How To Find Brick From The Early 1900's

How to sell our car?  Craigslist.  How to sell outgrown baby stuff?  Craigslist.  How to purge the house of still-pretty-useful-items-that-are-worth-something before we renovate?  Craigslist.  Where will we live during the renovation?  Craigslist. 

Where can I find red-orange clay bricks from the early 1900's?  Craigslist!!!

Remember when we had that great idea about exposing the brick in our sink room?  Still a crowdpleaser even today.  Let's have a quick look back at that winner project.

Sink Room off Master

Before Exposed

Surprise!

Yup, that's the pipe.  Totally surprised us.  We think it carried kerosene to a light fixture back in the 1906 day.

Feature Wall

We decided to do nothing with it.  So it stayed in the wall, carefully balancing chunks of mortar.  

Then we decided to renovate.

Here's that wall through the master. 

Moving Month

Ignore everything everywhere.  And here's that wall after everything was demo'd. 

Uh Oh

EEK!  The pipe is gone.  I even didn't think about it before I saw the hole...but of course that pipe would be removed.  EVERY OLD THING was being removed!!!

Now what do we do?  We turn to my contractor's uncle, of course, who is a mason.  Except my contractor had his own idea of replacement bricks. 

Top: His Brick/Bottom: My Old Brick

This was it.  His closest match.  He knew people who knew people but couldn't source original clay brick.  You can't buy this stuff at the corner store.  Actually, any store.

So I took it on.  I googled for old bricks.  Surely there's something available somewhere.  What should pop up but an ad on Craigslist for "Reclaimed Bricks from 1910".  Four years off?  Bingo!

Cut to me two days later in the backyard of a house on the East side of the city.  Digging through a huge pile of clay bricks full of mortar, dirt and bugs.  Pulling out ones that looked like they matched my chip.

Chip Is On The Bottom Left Brick

They were from a chimney, so many were burnt black.  In a pinch, that could be sanded off easily, but I found enough good ones to take home and test.

And guess what???....

In Place

   
IT WORKED!

Other Angle

The mason, who speaks very little English, said, "Same bricks.  Same factory.  You buy 649!"  I couldn't believe it either.  Total luck.

A few days later, they were in.

After

A little bleached mortar did the trick.  It will never be invisible, but it looks amazing.  Even better in person.  Especially when I think about what it could have been had my friend Craigslist not come through. 

Here's the before and after. 

Not bad at all.  Once the settee is back in place, you might never even notice that Craigslist score.

Perfect!

Framing The 2nd Floor

We passed the framing inspection.  High five. 

Time to check out the 2nd floor!

Before I continue, I have to say this.  I took a million pictures of the framing.  It's sooo hard to capture it.  When I stand in the space I can see it.  Then I take a picture and it looks like a bunch of sticks everywhere. 

So...this 2nd floor tour will be a "before" and "now" of various angles of each room. 

Starting with the bathroom...

This guy is at the top of the main staircase.

Before

Inside Before

Pedestal sink, toilet and shower. 

Now

Inside Now

That's space for a tub under the window AND a shower to the right of the pony wall. 

!!!!!! 

Since we needed to demo the whole floor anyway, and reframe due to 100+ year old studs that crowned every which way, we decided to cheat the guest room out of 12" and give it to the bathroom for the tub/shower combo. 

See the recessed floor in the shower?  Make way for a trough drain.  The box in the wall of the shower?  Shampoo/Soap/Razor/whatever-you-need-inside-your-shower niche. 

Another angle:

Before

Now

That pedestal sink drove me crazy.  You couldn't put anything on the ledge next to the faucet or it would fall in the bowl immediately.  Now we'll have a 5 foot long vanity with lots of storage and one centered sink.  That means counter space. 

The box on the wall is a niche - picture a long narrow mirror running across the wall above the vanity with that left section opening like a medicine cabinet.  Yup - we're loving the niches.  

Moving on to the guest bedroom that we cheated...

Before

Now

I admit...it being tinier than the tiny room it already was makes me a little bit nervous.  But still being able to fit a full sized bed (with the head on that wall with outlets) means I'm ok with it.  

Let's see the boys' room...

Before

Now

...so yeah, we cheated a few inches out of this room, too. 

When we shortened the guest room along the bathroom wall, we widened it along the closet wall that's shared with the boys' room.  It wasn't much at all - maybe 6 inches?  But it made sense from the point of view that neither room felt way too small to function as a bedroom. 

I'm good with it.  And the boys won't even notice...!

On to the master...

Before: Entry to Master & Sink Room

Now

Before, we only had the bay window in our room.  The other window was in the "sink room".  You know, that room with just a sink?  So we decided to remove the wall and door between the two.  Now we get all. that. light. !!!!

Before: Opposite View of the Sink Room

Now

Oh my, that ugly little vanity and mirror is a thing of the past!  A distant memory!  How excited am I...!?!? 

And since we're reframing everything, the plumbing will fit completely into the wall.  No vent bump out anymore.  It's the little things. 

That's it for the 2nd floor.  Two rooms merged into one, two other rooms slightly smaller and one room bigger.  Hooray for reframing. 

If you want to see a few more sticks, here are pictures of the master if you stand in one spot and keep turning to your right.  Because the new master was two separate rooms, I don't have 'befores'.  Don't get dizzy.

Sink on left/Closet on right

Closet on left/Headboard straight ahead

Bed on left/Bay Window on right

Get ready - we're gonna trick out that bay window.  It's amazing what you can do when you get back to the bare bones....! 

Fun With Framing The First Floor

The past week in a nutshell:  Because of the steel issues we are two weeks behind.  The team is working double time to make it up.  I blinked and the house is framed. 

Yes!  Framed!!!

Warning: lots of pictures in this post.

Where to begin?  How about when you walk in the house. 

Welcome!

I know, that doesn't look like much.  But turn around. 

Entryway

It's an entryway closet!  Organization will be mine. 

We used to have a little "mudroom" which was similar to this construct.  We're keeping with that same idea because it's perfect for the layout of our home.  But we decided to make the closet longer than the old wall and only have the main front door instead of an inside door, too.

Now look to the left into the livingroom.

Niches in the Living Room

If there's anything this house will have a lot of, it's niches.  We are using every square inch!  The lower niche is for a recessed TV.  The upper is a design element.

Continue looking to your left.

Dining Area

This is the space formerly known as the dining room and staying a dining room. 

Look further to your left to the back wall.

Kitchen

The kitchen wall will be here.  The first appliance to the right of the slider will be the fridge that I'm sooooo excited to fill. 

Walk further into the space and you'll see this.

Back Wall

The powder room and pantry have been framed!!!

Powder Room

This is the best picture I could get of the powder room.  It is sooooo perfectly tiny.  The entrance is opposite the basement steps, so it will be out of the way.  We're putting an 8 foot door in the powder room because...

Three Openings

...it will mirror the 8 foot heights of the 2 shelving towers and pantry entrance.  See the headers?  Those will support a big, long barn door rail.  The door will be 36" wide to exactly cover either the pantry doorway, middle shelving tower or outer shelving tower.  I can finally picture it!!

Pantry

The pantry is teeny tiny, too.  Small enough for one person to fit.  Big enough to hide all my kitchen stuff!!!

Inside the Pantry

That beautiful tubing in there is the water and drain connections for a small bar sink in my precious pantry.  The running joke is that Steve and the boys will be enjoying the big, bright open main floor while I'll be hanging out in that 4'x4' pantry that I'm so in love with. 

Sad cause it'll probably be true. :)

Now turn to the left again.

Adios Staircase

Yup, kiss it goodbye.  We initially intended to keep the staircase.  But as the house was being stripped to its bones and leveled, the staircase post, steps and wall beneath it were becoming noticeably out.  Like waaaaay out.  Looking really bad out. 

So we made the decision to shed a tear and say adios.  I was upset at first, but now I'm excited.  Planning a new staircase means lots of cool ideas being considered.  I can't wait to see where it nets out!

So that's it for the framing of the 1st floor.  How about some fun before and afters?

Entry Before

Entry After

Ok, it's not really after, but kinda after. 

From the LR Before

From the LR After

After the demo and framing, anyway. 

From the Back of the House Before

From the Back of the House after

I'm still amazed when I walk in the front door.  I'm loving every minute of this.  Thank goodness we left the 3rd floor as is so I'll have something to do when we move back in!!

Doin' The Deck....Again

It wasn't a waste to do it the first time.  We knew it wasn't going to last long.  What we didn't know is that we'd be replacing the whole thing earlier than we thought. 

That's kinda the way it is with a ball of string...where does it end?

Ours ends in the backyard. 

Last Spring

This is a lovely Spring day last year right after we got the deck painted.  It was in such bad shape, we hired a college team to give it a new coat of color.  Definitely a band-aid.

This Spring

Then we decided to renovate and put in a slider.  We centered it on the kitchen inside, not the deck outside.  See how this is the beginning of the end for this guy?

Since the shed was a total dilapidated eyesore, we got rid of him, too.

Now you see it:

Now you don't:

 It opens up a ton of room beside the slider where we intend to put the BBQ. 

Mmm hmm, that's the slider....!!!!!

From the Outside

I'm totally in love. 

A few things to mention here.  Snaking eavestrough will be gone.  Upside down backwards "L" bar that carried new electrical to old upstairs bathroom so they didn't have to go through the walls will be gone.  And big square AC unit to the bottom left of the slider will be....gone! 

Yup, we're side mounting it.  Another job creep, but this one's worth it.  For function as much as noise factor.  And having an HVAC guy on site who's friends with your contractor makes it even more worth it.

Black & White

I'm disappointed in the contrast between the white upper windows and the black slider.  I didn't think it would be so apparent.  This one's on me because I coordinated the windows myself.

I admit, talk of painting the window exteriors black did come up.  We'll see how the job creep goes.  And how much it ends up bothering my better half.  He's the gatekeeper ;)

For now, I'm enjoying dreaming up a new deck.  Shallower but wider is where I think we're leaning.

Sectional, Coffee Table & BBQ?

I have time to sit on this one.  Back to decision making on the inside!!!