It has finally sunk in that we don’t have the stamina to have house projects going all the time, one after another, lets hurry up and get everything done so our house is restored all ready. Our what seemed realistic at the time plan, the one where we complete all the work on our house within five years? It’s now the 10 year plan or the hopefully we get the house done before we die plan. Considering this is our fourth year in the house and we are barely halfway done, I think the new plan is a good call.

We have decided that completing one project a year is a more realistic pace for us. Although, it would have been nice to have restored the kitchen and our main bathroom before we hit upon the one-project-a-year-for-a-more-balanced-life approach. I think it is going to be a while before I have the ever changing kitchen of my dreams.

January
My dad came to visit and finished some plumbing work he had started the year before. This culminated with hooking up the sink in our downstairs half bath. It only took us 3 years to actually have water running out of a faucet in one of our bathrooms. Yeah!

February

The episode of “Restoration Realities” featuring us aired on the DIY television network. Along with the show’s host and carpenter we built a period appropriate screen door and weather stripped our windows and front door.

Heather + Dave on Restoration Realities Part 1
Restoration Realities Part 2
Restoration Realities Part 3
Restoration Realities Part 4

March
Did absolutely NO work on the house.

April
Did absolutely NO work on the house, but may have scared a very nice sounding family away from the idea of restoring a rundown Craftsman home of their own.

May
Did absolutely NO work on the house. Starting to see a theme here?

June
Did absolutely NO work on the house.

July
Did absolutely NO work on the house, but I finally resolved the ownership issue of the oil and mineral rights to our property.

August
Finally, some work on the house! Stripped the woodwork and doors of the stairwell, landing and upstairs back hallway. I purchased leaded glass French doors from the early 1900′s off of eBay for the upstairs back hallway.

September
I publicly confess that I have resentful feelings towards the house for the first time. I think I used the word “hate.” And, in certain moments I do hate the house. There, I said it again. We are at an odd point in our restoration experience. The honeymoon period with the house is definitely over.

Maybe this is normal? Maybe around year 4 of an extensive restoration project everyone starts hating their house a little bit, or at least all the time, money and energy that goes into it? After all the work on our house year, after year, after year, we are barely at the halfway point of having our home fully restored.

It’s not like I hate the house all the time. It comes and goes. There are moments when I also love our house. Most of those loving moments are spent in the completed portion of the house.

October
We discovered that the upstairs sleeping porch, a 1918 addition, was inadequately framed. I’m not sure if inadequate is a strong enough word to describe opening up a wall and discovering two 2×2′s as the sole support for a load bearing wall. Shocking comes to mind, so does what the hell were they thinking, quickly followed by I wonder how poorly the rest of the sleeping porch is built?

Pablo rebuilt the wall and installed the leaded glass French doors.

November
Ah, November…November was a month chock full of resentful, or maybe even hateful feelings. There was a lot to hate.

Getting right to it, we both hated the color I selected to paint the stairwell and hallway. I was going for silvery sage but ended up with baby nursery mint green. We received alot of wonderful paint color suggestions, but in the end decided to go with a blue green color that matches the original 1912 wall color of our bedroom.

This leads us to the most mysterious occurrence that has happened during our entire restoration process. Two weeks after the woodwork was stained and sealed with several coats of varnish the woodwork faded. Drastically. Overnight. We have no idea how or why this happened. It’s so unbelievable. I didn’t even know that such a thing was possible? We are hoping that someone out there might be able to provide an answer.

December
Our stairwell and back hallway project is completed. One more down, seven major projects left to go…

Lulu and Winston underneath the Christmas tree

David and I spent a quiet Christmas in our little bungalow, just the two of us.

Looking forward to 2007!

Related posts:

1. 2005 Year In Review Taking a look back at our bungalow restoration project
2. Hallway & Stairwell (almost) Finito! Walls patched and painted, wood stripped and stained
3. Wide Open Spaces We try to decide if we should enclose our hallway?

The only thing left to do is sand and refinish the little back hallway floor. I’ll start on that after the holidays.

Photo taken from the dining room. We selected a blue green color from Benjamin Moore’s Historical collection called Wythe Blue HC-143. It’s a darker version of our first paint color attempt. Our bedroom plaster was originally tinted a similiar color to Wythe Blue and served as inspiration.

Top of the stairwell. Light fixture is from Rejuvenation.

Taken at the top of the stairway landing, looking down.

Taken at the top of the stairway landing, looking towards the sleeping porch.

Photo of the antique leaded glass doors, taken from the upstairs bathroom. It is difficult to adequately photograph these beautiful doors due to the narrowness of the back hallway.

Photo of the back hallway taken from our bedroom.

This project somehow doesn’t seem as exciting as some of our past projects but it was just as much work!

Related posts:

1. Before: Landing and Stairwell Our next bungalow restoration project
2. Letting In Light Next steps in our hallway restoration project
3. The Work Goes On Restoring a bungalow hallway

I am standing at the top of the stairs on the landing, looking towards the sleeping porch. The door to the sleeping porch is open and you can see a little bit into that room.

Photo taken at the top of the stairs looking down (standing at an angle). On the left, the plaster wall is bowing out a little bit. There are also several holes in the plaster towards the bottom of the stairwell from when we updated the electrical.

On the wall at the bottom of the stairs are some test paint colors. I found the original wall color for the stairwell. It is a soft yellow orange color. I’m going to match the paint to that original color.

Related posts:

1. Hallway & Stairwell (almost) Finito! Walls patched and painted, wood stripped and stained
2. Letting In Light Next steps in our hallway restoration project
3. The Work Goes On Restoring a bungalow hallway

The cost of disposing of large quantities of asbestos in Los Angeles is so expensive that we actually saved money by having the siding removed and disposed of by a professional company. We went with Fresh Air Environmental Services Inc. out of Commerce, CA.

Update
Oh, dear lord…the abatement guys knocked on my door after they were finished and said sorry. Sorry? The condition of our original clapboard siding looked pretty shabby to them. They know we are restoring the house and I think they felt sorry for us. There is a gaping hole in the side of our house next to where our upstairs bathroom is. Why? Maybe that is how someone got the original clawfoot bath tub out, other than that it is anyone’s guess?

I immediately went outside and started pulling the black paper off the house. The front and side of our house that faces the street look pretty good. Not great but not in the sorry realm. Although, the gaping hole in the South side of our house and bobbled back porch addition is pretty sorry. I am not prepared to deal with the condition of our wood any more today because I am afraid upon further inspection I will discover plenty to be sorry about. I keep wondering, “How much? How much is this going to cost us?”

I have a work deadline that is due at the end of the day today but am finding it hard to concentrate. I support our house by doing freelance graphic design work. Our friend Jeff stopped by and wanted me to touch up his acting photographs. I am on the phone with David at the same time, “No, there is a hole, a huge friggin’ hole on the side of our house. What do you mean what type of hole? The type of hole with no wood over it! It looks like birds can fly into our house.”

In the midst of all this Simon was left upstairs by himself and forgotten until I heard him tumbling down the stairs and landing at the bottom with a yip and a thud. Oh, the guilt! He was rushed to the vet. He has a sprained front leg but nothing is broken. I am supposed to keep him quiet for the next few days, easier said than done.

I thought I had prepared myself for whatever was waiting underneath the asbestos. I told everyone I was hoping for the best while preparing for the worst. Even though we have ended up somewhere in between, the eternal optimist in me feels disappointed, ok, crushed is closer to it. I am always hopeful that one project will go easily like it does on all those television home improvement shows. You know, the ones where they re-do a house in 4 days or something like that. We will be lucky to be finished 4 years!

Photos

Related posts:

1. Asbestos Removal, April 2004 So, we have taken off the asbestos siding. What now?
2. Asbestos Today, Kevin from Fresh Air Environmental Services Inc. came over...
3. Do We Remove the Security Bars? Will I feel safe without bars on my windows?