Pandora's Box.

“The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at, or repair” Douglas Adams

At this point I am fairly certain that the person who came up with 'When it rains, it pours', lived in Our Little 1900's house. We started the demolition downstairs this weekend and boy oh boy were we in for one surprise after another. 

My constant chant throughout this entire process has been 'This needs to be done.' And while smashing through all of that teal tile felt really good- I must say I was a little surprised to see exactly how much work this demo was going to be. 

We managed to hit a top layer of teal tile, mortar, mesh wire, a second layer of white tile, mortar, clay sheet rock, 2nd layer of mesh, paper insulation, lathe slats and finally... a wall stud! Thats right people... Nine layers before we even shed light on a single stud. 

Galvinized piping under the sink proved easy to remove, since these two pipes didn't have a proper connection, they were just barely touching. 

Its a good thing we rarely used this bathroom. The drain pipe literally crumbled in our hands as we were disconnecting it.

Tearing through the layers. 

 Lots of water damage to the pipes around the sink, not to mention spotty plumbing work.

I was thrilled to see what was under this corner since it had always been tiled in... we will make good use of that space in my new bathroom!

Pittsburgh Steeltex paper insulation. 

The brown clay sheetrock makes a huge dusty mess throughout the entire house.

The first load off to the dump weighing in around 1100 pounds worth of tile!

Back to work again on Sunday..

We tore out the mold damage on the ceiling to find that the above bathroom had a pipe in the floor that was leaking down into the ceiling of this one. Its a slow drip but still I was so happy we caught it in time. 

A closer look at the leaky ceiling pipe...

End of Day Two for work, still tons to do.

Meanwhile at some point during the demolition the plaster in the theater room decided to fall off. 

Today I decided to get crackin' again on the upstairs guest room... A few days ago I repainted the room a soft gray color. I had a little fun too while I was at it. :) 

The original color... 

The after color! Its much softer and looks lovely with natural lighting (this picture has a flash to it so it looks a bit washed out!) 

After Mr.Major sanded the floor.

After I stained the floor.

Tomorrow I will apply three top layers of  polyurethane and 24 hours later its as if those icky white floors never existed! Well. In this room at least. The master bedrooms is another story all together.

"Our house... had a heart and a soul... it was one of us, and we were in its confidence and lived in its grace and in the peace of its benedictions." Mark Twain 

 I hope that all is well in your world. 

Bathroom Design

This weekend is the weekend we will be tearing out the downstairs bathroom and after hours and hours worth of searching I think I have finally gathered enough pictures to get a general direction that I want to steer this bathroom. 

Even though we already bought our sink I am still in love with the dark wood vanities that are out. So I figured I would do the rest of the bathroom accents in this dark mahogany wood. (the mirrors, wall decor and built-ins.) 

This is the exact same sink we picked up off of CraigsList- the owners had never installed it and we picked it up for $40 bucks! Talk about a steal!

Ideally this is what we are planning on putting in to replace our icky yellow tub.

I mostly liked the general light and dark color scheme in this room, but I especially liked the tile!

Some cute storage ideas for my custom shelving my brother is installing for me!

I adore these built-ins. Behind the door in this bathroom is a nook and Im thinking something like this will be perfect. 

If we are able I think having built-ins like these are nice to have too. 

Of course I am fully expecting for things to change just as they did with the first bathroom. We had no idea we would be putting in raised ceilings- but six pounds of extra drywall mud and one chandelier later here we are. I think thats part of the fun in renovating an old house, you always find surprises you weren't expecting.

At this point my only hesitation in ripping out our bathroom downstairs is, its our only shower! I suppose that will give us good incentive to get it finished ASAP and not drag it out like we did with the last renovation. This bathroom will be a mite more work considering we will be needing to add in a lot of new features to bring it up to date- My ultimate dream for this bathroom would be to: 

• Install heated flooring
• install shower surround with rain shower head
• all new maple wood storage
• install a ventilation fan (WE DONT HAVE ONE!) 
• install a new window
• Install a pocket door to save room in this already tiny space.

The heated flooring might be a bit much considering we only have about three months worth of freezing cold here in Florida. But, a girl can dream cant she!? 

3 Days and Counting. I hope all is well in your world. 

One Big Teal Nightmare.

Since buying Our Little 1900's House, there has been one room that I cringe to share with anyone. It has been my secret shame since purchasing our house nearly two years ago. The Teal bathroom down stairs. Now many of my friends and family members argue that teal tile is coming back in, or that its a 'retro' bathroom. My goal for our home is to bring it back to a somewhat traditional state of being, and at 111 years old- our home is anything but 'retro' era. 

Its not just the teal tile that makes my skin crawl, but the peeling linoleum, yellow fixtures, punched out tile where wires were run, the patchy wall plaster, outdated and dilapidated shelving, bad plumbing, botched caulking, and general wasted space that sends me running every time. Its the one room that I can't stand to be in and no matter how much I scrub- this room still seems dirty. 

This bathroom has been hidden and locked away from the public eye, from our own eyes even until we could both find the time to take on a full scale bathroom remodel yet again. It wasn't until a few weeks ago that I peeked into my bathroom to find that Our Little 1900's house was planning on speeding up our process quite a bit. 

I came in one morning to find the roof had fallen and black mold had settled in. Needless to say I have been in     stress mode with the entire mold issue at hand. And the only way it seems to fix this is to gut the entire bathroom ahead of schedule. I know we are looking at major water damage around the tub, so I am prepared for the worst. But I'm hoping the mold is only what I'm seeing here and not settled into the walls as of yet. 

D-day for my Teal Nightmare begins February 26 and who knows where this next adventure will take us. 

Day Two- Or is it Three of Floors?

This stupid paint stripper makes me loopy, so I honestly cant recall if its day two or three of paint scraping. The important part is today was the last day of scraping and boy oh boy am I happy to be saying that! As you can see the floors in the guest room are nearly paint free. I have a touch up scraping for any paint I missed and then we are on to the sanding phase this weekend- which Mr.Major has happily volunteered for. 

In the mean time we are having to begin another major undertaking in Our Little 1900's house- more on that tomorrow. 

I hope you are all doing well! 

Refinishing Floors Part 2:

Well its been about a year since we took on the upstairs loft area and refinished the floors and I figured it was high time we started a new room. In total we plan on refinishing the master bedroom and guest bedroom floors but for now we are just taking on the guest bedroom. 

Refinishing floors is tough work! From my previous experience its one layer of latex, one layer of lead based and  the top clear coat. 

Boy was I happy to see that old carpet go out the door. 

With most home renovation projects, it wouldn't be a proper project without a snag. 

No, thats not static your seeing. It seems this was some sort of children's room and at some point they decided to squeeze big globs of paint all over the floor. 

Luckily I have my Paint Scrapping team to the rescue. 

Were now a day into it all and still have a lot left to do, but things are starting to look up. 

Distressed Signs Tutorial

In my quest for cheap DIY projects I really fell in love with the whole industrial revival decor people are doing in there homes now. I especially love distressed signs / advertising. 

And so it was with these in mind that I decided to find a cute saying that went along with my theme and made my own DIY project. 

I started by spray painting six boards black, sizing depends on how large you plan on doing your lettering and how large you want your over all sign to be. I want these to be pretty big since they will be sitting over a bar area in their new apartment so I chose to do them on three separate lines. 

I took my top coat color and watered it down so it was thin slip and brushed it all on the tops. Once dry I stapled my boards together at the seams. (staple the back side as well.) 

Using my stencils I stenciled on my lettering. You don't have to be all too careful with the paint while lettering any paint that smudges or smears can just become part of the overall charm. Remember you don't want things to be too perfect!

Finally using your sand paper distress your finished product and add the hangers to the back for mounting to your wall!