Ringing in the new year

Ringing in the new end of the year.

So the doorbell has been another of our little projects that just wasn't coming together. We moved in and there was a cheap wireless doorbell setup that needed batteries on both ends. The box and the button.  Something about a wireless doorbell that was going to continuously need batteries was just a problem.  And it certainly did not play into the aesthetics of the house.

We pulled the doorbell box down to find that it was battery powered.  But behind was the original doorbell wires leading to the basement. (Ignore the ugly walls, we are still in the process of pulling down paper in the kitchen)

So for the last 3 months we have done without a doorbell.  It makes people coming to the door difficult now that the winter months are here and we keep the door closed.  (Our next door neighbor has lived in the house 2 years and they don't have a doorbell either, for the same reason)


Well about a month or so ago I was walking through an estate / garage sale at the edge of town and came across this old phone. A conn Electric Intercom.  Turns out this "phone" was only part phone.  It was an in house intercom for a clubhouse somewhere here in Michigan. But the coolest part was some of the old labels were still intact, the oak box was in great shape, it had the bells on top, and it was fairly low profile.

Of course my little creaky gears start turning.  Need = bell,  this has = bell.

 So I get the patient home and start tearing it apart right away to 1. see what kind of treasure I brought home, and 2. see what it would take to accomplish my little doorbell of a dream.

Back of the box.  The striations are cuts to recess the wires from the wall. Very different than your modern manufacturing processes.

So I got my litle joy home and soon realized the knocker for the bells was broken. (right) Since it was broken it did give me a chance to start testing some electrical on it, sure enough it worked great with a little juice from a battery. 

Although the ringer mechanism was broken, a little web research I found a guy in ohio that restored old phones.  I emailed him my delima and what I knew about my little box of magic.  Of course that didn't get far, so I sent a picture.  That did get somewhere, $10 and wait a week and you get parts from similar devices.  The ringer on the left is from the same brand of phone but I had to bend the arm straight to mimic the original. But for a few bucks, we were getting closer to business.

Patient with it's new heart.

So it has taken a few weeks of work but I finally got wires ran 3 to be exact. from our chosen location in the kitchen (where there was a previous phone) to the vicinity of the transformer in the basement. The patient is all hooked up and ready to go.

 

Of course being the crazy nifty guy and gal we are we couldn't stop there.  With an anticipated bonus room in the basement it may get difficult to holler upstairs and someone downstairs to hear.  So with all these nifty buttons something had to be done.

That is where this little guy comes in.

 

 

 

With a button that says "Dog House" how can one resist.

 

Well the walls are ugly as can be since we started pulling down wall paper but the little box fits right at home. The doorbell button on the front door rings the phone. And if you need someone's attention in the basement.  Well..just ring the dog house.

We are trying to figure out how to upload video so we can share the fun, but until then

-cheers

What to do with a boring closet door....

 Well....Once again I failed to get much on the before pictures.  But none the less our front entry closet has been a topic of what to do for some time.  With all the work on the tile floor, we hated to cover half of it up.  so changing the panel of the door out to glass sounded like a good idea, A nice antiqued frosted glass with a logo in the middel calling out the room as a closet.
Well after a little research and a realization that new glass was uber expensive that little project stalled.  So I found free glass.  Tempered sliding doors from a back window wall.  Great....except I can't cut tempered glass.
So back to square one......

Eventually we realized chalkboard paint would work great there.  This is when Amanda told me about chalkboard markers.  They are like paint pens except they are chalk.  So off to sanding I went.

 A little elbow grease, some tape, and some paint she was on her way to being a door again.

 After hanging the door, I contracted some artistic expertise from the neighboring residents.

Not to bad for a couple kids from the south.

Notice the door hardware, that was the stuff that was gunked with all the paint.

 

And the greatest part is we can change it whenever we feel like changing the decor a little.  The markers come in a 4 pack, so we bought 2 packs so we have a variety of colors to play with over time.

till next time -cheers

Thank God for Cover-alls

So something about owning a house in a quaint little neighborhood really brings a different joy to holiday season.  Even when ol' man winter shows up before the first day of winter.

Although we had our first dusting over what seemed like the last week solid nothing stuck until yesterday.  But as soon as the sun came out from behind the clouds, it all melted.  But the beautiful snowfall we woke to this morning continued all day, expecting to leave us overnight with 5" of fresh fluff on the ground.

Much better perspective of the snow.  From inside the house.

Hope everyone's Christmas season is finding them safe, warm and joyful.

GHOSTED!

I came home late one night this week to find that we'd been ghosted!

We have 24 hours to come up with goodies for (2) other houses in the neighborhood and ghost them under the cover of darkness!

We in turn let everyone know that we've been ghosted by taping a flyer to our front door.

It's great trick-or-treating for adults!

We carefully picked our victims, snuck gifts onto their porches and ran!  Amazingly almost every house within 3 blocks had been ghosted by Halloween.

Pumpkins


Instead of carving pumpkins, I picked my picked my favorite templates painted them, they'd looked great and were super easy.

Templates from Good Housekeeping, Country Living, and Photoshop

I taped the templates to the face of the pumpkins and traced them out by puncturing the outline with a sewing needle.  After removing the template we played connect the dots using sharpie marker.

Outlined pumpkins

After they were outlined I went back a painted them with simple black acrylic paint.  After letting them dry overnight they went out onto the porch.

We went to the neighborhood party and I handed out candy as Max from "Where the Wild Things Are"

Happy Halloween!

g'night gracie....

Mission 1.1a accomplished.... no baseboards yet but they are on their way

A lesson in stripping paint

Just thought I'd post up a few words of wisdom...or hard lessons as it may be.

Through all the weeks of working on baseboards I feel like I have tried a dozen things to make stripping paint work.  The orange citristrip seems to work but is messy and is still a paint striping chemical.  Although I still think it's a good product if you really want to get the job done it's not the quickest, and is certainly temperamental.

That little triangle pointy tool on the right there...that guy can strip some paint in a WHOLE lot less time than any brush on nonsense.. That whole door frame took less than an hour and a half for both sides. For stripping paint on wood..my new best friend.

Now for metal, that is a whole different story.  We had this hardware on the front closet door that is pretty old.  Nice solid mortise lock set. But it, like everything else, has 3-4 layers of paint on it.

Inside the lockset was actually really clean. Found part of a broken skeleton key, a plastic pearl, and a reather old scrabble piece.

At least I get to use my camp stove for something.

I came across the best discovery I could have ever made in regards to stripping paint off of metal parts.  I neglected to get any pictures of the hardware before I started the process but you can see in the pot the parts are a heavy white / cream color.  bought an old pot from salvation army for a few bucks, add water, baking soda, and boil.  half hour later start removing.  The paint just peels right off in heavy layers.  After about an hour with a wire with this, a plastic tool, and a wire brush......

No more paint!! Brass darkening solution to come soon....

Toodles.....

Just a quick one before I turn in......

Short / Long week for me, I have to go to Sault Saint Marie Wednesday afternoon (overnight) so trying to get as much done as I can before then.  Made quite a bit of progress on the floors tonight, thanks to the help of my new little friend the flooring nailer.

Sometimes butter just isn't butter unless it's parquet.

Starting is always the hardest part. But I got smart somewhere along the way and pullled a line from the old flooring that is there. Much easier than me trying to snap a line from the oh so striaght walls of a 90+ year old house.

That's a start at least. I think I got the hang of it.  Certainly have to admire the paint, got the best painter that  a simple man can hire.

On the latest episode of our old house . . .

I swear it followed me home . . . .











What was in the box . . .?  Just a Tivoli Bedside Table for the entryway.  The Entryway table version of the Tivoli is too wide for our entry vestibule, but the bedside table version fit perfectly!

Living Room

Les worked especially hard this weekend and here's the progress he made on the wood floors.

 With the Living Room floors pulled up you can see what we think are the original floors to the house. (Original being a broad term considering to the best of our knowledge the house was built in 1918, added onto in the 30's, then moved to its current location in 1951)  The original floors appear to be 2" oak plank that at some point were painted navy blue!  There's really no way to tell exactly how old they are, but they are showing signs of dry-rot. 

All considered it would be an extensive effort to restore them, which is a bit beyond our expertise to repair.  We're going to protect them as best we can with a layer of underlayment before we put in the new wood floors.

 

Underlayment in Living Room

Next is the dining room, which currently has an old oak parquet floor on 1/4" plywood substrate, both of which will be removed to expose  the original floor.  Overall we'll be replacing 750 s.f. of floors, which will include the Living, Dining, Kitchen, Guest Bedroom, and Mudroom.

Recently, From This Old House

A little elbow grease, a little grout, and a few extra trips to Lowes and voila!

Finished Entry Way with new light fixture.  After a couple days of curing we can add the base boards and trim back in.






Dining Room

It took about a week to gently persuade the wall paper to, let go! But thanks to a combo of vinegar and steam, we are wall paper free.


As with lighting, good things come in boxes labeled Hinkley!  With 9'H ceilings we and a dining room table that extends to 122" we needed something to rival the overstated size of the room and furniture.  We went to a local manufacturer from Ohio to find a new vintage 3' diameter chandelier.

Coming Soon!


A pleasant surprise, showed up over the weekend . . .