Elena's Birthday Party

Elena had her first birthday in the house!
The downside was that we about froze everyone to death. We also had a little girl get her finger scraped up in a door...and I had a really bad cold and wanted to be in bed...but other than that it was great.

The cold came from a couple culprits...1. It's a good idea to make sure you don't have any windows partially open when the temperature is about 12. Also, if you replace batteries on the heat control, make sure you've turned the heat on. Otherwise your house will be about 58 degrees and your guests teeth will be chattering.

Also, there seems to be a rule that if 4 or more girls get in a group (it only takes 2 boys) then somebody is going to get hurt. One little girl accidentally shut a door on another little girl's finger...fortunately it wasn't broken or in need of much more than a princess band-aid.

As for my cold...I was a pretty worthless host. I had spent all morning in bed, and pretty much spent the party thinking about being back in it.

Fortunately, Elena had a great time. She really likes playing with other kids and really enjoyed the games and toys. We're pretty happy that she's willing to share most of the time.

Little shop of Christmas Horror

Haven't gotten anything done on the house these last couple weeks. Putting up Halloween and then moving on to the Christmas decorations has kept things moving. Something I should have anticipated, but didn't was that it wouldn't matter if I have my workshop set up...I'd end up having some things to make as Christmas approaches.

First up: Elena is getting ready for her first Kindergarten play. I offered (or was it Ashley offered?) to help out with a set prop. It's the "street sign" for Candy Cane Lane. It's made from 3" pvc, a dowel rod...a couple wood balls and a plastic oversized christmas ornament...oh and then the carved sign of course. It stands about 6' tall. It's mounted in a Christmas tree stand and is relatively light. It shouldn't be too much trouble to move around. Which is in direct opposition to the machine that made it.

I like to think of each sign as preperation for trim work I'll have to duplicate next summer. I hope to have more updates on the house soon. Seriously. No really. I mean it.

Up and away

Our first Halloween in Big Red is over. Elena's first costume (a bat) didn't make it through our halloween party. In all the excitement, the ears got broken and the costume lost a few pieces. The excitement, of course, being a sugar fueled mob of children running about the yard and through the house like a band of Hell's Angels at a pig roast...not that we mind.

Her last minute choice for trick or treating was Supergirl. She tried very hard to get me to dress up as Superman, but I refused. I couldn't subject the world to seeing me in blue tights. I'm sure the neighbors already have concerns about the eccentric fellow who moved into that nice red house. Squeezing my body into spandex would just confirm their worst fears.

We knew we'd probably have a lot of trick-or-treaters, but WOW. Our house seemed to become a central location to park and a prime place to visit. Many neighbors we hadn't met came by to introduce themselves and to let us know they liked the decorations. More than one told us how nice it was to see the house so alive and lit up. Men, in particular, wanted to know how we did the "magic mirror" in the large window on the porch.

The most common comment was "So...what do you plan to do for Christmas?"
Now we have to figure that out.

I plan to get back to our regular programming next post with some updated pictures inside the house and a discussion about water leaks that occur before a party. Ugh.

Viva Halloween

Because of the volume of children in our immediate neighborhood...I've decorated the house in a "halloween meets las-vegas" style. Plenty of bright lights to go with the spooky decorations.
Generally speaking I think it's fun. Based on the number of cars that have slowed down to look..then drove around the block and looked again, it seems to be a hit.
The only thing we leave on after about 9:30 p.m. are the two items in the attic....the underlit face, and the blacklight ghost on the side.

In other news...the area beside the garage (in the alley) is cleaned up. One big dumpster of rubble later and the pop-up camper and my little trailer are stowed back there and off the drive-way.
It looks much better.

This week is going to be filled with cleaning and last minute decorating. The party is next Saturday. We temporarily pulled up the plastic on the floors and have hidden all the paint, tools and other renovation material that we've become so used to living with in the house. By Halloween, that will all be back and we'll be working on Elena's room.

A bit of a stretch....

Ok..this isn't about the renovation work, but oh well.
As Halloween fast approaches, we have started to think about our annual Halloween party.
Elena has been on a disney Haunted Mansion kick since her trip there this summer with her Grandparents.
One of her "ideas" was that we should have the pictures that she saw in the Haunted Mansion in the foyer....As the walls "stretch" they expand to show gruesome fates for the people in the pictures.
I checked online and even a low end set of prints was pretty expensive...what to do? Why not paint your own?
I found some long narrow canvases at "Big Lots" with awful flowers painted on them for about 8 dollars a piece. I primed them, and then used my projector to sketch the original paintings on them (I found photos of them online). Then I spent a couple evenings painting them. I think we're going to hang them in the "round" living room, between the windows.
Now that those are done...it's back to work. I'm working on the walk-in closet between the Master bedroom and the bathroom. I've stripped out 3 layers of linoleum flooring, removed the wallpaper and filled the cracks in the plaster. Today I'll be painting the closet, with hopes of getting the flooring situated tomorrow...and somewhere in there I need to start getting the Halloween decorations out of the garage attic.

A little glue and some love

When Jason (the previous owner) told us that there was some woodwork under a bench in the garage I got excited. I have been doing woodwork for a number of years...sometimes successfully and without loss of limb. I tried for a week or two to focus on the house and work on the growing list of things that needed work inside, but I just kept thinking about the stuff under the bench.
Eventually, I gave up and started digging through it all. I found pieces to this table under the workbench. The top had cracked and it appeared the table had been disassembled and just stuck under the bench as a "worry about it later" project for some previous owner.
A few hours later, I'd applied some glue and clamps and ended up with this. I didn't even re-finish it. I just put on a coat of refurbishing oil and called it done.
Little pieces of the house continue to reveal themselves as we work....glimpses into the previous owner's lives. It really makes the hard work worthwhile.

Lipstick on a 118 year old pig

Not all of our renovations are "long term". In some cases, we just need to get some areas of the house ready to use...with long term plans to overhaul/renovate.
One area is the full bathroom upstairs. Avacado green bathtub and sink are on a short list of key items to ditch sometime next year. In the meantime, we've just been trying to make it more friendly...we added a wall mirror over the sink and have put some temporary flooring in over the beat up linoleum tiles.
We finally got the back room loaded with our dressers and storage racks for clothes. We decided to keep dressers out of the Master Bedroom and create a "dressing room/closet" room in the back. I'll try to post some pictures tonight.
We're trying to balance our desire to keep moving forward on the house with our desire to actually do some living in it. I'm trying to get a little something done every day, without treating every day like it's a second job.
Halloween is coming up, and we always have a halloween party...so at some point I'll be moving from renovation to haunt-o-vation. The decorations will come out of the attic sometime this weekend.

Butternut galore

When we first looked at the house, this was a huge part of what "sold" me. I've never seen a set of railings and stairs with such figured wood. They're stunning. We've been living in the basement while we work on the second floor (bedrooms) and it's easy to forget this is there. As we get close to moving in our bedrooms, I look forward to seeing these every day.

A-Door-Able

I still have more cleaning/polishing to do...but the door knobs are going to be great. The other style of knob (closets, inner doors) are brass with a copper back plate. I've learned something about doors in old houses..they get a bad rap.
I've heard a variety of complaints about how they are hard to close or open, and how annoying they can be. My experience is that after 20 - 30 coats of paint, a "lip" develops on the edges of the door. You may be suprised how much easier they open if you sand/strip/plane off that lip.
Additionally, I've found that many doors that don't seem to close properly have inappropriate screws in the hinges. In earlier times, people used what they had on hand whether it was a good fit or not. Check yours out, you may find that you're one .15 cent screw away from a door that closes and opens just fine.

Don't Fret...

One of the unexpected and wonderful suprises in BR (we're friends here. I think we can call the house BR and not make her angry) is the vast amount of wood detailing that was carefully removed in the 60's or 70's and put into storage in the attic and garage attic. We knew what was in the attic when we bought the house, but had no idea what waited for us in the garage attic. There was fretwork for the entryways into the dining room and formal living room...as well as the original fireplace mantles. There are columns that need to be put back into the living room...and it was all there waiting for us like a secret gift from the house to us. Now we're looking for any photos we can find or any indication anyone in town might have about where some of the wood items belong (those big floor to ceiling columns go somewhere in the living room, but where?!). Some of the pieces need a little TLC, but that's ok.

Next spring will bring a new round of floor refinishing on the first level, and we'll begin putting the puzzle pieces back in place. We can't wait.

Before and after Master Bedroom

OK, so most of the pictures I post here will also be in the gallery if you don't want to read our ramblings. I thought some of you might be interested in specifics about what we're doing.

The master bedroom isn't the first room we started on, but it is the one that is closest to completion right now. We've removed paint from the transoms and all the harware (hinges, window pulls, transom hardware). This isn't fun work. Paint stripper is bad enough to smell, but the mess from 100 years worth of paint is significant on it's own. We've also removed the old carpet, sanded the oak floors and restained and polyurethaned them. We painted the walls and trim. We spent about 6 hours cleaning the corbels at either end of the arch in the room. If we didn't have the finished basement to live in, we'd have never been able to focus so much attention on trying to get it right.

BIG RED isn't just chewing gum.

I had hoped to begin posting something sooner, but diving into the restoration took priority. As we head into fall, I thought maybe it was time to get serious about creating a site for everyone who is curious about how it's going.
We have a community of interested and well meaning people who want to know how we plan to treat the old girl. We have family and friends who are caught somewhere between two sentiments..."you lucky dogs" and "thank god it's not us". We feel the same way.

Who are we? I am from Canton, Illinois originally. I went to "NMSU" which is now known as "Truman State University" in Kirksville, Missouri. I met my wife Ashley (originally from St. Louis) there and we ultimately moved back to the Peoria area for work. I am the head of the IT division at a company in Peoria. We have a daughter, Elena, who began school this year and calls our house "the castle". We also have a dog "Ace" and a cocky cat named "Wampus".

After living in Spring Bay, Illinois for several years, we decided to start looking for a larger house. We didn't know how "large" that would become. Ashley found the house online and convinced me to drive out to look at it on Mother's day. We thought the same thing most people do when we saw it..."Wow! That house is awesome. It needs work, but can you imagine how beautiful it could be?" We decided to get a look inside and contacted the realtor. As we looked through the house, Ashley began to squeeze my hand HARD. From the amazing woodwork throughout the house, to the original pool table in the 800 square foot attic, we became hooked. By the time we walked out the front door, we'd made up our minds.

Buying the house turned out to be a pleasure. The family we bought it from had put a great deal of money, labor and love into the home and under different circumstances would never have moved. We bought a house and gained new friends in the process. They passed on a huge assortment of knowledge about the house, the town and life in Big Red. The work they did set us up very well to continue the process. Without that foundation, our job would be much harder.

Why "Big Red"? The house has been called that for many many years because of it's primary color. There was a brief period many years ago when it was painted white, but it didn't last long. As far as we can tell, red was the original color...and for those of you dying to know...yes, we'll be sticking with it. I don't want to be run out of town on a rail.

Now that we have that out of the way, I'll begin to post some pictures of our progress inside and tell you about our plans.

You can always jump to the web based photo album by clicking the slide show photos on the left side.