We looked at some carriage style doors, which are popular in our neighborhood and we like. However, they are wicked expensive so really not an option for us at the moment, given the higher priority investments to make in the house. In wandering around the neighborhood we noticed a house where they had taken a standard garage door and invested a bit in the trim work and light fixtures around the doors instead, to tie everything together with their colonial revival house. We thought this worked nicely and decided we’d go that route instead.

Now the only question is what type of window to include in the garage doors: plain or with a colonial grid. If you’d like to share an opinion about the styles and what goes best with the house, you can take a look at some mock up images of the garage doors. This includes some very roughed in ideas of how the back of the house will look once the siding and new windows are in place.

Turns out the additional cost to upgrade our incoming electrical service to 200 amp — and pretty much guarantee that we have the capacity in the system to support anything we can think of for AC, upgraded kitchen and baths, even an extension — was neglibible once you take on the investment to put in a larger panel. So, we went ahead and did the “heavy up” as well as the new panel.

Still waiting for Dominion Virginia Power to come out and do their part, but we have a very pretty new panel downstairs. We were also able to confirm all of our outlets in the house are grounded, and therefore can be upgraded to three-prong outlets. And we were able to convert two old 240v circuits that had been in the house for old window AC units and an old electric stove over to 120v to give us some more usable outlets in the house.

If you are in the Alexandria area and are looking for an electrician, we highly recommend Michael Goldsmith at E, S, and G Services. Nice guy, really nice team as well, knows his stuff and happy to talk through what he is finding and the different options, and seems to be competitively priced.

This is Juneau, our 14 week old Bouvier puppy. Great girl, seems to chew and poop a lot. Who would have guessed?

Work continues, slowly, on repairs to the second bedroom.The hole above the closet from the water damage got bigger and bigger as we squared it off so the edges would align with the studs to support the new drywall. In the end though, the drywall went in pretty easily. We cut a piece to fill in the hole on the vertical wall, and another piece to cover the remaining plaster and the hole in the sloping ceiling / wall. I couldn’t see a way to cut a hole for a patch in the sloping wall that would give us studs / beams on all the edges, without risking damaging the plaster ceiling, so covering the original wall  mademore sense to me. The angle for the new drywall had to be slightly different from the angle of the original wall — the bottom edge had to overlap the vertical wall slightly to have the new piece come down far enough for the bottom edge to be horizontal to the floor. Some angled shims filled in the space between the new drywall and the original wall and gave us a solid surface to attach the drywall.

The vertical wall also had areas where the skim coat of the plaster had fallen away over the years, and a spot where plaster was missing where we removed a horizontal 2 x 4, which had been added to support hooks. So final work on this wall included putting on the joint compound for the drywall and patching the plaster with DAP pre-mixed patching plaster (which can be sanded smooth, covering for my inchoate at best plastering skills.).The mud and plaster work came out well, but my process was really slow — I’d hate to try to do a full room of taping and joint compound given how slow and difficult it is for me to get smooth, nicely feathered surfaces.

I’m looking forward to painting and wrapping up this work. My biggest concern — which I didn’t know / think of to consider in the process — is that the sloping eave wall, here and continuing into the closet, is uninsulated. We have soffet vents for the attic and air travels up the eaves. I should have figured out a way to get a vapor barrier in there or perhaps used a different kind of drywall that is moisture resistant. I’m worried that a handful of years from now we’ll have a problem because of cycle upon cycle of condensation on the outside of the drywall surface. Nothing to do now but worry I guess :-)

Next on the list in the room was to fix another plaster problem. At some point, a patch was made under the bedroom window, and the plaster was just glopped on in a big dome, raised about an inch past the plane of the wall. So, hammer and chisel in hand, we chipped out the patch to get back to the brown coat beneath. Our exterior walls are three layer plaster directly on to the double-brick masonry wall. It took a bit of time to clear away all the loose material under the patch with a wire brush but in the end had a 2′ x 2′ or so area to patch.

The biggest challenge here was figuring out what materials to use. It’s nearly impossible it seems to find anyone who can tell you anything about wet plaster work. And little did I know how many types of plaster there are: brown coat, skim coat, veneer, with aggregate, without aggregate, plaster of paris, and on and on. After some research and several dead-end conversations, we settled on the following approach. We used Plaster Lock, a plaster binding agent, on the wall surface to help the new plaster stick and stay in place. Then used Structo-Lite Basecoat to fill in the brown coat. Then DAP pre-mixed Plaster Patch again to create the skim coat (again, so I could sand it smooth rather than trying to bring out the “polish” with a trowel, which at the moment is well beyond me). It looks good now — just the same unanswerable question: will it last or will it need to be repaired again in a few years because of some error in the materials selected or the application?

With those projects done, the next step was fixing the casing for the closet door so it would close properly. We couldn’t find a match to our original casing. It’s a basic colonial casing with a beaded edge, however it’s 4.25 inches wide and no one around here has or knows anywhere to order a match. So, the options were go with a 3.5 inch width, go with a slightly different profile, or pull some casing out of the inside of another closet and use it in the bedroom. In the end we went with a similar casing that is the right width (it has a fluted edge rather than beaded). Moving casings around from one closet to another just seemed too much work, and getting the right width seemed to make a lot more difference than getting the exact shape. Our sense is that once the room is decorated no one but us will ever notice. I’m going to work on putting the casing in this morning, so I’ll post more photos once I have that done.

We also needed to plane the closet door so it will close properly. Planing the door was funny. The closet frame has a pretty dramatic slant to it. It wasn’t hard to plane the door enough, though the vertical end piece of the door is cross cut at the top and I couldn’t plane that well — had to sand that section. If anyone knows how you are meant to manage that situation, just let me know! And of course, now that the door will close, what we’ve discovered is that the door latch and the strike plate are not aligned, so it won’t latch properly. Looks like I will need to chisel out a bit of wood on the jam and move the strike plate higher.

When we took down the old light fixture, a baseball-themed fan and light, we discovered one more thing that needs to be corrected. The light fixture had a “home plate” crown, if you will, attached to the ceiling above the light. Just our luck, it was glued to the ceiling (who could imagine ever changing out a baseball lamp in the shape of a baseball glove, anyway?). So, need to make some repairs here too before we’re done.

And then, finally. maybe, we can actually clean up all the c*** in the room and get this thing painted… At that point we will have sanded down lots of bumps and bruises in the walls; patched a bunch of small dents in the walls; sanded and patched the baseboards, door, and window casings; repaired the plaster patch below the window; repaired the water damage around the closet, and made the line of the wall and the casing level to reduce the noticability of the slant in the closet; patched the plaster on the back wall of the room; planed the door; and maybe that is it. We’ll still have details to do to fix up the doors, the hardware in the room, put in a new light fixture, and eventually put in replacement windows.

It’s coming along, but I think I burn half my energy wondering if I’m doing more damage than good. We’re doing a lot of this for the first time, and I can’t quite tell where the line is between “creative destruction” and simple, old fashioned “destruction.” At the moment, the question I’m struggling with is how much of the old plaster wall needs to be pulled out to 1) create solid connection points for new drywall, and 2) to allow us to remove the casing around the closet and straighten it out (the top trim slopes down an inch from left to right).

If you have any thoughts on that — or just encouragement :-} — send ‘em along!

Oh, and if you have any ideas how to deal with this too, that would help: the patched plaster under the window is a dome about 12″ wide and and 1″ to 1.5″ high beyond the plane of the wall. What in the world is the best way to fix that? Chip it out and start again? Sand it all the way down?

We’re trying to avoid yard tools that pollute and make a huge racket. The push mower seems okay so far, though it’s certainly a bit more work and it’s not for those who need their yard to look picture perfect — it’s tough to get an even cut and to deal with taller grass. But since our yard is probably more clover, dandelion, and other weeds than grass right now, can’t say we’re sweating those details. (I wanted to include the picture of Amy mowing, but she was quite clear that particular photo was getting deleted.)

We’ll see if this bushy tailed approach to mowing lasts through the season, but we at least succeeded with the first run, and took a moment to celebrate our first ever freshly mowed lawn as home owners.

The bigger projects we’ve tackled in the yard included getting rid of the old cast iron clothesline poles. The clothesline poles turned out to be a bigger task than we expected. While many things in the house have been done as quickly and sloppily as physics would allow, these poles were planted in the ground with cement plugs three feet deep and weighing an easy 250 pounds. On the sage advice of friends and family, we decided to leave the cement plugs buried in the ground (they are about 12″ to 18″ deep) and just cut the poles off just above the cement. That saved countless hours and struggles, plus it gave me the excuse to put the reciprocating saw to work. Right tools in hand, it took 10 minutes to cut through the poles.

Out front, our other big project was removing the mound of mulch and ivy in the front yard where the dead tree had been. The tree had been encircled by an ivy patch which we wanted to remove. Also, we had the stump of the dead tree chipped and left in place as mulch when it was removed. To finish the project, we needed to pull out all the ivy, dig out the mulch, relocate the mulch and any extra soil, level the area, and plant new grass.It took the good part of a Sunday to finish making the dead tree disappear.

We’re two weeks in and we have new grass! Can’t tell yet though if it will come in thick enough, or if we didn’t put down enough seed or ran into some other problem. Also can’t quite tell yet how well we graded the ground. Fingers crossed.

For painting the interior of the house, we’ve received the recommendation that we use eggshell finish for the walls and semi-gloss finish for the trim and doors. The eggshell looks nice, but we’re not sure if the semi-gloss might be a bit too glossy, and if a satin finish might be a better balance between shine and ease of cleaning for the trim and doors. What have you used and what would you recommend?

Thanks for the help. If it turns out I’ve called out into the cold echoing silence, we’ll just hide this post and revert to email :-)

The project wasn’t hard, but it was probably the filthiest thing I’ve ever done. We had to take out all the old insulation, one garbage bag at a time via the hatch to the attic. And that meant hand to hand combat with all the old insulation, and all the twigs and leaves and other nesting material the animals left in a couple of corners. Once that was done, the only hard part was that, in an 80 year old house, the joists aren’t all 16 inches on center, so for some of the narrower spaces we had to rip the insulation down its length to get it to fit. That was time consuming. The other challenge was that we couldn’t reach well into the area above one of the dormers, so we’ll need to get some loose insulation to blow into that area.

After two full days in the attic we’re almost done. Just have maybe 80 square feet left to cover, and that dormer to finish. The outside temperature has been warmer the last few days, but the first night after the insulation went in, the outside temperature was in the 30s, and the temperature on the second floor was 3 to 4 degrees warmer than it had ever been while we’ve been here. So, with some luck this has been worth the effort. We’ll never be able to make things perfect, since our outside walls are solid masonry and there is no space to add insulation, but between the attic, adding insulation to the extensions to the house that are frame and siding, and updating windows, hopefully we can get the place pretty comfortable.