My pretend root cellar

Under another side of the addition I find things like this...
I imagine it to be a root cellar...
But that may just be my wishes that life were like "life on the farm" as in the Wizard of Oz...

But that is just my imaginings because I am pretty certain it is the service entrance to the basement as I can see stairs that would be directly under the addition from the basement that lead in this direction.

the root cellar?, originally uploaded by Blair Necessities.

In the historical documents we have that relate to the house, it is said that there was a Chinese chef/cook at the house, he cooked outdoors (which must have been really dusty) and would bring the meals to the basement kitchen, most likely through this entrance.

I have a dream of redoing the addition so that the stairs that are there can be incorporated and that would provide us with another entrance to the basement... I am not sure how this could be done, but should we ever win the lottery I am sure there could be a way to do this.

Our addition is at the back of the house, and holds our office area. The laundry room is there and a little porch that looks to our neighbors backyards and some lovely mountains in the distance. This is a time when I am so glad that we have laws limiting the height of buildings here... I can still see things in a distance, the wide expanse of our gorgeous sunsets...

I do have a love hate relationship with this house. I love it so dearly, It is precious and feels right, but fixing it is just not easy and full of delays that are not in my control.

But, now that I think on it, I think this house is teaching me something valuable... let go, enjoy the process.


Tags: house, cellar

secret stairs

I found these stairs while looking through a hole under the addition of our house... these lead up to the original kitchen door to the outside and while they have been there for a while, from before the addition, I don't think they are original...

secret stairs 1, originally uploaded by Blair.

why don't I think they are original?

if you look behind them you will see a window arch (yes the basement has/d drop windows).

Someday I will go down and take pictures of the basement so you can see how big they were, they even opened it seems, but a pool, and the air-conditioner unit and the water heater all have seemed to force them to be closed up over the years.

OH, Kaptain Kaos seems to have been able to salvage a window that looked pretty bad too! Kudos to Kaos.

Tags: stairs

The hook

Here are the things that are all around the house that I realized were for holding the porch to the house. They are located at porch foot level and also at porch roof level.
I have no idea if they are original to the house but I thought they were cool.

the house hooks, originally uploaded by Blair Necessities.

I took a bunch of pictures of other things and am working on the tales of them. When I finish unpacking sometime next year (if I am lucky) I will find a copy of what the house looked like way back when it was built.

I have to say that this process is taking a very long time. We are still working on the living room, and I just can't believe it is taking this long. I love this house and I am so glad that it is ours and that I can take care of it. I just wish I had a sense of accomplishment with it, I want to have a living room with out a view of the mud dobbers and bare window panes... but that is just me wanting to see it done and being able to decorate it to its glory!

On a side note, my aunt, the artist, had a fundraising exhibition at her gallery for a local historical society. When they found out that we owned this house they were thrilled. We might get an article in the newspaper about the house. We also found out that it seems that the city restoration grants have a proviso of passing ownership on to the city... sad isn't it... However, the rules may have changed. But if they haven't I sure won't be sending in an application. Does anyone know of other ways we can find grants for this restoration/renovation?

Ask and ye shall receive

Well, Jordana asked, so here are two pictures I asked Chris to take since I get home at dusk or after dark now-a-days.
This is the window, while I still have to get a picture of the hardware It does show just how cool it is to have them.




Here is the pool fence so we are now a kid safe house.

This weekend I will work on geting pictures of the hardware for the sashes and weird little thingies that cause me to think a wrap around porch was an architectural intention when it was built.
Tags: sash windows, pool fence

A quick update and questions answered

OK SO here I am resuming back into the world of house blogging and keeping everthing on track as far as where we are at.
But first, I must address some questions that I have left unanswered for far too long...
first one:
Anonymous said...
Love your crown molding. Do you mind telling us what product and technique you used? Thanks.
Well, to be honest Captain Kaos (aka Dave Wilcox) did the painting. We did choose the colors. SO we went with Ralph Lauren paints. The molding is using tehir new metallic line with their itty bitty roller. It is lovely and Kaos deserve some major Kudos for doing it, because, after all, we have 13 foot ceilings.

secondly,
the do-dad - the one on the fireplace. We still don't know what it is, even after a chimney sweep came. Whatever itis it is obvious that that is not the original mantle so it was most likely part of a heating system.

OK, I did not find any more questions....

So, what did we find out.... I know you are waiting with baited breath

Our sash windows are double sash meaning that the back pane comes down. So why would the house have this you may be wondering... well, it gets a little hot here so it operates on the same idea as a transom window. There is even lovely eastlake hardware for them.

I discovered that the house may have been intended to have wrap around porch. I had seen these little projections above and below the windows and then realized that the same projection do dads were holding up the porch.

We had our pool fence installed and it is gorgeous, we had to make it a bit special because we did not want to attach the fence to the house.

Not sure what else to say...

Pre update

OK
We had some exciting finds over the holidays and I plan on spending part of this holiday weekend putting up a post. Forgive my long absence, I just had to break away for the holidays, the house had become overwhelming.

well

Ok, we have windows, and then we have windows. Right now we are looking into making our windows functional and energy efficient... not an easy task when you have to keep them "period". A delightful quote of more money than I could even think possible was quickly tossed, and now we are looking at other options. Options I hope will be less costly. I hate this part of historic home ownership. People see this grand house we live in and don't even take time to think that maybe we have to eat ramen so that we can save enough money to fix it... though to be honest it is not quite that bad... yet. It is hideously expensive and overwhealming in that respect.

Almost done

Here is a great picture of the newly painted gold crown molding. We looked at possibly stripping it too, but it had a horrendous dark brown paint and so we decided to complement the colors we used in the room... I must say that it looks lovely.



Kudos to Kaos

Well, at least the wine wasn't awful.

We have most of the living room primed and ready.
And in order to celebrate we had a family outing to a somewhat casual yet fancy uncorking of this years Beaujolais. Last years was much better, but that may be because I was bound and determined to get out of the house at least once while on bed rest. This year, Josef went with us in his jammies and in a sling and he was one happy boy. Who knew he would like spanokopita so much.
Anyway, we have a room almost ready for paint, and we are both so excited we are wandering room to room talking about what we would like to see, should we paint all the crown moldings gold, do we paint the hall after we remodel the kitchen? etc...
I am just so darn excited about this.

Whereupon we rejoin the house blogosphere

I finally found the silverware. I will spare people my picture of a drawer now overly full of eating utensils. The irony of it is that I found them as I was digging through a box looking for bed linens...

So, the great news is that we are almost ready to paint the living room. Here is Chris standing in front of the sealed up sliding doors (as in covered with plastic sheets).

Here is a wall of paint samples that I insisted on and that have driven Chris nuts since I did them. We are going with the color to the left of the red, and we will cover the fireplace projection with the red. Then for the nifty moldings on top we will go with a gold (not pictured). The green light color on top of the red might be what we do in the grand hall (OK, the only hall). I am also keen on the light color to the right too.

And I hate to bring up an old topic (issue). But here is a close up of the do-dad on the side of the fireplace. Only this time I opened it up. So, do you know what this is or does?

And here is what is on the inside of the fireplace where the do-dad is. See, it does not go through to the inside.

Now we (cough) just have to finish the re-plastering and then off to painting we go!

Before and After

It seems like that we started our wood-refinishing project years ago, but it was only August of 2005, when we moved into our new house. Just before we closed on our home we had all these big plans (hardwood floors, restoring the windows, getting rid of all the 70's abuse, restoring the kitchen to a more "Victorian look" and so much more. I even do not want to go into the mechanicals of the house like HVAC, Plumbing and Electrical).

We are just about to have the doors, moldings around the windows and the baseboards finished in the formal living room and are getting ready to paint the walls.

Since all the moldings from the seven foot windows are completely removed we are contemplating to have two window restorers come out and help us to refurbish the sashes and perhaps retrofit them to accommodate dual paned glass. We found two window restoration contacts at last Saturdays Historic Roosevelt Home Tour and took a look at the work they have done. Quite impressive, to finagle dual paned glass into these old and "skinny" window sashes. We'll have to see what the quotes are going to be.....and/or if it is even possible.

The Historic Roosevelt Home Tour was actually a good source for us to compare our home to other homes in the area from the turn of the century. The Ellis-Shackelford House at 1242 N. Central Avenue in Phoenix has similar but simpler Mahogany Moldings and were never painted. Built in 1917, it is amazing that all the wood trim survived without getting molested with paint. The second floor's wood trim however, got painted in a gray color and of course nobody is crazy enough to restore it back.

One may say that I am biased, however the wood trim in the Titus House is in far better shape after all the chemical stripping, sanding, staining and clearcoating compared to the untouched wood in the Ellis-ShackelforD House. This is astounding since The Titus House endured 25 years more of desert wear and tear.

We are almost three months into this wood-refurbishing project and we are getting close to having the formal dining room finished. At this pace (which is actually really fast considering that we are putting 30 to 40 hours per week into this project) it will take about an entire year for the wood-trim alone. OVERWHELMING in one word, but when it is done there won't be any words to describe how cool it will be looking and just to smile back at people who asked "You really did do that.....

Here is a before picture of a molested door...


Here is what it looks like after therapy... LOTS AND LOTS OF EXPENSIVE THERAPY...

Phew, parties, tours, molding stripping and painting

Can you say that three times fast?

The event went well, I over planned (as usual) but it went rather smoothly and it was nice to show people the house! And in my case over planning means having WAY too many leftovers... I will not, and can not complain!!!!! I love food!!

The exciting news is that there is a Neighborhood tour this weekend of house in a similar age range. We will be there to see how they got everything fixed up! I hope to take pictures too!

I do have to say, that while I may not be the best "old house" type, I do adore my home and I certainly do adore living in it. Though sometimes it is better than others.

In house news, we have pulled all the molding from the windows in the living room. So, as soon as they are close to getting done we get to paint. We have settled on a creamy yellow color, and we will be painting some swatches on the walls this weekend... Oh, and an accent color of red...

OH S#*%!!!!!!!!!

So, it may have been apparent that I am rather UN motivated in the unpacking department. I have my basics, the rest is fluff and if I really need it, I just dig through boxes until I find it, though I still can't find the darn flatware!
Anyway, I have about 13 women coming over to my house this Saturday to spend the day discussing important things...
How far can saying we are in the middle of the big renovation carry me?
And here I thought it would force me to clean and unpack more... see how that plan backfired!
Oh dear!

Unpacking

OK, it has been almost 9 weeks since we moved in, and all I have to say is where in this freaky world is my flatware!
They are (were) certainly not in any of the boxes marked "Kitchen"!
Has anyone else had this crazy experience of losing something like FLATWARE during a move?

burning down the house... or the apartments next door (almost)

Well, still no reply on the doohicky... folks help me out here?
Very busy right now, my little brother is in town and I must pay attention... little as in 23 years... he is one cool guy!
But the joshua tree next door burnt down the other night. Sad thing, because i have been secretly coveting it and was thrilled to look at it every day and now it is gone. Plus, there is not a big chance I will be getting one of my own since a baby one costs $400!!!!!!!!!

The butt ugly built in decoupage

P7150039, originally uploaded by Blair Necessities.

Well, so far no one knows what the doohickey is in the previous post… too bad because I am rather curious.

But…

I think I will introduce you to the built-in ugly art piece that also managed to destroy the house when it was built in…

See that thing? Yeah, that is in my equally odd kitchen, not sure what that it is doing in the kitchen, but it is there none the less. It is a collection of work from the golden age of abstract (as in Picasso and such… and don’t argue about my use of abstract, yes, Picasso was a cubist but there is not only cubism represented so… please indulge me if you will)

In order to have put this in, they had to dismantle and CUT (yes cut) the mahogany molding and put in a silly BOOK SHELF in the DINING ROOM so that I could gaze upon distorted pictures of naked little boys and lonely looking women. Now, some folks that walk in love it, and while I don’t really hate it I feel it is not a good thing to have in a kitchen. When we get around to taking that thing down, I will give it a place of honor somewhere outside, maybe near where the pump house is when I can talk Chris into getting some laying hens and setting up a coop (though I feel like the coop thing will never happen, it doesn’t hurt to dream does it).

OK, back to the decoupage monstrosity…

I have to admit that the built in is not all bad, because it is also where they installed the dishwasher (and as the laziest house wife in the world, I can’t live without a dishwasher)… but just so you know, the dishwasher is built in to a mahogany cupboard.

Also, molding update: there is only the molding around the three windows left to get the living room started in its long road towards it glory… once they are done we get to paint! Which means I will finally have a room that can be usable, the dining room will follow and then I suppose it would be the bedrooms and bathrooms… where the real work has to get done.

The dohicky

OK... Living in a desert with modern conveniences like a heater prevents many of us local yokels from knowing what those fancy do-dads are on some of these here thingamagigs...

See that little round thing?

It is on the side of the fireplace...

What is it?

None of the other ones have them, these dohickies are on both sides and they open up and have a mesh screen with stuff in it, I don't think they go all the way through...

Thank you in advance!

I heart Eastlake

I really do.

P7150084, originally uploaded by Blair Necessities.

but it is a love hate thing... because there are quite a few we need to get to replace the ones that have been tossed away...

I find them so pretty, and they look even prettier when they are all cleaned up.

I suppose I should take an inventory of all the parts we need, or is it want... but looking at what these things are going for I could be tempted to say oh are there any good reproductions out there?

I think we are looking for about 10 of these here hinges...

For some reason I am assuming the door knobs are related and I would need 7 door knobs...

6 faceplates (though it might be good to have 7 one looks like it may be cracking)...

one round thing that I have no clue what it might have been since we just have an empty hole...

I wonder if I can task some people that live where there are more than the six old homes (only slight under exageration) to go looking for these for me.... anyone out there willing I will let you know exactly what I need...

help

Oh, and you may be interested in knowing I am operating on about 4 hours sleep that I did not even have the pleasure of having these occure all at once...

Leeches, leeches, what leeches...

OK, not leeches, it is leaches I am sorta talking about.

It has been a crazy time not just for us but for the USA.

Anyway, I think I can stop my constant tears and TV watching, what I was doing was just not healthy. Interesting thing is that natural disasters in other countries I am in I can handle, Katrina wiped me out and I live in Arizona....

So, in order to get on with my life as I am sure any survivor would want me to do, I will tell you about a neat little rigged job we discovered....

But first let me ask... where does your grey water go?

Most people might say the sewer or perhaps even the septic system.
We noticed an odd odor in the back yard... so we dug.

Only to discover that the grey water from the washing machine has been slowly killing the oleanders for years and years...
Pictures will come I promise.
I still marvel at how this house has managed to withstand not only this harsh desert climate but "fly-by-night" jobs...
So, if any of you readers (all one I think) have seen the flickr slideshow... is there something that you are intrigued by to help get me out of this Katrina induced slump?
Oh and the leak in the basement was a leak in the water main... the joys of old homes is NEVER ending isn't it!

And, another question... I have a huge front porch, how tacky would it be to have real furniture on it and have an extended outdoor living space?
Is this OK or are my southern (NC and TN 4 generations back) roots showing or are my northern roots (MA and PA 5 generations back) just horrified?

ok

I (we) have not opened, ok I did open so should say, unpacked any boxes this week. They are a looming albatross. I hate them.
Then, with a teething cranky baby in the house... well, not much sleep either. The kaptain has almost finished the first pocket door. Not much news otherwise.

Are we there yet?

z z z z z z z z z z z z z z z z....packing sucks... z z z z z z z z z z z z z