Once Upon a Window Seat, Part IV: The Final Chapter

Catch up on the project with Part I , Part II and Part III.

The mostly finished window seat and book cases.

Building a window seat and book cases in our living room proved to be challenging, but the work wasn't over after the last board was fastened and the last cabinet door hung. I wanted the wood to complement the other dark woods in the room. Woods that are likely to remain, such as the mahogany china cabinet, antique piano and foyer doors. 

This piano is probably the oldest thing that I own. 

One thing that breaks my heart about this house is that the old, original parquet floor in the foyer only comes part of the way into the living room. Oh, to have parquet throughout the house!

I used oil-based stain because it has a longer working time than water-based. With pine, you never can tell how stain will absorb, so I wanted something that I could work into the wood really well. I chose antique walnut, which is the same stain that I used on the foyer doors. It also complements the piano and china cabinet. Wearing rubber gloves is a must when working with stain, especially if you're covering a lot of ground.  

Find an old rag that you don't mind sacrificing, and rub the stain into the wood really well. When you wipe off the excess, work in the same direction as the wood grain to avoid dark streaks. 

Smaller cabinet door for under the window seat.

The trim around the cabinet doors doesn't match the plywood perfectly because they're different species with different levels of porosity and wood grain. Once I wiped on polyurethane after the stain was set, the colors turned richer and the differences became less noticeable. Although we hadn't painted the room yet, I taped off the walls around the cabinets to protect them from stain.

Although I knew better, I used masking tape to tape off the cabinet. It peeled off some of the paint primer on the walls. If you try this at home, do yourself a favor and use painter's tape.

After staining, I installed the cabinet hardware. Prefab cabinets come with pre-drilled holes for hardware. When you build your own, you have to figure out where the hardware goes. 

First, I measured the distance between bolt openings on the door handles. They're usually somewhat standard, but measuring helps avoid major screw ups. I marked the edge of the cabinet door to show where the handle should fit.  

Sometimes it's easier to measure from the 1-inch mark than from the end of the tape.

Tiny silver marks on the door from a washable marker help with alignment.

Finding the width of the trim helps you find the center where the handles should fit.

Speed Squares are such amazing little tools. So simple, but they help you keep everything straight. 

Speed Squares have a perfect 90-degree angle, which keeps things straight as long as the edge of the board is also straight.

To the extent possible, keep the drill bit horizontal to the plane of the cabinet door. If the bolt holes are tilted, the bolts won't align with the door handles.

Slip the bolts through the back side of the door and into the handles, and tighten them until the handle fits snug against the door. 

After installing the hardware, there was one more thing left to do. I deliberately left the back wall of the book shelves bare because I wanted to decoupage pages from old books. 

I cut out certain paged and pasted them on the wall with thinned wood glue and a sponge paintbrush. It's like going back to kindergarten craft time, except that nobody tells you not to eat the paste (Don't eat the paste!). The only rules that I discovered are that thinning the glue with water makes it easier to spread, but thinning it too much can warp the pages. 

This is my Edgar Allan Poe section when I'd just started the job. 

Lime green flip flops aren't mandatory. 

We ran out of time because company was arriving, so I had to put the remainder of decoupaging on pause. I do that a lot, putting off projects. 

A bit of advice for decoupaging. Cover the surface with pages that aren't special before layering on the pages that you want to see. That way, you won't have to cut and trim and cuss to make the pages fit the way you want them to. I trimmed and cussed a bit. 

Besides finishing the back walls, there are two more things that have to be done. I still need to finish sewing the bench cushion cover, and I want to install a plant shelf between the two book cases. Mr. V. and I found two of these brackets at a little antique shop, and they will fit under the left and right ends of the shelf. 

$20 for a pair of these. Not too shabby. 

It will look a little something like this, except that I'll fasten them to the cabinets so that Mr. V. doesn't have to hold them forever. 

He isn't crazy about modeling for me.

All in all, I would call this project an official success. The bench seat is so sturdy that I can walk on it without any bends or creaks, and the cabinets are so sound that I think that's where I'll hide next tornado season. 

Building a custom cabinet takes a lot of planning, flexibility and compromise, especially in an old house where nothing is square.  But that's also part of the fun. You can customize it any way that you like. As long as the structure is sound, anything goes. 

XOXO

Once Upon a Window Seat, Part I

Follow the rest of this project at the following links: Part II , Part III and Part IV.
_____________________________________________________________________

Since I've posted a couple of photos after the fact, it’s time to go back and start from the beginning. When Mr. Vagabond and I bought this old house, I almost immediately started planning a window seat flanked by two cabinets at the front end of the living room. The space was ideal, with two 3-foot-wide, 7-foot-tall windows centered on the wall, and an equal amount of wall space on both sides of the windows. We lived here for about 5 years before we launched the project. I am nothing, if not a patient person.

At the moment, the built-in looks like this. I still have work to do, but the rest is for me to finish as I can. Hopefully before Christmas.

The first photo (below) in the series to follow shows how the project began... a full year ago. It didn't take a year to finish, just to move past the part where I committed to it and where actual construction began. When I installed the new floor in the living room, I bought flooring materials on sale and was afraid I would run short. To avoid that, I framed out the foundation for the window seat and both cabinets, and then installed the flooring up to the edge. As you can see, I had some new lumber, but I also repurposed a lot of leftover boards from other projects. It's not as if lumber has an expiration date.

The boards on the floor along the wall were much too short in pieces, but the foundation didn’t have to be pretty; it only had to function. The board fastened to the wall under the window would serve as a cleat to anchor the back side of the window seat. I fastened all of the lumber to the floor and wall with 4-inch deck screws, which seems like overkill since I didn't anticipate rain in the living room (a dangerous thing to say in a house that's over 120 years old). I used deck screws instead of common wood screws because we had a large boxful on hand, they're strong, and the heads are less likely to strip when driving them in. Four-inch screws also let me grab the studs in the wall that were buried under what I discovered were layers and layers of plaster, drywall, old furring strips and paneling, and more drywall. Probably the walls in this house are a lot different from yours.

View from the left end.

Now, this lovely assembly looked exactly like these two images for about a year before any further progress was made. I installed the living room floor, but took no steps, short or otherwise, toward completing the project. Then we learned that Mr. Vagabond’s family planned to visit us in August. Yikes! Along with everything else that had to be done, I really wanted this thing finished when they arrived. Mr. V. asked what my top priorities were, and I saddled him with this, among several other things. Good thing he’s a good sport. 

View from the right end.

In the next image, Mr. V. is doing a test fit for the front and back “walls” of the window seat. They were built, raised, leveled and fastened the same as you would frame up a wall in your house, just smaller. Each section consisted of one horizontal board across the top and bottom, and short vertical boards across the width which serve as miniature studs. You might notice that the framework at the right end of the book case is awfully short. That’s because I changed my mind (I do that), and wanted book cases instead of ceiling-to-floor cabinets. Because the foundation was much too deep for book cases, we decided on two short cabinets at each end of the window seat with a book case on top of each cabinet. 

I’m skipping past the part where he measured the foundation that I built, shook his head and told me that he loved me. Several times. He said that with a heavy sigh, and sometimes a chuckle. He also laughed at my use of salvaged lumber, but did have to agree that there was no sense to be found in buying new 2 x 4s to use where they would never be seen. 

This is day-1. Errr, night-1

While I was out of the room, he decided that he didn’t like my wall cleat, and planned a new height and configuration for the window seat. It didn’t occur to me until later (too late) that he wasn’t using my carefully-planned seat height measurements, and was instead working with his own height in mind. My feet dangle off the edge of the window seat now. I’m considering building a step.

Standard chair seat height is approximately 18 - 20 inches, by the way. Most chairs are about 18 inches deep, too, but I like to sit sideways. The finished depth became about 2 feet, which lets me do that comfortably. 

In the next photo, we had built both walls and set them upright on the foundation. We found the straightest board that we owned (which is hard to do when shopping at Lowe’s, lemme tell ya), laid the board as a bridge across the top of both walls, front to back, and set the level on top of the board. Ordinarily, you’d use a 4-foot level, but ours was in the garage, which is at the back 40 of the property, and it was dark. And there is no electricity in the garage. Because we have never found a single floor in the whole house that is level, we had to shim up the framework. Only then were we able to fasten the whole thing together. 

Never underestimate the importance of building things level, square and plumb. 

The next photo was taken at the end of the first day. We had spent most of the day at Lowe’s, so we got a late start. Day-2 held a lot more progress.

Little Sinner in the way helping.

Gypsy made her own progress, taking advantage of the fact that Mama and Dada were otherwise occupied. I caught her turning a board into toothpicks on the sofa. People think that I exaggerate when I tell them about the things that she does. By the time we’d worked all of one day, she’d torn several small holes in the sofa. Oh well. I wanted to bring my awesome old vintage sofa downstairs anyway.

Not the most normal dog on Earth.

At the end of the first day, we wondered what we'd gotten ourselves into. That's pretty much a theme around here. We also realized that our $600 budget was about to be tested. Although we purchased much more materials than we thought we'd need, things almost never go as planned. We made at least five more trips to Lowe's, and at least as many to the liquor store. 

Next week, Part II


XOXO

In Search of Historically-Accurate Victorian Paint

Winter is breaking, the heat is being used less and less, and my tulips are poking up through the ground. Each time the warm sunshine finds its way through February clouds and streams through the windows of my 1890 folk Victorian home, I am reminded of how badly this house needs new siding and a nice coat of paint. The trouble is finding the right siding and the right paint.

Pinterest is one of my favorite new time suckers. I justify the hours I spend pinning, repinning and scrolling through everyone else's pins by telling myself that it's a valuable source of inspiration and information. The first of those two points is true. 

Sorting through what seemed to be miles of pins this morning, I learned that while Pinterest is certainly a terrific way to share inspiration, it's also a fast and furious way to spread misinformation. Victorian homes are a good example. 

Pin after pin, I saw Craftsman homes misidentified as Victorians, vivid tangerine paint described as period-accurate for the 1800s and white paint frowned upon as safe, boring, meek and only selected by homeowners who lack the courage to go with an "authentic" Painted Lady look. 

Fact is, many of the wild colors seen on Painted Lady houses are not only hard to look at, they're flat wrong for the period. I challenge anyone to show me a home that was originally painted in a combination of neon orange, turquoise, fuchsia and lime. Gaudy? Yep. Blinding? You bet. Garish? Well, you get the idea. 

Accurate?  Probably not.

I don't claim to know everything there is to know about historically accurate paint colors, but I do know a few things, and I am always greedy to learn more. 

Many of the colors originally used on Victorians were, indeed, contrasting combinations that highlighted fancy architectural details. But to my knowledge, those colors weren't day-glow pink and turquoise. Muddied reds, browns and golds are a more likely combination than pretty-pretty pastels.

And white is also accurate for some homes, so there!

White is the direction I am leaning for my house. Safe? Of course. But it is also quite accurate for the age and style of my home. The original cedar siding that's hidden under layers of horrifying remuddling attempts is unpainted. While I love the look of cedar, I also think it's a bit dark for this house. 

For those of you playing along at home, you may remember what my house looked like when we bought it. If not, here's a reminder. 

Do I really need another caption about how sad my house looked back then?

When I think about the way I want her to look (eventually), I picture something more like this.

Pay no attention to the crooked siding and windows. My Gimp photo manipulation skills are still in the embryotic stage.

To me, white paint is clean, fresh, bright and tidy. Narrower siding than what's on the house at the moment is correct for the period, and those hideous plastic shutters in the first image are already long gone. 

Dressier porch columns and balusters are in order, and I really want to splurge on copper gutters and downspouts. I also hope to restore the transom over the front door. Maybe I'll add a bit of stained glass there. It wouldn't be too expensive for such a small window. 

Some Folk Victorians originally had fancy trim, which is often called "gingerbread." I don't know if my house was adorned with it, but I did unearth an interesting attic vent cover with what appeared to be tulips carved into the wood. I found it in the attic looking tattered, worn, broken and, well, like this.

I'd love to know what the whole design looked like. The panel is broken, so it's anyone's guess. 

So we have part of a theme, and an idea that there was once a lot more to this house than plain cedar siding. 

If those are, indeed, tulips, maybe the stained glass for the transom could mimic it in something like this.

Or this.

Or this.

You get the idea.

With all of the ideas flying around about what defines a Victorian, I'm trying to stay true to what is realistic for mine. Painted Ladies in San Francisco can get away with outlandish color combinations. My little folk Victorian is situated at the top of a hill in rural east Tennessee. It's more of a farmhouse than anything. 

So white it is. Now to get the new siding and get her painted.

 

Inaugural Renovation Post

So you're probably thinking,  "Another blog about DIY renovations? Great. There aren't nearly enough of those."

For the most part, you're probably right. The Internet is saturated with blogs about DIY projects. The difference between those and mine, at least in my opinion, is that this renovation is me, on my own, elbows deep in a 121-year-old folk Victorian house. And I'm taking no prisoners. My husband pays for the things I need, and I do pretty much all of the work. 

Before I get into the work around here, I'd like to clear up a little confusion about Victorians. Those pretty things you see in new suburban developments? They are "like" Victorians. The Victorian architectural era began in the mid 1800s and lasted until the very early 1900s. Basically, we're talking nineteenth century architecture.

Does the image of a pointy,fancy, painted lady in San Francisco or a sprawling, white house with a rounded porch and circular towers come to mind? Those images aren't incorrect, but they're only part of the period. There are numerous Victorian styles. 

Gothic Revival is one of the earliest in the Victorian era. Gothic Revivals are often loaded with fancy gingerbread trim and have steep-pitch rooflines.

Second Empire is generally very tall with short, steep Mansard rooflines atop towers. Think: Addams Family. 

You rang?

Another Victorian style is Queen Anne. Queen Anne's appearance might be more familiar to you. Numerous modern builders copy the elements and market them as Victorian. 

Maybe when my house grows up, it will be a Queen Anne!

There are other Victorian styles, but these are favorites of mine.

And then we have my house, the folk Victorian. If you study the photos above you can find certain elements from each of them in my house. Folk Victorians were developed for the less-than-affluent. Homes like mine were built with simple, straight lines. Embellishments could be added if the home owner's budget allowed.

This image was taken the same year my house was built - 1890. Notice how the bones are basic, and the fancy bits are add-ons. Imagine the house without the porch and gingerbread trim. It would be your basic farm house. 

I love this porch.

My folk Victorian is just about as plain and ordinary-looking on the outside as a Victorian gets. Actually, it's less exciting than that. 

How she looked the day we bought her. Poor baby.

Over the years, it has been remuddled in so many sad ways. The minute I saw her, I knew she had to be mine. I had to fix her. I had to give her a hug. 

Our Realtor flipped, but she knew I wasn't joking. 

First, the siding is all wrong. Even if it weren't in terrible shape, it's too wide. The original siding (hidden underneath) is cedar. The porch steps are molded concrete. All of the columns, railings and balusters were replaced with plain, untreated pine boards, and they're in terrible shape, too.

Mr. Vagabond and I were excited about finding the cedar on the back of the house. Well, at least until we realized this was lurking underneath.

Nearly every board was at least partially rotted. And, yes. That is a doggie door that someone installed upside-down. *sigh*

Suffice to say, it needed work.  

We rolled up our sleeves.

Not finished when this photo was taken, but almost.

We spent a weekend chopping out and replacing the parts that couldn't be saved and reinforcing the parts that could be saved. It's hard to see in this photo, but the house is jacked up all the way across the back. Once we finished, we lowered the house back onto a repaired foundation. 

New windows for the kitchen will be a project for another day. I hope to find old windows at a flea market instead of new, modern windows. Anything would be better than this aluminum thing, though. There's another like it on the side of the kitchen, and another in the lower bathroom. I would like a much larger window here to let the morning sunshine in.

Summary

Restoring and renovating a 121-year-old house that fell into serious disrepair isn't for the delicate or easily frightened. It takes equal parts vision, patience, money and skill. When those aren't available, I hide in my bedroom, feigning ignorance and blindness. I spend lots of time imagining what my house will look like once I'm finished. But of course, if you ask anyone who has ever ventured into this kind of territory, it's never really done.  

I think about new, narrow, period-appropriate siding. A new, wider porch with fancy columns and balusters. Maybe some gingerbread trim. A nicely landscaped yard. An upstairs bathroom that works.

But those are things for another day. For now, I take it one day at a time.