For those interested in the rehab of Radiance Manor, here is the next project.  I have now moved upstairs!  John is working his way into the basement 😀

This is the middle bedroom.  It is going to be the guest bedroom, although no one wants to stay in it now 😀  It is also my practice room for guitar, but it really is not inspiring at all, I have to say.

 

Out of all the wallpaper patterns in the house, this one is the least offensive in terms of color and pattern, but it is in the worst shape of all the rooms.

I am not exactly sure what was going on here. At first I thought it was just patched paper, but it is layers of paper over the same wallpaper with what seems like drywall compound in between? 

 

The wall could be messed up under this, so it should be interesting anyway…

There was a roof leak (anyone remember the slate work we had done in the fall?) and some of the wallpaper had gotten moldy:

 

Then there is this, and I don’t even want to think about what happened here.

Nas-tay.  

And then there is the red closet door because why not?

Of course, there is the other door.  

 

Sure no one wants to stay here?? Again, I have to remember that the reason we were able to afford this house was because of how poorly it was treated.  Poor Radiance Manor.

 I do practice in this room, but like I said, it isn’t very inspiring right now.  It does have a big bright window, though.

This picture was taken over a year ago when we were first looking at the house. I think it was one of the subsequent checkup up visits we did because I see snow and there was none when we first saw the house. I just can’t believe how much time has passed.

Anyway, this room should be pretty straight forward. Wallpaper removal – which has been really easy so far – then patch and paint.  New window coverings, painting the closet door, new light fixture and replacing the missing door handle.  Seriously – what happened to the door handle?? Still working on paint color ideas, but I am leaning towards a mauve or rose colored room.  Or possibly light blue.

Playoff weekend!  And wallpaper removal weekend 😀

Getting started right at the beginning of the year.  I actually wasn’t intending to do the downstairs foyer first, but I was taking ‘before’ pictures of the upstairs bath, bedroom and the hallway and then I saw a little loose strip of wallpaper and it pulled off a big sheet, so that was it.

Here was the old wallpaper:

It was dirty and had a lot of rips in it.  And kind of ugly.  I really don’t have a problem with wallpaper, per se, but it has to be well done.  That is absolutely key to pull off wallpaper.  It has to work with the house and when you combine papers, they should work together.  In this house on just the first floor, there were 12 different patterns of wallpaper used. TWELVE!!  That doesn’t count the layers there were underneath the top layers, either.  It’s almost like the people just found all the patterns they liked, couldn’t decide and put them all up. There are only about 8 different kinds upstairs, so there is that.

Here is an example.  This is the entry going to the downstairs basement. It had plaid wallpaper on the top.  That in no way goes with the paper in the foyer or what was in the nook/kitchen or dining room. This was John’s work area for the weekend:

He was lucky enough to have a double layer to work with. Lovely:

 

I was in the foyer:

I am an expert in wallpaper removal now and this area was a breeze to remove. It came off really easily, which after some of the tough rooms I did felt like a treat.  However, I decided after a while I would rather do a little shopping and on a whim asked my sister to go out to an upscale consignment shop with me that was kind of near her house.  It’s called La Moda Lisa and it is a huge shop that sells everything from furniture to clothes to jewelry. New, used and vintage.

I think Elton was here, maybe.

I *almost* bought these shoes. They were $8, but I can’t imagine where I would wear them. It was just fun to find spike heels that actually were comfortable to wear on my wide feet.

I walk too fast to have wobbly shoes, though.  I would be on my butt sooner rather than later.

You can get a red velvet barber/dentist chair if you want:

Pretty tops:

 

It’s a fun place.  I ended up buying a faux fur coat. I wasn’t anticipating buying a  coat, but the  price was great and it was really warm and comfy (and fun).  So in keeping with my 2015 goals to upgrade my wardrobe:

Now I see why people take these selfies high overhead. Thinner and taller.

Anyway, it was great to have sister time.  We stopped for coffee afterwards:

I wish we could do that more often.

Sunday was back to the wallpaper and I got it all down from the foyer.  It was lickety split!  I just patched the walls and it is now ready for paint.  I will be using Golden Mushroom for the walls.

I am going to paint the doors and windowsills as well. Just a few shades lighter.

It’s brighter without that paper.  I stopped where the next papering end to get a clean edge in the stairwell.  That is going to be a huge job and I don’t want to do that until the upstairs bedroom and bathroom are done.  

Do you like how I am drying my boots on the radiator?  Those things are great for drying laundry and putting jammies on there before bed to get them toasty warm 😀

Okay, here are pictures of the living room.  We still have pictures to place and window treatments to do, but if I wait until all of these are done, you will never see pictures.  I also was hoping for a sunny day to take shots, but seriously – we haven’t seen the sun in probably a week?  Anyhoo, here is what we were looking at before:

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The wallpaper in here looks okay from a distance, but it had rips and tears and gum stuck to it.  Plus it was really dirty.  The first thing done was the sanding of the floors because  the finish was worn down and dirty:

That was done waaaay back in August!  I can’t believe how time flies.

There wall wall repair to do, of course.  There is always wall repair to do…

 Then finally after getting rid of all the wallpaper and much discussion over the paint color, we were ready to move forward:

 

We decided on Olympus Silver Spoon for the wall color. It complemented our art work and actually made the fireplace look pretty good without painting it as it matches the grout. Go figure.  I wish that I had better lighting because I don’t think these quite do justice to the color, but I am very happy with it.

In the ‘keeping it real’ department – that lamp behind the piano is barely held together. If you bump it, the shade falls off and our other lamp is just like it. That is on the list to replace.  I also haven’t moved my dead plumeria that is under the piano. I realize that now, but there you go.  We won’t be featured in House Beautiful any time soon 😀

 

Where the bench is will be 2 chairs once I find the perfect ones for the nook, but my bench is there for now.  That’s my foot pedal for work on the floor.  My life has never ending cords attached to it.

 

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I am not really a good decorator. I am pretty good fixing up the ‘shell’ of a room, but  decorating is hard. This is a work in progress. There is no hurry, though. This is our forever home, so there is plenty of time to tweak that stuff.

Finally – pictures of the kitchen!  This is going to be a picture heavy post, so sorry about that.

The kitchen is what needed the most work in the house to get it functional before we could move in.  It took us about 6 weeks to get it done because of those pesky jobs and all that 😀 .

Here are the before shots:

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This radiator issue was a puzzle we had to solve. It  just doesn’t make any sense to me why they chose to do this.

Nook area:

The only thing we kept was the cabinetry – and not all of it.  Most of it was in good shape except the sink cabinet. It was totally water damaged and rotted on the inside and the doors actually were held in place with a screw LOL!  We did keep the doors of the sink cabinet, though, and reused them.   We also had to buy a new cabinet for the missing one.  The appliances we listed on Craigs list and someone took them, along with the old countertop (even though we had cut it into 2 pieces). Yay for a green renovation!

My goal in this kitchen was to brighten everything up.  It’s not a big kitchen, so it needed to be brightened up.  I don’t really understand the color choices that were made before, but then again, somebody liked them. 😯

I chose a dark floor to anchor the room and then the light colors up top.  I wanted it to be warm and fairly traditional to go with the style of the house. John basically agreed with all my decisions on finishes and fixtures.  He’s a smart man. 😉  He trusted my judgement on choices and we are both really happy with how it came out.

Then it got down to the lowest point of demo.

This is always that point where you say “Jiminy Christmas” (or something like that) and wonder if you will ever get done and what the hell were you thinking. It’s a tough point in a rehab physically and mentally.

The electrical was an issue of having those boxes and wires on the wall.  This was probably the biggest problem in the whole kitchen. What to do with electrical when you have cement walls.  Drywall and framing? No problem. You just run lines through the open spaces. With solid walls, you can’t to that.  John was able to sink one outlet into the wall, but it was so much work and was going to be impossible to do all of them.  After much consternation, we decided on a solution. He ran new conduit inside the cabinets and mounted the outlets underneath the cabinet.

Every single surface in this kitchen was touched. Wallpaper removal everywhere, painted cabinets, new counters, new backsplash, new sink, new garbage disposal, new hardware on the cabs, new floor, new lighting. That’s what took so long.  If we didn’t have to work jobs, it could have been done a lot faster 😀  Stupid bills that have to be paid.

Anyway, we do still have a few small details to touch up, but here is the kitchen as we are using it!  Nightime:

Daytime:

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I tried to get most of the same angles for comparison.

Loving the counters:

The Waterlox has been great so far.  Water just beads up on the surface and even if it sits there for a long time, nothing happens to the surface.  Good stuff!

I also love my granite composite sink!

The nook, which is the sunniest spot in the house.

It’s Pixie’s favorite spot, too.  She hangs out here in the sun every day.  These chairs are probably not staying in here, but I need to find a couple chairs to reupholster or purchase, but for now they will do.  We eat breakfast in here every morning.

I also love the marble.  I wanted marble or soapstone counters, but they just weren’t in the budget. So, we went with my other counter choice, which was butcher block and did the backsplash in marble. 

 

The radiator issue we solved with making a frame for the doors around the open space.  We saved the old doors from the old cabinet to put on the new sink cabinet so they would match the others. We actually used the doors from the new sink cabinet to make these and replaced the center panel with radiator screen.  This is one of those things where I am so pleased with our cleverness LOL.   We also moved this counter section over a couple inches as well.  Now the heat can come out of the radiator screen and we don’t have to look at it.  We have a recycle bin in there, but unfortunately can’t really put a lot in this cabinet so we don’t block the heat.

 

So, I’ll share numbers since I shared everything else. This whole kitchen cost a little less than $5000 in materials to do, including the appliances. Not having to buy a lot of cabinetry was a huge money saver.  In retrospect, I should have bought a paint sprayer and done the cabinets with a spray gun because it took forever painting all the coats and detailed areas on the doors.  

 

We didn’t go high end on the appliances, but I like the ones we have, so I don’t think it makes a difference.  The most expensive thing was the cork flooring, surprisingly, but we did the nook, too – so it added to the square footage.  I can’t imagine how much this would have cost to have a contractor do this, but it probably would have been done faster LOL!  I know our sweat equity definitely increased the value of this house, so it’s worth it in the end.  Not to mention it feels really good to know that we actually did this and gave this house some of the love and attention it deserves!

 

Thank you if you made it to the end of this post LOL!  There is a lot more I could talk about, but I don’t want to bore you too much with the rehab details.  Besides, it’s on to the next room!

First off, the winners of the CocoVia coconut water are:

 Carla!

you had me at ICY COLD since we are mooooving back to TEXAS.

And

Kim!

I’ve never tried coconut water, but I needed something to kick my ridiculous diet soda addiction.

Please email me at javaqueen01@yahoo.com with your address by Sunday  (10/26).

I know that I owe you kitchen pictures, but I have to get them organized as there are a lot more than for the dining room.  Finally finished the dining room and got it cleaned up.  It’s amazing how messy removing wallpaper and painting is. Ugh. More the wallpaper than anything else.  Anyway, this room had 4 loverly layers of wallpaper on the bottom half and there was so much wall prep to be done. After removing the paper, then I had to get the glue backer off, patch holes and then sand all the walls (talk about working up a sweat!).  This is what we were working with:

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This doesn’t look too bad in pictures, but there was a lot of damaged wallpaper. It’s just was a little stodgy looking and dated as well. (The last picture I had sanded and polyed the floor, so that looks nice).

I left the chair rail up. I like chair rails, particularly in the dining room.  It gives you options for paint colors!

Lots and lots of work on the walls. Wall prep is really the most time consuming thing, but good prep means better finished product.  I have been wanting to use a cranberry color for a long time and this room seemed perfect because with the chair rail – it wouldn’t be too overwhelming or make the room seem smaller.  The upper half of the room is done in Olympus Golden Mushroom.  It’s cream colored and not what I would call mushroom at all, but whatever.

The bottom half is Olympus Merlot, which I looooove!

My bargain china cabinet that I couldn’t wait to get into this house many months ago when I found it!

 

I wish it was sunny out for this picture because it is such a bright room, but we have had rain for the last few days:

 

We need to either thrift or build a buffet for in here. It’s sparse on furniture LOL!  The walls are cement, so it is going to take time for us to hang the art work. Our light frames we can use Command picture hangers, but the heavier items I don’t trust with that and we need to drill anchors. That means careful planning of where we want the photos since they won’t move for a while 😀

Each room that we do in this house erases the neglect this house suffered for a while and makes it more ours.  I am going to take a break from wallpaper removal for the rest of October as we still have a ton of boxes to unpack and organize.  November will start the living room.

I had a nice mostly unplugged weekend.  I worked a little on Saturday morning and then just spent the weekend doing other things. With the move done, it now feels like we are starting to build our routines back. I was on the hunt for a small table for out nook and I hit up a couple resale/antique stores. Here are some nice shots of some businesses getting decked out for fall and Halloween:

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I did find an interesting table, but it might be a little too big.

I also finally got out into my own garden.  This is the mess (one of) I am trying to sort out:

Yeah, it’s a big mess!  If I can get anything cleared out, I might just get a chance to put some bulbs in just to have something come up in the spring.

House progress.  I got all the wallpaper off the dining room wall!  Each room seems to have a different level of wallpaper hell going on. This one seemed easy at first because the top wallpaper came right off except for right at the ceiling where it was glued in a strip (which took forever to get off), but the bottom was 4 layers. With paint in between. That took forever and a day.  But now it is done!

All that is left is wall patching,  quick sanding and then paint.  That red color is what is going on the bottom half. It’s called Merlot.  Top will be cream.  It will be good to get this room done.

I found strange stuff, too.  It looks like someone took a knife and stabbed the wall.  

Is that not bizarre? This was up high above the window, too.  All the neighbors we have met so far do not have a high opinion of the guy that had this house before. He sounds like a real peach.

We finished the doors for the radiator cabinet after my mismeasurement..oopsie… Or should I say John resized them 😀  Here is the old kitchen and what we were trying to solve:

Here is this area now:

The doors came out just like I wanted!  The cabinets were moved a smidge to the left. We bought the radiator screen online and cut it to fit the middle of the doors. Then painted and voila. Now the heat can come out from behind there and we don’t have to look at it 😀 The drawers fronts look a little small above, but for now they will do. Plus we need a little trim on the bottom to match the other door, but those are small details.  I know I owe you a full kitchen reveal as well.

Today’s pink picture! This is a magnet my sister brought us back on a trip she took to California earlier this year. Bling!

Don’t forget to click!

Marching in slow progress.  We were hoping to be able to move into the house this weekend by our anniversary, but looks like it will be the weekend after that.  Not too bad for timeline, though!

Roof is finally all fixed and now I can go and do transcription work from the new house during the day without all that noise.

We tested the radiators this week and they all work with no leaks, thank goodness. Our boiler is really old and we need to decide whether to replace it or possibly invest in one of those ductless split heating/cooling systems.  Since the walls are cement and we have radiator heat – puttting in a forced air system is totally out because installing air vents would be a problem. So, it is either new boiler or the ductless.  The ductless system would be nice because then we would have air conditioning!  So, we need to get an estimate on the cost of that. A new boiler is around $10,000 (super ouch!!), plus another couple thousand for the chimney liner. 

This week most of the time was spent on the flooring and coating the counters.  The flooring went in pretty easily.  I have installed tile, laminate, vinyl and now engineered wood floor.  The only floor we haven’t done is hardwood 😀

This flooring has an underlayment already attached to it, so we didn’t have to put that down. The cork planks cut much easier than laminate and we easier to install, although some boards gave us problems for unknown reasons. We did find a lot of pieces with chipped edges, though. Probably a whole box worth, so that needs to get returned.

It took 2 days for us to get flooring in the kitchen and nook areas.  

I am loving how the floor looks.  I put my chair in there just for fun.  It’s not going in there permanently.

I like this floor enough to put it in the little alcove off the living room (we call it the North room) in the future. That is the only room with carpet in it and I really, really like this cork.  I like the color. It is very quiet to walk on and cushiony.

 

Lots of attention paid to the counters this week, too. With the Waterlox, you have to let it dry 24 hours between coats and it needed 4 coats.  It didn’t take a lot of time to actually put on the coats, but there is a lot of downtime waiting. We can’t put in the sink or tile until that gets done.  I am pretty pleased with how it is looking, though.

Backsplash should be started on Friday or Saturday.  Yippee!

Plumbing always seems to be the bane of my existence.  The previous owners took the shower handle (why??) and finding a replacement has been the biggest PITA ever.  

Plumbing parts are very brand specific and after finally figuring out the brand, we cannot seem to find anything that fits this particular stem. It would really help if these parts were labeled so that it could be matched, but they aren’t.  This is one of those things that should be easy, but isn’t and is incredibly frustrating.

We took tonight off from the rehab to do a few other things. After 2 weeks of going down in flames for football picks to start the year, I finally won this week!  Woo Hoo!  I decided to try something really different:

 

5 Guys!  This was pretty good. You don’t see burgers on the blog hardly ever.  I don’t generally like to eat ‘corporate’ meat as we call it, but I wanted to try this.  John got a grilled cheese sandwich LOL!  I don’t know if I would go back again, but the fries were awesome!

Then it was shopping time. Birthdays coming up in the next week and appliance shopping!

 

I will be glad when money stops going out faster than it comes in, that is for sure!

Another weekend come and gone. We managed to do some nonrehab stuff this weekend, too, which is a good thing.

 

Saturday started with rehab, of course.  Here is another look at all the scapholding set up to repair the roof.

 

 

They are working on the valley up there and will be reslating the roof over the porch.  So glad I don’t have to be up there.  You know those things that you would never think of doing yourself? That would be roofing for me. I do have my limits 😀

See that pipe on the roof waaaay up there in the middle of this picture?

That’s where they were last week.  Scary stuff. The back porch is also getting redone (which is why those wires are hanging there).

I was inside working on the counters while John made what seems like the millionth trip to the hardware store.  Sanding and sanding and sanding:

 

I have my game face on (kinda scary, actually):

 

I actually got interrupted while I was sanding by someone at the door. I thought maybe my sanding was too loud, but it turns out to be a former owner of the house. The owner previous to the one that got foreclosed on. He saw the sale notice in the paper and came to see his old house.  I took him on a tour and he was telling me what he had done to the property and all the things that were missing that the foreclosed owner took out of the house, like the California Closet systems and the French doors.  This gentleman was waxing very nostalgic about the house and said he would have bought it back if he had known it was on the market.  After I went back inside, he was leaning against his car and talking on his phone while looking at the house.  I have to say that it would not surprise me one bit if he approached us to buy the property  – but he can’t have it! LOL!

We spent some relaxing time in the afternoon with some coffee and a jazz duo:

This was the weekend of the Adirondack balloon festival.  We decided to stop by on Saturday evening, although it was breezy and we didn’t think any balloons would go up.  They didn’t fly, but some inflated a little bit:

 

This is how hard they were pulling to control the balloons in the breeze.

 

Darth Vader was there, though!

Darth had his own balloon, but it didn’t fly Saturday.  At least it was nice to get outside and walk around and away from the rehab.

We were able to do our usual 20 mile ride for breakfast on Sunday.  Doing that ride makes it feel like life isn’t quite so crazy, you know?  I do love my routines.  Except I forgot my phone, so no pictures.  Not to mention I missed that my mother texted that she wanted to meet us for breakfast. Oops.

Back to counters. Crack filling and sanding:

 

Kim asked what we will be sealing the counters with and it is this product:

After a lot of research, I chose this product for a few reasons.

A. It is food safe once it cures.

B. It is water resistant (not waterproof) and won’t turn white if it gets wet.

C.  Since this is a wood countertop, chances are it will get dings and scratches. With Waterlox, you can sand just the damaged part and add more Waterlox. Using poly and you would have to sand the whole counter and reapply. 

I’ll have to let you all know how that works out 😀

And an historic moment at Radiance Manor:

The moving of 2 plants!  This is the 100-pound rose bush and my razzmatazz coneflower.  They are just in the ground. Probably not their permanent homes, but I had to get them over and transplanted so they have a chance to get some roots established.

This week we will be sealing the counters and putting in flooring. Getting close, people!

 

Life has been a blur lately.  It is a little better with only 1 job and the rehab, though  – so there is that.  We are trying to do that last push to get the kitchen done so we can move in.  That and the shower upstairs are the things that have to be done before we move in.  I had been going in and working from the new house and then would do rehab stuff when work got slow, but today the roofers were at the house and a chimney sweep and I knew it would be too noisy for me to concentrate with work, so I stayed at the current house with my work partner:

It’s been pretty bleak on the selling side.  There just is not any activity in the market and our open house was a bust.  It’s just not a great time to list a house. The right buyer will come along at some point, but it could be many months down the road.

We escaped with major costs in other places in the new house, but the roof and the chimney are what hit the pocketbook.  The slate repairs are expensive (but hopefully we won’t ever have to worry about the roof again).  This is not a job I would want to do:

That’s 3 floors up from the back of the house. Yikes!  There are 3 spots getting fixed. One is the house roof itself and then replacing the roof on the back and front stoops. Closeup of the slate that will be going up:

Also, we need a new chimney liner to the tune of $2-3K.  The chimney is used for venting the boiler for the radiator system, as well as the gas fireplace, so it has to get done.  Sometimes it just makes you angry at how poorly some people treat their homes.  Delayed maintenance will get you every time… or get us, in this case.

Fun stuff lately:  I received a nice gift in the mail that was unexpected.  FB friend Rachel sent me a book to read to help decompress from the renovations and work stuff:

 

Very sweet gesture and just about makes me forgive her for being a Steelers fan 😉

John got me a little present just for fun when he was ordering something else for himself:

 

My sister and her family went to Maine, where Colleen had to buy this for us because of the name:

 

Pixie approved!

Latest rehab projects:

Working on the cabinet doors for the radiator cabinet:

Removing the middle of the doors for this step, which was kind of fun and no turning back now 😀

Also, the countertop is going in:

 

Our mantra is “We will get through this, right?” 😀