wtf?

This door in our foyer leads to the World's Smallest Bathroom:

As it is such, my mother-in-law and I hatched a plan long ago to do something unique and unusual with the walls in the bathroom. Not only is the room tiny (meaning it can be painted/wallpapered/etc. for short money) but the door can always be closed on it anyway.

Well, a few weeks ago I was over on a message board and someone came in and posted that ferm living was having a HUGE sale on their wallpaper. $100 wallpaper for about $30 a roll. Needless to say I got over to the website as fast as I could type.

My initial thought was that ferm's wallpaper was a little too funky for my husband's taste. But, I simply COULD NOT RESIST such a bargain. And so I bought one roll, to cover the inside of a glass-front bookcase.

Well, wouldn't you know it - my husband ended up really liking the wallpaper (sometimes I don't give him enough credit!). So I figured I would need at least another roll (maybe two) to be able to do the bathroom and the bookcase. But yet again, I procrastinated all weekend and when I finally sat down to place my second order, THE ONE PATTERN I WANTED WAS SOLD OUT - OF COURSE. I swear, I think every other clearance pattern is still available except my lovely Kingflower pattern:

It's like the Pottery Barn chandelier fiasco all over again.

End rant.

What Lies Beneath

Wooooooooooooohooooooooooooooooooooo!

These floors have not seen the light of day in 50+ years! I have to say, they were worth waiting for...



Look. At. All. That. Dust. It's gonna take me weeks to get rid of all this dust. But again, I DON'T CARE! I HAVE FLOORS!!!

Another view during sanding...




I couldn't be happier with the results so far. There were areas of the floor that we couldn't clearly see before sanding and we thought there might be some damaged areas. But, so far so good! I cannot believe that these are hundred year old floors. They look brand new.


A ringing endorsement. We've used this company for every hardwood floor in the house and couldn't be happier with them. If you're in the Boston area, I highly recommend them.

More pics to follow.

They're Heeeerrrre...

One day late, but they're here! The floor guys got here around 7:45 this morning and have been hard at work ever since. I hear a whole lot of scraping goin on. I can't actually SEE the scraping, since Mike has us quarantined, but a little later I'll walk around to the front door and take some pics.

Today is the first really COLD day of Fall. High of 60 and it is freezing in the house right now. Guess I should go offer the guys some coffee...

All That Remains...

Here are some pics of the floor, post dry ice experiment.

This is the view into the foyer from the formal livingroom/diningroom:

The foyer staircase landing:

A close up of the "grid" left by the 9" x 9" tiles. This tar paper currently covers the hardwood in some spots, but will be sanded off easily when the floors are refinished:

The tool Mike used to scrape the tiles off after they were treated with the dry ice:

Remnants of the asbestos tiles after they "shattered":

Originally, we thought the hardwood in the foyer and livingroom/diningroom were the same. Now, it looks like they are a little bit different. The width of the foyer planks look slightly bigger. This is a close up of the foyer floor:

And a close up of the livingroom/diningroom floor:

The view into the livingroom/diningroom (thought this would make a nice "before" pic after our floor guys work their magic):

It Worked! It Actually Worked!

Yesterday afternoon, Mike set out to pick up a large amount of dry ice in a last ditch effort to rid the foyer of some extremely stubborn asbestos tiles. We had heard rumors about this working, but couldn't find any first-hand accounts - so we were a little nervous. Well, by the time I got home from work at 5:00, all signs of the tiles were GONE!!! There were still a few "freeze" marks on the floor when I arrived - I had just missed all the fun.

Mike and my dad had spread the dry ice out in a row and let it sit for about five minutes, while uneasily watching the stuff smoke like crazy. Then, when they scraped up the tiles, they just shattered like glass! Came right up as if they hadn't even been glued down! They kept repeating this method, row after row, moving the "line" of dry ice back further and further until the whole foyer (approx. 150 sq. ft.) was cleared. We used about 100 lbs. of it, altogether.

I forgot to take some pics this morning, so I'll take some when I get home tonight.

As an added bonus, Mike said the dry ice method really cut down on the airborne dust BIG TIME.

We're calling this experiment a SUCCESS!

Dry Ice, Asbestos and a DIY-Crazed Lunatic

What can go wrong, right?

Remember this pic from a couple posts ago? Well, this is what the floors look like when the asbestos tiles come off easily. What they look like when the tiles won't come off at all, well that's a whole different deal. For whatever reason, the tiles in the foyer have made it very clear that they have no intention of parting ways with our beautiful 100 year-old hardwood floors. The solution? Dry ice. Mike is on his way to pick 100 lbs. of it as I type.

Will post on the progress when there is some.

The Boy in the Bubble

Well, we're all sealed up. Cullen came down with a cold, so we decided to quarantine him until Finn's first day of school had passed.

I'm just kidding.

Mike has been (very) hard at work scraping 50 year-old asbestos tiles off the better part of our entire first floor. His hands are covered in blisters. Hasn't been an easy task. He sealed up the areas he was working in so the dust from the tiles wouldn't get to the rest of the house. I talked to a contractor once who told me that for the asbestos to be harmful we'd have to grind it up and eat the dust for breakfast. Ha. Even if that's true, I think we'll err on the side of caution with this one.

Our floor guys are coming today to give us the estimate for refinishing the floors. This is what they (and we) are up against:

Kinda makes you want to cry, doesn't it? Why? WHY would ANYONE do this to hardwood floors!?! Of course, fifty years from now the house's new owner will probably be cursing us over our faux tin ceiling. So it's all relative, I guess.

Slow Going

Well, things haven't exactly been moving right along as of late. We spent most of last weekend cleaning out the cellar. Very fun in a 111 year-old house full of 111 year-old dirt. Luckily, my cleaning-machine mother-in-law was there to give us the kick in the butt we always seem to need on "clean-up days." The cellar had to be emptied so that the formal living room/dining room and foyer could be emptied. Those rooms had to be emptied so we can finally, FINALLY get the floors done! Til then, this is what these rooms look like:

Almost pretty.

And, to top off our dirt-filled weekend, my grandfather passed away on Sunday night after a very long, very brave battle with cancer. This grandfather was instrumental in allowing for me and Mike to have the opportunity to purchase the Big Yellow House. While I know he was very happy for us and knew how much we appreciated his help, I really regret not having been able to show him the "finished product" before he left us. Rest in peace, finally.

Uncovering the Past

A few weeks ago, when my husband was working on the foyer, he had to rip out some pipes (old gas lines?) that had been in the house for a long, long time. These pipes were exposed (not walled in) and were just tucked into a corner of the foyer. Rather than dealing with them, previous owners had simply painted them to match their wall color.

The back sides of the pipes, which had not been visible until they were cut down, showed the vestiges of several different layers of paint. Much to my satisfaction, the order of these colors matched those that I had found in several other places throughout the house.

Soooo, I am now fairly certain that we know the original wall color of the house, as it looked in 1897...

This mauve-ish color looks to be the original paint. This color, together with all the natural woodwork (before it was painted many, many times) must've looked really beautiful.

I am a regular Nancy Drew.

Sneak Preview Time!

Oy vey, one month since my last post! So goes Summer in blogland, I guess. Well, my family and I enjoyed a very nice vacation in the White Mountains last week (see, I'm coming up with excuses for not blogging - that means at least I care). We got rained on about half of the time - but it was still nice and very much NEEDED!

I thought I'd share a little sneak peek at what my very talented husband has been up to. This project is whole-post worthy in and of itself, but I don't have the before pics with me and he's not quite finished, so that post will have to wait a couple weeks or so. This is a little corner of my beautiful, new foyer (complete with brand new wainscotting done by said husband)...

I absolutely love it! I feel like a little girl at Christmas every time I look at it! This wainscotting might be my single most favorite thing my husband has done to the house. This is better than flowers and chocolate! Don't bring me roses - bring me wainscotting!!!

Incidentally, those framed pictures are of our house in 1952. My husband found them in the attic shortly after we bought the house. Apparently an arsonist set fire to the church next door in 1952 and our house appeared in some of the fire-related pictures. Very cool to have pics of the house from that era. It's hard to imagine that the house was already 55 years old in these pictures!

Okay, now for one more little sneak peek...

This is our new tin ceiling in the foyer. Well it's actually faux tin - but don't tell anyone, okay? I cannot get over how real it looks! We used this* product from Armstrong and just put a few coats of silver spray paint on it before hanging. Oh, how I love my new ceiling! (not as much as my new wainscotting, though ;) )

* http://www.armstrong.com/resclgam/na/ceilings/en/us/prod_detail.asp?itemId=44552.0