My Favorite Old House Renovation Things

This little thing is magic. MAGIC! 

As a lover of all things old house rehab, time and sweat and a lot of sore muscles (not to mention ruined manicures) have given me an appreciation for certain tools. Sometimes, they’re conventional. Sometimes they’re not. Right now, I’m in love with a little steaming tool. It cures an awful lot of old house renovation ills without a lot of effort.

This is a Dirt Devil Handheld Easy Steam machine. It’s not very big, which is a good thing because it’s portable. But it’s powerful. Don’t get your fingers too near the tip. Trust me on this. Good things do not happen when skin and hot steam meet.

What makes this steamer awesome is that it removes stuff that you don’t want, and it does it without anything besides water and electricity.

This is my favorite tip because it concentrates the steam. 

Got 100 years of paint on a set of door hinges? Not for long, you don’t. No soaking overnight in a crock pot, and no paint remover required.

Crud built up along a baseboard seam? This tool obliterates it AND it blows out the gunk so that all you have to do is wipe it up. You don’t even have to scrub.

What about mineral deposits around the base of a faucet handle? If it hasn’t corroded the metal badly, this steamer will soften up the deposits so that many of them will wipe off, and others only need a little nudge with a fingernail plastic scraper. The metal will shine big time. It even cleans decades of old, miserable grease off kitchen tile.

The steamer also strips paint from wood. Whaaat? Yep. It does.

The steaming part is really fun. 

REALLY fun.

I’ve been stripping my staircase for longer than I’d like to admit. It’s got more than 125 years of paint and varnish on it, and even the most eye-watering, fumey paint strippers just don’t work well. This morning, I wondered if steam would work better than paint strippers. It does.

It just peels right off. 

Awww yeah, this paint is gonna be TOAST! 

Sometimes your favorite old house rehab tools weren’t necessarily born for a job, but they work great just the same. If you can save some hours of labor? Even better.

DIY Bohemian Country Kitchen Remodeling Ideas

Transitional Kitchen by Cambridge Building Supplies Longleaf Lumber Inc

So lately I have been thinking about reworking my country kitchen. Again. I know, I already did that. But the foundation is sinking again, and all of the cherry cabinets that I didn't even like in the first place are separating. Now, I could fix the house and try to wedge the cabinets back together. But since it’s making me a little madder every day, I’m just about over the whole thing, and looking for remodeling ideas. 

There is no more sigh of happiness when I walk in that room. What I feel is a little closer to despair with some ennui blended in for good measure. It bums me out. Big time. The problem, of course, is funds. I'll fix the house, because that has to be done. But I'm not loving the idea of keeping everything else as it is. 

I am so in love with this kitchen that I don’t even know where to begin.

Farmhouse Dining Room by New York Photographers Rikki Snyder

Now, money and I have never been great friends. That might be the reason why the mishmash, eclectic style that I am most comfortable with evolved. I have different names for it on different days, but it’s a bohemian, shabby, gypsy, witchy, bohemian farm house sort of thing. Some people love it, others hate it. Meh. It’s my house. And because I change things in my house the way I change my nail polish, I rarely have commitment issues. If I hate it, out it goes. Eventually. 

Some of you can decide that you want a new kitchen, and you’ll just head on out to the Home Depot and make it happen. My life has never really been like that. I have learned patience over the years. It’s the joy of the ride, not just the destination. 

I save my pennies. I shop sales. I scour thrift stores. I buy things on lay-away, paying small bits at a time toward whatever it is that I need. I habitually visit the Habitat for Humanity ReStores, both in Knoxville and Oak Ridge. Knox Rail Salvage and I are old friends. I try never to buy anything full price or on credit if I can help it. These things have served me well. 

I’m increasingly interested in freestanding cupboards instead of built-ins. 

Farmhouse Kitchen by Columbus Photographers Julie Ranee Photography

So on my bohemian, eclectic, country kitchen, I’m trying to come up with some remodeling ideas. I can build cabinets. That’s not a problem, and I know how to do it on the cheap. And when I say cheap, I mean that each new cabinet would cost me no more than about $10, $15 tops if I by new hardware, which I probably won’t. I’m a major fan of reusing what I can. 

I could build all that I want and need for no more than about $100. I didn’t leave out any zeroes there. I already have a garage full of lumber. Full, I say. 

Seriously enamored with deep red and open shelves these days. The beadboard ceiling is nice, too.

Farmhouse Kitchen by Nashville Furniture & Accessories McKeithan Design Studio, LLC

I’m trying to tap my inner inspiration fairy. I am positive that the black granite countertops are outta here. I might reuse it elsewhere, or I might sell it. I haven’t made up my mind on that just yet. Mr. V. loves it, but I don’t think it fits with this house. 

So when I have some spare time, which is increasingly rare but also increasingly divine, I think about my sad little kitchen. Well, sad big kitchen. It's huge. 

Blue isn't half bad, either. And again with the mismatched cupboards, which I love.

Rustic Kitchen by Morrow Kitchen & Bath Designers The Workshops of David T. Smith

What will it look like? How will it function? I have no idea just yet. I wish I was still in contact with my former landlady. She really knew how to take a bad kitchen and transform it into something that not only looked great, but functioned so well that it was a pure joy to be there. I wish I had even half her talent. She wasn't as enamored with the eclectic country kitchen look as I am, but she'd probably indulge me. 

Until I’m ready to dive in, I’ll peruse Pinterest and Houzz. At least there I can get lost in dreams about my new kitchen, if only for a little while until I have a work deadline to meet. 

If you have any ideas on what I should do with my kitchen, please don’t keep them to yourself!  Did I mention that I'm in need of inspiration? 


XOXO

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 II

Other installments of this project are found at these links: Part I , Part III and Part IV.

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After the first day of construction on the window seat and book cases, we realized that we were in for a lot more work than we’d planned for. That’s ok, because my vision was spurring me on. Mr. Vagabond was spurred on by copious amounts of tequila. 

We had planned to build a hinged lid for the window seat, which would allow us to use the space underneath for storage. Unfortunately, we couldn’t find a single 1 x 12 at Lowe’s that wasn’t twisted or bowed or otherwise skewed. This was a problem. We stabilized the underside of the 1 x 12 boards by framing them out with 2 x 4s, but that didn’t help. One end of the bench top remained determined to stand proud of the base by at least 1 1/2 inches. We had to nail the boards to the frame, and we didn’t get a hinged lid. But we worked around that later. 

That's Pepsi in the water bottle. I do weird things like that. 

After we nailed down the boards for the seat, we started building the book cases on top of the two cabinets. This was a very simple design. Each book case consisted of two 1 x 12s for the sides of the cabinets, two 2 x 2s mounted to the ceiling across the top (mounted furniture-grade plywood on the 2 x 2s later), and then a series of 2 x 2s nailed to the back wall and interior sides of the book cases. The 2 x 2s were cleats, which we used to support the shelves. The book case on the left has shelves that are about 20 inches apart. The book case on the right has shelves that are closer together. 

The bottom and top of each book case was fashioned from supports and furniture-grade plywood. The plywood had a much nicer grain than the 1 x 12s, so I wanted as much of the plywood to show as possible. 

I fastened the plywood to the supporting boards with finishing nails. As you can see, I marked off where I wanted the bottom shelf to stop, and I cut my supporting boards and plywood to fit. After everything was installed, I countersunk all of the finishing nails because I planned to stain the whole built-in instead of painting it. 

This is how I take measurements around here -- on anything that is handy! A scrap of 2 x 4...

Or on the back side of an old boarding pass! 

I wish I were heading to Utah again right now. *sigh*

And this is the circular saw that I use when I absolutely, positively need my cut to be straight as an arrow. I use the old Black & Decker that my dad gave to me. I have several other circular saws, but this one is Old Reliable. 

And this is what happens when I use my dad’s saw. A perfect cut for a perfect fit  :-)

Finally we started to make the kind of progress that lets you stand back and smile for a minute. The shelves were in, the bottom of the book case was mounted and the trim around the front was turning out beautifully.

Just look at those beautiful mitered cuts. Those were courtesy of our basic Delta miter saw. 

We did have a slight issue with the plywood on the sides of the book cases. I’m not naming names, but someone installed it with the grain running left-to-right instead of up and down. I found this scene when I woke on one of the numerous mornings of the project. It wasn’t easy to pry off, lemme tell ya. And I was running out of plywood, so I had to cut the replacements perfectly. 

At the end of the first week, this is what we’d accomplished. 

We had some weird configurations here and there, due mostly to being sick and tired of running to Lowe’s, but it was turning out just great. We figure that the next time tornado season rolls though east Tennessee, we’re camping out inside one of these cabinets. The house might fall, but this thing isn’t going anywhere. 

Next week, my idea of “premium lumber” is really challenged. 

P.S.  I really need to start keeping my work spaces tidier! 

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.
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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