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When we first met the bathroom, its high points were a regular old bathtub (with drain!) and toilet that flushed. Among the low points: moss-colored carpet (likely mossy as well), peely floral wallpaper, dark brown wainscoting, a grossly ornate light fixture not centered over the sink (huh?), pink plastic tile bathtub surround painted marine blue, a sink with leaky squeaky faucets and no shower. So, so sad.

First order of business: add a shower. Next, we peeled off the wallpaper and painted the walls a cheery yellow and the wainscoting white. We got a new light fixture and, I know it’s pretty conventional, but we centered it over the sink. We replaced the disgusting carpet with cork floors. (I need say here how marvelous cork floors are. They are warm and comfortable to stand on in bare feet, even in the winter. And, they hide dirt really well.) The new sink faucets work better than ever.

The tile for the shower was one of our first big projects. We went to Brown’s Building Supply and found some old boxes of tile that we brought home and smashed into interested shapes that we then used to make a mosaic surround.

Now, the bathroom has color, character and the tools to become all it can. It is full of self-esteem and has become a fun young adult able to hold a witty conversation with a stranger. Sigh. We are so proud of how far it has come.

Look at how tall and slender she's become!

The thing was, the house was in desperate need of new paint. Not a “blow and go” paint job either, where a couple of college kids, a pressure washer and an airless sprayer show up for a day or two, charge you five grand and leave you with a somewhat better looking house.

No, our paint was cracked, checked and peeling. The house needed some serious TLC. This meant stripping down to bare wood, doing a thorough job restoring the siding, applying many cases of caulk, priming, repairing window casings and trim, then applying the highest-quality paint in a way that would highlight the house’s architectural style.

I should also mention that the house’s paint had never been stripped. This meant it was covered in many coats of lead-based paint. And we have a young daughter. Lead dust and kids don’t mix well.

In some ways the smart thing would have been to pull off all of the siding and cart it to the dump, replacing it with something new. It would have been cheaper and faster. But in my mind it would also have been a tragedy. We have clear fir and cedar siding and shingles–the stuff from old-growth forests that were harvested to … build houses. And we felt a responsibility to preserving this. Plus, you can’t buy materials this good anymore. They simply don’t exist.

Coming off this tangent, what do you think it would cost to pay someone to do things the right way? And keep in mind that this was at the height of the housing bubble, when all contracters were super busy. Anyone?

If you guessed $25,000 to $30,000, you’d be guessing right. And this wouldn’t include stripping in a way that minimized lead dust all over our gardens.

After reading a bunch of our posts you might guess what we decided. To do it ourselves of course. And when I say “ourselves,” remember what I just typed about a young daughter. K.’s job would be entertaining L., not spending all weekend every weekend, and most evenings stripping old paint.

Many hours of internet research and discussions at Sherwin-Williams later, a plan was in place. First, we “invested” in an infrared paint stipper (Note: “investing” in a tool is like “winning” an auction. It means you’re spending money you’ll never recoup). The Silent Paint Remover is a very slick system. It uses infrared heat that breaks the bond between the paint and the siding, but doesn’t heat it enough to vaporize the lead in the paint. It’s then scraped off, making clean-up a snap and removing the risk of contaminating soil, family and pets. If you have an old house and are into restoration, I highly recommend this thing.

If you watch the videos about how it works you’ll also notice HOW FAST AND EASY it is. Riiiiiggggt. It works really, really well. But it’s far from fast.

My  guess was that it would take a weekend (maybe two!) to strip the entire house. I think it took me close to two months, and this includes a week or so that I took off from work. It was brutal–the middle of summer, hanging out in the sun on a ladder with a 400 degree heater in my hand.

The good thing about doing this project ourselves though was that 1) we were confident that everything was done well and 2) we sprung for the best paint we could buy. And good paint–the kind with a lifetime warranty that costs $60 a gallon–makes a huge difference.

In the end, the project took longer than expected, but looks awesome. Our “sneaker white” (more like, dirty sneakers) house is now two shades of green that’s much more appropriate for a craftsman. Trim is off white, and we used reddish-rose as an accent color. Cool stuff, and I think the house is happier for the change.

There’s also a funny story about the paint colors. When you undertake an ambitious outdoor project in a walking neighborhood like ours, you have to expect lots of visitors. Most of these are great, and in fact neighborly “how’s it goings” are a great distraction from hard and often-monotonous work. But then there was Bungle Boy.

Bungle Boy isn’t his real name, but he’s a guy that walked by almost every day to check on our progress. And he was really into paint color. Evidently Sherwin-Williams has a paint color called Bunglehouse Grey. This isn’t a color we used. (for the record, it’s Oxford Ivy, Zeus, Calablanca and English Rose.)

Anyway, Bungle Boy introduced himself one day (not as Bungle Boy) and complimented our choice of paint color. Here’s how it went down.

BB: “Hey, nice job choosing Bunglehouse Grey.”

Me: “Thanks, but it’s not Bunglehouse Grey. That’s a different color.”

BB: “No, it is. Sherwin-Williams has a paint color called Bunglehouse Grey, and it’s really similar to what you have. You must be using a different brand.”

Me: “Wow, that’s a super interesting story. But we bought our paint at Sherwin-Williams, and it’s not Bunglehouse Grey. It’s called Zeus.”

BB: “That really surprises me, because it looks just like Bunglehouse Grey. In fact my wife is really into design. She might even be a designer one day as a job.”

Me: “Um, OK.”

BB: “Yeah, she’s really talented. OK, well I’m off to get some a frozen coffee at the Rocket. Man, it’s really hot out here today. Bet you wish you were drinking frozen coffee.”

Me: “Yes, well, luckily I haven’t noticed that it’s 94 degrees and that I’ve been out here for 8 hours. But at least I can work in the shade so that the paint doesn’t coagulate the second I open the can.”

BB: “Yeah, that’s lucky. Well have a good day.”

Me: “OK. Bye.”

BB: “Alright dude. Bunglehouse!”

So then K. comes up and says something like, “what’s up with Bungle Boy?”

For the next few weeks we had daily Bungle Boy sightings. It was funny at the time.

Anyway, just in case you’re exhausted from reading here are some happy snaps. And once again, I know I need to take some better and more recent pics.

Strip the entire house in one weekend? Uh...

Lap siding is hard to strip. Shingles? Brutal.

Ever played Chutes and Ladders?

Sure, no problem. Go ahead and play on the ladder.

In progress, but getting closer. Strange to see the house before we had put in gardens in the front corner and parking strip.

Cousin R. and Uncle J. come to check on progress.

The view from our neighbor's awesome leaf pile.

OK, this has nothing to do with house painting. I like the photo though.

Too much painting. Not enough hiking.

The problem, in part, was that there was no divide between time at home and time at the office. The computer, fax machine (remeber those?), files and more were always inches away. Not a good thing for that elusive life/work balance.

Back then I promised myself that if I ever had the chance, I’d have a home office that was truly separate from the rest of the house. And our garage project gave us this chance.

In reality we designed the 375 square foot space above the garage to be supremely flexible. It can be (and has functioned at different times) as an office, a craft room, a yoga studio, a play room, a bike shop and more. Call it an “away space,” if you’d like.

The Loft, as we call it, is one of our favorite spaces. It’s beautiful, and with the abundance of light and views of trees and gardens, feels like a very adult tree house. The clerestory windows, bamboo floors, maple trim and moulding, and ample-sized deck all add to the experience.

And while we have a heat pump to heat and cool the space, more often than not it’s off. Until you’re in a space like our loft, you don’t realize how noisy any house’s systems (furnace, water, etc.) are.

K. often practices yoga up here and loves the quality of light, the  privacy and of course the beautiful floors. Evidently when one practices yoga a lot of time is spent looking at the ground/mat.

Anyway, it’s a space we’re proud of. Like many other projects in the 1527 House, we took our time, learned new skills, and picked and chose materials carefully. The bookcase guardrail, that gives something interesting to look at as you enter the space, is something I’m particularly happy with. And the maple trim is mellowing to a beautiful color. Most people though comment on the amber bamboo floors. The vertical grain works well in the space, and the variation in color has an added benefit of masking dirt!

Here are a handful of happy snaps. Really, I need to get back up there to take some better pictures. These don’t come close to doing the space justice.

A blank canvas.

Ascending the stairs, here's the bookcase wall.

An early pic, looking back to the entry and light well.

Not sure why that old radio was there, but here's a view onto the deck. Up close that desk is very cool. It was my great-grandfather's drafting desk.

Before the garden started to mature. Funny to look at how small these plants were. Fun to look back on. Anyway, the deck is a super-nice place to hang out on and offers a nice view of the garden and patio.

Kind of embarassed to even include this, but it at least shows the view entering the loft. Really, it looks much better today.

Because I didn’t have any sewing skills to speak of, Kleenex became the all-purpose fabric of choice for blankets, pillows and clothing, reinforced with a good deal of tape. Cardboard boxes, plastic lids, wrapping paper, beads and yarn all held a galaxy of possibilities. It was not playing with these dolls, making them talk and interact, that was so much fun, but the process of deciding what they needed for comfortable lives and then figuring out how to make it from whatever I could scrounge up.

Designing and making things for the Sunshines’ home sparked an early love of fixing things up that was not reignited until A. and I moved into the 1527 house. With a limited budget but plenty of weekend and after-work hours, we figured “Why not try?” Joint compound, a wonderbar, tin tiles and 2x4s became the new materials holding dreamy possibilities. An investment in a basic sewing machine and scrutiny of its accompanying guidebook helped me step up to creating curtains and covers out of real fabric.

Comparing our most recent project to our earlier ones, I am amazed by how much we’ve learned and how many new skills (and tools) we have collected. What I have always loved most about every one of our projects is that we did them ourselves and we did them together (and that we are still together!). For many projects, professionals are definitely needed. For many other things, a fabulous purchase cannot be beat.

But for plenty of others, a little sawing/stitching/sanding/spackling turns out something that is just right.

We were ready. The plans were in place. The subcontractors lined up. A workplan was mostly developed. It was time to build. The garage would be a metaphor for our careers, our lives, the way we approached life.

Well, not really, but after destroying the old garage we were pretty stinking excited to get going on the new one. At this point in our time in the house, we had wrestled with some pretty in-depth projects. Full bathrooms renos, tearing down plaster, rebuilding windows, etc.

But new construction was a different story. So was new construction on a budget. Our contracter agreed to frame and wrap the new structure. So he took care of overseeing the foundation work, framing, roof, and installing the windows. Everything else would be up to us. Mostly, anyway.

Looking back on it, I can now say that things weren’t too terrible. Then again, time has a habit of blocking out the difficult parts. Like when women look back on childbirth. Or so I hear.

Seriously though, we had a good time. Did we get out over our skis here and there? You bet. Did we learn some new skills? Yes. Kristy is now a whiz with a pneumatic framing hammer–hanging siding for a bunch of weekends will do that. Plus, there’s the sense of satisfaction of accomplishing something special.

What we really appreciate–beyond the physical “stuff”–is the amount of detail we were able to include. Our architect and builder helped with this of course, but from the brackets we built that support the fascia boards, to how we trimmed windows, we’re really pleased about how things turned out.

In flipping through some old pictures I was reminded of some especially strong memories:

• Our friend Erika, who gave up a whole stack of weekend time, channeling M.C. Hammer. Who knew rapping to Mr. Hammer would be so apropos to hanging siding?
• K., totally exhausted, taking a nap on a 10-inch wide scaffold while I went to pick up lunch.
• Being woken up after arriving home from a three-day work trip (where I visited Seattle, San Francisco, Boston and New York) at 6:30 in the morning to the urging, “why are you sleeping in? We have a lot of work to do!” I love you too.
• Painting the garage. At least we were safe. Even if I don’t rock climb 5.12 anymore, at least I have the gear to keep us safe.
• Wondering why it was OK for the foundation guy to not show up for two weeks without returning phone calls. Is that OK in your line of work? At least when he did show he had a good excuse. “Sorry, I had a job in Newport that was bigger than yours.” Nice.
• Sacha the dog expressing her displeasure with us, and the commotion we were making in her tight, organized little world, by taking a dump on our bed.
• Being more than happy to give construction site tours to the 50 or so people that stopped by to ask about the project.
• When it was done, telling someone five or six times in as many minutes that he couldn’t rent out the upstairs as an apartment. Me: “I’m sorry, you can’t rent it. There’s not even a bathroom.”  Him: “Well I’m sure we could figure out something.” (Like what? An outhouse? A chamber pot?)
• Finally hiring a “siding guy” to finish the very top/most difficult part of the garage. After being so careful about working with fiber-cement siding and the dust that’s created when it’s cut–using HEPA-filter masks, eye protection, keeping the dog inside, etc.–siding guy was pretty much caked in the stuff within minutes. His response to our concern? “Oh, don’t worry about it. I’m around fiber cement dust so much that I’m pretty much immune.” Yikes.

Anyway, we now have one very unique garage. In the final installment, the interior! Try not to get too excited…

My, what a lovely yard you have.

Going up...

And up...

And up!

Putting hundreds of dollars of high-end rock climbing gear to use.

Hanging siding...

...is hard work.

Mostly finished. (in the days before we repainted the house and garage.)

One day, their crew showed up at our house and filmed us chattering on and on about our kitchen. They played up a reference to our honeymoon in Italy, but that wasn’t really an inspiration for the kitchen re-do. I think it was another HGTV show where we saw someone doing a textural wall treatment with tissue paper that spurred on our remodel. Even though we didn’t move walls, add appliances or get new furniture, our kitchen changed quite dramatically. When we moved in, the kitchen had:

• Gray indoor/outdoor carpeting
• Pink and blue patterned wallpaper with blue trim
• A plastic tile backsplash painted blue
• A weird, warped, some-sort-of-laminate countertop that was dark yellow and sparkly

Sick! It was really gross.

So, we pulled up the carpet and laid brown and cream square tiles in a checkerboard pattern, took down the wallpaper and put up a tissue paper texture that we then painted with two tones of yellow, painted all the trim white, put in John Boos rock maple counter tops and a painted tin tile backsplash.

We also took the doors off the cabinets and painted the insides of the cabinets and the shelves bright blue. I love the open shelving; it’s so handy. All of our cabinets were open for a time, until our dog got wise to the possibility and started stealing food out of them. Sheesh. A. made great glass-front doors to protect our food. Now she just waits until we’re cooking and jumps up on the counter to nab our mise en place. That’s why we call her the counter-terrorist.

We need to work on scanning in some other “before” photos. It’s amazing to see the difference. We’re also working on converting our HGTV spot from VHS to be able to post it. We’re still surprised it didn’t win an Emmy.

Plastic tile ... classy!

Work clothes - ready to go. Note the indoor/outdoor carpet. Nice!

Progress.

Tin tile, maple counters and a Chicago Faucets, well, faucet.

Entering the butler's pantry. Our butler spends a lot of time in here.

If your walls had this much depth and texture, you'd be happy too.

L's favorite breakfast spot--next to the heater!

A fun and functional project. A scrap piece of countertop works perfectly on a base we made from galvanized pipe. Perfect for prepping a morning coffee..

People think I’m exaggerating when I tell them that when we moved in, the garage was ready to fall over. I can understand their skepticism. After all, people have a tendency to be overly dramatic. “I’m starving!” “I just got back from the gym and O-M-G that workout was so hard I almost DIED!” “I was a great high school athlete!” “If Republicans were in charge we wouldn’t have a budget deficit!”

Sorry, couldn’t resist.

When it came to describing the garage, I wasn’t over-hyping reality. The thing was listing over at a 15 degree angle, literally held up by a 4″ x 6″ post that we affectionately nicknamed “the kickstand.” It was so bad that the garage door was half off of its tracks, unable to align with its crooked opening.

To add even more excitement to our lives, there was no foundation, just a thin concrete pad, and the roof was covered with seven layers of asphalt tiles (3 layers should be the max according to code). So think about it. A decrepit old structure, leaning WAY over to one side, with a ton of weight at the top and no support down low. Sketchy.

Needless to say, we never parked in that garage. We did keep our lawn mower in there, but had to chain it to an eye hook so that no one would steal it. Remember, the door didn’t work.

It took us a few years to figure out what we wanted in a new garage, save up the money to build, etc.

Along the way we also came across a great book that served up plenty of inspiration. The aptly titled Garage is an excellent read, especially if you appreciate, well, garages.

Of course we didn’t want a vanilla garage. No, no, no, that would be far too simple. And boring. We wanted a one-car garage so we could maintain plenty of yard space. We also wanted some modern touches inside, but it had to complement the house and fit in with the neighborhood. Oh, and we wanted a second story so we could have a detached office/bonus room. All within budget, of course.

Knocking the garage down was a good time though. We recruited 10 friends or so to help.

(Note: it’s easy to recruit people to stand around while stuff gets destroyed. But it’s nearly impossible to recruit people to help with actual work. Mini-rant is now complete.)

Destruction begins.

Naked.

Anyway, we totally over-engineered the situation, rigging up ropes and pulleys to pull and push the thing over. We thought through which studs we’d cut through, where people needed to stand, etc. We pulled off all the siding for some reason too. Probably I thought we’d reuse the old, rotting wood.

Oooh. That chafes! Also note that 10 helpers started, two finished.

In the end, knocking the sucker over required little more than whacking the kickstand out from under the garage eave, then making sure the various helpers and helpers’ pets were out of the way. The garage came crashing down in a pretty elegant way. It wasn’t even loud–it just sort of gently folded to the ground.

Those green jeans were on sale at Value Village. Who could say no?

As usual, we didn’t come lightly to the decision about what kind of garage to build. For months we spent nights and weekends walking our neighborhood, looking at details of garages we liked. We surfed the web, we read books, I filled sketchbooks with sketches. We interviewed builders. We looked at materials and thought about what we could do ourselves vs. what we would hire others to do.

Finally, we landed on a builder. We showed him our ideas. He said they looked great and that he’d refine them for us. He agree to frame and wrap the structure, leaving the rest of the work to us. We were excited, ready to go. And then we waited for his plans. And waited.

A week before groundbreaking he showed us his plans. We didn’t like them. And then we put the brakes on the project and hired an architect.

I shouldn’t be unfair to the builder though. He was honest, did great work, did exactly what he said he’d do, came in under budget, and allowed us to do a ton of the work ourselves.

I mentioned this in another post, but a good architect/designer makes all the difference. They look at space, light, shadow, function, symmetry, asymmetry and materials in really different ways. Of course we had never worked with an architect, let alone hired one. So we researched that as well, interviewing plenty.

Some didn’t “get” what we were trying to do. “You have a big lot. Why not just lose your entire yard and connect the garage to the house?”

Some didn’t appreciate the opportunity to work around our challenges. “You know, on your budget it’s going to be impossible to build in many interesting details.”

But in the end we hired iDR Studios. Matt Melcher ended up doing a lot of the work with us, and it’s a relationship that we still have today. A month or so later, K and I were totally blown away with the plans, which included details we never, ever would have thought of on our own.

Up next: Building, subcontractors, design details and M.C. Hammer.

Done for the weekend.

All that work makes a dog thirsty.

From the time we moved in, K & I had talked about making changes to the master bedroom. In terms of what we had to work with, for an old house, we lucked out. The master is big, a rarity in turn-of-the-century house: Walk-in closets, a large main room, an interesting wall of windows. But it also has a somewhat awkward adjoining area that was half-tucked under a dormer, half under a sloping roofline.

That awkward space though is what we pictured as a place for a master bathroom. When we showed it to friends and family, walking them through our vision, we were mostly met with raised eyebrows and skeptically nodding heads. But whatever. It wasn’t the first time people thought we had jumped the shark when it came to our renovation plans. We assured everyone that it would be cool-they just needed to understand it would be a little funky.

In fact it would have been way too funky. Strange funky, not cool funky. So at the 11th hour (meaning after I had already started demolition) we called our friend and uber-architect Matt Melcher. K had the idea of moving two walls, but we weren’t sure how it would affect the space. As usual, Matt came up with a stack of great options, and we ended up blending two based on what we thought would work. The thing is, a good architect looks at space differently. Every time we’ve worked with Matt he’s brought us ideas that we never would have thought of. This is a good thing.

I won’t completely bore you with a “woe is us” tale of living in a house during a major demolition. So here’s the short summary comparing what we thought would happen vs. what actually happened:

What we thought:

• Add in a bathroom, easily tapping into the plumbing stack in the wall between our room and our existing bathroom. Simple!
• Remove the plaster in the future bathroom only, leaving the existing plaster in the main room and closets. Replace it with water-resistant greenboard drywall
• Refinish the vertical-grain fir wood floors throughout the room
• Update our closets with new hardware
• And of course, make minor plaster repairs and repaint the rooms
• Complete the project in eight weeks, for a super-low price

What we actually did

• Removed all the plaster and lath in the entire room–every wall, ceiling, in closets, etc. And because we were living in the house while this was happening, I had the privilege of carrying out a roomful of plaster in paper grocery sacks.
• Reinsulated all exterior walls
• Moved two walls, adding in new five-panel pocket doors
• Completely rewired the upstairs, running a new “homerun” to our panel
• Had giant holes in our dining room ceiling and wall for months. These were needed to run brand new plumbing and electrical lines up from the basement
• Removed the VG fir flooring in the bathroom, replacing it with cork. We then milled down the old flooring and paneled a bathroom wall with it
• Milled down old trim, using it to build new cabinetry (very old, very beautiful wood)
• Built two completely new closets, including custom rods, maple cabinetry and lighting
• Opened up the headboard wall to create two light wells
• Refinished a clawfoot tub found on craigslist that had been sitting in the carriage house of an old Kirtland Cutter mansion for the past 50 years
• Spent every weekend, all weekend for eight months working on the project. Spent a boatload of money.
• Hired Sean Smith, a.k.a. Smitty, to custom build us a set of steel brackets to support the fir sink box

Below we’ve attached a series of photos. I think these better-describe our results than the writing above. Overall, we couldn’t be happier about how things turned out. It’s a very unique space, but also in keeping with the period of the house. The interplay of light and shadow is wonderful, and having new cabinetry and high-quality fixtures in the bathroom is fantastic.

Also, despite moving the walls in, it’s impressive that the room feels substantially bigger. I think this has to do with the headboard wall extending so far beyond the closet and bathroom walls. Plus, it’s a space that’s totally appropriate for a king-size bed.

Entering the bedroom

From here you can see how the headboard wall extends into one of the closets

From one of the "lightwells," looking across to the closet

And looking back across from my closet to the built-in bookcase

From here you can also see the new bathroom. The doors are 5-panels, with frosted glass on a pocket door track.

A new home for an old clawfoot tub

The paneled wall and sinkbox use wood reclaimed from our demo, and refinished.

Fixtures by Kohler, sink by Decolav.

Smitty's artwork/sink brackets

A place for everything...

Deep, pull-out shelves

Looking across to the second closet

Yes, K likes her shoe rack. To answer the question I know you're wondering about, it's made from maple and hemlock. Also, it holds 30 pair of shoes.

We worked hard to maintain period details. Doing this is harder than it looks. Thanks, Dad!

Sacha, waiting for the heater to turn on so she can take a nap.

We found two of these giant metal jacks at a thrift store years ago. It seemed like a more interesting doorstop than what we found at Home Depot.

For a good part of the year, it pretty much felt like we were living in a crack house. Minus the crack.

Thanks for visiting.

One thing that surprises people when they first visit our house is the way it feels. Not the way it’s decorated necessarily, or the flow of the house (although that’s great too), but…something.

After living here as long as we have, I’m convinced that this “something” has a lot to do with how the house is designed. Virtually every room is based on a square. When you walk in, the living room is rectangular–in fact two perfect squares. The dining room, taking out the bay window and built-in hutch, a 13′ x 13′ square. The large windows? Sqaures. The dental moulding on the fireplace surround? More squares. The fabric on our roman shades? Subtle squares. And the result is exceptionally pleasing. It creates a feel that’s comfortable, and that works in a way that’s subtle, but surprising.

So this leads me to my brain splinter. I have this theory that certain things lodge in your brain in ways you’re not immediately aware of. You know something is different, or pleasing, or interesting, but you’re not sure what or why. This concept isn’t limited to how you might feel in a house. I get it in certain cars, looking at artwork, using certain products, and more. It’s a fun idea to chew on, anyway.

Symmetry can have this effect too, and we really played this up in our garage–a freestanding one-car, two-story structure with a very cool room upstairs–that will most certainly be the subject of at least a couple of posts. We built it from the ground up, including doing the majority of the work ourselves. Anyway, its design is hypersymmetrical, and one of the most pleasing spaces I’ve been in.

These ideas are difficult to capture in pictures, but here are a few details that might be interesting.