Electrical Work

This week the electrician came in and rewired our Kitchen. He installed a bunch of new above counter GFCI outlets, hidden outlets for the dishwasher, garbage disposal, range and microwave and/or hood. We also had him install switches for the 2 existing Kitchen ceiling fixtures, the exterior light next to the door, a switch for the garbage disposal and a switch and wiring for future undercabinet lighting. It's going to be a beautiful Kitchen! He also ended up replacing some other Kitchen outlets for us and two in the Dining Room!

Our New Door

The back door, in the Kitchen, is the door we use to get in and out of the house. We changed the locks on the closing day, which made it easier to unlock, but getting the door physically open has always been a problem. You have to turn the handle, lift the door, and kick it with your foot to get it open. I foresee a problem when it's raining out and I'm getting home from work. SO... since we couldn't do the Kitchen this weekend as planned, we decided to replace the door.

And since nothing is easy in this house, this quick switch turned into a day-long project. My dad, uncle and Ryan took the original door off, only to discover that the sill was completely rotted out. Well, we can't put a brand new door on top of that! Enter Lowe's trip #1 of the day (they know me there now... it's pretty sad). A couple hours later, we had a brand new sill, complete with flashing and insulation!

Yesterday when my dad and I bought the door, I decided that I wanted a door with full glass. When we were taking down the cabinets and drywall, the back door was completely open and I realized how much light came in from the backyard and loved it. I didn't really like the Dutch door, other than the advantage that we could have the top open to let in light and air while the bottom was closed to contain a certain puppy. But I told myself that if the full glass door was too expensive, for now I'd have to settle on a new door with only glass on the top half. Well, in the already blessed trip to Lowe's (my $50 window), we discovered that the full glass door was only $10 more than the half glass. No-brainer!

The door is absolutely beautiful! I'm so in love with it! And Madison loves it too! She loves being able to see people outside, and just simply sitting in front of it staring out at the birds and squirrels in the backyard. And the light in the Kitchen now is great. And the views! The door lines up perfectly with the doorway into the Dining Room, so now you have nice backyard views from the Dining Room too. And it looks great with the new oil-rubbed bronze door hardware we bought the day we closed (and it's awesome to have a deadbolt on the house now). I'm loving my house! :)

Painting the Dining Room

It was too hot to do anything today. The house has been relatively cool on warmer days so far this summer, but today broke a bunch of heat and humidity records, and even the house couldn't account for that.. But I just couldn't let a day go by without any work getting done! So I decided to paint the Dining Room.

The Dining Room is probably the one room in the house that could have waited until the very end to be refinished. While in the future it will be a room we will use a lot for family dinners, holidays and get togethers, for now, we can eat in the Kitchen or Living Room. And we aren't planning on hosting holidays until we have kids. Yet it's the one room that is almost complete. Ironic. Also ironic is that it is the only paint color I've been able to choose so far. Every other room I flip through my color books, unable to find anything that would maybe work. But this room, I opened the book to a random page, and said "wow.. that's it!". The color is Benjamin Moore Pewter. Because we're newlywed first time homeowners, we don't have money to buy Benjamin Moore paint, as much as we'd like to. We have to buy whatever Lowe's or Home Depot has on sale that week. And this week it was Behr, so we had them color match it. It came out pretty close, but not exact. It's a little bluer than the BM color, but that's ok because I think it looks great! We decided to not paint the trim. There's so much of it, and it was in pretty good condition. Nothing peeling, no spots that needed touching up. 

Luckily there wasn't a lot to be painted. I say lucky because I stepped into the other room to make a phone call, only to hear Ryan yelling a couple minutes later. Turns out he was trying to help and do some second coat touch-ups, and accidentally bumped the paint can (which had the cover on, but wasn't closed) and it spilled EVERYWHERE. I mean everywhere! About 3/4 of a gallon of paint was now not in the paint can anymore. Luckily we had left the carpet in there while we were painting and it all spilled on the carpet. It missed the wood floor by about an inch. We were very very lucky!

Many people say that the Dining Room is their favorite room in our house. Due to the size of the fireplace, I originally thought it might have been the original Kitchen. And it was very common for this room, in this floor plan, to be a Kitchen. But in the style of the Wilcoxes, it is very intricately detailed. Too much so for a Kitchen, even in a Wilcox house. I think it may have been the original Sitting/Receiving Room (Living Room). It has crown molding and wood paneling that run around the room, and a fireplace with a very interesting mantle detail. Oh, and a funeral door.

Wallpaper Removal

Today I mastered the art of removing wallpaper. Luckily for us, about 90% of the rooms in the house are wallpapered. I say lucky because removing the wallpaper exposes the original walls and we can assess their condition, and then paint the walls directly, rather than adding another layer of paint.

The one drawback? Neither of us had ever removed wallpaper before. We made a rookie's mistake and bought expensive wallpaper remover from Home Depot. We also purchased one of those large orange Home Depot buckets (a steal at $2.49), a wallpaper remover and a large pack of putty knives. The wallpaper remover was in a spray bottle, and very watery. I would spray it toward the top of the wall, and it would just drip all the way down. And if I sprayed it on top of the wallpaper, it wouldn't do a thing. I had to rip the wallpaper off, leaving the bottom layer of paper/glue, and then spray that. And I had to really get it soaked before it would scrape off. And did I mention how horrible it smelled?! Halfway through the room I had to go find a mask to wear it was so bad.

I did finish about 3/4 of the Dining Room though. The only spots remaining are in the corner where the sill damage is (I was afraid to stand there for too long.. it didn't look like it could support long term standing weight). It was a good room to start on because most of the room is paneling, windows, doors, fireplace, etc.

Dining Room built-in cabinet

Front Dining Room windows

Toward the end of the day, we ventured into the Living Room to assess those walls. Turns out, those won't be as easy. The Living Room walls (or at least what we uncovered today) are all original horsehair plaster. Taking off the bottom layer of paper/glue often resulted in making holes in the plaster and dry sand pouring out of the wall. The walls also are very textured. Not a nice texture, more rigid and bumpy. Which is to be expected for 239 year old walls. They didn't have the tools back then to make them perfectly smooth. Due to the holes (existing and new) and texture, we'll most likely be putting a skim coat of plaster on these walls. I'd much rather do that than tear it all down and replace it with drywall.

Living Room fireplace

Living Room wall