Hi from Toronto

[fugaziosbourne (WavyGlass)]

My wife and I have been slowly restoring our 1923 Craftsman after many years of bad renovations and questionable design ideas from the previous owners. We're trying to do a semi accurate restoration but most of the original details are long gone and chances are we're going to be the last owners of the home. The next owner will likely bulldoze it and cram a McMansion on the lot.

Right now, I'm working on the master bedroom, which is quite the project for a semi competent diy enthusiast. After the room was completely gutted, I had to replace most of the ceiling joists, reinforce some of the studs and install insulation/vapour barrier. This room was bitterly cold in the winter.

Here's a before showing the painted wall paper/stucco combination. The stucco was strategically placed so whenever I'd get up in the middle of the night and walk around the dormer, I was guaranteed to impale myself in the head or back.



More stucco!


During the renovation I found an outline of the original closet which was behind the bedroom door. It was approximately 3'x3'. We were surprised the house had a closet since most older homes in Toronto do not. At some point a previous owner ripped it out and built a walk in closet made from wood panelling. This was also removed before we bought the house. I wanted to recreate the original closet but we decided it would make more sense to have a larger closet instead of trying to historically accurate.

[fugaziosbourne (WavyGlass)]

Here's a little section of wall removed. I was surprised to see wide planks for the exterior wall. Was this normal for the period? Someone did a patch job on the plaster in the past and used concrete which worked but it made removing the baseboards next to impossible.



When I was ripping the ceiling out this hit me on the head. Always wear head and eye protection! There was also a print advertisement for the Grease movie which placed the last "renovation" in the late 70's.

[fugaziosbourne (WavyGlass)]

I wasn't sure what to expect when I was removing the floors. When we did our kitchen project there were 7 layers of tile and linoleum! This wasn't bad. One layer of cheap laminate, a layer of red tile and thin sheet of plywood and we're to the original floors.



Then I find this the closer I get to he centre of the room. Thats interesting.



Someone painted a "rug"design on the floor. But the person didn't use a straight line so it's uneven and the colours aren't the same thickness all the way around. Weird.

[Powermuffin]

Welcome fugaziosbourne. We have the same wide plank boards on the outside of our home so it must be a common feature. I've seen it on other old homes in Colorado too. I so hope that you are wrong about the next owners ripping down your house. That would be sad. Here in our town, we are seeing more people buying up the old houses and keeping most of the original details.

Funny about the 7up bottle! I can't imagine why it was in the ceiling!

We had great fun ripping up the multiple layers on top of our kitchen floor. There were some 1930s newspapers in between layers. Once everything was removed, we could see how the kitchen was originally laid out. That is the part, maybe the only part, that I like about renovation.

Looks like the floor is in good shape. More pictures please.
Diane

[fugaziosbourne (WavyGlass)]

Welcome fugaziosbourne. We have the same wide plank boards on the outside of our home so it must be a common feature. I've seen it on other old homes in Colorado too. I so hope that you are wrong about the next owners ripping down your house. That would be sad. Here in our town, we are seeing more people buying up the old houses and keeping most of the original details.

Funny about the 7up bottle! I can't imagine why it was in the ceiling!

We had great fun ripping up the multiple layers on top of our kitchen floor. There were some 1930s newspapers in between layers. Once everything was removed, we could see how the kitchen was originally laid out. That is the part, maybe the only part, that I like about renovation.

Looks like the floor is in good shape. More pictures please.
Diane

Right now the trend in Toronto is to buy a small house and knock it down or completely gut the interior and make it look like a condo. It drives me crazy. I completely agree with the fun part being seeing what is under everything. I'll post pictures of our kitchen reno later...that one was frighting. Yours sounds similar to ours.

The floors are solid just little rough looking in spots. Theres something weird where the flooring stops then theres an added row. It's like when they built the place, they did it too short, panicked and added a row of evenly cut floorboards.

[fugaziosbourne (WavyGlass)]

The dormers were not even close to being level...lots of fun trying make it appear that they are.




Picture of the walk in closet under construction. I like to keep a nice clean worksite. /sarcasm.




Here's the almost completed shelving.

[fugaziosbourne (WavyGlass)]

We found this grate for a decent price at our favourite salvage shop. I cannot find the photo of the before. This was after many hours of stripping and cleaning with steel wool.




This is the almost finished product. I usually try to remove paint from every piece of metal in our home, to my wifes amusement, but we decided paint would look better on this.


Door plates! One of our neighbours was "renovating" their house and threw out all of the old doors and hardware. I was lucky enough to rescue them before they ended up in a dump somewhere.

[Superbeetle]

Welcome to wavy glass! Those door plates are fantastic! What a save. I can't imagine what your PO was thinking with that bizarre texturing.

[Foursquare]

Great thread, I enjoyed reading it so far. Ditto on the door plates, mine are big box generic replacements which will be replaced one day. Glass doorknobs would be nice too I think.

Welcome to WavyGlass!


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[nlswitz]

Love those door plates. I think that I alternate between being pleased with discovering something new and asking myself the question, "what were they thinking?" Enjoy the journey!