The Library...(Now the Master Bedroom as of 2/16/13)

Sitting room turned library/office turned Master bedroom.




We were told this room was the master bedroom added on in the late 1940's. I had heard stories about fancy drapes and a grand piano. I had visions of chandeliers hanging from a crown molded ceiling. Alas, it was not to be, but it had potential.

 

Bathrooms

I just realized I have not finished posting before and after photos of the whole house. Here are the bathrooms.

Master bath BEFORE



Master bath AFTER  There is now a crystal chandelier above the tub.
 

Custom cabinets that I designed.
 

Monogrammed shower door from the 1950's remodel.  The "M" door is now in the home of a great grandson:)
 

Upstairs bathroom BEFORE

In 2008 Upon completion of the demo phase and with the new layout of the room, we realized we would not have enough fir flooring left over to refloor the room.   After searching for weeks we luckily discovered a huge door in the basement was made from flooring.  The turquoise green boards are from that door and became the inspiration for the wall color.  Sadly I had to sand the whole floor to make the boards more level and lost a lot of the color, but I am still happy with the finished product:)

 

 

Kelly

We're MOVING!

Yep you read that right!  My husband has been transferred back to Minnesota for work so our historic home is now for sale.  It was a labor of love to take it back to it's 1916 origins and now we hope someone else will love it as much as we do. 

 Jerome, ID

For Sale: $339,000                                                     Single Family: 3,951 sq ft

                                     Bedrooms: 5                                                                    Lot: 2.3 acres

                                     Bathrooms: 2                                                                  Year built:1916

Home was completely gutted and restored to 1916 era over the last 5 years.  (See the label to the right called house restoration for before and after comparison photos) Original wood floors, woodwork and staircase have been refinished, antique chandeliers and push button lighting on main level.  Hand painted wallpaper on some walls.  Garage previously had a 1BR/1BA apartment above it.  1 acre fenced pasture, indoor hot tub, 2 stained glass windows.

 

2006	2007-2010	2011
New Roof and Shingles	New Electrical	New custom kitchen
New Wood/Steel Pella Windows that flip in for easy cleaning	New Plumbing	New floors milled from historic big leaf maple trees on property
New Exterior Doors	New Heat Pump	New water heater
New Septic	Central Vacuum installed
New Well Pump and Tank	New Attic insulation
Fenced in front yard	Sprinkler system front/back yard
New concrete patio

 To see more photos click on the label to the right called Home Restoration.  There you will see before and after photos of many of the rooms and you will also find a post about the history of the house.

Please feel free to pass this on to your friends,

Kelly

averbeckk@juno.com

FOR FULL REAL ESTATE LINK CLICK here !

Help Us WIN!!!

Once again I have entered remodeling contests with This Old House magazine.  Since the house is FINALLY DONE, and by that I mean EVERY SQUARE INCH, inside and out:)  I have entered the WHOLE HOUSE and KITCHEN categories with the hope of winning $$$$ and a new truck!  You don't actually VOTE, but by clicking on the links below you can RATE my projects and maybe that will persuade the judges;)

WHOLE HOUSE link
http://youroldhouse.thisoldhouse.com/thisoldhouse/submission.jsp?id=119571

KITCHEN link

http://youroldhouse.thisoldhouse.com/thisoldhouse/submission.jsp?id=119568

Also check back because I will add more links as I enter more categories.

Thanks:)

Kelly

P.S.  If you click on the label to the right called House Restoration you can see all the blogs and photos that I have posted thus far.

The PINK Room:

This spacious room was surrounded on 3 sides by glass!  Added on in the early 50's it sported a full wall of glass doors and two complete walls of windows.  So...in this home that meant 3 walls of ceiling to floor, wall to wall drapes.  And iridescent PINK at that!

I was told by a friend that was a seamstress and drapery maker, that in their day the drapes in this house were probably worth $10,000!  Pink is NOT  my color and they had some stains but I did find them a new home on ebay.  Someone out there is hopefully really enjoying them. 

 Oddly this room was only accessible by going through the closet/master bath, the HUGE sitting room and THEN you entered this room in the corner, under the light of an outdoor flood light!  No chandelier as one would expect from such a surrounding of magnificent drapes. It was hard to understand why this would be designed in such a way.  Little did we know we were soon to find out!

These rooms served more as a private wing for the lady of the house and this was added after the blue master bedroom and master bath.  The logical passage way was from one to the next because it was meant to be private. 






But the REAL reason I think it was built this way is because the original 1916 part of this house is made of poured concrete.  And let's just say we found ALL the original outside walls, because they were EXACTLY  where I planned new doorways!!  Yep...we had to chisel out 3 doorways in our restoration process. You can see in the photo below where we made an opening for the door and a hallway leading to the laundry/workout room.  It took ALL day to cut the hole and there was an awful lot of concrete to haul out to the dumpster.  This is also where I found evidence of a roof to a porch, though I am not sure where the door would have been.

Here is the room now!

Keep Pickin'

Kelly

Hot tub room before...and more importantly...AFTER!

The house we bought in 2006 had many additions to it including this hot tub room.  Sounds great right?  Did I mention the tub was put in place... and then the room was built ArOUnD it!  It had one tiny window and insufficient ventilation that caused the tape to fall from the seems of the sheet rock on the 8 foot ceilings.  The tub itself is FaBUloUS...I was told it was the cadillac of hot tubs in its day.  And did I mention...it's HUGE!  Here's a look at it.

  

The first thing we did to make this room more functional and appealing was to bump out the wall 4 feet to match up with the new trusses on the sloped roof.  That allowed us to remove the 8 foot ceiling and raise it up to 12 feet. 

We also took out the chimney on the wall that had previously been the outside wall which allowed us to shift the tub over a couple of feet and make a walkway to the new 8 foot by 6 foot french doors.  These doors will provide a way in the future to replace the tub if needed.  Gratefully we were able to plan for plenty of ventilation by putting in 3 large windows, a ventilation fan and ceiling fan as well as providing 3 doors in and out of the room.

The headers above the doors and windows are actually salvaged pieces from the Frontier Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada.  We picked them up at a architectural salvage yard in Vegas and the man said he bought them when they tore the casino down! 

It was just the rectangular section with the detail work that we bought.  There were 3 of them and we bought them all for $60 TOTAL!  You should have seen us driving home (8hours) with them stacked between us touching the windshield and back window of our small SUV.  Thank goodness we didn't need to hit the brakes!  I designed the columns and crown moulding, and a friend helped me hang it all.  Thanks Norm!

Below was the original outside wall where the chimney used to be.  We removed it so we can lean the cover there when we are in the tub.  Notice the 102 on the door.

I was lucky enough to buy 29 antique doors for $30...yes $30...at an auction and this was one of them.  I have the mate...room 101...as the library entry door.  These doors were from a local hotel.  How do I know which one? 

Because the sign was still on the door!!  How cool is that?

And that window and table...they have a story as well.  The window was given to me by a cute little old lady (think 85ish and about 4'10" tall)  It came from her home which is a garage converted to house.  She told me I could have it but I was concerned that it was not hers to give away, since I knew she rented the home.  She proceeded to tell me the young man that took the window out wanted to know what to do with the window.  When the owner replied, "Just throw it away."  Peg said, " Over my DEAD body!"  You go girl!!!!!  And THANK YOU PEG!!

The table was found locally just hanging out in the weeds, where it had been for WHO KNOWS how long.  I just added the top board from an old OUTHOUSE from which I salvaged the wood.  I think it fits right in!   Don't you?

Keep Pickin'

Kelly

The Big Ol' Living Room and TONS (maybe even literally) of Wallpaper

This spacious room had ceiling to floor and wall to wall drapes, as did most of the rooms, but there was something hidden in this room.  Something some of the grand kids didn't even know was there, and something we uncovered within the walls.  Come along on the adventure to find out what it was hiding behind those Hawaiian print drapes and lurking within the walls.

This room had several layers of wallpaper as seen below.  The first thing I did was take down the drapes.  Believe it or not the red flower wallpaper pictured below is actually a match to these drapes!!!  The wallpaper that was up with these lovelies was the yellow and green stripes.  Next I pulled down the top layer of paper to reveal the apples.  It helped to rid the room of the musty OLD odor it had, but I dug deeper.  I was on a mission to discover the history of the home.  I saved a sample of EVERY layer of paper from EVERY room.  My initial intent was to make a collage for each room.  But after peeling back the layers I soon discovered this to be impossible due to the large patterns and almost mural like scenes.  These are the layers from the living room.

top layer

2nd layer

2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th layer

6th layer, probably from the 20's

7th and original layer, from 1916!

  There were 9 layers of paper on the staircase walls which is located just south of the living room.  I soon discovered these layers provided a nice insulation!      These are the layers found under the stripes and apples.

4th layer

3rd layer

  

5th layer

5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th (original)

Now the REAL work on the living room started when I was away at a friend's house celebrating New Year's Eve.  I THOUGHT I was going to come home to some work COMPLETED on the bathroom, BUT this is what greeted me!  The plaster was all down from the ceiling and walls of the living room.

Notice the colors of the wall above the window.  The top was white then there was a gray stripe and a turquoise color under that.  It took me a year to figure out the gray stripe was the concrete that had been originally decked out with a picture rail!!

When the time came, Wayne had a little help hanging the new sheet rock.  Because I could not get all the wallpaper off and we did not want to disturb the base boards, we covered the concrete walls with 1/4 inch sheet rock.  We were able to set it on the baseboard and glue it to the wall.  That helped to provide a little bit of that insulation factor we lost with the peeling of the paper.  

Wait...wasn't there a HUGE window here somewhere?

My sister Nancy flew out about a month after we moved into the house.  I put her to work on the staircase stripping 5 layers of paint.  This was one of the first jobs we tackled, and it was the LAST to be completed 5 years later.  What a long drawn out process it is to strip paint from antique molding!





  























Now... the finished product!  After 5 years of stripping several layers of paint from the woodwork, it has now been restored to its 1916 glory and the diamond windows have been hung back in their proper place.  Notice the built in bookcase to the right.  It had been covered for decades under the drapes and it was a surprise to some family members to see it existed!  As I worked on the restoration of the built in I discovered photos of the Marshall family, as well as the Atwoods who were the original owners, that had fallen through some cracks and found their way UNDER the bookcase.  There were also several Christmas cards addressed to the Atwood's from the late 1920's and early 1930's there as well.  


The porch swing,  was found in the crawl space under the house.

 

Double pocket doors put back in place!

The staircase is visible in the background.

Another pocket door put back in place, originally there were double doors, but we had to hide duct work and were unable to put both back in.

Here is a view of the living room looking into the dining room and mud room at the back door.  We tried to keep the home as true to it's original construction as possible, but with several additions that took place in the 40's, 50's and 80's it was hard.  I hope we did it justice and that THIS old house will be around for another 100 years!

Kelly