Happy New Year from The House on the Isthmus!

My rather large, rather quirky family celebrates Christmas. Several of the "branches" of my dad's side generally gather in Florida with Grandma to enjoy Italian food as only she can prepare.

What that means for Isthmus House is that I'm not there and The Roommates are holding down the fort. Although this isn't entirely uncommon (see the beginning of this recent post for specifics on just how common it is), I joined the family from a business trip and haven't done anything around Isthmus House for about 2 weeks. Hard to believe.

I knew this was going to be the case for about the last month and took a while to consider if I just wanted to write a post in advance and plop it up here or come up with something better. Since it's the time of year for people I haven't seen in a while to ask me "what's up with the house?" and the New Year is in just a couple of days, it seemed most appropriate to do a quick year in review - but, not to disappoint, also let y'all know what's coming up.

Here's my top 10 favorite moments of 2013:

10. Closing on Isthmus House!

I got about 20 keys at closing - almost all of which were defunct the second I completed our new lock installation.

9. Putting a pry bar to the paneling the wood-paneled shower less than 48 hours after closing...

I just kind of kept going...

8. Finally getting the sub floor level in the downstairs bathroom...

After rather a lot of self-leveling concrete.
 

7. Building a wall from scratch for the first time!

I had a little (okay, a lot of) help from my dad...

6. Refinishing a clawfoot tub from start to finish was pretty awesome...

Repeatedly scrubbing a tub down in July without air conditioning isn't easy - but it is super worth it.

5. Pulling up carpet to find that there was nothing wrong with the floors underneath...

 

And not a tack holding the carpet to 'em!

4. The back yard becoming a yard...

As opposed to a jungle... nine hours later...

3. Finding old papers behind walls, baseboards and the living room paneling...

I wonder what else I'll find...

2. Ending the Saga...

I kind of love this bathroom...

And last but certainly not least:

1. Hanging my bedroom door!

Because there's nothing like a little peace after some work around Isthmus House!

Needless to say, it was an eventful year here at The House on the Isthmus and we have a lot to be thankful for beyond this list. Here are a couple of the things that are planned for early next year!

1. Finish exposing the brick in the upstairs foyer (the top's not even close to done).

2. Redo the kitchen!
3. And the upstairs bath - I'm only opening that ceiling once!
4. Remove the kitchen upstairs to make it a master bedroom.
5. Move The Roommate upstairs and restore her current bedroom to a den.

Of course, there are plenty of other things (the foyer, refinishing almost every wall and a lot of floors, etc.) to work on too. Can't wait to see where we are this time next year - better get started!

Happy New Year!

It was just covered up!

Let’s start this week with one simple fact: The House on the Isthmus is always surprising me which is saying rather a lot considering the number of surprises we’ve ushered in the last six months. Now that we’ve confirmed that, brace yourself for its latest surprise.

Now we can proceed with the story leading up to it.

My bedroom door installation was no easy feat. In fact, a detail I left out of the story from a couple of weeks ago was that I actually intended for it to swing left and into the corner of my bedroom. That ended up not being possible because the floors aren’t level and it would ground out when we went to open it.

To get started on the original plan, I had to remove the transition piece from between the hallway and my bedroom. That also meant removing just a little bit of the flooring in the hallway so that we could drop the door into its desired position.

The floating floor pretty much untouched

A couple of weeks ago, the City of Madison sent me a note letting me know that they took exception to my Bagster being in the front yard and that it had to go. Since it wasn’t full and I don’t want to upset the City, I decided to pull up the old flooring (since I now knew there was hardwood underneath it all) to fill the Bagster with whatever pieces I couldn’t salvage before the deadline for it to be taken away. When we hung the door, I pulled only a couple of tiles before moving on to other projects around the house.

It’s not like I expected to just pull up the existing floating cork floor (that I think was one of the lipstick on a pig projects completed right before I bought the house) and magically find nice hardwood floors. I hoped, maybe, but I didn’t see myself getting as lucky as in The NewRoommate’s room twice… and I didn’t.

Underneath the floating floor (so called because it’s not glued or nailed down to anything, it just locks to itself) was a floor pad (not interesting) and under that gem was linoleum tile. Not vinyl peel and stick, mind you. It was linoleum. Now, linoleum is actually a great, period correct floor covering material in certain forms but this was more like the 1960s and didn’t quite fit one of those forms.

The floor pad - yep, that's duct tape!

Trust me, keep reading, it’s about to get good.

Up came the floating floor in about ten minutes and I managed to save six of the 12-15 boards that compiled the hallway floor to donate later. Best demo project ever.

Then up came the pad and there it was, my latest surprise from Isthmus House: a grate set into the floor.

After some diligent scraping of the tar-paper-like adhesive with my very glamorous floor scraper (a razor blade on a paddle, essentially) everything that could go in the aforementioned Bagster did.

Once everything was up that was going to come up, I baby-powdered the floor to make it less tacky and wiped it all down.

I realize it’s not done yet, but doesn’t it look better at least? I can't wait to get them fully refinished!

A new meaning for Christmas lights

Salvage shops are awesome. To date, I've only found one in Madison. Detroit (and the surrounding area), however, has a fair number. That could be because large chunks of the city are being gutted. The more sentimental part of me hopes it's because people there recognize the history salvaged items represent.

Either way, my voyage over Thanksgiving paid some serious dividends when my family and I went to visit a few.

The first was a place in Toledo. I have no idea what the name of the place was anymore but the name of their website is Cool Stuff is Cool Stuff and I'm inclined to agree with them. While they had some beautiful items, they've sadly gone the way of many salvage shops and were quite expensive.

I did find a heat register cover that I'm working on for the bathroom, but that was about it at that one.

On our way home, we decided to stop by another shop in Ypsilanti about a mile from my sister's house. I've had a really hard time finding hinges that match all of the others in the house. All but 5 doors have them - and the doors that don't currently have them aren't original doors.

I've also been looking for a light for the dining room pretty much perpetually since I bought Isthmus House. I've come close to buying a few and had pretty much resigned myself to the likelihood that I would have to go with a reproduction. The one that was hanging in the dining room when I bought the house wasn't a real option.

When we hit the front door of the store, they immediately said that they likely had a few of the hinges I was looking for and often got more in. I've been looking for these hinges for six months. They had the two I needed right in the store and, yesterday, they texted me to let me know they just got in plenty more and to ask how many more I needed.

I could hardly believe it.

All of that is great - see the aforementioned six month hinge search - but the best was what I found that I didn't really mean to. While one of the store employees was searching for those hinges (there are buckets of them), we took a look around.

Several items drew my attention and little bit of envy but there was one that I could actually afford and needed for our home: a new light.

 

Made by the Steuben Glass Works in 1905, it's not perfect but it looks, in the words of Nicole Curtis, "looks a lot better than I will in 100 years." With a molded, acid-cut milk glass shade and brass chain links, I think it's perfect for Isthmus House and will nicely tie the dining room together.

As my Christmas gift to myself this year, I can't wait for everyone to see it at my birthday/Christmas party on Saturday!

Cross another one off the list: Katie has a bedroom!

Many of you know that I travel a lot for work. Like, I’ve spent almost as many days in hotels this year as I’ve owned Isthmus House. Perhaps that’s why, as I sit here with my square, plastic Delta spoon in my hotel room munching on grocery store salad bar fare, I’m feeling slightly reminiscent for my recent visit from my parents. Let’s be honest, the best reason is probably getting home cooking that I don’t have to cook but I always get a lot done around the house, too. 

This most recent visit was no different. It wasn’t the original plan for the weekend, but we ended up putting in a wall between the former upstairs living room (now my bedroom) and the former upstairs kitchen (now my workshop but it will be the master bedroom eventually) and a door leading to the hallway.

There was one obvious problem with this plan from the beginning: I didn’t have a door that fit the opening. I had an existing door jamb and stops, but not a door that fit.

There were a couple that had come with the upstairs apartment but neither was a viable option. One wasn’t the same style as the original doors (you can stop laughing at me now, I won’t put in a door that doesn’t match the originals!) and the other had been chopped up like crazy (think rhombus).

Here’s what the original doors in the house look like. As you can see, this one was cut down and a deadbolt added to make it the upstairs unit door. In case you're wondering, it's also a rhombus:

 

Once I figured out that I wasn’t going to find a four panel door to match my existing ones at either of my local Restores, I tried online but couldn’t get one I found in Ohio to Isthmus House in time for the visit.

I did get a door in time. A while back, The Roommate and I stopped by Ace Hardware on Willy St. picking up a couple of things for Isthmus House and met one of their employees who also restores antique windows and knew of a salvage shop in Madison. Naturally, I couldn’t remember anything about it but I still had his card (because I’ll probably need to restore some windows at some point) and he gave me directions when I called.

The owner, Roxy, has been in business for 30 years and helped me put together a full 4-panel door (that matches the original doors in the house) including mortise, doorknob and hinges. I even picked out the screws that attached the plates to the door. We spent a couple of hours on this project but it was worth every bit for the final product – and was about half the cost of the door in Ohio before shipping.

The second day of their visit, my dad and I built a small wall frame out of 2x4s to fill in the archway so that the drywall would have something to attach to. Since it fit with minimal shimming (there’s no such thing as a straight wall in a 100 year old house so you’ll have to shim something) and I didn’t cut off any appendages, I’m calling it a success!

Once the wall was in, we put up the drywall I already had from one of my first projects around the house. I’d never drywalled without a contractor present but it turns out it’s not that easy to mess up. As long as you get the screws flush or sub-flush in the wall and you hit studs (and lath, in my case) with every screw, you’re good to go. Both of those steps are important!

Normally, you hang drywall top to bottom and stagger the seams of the sheets. Because the sheets were perfect for the height of the walls we hung them vertically. They went up in about an hour, not including cutting one of the three sheets to size. Since I’m still a work in progress with mudding and taping (it’s a skill to get the seams and screws to blend in nicely, and not really one for beginners hoping for a decent final product), my dad, who’s very good at it, handled that part.

While we were waiting for the first coat of mud to dry, we cut the door down to fit the opening. It took a while due to the floor having a slight slope (the floors are never level either) and we ended up making it swing right so that it wouldn't scrape the floor but it did finally fit in the opening.

Although the long-term plan is to use some re-tinted paint whose color I didn’t like the first time throughout the upstairs, it’s not re-tinted yet and using it would have just been a waste of paint. Instead, we gave it a quick coat of leftover primer+paint from the living room. Once we moved my bed to that wall it looked a lot more complete.

 

I don’t see myself ever hanging a door on my own because they’re just too unwieldy. We couldn’t quite get to hanging it during their visit so I had a contractor hang it for me. It took a few phone calls and a couple of pairs of hinges but its done and it opens and closes smoothly!

 

 

The Roommate and I sat on my bed for a couple of minutes enjoying another finished project and reminiscing about Isthmus House when we first moved in. As she said it: This is why I bought Isthmus House; for the feeling of accomplishment and contentment that comes along when another line on my to do list gets crossed off. What do you think of our final product?