before: Ahh, the floors, those beautiful floors! They make
even "swine" look good]

Oh boy! The moment the paint went up I could feel myself shrinking in my big girl pants. Boy, it was bright! And aqua! And colorful! Dear husband was gracious enough to wait until coat no. 1 was finished before coming to a final verdict. Frankly, I was convinced we'd made our second bad color choice and needed to rethink our strategy for the diningroom, but I grit my teeth and painted away.

And after all the swine was gone, the magic happened. This dusty greenish aqua is the most gorgeous color. It's bright, but it's not overwhelming you. It's cheerful, yet soothing. It's colorful, but not overbearing harmonizing with the colors around it beautifully.

[After: Helloooo pretty!]

It's fabulous and we both love it a lot. Even the little man thinks it's a cool color. I think this was our boldest move color-wise and it took us quite a bit out of our usual comfort zone but it was so worth it.

[Catching a glimpse from the living room]

Guess I should make up a new design board, yes?

Tank the tank

After discovering the soggy moldy mess underneath the tile floor in the upstairs kitchen caused by a leak of an old water heater I was even more convinced that any kind of large amount of water upstairs in a wooden house is just so not a good idea.

No, I don't go ga-ga over the idea of having laundry upstairs. It can leak. Massive amounts of water at once. Nuh-uh - don't want.

Not to mention that water heaters take up a huge amount of space and that often in those historic homes they have been squooshed into whatever corner was available no matter how it looks. We've even seen them perched 8 feet high on a couple of boards above the refrigerator - so not a good idea on many different levels.

When our contractor - without any prompting of my own - suggested to go tankless, I was all for it. No danger of a massive 120 gallon leakage? Sign me up! Saving money on our electric bill and a smaller carbon foot print are great additional perks. So here I proudly present to you

[The tank!]

It's about the size of a manila folder and fit to deal with 3 bathrooms, a kitchen and a washer. I love how little space it uses. You know, compared to this guy here

[For Sale: 2007 Lowboy Whirlpool 40 Gallon Electric Water Heater]

Close to completion

We're still miles away from really truly and completely finishing up the kitchen but I thought another update was in order. After all, now that the appliances and fixtures are installed, the cornice is in, the walls are painted and the floors are simply gorgeous this room is actually a kitchen. Remember? This is what the before looked like:

[Before: Dirty, dingy and ramshackled]

We tore out -every-single-thing- : old cabinets, built-in pantry, nasty linoleum and a vintage water heater.

[Original Designboard via polyvore.com]

This is our vision for the heart of our home: bright and airy with clean lines and just a hint of cozy country chic offset against clean industrial lines and color of the appliances.

We have strayed from our original moodboard in that the new accent color won't be apple green but the sweet turquoise from those beautiful oresund mugs my mother-in-law gifted me. Other than that, we hit everything pretty much right on the head.

Ignore the mess - there's drywall dust all over the place from all the work our contractor team has done on the walls in the adjoining laundry room and the electrician is crouching behind the stove finishing the stove hook-up but take a look around

[Close to completion: View from laundry room - you can see the little

breezeway leading to the dining room on the left]

[Looking toward the window: farmhouse sink with pull-out sprayer fixture,

dishwasher and refrigerator all lined up and waiting for action]

There're still plenty of things left to do (add knobs, paint trim, add window treatment, built eat-in nook, add open shelves, waterlox counter tops, etc.) but it is no doubt an actual kitchen! And a lovely one at that!

Oh, and you know how you can tell that you managed to find really special contractors for your remodel? They make you chopping boards with routered edges from the left over bits of butcher block counter top ...

Sources:

cabinets - IKEA

countertop - IKEA

ORB pull-out sprayer faucet - Apluschoice on ebay

appliances - Frigidaire through hhgregg

Paints/Stain

Homestead Resort Sunwashed (Valspar National Historic Preservation Color)

Ultra Pure White (Behr)

Minwax Walnut

Featuring Historic Springfield

[Greetings from beautiful Springfield! source: cardcow.com]

While we're packing and moving and posts about projects are very likely to slow down I've been thinking about what possible entries to post in the near future.

Gradually the nature of our online diary will change: less major building/remodeling posts, more decorating and moving in updates (although I have no plans to turn this blog into a regular home decorating blog at this point. There are so many talented bloggers out there, I don't think I have much to add to that).

What I do enjoy and find the most rewarding is encouraging people to try a historic home, if not in Historic Springfield then perhaps in another historic neighborhood. And I would really really love to feature other "Ugly Ducklings" turned "Swan" to show how beautifully these grand old ladies clean up and make fabulous homes for you and your family.

So, dear Springfielders, I'm looking for volunteers who would like to see their historic Springfield home 'crashed' and featured on the "Little Old House" blog.

Drop me a line! Come on, you know you want to!

Reach out and inspire others!

Stow a-way!

It's once more back to the upstairs bathroom. You know the one that's always teetering on the border between "done" and "almost done". Yes, that one. The neat vintage pedestal sink is now installed and fortunately the existing faucets turned out to be functional and non-dripping to boot (although I -am- eyeing a scrumptious pair of double faucets on Vintage tub and bath to replace them with). That makes it a fully functional bathroom with sink, toilet and tub! Hurray! Now it's on to organizing and cleaning. Unfortunately I forgot to take a before picture of the bathroom closet. I think it's possibly visible in some of the before shots but either way, it's a deep and narrow closet tucked between tub and door. Hinge remnants hint at the former existance of a closet door which is now missing. That's okay. It'll take a while until we've decided if we want a door or just hang curtains to cover the potentially amassing bathroom clutter in that space. When I started painting the bathroom I removed the existing shelf boards. They were unbelievably filthy and beat up, not to mention featuring layers of peeling paint. For a while I was contemplating reusing them but after a trip to the local reStore this past weekend I decided to support charity, go easy on my nerves and time and picked up a couple of white MDF shelf boards. Back at the Darling Duckling I measured, taped along the cutting line to limit the amount of damage to the finish and cut the shelf boards to size. 20 minutes later the closet space looked like this:

[After: shelves and baskets]

Voila - a clsoet ready to be filled with assorted bathroom related stuff. There's even room for hooks on either side in front of the shelves for hooks to hang a bathrobe or two. One project checked off, now onto the next!

The fireplace that isn't

I know it's hard to believe but we're revving it up before our move. We're now fighting on two fronts: at our apartment we're up to our ears in packing chaos, boxes stacked to the ceilings and furniture half broken down, and at the Duckling all kinds of projects are hurriedly being brought to more or less completion. No worries - there's still plenty of work left and I'll keep on posting but at the end of this week we will finally move in! That's right! We will finally fill the Ugly Duckling with life! Since the upstairs bedrooms are pretty much done we decided to tackle the living quarters downstairs as much as possible. Our contractor team has a few spots of drywall to finish still so we kept to the walls that were a go. Another thing we attacked was the fireplace that isn't.

[Before: A load of red brick]

Our livingroom is dominated by what was once a sturdy, possibly craftman-style brick fireplace. Today it's just a massive, red brick wall because a previous owner had the great idea to weatherstrip with (more) brick. So.not.cool. It's good we don't know what kind of mantle we're missing or we'd be in tears. Anyways, while Florida weather doesn't necessarily make a working fireplace a must-have it's a cool ...err, hot feature to have. Since I'm personally a bit iffy about making a fire in a wood house or setting gas on fire in a wood house I searched the 'net for a possible alternative. More on that later! For now we went ahead and turned the brick eyesore into the hot spot of the living room.

[In-progress: Little man helping paint]

Paint to the rescue! The fireplace brick was already painted a solid layer brick red and so we didn't feel bad about repainting it. There's just no good way to remove layers of paint from old brick without damaging it - you can read up on sandblasting (baaaad....), chemicals and other means of removing paint but we didn't think it'd be worth it. I simply grabbed a bucket of flat white paint and forged ahead while husband tackled the walls (that will get its own post - promised).

[Almost done!]

What a difference! In a spur of the moment decision I painted the top row black which helped visually 'shrink' the fireplace and balance it against the overall size and height of the room. Originally we were musing about adding a wooden mantel but now we aren't sure. It looks sharp as it is! Don't you love how it just pops against its new backdrop of a warm charcoal grey? We definitely do!

And if you think that we've strayed a bit from the original design board, wait until you see the dining room ;o)