March FORTH

We moved in to the Bay View Bungalow exactly 2 years ago today, March Fourth, 2011. We've done a lot in two years - I won't list it all right now, but we really have done a lot. We really didn't know what we were getting into when we signed on the dotted line. The house was "turn-key" with a brand new kitchen. Sure, we wanted to redo the upstairs eventually, but we figured we could knock that out in no time, once we got to it, then sit back and relax.

Well two years later, there is no end in sight to the restoration that is the Bay View Bungalow. The good news is that the house is completely livable. The "Bad News"? We have a lot of interior finish work to complete and a whole lot of deferred maintenance to address on the exterior; mostly paint, and rotted shingles, and refinishing two storm doors, and...

Fortunately, we (and sometimes just I, but mostly we) still enjoy the work and approach things with the same enthusiasm that we did in the first few months of working on the house, and we will continue to do so. March Fo(u)rth, after all, is about moving forward. Which is why it is so fitting that Nicole, who I am so proud of, also happened to start a great new job as an Art Director at a Milwaukee-based Ad Agency today. So, March Forth we will. (have I crammed that pun down your throat enough yet?)

Before-and-after composite; the bedroom as appears today, with an
overlay of me tearing it apart on day three of new home-ownership

(...Also, thanks to Steph Rose for pointing out the meaning of March Fourth to us upon closing on the Bay View Bungalow; the meaning would have otherwise been completely lost on us)

Facade Restoration; Phase Two

OK - I couldn't resist! I just had to see what the Bay View Bungalow will look like after the facade restoration is complete, so I photoshopped the gable, eaves, etc. Notice we also have copper gutters - there is paint available for this exact purpose; it has real copper in it and will develop a patina over time. Our modest bungalow would not have had copper gutters, but they would look a lot better than the painted aluminum we have now. Also note how much better the house looks without shutters. It makes me want to climb out on the snow-covered roof and rip them off right now!

future state

 

current state

Phase one of the Facade restoration Complete

The best part of any home restoration blog is always the before-and-after shots. Since the completion of the large storm window marks the completion of Phase-One of the facade restoration, we figure it's time to share.

What constitutes phase one you ask? What we're calling phase one is basically the facade from the porch roof down. This spring we'll tackle Phase-Two; everything from the roof-line up. This will include removing the awful '60s shutters, painting everything, and installing period correct screens (partly to hide the white vinyl replacement windows).

In the mean time however, we're quite pleased with the transformation. As a side note, any true home restorer would point out how "incorrect" the asbestos siding is, but removing it and restoring the original siding is just beyond what we're willing to tackle (I've seriously thought about it, but I'd rather stay married) Besides, all things considered, I think it looks OK; it's in great shape, it holds paint well, and with all of the other "correct" details, it's very easy for the casual observer to look past and see an "original" bungalow.

And, just because, here are some progress shots of the windows / trim:

The window and trim as it looked after removing the '60s era shutters. Note the brown overspray at the edge of the shutter outline; the whole house was painted this color in the '80s. Our neighbor said they got overspray all over his house when they did it.

There were so many layers of paint that had been applied over cracked peeling paint
that the only thing to do was strip the trim back to bare wood in most places.
Tedious work with the heat gun, but well worth the trouble.

The same section as it appears today; still some paint work to be done above the
green trim. The original storms were also stripped and repainted, including
the original hardware.

Building a Storm Window the old-fashioned way

In addition to replacing original wood porch columns with faux wrought iron, the other architectural bastardization that was common in the 1960's was to remove original double-hung windows and replace them with a "picture window". The Bay View Bungalow unfortunately fell victim to this trend in the name of "modernization".

What we are left with, is an expanse of glass on the front of the house that looks very out of scale with the two original windows that flank it. (this would have originally been a bank of four matching leaded glass windows; the two in the center were removed and replaced with one window). The icing on the cake is the Craptastic aluminum storm window that was installed over it.

picture window with aluminum storm

Since recreating and installing the missing windows was out of the budget, our solution was to build a traditional wood storm window to match those on the original windows and break up the huge expanse of glass by incorporating divided lites (individual panes) to give it a period-correct look. This would at least create the illusion that the larger, center window was an original feature.

In order to really "sell" the illusion, we built the new storm window in exactly the same way it would have been built in 1930; meaning we built it to last, with mortise and tenon joinery (alright - and, yes, a few lap-joints), real, rather than applied, muntins (window "dividers"), and glass held in place with glazing points and sealed with traditional glazing compound.

Rather than bore you with the whole process, I will instead point to this person's blog post that I used as a guide in creating our window. Below are a few highlights from our window build.

open mortise-and-tenon joint

muntins before being glued in place

gluing everything up

chiseling out the corners of the window pane channels

   

Kirby and the finished frame

priming the frame

glazing the panes

finished window installed

We are thrilled with the results! In the spring we'll take the window down and paint the glazing compound to match. (It will take quite a long time for the putty to cure - and can't be painted before then)

Update: this blog is not dead (just very neglected)

What's been going on at the Bay View Bungalow? Well, we've been busy. There have been lots of small projects (and a few big ones). Mostly though, we've been busy with this guy:

Kirby at about 8 weeks

Kirby is our new addition to the family - he is a (now) 8 month old Welsh Corgi and has kept us very occupied. So, between him and life as a whole, we've been letting the blog languish for far too long.

So, we intend to remedy our lack of updates in short order with some posts on recent progress (although we haven't been keeping up the Blog, we've been documenting the progress by taking LOTS of photos) Stay tuned...

A Front Porch to Match

Before we even closed on our home, we immediately wanted to tear down the 60's era faux wrought iron supports on the porch and bring the facade back to its original state. We did some research on the home, but failed to locate any images from before they were installed. Luckily our style of home has many similarities to others in the neighborhood which still have their original porches. (The home three doors down from us is nearly identical, and it's original porch is intact) We used those as a guide and built ourselves a brand new porch that looks like it could be original. We also swapped in an antique light fixture and developed a new paint scheme (which we are still not quite done with so try and ignore the bright red trim on the top - that will soon be the darker shade of green). We are very excited to see the house regain its original identity and still can't believe what a difference it has made. There is still work to be done to finish this project (trim at the tops of the columns, paint, stair railing, etc.), so stay tuned...

Backyard Patio.

Our backyard has been basically neglected up until now, apart from the occasional grass cutting to keep the neighbors from calling the city on us we have been focused on the inside of the house since we purchased it last March. We decided to finish what we could inside in time for the enjoyable weather.

We didn't have to many things on our list when it came to getting the yard back in working shape. First was that orange mulch again that the previous owners seemed to love so much. We were able to craigslist it, because you can't throw away mulch apparently. So someone in the neighborhood picked it up for their compost pile. Our yard is not huge so taking advantage of space is a huge priority, so we decided to tuck away the patio against the garage and the back end of the yard would be designated to seating and the bbq. It would also make the view of the garage look a little bit more inviting from the house. We started to dig out the perimeter and found that there was actually a previous concrete slab left over from a prior owner. We found that it was a good size and it would be perfect for our foundation which cut out a ton of work and some money. Probably the one unexpected find that was actually a advantage so us so far. So it ended up being about 11x14 and we went with a "cream city" looking brick in a herringbone pattern to fit the era of the house. There a few details that we need to wrap up still (I feel like I just need to end every post with that statement)

I usually don't put how long things take us on here, because they always take longer then expected but to lay out the entire patio it actually only took us one weekend. It was possibly the quickest most rewarding thing we have done so far. As for the grass through all the digging we had to do, we are attempting to grow weed free grass which is taking a bit longer.

House Anniversary

I can't believe its been a year since we moved into our Bayview Bungalow. Last year we were moving in boxes in the cold rain, and couldn't sleep the night before our move because it felt like Christmas. Yesterday which marked the actual anniversary we were replacing our toilet that has been giving us problems since we moved in, which was very fitting. Mike let me smash it with a sledgehammer, now that is love. lol

This truly has been an amazing year, first the move then a major renovation followed by a beautiful wedding. I can't believe how much we managed to accomplish in just one year, our house is now a home and we have not only completely transformed the upstairs but continue to make changes throughout the entire home to bring it closer to our 1930 dream home.

What makes this year even more special is spending it with my wonderful husband who I love more and more everyday, I am very happy we managed to not electrocute ourselves and renovating has only made us stronger.

Say Wisconsin Cheeeeeeese!

Between moving 4 times in the last 4 years our collections have been sitting in boxes along with most of our belongings. When we moved into our new house unpacking was like discovering our antiques all over again. Then came the decision of where to put them and how to display them. The cameras were most important to me, because not only have we been collecting them forever family members and friends have graciously donated to our collection over the years so I wanted to give them a good home in our new home. We first decided the office/studio would be a good spot there is this one wall in between a closet and the door to the hallway that doesn't have much purpose beyond hanging something. We played with the idea of building something but that would have to go on a long list of things we had to do. Then on one of our trips to the Waukesha antique store we came across this display case that we fell in love with. It was craftsman style, with a light and was the perfect size to display all of our cameras. SOLD!

Thanks to everyone who has donated to our amazing collection we love telling everyone how we got each camera and their history. They will be apart of this home and every home in the future until our future kids tell us they don't want our junk.

I left my hairdryer out and he built me a vanity.

So I may not be the girliest person in the world (if you haven't figured it out yet Nicole is writing this post not Mike) but I am so excited to have a designated area to get ready in the morning and have all of my personal bathroom items where Mike can't hide them on me. It turned out so beautiful and completed with all salvaged pieces. The actual vanity I wanted to have a lot of drawer space but still be able to fit my legs underneath so I could sit near the counter top. We had a really difficult time finding this size cabinet, until Mike went wandering in our neighbors trash and found a discarded remnant of a kitchen cabinet that fit perfectly. All we had to do was strip it of the 50's era yellow paint and stain it to match our pocket door. The marble top was found at a local salvage yard and we had it cut to match the style of our sink top. We added hardware to tie in the look with the rest of the bathroom and added the same mirror that is above our sink. My favorite part is the top drawer that Mike put in small dividers for all my jewelry since I have been using the same crappy jewelry case since college. I have officially moved up in the world.

The background to this story shouldn't be lost, we almost made this area a closet but instead knocked out a portion of the dormer for a medium sized closet to gain space and not lose the vanity. This whole project stemmed from Mike's pure hatred for my hairdryer. Which now has a home underneath the vanity where he will never have to see it.

The Front Porch is Complete!

OK not really, but I finished doing the plans in CAD. Once the vanity for the bathroom is done, I plan to start building the columns / railings in the basement.

So - while we've made some progress on the vanity for the bathroom (pictures soon), and intend to do a few more before-and-after posts (just need to pick up our dirty socks and take some "afters"!), computer-modeled progress is the only progress that we have to show right now.

It did take quite a bit of measuring in the cold to get all of the dimensions that I needed to model the facade of the house - At least I was able to reference the pitch of the roof / upstairs window placement from the CAD model I had previously done of our bedroom; no standing on the roof required.

As a reminder of what the porch looks like now, you can look here, or here.

Looking Back

So, my favorite column in Hot Rod Magazine, "Looking Back", is the column in which they dig through obscure photos in the Hot Rod archives to uncover some gem of a snapshot-in-time  that carries some relevance; a photo worth a thousand words.

You can see where the built-in used to be, on the right wall.
Also note the faux box beams, ceiling tiles, linolium floor
and pine paneling. Our attic bedroom looked like a basement
rec-room from the 60's.

And here's the opposite wall, where I moved the built-in to.
Why? Because I find it necessary to do things the hard way. 

 Lately I've been trying to dig through all of our renovation photos to put together our own home-blog version of "looking back", since we skipped the documentation of so many important moments - (in favor of planning a wedding - priorities!)

What I've found in doing so, is that we have a thousand photos worth one word; naivete. We had no idea what we were getting ourselves into, but I do have a few photos to prove that it all worked out. So, for our "Looking Back" entry (Part One), let's look at the built-in dresser that i mish-mash-dissassembled-reassembled with a custom built TV cabinet of my own creation on the other side of the room. In "repurposing" the 1960's built-in, i essentially built a custom cabinet around some marginally-crafted pine drawers...let's take a look back.

The panel to the left of the drawers is actually
a hidden laundry hamper (see above)

Hallway

So this is one of those projects that nobody will ever notice that we did, but it was really bugging us that it was unfinished. The previous owner decided to try some "modern accent walls" which is great but not really in the small hallway with a lot of corners in a historic bungalow. So, it the result was that it looked like they just forgot to paint a few walls.

Anyhow, this whole project started when I decided to repaint the inside of our hallway cabinet / pantry, which needed some tlc after years of use. Since I had the correct color out, it snowballed into painting the rest of the lower hallway which then lead me up the stairs since we wanted to paint that area the same color as well. It wound up taking almost the whole day to "paint the pantry" but we ended up with a much more cohesive hallway.

One Man's Trash...

Is another man's wife's makeup vanity. So, we'd been looking for a cabinet to modify into a makeup vanity for the master bath for a while. I was sort of starting to think that I was just going to have to make something from scratch. I knew I could build something from scratch, but didn't really want to spend the time that I knew it would take to do it right. Let's face it, I'm not a cabinet maker. (Though I've found that I am a pretty good cabinet modifier.)

Anyhow, just as I was ready to start planning a custom cabinet, this little stack of drawers (minus the top drawer) showed up in the ally. The house on the corner just sold and apparently the basement was stuffed with junk that the new owner wanted to get rid of. I know this was in the basement because it smelled like a damp basement, I mean really smelled. So, I threw this smelly thing into the back of the van and got to work measuring. The smell has since abated.

I wound up cutting part of the top drawer section off, both because it was missing the drawer, and because I wanted to achieve a lower overall height. Next, I cut the back 4" off to achieve the proper depth.  After doing this, I had to reinforce the whole back since I had cut out so much of the structure of the cabinet.

Plans this week are to strip the whole thing and get a few coats of shellac on it over the long weekend. The pictures below show the whole thing mocked up to check how everything fits. When it's finished, the baseboard will continue around the bottom of the cabinet and the top will be white marble (another salvage yard purchase, though I have to have the marble cut to the right size and have the edge finished) The Drawers are a little wider than I would have made them if I had started from scratch, but there's still room to fit a small vanity-bench to the left of the drawers if you were to slide it in length-wise.

In the end, I know this will look better than something I could have built with so little time and money invested. Under all of that paint is a really well made, solid oak cabinet with dove-tail drawers. It's probably as old or older than our 82 year old house and should look right at home. I can't wait to start stripping it...  

Period-Correct Faucet is "Correct"

While flipping through a book I got from the library last night, I came across a period illustration of the faucet I just restored. The book, The Vintage House Book, dates the ad to 1931, one year after our house was built. So when selecting the sink and faucet, I chose the correctly-dated faucet within a year. Not bad if I do say so myself.

Main Floor Bathroom Restoration

Well, it took longer than expected (of course), but the main floor bath is complete. The centerpiece is our restored 1920's Kohler sink with original Kohler faucet and legs - very appropriate for a Wisconsin Bungalow. I found it at the salvage yard a few months back and was interested in buying just the faucet. When I asked about it, I was told that I could have the sink, faucet and legs for $40! So, I took the whole thing home and had to convince Nicole why I thought it was a good idea to restore a 80+ year old sink. She caved and told me the cost of the restoration would be part of my Christmas present. So, Merry Christmas to to me!

The restoration of the sink entailed removing the faucet, valves, drain, etc. to have the basin reglazed. In doing so, I sheared the end off of a threaded rod, essentially destroying a key component of the faucet. I thought I was going to have to cut my losses and buy a "modern" faucet, but figured I'd at least try to locate the part. After some searching on the interwebs, I found a place in the suburbs that specializes in plumbing supply.

When I went in and explained what I was trying to do, they gave me a hard time (in a friendly kind of way) telling me that they sell new faucets, but humored me and pulled out a really old, dusty book of Kohler parts diagrams and looked up the part. They soon found that they actually had four in stock (despite the part being discontinued). They also located all of the seals and other wear items that I would need to put it back together.

Other components of the bathroom restoration:

Skim coated / repainted all of the plaster walls
Installed a reproduction 1930's porcelain light from Rejuvination
Installed a 1930's vintage glass towel bar from the Detroit Antique Mall
Installed a nickel plated shower rod from Restoration Hardware
Stripped the paint off of the door (we still have to polyurethane it in the spring)
Cleaned, stripped and polished all of the various hinges and hardware in the bathroom
Replaced the modern light switch with a vintage original (salvaged from the old garage before it was torn down)

All told, it took a little over a month and was aggrevating having the house torn apart again so soon after the (almost) completion of the master bedroom, but we're thrilled with the results. Here's a quick mash-up of before and after: