To aid my sometimes obtuse descriptions, I’m posting a few pictures of the house. These pictures were all taken years ago.
This is that 70s Kitchen. Wowee, talk about ugly. That greenish yellowish range hood (shown in the picture) was only a recirculating fan with a filter full of grease. Below the range hood was a small “drop in” range of the same color (we replaced it with the stove you see below).
Desperate for light, I painted everything white. It is now lighter, but not less ugly. I have been very eager for a kitchen remodel.
Below is a picture showing the condition of the front exterior of the house. The front porch (a miserable little speck of a porch) was rotted. We found severe dry rot along the exterior wall when we removed the porch. There were two huge nests of carpenter ants that I sprayed like no tomorrow.
Here are a few pics of the front porch, remodeled.
The siding is incomplete, as is the porch ceiling. Sigh. We’ll get to that.
The interior one room I did gut was the Entry Hall from the front porch. You can see in the older photos above and below that there are bricks in the exterior walls of the house. All local contractors have been baffled by it; we thought perhaps the bricks were for firestops (the house is balloon-frame, more on that later). But a knowledgable old-timer (R.A. Dudrak, the Window King) told me recently that his mother’s home had them, too. He believes they were used for insulation. The house is very cool in the summer.
Back to the Entry Hall: the layout of the home is very nice. The front entrance has a spacious Entry Hall, with one doorway opening to the Dining Room, and another opening to the Living Room. Originally, both openings had doors, but they had been removed.
I ripped out the front door and had a nice fiberglass model inserted. I installed wainscoting, wallpaper, and two French doors for each of the doorways.
When I removed the walls, we found good, bad, and ugly. Good: the original builder, Henry Rogers, has written 1855 on one of the studs in pencil, then signed his name with beautiful flourish. Bad: Loads of wiring squashed into corners and left there. Ugly: a complete mouse skeleton between the walls.
About the doors of the house– this house had a TON of doors. There are doorways everywhere– every opening had a door. I’d say about 7 doors had been removed. The doors that remain are all original. They are all in very poor shape, but they are solid wood, paneled doors. They must have been attractive in 1855… or for the first couple of decades…. or the first century, maybe… and before all that paint was slobbered over them… anyway, some the bedroom doors and some closet doors have the original cast iron door handles, too. I had stripped the paint from them, and put them back on. I don’t think I will reuse them again though– not for the bedroom doors, anyway. I did already put a few on my finished Entry Hall French doors, and they look classy.
More to come…
10. May 2007 at 2:15 pm
When my husband and I were remodeling our home, we pulled off the old wall and underneath we found horizontal slats which indicated that it used to be an outside wall. Scrolled on one board was “Henry Smith 1888″. I thought that was neat and it ALMOST made the dusty, sweaty task more fun!
14. May 2007 at 11:29 am
The bricks in the wall were most likely used for insulation. I believe they called in noggin or something like that. I am restoring a house from the 1760s so share with you all of the joys and sorrows of such an enterprise.
14. May 2007 at 11:34 am
“In” should read “it” in my last comment. Also if you have any of that old hardware from doors that you don’t want, I might be willing to purchase it.
14. May 2007 at 4:13 pm
Thank you for your comments, hh and bookhound. Oh, a 1760s house–what joy! What back-breaking, wallet-purging joy! I shall certainly keep you in mind should we not recycle the hardware. Thanks.