All Blog Posts (25)

Recently I had the good fortune of traveling to Los Angeles for business, and while there I was able to fulfill a lifelong dream - making a pilgrimage to “The Ultimate Bungalow”: The Gamble House in Pasadena...

http://thisoldbungalow.tumblr.com/post/15929331479/a-pilgrimage-to-the-gamble-house-the-ultimate

According to home improvement retailers, June is one of the busiest times to begin DIY projects—and paint is the most effective way to give your home a fresh look without the cost.

Since June kicks off the official start of paint season—ScotchBlue Painter’s Tape has brought on their Pro Prep Patrol team: professional painters and home improvement experts who are on hand to help Americans with their paint dilemmas—for…

More and more there are a lot of calls for designs for an Arts and Crafts Style Kitchen Garden.

It is so easy to grow vegetables and herbs here in TN and edibles look great among other foundation plantings. Why not grow plants you can eat? 

 …

Can anyone tell me how much it would cost to restore our original 1925 windows?  Just need a ballpark if anyone knows or who had done it.

Thanks

Go Figure!!!!  Since moving into my Arts and Crafts Home, here at Lawrencetown Beach, I've been researching my home and the "movement" to be confident that any changes I make are in keeping with the home's historic qualities. 

I will be spending my summer doing something in the kitchen; but over the past 2 days, we finally "broke out" a wall.

Prior to this, in order to get to the pantry, I've had to leave the kitchen, walk through the keeping room, down the…

My 1912 home does not have doors on its closets and I'm wondering if that is typical. the house has been renovated but it doesn't look like there ever were doors on the present closets. Were curtains usually hung over the opening?

Thanks!

I was at Lowe's over the summer looking at tile saws. I have two big tile projects to do in my house - the kitchen and bathroom - and if I add another bathroom later as planned, that will be a third. I wanted to get a tile saw instead of renting one for many reasons, not the least of which is that if I rent one, I will spend as much or more on renting the thing than I would if I just bought a good one.

So, back to my opening sentence. I was at Lowe's over the summer looking at tile…

We still have a few things left to finish - installing the ceiling fans, putting on the outlet covers, tiling the bathroom - but it has been quite the haul just to get to the point where the walls are painted, the floors are finished, and most of the baseboard and shoe mold is installed. I'm too happy about getting to this point, so I'm posting photos...



BATHROOM

This is the bathroom floor - stained and finished. We had to put a dark stain…

Late in the day on Labor Day, a car drove by my house, slowed, stopped, and the driver leaned out the window. "Thank you! It looks great," he said. Car after car, neighbor after neighbor driving by, walking by - their first words were "thank you."

Much of the work I have done on my house has been inside, so even though I have done a great deal of work that has improved the property, very little has been visible from the outside. And let's face it - my house is, well, in a word, ugly.…

Many developments in these last weeks. Sanding, cleaning, priming, plating, excavating, concrete, water diversion. I can't believe how much

we've accomplished in so little time.

We finally finished the sanding, hallelujah! We were all tired, happy, and incredibly sore. So the next weekend, we rounded up wash buckets and rags and after vacuuming the entire upstairs - every blasted surface - walls, ceilings, woodwork, floors, radiators (amazing how much dirt those buggers can…

In a previous blog post I described my “2x theory” of renovation, which states simply that it takes twice as long and costs twice as much as you anticipate. Regardless of how carefully you budget. Regardless of how tightly you keep control of your contractors. Regardless of how much of the grunt work you do yourself, or are able to get done by people you’ve rooked for free labor. It just doesn’t matter. At some point in the project, you are going to realize that…

With Mother’s Day and Father’s Day on the horizon, this blog is largely about my parents. They are two of the hardest working, most generous, supportive, sensible, completely insane but lovable people ever. I am truly lucky.…

As promised, here is a peek at the kitchen budget. With regard to the kitchen, I am keeping the existing cabinets, but I will be updating their interiors with slide out shelves to make the deep cabinet shelves more accessible and more useful. I have a floor to ceiling pantry that will also get the slide-out treatment. The interiors of the base cabinets are pretty filthy, so I am going to clad them with something thin like a luan board that will clean up the…

Well, I haven’t checked in since December 1 of last year (2009). I didn’t do much on the house in December and January, so there wasn’t much to report. My dad had cataract surgery mid-December, so my #1 electrician and all-round do-all guy was down for the count recovering. I used the time to work on a music project that I started about the same time I started house-hunting, and we all took the holidays off.

Early January I…

The eventual goal is, of course, silk purse. Currently, I’m in sow’s ear mode. Or sow’s ass to be a bit more accurate! The walk-through revealed a nasty little surprise hiding under the area rugs and extending to the wall to wall carpet as well. The oak floors in living room, dining room and to a much lesser extent the sitting room, are completely destroyed by dog piss. To the point where in several large spots (maybe 12″ x 18″) the finish is completely eaten away.…

Well, here I go again – I am embarking on my third renovation project. The first was a cottagey-bungalow home I bought in 1998, and the second was the 25,000 square-foot building I currently work in. Today, in less than an hour from this writing, I am going to do the ‘walk through’ on my new house. New only in the sense that it is new to me. I close Monday, November 30, 2009 on an American Four-Square house, built in 1924, in a lovely Western New York village.…