Whoa! Didja get the numbers off that truck?!?

November 23, 2004 - 10:35 a.m.

Lookie what I found!

While scanning negatives for storage in the Digital Vault, I came across some pictures from 1993. This is one of those former lives I allude to from time to time.

We bought a 1914 vintage house in 1986 for $39,900.00 It was a 'billy special, purchased from a very paranoid undercover narc. It was filmed in a layer of grime and needed an electrical service upgrade, new furnace, gutters, kitchen, upstairs bath, electric service in the garage... you know, just a few things.

I worked on it over the years, tearing down plaster and lath, disassembling door and window frames and heat stripping several layers of latex and lead based paint. It was the glue that kept us together...

Shortly before I was unemployed over there we undertook rehab of the kitchen and stairway. I don't have any before pictures of this project scanned yet (I have to find them first), but I do have some after shots that I'm pretty proud of. I took these pix on my last visit there, after the movers had emptied the place.

Here's the new kitchen
Note the chimney I had to contend with in the corner.
I did not do the countertop. Good thing
It took a pro five hours to get it right.


Here's another view.
Note the eyeball spots in the ceiling and
the flourescent fixtures that washed light up
onto the ceiling. It was lit like a TV studio.

Queen sized box springs do not fit into 1914 vintage hallways, so a circular saw was used in the header of the stairway to make the appropriate sized hole. We lived with that hole until shortly before moving. Of course the window frames had to be refinished and I had to construct newel posts, and handrail and balusters from scratch.

Looking up at my handcrafted open stairway.



The art deco wall fixture was my idea.

the last one -*- the next one