Project # 5: Second Floor

I am on the hunt for a General Contractor who can manage some of these projects and coordinate the various trades. One such project that needs some coordination is the second floor. Back in 2011 when Mom and Dad were getting ready to move in, I had to pull the plug on some aspects of the project to get others done, because they were suddeny moving in sooner than I anticipated. Finishing the second floor is one of those projects that I had to cut loose.

Back in 2010 when the project began, the first task was to remove plaster and lath. The dumpster was set up in the front of the house, and the natural place to start the ripping and tearing was the second floor, and work our way down. So the upstairs bedrooms were the first to be cleaned out, and now will be the last spaces to be finished. I remember how nervous I was, as we were about to start the destruction. What was I doing to Grammy's house!!! I'm sure everyone else was nervous as well, and going on trust that I knew what I was doing and that it was going to be OK. In fact, I know I stretched Dad's confidence in me when we all started attacking the place. I was thinking, is this the right thing to do? What if we can't get it done? What if the house falls down? What if we wreck the place and the project doesn't go ahead? Although I spent a year negotiating with banks, I still didn't have financing in place yet. If that fell through, the demo would have been as far as we could have gone. But I was determined to push the dream forward, and willed it into reality (a little side story: the bank I was negotiating with ultimately rejected me because I wasn't a resident of Canada, and I had to scramble to find an alternative, and I found another bank who did accept my situation and I got the papers signed just the day before I came back to Lincoln. It was a very close call!).

Below is a recap of the demolition on the second floor

A dark and blurry picture of the west wall of the back bedroom just as we were getting started, June 28th, 2010.

 Shoveling debris out the window into the dumpster

 The back bedroom cleaned out

 Front bedroom closet

 Chimney is gone

Chimney bricks, later reused for walkways in the yard

This is what the back bedroom looks like now. The rooms are usable and we have beds set up, but the walls are still open with a few sheets of drywall roughly installed.  I took this was the day I left to come back to Lincoln last summer.

So now what?

The front bedroom was very bright and sunny, facing south, and the back bedroom was quiet and shady, with a view of the river and waterfalls. Thats my favourite room in the house.

The little stair hall had the red glass window that allowed second hand light in from the back bedroom. Dad removed the pane of glass and we have it safely tucked away to be reinstalled when the space is finished. The banister is about the only thing in the whole house that remains in its original location, untouched by all the work.

The roof was insulated with closed cell foam which has a very high R value for insulation, and does not require a vapour barrier. The ceilings in both bedrooms were completely removed and will not be reconstructed. The rough hewn King Post Trusses of the roof will be left exposed in the bedrooms and the roof will be drywalled to the peak, and painted. Ceiling fans will be installed on the bottom of the middle trusses, and with the high volume, this will make the rooms very comfortable during the hot humid nights of summer. Also, with all of the insulation, the rooms will be a lot more comfortable.

The wall between the bedrooms used to go only as high as the ceilings. The chimney went through the back bedroom against this wall. With the chimney and ceilings gone, there wasn't much left of this wall so it was completely removed and reframed to the peak in the same location. The original wide plank floors are still there and will be repainted.

Now for the fun part, colour!

As I mentioned, the front bedroom was always light and airy, so I want to carry that on with the colour scheme. The paint will all be Farrow & Ball, as is all of the paint in the house. It has a lot more pigment than other paints, and changes colour depending on the time of day, the weather, and how the light hits it. The trim will be Blackened, as it is in the rest of the house. The walls will be Lamp Room Gray. Like Blackened, it is a colour to match soot from kerosene lamps, only worse. We tried it here in Lincoln in our dining room and it is actually a very light and cheery blue, see below.

As I mentioned, there is no ceiling, but the angled walls on the east and west sides will meet at the peak and count as the ceiling, and will be painted Skylight, a white with a blue tinge, the same as the rest of the ceilings in the house. The floor will be Cornforth White, a white with a warm gray undertone. All in all, pretty much a white-on-white colour scheme with a blue vibe. Bright but soft. Below are all of the colours together. They look quite dark here but trust me, they will be very bright when in the room.

Trim: Blackened

 Walls: Lamp Room Gray

 Ceiling: Skylight

 Floor: Cornforth White

The back bedroom is where I'm going to get bold with colour. I want that room to be a little dark and moody. The trim, "ceiling" and floor will be the same as the front bedroom, but the walls will  be Olive, my favourite colour. The Cornforth White floor will bounce light onto the walls, and the room will seem like its lit from below. Below are the colours together.

Trim: Blackened

Walls: Olive

Ceiling: Skylight

Floor: Cornforth White

Last, the stair hall. It is a dark space with no windows other than the red glass window to the back bedroom, so I wanted something bright here. I really like the colour of the Dining Room, and we have a lot of that paint left over from when I painted it last March, so I want to paint the walls the same colour, Farrow's Cream. You can see in the photo below from last July how light and airy it is.

 Walls: Farrow's Cream

The trim and stair risers will be Blackened...

...the ceiling will be Skylight...





 ...and the stair treads and floor at the top will be Railings. This is the same colour as the stair treads at the stairs to the basement, with Blackened risers. The contrasting colours makes seeing the stairs much easier to see and safer. Below is a photo of the stairs to the basement to show you what I mean.

So thats pretty much it for the second floor. There are other projects with higher priority, and I don't see this getting done this year, but hopefully next summer I'll be painting these rooms.

PS: the new trim, described in Project #1, arrived at the house today. Once thats up, the main floor will be a lot closer to being done.

Project # 4: Screen Doors

I can make the simplest task complicated. Just ask Mom and Dad.

 

The house needs screen doors on all three exterior doorways, for the typical obvious reasons: to let in more light, for better air circulation, and to protect the main doors.

 

Sounds simple. Go to Home Depot and pick up some doors. I don't think so.

 

Carter's brother Kerras, who built the bathroom vanity and supplied reclaimed hardwood and hardware, and many doors including the Gothic Revival exterior door at the back, also makes custom screen doors.

This door is Gothic Revival because of the chamfered, or angled edges of the panels, and the grain is painted on. Also the proportion and size, and distribution of panels with the bottom two being very short denotes its age. My best guess is that this door dates from the 1860s or maybe a little later. By the way, it was wearing fast, so after I left last year Dad gave it a light sanding and put a sealer on it to slow down the weathering of the faux grain finish.

 

Anyway, back to Kerras. This is his website, updated since I last saw it. Very nice!

http://www.birchgate.ca/kerras/about.html

 

He makes custom gingerbread trim and screen doors, and does fantastic work, so he is the natural choice to make my doors. Incidentally, he makes them all with removable glass panels so they double as storm doors in the winter.

 

The patterns for screen doors that Kerras uses were designed by Carter, based on traditional PEI screen doors.

I talked to Kerras last year about the doors and he said the next time I visit he and I can custom design the doors. All three doors are different sizes and of different character, so I want all three doors to be different from each other.  The screen door at the back should have some Gothic details to compliment that door, probably with four panels, the bottom two being very short.

 

The front door had a screen door on it until we gutted the place. I had repaired it in the late 90s but by 2010 it fell apart again, so it went in the dumpster. We saved the bell on it though and Dad reinstalled it in the main door.

1999

2010

I think I want something formal here with solid panels at the bottom, similar to the original. For the kitchen, it had a simple square framed door that got a lot of use. I remember the old dark green one that used to be there, and it fell apart one year, so Jim Burtt built a new one that lasted a long time. It fell apart though as well after many years of heavy use.

 old green door in 1988

 Jim's replacement as it looked 1994

 

From this early photo you can see the first screen door on the kitchen, before there was a kitchen porch, and it had 5 panels. I might opt for something like this on the porch.



They will all be painted Farrow and Ball Carriage Green, to match the colour of the exterior doors and window sashes. They will have traditional hardware, with a coil that will make them squeak and slam like the old kitchen screen door used to.

So when I'm home I'll take Mom and Dad up to Kerras' and we can get this project started.

Project # 3: Say Good-Bye to the Garage

The poor old garage is on its last. The east side, facing the new driveway, blew out during a wind storm about a month ago. Then just last week there was another storm with high winds and when it was over, the garage was leaning toward the road. Dad gave the corner posts a shake and it still seems solid enough, but it truly is a hazard now. Dad is talking to some people around who might be interested in showing up with a chainsaw, take it down in chunks, and take it away for firewood. Over time Dad has slowly emptied it out and I don't think there is anything in it anymore. Every time we step inside now we fall through the floor. All of the wood is mush. The roof fell in about 1998, and I always meant to get around to fixing it. In fact, Dad and I had it all planned out, but back then I didn't have the money, so it sat. We still used it for years, with stuff stacked up inside under tarps.

 

Not a whole lot of attention was ever paid to it. We kept the mowers in it, and the firewood. I don't know the specific history of the building. I suppose George built it. The map of the land below from 1916 shows it wasn't there yet, but the kitchen was. There were also three out buildings down the field.  

It was there in 1958, as shown in the above photo with Winnie, Lois and Ralta. It had steps then!

It obviously didn't change much. Seems it always had that square opening in the back. This is Lois, Ralta, and Sandy. Sandy sent me these photos a few years ago.

 

It must have been built to hold a very small carriage? Its only 14 feet wide and 16 feet long. I suppose a Model T might have squeezed into it. I have no idea though if George ever had a car.  

Sandy sent me these photos a few years ago as well. These were taken July 31, 1988. That's Neil and Carol, Jim, Dad and Mom, Grammy, Sandy, Winnie and Christopher, with Arthur in the front.

This was the same day. Viola and Dolly (Wood, not my friend Dolly!)

 2008

 2009

 Dad and Jim, 1995

 This is what the inside looked like after the roof fell in, and we were still using it.

 Munn 200. I put the family chart up on the back wall.

 I took this November 1, 1994

 2008

 Dad's old truck, whick also fell apart and had to be put down.

 Surrounded by chaos October 2010

Landscaping around it 2012

 

James, Sarah and I stacked the chimney bricks up against it, and I later used them to build the walks.

 

The north side of it blew out in a wind storm in 2011. My contractor told me about it as he was working on the house over that winter, and he put the plywood up to keep it together. At that time it was still full of stuff.

The garage has always been an important part of staying there, until the house work started. It was just there, never paid much attention to. Eventually, once the house is done, I will build a new 2 car garage, idealy with a loft, roughly in the same place, with the doors facing the new driveway. I'm getting a little misty-eyed about it now. I suppose it will be gone by the time I get there in August. I sure hope so!