Happy 9th Anniversary Little House!

 

Goodness, another year has gone by!

When I was thinking about this post, I didn't think there was any projects to add to this year's Have-Done-List.  But looking through my pictures I discovered I was kind of busy this Spring! 

Backyard view through the apple tree.

The biggest projects was finally patching the heat vents! This one is a shared vent between the bathroom and back bedroom. 

Because the old vent covers actually come out over the floor, the floors also needed to be patched. Thankfully I had leftover tile and leftover flooring. But first patching the wall!

New lath is the first layer,

Then a "scratch" coat of plaster,

And finally the top coat of plaster.

The one tile half tile that needed to come out so I could fill it in with whole tiles.

Can you see the section that has really white grout? That is the new rows!

And since I had the tile cement and grout out and I thought it was finally time to finish the half row of tiles behind the bathroom door. I had originally miscalculated the width the trim would ended up taking and left too large of a gap.  

Gap all gone! And it took about ten minutes! Lol!

Once all the wall vents (there were six) were patched it was time for a little trim rearranging! I had a small amount of old trim left over and one 6' piece of new. It was really close, but we made it! 

The white piece of wall is my new patch, the black on either side is old wall.

This wall actually had four pieces of trim on it! I managed to get it down to two! 

This wall done! One would never know!

I also re-painted my bedroom! I finally found the paint of the color I had upstairs and am so happy with the color now!

Can you see the old color (upper part) and the new color (lower part)? So much better! The old color didn't even look pink compared to the new color.

And then I finished a new quilt for my bed!

Mandy and I had a shelf Saturday and took down the floating shelves I had upstairs, brought them down to my room and then put up a bigger shelf for plants upstairs.

We also hung towel hooks in the bathroom! Should have done this long ago! And I love the old fashioned look it brings to the bathroom.

Mandy's new plant shelf. It has so many more plants now that we have had to bring then all in for the winter.

So that is this year's list! More than I thought, I had kind of forgotten that all happened this year! Working on Sister House is bringing back so many memories. It is fun to see the sister's differences, but I am still glad this little house it mine. 

The two sisters!

Happy 8th Anniversary Little House!

Can you believe it has been eight years!?! Goodness. Eight years. So much life lived.... Especially this year with all that has happened, it has reminded me how very important Home and Family is. I have always been so very very grateful for this little house. It has truly been our haven and safe sanctuary.

"We shape our buildings; therefore they shape us." ~Winston Churchill

This little house has also shaped me, in so many ways. How could it not! An intense year long renovation, a thousand and one decisions (for a person who hates making decisions this was really hard!) time and resources stretched to the limit and family who was always there to push and prop me up. It has taught me so much; so many house skills, how to manage time and money better, how much I am really capable of when I put my mind to it and opened up un-dreamed of avenues!

Eight years ago I wasn't really dreaming of being a landlord of multiple properties. I had a possible plan that this little house might be a rental if things didn't work out as I hoped, but I sure wasn't thinking as far ahead as having a house and two rental properties! That would have been very over whelming! 

Do you see the house to the left of my Little House? That is Sister House. She is almost identical in floorplan as my house and joined the family in August!

I wasn't really planning on buying another house this year, but the neighbor who owned it was ready to sell and I couldn't say no! I have had a dream of owning Sister House almost as soon as I got settled in my house! Sister House has been a rental for the last twelve and came with renters, so no remodeling yet. I have been trying to content myself with sprucing up the yard and tiding up the back yard. I can't wait to tackle a few more outside projects next spring!

Now on to this year's Have-Done-List!

If you are new here, every year I list out projects I have completed. I started this tradition the first year as a way to show myself that progress was indeed being made!

Most of last year was taken up with installing a boiler and radiators and dealing with projects it created. It started last October with pulling out all the old ductwork, 

By the end of January we had the boiler and radiators installed.

Early Spring the old cold air return holes in the floors were patched.

In April I also patched the entry ceiling. To run the upstairs radiator we had to cut a pretty large hole in the entry ceiling.

Then it was on to adding another layer of Shellac to the floors in June. 

And then we finally found a new rug to go with our refreshed shiny floors!

Not the longest of lists, but the boiler was a major project! I still haven't patched the heat vents and trim. I am saving that for a long winter project!

"He who loves an old house never loves in vain.

How can an old house used to sun and rain,

To lilac and larkspur and an elm above,

Ever fail to answer the heart that gives it love?"

Isabel Fiske Conant

Living Room Updates 2020

I thought it would be a good time to share more pictures of the living room, especially since we just got a new rug! Now, that sounds simple but of course there is a long Rug Story!

It has taken us about a year to find one we like! I know! We are particular. It had to be soft, plushy, but not to thick, not too dark, busy or too light colored. Nothing that would clash with the curtains, which was the biggest problem! We looked at so many! But I think we only tried five.... Still that seemed like a lot! 

Before I forget to mention, we finally decided on the Mohawk Marrakesh Damask. Mom loves the Mohawk brand and it is made in the USA! (We still had to air it out on the front porch for a week before bringing it inside. Not sure why rugs have to stink so much!)

We actually start looking for a new rug last summer as our old one didn't recover from a washing. But we were ready for a new one and it was starting to look sad and worn. In the fall, right before we started the radiator project we tried out a couple of rugs and didn't like any. Then we decided to post-pone a new rug as it was a bit of a construction zone! (I think Kerri Dog missed having a rug!)

We did learn things from our first batch of rug trials. The curtains kind of clash with any pattern, navy blue was too dark on the dark floors, and rug shopping is hard work! Lol!

This rug comes in a couple of different colors and I hadn't realized at first that last fall we tried the navy blue one (which is the only color our local Lowes carried.) So glad I took another look online and found this one! 

This wall is still rather blank... but I am thinking on it! 

Renewing Floors- 2020 Edition

Guess what we did this weekend?!? 

Yes, we shellacked the floors again! The last time was back in.... 2014! I just checked and if you are interested HERE is the link to the post about it. Goodness! All things considering the floors have held up great for six years. 

Other floors posts can be found here and here.

As you can see, there was worn patches and scratches. And I probably should have done this last year, but I had just finished up the Brick House floors and wasn't really ready to tackle more floors. That turned out to be okay as moving the radiators around put a few more scrapes and scratches in the floors. Not to mention the patching of the cold air returns.

There is something refreshing about moving all the furniture out and cleaning the floors and baseboards really well. (Actually, the dining room table, bookshelf and the sofa stayed. Everything else we managed to cram on the front porch and in the bedrooms!)

Part of this project was also redoing the little hallway floor. I never liked how it turned out, but since it was a small portion of the floor we just lived with it. Above  is the "after" with finish on it. It was quite the process to get there!

This is what I started with. I hadn't realized how scratch up it was. And obviously I needed to blend the patch with the rest of the floor.

The first step was to remove the current finish which was shellac I had put on it 2013. I tried not to use a sander as the dust gets everywhere. Instead I tried scraping it by hand with a vintage Stanley 82 scraper. It worked fairly well, but was very slow on taking off the finish. So I eventually got out a small belt sander.

Because this is maple which I tried to stain, the belt sander wasn't evening it out very well and I ended up doing a final sanding by hand with 50 grit sand paper, then hand scraping it thoroughly to smooth it. This method worked very well and I felt like it was a reasonably good place to be. I wasn't ready to spend another week sanding to try and get down below all the stain.

 The first coat was a light amber button shellac similar to what I used at the Brick House (a detailed post here). I used the same button type shellac from www.Shellac.net , just in a different shade. Yes, shellac comes in different shades! It just depends on how dark you want your orange. Lol! There isn't too much difference between the shades, but it is nice to have options.

And this is with the next coat of shellac which I put Brown Mahogany dye in. (Also from Shellac.net). I love how the dye worked! It is still a bit blotchy from the previous stain job and old sanding marks. I am not sure if it that much different from how it started, but at lest the cold air patch is blended a bit more! And the tone matches better.

  At the same time as putting the first coat on the hallway, we put a coat on the dining room. You can see the line in the picture above of "coated" and "uncoated". The button shellac is so different from the pre-mixed shellac you buy in the store. I know it is hard to tell in this picture, but the buttons are a lot less shiny, it also dries faster and harder. And for some reason not as glossy smooth. Still trying to figure that one out....

I love the afternoon sun coming in the piano window! Just waiting for everything to dry!

 We have been enjoying a clean and uncluttered look!

Now we are working on finding a new rug we like and wall art. This long wall has kinda been a stumper!