A Texas Cottage Garden Comes to Life!

Posted on April 13, 2018April 14, 2018 by nancychapmon

Ah…..yes, some of the things that dreams are made of….

or, at least MY dreams of a luscious landscape around my cottage, a place to ponder, reflect & just be happy to be alive.

It’s finally springtime in Texas! (that time of year when all Texans rush to the garden centers, eager to load up on flowers, bushes, soil, seeds, tomatoes, birdbaths….because it’s so pleasant outside and we simply cannot retain the knowledge that our precious little plants will be withering in the hot Texas sun in July) Oh sorry, I digress! Well, I’m just itching to be right there with the rest of you, but I’ve been held back a bit…

Why, you ask? Well, remember that Jose is not available to paint my bricks, trim, etc until JUNE! I cannot plant any perimeter gardens until the painting is complete; I also must wait for my privacy fence to be replaced before I can plant anything next to the fenceline! UGH!!!

So far, I have visited the garden center for large bags of fertilizer & ant killer; I wouldn’t usually do that, but my entire side yard filled up with little mounds at the first sign of warmer weather, and there were so many they were actually continuous! Fire ants are not my friend, so the lawn guys spread that and weed ‘n feed this week. I did buy a cute hose-holder and a nice sturdy water hose; the sprinkler system in my yard is just as ‘vintage’ as the house, so it’ll need an overhaul too!

I also got a good start on my raised herb garden….and I’m sprouting dill, cilantro and basil to be planted soon…

So, in my frustration over having to WAIT for my hydrangeas, hostas, caladiums and the sort….I ran across a great article on Houzz about growing trees in containers! Now I’m excited all over again….here it is for you to read as well:

10 Top Trees to Grow in Containers

It makes perfect sense to put my yearnings to work on container gardening for now! I absolutely love the idea of growing a dwarf Japanese Maple in a huge pot, as a way to further diguise my huge AC unit….

The pot can sit between the steps and the garden gate we’ll be securing around two sides of the unit; the pot will be a nice filler to pull your eye away from steel, and the shape & color of the foliage will fill that gap nicely! (how I wish I’d photographed this, and all of my azaleas before they finished blooming!

If you photographed yours, please share them with us in the comments below! Azaleas are nature’s works of art, to be enjoyed briefly and shared…

OK, so while I’m dreaming, just look at this picture: I think I have a real shot at making my gazebo look like this one day!

(I have already planted hollyhocks bulbs around it, but not too close since it has to be painted also….see what an optimist I am?!)

My friends, I really cannot complain about having to wait for some things….each afternoon when I arrive home, I take Kobe out to run around a bit while I relax on my new covered patio, enjoying the breeze and the tinkling of the windchimes, with sounds of kids playing basketball down the street, and distant sounds of the families, kids and coaches gathering for the games we’ll pass on our evening walk…T-ball, softball, baseball, track, this time of the year….and I smile, remembering how far we’ve come in transforming this cottage that has so graciously become my home this year….and I am filled with gratitude for it all….yes, even the waiting.

Design Tips Included!, Finishing!, Nancy's Kilgore Cottage

Turquoise Front Doors…& more

Posted on March 4, 2018March 4, 2018 by nancychapmon

For as long as I can remember, turquoise has been my favorite color!

(What’s yours?)

Just for fun, I Googled the word “turquoise”, and look what I found! I love the map of ‘usage’, showing the use of the word turquoise first peaked around the time I was born…..maybe that’s why I love it!

tur·quoise

ˈtərˌk(w)oiz/

noun

noun: turquoise

1.

a greenish-blue color.

“the turquoise waters of the bay”
2.

a semiprecious stone, typically opaque and of a greenish-blue or sky-blue color, consisting of a hydrated hydroxyl phosphate of copper and aluminum.

Origin

late Middle English: from Old French turqueise ‘Turkish (stone).’

Use over time for: turquoise

OK, so anyway it’s defined as “a greenish blue color”

Really?? To the kid (yours truly) who knew the name of each color in a box of 128 Crayolas, that just isn’t quite good enough! After all, couldn’t you also define aqua or teal the same way?

Yes! And I’ve been asked that more than a few times in all the years I’ve made color my vocation, as well as avocation!

OK, in a moment I’ll show you why this is coming up today, but just let me say that color IS somewhat subjective, especially with tertiary colors (comprised of a primary + secondary color, ie blue-green). In the 80’s TEAL was all the rage ; that teal tended to have more of a green cast than blue. Aqua has long been a favorite of mine too, but it tends to have more of a \ blue cast. Turquoise, at least to me, is the perfect blend of blue and green! It can be intense and bright, or soft and light…..that’s what makes it fun to decorate with: the fun is in LAYERING more than one shade and varying the texture…but I’m getting ahead of myself.

Just a quick note about this sample of TEAL fabric, above: when I was working with couples to decorate their homes, my presentations often included samples of fabric, wallpaper, paint etc. Teal WAS popular then, of course, so it was part of many color schemes (and I’ve always used shades of blue-green) But to a person, EVERY SINGLE time I showed a sample that included teal, the female would call it BLUE & the male would call it GREEN! It NEVER failed! (Now keep in mind that color rendition online depends greatly on your screen resolution, so we may not ALL be seeing the same thing!)

Besides the screen resolution, and the fact that color is subjective and teal has both blue and green tones…..there is the fact that most men are colorblind, at least to some degree:

“Men are much more likely to be colorblind than women because the genes responsible for the most common, inherited color blindness are on the X chromosome. Males only have one X chromosome, while females have two X chromosomes.”

Ahhhhhh….back to what brought me here today….but first, this wonderful photograph by Douglas Fisher just makes me so happy! Isn’t it delightful?!

So…yesterday was the first sunny Saturday we’ve had in East Texas in such a long time, & I happened not to be showing any houses either; on top of that the temperature was in the 70’s! Not only is that just an ahhhhh moment all by itself, it is also perfect painting weather! As you know, I’m waiting for the perfect convergence of weather conditions & contractor timing to get the exterior of my cottage painted! (I’d like to say I’m PATIENTLY waiting, but that might be a stretch…!) So yesterday I cheered myself up by painting 3 of my exterior doors – yay! I don’t want to paint the 2 that face the street until the brick is the right color, but the doors I use daily – to my kitchen, master bedroom, and laundry room are mainly just seen by me; I decided they were ready for color!

Now when I come home, I’ll be greeted by my lovely turquoise doors, and maybe that’ll help me wait for the white brick!

This is a color chip of Sherwin Williams Vintage Vessel, my exterior door choice from the beginning. For one thing, I bet you don’t think it looks very TURQUOISE here…..am I right?!

Here’s why: if the color chip itself looked like my desired door color, it would look awful actually painted ON the door! The science of WHY is more than we can go into here, but suffice it to say that the color is affected by everything around it, as well as the sheen, amount and quality of natural light it will be exposed to, and the surface it’s painted on. The funniest example of this principal is the wall colors we see used so often in kids’ rooms: you can tell when the parents let them pick out the color, & they picked one they just loved on the chip…..but painted on the walls it often looks like a giant popsicle! Even worse, when the parents choose a semi-gloss finish (for cleanability they say) the reflection magnifies the brightness!

Now, since I got the wild hair to paint on the weekend, I had this chip color-matched and mixed up in a Behr exterior latex at Home Depot. They did a fabulous job with the match; I couldn’t be happier with the color! I chose an eggshell finish, more in keeping with the cottage style I’m creating; keep in mind that while semi-gloss is more authentic to the 50’s era turquoise so many love, the reflection would have changed the color significantly in an exterior application where sunlight is a huge factor. Also, I AM looking for subtlety…when the exterior is finished there will be quite a bit of white brick, and 5 exterior doors: if the shade and sheen of turquoise was too bright, the effect would be garish!

Ta-dah! See what you think:

I LOVE the subtle turquoise shade combined with the original vintage door! I’m only showing you the interior for now because I want to save the reveal with the white brick and gray shutters for when that project is completed!

When we do the exterior, we’ll move the full-glass-panel storm door from the front to this door; then you’ll have a beautiful view of the arched iron gate from the door.

So now you’ve seen one of my 3 new turquoise doors! I thought it might be fun to see a few of my favorite turquoise/aqua/teal pretties….the color is repeated throughout my interiors, in varying textures.

Backsplash: glass subway tile

Pottery, glass & metal; vintage & artisan-made

(those are old Fiesta plates; I can’t put them in the microwave!)

Cushy rocking chair

Sunny window seat

Chairs with teal velvet piping & pillows

Cozy seating…(and a favorite pottery bowl)

Favorite wood bowl

Favorite hand-made pottery vase bought in Italy (I love the one beside it too)

What is your favorite color to decorate with? I hope you’ll tell us in the comments below…in case you can’t tell, I love the subject of COLOR!

Thanks for helping me celebrate all things turquoise….

Have a wonderful early spring week….and remember, if you or someone you know needs to buy or sell a house, please consider calling on Blue Sky Group Realty to help!

Before & Afters!, Design Tips Included!, Finishing!, Nancy's Kilgore Cottage

Sneak Peeks Week!

Posted on November 20, 2017December 31, 2021 by nancychapmon

I’ve moved in to the cottage!

…and here I sit, among the barrage of boxes…

Seriously, this hasn’t been the smoothest move of my life, but that’s usually the case when DOWNSIZING is involved! I DO like “my stuff”……

(interesting side note….it’s not unusual for clients to come to me, planning to downsize….but I’d estimate that 90% of the time, they reject EVERY house we see that would fulfill those wishes….people (including yours truly) do NOT like to go backwards in most things in life, including square footage, storage & stuff!)

So, for the last 3 weeks our wonderful crew has been in a race to the finish, pending my moving day! They all worked so hard to get the messiest, ickiest, and stinkiest jobs handled before I had to spend the night here……and by stinkiest, I mean the oil-based paint we had to use on all the woodwork!

By way of explanation for those not ‘in the know’, the world of paint finishes is now blessed to have perfectly good water-based (latex or acrylic) finishes for wood; however, if one is painting OVER existing woodwork that was originally painted with oil-based paint, one must use oil-based paint again. (and many of us old-timers swear it’s a superior finish anyway) WHAT IF YOU DON’T?? Well, I can speak from first-house experience on that subject: back in the 80’s my young and energetic self painstakingly painted the kitchen cabinets in our first home a lovely white; since I had little children, I was concerned about the fumes (off-gassing) from oil -based paint, so I used the new latex enamel! Oh, I was so proud of myself….until the paint started peeling off in sheets a few months later.

So here’s the rule: you can paint over water-based paint with oil-based paint, but NEVER the reverse! You might say that ” oil trumps water” when it comes to paint.

OK, one more woodwork detail, then I’ll show you some pictures….I’m aware that’s why you’re still here! When we started this fixer upper, my wonderful carpenter/builder extraordinaire, Jose Chavarrio, quietly made the decision to save and reuse all of the original workwork, to the extent that was possible. Since we were doing such extensive work, that meant he had to REMOVE most of the base and facings (the crown had been sprayed along with the ceiling when some earlier remodeler decided that popcorn ceilings would be nice !) So he removed and stored trim….and later removed all the old nails in the trim. And when the day came to finally trim out the newly-remodeled rooms, he re-installled the old woodwork in all the main rooms, leaving new woodwork for the entirely new master bedroom only. What a heroic effort that was…..and the payoff is that most of my little cottage has original woodwork, recoated with fresh oil-based paint! (OK, just ONE MORE detail; for those inquiring minds in the crowd, we DID NOT remove the previously-popcorned crown mouldings….we simply installed a larger crown over them!)

So…disclaimers first! None of the pictures you’re about to see are true “after” pics! I am still solidly stuck in the unpacking phase. But little by little, the beauty of this cottage is being revealed, and I know many of you are eager to SEE! So that’s why I’m calling these “Sneak Peeks!” Just know you’ll see more completely finished-out rooms soon!

Many of you saw this on Facebook….it was night, I was too tired to unpack another box….and I just couldn’t resist! Behind those counter stools is a MOUNTAIN of UHaul and Home Depot boxes!

As a reminder, the chandelier was originally in the living room
What’s missing? The swinging old-door-from-Canton (had to move in the washer/dryer first)
I had just FINALLY removed the plastic covering from the quartz countertops for the first time minutes before…this lovely 7′ island had been a handy horizontal surface for tools, caulk, sandpaper, stray mouldings, etc….for weeks!
The flowers? YES, I DID move on my 60th birthday! Thanks, my friend!

And just a quick reminder of where this view started…

Here’s a current view of the hall bath…

And a reminder of what we started with…

I’m loving my new home office! And look! I haven’t even had time to mess up the desk yet!

(Something tells me Ballard Designs didn’t have a dog bed in mind for that particular cabinet, but Kobe claimed it long ago; he keeps watch while I work!)

A few scenes from the new Master Bath….

And once again, a reminder from whence it came:

The window was removed; the walk-in shower is now in that corner
The door was moved to the left a few feet; the tub-to-die-for now sits there
Everything….EVERYTHING else about this room….changed!

Now I want to share a detail that is hard to illustrate (due to the difficulty of photographing a light fixture while it’s ON!)

This hall light fixture is original to the house; we changed nothing about it, unless you want to count using LED bulbs so I never ever have to bother changing them:

When you look down the hall from the living room towards the master bedroom….

….you see a consistency of light…but it’s not until you enter the master bath that you see why…..I LOVE this new fixture mirroring the old!

OK, so…about that old blue door I love so so much….first, would you even believe me if I told you that I bought the interior paint WEEKS before I finally found “the door” to use between the master bath and bedroom?! It’s true! (I can hardly wait to show you the bedroom side of this door, and another synchronicity of design that was totally unplanned!)

So, here is the door in the form it came to us:

I would be embarrassed to say how much I pored and pondered over what to actually DO to clean and preserve this, as well as the 2 other old doors I bought for the house. My goal was to clean off the dirt, but preserve as much as possible of the peely-paint, patina, and patchiness of the old doors. After all, if I destroyed the character, what would be the point of using them in the first place? But most treatments would, indeed, destroy what I loved about these re-purposed beauties. Entirely true to my personality, I came up with the solution literally the night before the day I HAD to do something to the doors. (if any of my old teachers were reading this, they’d be seriously rolling their eyes right now; I have ALWAYS tackled important projects just prior to the deadline! )

Harsh detergents would wash off the paint; a wire brush or sandpaper would remove the crazing and certainly any about-to-peel patches; sandpaper would leave fine particles in the ridges created by old joints and slight peels; any ‘clear coat’ would yellow or buckle, and shine too much (even if matte finish).

So here are the 3 doors AFTER treatment (wish I’d thought to photograph the reverse sides too!) And here is what I did:

I brushed down each door, both sides, with a lint-free soft mop-like hand brush (think feather duster with fat dust-resistant soft fabric loops) That removed loose dust.

Then I gently washed each with a soft sponge and a solution of mild dish detergent in a bucket of water. I was super-pleased with how much dirt I was able to remove without harming the finishes!)

Next I used a soft white cloth to rub in a mixture of orange oil and beeswax; it was painstaking work, as I had to be sure every inch of each door was “nourished” with the mixture. The oil soaked into the dry, thirsty wood, then the soft beeswax sealed in the moisture. The difference was subtle, but certainly noticeable! There is a natural sheen now that the wood is nourished.

Now, the door in the middle is a little different. There is obviously much more peeling paint on this one; given the age, it is likely to be lead-based paint chipping off. I don’t have little ones toddling around, eager to eat cute little paint chips….but nonetheless I don’t want that door regularly ‘raining chips’. I removed all that were loose, but since this will be the sliding door on my pantry, it’s going to be moved daily. I am therefore going to spray a coat of clear matte sealer on this door. I was so opposed to this, but having faced the fact that more chips are inevitable, I have decided it’s the best coarse of action. To remind you, Jose is going to slice this door vertically, and hang ‘barn door’ style as pantry doors. That should happen this week, and I’ll spray the finish afterwards.

That brings me to the status of the project, which you may be wondering about: we are all weary of the work and in need of a break in the action! And now that I live here, I’m not crazy about having guys show up in the morning and throughout the day to “fix” something. So all but Jose are off to other projects for now; he is staying with me this week to finish up details on the inside, such as hanging the barn doors, hanging curtain rods, installing new door hardware & keying the locks alike, finishing up the shelves for the living room built-ins, and building the 2′ “box” for the base of the black bathroom cabinet. There are many little details he and I will handle this week…..then Jose, too, will move on to other projects for awhile.

It is now too cool and damp to paint the exterior brick and siding; this is so disappointing, as I’m eager to have it sporting it’s new white finish! But we really need a consistent week of warm, dry weather, and it’s just not predictably going to happen for awhile. So, we will regroup and attack the exterior of the house in February or March, including landscaping. The new garage door should be arriving any time now, so we’ll get that done, but otherwise we’re all ready for a renovation rest!

I’ll be back with more blog posts, though, as the interior gets photo-ready! There are so many details, how-to’s and hints I’d like to share with you, so keep watching for posts! In the meantime, please leave comments letting me know what type of posts/info/pictures you enjoy the most: I aim to please!

Now, as we all turn our thoughts to family, friends, food & fellowship, I want to thank each of you for sharing in my fixer upper journey; many of you have touched my life in ways you do not know….I wish for you all the happiness you can stand in the coming holidays & afterwards into 2018!

please don’t forget to leave me your comments below…and remember…….I’m never too busy to help your real estate referrals; I will treat each with the highest level of service!

Design Tips Included!, Finishing!

And Behind Door Number One…

Posted on October 7, 2017October 7, 2017 by nancychapmon

Happy October Friends!

No, this isn’t my porch, sadly….I’m just missing my chance to decorate for Fall since my cottage isn’t quite ready! So I’m dreaming of my own porch-scape while I update you on progress at my urban cottage project….sit back, relax with a cup of tea or java & enjoy!

I thought we’d talk about doors today; resolving my ‘door issues’ has been ongoing, and became downright crucial in the past week! Several posts ago I showed you the door I’d finally uncovered at Canton….the one that will be modified to a swinger between the kitchen and laundry. (we’ll review shortly)

What I never mentioned is my consternation over ALL of the doors in the house! I longed to keep the original doors, as much as possible. They are all solid wood, and I love the door hardware, which I’ve actually NEVER seen before! Unfortunately, along the way some of the original knobs had been changed or modified, making them either ugly or less-than functional…..and the doors themselves were not necessarily the best choice for each application. So, finding ways to reuse the original doors, while making sure I had a fit for each spot became a bit like working a puzzle!

Roger and I put our heads together last Saturday, & I’m pretty stoked about what we came up with! But before I reveal the re-use let me show you what the doors look like…..here you go!

I wish I’d snapped a better picture of the original doors BEFORE we demo’d….they’re all safely stacked away in the garage right now, waiting to get the “hang” of their new locations! 4 of these will remain where they always were: the laundry to hall spot, the hall bath, & the 2 bedrooms. But the others……???

Problem 1: Several 2′ doors have been removed from closets and the tiny bathroom: what can be done with them?

Problem 2: The newly-enlarged closet in Bedroom 2 is right behind the bedroom door; how can we fashion a closet door that won’t interfere with the hall door swing?

Problem 3: The master bedroom has 2 long rectangular closets; what can be done besides bi-fold doors that will open widely enough?

(Just ahead, you’ll see there are a couple of other “door problems” to be solved, but I’m dying to tell you what the Roger/Nancy brain-trust came up with for these!)

For each master closet we are going to use 2 of the 2′ doors……then mount them as a gliding double door….aka barn doors!

The 5th remaining 2′ door will be a single barn door on the closet in Bedroom 2, gliding back and forth BEHIND the door swing from the hall!

OK, I’m feeling like a door-nerd now….why is this so exciting to me?! I just love using something old in a new way – & now the house will have it’s original doors, 2017-style!

“THE MASTER BATH ~ BEDROOM DOOR”

This could be the name of my biggest door headache of the whole project! The drama was intense as I searched, surfed (online), shopped, scratched my head, and tried to find THE DOOR!

If you recall, the new master bath being carved out of an old bedroom required us to move the door (to the bedroom) a few feet; that sounds easy, but the OTHER side of that wall is brick! Remember, the new bedroom WAS the sunroom….and before that the sunroom WAS the back of the house. So…..brick. The day loomed when the brick saw would be rented, on the job-site, & ready for Jose to cut the opening for that door.

At first it seemed I had such a long time to find it, but as time wore on and I didn’t find THE DOOR, the clock was ticking on my quest! You see, I didn’t want that to be an ordinary new 6-panel door, and there wasn’t a suitable ‘original’ door to be used there…..besides that, I just dreamed up that it would be a cool, one-of-a-kind OLD door!

So……last weekend I knew I absolutely had to find THE DOOR or the hole would be cut this week for an ordinary one. There’s nothing like a deadline to motivate, right? My sweet daughter Kiki and her friend Jessica were visiting last Friday, so they stoically agreed to scour Canton with me……I know for sure we looked at 50 old doors, and it may well have been more. There were some we liked, but none that seemed quite right. The curse of a designer is the inability to “settle”……sigh.

The Saga Continues….& the Solution Appears!

Saturday afternoon Kristen (aka Kiki) and I decided to run out to Riverside Trade Days, which is held every other weekend in White Oak. We were just hoping one of the vendors out there would have something I’d fall in love with….unfortunately we got there at 4:30 and all the vendors were gone! If you haven’t been there before, the vendor’s booths are in storage-type units arranged in a U around a pavillion. We could see a stack of doors towards the back, and since nobody was there……yep! We decided to drive right on around the U to investigate! As we pulled around the U, we both SAW IT! We cried in unison, THAT’S THE DOOR! (dramatic, I know, but it’s true!

TADA! Don’t worry….a few of you won’t “see” it yet, but later you will! Everything about this old door is perfect for what I wanted, but never could’ve described.

There is no room to make this one a slider (which is preferable since you don’t have to mess with the original hardware), so Jose will have his work cut out for him, making it a workable door….but he can do it!

I’m sure I’ll clean it up a bit, but the patina is my favorite color, and the fading/crackling/wearing is what I love. I’m super happy to have found it JUST IN TIME! Today they cut the hole….with my blue door size!

There was one last door I’d searched for; the PANTRY DOOR. The pantry was moved from one side of the laundry room to the center of the long wall, and I wanted just one more cool door for it….I really wanted a screen door since I hadn’t found one earlier for the kitchen-to-laundry spot (but oh, I love the door I did find!) Another vendor at Riverside had left a screen door sitting out, and with it’s vertical lines, I thought it would work.

Sunday I set out once again to Riverside, thinking I would catch all the vendors before anyone else got there, to claim MY doors! This time it seemed I arrive too early….until Google helped me realize I had the entire wrong weekend totally! Sigh….I needed that blue door, at least! Fortunately a sweet couple was there, rearranging their booth; they directed to me to the manager, who called the 3 vendors involved (the stack was between 2 booths, so we didn’t know which one owned the blue door). 2 of them were kind enough to call me back and agree to meet me out there Sunday late afternoon – which I’m ever-so-grateful for! The screen door owners arrived first, but unfortunately I had to rule out that one; it was built the “old” way, and it would’ve had to be taken apart into many pieces in order to re-screen it, which was necessary. They were such good sports about it all, and joined me in meeting the other vendor, a friend of theirs…..and all of them now friends of mine, by the way! People are often so kind, don’t you think?

We unstacked all 7 of the doors so they could be seen; there was one I kept looking at, but didn’t know what I could use it for….after all, I only needed ONE more door, and it was to be a SCREEN door! But that raggedy old door was calling my name, and after awhile I could see that it would be the perfect pantry door after all!

See what you think:

Now here’s the framed pantry:

And here is the final cool solution of the day: I don’t want to disturb the hardware on this door, or risk messing up the wear pattern on the finish: the only way to make that work is to make it into a barn door…..but as you can see, there isn’t room! This pantry could ONLY acomodate sliders that opened to both sides…two small doors, basically. Now look at this again:

Do you see what I see?

Just in case that was a “no”, I’ll tell you: Jose is going to CUT the door in half vertically! The design is perfectly symmetrical, so it will not only work, but it will be amazing! It’ll also work better as a pantry, not having to open the door, and aesthetically, it’ll keep us from have 3 door swings right in a row…pretty cool!

As if that wasn’t design-fun enough, this pantry door will now line up perfectly with the kitchen swinging door, and you’ll see it through the upper glass panes….see?!

If you don’t happen to be a door-nerd like me, thanks for hanging in there…I think it’ll be fun for you to know the background when at last you get to see the finished product! So this concludes my door-themed blog post, & you’re all caught up on the swingers & the sliders!

PS. Since I was obviously ‘otherwise engaged’ last weekend, and didn’t get out a blog post….I’ll send you another one Sunday with colors & finishes….”if the Lord is willing & the creek don’t rise” (please tell me your grandmother also used to say that!)

See you Sunday – tomorrow (Saturday) I’m showing duplexes to an investor client, then meeting my cabinet delivery at the casa! Stay tuned!

Demo!, Nancy's Kilgore Cottage

Let the DEMO begin!

Posted on September 10, 2017September 17, 2017 by nancychapmon

It’s TIME! I’ve been plotting & planning, dreaming & scheming, adding & subtracting….and now FINALLY it’s time to tear into this house & MAKE IT HAPPEN!

or…time to let the house reveal its dirty secrets…

OK, so we KNEW the old ac was leaking….we KNEW the laundry room sub-floor was going to need to be replaced….

But it was still a bit of a shock to see just HOW rotten that floor was, as Jose peeled and scraped away the layers of time-worn flooring! Obviously the old vinyl fashion statements were all that was holding the laundry room floor together!

Just some housekeeping notes (pun intended): when I looked at the house, it was obvious the old HVAC unit housed just above that HOLE in the floor was leaking, though very slowly. The top layer in the laundry room was carpet, and it was damp around the HVAC closet, just a tad….UNTIL the day the appraiser came, that is! Most of you know that an appraiser visits the house about a week or so before the intended closing date…just to be sure it’s worth the sales price, right? Well, on that particular day, for unknown reasons, the AC had really leaked, and there was water on the floor. The appraiser wrote it up as a condition of sale that the AC be replaced to prevent further damage to the structure.

If you’re thinking “that sounds reasonable“…..sure, but he meant it had to be replaced BEFORE closing. BEFORE I owned the house. If you’re thinking “yay, then the seller had to replace it!“….no, that was not reasonable. Not only had they given me a ridiculously low price, but I had already planned to replace the unit first thing after closing. So….I was to replace the AC system in a house I didn’t own??? (shameless plug coming…)

This is when you need a good REALTOR on your side of the transaction! Happily, I had myself (warned you!) We were able to work out putting $$ into escrow with the lender, so that the AC could be replaced once I actually owned the house; this required the appraiser to go back out after replacement to sign off that it HAD in fact been done, and done satisfactorily. By the way, I now own a super duper efficient (and shiny and huge) new Carrier HVAC unit; the inside portion now resides in the attic…the outside unit will be ‘dressed up’ with the L-shaped iron gates I showed you earlier, hopefully covered with beautiful vines of some sort!

(yes, these are actually laying on the floor, and I rotated the pic to make them easier to see….so if you feel dizzy looking at the floor acting like a wall, just move on)

here’s a little tear-the-house-apart ditty for you

A few demo stories for your enjoyment…

The big blue dumpster was supposed to be delivered & plunked down in the backyard…oh so convenient for the whole sunroom being torn off….the guys were ready, with a section of fencing rolled up and the yard cleared…but the dumpster couldn’t back over the curb – ouch! So when I pulled up later that day I saw the BIG BLUE DUMPSTER right in the middle of the front yard; they had to take down the mailbox to get it in! Not only do we now have deep ruts….it’s already been dumped once and so now they’ve re-delivered and made NEW deep ruts….grrrr

Last Saturday I had real estate appointments stacked up all day, but I finished some showings that happened to be in Kilgore a little early…so I decided to drive by my house before heading back to Longview. I knew nobody was working that day, but something told me to go! As I turned the corner onto my street, I was stopped, as a man was standing in the road (curious yet?!)

(first you should realize I had been knowing I needed to find tree trimmers, as there were huge branches hanging over the garage and part of the house on the other side; they’d have to be removed before we could replace the roof….it was nagging at me, but hadn’t risen to the top of the priority list yet!)

Now, back to the man in the road….my brain took in, all at once, the fact that there was a crew trimming trees across the street from my house, there was a long trailer already piled high with huge branches, there was a truck with a tree trimming sign on the front door….and there was the owner, inexplicably standing in the road as if I wouldn’t run over him!

Feeling completely bemused that something I so needed was presenting itself so easily, I pulled over and asked the man (still in the road) if he was the owner. “Yes”, he said. “Will you come give me a price to trim my trees too?” I asked……well, within about 5 minutes I had a very good price quoted, and a promise to get it done the next day! Margarito Ramirez and his crew did an excellent job; now the large oaks are canopied nicely all around the house, and it happened while my whole crew was off!

Serendipity??

As it happens, right after I talked to Margarito, at a time I wasn’t supposed to be there, my contractor Roger pulled up, quickly followed by Don, the plumber! Don hadn’t looked at the job yet, so they just came by to go over things….at the absolute perfect time! Having worked with Don a few times before, I was able to go over the particulars of where everything would be…..and he had some great ideas! Since he’s already re-piping the whole system, we can add tankless water heating for just the difference in cost of the system and what the new tank would have cost. YES! This means NO water tank in the attic, and NO chance of running out of hot water ever! I’ve had tankless in my last 2 houses (one a retrofit like this) and admittedly, I’ve become spoiled! It bears noting, however, that a tankless system is more efficient, as you’re not paying to keep gallons of water hot until the moment you choose to use it, and it also cannot suddenly burst and flood your house!

This is the former kitchen sink area; to me it just said NASTY! To Don it said, “Let’s replace that galvanized pipe while we have the chance”. OK, sure…that’s not my thing…..as I always say, I don’t have to KNOW everything….I only have to know who does! Go Don the plumber!

So…I left to continue selling houses, excited about coming back on Sunday to test paint colors on the brick…I was determined to order the exterior paint during the Sherwin Williams Labor Day Paint Sale, you see! I had left home EARLY that morning to go by SW for a few sample jugs. The plan was to test Sunday…. and order paint Monday….

Mmmm hmmmm….yet another blue box greeted me as I pulled into the driveway on Sunday….planning to test paint, right? This was my FIRST CLUE that Don had turned off the water after I left Saturday. Always the optimist, I chose to celebrate PROGRESS rather than bemoaning the fact that I had no water to clean brushes between tests….

Well, I did test the paint around almost noon on Sunday…it was a beautiful day! Saturday when Margarito said they’d trim my trees the next day, I really wasn’t thinking about how much noise tree trimmers make! As I painted bricks against the ear-shattering noise of chainsaws and the front-end loader they used to carry the branches, I just hoped my soon-to-be neighbors would still be talking to me when I finally move in next month!

My last demo story of the day is really a design story….let’s call it the saga of the original wood floors not making the grade…and why:

From the beginning, I’ve known that a pier and beam house built in 1961 would have original wood floors under the plethora of flooring subsequent owners chose to “upgrade” it with.

If you wonder how I knew, just think about it; what else would they have used? Though plywood had been widely used in furniture & some construction for 40-ish years, there was a huge shortage of it at the time (the shortage was of the wood used to make plywood). Particle board had come along as an alternative, but wasn’t widely accepted as being stable, and really wasn’t, for a subfloor. This was long before OSB became a standard subfloor material, and just before slab construction began to be common….thus the need for the basic flooring to be used in a pier and beam house. Pine or oak planks were readily available and relatively inexpensive; if you’ve seen old-house wood floors, they were generally 2 3/4″ to maybe 3 1/4″ planks. It’s always good to find a corner of carpet or lineoleum to pull up and peek (and we did) but the chances of ‘original wood floors’ being underneath any other flooring in a 50’s-60’s era house are worth betting on.

OK, back to my flooring saga…I knew there could be some damage to the living room and hall floor due to the leaking AC unit, so had to consider keeping the floors COULD prove to be a problem until all the carpet was removed. Further, Jose had pried up bits of the kitchen vinyl earlier, and it appeared there was some type of plywood under it. That left me with non-matching floors in the kitchen and living room, and I was tearing out that wall! Ugh. Of course I knew the laundry room floor would have to be something different since it was clearly going to have to be replaced all the way down to the sub-floor.

We had determined the bedrooms all had wood floors under the carpet, so I definitely planned to leave those intact….2 of the bedrooms, that is. The 3rd was destined to become the master bath, so that floor would have to go. THIS IS WHAT I THOUGHT I KNEW BEFORE DEMO TOOK PLACE! Remember my subtitle at the beginning of this post?