My daughter's room is what used to be the dining room. Double windows, a
transom window from her room to the hallway connecting it to the kitchen,
wooden wainscoting, a chair rail all around and a door onto a tiny porch
give it a lot of character. When we moved in this room was painted white
with Pepto-Bismol-pink woodwork. She chose blue to replace the pink. The
walls and ceiling are now a light blue, almost white, and the woodwork is
just a shade darker. The wainscoting is sponge-painted, as are the doors. Our neighbor, Fran found an old wrought-iron light fixture at a garage
sale, painted it white and rewired it for this elegant room. My daughter’s
favorite art posters are wallpaper glued to the walls, framed with slivers
of wallpaper borders. A rainforest wallpaper border above the chair rail,
rag rugs, calico curtains and new quilt for her great-great- grandmother's
bed completed the look. She sent out a declaration of independence from
the rest of the house, as her room was too cool to coexist with the
shabbiness around it.
My son's room is on the other side of the kitchen, what used to be the
"keeping room" for putting up produce. The woodwork is not as fancy as the
main house, but it does have double windows and is attached to the sun
porch. He chose green and a fish theme. We texture-painted over the cheap
paneling and the result was too dark. In trying to come up with something
a nine-year-old could do, I hit on thinning a little pale green paint,
putting it in a spray bottle and telling him to zap the walls. It has a
nice spatter effect and lightened the walls. We stenciled fish on all the
woodwork and realized that two of the four types of fish didn't have eyes
(!). Off we went to the craft store, and many little googly eyes and dabs
of hot glue later, all the fishies were able to see. Dark green plush
carpet (remnant store, cut to size like a big area rug), undersea posters,
whale wallpaper border and trout bedding finished it out.
The master bedroom was originally the den, with ceiling-high built-in
bookcases and a fireplace. When the house was moved, the bricks were
removed from the fireplaces/chimneys and they were not replaced. The
fireplaces were still there, lovely old wooden mantels intact, but boarded
up. The walls were as most of the rest: nasty dark fake paneling that had
chunks broken out of it in places, warped in places, and thousands of
staples and nails everywhere else. We wondered what was under all this
nasty paneling, so we pried up a corner of it. We found very old wallpaper
on top of cheesecloth on top of wood. Solid wood. Curious, we did the same
thing in each room of the house. More wood. The house was solid wood, some
so old and petrified that we couldn't drive a nail into it. Other spots
were pocked by an old termite population, and still others were water
damaged.
How to "fix" the walls on a shoestring budget? OK, who am I fooling? My
budget was not a shoestring, it was the Dust on a Bug's Shoestring. Enter
my friend - fabric. The master bedroom was swathed in plain muslin,
applied with finishing nails, topped with a fern border also nailed in
place. This set off the dark woodwork. Since the room was once the
library, it had no closet, but it did have an alcove. I found bed-sheets
in a pattern that I liked that were the perfect size for curtains (with
the size of the windows, draperies would have been custom; read Expensive)
so I curtained off the alcove with the help of a spring-type shower rod. Instant closet.
Another trip to the remnant store scored a nice patterned Berber that
we cut to fit.
The house has a main central hall and rooms opening into it on each side. Each side room also opens into the room behind and in front of it. When I
purchased the house I had no worries or intentions of ever having to chase
a toddler around the many circular patterns that can be run here, but life
is funny. Five years ago, when my other kids were 13 and 18 another child
joined the family; born right here with two midwives in attendance. Trying
to catch the little bugger takes a team of at least 2 adults - one to
flush and one to catch.
The central hallway was painted gangrenous infection green over '50's
institutional green wainscoting and woodwork. A single light bulb tried
valiantly but unsuccessfully to light it. It took three coats of light
peach paint and another rummage sale light fixture (a magnificent
wrought-iron whimsy of palm leaves and blossoms) to transform it into an
inviting entryway. The floor in the hall, front to back, was particle
board. It had deteriorated over the years and was not in any
condition to accept the tile I'd like eventually, so back to the
remnant store we went for simple white roll linoleum.
This is as good a point as any to remark that I don't like white walls. My
goal for my house was to have every room a different color. Also, there is
something completely freeing about working with a house in this state of
disrepair. You can try whatever you want to, and no matter how dismal the
results are, it will still be an improvement.
Double French doors open into the back hall, which serves as the
utility/sewing room. It was grey with a plywood ceiling. I painted it
lavender with iris and dragonfly wallpaper and hot glued
lavender-pinstripe fabric (OK, bed-sheets) to the ceiling. Important
scientific observation - when using hot glue on the ceiling, gravity is
NOT your friend, and when a glop of the molten glue does fall on your
hand, your first inclination is to quick wipe it off with your OTHER hand,
giving you double burns to enjoy. Someday this will be a metal ceiling,
but many of the initial projects were necessarily cost-effective "first
wave" decorating. Surprisingly, a number of these projects turned out so
well, that now I don't want what I originally thought I did. A roll-down
shade hides the furnace from view, and rolls up to service it.
The kitchen was one of the rooms that had undamaged walls under the
paneling, wallpaper and cheesecloth, so these were painted pale yellow. There are three doors into the kitchen - one from the back hall, one from
my daughter's room and one to my son's room. One of these retained the
original transom window, but the other two had been gleaned and sold, the
holes badly patched. Someday, I hope to find matching transoms, but for
now, they are covered with "mirror windows" purchased from the local home
improvement center. When the counters were ripped out, it left me
sink-less, and I purchased a large utility sink that I love for roughly a
quarter the cost of the cheapest "kitchen" sink. I can wash lots of
produce and small dogs (not at the same time), and it hides a fair amount
of dishes. I have taken the art-on-the-fridge idea to the extreme and
framed toddler masterpieces with frames from the dollar store. They cover
the walls almost to the 12-foot ceiling.
The bathroom contained what was indisputably the most valuable item in the
house - a metal claw-footed tub. As far as I can tell, the only reason
they didn't sell it was because they actually built the bathroom around
the tub, and it won't fit through the door. Unfortunately, it had been
painted pink. Then brown. It took several coats of white to get it back. A
new pedestal sink, pale pink paint to cover the dark brown (like all the
dark brown paneling hadn't been enough) plus a flock of flamingos and the
bathroom was good to go.
We reached a point where we could tackle the Big Stuff: projects we didn't
have the skills or youth to do. The day they shingled the roof was a
banner day. For six months after the roof was put on, the first thought in
my head when it clouded up was, "Are the buckets empty and in the right
spots?" Then I'd smile. If I was at home, I'd stand under where we used to
be roofless and listen to the rain, feeling all warm and fuzzy inside.
With the new roof on, we could finally do the living room. Time had not
been kind to the living room. There were gaping holes in the ceiling, the
walls were water-damaged and so was the floor. The living room is another
place I'd like a pressed tin ceiling, but for now it's white metal ridged
siding, and it looks pretty slick. My husband asked what color the
woodwork was going to be, and I told him without hesitation, “Red”.
“Red?”
“Red.”
He just shook his head and walked away. I painted the woodwork before
doing the walls, so I was painting next to the nasty dark-paneling, and of
course, when the paint was wet, it was shiny. Shiny Fire Engine Red. Bravely I painted on, and the finished product is striking and dramatic. Fabric was brought into play again for the walls. I found a pattern of
tiny floral calico in multi-colors and ordered eight bolts. Seen from a
distance of a few feet, it looks muted, not busy. It's a lovely
counterpoint for the Victorian Red woodwork. To the remnant store again
(they love me there) for more Berber.
There was a large porch off of the living room that had fallen down with
the other rooms we dismantled. The foundation beams for this porch were
still there, and, in fact were proving to be all but impossible to pry
off. It was therefore decided to make half into a deck off the living room
and the other half a badly needed second bathroom that would open onto the
back hall. The one wall of the bathroom was in fact the outside of the
living room wall, so, solid wood. Our contractor picked out lovely pine
planks to make the other walls and I satin-polyurethane-ed them and the
ceiling (another project where gravity is not your friend). The
first time my older son saw the new bathroom he announced "Smells like
Canada".
Whatever that means.
The last room to be done was the sun-porch off the boys' room. I was
officially out of colors to choose from, and the walls were in good enough
shape to hold wallpaper, so the room became plaid. When we opened the door
to our little son's new playroom, he exclaimed "I love it. It's my treehouse!" And you know, with the windows all around and the forest
pressing in, it truly is.
Siding the house was a hard decision. I really wanted to save the original
wood siding, but was given the news by several painting contractors that
to repair and replace and THEN paint would be roughly three times as
costly as vinyl siding. My contractor (who loves old houses) pointed out
that siding has come a long way in the last few years, and there are
different widths and styles you can choose from. We chose a narrow width,
like the original, and even found vinyl medallions and fancy trim for over
the windows and doors similar to what was sold from of the house before it
was moved. There are even vinyl "fish-scales" for the peaks. All in all,
after the siding was done, the house looked much more from its own period
than it had in years. After the siding was complete, one neighbor called
to complain that now his property taxes would go up (grin), and another
still brings people down the road to show them what we've done to the
house.
Less glamorous projects included insulation in the attic, the walls and
under the house (there had been NONE), installing ductwork and hooking up
the furnace to it (heat in every room, all the time), and moving the
circuit box indoors (I kinda miss standing in the dark, in the rain, in a
puddle, flipping circuits) and adding a few new ones. The house had eight
circuits when we moved in, no 220. In the kitchen, if we were making
Sunday breakfast, we could make toast, and eggs, but if we wanted the
coffee maker on, we'd have to turn the lights off. Now we have over 30
circuits, and don't use more than half of them. There's 220 if we
need it.
We chose to have the windows reglazed rather than replaced. It's not
energy efficient, especially given the size and number of the windows, and
it was costly, but I just couldn't part with the old, lovely wavy glass.
When I first moved into the house and it was room after room floor to
ceiling bleakness and despair, I would lie in bed and look out the windows
at the oak trees and marvel at how beautiful they looked through that
glass.
The ultimate finishing touch was getting the fireplaces back in working
order. The first night with a fire was glorious. There is nothing more
decadent than a fire in the fireplace in your BEDROOM, cocoa on the
bedside table, good book in hand, snuggled under quilts with dogs and
family all contentedly snoring next to you.
Oh, there are still lots of things that need doing, or re-doing. A house
is like your life, a constant work in progress. The important thing is
that after a long, hard journey, a sad tired woman found a sad tired house
and together, with a lot of help and a lot of hard work, they are Home.
Postscript- The story you have just finished is an unabashed love-story to
my house. Even though the winds of change may blow me elsewhere, and on to
new challenges, this house will be forever in my heart as the old house in
the country that I finally had the privilege to restore. In bringing this
house back to life, so my own life was healed and restored.
