Introducing Myself - Before Pics Inside!

[crystald528]

Hello H&G ladies! I am stepping out of the shadows of lurkerdom to introduce myself. I usually lurk on MM but have been hanging out here for awhile. My husband and I are in the middle of purchasing a house with a renovation loan, contracting out much of the work. Every room needs something done, so I will need to design everything to my taste which is both exciting and daunting at the same time.

Here is my dilemma - how do I keep everything organized? I have been using Pinterest to gather and save things I like, but it seems to turn into a big cluttered mess, even with different boards. I would appreciate any tips you have.

Also a bit about the house - built in 1873, 2800 sq ft, 3 bedrooms, 3 baths. Beautiful woodwork, great floor plan, and pretty much the house of my dreams. If anyone can tell how to post pictures, I will share some before pics. TIA for your help.

[Deleted]

Welcome! I love old houses; I'd love to see some pics!! If you already have them online, you can use {IMG}http://address{/IMG}, only use [] instead of {}. Or you can use the little icon that looks sort of like a postcard above all the emoticons, but you can only put one picture per post that way.

If you have a lot of photos and like to share, consider making a bio?

Whatever you do, don't rip out the original windows if you are lucky enough to still have them! Biggest mistake old-home owners make.

[tarheels]

Welcome Care to share your Pinterest? I can't suggest different systems when I'm not sure what you're working with. (You can go into pinterest settings and hide your last name if you're worried about privacy.)

[aweilba]

Welcome to the board! How exciting to get to renovate a house! Have you considered creating a binder with tabs to keep all of the rooms and ideas straight? Then you could store samples of materials and everything in there too.

[mrs.jacinthe]

Welcome!

[dec13th]

hi & welcome! I would love to see pics, too!

[davescatch]

Welcome! I have an older home too, I would love to see pics!

[crystald528]

I really like a mix of traditional and simple with mostly neutral colors.

As far as the house is concerned, we will have some updates done before we move in, with major renos on the jack and jill bath and master bath. The house needs wallpaper or something on all the plaster, so we will hire that done. One room I could tackle but that amount of paper would take us months. We will put carpet in the garden room, and the bedrooms and try to refinish the living room floor.

The downstairs windows are original and will remain. I love the way they look, but am worried about them not being energy efficient, so I will have to see if I can do something about that. The windows upstairs have been replaced and look nice with the look of the house.

I look forward to your comments and suggestions. I can't wait to start getting my plans together!

[Deleted]

Oh, that has a lot of potential! That stained glass is just gorgeous! Is that carpet in the bathroom though? Yeah, I'd definitely have to get rid of that! FIL has that in his master and it's disgusting. It's your house, but there's no way in hell I'd put carpet over the wood in the bedroom(s). But I'm a dust allergy sufferer, and that's the #1 rule (no carpet where you sleep). Have you considered just some big rugs, even finished-edge carpet remnants? What sort of floor is that in the music room? Some sort of parquet??

If you have inflitrative air coming in the windows (that's air coming in around the edges of the sash), you can do a few things, including taking down the stops and moving them back a bit to stop any rattling, adding brass sping in the channels and/or adding a storm window for winter. If you don't have infiltrative air, you aren't losing much through the pane, though adding a storm window would give you some extra insulation. If you have any rehabbing to do and you want to try DIY (broken cords, broken panes, missing glazing, etc.), I've read good things about "Working Windows" by Terry Meany. We've DIYed all of ours and we knew nothing when we started.

[crystald528]

The bathroom carpet will go during the full reno of that room, thank goodness! I lived in an apartment that had carpet in the bathroom and kitchen, so I learned that lesson. I hadn't thought about trying to refinish the hardwood upstairs. All of the floors have been painted, so it would take some doing to get them sanded and refinished. If the hardwood is in good shape, I may use my rented sander and test it out when I work on the living room floor.

Yes that is a parquet in the music room. It is in great shape and is so beautiful. They had a ton of stuff sitting in there, so I couldn't get a good picture. The contrast between the light and dark is great and will be even better when the walls are more neutral.

Thanks for the window resources. I will have a better idea about their condition once we are in the house.

[Deleted]

Drool. I can't believe that parquet and can't wait to see after photos of that room (even a before without all their stuff!). A painted wood floor can also be beautiful if you didn't want to sand down all the way upstairs.

[sassafrass]

What a beautiful house!

[davescatch]

Wow it is a beautiful home, I can't wait to see what you do with it. So much character, and tons of space and storage. I am so jealous!

[bunnymendelbaum]

Welcome!
Such an interesting house! It looks like they did some work on it right? Is the light trim & beams downstairs where they removed walls to open it up?
Is the garden room an addition?
Did they build closets and add forced air heating ducts upstairs?
So exciting!

[ohjessica]

Gorgeous house! Love the staircase and stained glass. Lucky you!

[crystald528]

There were updates done in the 70s including new wiring, the kitchen, the garden room addition, and opening up some walls on the first floor with beams in the ceiling. I think they also updated the the upstairs bathrooms at that point. They did add forced air thoughout the house. There are two units, one with a heat pump. You have a good eye for catching all that.

[tarheels]

Well, yeah, you can't find anything in Pinterest because your boards aren't narrow enough. Create one for laundry rooms, one for kitchens, one for baths, etc. You have like 20 pins on stencils, so maybe do a board for wall treatments as well and drop those and the wainscoting pins. Maybe do a board for fireplace ideas as well. GL!

[pitterwoo]

Love your house! I'd like to think that I can evangelize about plaster walls about as well as Juno can about old windows. It looks like you have some condition issues but I can't tell if it's very bad or if you will be creating holes to run wires and such during the renovation. Anyway, please don't patch plaster with drywall or with joint compound. Go with one material or the other for the whole wall, and preferably pick plaster. There's nothing like hard, glassy smooth plaster walls for durability, noise reduction...everything but ease of hanging pictures (and even that I've gotten better at).

To your original question about organization, I would probably add a spreadsheet to keep track of your projects and timelines in addition to the Pinterest visuals.

[Deleted]

Jan 3, 2013 22:09:47 GMT -5 pitterwoo said:

I'd like to think that I can evangelize about plaster walls about as well as Juno can about old windows.

I wish you had gotten to me before our BR remodel. Costs seemed to be spiraling out of control, and the $2K extra it was going to cost us seemed like an OK place to compromise with a faux finish. Went with drywall and I don't like it nearly as well. Something about the feel is just wrong. Should have just forked over the cost to do it right!

[pitterwoo]

Jan 3, 2013 22:19:44 GMT -5 @juno said:

Jan 3, 2013 22:09:47 GMT -5 pitterwoo said:

I'd like to think that I can evangelize about plaster walls about as well as Juno can about old windows.

I wish you had gotten to me before our BR remodel. Costs seemed to be spiraling out of control, and the $2K extra it was going to cost us seemed like an OK place to compromise with a faux finish. Went with drywall and I don't like it nearly as well. Something about the feel is just wrong. Should have just forked over the cost to do it right!

Ouch 2k for just a average sized bedroom? I understand the compromises have to be made in these things. Our plasterer would probably be half that. That's what we paid for both the living room and dinning room. The bedrooms were quoted about $700 each. I'm in a MCOL area.

We drywalled our first bedroom renovation because the entire room got gutted so we just started over with drywall. We should have done plaster. It makes me appreciate the downstairs walls that we had redone even more. I hate the stupid drywall tape lines, and I can always see them when they wouldn't bother a normal person like you say about the window panes.

[Deleted]

Jan 3, 2013 22:34:00 GMT -5 pitterwoo said:

Jan 3, 2013 22:19:44 GMT -5 @juno said:

I wish you had gotten to me before our BR remodel. Costs seemed to be spiraling out of control, and the $2K extra it was going to cost us seemed like an OK place to compromise with a faux finish. Went with drywall and I don't like it nearly as well. Something about the feel is just wrong. Should have just forked over the cost to do it right!

Ouch 2k for just a average sized bedroom? I understand the compromises have to be made in these things. Our plasterer would probably be half that. That's what we paid for both the living room and dinning room. The bedrooms were quoted about $700 each. I'm in a MCOL area.

We drywalled our first bedroom renovation because the entire room got gutted so we just started over with drywall. We should have done plaster. It makes me appreciate the downstairs walls that we had redone even more. I hate the stupid drywall tape lines, and I can always see them when they wouldn't bother a normal person like you say about the window panes.

It was probably around 250 sq. feet total (bedroom, 2 closets, new bathroom, and a wall in the second bedroom). Bay area living, yea! Maybe in 20 years we'll go back and do it right LOL.

[lemondrop]

Jan 2, 2013 23:21:15 GMT -5 tarheels said:

Well, yeah, you can't find anything in Pinterest because your boards aren't narrow enough. Create one for laundry rooms, one for kitchens, one for baths, etc. You have like 20 pins on stencils, so maybe do a board for wall treatments as well and drop those and the wainscoting pins. Maybe do a board for fireplace ideas as well. GL!

This!

Also, this house is going to be so amazing when you're done!

[crystald528]

Thanks for the notes on reorganizing my Pinterest. I have already gone through and done some clean up there.

As far as the plaster is concerned, there is really only one bad spot in the music room and I plan to have it patched. The only major renovations will be in the bathrooms and I hope we wont need to rewire too much. Thanks for the tips on materials.

I cant wait to share the progress as it happens. I am so glad to finds place that shares my excitement about the house. Some of my friends just see too much work, or the lack of a full, finished basement and probably think we are nuts. It's one of those things you either get or you don't get!

[wawa]

Jan 4, 2013 11:42:19 GMT -5 asdfjkl said:

Jan 2, 2013 11:12:55 GMT -5 crystald528 said:

Ok - I did some work so I can share some of my ideas and pictures. I am not sure if this will work, so let me know if it doesn't.

House Tour - Before pictures: www.flickr.com/photos/crystald528/sets/72157632414790464/ They aren't great quality but give you the general idea.

Pinterest with 3 house boards:
pinterest.com/crystald528/ I really like a mix of traditional and simple with mostly neutral colors.

As far as the house is concerned, we will have some updates done before we move in, with major renos on the jack and jill bath and master bath. The house needs wallpaper or something on all the plaster, so we will hire that done. One room I could tackle but that amount of paper would take us months. We will put carpet in the garden room, and the bedrooms and try to refinish the living room floor.

The downstairs windows are original and will remain. I love the way they look, but am worried about them not being energy efficient, so I will have to see if I can do something about that. The windows upstairs have been replaced and look nice with the look of the house.

I look forward to your comments and suggestions. I can't wait to start getting my plans together!

I have no comments or suggestions other than I love your house, I am jealous jealous jealous and I hope you regularly update with pictures.

YUP! This. I love to live vicariously through people working on houses that actually have some inherent character.

[crystald528]

Jan 4, 2013 11:46:31 GMT -5 asdfjkl said:

I actually have a question for you. I see that in some of the pictures there are ceiling tiles. I'm looking at a house (that I have no hope of ever actually owning, but whatevs) that has those in almost every room. When I first saw them I thought, "Welp, I guess the ceilings are all damaged, probably water." But now I'm wondering whether they just did that to add wiring because the house is so old and it was easier than tearing out the ceiling and replastering it...

Anyway, question: what's under the ceiling tiles in your house?

Looking at the pictures, the only place I see tiles is in the jack and jill bathroom, which has an updated light/exhaust fan. I am guessing the tile is hiding where they ran the wire and vent pipe. The woman that owned it two owners ago was wealthy so she would pay to have it fixed correctly. I am guessing this was done after she sold it to the current owner, who has done the bare minimum maintenance.

There is some water damage in other rooms from where they had problems getting the flat roof (widow's walk?) to seal correctly. *Hopefully* that has been fixed with the new roof that was put on several years ago.