Old-Fashioned Intercom System

In every old house or building there are always little peculiarities and quirks that add charm and character. Some things here in this old church have left us scratching our heads wondering why....or what the heck? One such thing is this hole in the ceiling above the kitchen. Do you notice the square in the picture?

Right above the kitchen is Ellie's room and you can hear everything that is going on when she is up there and she can hear everything that is going on in the kitchen.....all through this little hole. When we first moved in I thought, "Oh, that's gotta go.....we gotta fix that as soon as we get a chance". But the more we live with it the more I like it. When we want to ask the kids if they've brushed their teeth yet, or it's time to get dressed for school....viola!....a home intercom system.....

This is what it looks like from Ellie's room.....(you don't even need to be this close to hear clearly)...

Beam Me Up Scotty

It's been a busy week! First, I must thank my sis-in-law Sara who came over and helped me clean saw dust off windows and hours cleaning up drywall mud off the floors. It was so much more fun with a bud and it made the time go by so fast. Thanks Sara!



So, we decided to go with a light colored ceiling...an off-white. Do you know how many "whites" there are in, say, just the basic Sherwin Williams color catalog? Well, we just so happened to have a color catalog and there are over 50....and that's just the basic popular ones. Karie, if you are reading this, you would be so proud how I used your method of "testing" to pick the right color. I think we're really going to like this one.....

We had a friend of ours, Christy Mower, who does some interior design work, come over and give us some advice the other day. I love having her come over to, at the very least, validate our ideas and she always has so many great ideas of her own. One of her ideas that we are going to use is putting up beams to make a coffered ceiling.

We did some research on faux beams and man, are they expensive! And they're fake! In our case, they would have to be faux because our ceiling just wouldn't hold the weight of real ones.

We figured out styrofoam beams would be over $4000. Wood ones were still over $1000 (already made). So, of course Dustin, being the handy man that he is, says, "I can make them".

Still, the cheapest wood at Lowe's is pine and we calculated the project to be over $700. Do we just accept that as the price of remodeling and making a cool ceiling?

Well, thanks to me and craigslist, we found (36) 1x8x14 pine boards for $100...leftovers from some dude out in Weiser.

The cons?....Dustin had to pick them up way out in Weiser (about an hour and a half away) and they're tongue and groove flooring. Not a big deal though with a handy man and a handy dandy table saw.....a quick fix and totally worth the savings. Decorative beams for $100?!

Dustin was in his glory (his happy place) today and had all the beams built in an afternoon. We then solicited Ethan and Ellie and even a neighbor kid to help distress the beams. We all took out our frustrations with hammers, chisels, and picks.....

Here are the boards....nice and smooth before the pounding mayhem....

Here's Ethan, going for it.....

Here's an example of the finished product....beaten up and stained.....

Does it look like a real beam? It does to us....especially from 12 feet down.

Here's Dustin pretending like he's holding up the beam with his head (you really gotta click and magnify the picture to appreciate the look on his face).
I helped him place it up there and it really is quite light.......

We were going to have three beams across and then two going down the other way.....but now, we are contemplating just leaving the three across and keeping it simple. We'll see what it looks like when they're all up. Stay tuned for the final look......

First Hidden Treasure

We found our first hidden treasure! So, it's not an antique diamond ring or a 90 year old U.S. Bond, but it was fun to find nonetheless! Some of the casing around these old doors need to be replaced as they are pretty munched up....a lot more than a little sanding could fix. While Dustin was replacing the casing around one of the doors in the entryway....

He found this in the wall above the door.....

The Conquering of The Castle Fort

This castle fort was really quite cute....for a preschool, bonus room, or kids bedroom....but not a living room. It just had to go. It was so well built and so solid that Dustin had a really hard time disassembling it....lots of bolts and screws. There was just a little "extra" hammer pounding to pound out his frustration, but in the end, he conquered. Here's the "before" picture......

We were happy to discover that the same wood floors were underneath the carpet but sadly realized that the old preschool owners were just covering up a previous carpet job that was GLUED to the floor. Who glues carpet to beautiful historical floors anyway?.......

It's a family affair....padding to be pulled up, wood tack strips to be taken out, and a whole lot of staples to be pried up. My hands hurt by the end.....

Here's Sissy, working hard.....

Week of Drywall

So, remember the "BEFORE".....no wall, no ceiling......


Now we have new drywall on the ceiling and walls with even texture throughout (not 3 different kinds with really rough texture, bumps and gaps). Electricity is in place. Also, note the wider door frame (or at least it will be in the future).....

Here is Dustin putting in some canned lighting. He primed the walls and ceiling today too....all after his "real" job. So, we have a clean slate now, a plain canvas to create a work of art....the only problem is.....we have no clue. The color possibilities are endless. We're still unsure about what "look" we want in this room. It will serve as a living room, the main room when people come over. Any color suggestions?????

And The Wall Came Tumbling Down!

I'm still not exactly sure why this wall had to come tumbling down....something about falling, crumbling plaster, we're going to cut a bigger doorway anyway and it's easier to hang new drywall.....or something like that. I just know there was a whole lot of banging and dust flying everywhere (note the open door to the kitchen thank you very much). I quickly took a picture and was able to cover the door with plastic before too much damage was done. :-)

This was really cool to see where the three big windows used to be. They are exactly like the other three (actual) windows directly across the room. So this was obviously the outside wall and then they added on the kitchen some time in the 30's I think? I need to go down to the Eagle Historical Museum and get all the history sometime. Anyway, we're going to open up the doorway to that orange line.


So, I just have to add here that even though, in all these pictures, it looks like Dustin is doing all the work, I'm punchin' my time card too. Last night, Dustin and I shuffled that big ladder around and got down every last one of those acoustic tile hanger nails. There had to have been a 1000 of them. We were sweaty from going up and down the ladder and dirty from sweeping up all the nails and plaster dust.......but Dustin still managed to give me a big wet one. It was a good night.

The Ceiling is Falling! The Ceiling is Falling!

A couple of nights ago, our conversation went something like this....

Dustin: "So, what do you want to do tonight"?
Stephanie: "I don't know, read, or maybe watch a movie"......... "What do you want to do"?

(Long pause)

Dustin: "Why don't we tear down the ceiling".
Stephanie: ?

I'm telling you, Dustin has big fiery ants in his pants and there's no stopping him! I don't want to squelch the fire because I'd much rather him be "on fire" than "lighting a fire" under his bum. It was around 10:00 p.m. when he started peeling back the first acoustic tiles. Low and behold, the ceiling goes up another 2 1/2 feet! Some time (probably in the last 50 years?) the ceiling was all framed out in order to put up these tiles.

As tempting as it is to take it all out and go even higher we are not even considering it because 1. heating/cooling bills 2. sound/echo issues 3. we can get all the new electrical wires for new lighting easily between the existing framing and 4. WAY less work....we know our limits...and that just wouldn't be fun. And, why would we want more than 12 foot ceilings anyhow?

Here's the first reveal.......

It's just a plain white ceiling....the old lathe and plaster again!

So, remember, here's what it looked like before we moved in......

Seriously, within 45 minutes we had the whole ceiling off. It was really quite fun. The tiles just peeled off easily and we took turns handing them down off the ladder.

Here's what is looks like now....

Stay tuned for what we did today!!!

Pantry

One of my favorite rooms of my "old" house was the pantry....I loved that place. I thought it would be funny to compare then and now. So this was then....

This is now......You gotta love the wood siding. I'm thinking it's 1912 original.

This is two leftover bookshelves from the preschool stacked on top of each other. Who needs a perfectly designed pantry when you can have this? Hee Hee. Lopsided and all!

Just give me time......

Ellie's Room

Ellie has done a great job helping to get her room ready. Here she is painting a bookcase that was left over from the preschool...you can't really see in the picture but it's kind of a light green. It was all I could do not to just grab the roller brush out of her hand to smooth out the puddles and streaks of paint. She really wanted to do this, so after teaching her some techniques, she ended up doing a great job...the whole first coat! I was proud of her (and myself for practicing constraint, letting her learn the skill of painting).


Okay, so this doesn't have anything to do with her room, but since we're writing about Ellie I couldn't resist sharing her tender heart. Evidently the neighbor cat had a baby bird in it's mouth and it was still alive. Somehow she got it out of it's mouth and brought it home to nurse it back to health. Of course my first thought is, "Oh, great." It died very shortly after I saw it.....

But Ellie refused to give up. She's trying to feed it just like she learned from her second grade teacher Mrs. Kwid....

Here's her room. Not crazy about the wall color but it will sooo have to do for now.

The finished bookcase.....

Ellie helped in the decorations....

Back a few months ago....back when I had time...I painted these for the fun of it. I think I found a new hobby....when I get some more time.

Maybe I shouldn't have gotten such a close up picture....shows the goofy flaws...but I still want to show them off. hee hee.....

Ethan's Room

So, evidently the room that we're using now for Ethan's bedroom was the little kitchenette for the pastor?....minister?...(I need to find out the right term for the Seventh Day Adventist leader, anyone know?) of the church. It was also used by the previous owners when they lived here while they were getting the day care up and running. Under Ethan's bed (but covered up with floor boards now) is the drainage for the old kitchen sink. The kids bathroom that WE ALL share is just on the other side of this room. So, we thought this would eventually be a great place to put a nice sized jack & jill bathroom.....a whole other project that Dustin would love to start sooner than later.

Here's Ethan's room.....





Just finished sewing some curtains for him from some extra fabric I had. I didn't know he'd be so excited over curtains, but he was very grateful. I guess the headlights of cars were bothering him.......

First BEFORE & AFTER Project

Our first before and after pictures!!....a closet!!! But, an important milestone. It was a perfect project for the first week of moving in. It was small enough to finish in a couple of days to get that satisfaction of completion. It also gave us the boost we needed to start tackling the bigger projects. Plus, it got rid of a bunch of boxes! Love having a place to put stuff.

The closet is located on the first landing of the staircase up to the kids bedrooms...so it's a great place to put all the games and kids books.

I'm not sure if this picture does this closet justice. You may need to click on it to get the full effect. It was pretty gross....dirty, holes and tears in the walls, chips and scratches in the paint, etc. Once again, thanks to Papa's mudding talents and generosity, he covered and smoothed and caulked until I had a nice canvas to work my painting magic. BEFORE.....AFTER.....
The kids solemnly vowed to keep this closet neat and organized.....

Moving In

Dustin and I lived in a little one bedroom apartment in Orange County when we first got married. It was only for about a year. Since then, we have moved 6 times. I'm not sure anyone enjoys moving. I for one hate it and this move was probably the hardest. Leaving my dream home was tough, for lots of reasons, but one being because it was a place where I was very organized and had a place to store everything (built-in bookcases, closets, cabinets, drawers, etc.). Here, because it's technically not a house with regular closets, bathroom shelves, etc., I didn't even know where to start putting stuff. The weekend we moved in, I was numb. I felt paralyzed. We didn't even know where to start. I imagine now it was a good thing I felt numb...it kept me from totally freaking out.

The first official night we slept here was a memorable one. We knew it was cold inside when we first looked at the house and a number of times visiting the place before we actually moved in. But, I guess it wasn't THAT bad....not enough to make it a real priority....until we had to spend the night! That first night we moved in kept getting colder and colder the later it got. Dustin got bundled up and went down to the basement to figure out how to turn the pilot switch thing on but couldn't get it working. We finally gave up, put on our thermals and jumped in bed. I could feel a steady cold breeze coming in so I got up to find the draft source. Oh, and I found them! Dustin vowed that the next day he would get some weather stripping for the door and exclaimed through chattering teeth, "If we can just make it through the night." He was being serious but it struck me so funny I couldn't stop laughing...when you think about the hardships of the pioneers, homeless people, etc....I said, "I think we're going to make it!!!" So, now the joke is to say as dramatically as possible, "If we can just....make it...through the night!!!!"

Getting ready for church that first Sunday was also memorable. I was barely able to find a hung up dress. There was no mirror anywhere close to an electric outlet so I blow dried my hair by memory. Where there WAS a mirror, there was no light so I had to put on my make-up by memory too. It's a wonder I even I looked half-way presentable for church....at 8:30 a.m.!!

Ethan & Ellie were very excited about sleeping in the castle fort. We told them they could sleep there for the whole first week. Here they are huddled together with a little space heater watching a movie before bed. They thought this was better than a camp out. Ethan got top bunk......


Well, at least Dustin got HIS clothes in the closet. Other than that, I was barely finding a path to walk all weekend not knowing where to even start. Yes, that's our Christmas tree in our bedroom....
So, not only was it hard to find a place to put all our kitchen stuff, we had to find a place for a range/oven unit. Luckily Papa and Grandma Mimi came to help us move in/rescue us. Papa drilled holes through the cabinets, cut out drywall, and brought in an outlet for the stove in the best place we could think of. He hooked us up and then had to patch up the wall after. What would we have done without him? And, what would we have done without friends bringing us the most amazing meals in the middle of this chaos? I will forever remember this kindness as it is permanently etched on my heart!!......

Papa and Dustin (yes, Dustin actually helped....he didn't just supervise while drinking his diet Coke as Papa did all the work) took out a huge bump in the wall plaster (it's the old lathe and plaster they used in the "olden days") and put in a new piece of drywall. Being the experienced drywall mudder too, Papa textured the walls smoothing out the bumps and uneven, rough texturing.....

One of Ellie's favorite people in the whole world......


Ellie and Grandma Mimi chillin' in the sun taking a break from the madness.....