Kitchen without the cabinets and tile. The sink is still attached in this picture, because rusty plumbing connections made us dubious about disconnecting anything. In the end, just about all the plumbing in the basement had to be torn apart to be able to a point where we could actually find a pipe that didn’t disintegrate when we tried to disconnect it. The galvanized pipes just don’t hold up over time!
Even before closing on the house, we bought these windows from The Rebuilding Center, a great non-profit building material warehouse here in Portland. They accept donations of surplus or salvageable building materials and sell them at a reasonable price. The profits go to fund the warehouse and their community programs. While much of their stock is from 70’s and 80’s, you can occasionally find gems like these old casement windows.
We really thought that they would go well in our kitchen, and we were excited that they were fir, which would match all of our other woodwork. Our excitement did not adequately reflect the following issues which our spontaneous purchase would set into motion:
Negative #1) The size and shape of these windows would require a complete re-frame of the long (19′) wall of our kitchen.
Negative #2) They required stripping to get rid of the lead paint. Luckily, we did find a great local place that could do that for us at a reasonable cost (Houck’s Stripping)
Negative #3) Since these casements had no frames, we’d have to build them ourselves. That ended up taking a LOT of time and a surprising amount of money.
Negative #4) Some of the glass was broken and would have to be replaced. Julio’s original plan of replacing all the glass with wavy glass didn’t work out too well, because just about every piece broke either when removing it from the old frame (we bought junky old windows at the Rebuilding Center) or when installing it into these windows
Negative #5) Old, single pane windows are nowhere near as energy efficient as new windows, especially when the windows are warped, which makes it difficult to weatherstrip them well. Eventually, we are going to make some storm windows that we can put up in the winter.
Once the windows, the stripping, the wood, the “new” hinges (we had to buy antique ones at Rejuvenation, and they cost a small fortune), not to mention the dozens of hours of labor, we easily ended up spending about as much as we would have on new windows. But, they really do look fantastic, and EVERYONE assumes that they are the original windows. So while there were a lot of negatives, we’re still glad that we did it this way.
Hello…I am writing this from the future, September 2008 to be exact. Things today look much different than they did back in your time. Since these pictures were taken, this room was used for over two years for Chloe’s bedroom and since served as a “dumping ground” for everything we didn’t know what to do with, as well as a temporary sleeping area for Ginger for a few months. We are now reclaiming this room and converting it into our family/guest room. See the changes that we’ve made.
Back window of back bedroom
Side window of back bedroom
This is how our kitchen looked when we bought the house. Didn’t go to well with the 1911 house, although it definitely had its own brand of charm…
The football field size cover over our back patio. It is a fantastic thing to have in a rainy climate!
Did this ever look good? We have nothing against pink, per se, but what is this??
The upstairs was ‘interesting,’ in a Hansel and Gretel meets the 1960’s sort of way, but we decided that we’d eventually have to do a full gut and rebuild up there. There were some major issues that would require us to rip down the plaster and open it all up, most significantly the low ceiling height (6′) and very spotty insulation.
The living room, like the dining room and foyer, has the original, stained woodwork. While it’s not in perfect condition, it looks very good and gives a feel of real craftsmanship. Also, we were very excited about having a fireplace again!
Among the many other unusual things about this house was the fact that there were very few openable windows in the downstairs. Notice how the picture and double hung windows on the left side of the picture are not actually windows. Someone went to the trouble of removing the original windows and replacing them with sheet glass. It was like being in an office building, with no fresh air. We put opening windows high on our rehab list.
This is how our dining room looked when we bought the house. The intact, unstained woodwork was one of the main factors that drew us to this house. We had looked at so many houses that had painted or, even worse, missing woodwork. We really fell in love with the look of the flat-grained fir wainscotting and box beams. We later replaced the fixture with a more appropriate (Craftsman) one, and we moved this one out onto the back patio. We were not, however, very fond of the fact that all the windows had been removed from the room, cutting off any potential for airflow.
This is how our backyard looked when we bought the house. The house had been a rental for a long time, so the yard had been severely neglected. While we’re not big fans of large expanses of grass, we did want to create a decent place for our daughter to play. The terraces scattered throughout the yard didn’t make for a very good playground.