The Historic District

Thanks, Gothichome. I was happy to see the shape and profile of the trim, since there is now high v.s. low contrast. I don't have great command of my camera, to attempt to balance out the detail, so the trim now photographs as almost black. It is on the very darkest end of the paint chips, though.

I had to shoot around some chaos (still boxes, etc. in the living room) but I guess I should get a gallery posting going to document the house's progression.

Willa, the room looks lovely!! Such an improvement! The colour really makes the stained glass pop too.

Willa wrote:There are many, many, many nail, staple and thumbtack holes in the trim around the window casings, so stripping back to wood would be pointless as the beauty of wood filler would really shine then !

If I had a remuddler comic, I would steal this line faster than a Wyoming winter wind.

Each photo, things look better and better, Willa. You are doing a knock out job in what feels like a very short time frame.

Your post did remind me I still have staples to pull out of our baseboard trim in a few rooms, though.

The beauty of wood filler reminds me of my recent stay in London, in an otherwise very nice Airb'n B house. All the doors had been stripped at some point and none of them looked too good. The kitchen door was the wirst, it had huge white spots of wood filler.

A little early for this but I am getting too excited to wait....

Before:



After (almost):

I just put together some before and afters

http://stoneshack.blogspot.com/2017/04/we-all-love-before-and-after-pictures.html

StoneHouseGuy wrote:I just put together some before and afters

http://stoneshack.blogspot.com/2017/04/we-all-love-before-and-after-pictures.html

Stone house, just had another look at your site, on the mantle you have a couple of candle sticks, we have the sconce version of that same mermaid.

Sold to us as European about 1870, they were also a popular form for high end glass lights.

Mick_VT wrote:A little early for this but I am getting too excited to wait....

Before:

Messages Image(231435288).png

After (almost):

IMG_6644.JPG

That looks great! Looks like it could have always been there.

After roughly 8 years of working on the house in brief spurts during vacations I finally have a before and after to share!

The bathroom was an utter mess when we got there, ugly and not very functional. It was built in 1976 as cheaply as possible by splitting a room in half with a concrete block wall. There was zero insulation underneath the concrete subfloor and it was higher than necessary because the vaulted cellar entrance underneath went so high up. That resulted in a 5 cm step around the door in the adjacent hallway, i.e. the other half of the former room, a pretty dangerous contraption in a dim hall!

We gutted the place down to the bare dirt floor and adobe walls, removed the block wall that had been built on top of the old screed, split the bathroom into a WC with sink and bathroom with tub, sink and washing machine connection (your typical Austrian bathroom). We also switched from a wall-mounted electric water heater (120 l) to a gas boiler with an indirect hot water tank (100 l), eliminating the night tariff electric meter in the process. Also the new bathroom has a proper radiator instead of two electric quartz heaters!

The only somewhat sad compromise is the new window but it's only visible from inside since we left the original window (outwards-opening casement) in place. We still need to get some kind of privacy measure in place but that's about all that's missing!

Is that ugly or what?



That yellowed medicine cabinet was the only light in the entire long and narrow (170x340 cm) room!

The shower curtain did look quite a bit better once we washed it and removed the nicotine/tar hue but that's about the only uplifting bit here.



And now the great reveal (sorry for the crappy phone picture! My phone didn't really cope well with the mixed lighting)

That's a refreshing change, TR, and a relief to be rid of the mucus color! Well done.

My "Before & After" is, technically, before and after my July visit to the house, since the painting isn't done.

319 Fifth BEFORE by James McInnis, on Flickr

319 Fifth AFTER by James McInnis, on Flickr


As you can see in the "Before" shot, I had already begun hacking away at the vegetation. Plants grow like mad in that warm, wet climate.