House Tour: The Second Floor Bathroom

So we have actual reno news this week, but I haven't had time to blog about it yet. Instead, you get a "house tour" of our second floor bathroom and if all goes to plan you will get to see a current photo of the bathroom this week!

I spent a lot of time taking pictures of the kitchen and our living room, which - despite the worn floors and holes in the walls - photograph well and are at their core beautifully structured spaces. The second floor bathroom, on the other hand, has almost no redeeming qualities.  (I limited my photos here - no one really needs to see this).

So, get ready to be a little bit horrified - this is the bathroom we have been living with for the last year:

Not much needs to be said (or seen) on this "tour". The room is poorly organized, it has no storage, it is not conducive to sharing, it is tight on space, never looks clean (those tiles are designed to look dirty - I swear they're clean!) and, above all, it is terribly ugly.  To make it worse, our door may or may not have ripped off the wall about 9 months ago (who can say, really?) and during our last week in the house, as if the house sensed the impending reno, the toilet started leaking.

There is only one thing that I like about the bathroom - it has a window to the interior hallway that is original to the home. There is some plastic sheeting on the window so you can't see directly into it but, evidently, there was no frosting back in the day. Both the second and third floor bathrooms have windows and the best guess we have is that the windows were used to help circulate air throughout the house. We are planning to keep the window in the updated house (with frosted glass of course), but otherwise we have big plans to improve this space.

House Tour: The Office

Welcome to my office! While we have a basement and third floor, Kyle and I have been living primarily on the first and second floors of the house for the past year. This room, functions as both my office and my closet. 

We don't have crazy plans for the room and it will remain an office after the reno - we plan to clean up the plaster, replace the windows and add moulding. (Our architects and contractor don't know this but we have also been considering adding built-in bookshelves on either side of the fireplace and tiling in the space between the mantle since we will not be adding a fireplace in there. What do you think?)

Not much to tour on this side of the room - welcome to my closet! (I know, lots of black.) I look forward to having a real closet in the master suite after the reno (and a mirror that doesn't cut off my head).

House Tour: The Stairwell

The center of our home is dominated by a grand stairwell, which curves up three floors (and down one) in a central column. A skylight (that is in need of replacement at the moment) filters light down the shaft and throughout the house.

It is an impressive work of art - a Victorian masterpiece (everyone is saying) - but it is also a design dilemma because it takes up a significant amount of precious square footage on each floor of the house. Its location also unfortunately means we can't fit a powder room on the first floor.

While the lack of powder room is a true tragedy, we knew the minute we saw the house that we were keeping the stairwell. And many a guest (at least those who don't get vertigo) has been enamored by the staircase too. It has lasted for 142 years, and has proven to be very sturdy - a few weeks back we met a former tenant who recalled getting drunk with his roommates and belaying down the center of it. While we don't plan to belay down it anytime soon (at least until we break out the tequila), we are excited to restore the stairwell to its former glory and expect it to last at least another 142 years.  

House Tour: Pre-reno Kitchen

Next up in the house tour: the kitchen.

Not to be missed, the bright turquoise floors are the original floors from 1875! JK, JK, the floors, along with Christmas lights you'll see lining the room in the pictures below, are a design choice of past tenants.  We've left them in place to try to maintain some of the festiveness.

While the floor color is a more modern innovation, the windows are an older vintage.  These single pane beauties only somewhat work in their current 2017 state, but provide stunning light throughout the day. (One of the two windows even still opens, a big win in our book.)

The kitchen is at the back of the house and, at the moment, it's a little closed off from the hallway and main stairwell. The yellow wall you see is the wall to the living room and you'll notice the front door right at the edge of this photo.

You may have also noticed the washer and dryer. While it's not ideal, we have found that having laundry in the kitchen isn't as bad as it seems, but we hope to be able to move it upstairs once renovations get underway.

The fireplace in the kitchen is also original, although it isn't currently functional. Our neighbors tell us that underneath all the paint is a white marble front, which we still can't get over - who paints over marble?? I mean, seriously.

The kitchen was updated in the past few years, so we are lucky to have well functioning appliances. However, the kitchen poses some real challenges as we begin to think about renovation.  

Most importantly, we will really need to consider storage solutions. The cabinets above account for pretty much all of the storage space in the room as currently constructed.  As a result, we have a lot of kitchen wares that are just chilling in boxes in our basement. The other quirky thing is that the internet/tv cable to our home only exists in the kitchen. It comes in through the kitchen window, up behind the stove (seems safe, right?) and into our kitchen cabinet. You can see the internet modem sitting in the cupboard to the right of the stove (a traditional location for cable modems).

Lots to think about in revamping this space.  Feel free to share your ideas.  More to come later!

-- J&K

House Tour: Pre-reno Living Room

Welcome to our living room!  Maybe our favorite room in the house, it is defined by the the floor to ceiling bay window that makes the room bright and inviting. The windows really make the room. In fact, we're lucky they are so old because the floor to ceiling length is grandfathered in.  You'll notice they extend all the way down to a few inches above the floor - in our more enlightented times, the building code stops building windows from extending that low for safety reasons (what if someone kicked the glass? what if someone fell out of the window? nanny state, amirite?).  

Because of the age of the windows they are single-paned. As we are finding out, they are not the most energy efficient, but on the plus-side, we can hear conversations from the sidewalk in our living room!

If you're wondering about the ugly grey rectangle with holes above the radiator, let us assure you that it was all part of our current design concept (that counts as shaggy chic, right?).  A huge shelf used to be there that jutted out into the room at eye level and took up a lot of visual space. Although what remains is an eye sore, trust us when we tell you that removing it right away was actually a great improvement.

You may be asking yourself, what is up with the big white spot on the wall above the fireplace (I know we certainly did), and why would this blog share a picture of some odd shelf above the living room doorway?  Well, previous tenants saw fit to put a projector over the door and hold movie nights displayed over the fireplace. After much discussion, we may be going in a different direction for our own entertainment needs. For now, however, the projector shelf stays.

Finally, the other side of the room - the one we don't focus on that often because it is just a big, blank wall. Behind the wall is the stair case and beyond that, the kitchen. As it is right now, the wall just serves to cut the living room off from the rest of the house and it has got to go. We are exploring ways to open up the space to give it a more modern feel while still maintaining the room's definition. 

😍😍😍

That's all for this week folks! J&K

House Tour: Pre-reno Entrance

Before we tear up the house, we want to make sure to document it in its pre-reno state. So please, come on through the door - welcome to our home! 

This is what you see when you enter the house - a closed off living room to the right and a stairwell and kitchen up ahead.  

The home served as a boarding house for much of its history, and the house definitely feels as if it has been lived in. The floors are scuffed beyond repair and seem constantly dirty, though we have cleaned them ad nauseam. The taupe/grey floor paint is a color choice that has not aged well, particularly with all the scrapes.

In the ceiling right before the kitchen is the hallway lighting fixture, which elicits both fascination and concern on the part of all guests who enter. Come, take a closer look: 

That's right, the ceiling lamp is plugged into a multi-outlet plug in the ceiling, much like a normal lamp plugged into a regular outlet in the wall might be. Don't ask us why, we have no answers. The electrical socket is surrounded by patched ceiling and dried leak spots, which we have been assured are OLD leaks and not anything we should be alarmed about now (electricity and water go well together, right?). 

Finally, one of our favorite things about the house is something you see upon leaving - the EXIT sign! The exit sign is another of the last vestiges of the property's boarding house history. Luckily, it still lights up! We are pretty sold on keeping it and work it into our design - what do you think? 

Check back next week for more touring - J & K.