It's In The Closet!

After priming everything the night before and allowing it to cure overnight, it was finally time for a fresh coat of paint!

There is very little a fresh coat of paint cannot fix. Seriously, it's addictive once you see how much of a difference just a fresh coat of color can make. It's one of the most inexpensive and rewarding little projects you can throw into your DIY project schedule.

The closet was no different!

After several coats of Benjamin Moore's Ultra Pure White and Valspar's 'Homestead Resort Sunwashed' for the walls, our dusty, musty, dingy, catch-all dump turned into a beautiful clean light and airy hall closet.

I'm also a real sucker for the contrast between shiny dark heart pine floors and bright white trim. It's straight out lick-able!

The shelves need some cute baskets, of course, but so far they have proven to be a very clever addition to the closet that was clearly needed. Much needed, of course, was also the decluttering, and the husband came and seeing the nice new inside of the closet, decided to straighten out how brewing equipment on the top shelf. LOVE!
Of course we finished this project at the end of jacket season here in North East Florida but come winter, we are actually going to have a closet for our guests to hang their coats without shame burning our cheeks. Ha!

Shelf Life

In order to facilitate more organized cramming, I decided the closet needed shelves. One third of the closet extends to the left side of its door forming a nook that would be just perfect for some quick shelves.

Luckily, we also have plenty of pieces of wood kicking around the house and finding two pieces to fit the space was a piece of cake.

I decided to take my new toy - a Kregg jig Jr. -for a spin and use pocket holes to secure the shelves to the walls. What can I say - I LOVE that thing!

Pocket holes are no longer a fantasy. You know, like unicorns and garden gnomes!

I used drywall anchors for my screws and then screwed the shelf boards into the nook on the left side of the closet.

Then it was time for primer on door, shelves and trim. I love how even the splotchy coat of primer gives you an idea of beautiful crisp, clean things to come!

Coming Out Of The Closet

One of the not original to the house features we deliberately kept was the big hulk of a closet in the bedroom turned downstair's entrance hall/vestibule. Storage space in an old house is limited - people back then just didn't keep that much stuff as we do today - and I was loathe to loose it.

Instead I painted the door and trim white, labeled it so nobody would accidentally try this door in their search for the bathroom and called it a day.

Well, we didn't really call it a day. We stuffed it every day. Our beautiful big hallway closet became a catch-all including the last unpacked box from our move two years ago. Now I'm coming clean and out of the closet (well, there's really no way you could go -into- the closet, it's just that stuffed!).

Sorry, Mom! Camping gear, coats, costumes, sports gear, mail, boxes, bags over bags (empty), helmets, shoes, the husband's brewing equipment - everything was just crammed into it.

So, the first order of business was pulling EVERY.THING. out of the closet and sorting it into the three famous categories "For Keeps", "Donate", and "Trash." For a while the entry hall looked mighty exploded but ... it always looks worse, before it gets better.

No more peekabo

We are very fortunate to live in a neigbourhood with great neighbors in general (SPR's slogan could very well be "Come for the houses, stay for the people)" and especially lucky to live on a block with really darling neighbors.

So in order to quit shocking them with the sight of unmade bed hair, lumpy PJs and other unmentionable sights from the inhabitants and to add to the winterization of our house (not like we're really needing it this year; the winter has been incredibly mild so far) I decided to take this window in our vestibule looking out over our front porch and into the street from this

[Bare-naked ladies inside and out]

to this

[Shade in place]

by adding a simple thermal roman shade. During the day this baby rolls up and out of the way (without any cords to tease and tempt the feline members of the family to get into trouble) and in the evening it rolls down, keeping what's happening at the Ugly Duckling in the Ugly Duckling. I still may add actual curtains to the windows in the vestibule but this works fine for now.

So far, this has been our only ...ahem, foray into the world of winterization. Luckily, this winter has been very mild compared to past years. We hardly had any freezes and cold days have bounced back to warm sunny days in record time. It's kind of hard to keep up with what to wear: you go from shorts and t-shirts to woolen sweaters and coats within a matter of days.

By now the weather changes happen so fast that even my weather migraines can't keep up anymore. That is turning out to be the best thing because rather than feeling every change in weather I have managed to skip one or two without feeling so much as a twinge in my head. Woot!

Obviously

During last week's painting marathon nothing got away, not even the door to the hallway closet. Since it may or may not stay, we're leaving things "as-is" for now which includes keeping the ugly cheap hollow core door. However, since last week the golden oak eyesore sports a fresh coat of bright and clean white.

[After: White and ... blah]

Something had to happen. For a moment I was contemplating painting it black to match our entry door, but I just couldn't justify the confusion that might create. I also wasn't too keen on drawing too much unwanted attention to the closet door and if anything, black doors are real showstoppers.

So I thought I could label it, right? That would deal with any possible confusion ("Is that the bathroom?"), add a little bit of spiff and satisfy my craving for decorating.

After contemplating just which word to use ("Coats" didn't cut it), I decided to go with the obvious:

"Closet"

Since I don't have any fancy cutting machine, I had to do it the old-fashioned way. I designed my label, printed it out and coated the back with graphite powder for a homemade carbon-copy paper effect.

Here it is, taped into place.

After deciding on the placement close to the knob - centered but not in line with the knob, simply because it looked good to me - I traced it onto the door. The graphite backing (if you don't keep any fancy-schmancy art supplies around you can simply rub the back of your design with a pencil - that works just as well) created a copy of faint outlines on the door: just strong enough to be visible but not too dark to create issue removing any extra lines.


After that I grabbed a small brush and some black-brown acrylic paint and started painting in my label. It wasn't all that easy. Not that the design was complicated, oh no, it was more the placement that made it too high to kneel and to low to comfortably stand while painting. I turned into quite the contortionist and if I had a yoga instructor, I'm sure they'd been quite proud of me.


Here we go, all done! Of course it isn't machine perfection but it's darling. Really!

Now my closet is stating the obvious, or perhaps it's proudly announcing for all to see that it is indeed a closet and not the door to the bathroom!

Got label? What's the latest thing you put a label on?

Vesti-beautiful

Here are the things that my life outside of work and family revolved around for the past week: wood filler, deglosser, paint, brushes and rollers, cleaner and a good cup of tea every now and then to keep me going.

While we'd painted the walls of our entry hall aka the vestibule a while ago, scraping together enough enthusiasm to tackle yet another room's worth of trim took me some time. Oh, but it was so worth it! For more impact, let's go back to where we started:

[Before: Once upon a time our vestibule was a bedroom ...]

Ah yes, it was awful. Like, really really awful. This is what our entry hall looked like when we first toured the house. In order to create a second bedroom for the downstair's apartment of our house, the previous owner had closed up the original archway to the livingroom and the wall toward the staircase. It was teeny tiny, cramped and pretty filthy.

Within a week from closing we tore into those non-original walls and restored the original floorplan.

The impact that reopening those walls had on this area of the house can hardly be captured in pictures. I marvel at it every time I step into our house. Not only made the floorplan sense now but it felt like the house was drawing you in while at the same time appearing much, MUCH larger than before.

After hours of trimming, patching, priming, sanding, refinishing floors, updating electric yet still miles to go in regard to artwork, window treatments, lighting and other decorative finishing touches, we have arrived at this:

Hard to believe it's the same room, no? Or the same house, for that matter. The old heart pine floors look simply A-mazing against the white trim and soft warm "Woodlawn Colonial Gray" walls and the entire vestibule feels open and airy and bright.

Looooove!

Topping it off two-tone

For the past couple of days I've been a derwish with a paint brush in the entry hall. Everything and everyone including the cat got painted if they weren't fast enough to get away!

One of the few things left to paint, other than the actual staircase, was the newel post Joe built for us to replace the one that had been chopped when the house was converted to a duplex. Looks like it came with the house, doesn't it?

[Before: Hello Newel!]

It's been sitting there primed but un-painted for quite a while. This week, I finally tackled it. You see, the newel post is part of my Nemesis project: the staircase. While we're missing the spindles and handrail along the lower part of the stairs, there are spindles and handrails along the second stretch and the cantilever balcony. Badly painted spindles and handrails. Flaking spindles and handrails. Spindles and handrails with ornate detail and nooks and crannies.

Spindles and handrails that are a bear to strip from old bad nasty paint. It's a project that'll keep me busy for a while.

The downstair's part is easy and was a joy to paint. Just white, though, didn't quite cut it, so I decided to paint the top of the newel post in a dark warm brown, picking up on the beautiful warm walnut brown of our refinished stair treads.

[After: Hellooooo, Newel!]

I love the two-tone look on our newel post. It also comes with the added benefit that it's now much more visible against the other millwork in the hall and Little Man is less likely to run into it. Yes, this has happened before and is quite painful, he can assure you.

Tricking the eye

There's one not-original feature to the house that I really and truly enjoy: the entry hall coat closet.

When the Ugly Duckling was a Duplex, the former entry hall was closed in and became a bedroom. The teeniest, cramped bedroom you could imagine, especially after the addition of a rather big closet. One of the first projects we tackled after closing on our little old house was to rip open those walls and restore the old floorplan.
However, since we need to be budget-conscious, we decided to postpone the restoration of the original staircase. The millwork is there, all the original trim is safely enclosed behind a drywall cover, so once that is removed all we need to install are spindles and a new wooden handrail. It's going to be beautiful, but it would mean losing this humongous closet of holding, and closet space does come at a premium in old houses.

Anyways, when the closet was built, the previous owner didn't care about matching the trim. They just slapped on some teeny baseboards and quarter rounds and called it a day.

These modern baseboards don't really deserve to be called base boards. I mean look at them! That's not a board. That's a sliver of a piece of wood! About a third of the size of the original baseboards, they appear insubstantial and flimsy.

Since the days of the closet and thus the days of its weeny trim are counted, we weren't going to replace it. That money is going right into the staircase fund.

What's a girl to do? Mismatched trim ain't gonna do it. Yes, it's mostly hidden behind a big ol' steamer trunk but still. It's there, I know it's there - something has to happen.

I have paint and I'm not afraid to use it. Turns out you can trick the eye just fine by painting the wall with the paint used for the baseboards. See what I mean? Here I'm just done priming the area. If you squint, you can't tell that the left side is the side with the wimpy baseboards.

Pennies in paint evened out the mismatched trim. You can catch a glimpse of the steamer trunk
that's usually sitting right in that corner serving as a bench and storage for gloves and hats and scarves (and some more boardgames).

Trim envy

Here we go again - trim it is for today's post! While the de-texturized zone was drying I made sure to spend the spare time in between coats on other projects around the entry hall. As you might have noticed by now (I have whined reported about it a couple of times already), all of the millwork at the Ugly Duckling is in dire need of some TLC. This usually comes in the form of scraping, patching, sanding, priming and painting or short, SPSPP.

It's now a serious effort to get excited about painting trim. Sure, it's rewarding. There're few things more rewarding than the look of crisp clean white trim. But, man, it's a bore!
Anyways, the original trim in our house has taken quite a beating over the past 97 years - too much to restore it to its stained wood glory. Besides, I prefer white trim and old millwork looks absolutely stunning in pristine white.

So here I am again, scraping off loose paint and filling in with wood filler.

[In-progress: Notice the fine layering of drywall dust on the floor.]

See the corner of the window peaking in on the left of the photo? That's where our big entrance door with the sidelights (and the now missing transom) should be.

It got moved years ago, replacing a window in the livingroom, when the Ugly Duckling was turned into a Duplex. I'm hellbent on squirreling aside enough funds to move the ol' door back to its original location sometime in spring next year. That'd really rock my boat even though it means construction dust and painting everything all over again.

[In-progress: Now with primer!]

Next step, primer! That usually gives you a really good idea of how the end result is going to look. Lovely, don't you think?

All done! yes, I even painted the archway. Isn't it pretty? Phil trimmed this one out for us and he did a beautiful job. It looks like it's been there ever since the house was built and feels just right. I'm so glad we returned the house to its original floor plan as much as we could; it just makes so much more sense and flows beautifully.

And just before it got too dark for pictures I snapped this one with the furniture moved back into place. Yes, we have vintage typewriters all over the place. This is an old German one that I flew in all the way from Hamburg for Christmas one year. The things you do for love ...

Texture all gone!

This is what the little mess of textured wall above the door looked like when we last saw it.

[In-progress: Good bye, texture!]

It took another three coats to smooth out even the last bump of texture and create a smooth finish like the adjoining drywall. At this point I'm not sure I really want to skimcoat the remaining textured walls in the house. Ripping them out and replacing them with drywall sounds much more appealing and potentially faster than trying to cover up the texture. We'll need some time to think this over, I guess.

[More progress: All nice and even. I also made sure that all adjoining areas
received a thorough dusting of fine drywall dust]

Anyways, once the area was mudded smooth and had time to dry completely, it was time for a quick sanding and a coat of primer. If you forget to prime freshly mudded drywall you end up with spots that "flash". These areas will reflect the light differently and drive you insane. Really. Ahem ... not like I know anything about that. So yes, priming is a must.

Fresh coat of paint and voila - all done!

[After: Mission accomplished - texture eliminated]

I put the drying time between coats of mud and then some to good use and tackled a few other projects in the entry hall to get'er done! 20 days 'till Thanksgiving! How much trim can I possibly paint accomplish in 20 days? Guess we'll find out!

Texture is overrated

According to some smart interior design books there are five design elements:

1. line


2. form


3. space


4. color


5. texture

Frankly, when it comes to walls and ceilings, texture is way overrated and a serious pain to get rid of. Ceilings I can deal with, but textured walls ... not so much. Here at the Ugly Duckling, we have to deal with some textured walls, namely the wall of our staircase, the upstair's hallway and the dressing and master bath aka the former upstair's kitchen, reflective of the design choices of the '80s when the Duckling was, once again, turned into duplex.



I don't mind the textured ceilings so much. It's sort of a sunburst design, and since our ceilings are painted a bright crisp white the texture is hardly noticable.



The walls ... ehh. It's not bad bad. It's just ... I don't know. Weird. Like furry wallpaper. Or green wall-to-wall shag carpeting. Painted Woodlawn Colonial Grey, it's, again, not bad bad but skimcoating it definitely made it onto our project list quite early. Little did we know what we were talking about though our contractor mentioned it'd be "quite a pain in the -you-know-where".



I figured before tackling a big area like our stair case I could practice my skimcoating skills on a small piece. Like that area above our current entry door.
Since that door had been the door to the upstair's unit opening up directly into the enclosed staircase, it had also received the knock-down texture treatment. After we restored the original floorplan, ripping out the wall separating the staircase from the room that was then a bedroom and is now a vestibule again, we had clean smooth drywall for most of the walls except for a small rectangle right above the door.




Awkwaaard.

Here's a close-up of the transition between textured wall and plain drywall, just to make it really obvious.

Super awkward.

Husband wasn't perturbed by it one bit but it kept nagging me. So, after finishing the trim work in the dining room, I decided to move into the vestibule next and to tackle that odd textured rectangle. Better to get over and done with the drywall dust.

The process is rather simple and straightforward: load your mud pan with drywall compound aka 'mud' , slather on and smooth it over. Let it dry. Rinse and repeat.




The 'rinse and repeat' part surprised me. Sure, several thin coats are better than one thick one, but I was simply amazed about just how many coats and how much mud I needed to skimcoat this small area nice and smooth.

Here's an in-progress shot where you can see the white areas of already filled-in texture and the darker grey areas of the raised parts that aren't covered yet.


Uh-mazing.

This also meant that each coat needed its own drying time and it wasn't something I could just finish up in one afternoon or evening. So you're being treated to two entries for a project that measures 2 feet by 3 feet. Hilarious, isn't it?

Needless to say I did put that waiting period between drying coats to good use in the entry hall. Unlike many other couples, we started with the bedrooms and worked our way into the public rooms (usually the master bedroom seems to be last to get any kind of update). I'll update you over the next couple of days to show you what's been happening in the entry hall here at the Ugly Duckling.

Show me ... The hole in the wall!

You would think that after scraping, patching, priming and painting foot after foot of trim I'd be more than just sick and tired of trim.

How is that a certain piece of trim gets me all giddy with excitement? Let me show you!

[All chunky goodness!]

8 (!) pieces put together create the trim you see in this close up. No, it's not primed or painted yet but since it's brandnew I won't have to scrape and patch it. Thank God for small blessings. And it's oh so pretty!

Look!

Ta-da! Yes, ladies and gentlemen, this is the arch way to our living room aka "the hole in the wall". Now it's an Arch Way with a beautifully chunky presence just the way it's supposed to be.

[Before/ in-progress]

Much much better, don't you agree?

It's a (newel) post!

You know sometimes you might think I'm a little biased when it comes to our contractor team but the truth is we know just how lucky we are to have found them and feel truly blessed to have them by our side. They have our backs, they help us maneuver the paper war of a 203k loan and their advice has proven invaluable. Alright, so I'm biased but that doesn't mean I'm not right :o)

Truth be told, I'd tackle another rehab tomorrow if I knew they are on board.

Anyways, one of the cool things Gloria will do ever since she got her iphone is email me little teaser photos she snaps at the shop or over at the Ugly Duckling while I'm at work. That way I got to see in-progress shots of our wrought iron window grilles and then this week I got a sneak peek of thisIt's a newel post! While we're not yet restoring the original stair case, spindles and all, a newel post was definitely on our wish list to cover up the chunk missing from the second step that showed where there had once been a newel post until it was removed, probably around the first time the Ugly Duckling was turned into a Duplex (Sins of the fathers, I'm telling you).

It'll also work as a constant reminder that we want to remove that not so original half wall and reveal the beauty of the open stair case and original trim we know is hiding behind this bit of dry wall.


Here it is from another angle. I love how chunky and massive it is. It fit into the opening like a glove - fantastic!
See the first step at the bottom? The one with the chopped off edge to the left? Yet another scar from the Duplex Times where the graceful curve of the bullnose fell victim to the drywall construction. Bah! Luckily, the same woodworker who managed to build the newel post that fit its spot to the very millimeter is also going to make that one pretty again. Wheeee! (And yes, that'd be Joe. Oh, and Phil is the one who trimmed out everything so beautifully)

And this is now the view from the living room :o) With the door open, obviously.

Before & After : The entry hall

From a tiny blah bedroom

Before

over the first steps
into the right direction

In Progress

To an - almost finished - bright
and airy entry hall

After

[Just pretend the trash bad and other
bits and bops of gear aren't there, okay?]

Who'd have thought that re-opening two walls would have such an impressive effect? This area look three times bigger than when it was relegated to a narrow and cramped bedroom. A-ma-zing!

Things left to do: paint trim (Ha! Wouldn't have guessed that, would you?), add window treatments, install new door lock and handle and update questionable lighting.

Cha-Cha-Cha-Changes

For the past week there's been a lot of demolition going on at our Ugly Duckling. The dumpster in front of the house is 2/3 full with debris of all kinds: wooden boards, tile, cement board, drywall - you name it, it's in there, and to our surprise we're getting ready to kick off the "put things back together" phase. Let's hear it for Sam and his demolition skills! Frankly, without him we'd be chipping away at the parts that aren't staying until Christmas ... or longer.

We've been doing a whole lot, especially over the past weekend, so I have a few posts saved up and ready to go. [Actually, I have more posts or items to post about than days in a week, kind of, and am slightly confused on how to go about posting them. Any ideas?]. I guess I'll tackle it one day at a time, even if that means that this blog is no longer progressing in real time. That, of course, renders that progress ticker box to the right pretty useless too.


Anyways, to make a long story short, I think a few Before and In-Progress shots are in order, so here you go. Please excuse the quality - we're still without electricity at the Ugly Duckling and the weather has been all gloom and doom down here in NE Florida.

Entry Hall
Once upon a time our house had an entry hall. In order to offer a sufficient number of rooms to work as a rental apartment, however, the walls to the stairs and the livingroom were sealed and a closet built into the space. Voila - A teeny cramped bedroom! You can easily tell which part doesn't belong (and was consequentely busted out] if you look at the base molding ...

Some scoring, punching, ripping and cutting later we reconnected both halves of the house and turned our Ugly Duckling from a Duplex to a Single-Family home

Together with the newly opened wall to the livingroom for which we are hoping to score a mad deal on a French Door at some point, this small change had a major impact on the flow and feel of the entire house. All of the sudden, the layout of rooms started to make sense and the added light is just amazing. I think even the Ugly Duckling is happy about it. It certainly feels that way! One day we'd love to restore the old staircase, newel post, spindels and handrailing, but until then this would do ... or would have until our contractor had an idea that tickled hubby's favor. So while I was gone to Orlando he did this

That's right, he busted out some more wall following the angle of the handrail. Before punching out the first piece our munchkin must have cautinoned him with a comment along the lines of "Maybe we should wait until Mommy comes home?" but he sure loved helping tear out some wall. He gets this glint in his eyes when he tells the story.

So, there you have it. Our progress in the entry hall. It's turning out -exactly- like we planned it and it's looking even better than we imagined!