Sunday Snapshot: An Indoor Winter Scene

When it's cold outside, our cats can often be found napping on radiators.  Dorothy is the only one who will sleep on a naked radiator, like you see below.  I usually keep a small oriental rug on each of the radiators, to make their 'sauna' more comfortable.  

Dorothy was perfectly comfortable ... I don't see how.  I guess it's a cat thing.

Off topic:  This is the radiator in the living room, the room where we removed the plaster ceiling over Christmas.  The paint samples show my attempts to choose a paint color.  The final choice (as of now) is the small darker one ... Greyhound, by Benjamin Moore.  Bluish, greenish grey, and I think it's perfect!

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Sunday Snapshots are posts devoted to moments in time that represent glimpses into everyday life in Hartwood, or wherever else I happen to be at the time. 

Deconstructing the Living Room Ceiling

My husband wanted a project to work on (and hopefully finish) while he was off work for two weeks over Christmas.  He decided that this would be the perfect time for him to deconstruct our living room ceiling.

We decided a long time ago that it would be better to remove the ceiling in our living room, instead of trying to repair it.  It had extensive water damage, and large portions of the plaster had separated from the lath.  When our plasterer remedied a similar situation in our guest bedroom, he used screws and plaster washers to resecure the detached plaster, then he taped and skimmed over his repair and made it disappear.  The living room ceiling had an additional complication which made it less of a candidate for the plaster washer repair.  Over the years, debris had collected in the space between the large sections of loose plaster and the lath where it was formerly attached, which prevented us from reestablishing a good connection using the screws.  

It took a long time for me to get comfortable with this.  Throughout our renovation of this house, I have done whatever I can to preserve original elements.  I respect the history here, and I want to keep as much of it as possible.  In order to move forward with the work in the living room, I had to grit my teeth and admit that this ceiling, though largely original, had to go.

First, we had to remove everything from the room ... and we stashed stuff wherever we could throughout the house. 

Rug, console, and a pile of trunks in our foyer.

Sofa, Maggie's favorite wing chair, and disassembled recliner in the dining room.

Once the room was empty, we laid paper to protect the floor.

This paper was previously used during ceiling repairs upstairs ... reuse and recycle!

Plaster removal itself was done carefully ... using a 5-in-one tool and a hammer to chip off manageable pieces, which were dropped into buckets.  I'm no fan of sledgehammer demolition, because it creates a huge mess, causes unnecessary destruction, and would most certainly damage the floor as the heavy debris falls.

See the bit of brown horsehair in the one chunk of plaster?

Slow, steady progress.  

The strip of something that you see on the wall below the ceiling is a wallpaper border that had been hidden behind crown molding.  The crown molding also hid a strip of wallpaper on the ceiling.  The wallpaper is not an 1840s original, but it does look old.  This room has been updated a number of times, most notably in the 1930s, and the wallpaper may have been installed during that remodel.

The ceiling paper has a slight sheen.

From a distance, it looks vaguely like an all-over floral ...

... though I can't make out a true pattern to it.

Plaster removal took 2-1/2 days.  Plaster is heavy, and working overhead like this is very tiring.

There was an insane amount of sand and brick dust in the ceiling above the fireplace.

Plaster ... all gone.

Originally, we planned to leave the lath in place and drywall over it.  With the plaster gone, we could see that the lath wasn't even enough for us to do this ... and there was a LOT of stuff in some of the joist spaces above it.  Just like with the plaster, the lath had to come down ... carefully.

It was really exciting to reveal the original ceiling joists.  The ones that appear to be short are extensions of the the joists of the adjacent foyer.

Once the lath was down, we sifted through the debris on the floor as we swept it up, to make sure that there weren't any hidden treasures.  What did we find?

A vintage rat nest ...

... which contained lots of fabric scraps ... none of which was modern, thank goodness.

Two rat mummies.

Walnuts, a corn cob, mud dauber nests, and some leaves from the Post Oak tree beside the house.

Pieces of glass, some newspaper shards, and a few old nails.

Three of the pieces of glass fit together, and they appear to be part of a pressed glass footed compote.

We pulled the nails out of each piece of lath, sorted them by size, and bundled them for easier storage.  I hope to give it to someone who has a need for 19th century sawn lath.

I am always in awe of the craftsmanship of the framework of this house!

There are cross beams beside the chimney, which support fireplaces on the upper floor.

The cross beams are connected to the floor joists with pegged mortise-and-tenon joints.

With the plaster and lath removed, and the mess cleaned up, this part of the living room renovation is finished. 

It will be a while till we work in this room anymore.  We have to rerun the wires for the recessed lights, add new wire and a switch for a chandelier, decide what to do with the bookcase space, etc., etc., etc.  In true old-house tunnel-vision fashion, we put the furniture back into the room and we will use it as is ... till we get the energy, motivation, and inspiration to keep working to make it beautiful again.

Cabbage Rose Fabric and Another Future Project

More snow falling today.  Looks like about three-or-so new inches.  It's beginning to taper off as I'm typing this, so I doubt there will be any more accumulation.  Still can't work on stuff outside ... as a result, my brain keeps scheming new projects, even though I have plenty of current, in-progress stuff to keep me occupied.

I put one of those schemes to rest a few minutes ago.  Years ago, I bought a huge roll of gorgeous cabbage rose fabric, with no particular use for it in mind ... had to have it because I loved it and I knew I would kick myself for all eternity if I didn't buy it.  I don't remember exactly what the price was, but I do remember that it was low enough to barely be a consideration in the decision process.

The selvage on the fabric says, "Cyrus Clark Co., Inc. 'Warrington' MCMXCIX"

Months ago (maybe longer than that), I was in the sewing room working on something else,  and I spotted the roll of fabric leaning against the wall.  I said to myself, "Self, this fabric would be awesome as drapes for the living room!"

That's as far as the idea went until this morning.  I carried the fabric downstairs to the dining room, which is our room with the longest open space when I push the dining table over to the side, and rolled the fabric out to see how much of it is on the roll.

Maggie was helping.

I am excited to tell you that there is more than enough fabric to make the four panels necessary for living room drapes!  I stopped rolling and measuring when I counted16 yards, and I hadn't reached the end of the roll.  That's plenty.

Just like the process I described about decisions for our front porch railing, now that I know I have enough material for this project, I can put this idea to bed until it's time to actually do something about it.  Frees up brain space to dream about other stuff.

Craigslist Chandelier

A few months ago, I showed you what we are facing when it comes time to finish the renovation of our living room.  The main obstacle in this has been wavering back and forth as we have tried to decide whether to attempt to save the cracked, sagging plaster ceiling in there or pull it down and put up a new one.  The 2011 earthquake did enough additional damage to the ceiling that we now are sure that pulling it down is the best and safest thing to do.

Removing the plaster will give us the opportunity to upgrade the lighting in that room.  We installed recessed lights in the ceiling years ago (I say "we", but it was my father-in-law who did it) ... and I plan to add a chandelier, to provide the perfect accent.

From time to time, I would search "crystal chandelier" on Craigslist to see what popped up.  I had a very distinct image in my imagination of what I wanted, and I finally found it last week!

The ad said that this chandelier was removed as part of the renovation of a house in downtown Fredericksburg.  He estimated that it had been installed during the home's last renovation, in the 1930s or 40s.  Makes sense, because of the style of wiring and the lack of any sort of markings on it.

1930 is about the time when OUR living room was given an update.  I know that the baseboards and window and door casings were replaced then, and I suspect that that's when the bookcase was built beside the fireplace.

In my search for the perfect chandelier, I was looking for one that didn't look like a dining room chandelier.  This one perfectly fits that description.  It's twenty-four inches in diameter, twenty-eight inches long, and every part of it is in perfect condition ... it's just totally filthy.

Having this chandelier on hand means that we no longer have to wonder about what we are going to do in the living room.  This project isn't going to get done any time soon, mind you ... we have other things that are much more pressing that require our time and budget.  Until the living room renovation rises to the top of the list, at least I have the comfort of knowing that the chandelier for that room is safely stored away until it's time to put it into place.

(photos in this post are from the Craigslist ad)

An Example of the Graphic Reality of Living in an Old House Renovation

As I sat in the recliner in the corner of our living room the other day, I looked around the room without my usual mental blinders on.  Those of us who have lived in an old house renovation develop an ability to see only part of the picture, like tunnel vision.  I think this is the only way to remain sane and survive in a house that is at all stages of disrepair, demolition, renovated, and nearly finished.  

Our living room is the room that almost held up work on the rest of the house in the early years.  It has the most wrong with it, and was going to require more time and mess and money than any of the other rooms, so The Husband and I made the decision to put off work in there and come back to it later ... when time, money, and emotional energy would permit.  That was some time back in 2004 or 2005.  Because we don't use our living room on a daily basis, things get 'put' in there.  We try to keep it so the room is still at least somewhat usable, though.

(Here's a little bit of background, for those of you who may be unfamiliar with the beginning of our story here.  We bought this house in October 2002.  For five years, I was the general contractor and its renovation was my full time job, until we were finally finished to the point where we could move here in October 2007 ... five full years of commuting 20 miles to work here while living elsewhere, doing most of the work myself, but hiring things like roofing, masonry, plaster, plumbing and floors.)

Now, back to our story ...

Winnie and I sat there, in our corner of the living room, and this was the scene immediately to our left.  The ladder is one that I picked up at an antique shop.  That's the door to our office leaning against the wall ... I took it down because I needed its hinges to reinstall the living room door.  (more on this in a minute)  Notice the two colors of green paint.  The room will eventually be painted the color in the smaller swatch, 'Silver Sage' by Restoration Hardware.

There's so much going on in this next photo!  End table, trunk, sewing cabinet used as end table, old shutters, reproduction pie safe TV cabinet that holds quilts, folk art house, banjo clock, and crib that we are supposed to take to my brother's house ... oh my!

Those are the slipcovers for the sofa cushions that you see tossed over the crib.  I washed them the other day, and I haven't put them back on yet.  That chest that we are using as a coffee table is one of my favorites ... it's all original except for the hinges, including the beautiful original paint.  In the lower right corner, you can see a sliver of a drop-leaf coffee table that I recently finished.  It's going to the Lucketts Spring Market with me in May.  The mirrored hall tree in the bay window is an antique.

The grey hutch is another piece that's destined to go to Lucketts.  Here is the rest of the door story:  There wasn't a door on the doorway to the living room when we bought this house.  We found it later, stored with a bunch of random crap in the loft of our barn ... fortunately, it was still in usable condition.  In order to hang it, I had to  'borrow' the hinges from a door in the office.  The front door and its sidelights and transom have been a big job.  One day I will finish stripping off the last bits of paint and get them sanded and repainted.

What you see in this photo is a good example of the challenges that we have to overcome in this room.  The mottled pinkish color on the walls is the old plaster surface.  I stripped all the paint off the walls as best I could so we could repair them, and this is what I was left with.  Most of the plaster is solid and just needs to be skim coated.  The little bump-out with the light switch had loose plaster on the bottom (which was easy to remove because it fell off), and vinyl spackle elsewhere (which is stuck like glue I can't remove).  The exposed brick that you see shows that all of the walls of our house on this level and in the basement are solid brick ... no lath ... plaster directly applied to brick.

I love the chair in this next photo ... I had it reupholstered years ago, and Maggie promptly set to ruining it by clawing on it.  The painting you see was done by The Husband a couple of years ago, working from a photo that I took of our son-in-law's fire gear on the bumper of a fire truck.  The blue rocking chair is another item that's destined for Lucketts.  The plywood has been leaning against the wall for as long as I can remember.  In front of it is an awesome old radio/phonograph cabinet that I hope to convert into a TV console.

The door leads to the office, but we keep it closed.  On it you can see a peek of the door's original surface ... faux mahogany grain painting that was ruined when a previous owner painted over it with that awful color gold.  I carefully scraped off as much of the gold paint as I could, to preserve the grain painting as an example so I can, perhaps, one day recreate it.

This is the ceiling ... the item that caused the renovation of this room to come to a screeching halt.  The plaster is cracked, and the lath has separated from the framing in places.  We have reattached lath and repaired plaster in an upstairs ceiling, but this one is much more damaged than that one was.  With this one, we have been debating whether to keep the original plaster or remove it.  We installed the wiring and recessed lights with the idea that we were going to keep the ceiling.  After further consideration, and a lot of head scratching and soul searching, we now think that we will probably remove it.  I'm not sure that we can safely reattach the lath (loose plaster ceilings are heavy and can be dangerous), and removing the ceiling gives us the opportunity to hide the wiring in the ceiling itself (instead of tucking it behind crown molding... which this room is not supposed to have) and to install a chandelier.

This final photo is the view from the recliner as I looked straight up.  The gold shelf you see is part of a bookcase that was added by a previous owner, who removed the wall and borrowed space from the closet in the office to do it.  We have gone round and round, trying to decide whether to restore the bookcase or to remove it and return to the original configuration of a wall and a deeper closet.  As of now, we are leaning toward removing what's left of the bookcase and building a new, nicer one in its place.

It's this time of year, as we get toward the end of being cooped up in the house all winter, that gets my mind wandering and I scheme and dream about various projects that we have left in this place.  The living room, with so many things in there to do, is a project that we will continue to put off.  I figured that I would share it with you, to give a real-life view into what DIY old house renovation is REALLY like.