A New Coat of Paint: The Study

Back when our home was built, wallpaper was all the rage. So were dark colors of paint, which is why we chose a mulberry paint color for our study.

Before painting...

... and after!

We love this new, dark color. With the high ceilings and the large windows, the space doesn't feel small, as is what sometimes happens when walls are painted a dark color.

Before...

... and after!

A New Coat of Paint: The Nursery

The walls in our nursery were in rough shape. Something must have happened and caused some damage years ago, because the plaster on one of the walls was patched and very pitted and bumpy. The room was painted in a faux finish, probably to hide the imperfections of the newer plaster.

Some cracks have been repaired.

We tried to even out some of the rough parts by smoothing some joint compound over the pitted and uneven surface of the wall. There were also a few cracks in the walls, which we also repaired.

This large hole took three layers of joint compound to fill in!

After everything was smoothed out, we had Nitka Painting come over and give this room a new coat of paint. We loved the color of the playroom so much, that we had the same color in here. Look at how it turned out!

The color turned out great.

That's Jacked Up

A corner of our kitchen was added after the house was built. The odd thing was that it was a floating corner, and there was no support underneath it. Fast forward fifty years, and now we have a sagging problem.

Look to the right of the scaffolding. See the downward slope?

There's nothing holding this corner up!

This is also the same corner that once had a leaky ceiling. Perhaps this addition wasn't carefully planned out and properly built?

In order to fix this problem, the corner would have to be jacked up from the outside... a quarter of an inch at a time. To prevent our windows from being cracked, they took them out and temporarily filled them in with plywood.

It's working!

The jack is doing its job. That's Curt doing his job. 

We were without windows for a while.

The corner is now where it belongs. The deck has been added, too.

Now that the windows are back in, it's a sign that this project is moving along!

A New Coat of Paint: Jacob's New Bedroom

While we were planning to have Nitka Painting come out and paint our playroom, we wanted them to paint our son Jacob's new bedroom while they were here.

We are having a new baby in January of 2014, so our little guy needs to move to a new room!

This room had many cracks that needed to be fixed.

This wall needed the most attention.

A few more repairs were needed here.

Jacob's new bedroom was pink, initially. We want to do a theme with monkeys, so painting it green and brown was the next step!

These radiator pipes will serve as "trunks" for a tree that monkeys will climb.
We need to get some fake palm leaves to complete the look.

After painting.

Wall art for our monkey theme.

A New Coat of Paint: The Playroom

One of the rooms on the second floor doesn't have a closet. We knew that we wouldn't want to use it for a bedroom, so the next logical idea was to use it for a playroom for the current and future Lenz children!

When we first bought the house, the color of this room was kind of like a "peachy-tan"... the same color that my sewing room was before we had it painted a lovely lavender color.

Before painting.

There were a few cracks in this wall that we wanted to repair before the room got painted.

A few small cracks on this wall needed our attention as well.

We wanted the theme of this room to be Dr. Seuss' books, so we needed a nice neutral color that would go with everything from One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish to Horton Hears a Who and The Cat in the Hat. White was not a part of the conversation, simply because the trim was already going to be white, and who wants an all-white playroom? We went with Easter Lily. It really does look white on the computer screen, but against the white trim, it has a touch of yellow.

Nitka Painting was called up again. They were able to come out and paint this room for us, along with Jacob's new bedroom, which is right next door to this room.

Another room painted!

After painting.

We like how it turned out!

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.   

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.