Need A New Project?

Are you bored with your current project?

Do you frequent houseblogs.net but, have no project of your own?

Do you have money burning a hole in your pocket?

Are you just itching to move to west Tennessee? (Admit it, you are!)

Have you ever wanted to live in a church?

Even though I am perfectly happy with our stonehouse, I still obsessively browse the real estate listings. Maybe I am just nosy (I am.) Or maybe we are part gypsy. Anyway, I came across this little gem a couple of weeks ago. Of course, we had to go look at it.








The front of the church (bell tower and sanctuary) was built in the 1890's and the back in the 1930's. I can't remember the square footage. We'll just say it's HUGE. Of course, our brains were spinning--What can we do with this big ol church!? What can we do with this big ol church!? What can we do with this big ol church!? What can we do with this big ol church!? I think our answer was um..........nothing. So if anybody out there needs a big ol church, here are some details:

You enter through the bell tower to the sanctuary. The sanctuary has all of the pews (probably 50 or 60) and the pipe organ enclosure. The congregation took the organ with them. At the back of the sanctuary, you enter the 1930's three story addition. The lowest floor of the addition has a full kitchen and a huge dining room and all (three I think) of the heating and air units. The middle and top floors each have four rooms and a bathroom. There is a courtyard on the side of the church enclosed with an iron fence. At the back of the church there is a nice sized yard, and another 1930's/40's decoish building (probably 1500 sqf) that the church used as there office. The church is located on the main downtown street next to the old plaza movie theatre. The church is not in the town that we live in, but the next town over maybe 10 or 12 thousand people.
Price:$100,000 But I think they would take less. See a lot more inside and outside pictures here.

So, does anyone need a new project?

to fix the lop-sidedness

Long time no blog.

So, we have been in the stonehouse for about a year now, and the room that disgusts us most, is the kitchen. I hate our kitchen. I loathe our kitchen. I despise our kitchen. Did I mention that I hate our kitchen? Every room in the house makes me happy except the kitchen. Have you ever gone somewhere or seen something, that just gives you that icky kind of sick feeling, like, when you realize they tore down the victorian
down the street (with no notice) because she was "too far gone" and you KNOW she could have been saved. That's kind of the feeling I get in the kitchen. It's just not right. We have been back and forth on what to do with it about 149 times. Do we wait until we can do it right, or do we do cosmetic stuff to make it more pleasant? I am pretty sure we are never going to be able to afford a full gut and do over, so I think we have come up with a pretty good compromise. The layout of the kitchen is pretty bad. Everything but the fridge is in an L shape on one side of the kitchen, and the fridge is on the other side feeling lonely. This leaves the kitchen feeling pretty lop sided. So to remedy the lop-sidedness, I want to flip the stove and fridge positions, and add cabinets to both sides of the stove on the old fridge wall. Oh, on the old fridge wall, there is also a pantry kinda just sticking out, so, the stove and cabinets will give the pantry more of a cohesive feeling. Then, to remedy the dance floor in the middle of the kitchen we're going to do a work table. Then, of course, paint and add trim to the cabinets, paint walls, add crown, lighting, flooring, and all that cosmetic type stuff. So if none of this makes since... see layout mock ups and photos here.

This weekends project

We began our bedroom "makeover" this weekend. Our bedroom is the room in the house that needed the least work so we figured we would get it out of the way. We had three objectives. 1. Paint walls. 2. Pull up carpet. 3. Paint Trim. #1 Check #2 Check. We were prepping the trim at one of the windows for paint hubby noticed the plaster was unusually bumpy around the apron. So he starts pokin on it its not plaster or even joint compound its caulk. somebody filled in two nice sized holes on each side of the apron/sill with caulk. BACKSTORY: Since are house was terribly neglected by the previous inhabitants, and then bought by an investor, then sold to us----we never know who to curse when we find silly/stupid/lazy/ignorant issues. So we just curse them all. So we start to pull out the caulk patch, to patch it right and we notice that the plaster under the window seems pretty loose. Well frankly its not attached to anything, the paint is the only thing holding it on. So we rip it out to find the lathe and framing under the window is pretty rotten. (from what we understand previous inhabitants did not realize it is not supposed to rain inside when it is raining outside.) So we ripped out all the rotten stuff and reframed with new wood. And patched with drywall. So we have not gotten to step #3 yet but that's ok, our window won't cave in, in middle of the night, either. And regarding the floors, when we pulled up the carpet, the floors look like the do in the rest of the house ( bad) but there are no huge holes or anything so that's good I guess. BUT the part of floor in the closet gives us hope of what they can look like...um awesome. It's pretty cool to be able to see a little three square foot piece of the past shining up at is in all its amber glory. So anyway I will post pictures when the room is officially done.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas

 

Missing Crown Molding

There is no original crown molding in our house, because all of the ceilings in our house have been repaired/replaced by someone at some time. We don't know much beyond that. However, the hallway does give us some clues as to what it may have looked like. The hall is the only room that has not been drywalled, and still has awesome textured plaster. At the top of the walls and below the replacement crown you can see how wide the crown used to be, and that there were some sort of corner detailing at every inside and outside corner. That brings me to the question. Can anybody out there give me some clues on what these corner pieces may have looked like, and, where/how I might go about finding/building replacements. And what is the technical name if there is one for the corner pieces. I have looked at alot of molding/millwork sites and so far can't find anything that looks right. If anyone out there has molding with this sort of corner detailing I would love to see pictures. Thanks in advance.

Early New Years Resolution

Well, I am a total slacker when it comes to our house blog. I haven't posted anything since April. The main reason for not posting is, well, there is not much to talk about. We are sort of lucky that when we bought the house there was nothing that HAD to be done to make it livable. But having said that, after being in the house for 9 months, I have realized that since nothing HAS to be done, it is easy not to do the things that SHOULD be done. Although our house has not been remuddled to death, there are many things that po's have done, that need to be undone. So not only have I become a slacker in regards to this blog, but in regards to the house as well, and this house deserves better. So my first new years resolution is to give our house the attention she deserves.

Junkin' juke

So we went for a drive through old neighborhoods a couple weeks ago-of course keeping our eyes out for "junk" on the curb. And there it was, the most marvelous old juke box just hanging out on the side of the road. But as luck would have it, we had decided to take the car that day instead of the truck. Comfort Schmomfort! We were probably 40 miles from home, so we couldn't just go grab the truck, and this thing weighed as much as an ox, so even if we had the truck, I don't think we could have gotten it in there. So there she laid and stayed.

She's just sitting there. So sad!



But some of her parts were scattered amongst the same junk pile, so we gathered them up and brought them home. I cleaned this piece up, and it is on our mantle now.



I have no idea what we are going to do with this piece but we sure weren't going to leave it there
.


We also got an old light fixture from the pile. Every thing in the pile looked as if it had come out of a shed or basement-most looked to have water damage. It is so sad that someone had this tucked away somewhere and let it go to waste. Oh well no use crying over spilt milk or in this case, water damaged, torn apart, heavy as an ox, juke boxes on the side of the road.

Where does the time go......

Oh my word, it has been a month and a half since I posted anything on our blog. SHAMEFUL! Here is a run down on things we have been working on:

Painting:
-Exterior trim around windows (Grisaille Grey)
-Exterior doors (Orchid Night)
-Bathroom (Asparagus)
-Below the chair rail in dining room (Bordeaux)
**still haven't found the right golden yellow for above the chair rail
-Interior trim (white)

Outside:
-Planted ferns and impatiens
-Installed arbor at fence gate
-Rewired side porch light fixture
-Planted grass seed
-Started laying stone path from fence gate to side porch-- The stones were all over the yard, we are guessing that they were removed from whatever facade was/is under the gable part of the roof whenever the vinyl trim was installed.

Bathroom:
-We tore out the tri-fold imitation oak medicine cabinet (which of couse was covering the hole left from the original recessed medicine cabinet and hiding missing tiles ) We could not find a recessed cabinet that we liked and could afford, so we chose a surface mounted white cabinet from target..........yes target.(See it here) It helped that we had a $20 gift card from there left over from Christmas. Anyway back to the hole and missing tiles.
We had to frame in the hole and replace the tiles (waited for three weeks for the black mudcaps to come in) So, in short we now have a medicine cabinet that does not make us cringe.

-Installed sconces in the bathroom. Had to remove the imitation oak bare bulb vanity strip (what a beauty!) and rewire the switch (before doing the aforementioned framing) and ran wire for the sconces---which by the way also came from target (can be seen in the above link next to the cabinet) They were on clearance for $3.74 a pc. I LOVE DEALS.

-We are still working on the tiles. Most of the damaged tiles were easy to remove except the toothbrush holder. They should make warships out of this thing. We have been chipping away at this thing for weeks. It won't budge. I am sure we can go get some sort of specialty tool to make it easier....but well you know.

Other than that we have been cleaning unpacking cleaning unpacking cleaning unpacking cleaning. Oh! and we sold our old house that had been under contract for nearly five months. But that is a whole 'nother can of worms. (2 words---FHA 203K)

Will post more and pictures soon....maybe it won't take 6 weeks next time.

Flaky floors

No Painting on Saturdays!

Well I suppose we can, but we better have planned it out during the week. Let me back up--we moved here (pop. 7500) from there (pop. 100,000). So far the perks of living in a small town far outweigh the cons. One of the cons being there are no paint stores open on Saturday.

We had decide on two colors for the dining room. A golden browny yellowy kind of color for above the chair rail and a reddish winey sort of color below the rail. So we head out Saturday to get some quarts to test drive the colors. We head to the store we had gotten the color chips from---CLOSED. Store # 2----CLOSED. Drive 7 miles to the next small town (pop. 9500) Store # 3----CLOSED. We then realize, we are going to have to go to the City.

It is amazing how quickly we have become small town snobs. The city is really not that far, and we both commute there for work. So why is it such a big deal today? Maybe we are just weird. I don't know too many couples in there twenties that would purposefully move to a tiny town and then dread going somewhere that not only are paint stores open on Saturday but, stores are open after dark.

Anyway, we get there, order up some paint-we had to do the color matching thing because the sample chips did not come from there. We get home and I am about to explode in excitement to get some color on the walls. We threw a little red on---looks pretty good. Then the yellow......... It is the most hideous thing I have ever seen! It looks like a school bus massacre. Good thing we only got a quart. So we will have to get the yellow remixed. But not today...it is Sunday...and I don't want to go to the City.

Not a craftsman, but didn't destroy it

The contractor that sold us the house was not what you would call a craftsman, and he probably wasn't all that concerned about keeping the integrity of the house. The vinyl trim on the exterior, and the new solid pane windows are probably good from a maintenace and energy standpoint, but they do make it hard to tell what the house used to look like. There are very cheap and well, frankly ugly light fixtures in every room of the house. The kitchen "renovation" does not match the character of the house(cheap oak veneer cabinets, beige laminate counters roll vinyl floors). Someone at some time turned the breakfast nook into a laundry room. BUT we of course new all of that going in, and we do have things to be thankfull for. The bathroom still has the hexagon floor tiles, and black and white wall tiles. All of the doors and door hardware are original, the wide base molding is still here (don't know where the crown molding went), the hall still has the textured plaster walls, and the floors are in fairly good shape (only two rooms left with carpet).

House Background

We don't know too much about our house's history yet. It is listed in the tax rolls as being built in 1936. We have learned from neighbors that the last residents lived here for about 20 years. They lost the house, and a contractor bought the house in mid 2004. The contractor did quite a bit of work (new roof, windows, kitchen) and listed the house for sale in late 2004, when we bought it.