Fixing a Drip

Wisconsin is known for its rough winters. They don't call Lambeau Field the 'Frozen Tundra' for nothing!

Our home was a foreclosure property. The bank didn't want to pay the heat bill, so after a while the heat was turned off. Unfortunately, the water wasn't completely drained out of many of the pipes before that was done. Water in pipes and fixtures + freezing temperatures = burst pipes and damaged fixtures.

The faucet in the 2nd floor bathroom was one of the fixtures that was damaged. Chris at Sinclair Plumbing thought that the water freezing in the faucet may have expanded and created a small crack. Over time, and as the faucet was used more, the crack got bigger and bigger, until every time the faucet was used, a little puddle of water formed under the sink. We obviously needed to get a new one.

I wanted to make sure we got a new faucet that would look nice with the original pedestal sink, as well as one that was known for its quality.  We decided to get a faucet from the Leland collection by Delta. It's a cute little teapot-style faucet in a brushed nickel finish.

We had to survive without our sink for eight or nine days. Then, Rich from Sinclair Plumbing was able to come over with our new faucet and install it for us. As soon as I turned on the bathroom light, the bulb burned out. He offered to change the light bulb for me, so of course I took him up on it! Customer service at its best!

The new faucet looks great.

Our sink without a faucet.

Our new faucet, along with a clean sink and a de-cluttered bathroom!

New Garage Doors

Although the detached garage is not an original structure and was built years after our home, it is certainly old as well.  The doors on this garage were heavy wooden doors that probably took a small army to install.  When we moved in, only one of the doors actually had all its hardware and could be opened.  The other door was just panels stacked on top of one another, missing hardware and held together by gravity and a prayer.  

The original garage doors.  The one on the right did not open.

We knew that replacing the garage doors was something that should be done before winter.  Wisconsin winters are no time to leave a vehicle outside unless you want a healthy dose of scraping windows at least twice a week.  Since our previous house had only a one stall attached garage, we were anxious to actually have both vehicles inside for a winter.  

John from Alpine Sales and Service gave us many options to choose from for our new doors.  His website has a great tool that allows you to upload a picture of your current garage and see how various doors would look.  This gave us the opportunity to find doors that would compliment the age and style of our home.  

Two beautiful, working doors.

John worked for two rainy, cold days to remove our old doors and install the new ones.  Not only did he replace the doors, but he installed new tracks, openers, and a manual disconnect lock.  There is no service door on the garage and this might come in handy if we ever lose power.  He certainly went above and beyond for our installation and tackled the challenges of working with an older structure.  With our first snowfall earlier this week, it was great to have our vehicles tucked safely inside the garage where their windows remained dry and frost free.

Laundry Room Part III: Update of Ongoing Progress

Well a few months have now passed and our laundry room seems like that project that will just never end (Does anyone remember the deck at our previous house?).  However, we have been making some slow but meaningful progress.  Ralph's came back for this much smaller project to refinish part of the flooring and add new hardwood where the stairs used to be.

Before the new hardwood flooring was added.

The new flooring (left) and old flooring (right).  This is before the finish was applied.

The walls are now up and the lathe is all covered.  This was enough for us to at least get the washer and dryer in place, so we would not have to run elsewhere to do laundry.

The old lathe and the new plumbing and electrical.

The new walls with the washer and dryer all hooked up.

The room also needed venting for the dryer.  Drilling through several layers of wood, plaster and lathe yielded a nice 4" hole to fit the venting.  Seeing as though there is no insulation in the exterior walls it was relatively easy and clean.

The dryer vent hole from the outside. 

If there isn't any insulation, at least there is 3 inches of solid wood!

New dryer vent on the exterior.

Additional progress since the washer and dryer are in place has been slow.  We have been able to paint and place trim on a few of the walls, but still have a bit more than half of the room to do.

The washer and dryer in their new home.

A New Coat of Paint: My Sewing Room

Before we found this house, we weren't really in the market to buy a different one. We were actually thinking of starting to look for some wooded land outside the city to build a dream house, complete with a nice big kitchen, a cozy library, and a room just for me to be able to do my sewing and other crafty stuff.

Lo and behold, this home fell into our laps, and my dreams of having my own workroom were all but gone... until we started figuring out what all of the rooms would be used for. The dining room was obvious, considering both its proximity to the kitchen and the chandelier. The same went for the kitchen and the four bathrooms. The rest of the rooms, however, could be whatever we wanted them to be!

I've always wanted my bedroom to be in a turret, so that determined where our bedroom would be. We wanted the baby to have his room near ours, so that solved that one. We had another entire bedroom set for our guest room, but it wouldn't fit up the stairs to the third floor, so we had to have that on the second floor as well. This left me with a choice between the last two rooms on the second floor, neither of which had closets. I chose the smaller of the two, mainly because of its relatively square shape. The other room is more conducive to be used as a playroom for all of the future Lenz kids.

Once I decided that this room would be the home to my sewing machine, my yarn bins, and the plethora of other crafts odds and ends, I got right down to business. The first task was to take up the carpeting and get the floor refinished. After that was accomplished, we were able to schedule painters to come out and brighten the room up a bit!

The original paint color was a peachy-tan color. Not what I had in mind for a room that I'd be spending a lot of time in, so I decided to go with a light lavender color. The color in the photos looks a little darker than it turned out. The crown molding and ceiling are both white, even though they look lavender in the picture. It was a bright sunny day when I took the pictures, and there was clearly some reflection going on!

The original color.

After getting it painted! It's not that dark in real life.

We got our paint for the kitchen, my workroom, and the 2nd floor bathroom at Parker Paint in Green Bay.   

A New Coat of Paint: The Kitchen

Sometimes, a new paint color or even just a fresh coat of paint can have a dramatic impact on how a room looks.  Take our kitchen, for instance. It used to be this greenish color:

One of the first pictures we took of the house after we bought it.

After getting the ceiling fixed, we wanted to see how much of a challenge it would be to have all of the trim in the same color.  Before we started the ceiling project, we had beautiful maple crown molding up. The rest of the trim in the room, however, was painted over with white latex paint. Knowing that we'd eventually have the windows replaced, we decided to take the white painted trim down from around the windows.  We also took off all of the white baseboards. 

Now, this is what our kitchen looks like:

After painting.

I am excited to have this nice cream color for our walls.  It brings out the warm tones of the maple cabinetry and crown molding. Plus it no longer competes with the slightly different green color of the adjacent dining room.

A corner of the kitchen before painting.

After painting.

We got our paint for the kitchen, my sewing room, and the 2nd floor bathroom at Parker Paint in Green Bay.

Watch for a future blog post on our new window trim! 

Who Puts Carpeting Over Hardwood? Oh Wait...

As we completed our first walk-through of the house, I was curious as to why only one room on the 2nd floor had carpeting. After ripping up the carpeting once the home was ours, I saw why. Years of neglect and bad patch-jobs of the wood left the floor looking pretty sad. The previous owners must have thought they had no other choice but to put carpeting over the top of it.

This blurry picture was a snapshot taken from a video I took 

of our first walk-through of the house. 

I only have the above picture of the carpeting. I was too excited to rip it up before I realized that I had completely forgotten to take a before picture!

I started in one corner of the room. I got a corner of the carpeting pulled up, and as I peeled it back, the lovely green-and-yellow speckled carpet pad greeted my eyes. After getting a large section of the carpeting pulled back, I got to work with the razor knife. I wanted to cut the carpeting up into smaller pieces so they'd be easier to carry out to the curb.

Carpet fibers flew every which way, and before I knew it, the carpeting was rolled up and gone! Then I made short work of the carpet pad and those pesky carpet staples.

Clearly, the floor had seen its better days...

The Shop Vac was used to vacuum up pieces of carpet pad and staples. 

What a mess!

There must have been a radiator or a floor vent in this room before, too, because here's a patch of newer flooring that was put in where a hole must have been:

A new patch of flooring.

While we had Ralph's Hardwood at our house working on our other big flooring project, we decided we'd have them tackle this room too.

The floor post-sanding and pre-finishing.

I was really pleased with how beautifully it turned out!

A New Coat of Paint: The 2nd Floor Bathroom

I'm someone who usually takes a while to make a decision, especially when I know if I rush into it, I could end up having made the wrong decision.  Meaning, I'm not that impulsive.  Except in this case.

The bathroom on the 2nd floor of our house is designed and decorated in a classic turn-of-the-century style: contrasting colors, pedestal sink, basket-weave mosaic tile floor, and square tile on the walls.  The tile doesn't go all the way up to the 10-foot ceiling, but rather stops at the 6-foot mark. According to my math, this leaves four feet of wall that needs to be painted.

The previous owner took the black and white theme of the bathroom and went on a straight-out-of-the 1980s rag painting rampage. As such, we decided that painting over the splotchy black paint was going to be one of our first painting projects.

Yikes.

We had a paint sample booklet that featured historic paint colors, and we were between a blue and a green. This is where my impulse kicked in. We decided to get Buxton Blue. It matches a teeny, tiny stripe on our bath towels. Good enough for me!

After the painting was completed.

We got our paint for the kitchen, my sewing room, and this bathroom at Parker Paint in Green Bay.  The guy behind the counter was very helpful, and it didn't hurt that I had a BUY ONE GET ONE FREE COUPON. We ended up getting six gallons of paint for the cost of three.  (If you know me, then you know how much I love a good deal.)

Making an impulsive decision on choosing this paint color could have been disastrous, but it ended up working... this time!

Laundry Room - Part II: Pipes and Wires

If you read our last post "Laundry Room - Part I: The Wall Comes Tumblin' Down", you know that we have been focusing our efforts on finally having the ability to use our washer and dryer in our own house.  For this task, we need to convert the former maid's staircase into a useable room with all the hookups for modern appliances.

The small hole I cut into the drywall revealed water supply pipes and a drain pipe for the bathroom sink opposite this side of the wall.  I was hopeful that the experienced plumbers at Sinclair Plumbing would be able add the washer hookups and drain with relative ease.

While the supply pipes were easily cut and accessed, it was the drain that created more of a challenge.  The drain pipe I originally spied through the small hole was not large enough to handle the flow from a washer and was too high in the wall to drain properly.  Luckily there was a larger sewer drain just to the left that services the third floor bathroom.

Plumbing for the washer.

Cutting through this cast iron pipe was no easy task for the plumber, plus there were some electrical wires hiding behind the drain pipe.  Fortunately, our plumber was experienced with working in older homes and knew to look for these wires before he began cutting the pipe.

Now that a potential electrical problem was avoided, it was time to add the new electrical connections that we would need for both the washer and dryer.  We again enlisted Harv's Electric to complete their third project in our house.  The electrician from Harv's made short work of adding the new outlets around the plumbing.  He even moved a light fixture and added a switch and outlet combo in our future laundry room.

The new electrical outlets

Now that the pipes and wires have been completed, the next steps will be attending to the floors and walls.

Laundry Room - Part I: The Wall Comes Tumblin' Down

Since we moved into our old home at the end of August we have been living without the use of two modern amenities that seem much more like necessities -- a washer and dryer.  Add an infant in cloth diapers into the mix and now you are asking for a disaster.  Fortunately, we have lots of family that live in the area that have been generous to allow us to pop in and do a few loads when we need to.

The house did originally have hookups for a washer and gas dryer in the basement.  However, this basement isn't exactly the most inviting space, and we own and prefer an electric dryer.  Furthermore, we had the line for the gas dryer removed -- and the other nest of twisted gas pipe -- when our new water heater was installed.

After some research and deliberation, we decided to add a laundry room off the landing between the first and second floors.  Aside from kitchen towels and washcloths, the bulk of our laundry will be generated on the second floor anyway.  Plus we had these two little rooms located off the stairs that were inexplicably useless.

Looking down on the little rooms from the 2nd floor

We learned that these two little rooms were the remains of a second staircase that the maids used decades ago.  With the staircase long gone and no sign of maids anywhere around our house, these odd little rooms were a good fit.

The first step in creating our new laundry room was to remove the little wall between the rooms and create one larger room -- but still rather small.  Not only would this give us a usable space, but it would allow more natural light into the hallway on the second floor.

The drywall removed from the wall revealing the lathe.

Where the wall once was.

Same view as the first picture without the wall

With a bathroom on the opposite wall, we were certain that we could get the hookups and drain line we needed for the washer.  Just to be certain we cut a hole in the wall to peek at the plumbing inside.

Hole to check on the plumbing.

Confident that we could then proceed with our project we called Sinclair Plumbing and Harv's Electric to begin work on getting the hookups we would need for our soon-to-be-laundry room.

Sorry about your tree, Alice!

While cutting the lawn one day, I was stopped by a nice man named Ron who has lived in the neighborhood for decades.  He gave us the warmest of welcomes and said that he knew the couple that most recently lived in this house.  He mentioned that as they grew older, they had not been able to give the house the attention that it needed.  He was excited to see a young family with the energy it would take.

Ron also mentioned that they passed away a few years ago and that the wife, Alice, had gone a bit before her husband.  In her memory, a tree was planted at the house.  Here is a picture of the tree from last week:

Alice's tree

The size of the tree led me to believe that Ron might have a slightly different perception of how long ago Alice passed away.  The tree might have been 25 feet tall when it was planted and I could be completely wrong.

The tree blocking the house

Regardless, the tree needed to go.  It was far too large for our city lot and it blocked the view of much of our house.  Furthermore, it was a pine.  Pines are messy.  Pines leave sap, cones, and needles.

The crew from Economy Tree Service made short work of the tree.  Armed with a chipper and a fearless man with a chainsaw on an extension ladder, all but the stump was gone within 30 minutes.

Sorry Alice, the tree is down.

Hopefully Alice's family has other means of keeping her memory alive.

The grinding of the stump.

The house without the tree.

Kitchen Appliances "Steel" the Show!

Refrigerators, ranges, dishwashers, and microwaves! Who knew that shopping for new appliances would be so overwhelming?

About two months ago now, we walked out of Classic Maytag on Military Avenue with a feeling of accomplishment.  We had finally decided on what we wanted to have for kitchen appliances. We needed to get a fridge, an electric range, a microwave, and a dishwasher. 

Looking at store ads for Fourth-of-July appliance sales was pretty time-consuming, but we narrowed our search down to three stores; we decided to go to Sears, the Home Depot, and Classic Maytag. 

Sears left us with more questions than answers, because after a while, all of the appliances started to look alike.  It wasn't a wasted trip, however, because by that point we had decided that we definitely wanted to get stainless steel finish on all four pieces.

Home Depot wasn't any help.  Not only were we constantly bombarded by sales associates (Do they work on commission? It sure seemed like it!), but they didn't have as many appliances to look at as their ad led us to believe they had. Not the first time this has happened at this store, but that's another story.

Finally, we walk into the Classic Maytag store located on Military Avenue, and we immediately see the range we want. We decided to go electric, as we no longer had a gas line going to the kitchen. Plus, I get nervous about open flame around towels, wash cloths, oil... I have been known to accidentally start things on fire.

In no time, we had our dishwasher, our microwave, and our fridge picked out.  We placed the order, and in just a few weeks, our appliances were all installed.  I am so happy with the service provided by Bill Schumacher at Classic Maytag.

The Maytag truck is here!

Bill rolling the fridge up the steps.

The refrigerator in its (temporary) home.

The microwave and the range.

The new dishwasher!

In-venting a Solution

It wasn't until after we closed on our house that we discovered what was behind a mysterious piece of wood in the kitchen.  Based on the vent outside the house we knew it was for microwave venting, but the condition of what we'd find was the question.

Wood covering the microwave vent hole

Our curiosity was satisfied as we peered in on a jagged hole stuffed with a very old beach towel (which we promptly discarded).  We also had a chance to see what the house had for insulation in the outside walls.  To  our surprise we found absolutely no insulation in the walls.    

The microwave venting in the wall

Since the exterior vent will not be removed until we get the house repainted down the road, I thought it best to stuff at least a little insulation in the hole.

Insulation in the vent hole

Then I cut a piece of drywall from a wall I intend to remove for our soon-to-be laundry room and fit it in the hole as best I could.

Drywall covering the vent hole

Some joint compound, light sanding and a couple of coats of paint made the hole disappear.  

The filled hole painted over

Although my craftsmanship is now covered by the new microwave, at least I know there is insulation in one place in this house!

The microwave in its new home