Restore|House

Fixing cut sash ropes.

The window on the front of the house which is in my bedroom has been missing the sash ropes for the top and bottom sash on the right sides as long as I've lived here. It's always bothered me that I've had to use a board to hold up the top sash whenever I wanted to open the window. The board was functional, but looked...bad.
This weekend I broke down and bought some [what I consider] overpriced sash rope and came home and decided to just go for it.

I removed the screws that held the trim in place fairly quickly, and then wrestled both of the sashes out. It was a little awkward attempting this on my own, but it wasn't impossible :)

Here you can see both of the sashes out, and resting, with the left ropes still intact.

These are the tools I had. Sash rope, screwdriver set, hammer, window zipper, and some other random stuff. Nothing fancy.

First thing I did was try to feed the new rope down into the pulleys. I fed and fed and it never reached the bottom. So I decided to try to find something to weigh the end down.

And I found this little drill bit attachment thing for my ratcheting screwdriver set. I just twisted it into the rope until it worked it's way all the way in. This may not be the best/brightest method...but I was just using what I had in front of me.

And it worked! The end showed up down in the pocket. I tied it to the weight, and attached the other end to the sash, measuring it like I saw in a This Old House tutorial.

I repeated the steps for the bottom sash, and had the whole window put back together and working better than ever in less than 15 minutes! By myself!! Even Tom Silva in the This Old House tutorial video had the homeowner helping him cut and tie the rope while he held the sashes.

The best part of all is that now I don't have to use this board to hold open the top sash when I want the window open. This is probably the most rewarding house project I've attempted in a long time :)

Help me pick a kitchen paint color, please! :)

The kitchen needs some love.  Big time.

Here are the details in the current state :
ivory cupboards
white baseboards
white/chrome appliances
white with pastel confetti stuff on it laminate counters
heart pine floors

What paint color for the walls would tie this all together? Help!!

Guest Bedroom, again. :)

 

Anyone wanna guess what the new addition to the guest bedroom is as of this weekend?

I'll give you a hint...It's part of the reason why the bed is moved from it's normal position...

Perhaps this "action" shot will give you a better clue..

It still amazes me how this room started out at the beginning of last year...sometimes I think the best part of maintaining this blog is to see how far things have come..

Bathroom Under the Stairs [Or, The Epic Saga Continues]

I know I haven't posted in awhile. I'm sorry. It's not that nothing has gone on at the house, it's just...I've been busy! Since I've last posted, I've turned 30, gone to Vegas for a week [with a day trip to LA to see a friend I haven't seen in 11 years] and have been trying to tie up little things...because the BIG things are gonna require some help.

You may recall the bathroom under the stairs. I've posted about it before, and how incredibly...grating on my soul...it was. Seriously, the idea of a 1/4 bath grosses my OCD self to pieces. I've never used this bathroom in the almost 5 years I've owned this house.  And I never let anyone else use it...Why? Because if they use this bathroom, there is no way for them to wash their hands. Or anything. Just...ahhhhhhh!
Whenever someone would come over and want a tour of the house, I would walk by the door to this...monstrosity..and say, very quickly and quietly, "andthisisthebathroomunderthestairs" and keep walking. I never, ever showed it to anyone.

And with 4 bathrooms in this house, I thought I could spare getting rid of one, and having a nice walk-in closet on the main level of the house was very appealing.
But I had no idea how to approach the project.. So I called the plumbing/heating/cooling guys who have helped me with other large projects in the past [combining gas and water lines, installing new central AC unit] and had them help.

 

The next time I'm ever in a situation and need to remove a toilet permanently, I know the answer. Sawzall. Seriously. If I had one of those, my life would be complete. They are incredibly awesome and watching the plumbers use them today, it gave me so many ideas :) I could've taken that wall out so much quicker  if I had one of those years ago...
This is the ceiling in the bathroom under the stairs. I've gotta figure out a way to fix this. When "someone" installed the recessed lighting in the dining room, they knocked out the veiling in the bathoom-under-the-stairs and ran the 4 wires down the outside of the wall inside.
Yeah. Don't ask.

Gratuitous couch photo this morning. With Spring sunlight. I heart my $1 couch. Not that it has *anything* to do with bathoom-under-the-stairs.

Yeah, this thing has to go sometime soon too...Old school thermostat. But that's another story...I think I was distracted waiting for the plumbers this morning..

And voila! After less than an hour here, the plumbers had removed all traces of the corner toilet.....water and waste line. Yay! Now the bathoom-under-the-stairs is just a closet...with some big holes in the floor and needing lots of cosmetic love.

Yeah. Filling this thing in, without it looking like hell, should be fun. :)

chair restoration

Today I decided to haul one of the orphan chairs into the house and  see how bad of shape they were in. They seemed really rough at the auction, and I honestly thought the only thing I would be able to do with them would be to paint them.
After scrubbing the years of grime off of it, it really wasn't in that bad of shape. I tightened up the screws and it stopped wobbling.

A few rounds of Restor-A-Finish [which always makes things look a million times better...] I ended up with this.

It really soaked it up, so it will probably need a few more applications before the color stays put.

But look at that grain! I'm so glad these will be salvageable.. one down, two to go.

and  quick reminder of how they looked when I brought them home.