The Front Porch Beautification Project

I love the little front porch on this house.  And it was in pretty decent shape.  But as we started to update all the other finishes around it, the ‘while we’re at it’ syndrome hit us.  The floorboards had gouges and splinters, the railing was the wrong period and the steps were a bit wonky.  So 'while we're at it', we decided to update it to look as nice as the rest of the exterior.

We decided to give it a facelift.  As you can probably guess, this facelift was a little more than skin deep!  The guys updated the framing with joist hangers and modern building practices.  It included adding some new substructure, so the deck can be‘picture framed’, to give it a more polished appearance.

The first step was new decking.  While I’m a fan of composite decks for their low maintenance, I just couldn’t bring myself to put plastic floorboards on this antique house.  So we opted for mahogany decking – you can’t beat the beauty of natural wood on an old house!  

Updating the framing to meet current building code

The steps are 'picture framed' to provide a more finished edge 

Underneath, we wanted to use traditional lattice like we found on the house when we started (it also helps deter critters from living under there).  But since this is all close to the ground and will get splashed in the rain, we used a PVC product that can’t rot and will look great for many years.  It will be painted, so it will still look traditional.

Meranti is naturally decay resistant, but we added this oil to enhance it's beauty

 

The next step was the railing, with the antique balusters I spent so many weeks working on.  We modeled the design on other railings in the greater Portland area. They include the tri-color paint scheme that we’ve used on the rest of the exterior.  

 

The final step is to reinstall the brackets that were on the porch.  I’m not convinced they’re original to the house – but used them as a style guide for the rest of the brackets we added to the house.  And they are in good shape (under 50 coats of paint!), so we will reinstall them - after I get them cleaned up.

Look how close the rings are on this wood!!!  These are old! 

The result so far?  I’ll let you be the judge, but I’m pretty pleased with the first impression this will create as someone enters the home. And of course that ‘new’ antique front door is a big part of the overall look! 

The newel posts are still a work in progress

It's changed so much in the last 6 months! 

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Trials and Tribulations of 150 Year Old Floors

I knew there would be challenges in this house, but the floors were the least of my worries.  They had been covered with wall to wall carpeting for decades, so I assumed they were well protected and in good shape.  I budgeted accordingly – big mistake.  They’ve turned into a budget buster.  

 

We should have called this the house of many flooring types.  The foyer, living room and dining room all have 2” wide maple (or so we thought) floors.  The kitchen is sheet vinyl.  The office is 2 1/4” birch flooring, presumably laid over top of the 2” maple (but probably ruined due to lots and lots of nails through it)

The second floor hall and tiny room have 2 1/4” birch – same as the office downstairs.  The bedrooms have wide pine boards (no tongue and groove).  It’s not unusual to find the simpler flooring on the second floor and I was fine with that.  It’s part of the house’s history.

 

But then it all started to unravel as the work unfolded.  

 

I really wanted the main living area to flow seamlessly with the 2” flooring that's original to the house. We cleaned up a sample piece and determined it was maple, so we had lots of new maple custom milled to match (at triple the price of regular flooring $$$).  That would give us enough wood to replace the kitchen floor (I don’t even try to save kitchen floors, they’re always full of water stains and holes from old plumbing).  

400 sq ft of new, custom milled 2" maple flooring

We thought we could find lots of wood to patch problem areas (ex: heating vent holes in living room and dining room), when the kitchen floor was taken up.  But as the guys got into it, they discovered the kitchen had two sheets of luan plywood screwed and nailed over the original 2” wood in the kitchen.  It was a miserable job to remove and there simply wasn’t any way to save the antique flooring underneath of it. 

 

So how do we patch the old floor vents, spaces where walls were opened up and problem areas under the radiators?  We can’t use the new maple, it will stick out like a sore thumb.  

So many places need patching in the original flooring

Our only option - we had to tear out the foyer floor, to give us sufficient patching material.  That means the foyer will now also have the new maple.  I was devastated, I really wanted a uniform floor from the moment you walk through the front door. But sadly, that flooring had to go.

Foyer with old flooring removed - to provide patching material for living & dining room

 

But wait, there were more problems. As the guys started to sand through the dark finish on the original floor, we discovered it wasn’t all uniformly maple.  Instead, we discovered it also has birch and ash mixed in (probably not unusual, given the period when the house was built.  They used what was available!).  So now the maple floor we are installing in the kitchen and foyer will be much lighter (new maple is very, very light – think Scandinavian finishes), without that wood type variation. 

Once the dark finish was sanded off, we discovered maple, birch and ash wood

 

At this point, I was starting to lose it…..  See the dramatic difference as Pat starts sanding the new and old floor? 

 

Pat talked me down off the ledge by finding a stain to minimize the difference.  Typically, maple doesn’t take stain well.  But by water treating it before the stain, it allows the grain to pop and the stair adheres much more readily.  Take a look at the photo below.  Freshly sanded maple with just a clear finish looks blazingly white (IKEA bright!).  So he prepared some sample boards and we started experimenting with different stain colors.  After some experimentation, we came up with a color that will closely match the natural color of the original floors.  

 

With that plan in place, we addressed the 2^nd floor.  When we looked at the primary suite (now comprised of 3 different rooms from the original house), we realized we didn’t have enough of the original pine to fill in all the gaps and damaged boards.  So, we made the difficult decision to replace it.  We’re going to use oak, which is certainly different than pine, but it’s readily available and a nice traditional touch that isn’t as crazy expensive as the custom milled maple from the first floor.

And on a bright note, the stair treads are all pine.  Some are damaged and need to be replaced.  If we used new pine, it would look really odd.  Old wood has different colors, but also much tighter grain that can’t be matched with new.  So at least we have lots of antique pine boards to create the replacement treads!

So the guys are busy getting the floors in and it's all coming together.  The patches made with the narrow 2" flooring we got from the foyer are making the old holes in the floor disappear! 

The old heat vent is getting carefully 'stitched in' with original flooring

You'll never be able to see this patch once the floor has been sanded

  This won't be a quick process, but getting these floors cleaned up will make this home shine!

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It's Starting to Look Like a House Again

After months and months of ugly stud walls, old lath boards and bulging insulation, it's starting to look like a house again!  We passed all our rough-in and insulation inspections and started buttoning things up.

The drywall always unifies the spaces and brings the house to life.  And it allows us to get a good look at the Before and after Aspects of the house.  Honestly, I'm loving how it's coming together!

A big thing for me are 'lines of sight'.  The lines of sight were limited when we first bought the house, but by opening it up a bit, suddenly you can see from one end of the house to the other.  Case in point- as you stand at the entrance to the living room, now you can see through the dining room and out through the sunporch to the backyard.  That makes a huge difference in how the house looks and feels.  (BTW - the kitchen cabinets have been delivered, that's the huge pile of boxes that you see!).

You can see all the way to the backyard! 

Limited Line of Sight - Before

The dining room is a great place to see how much has changed.  This was the room with 3 different ceilings.  By tearing them all out, we've gained almost 18" of ceiling height.  And we got rid of the odd glider window and are replacing it was an antique one which will look so much better.

Look at the difference in the kitchen.  We opened up the wall between the kitchen and dining room, to enable a big, open living space.  The result is pretty amazing - oh, and we moved the awkward refrigerator to the other side of the kitchen.

Upstairs there are similar changes.  This hallway is so light and bright now!

 The new windows and bright white walls are making a huge difference in this front bedroom.

Front bedroom is light and bright, thanks to south and west windows

And the primary suite is looking so much bigger with all the walls patched and painted!

With this big milestone complete, we're ready to move forward with flooring.  After that comes the fun stuff - all the beautiful trim work we have planned.  Stay tuned!

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Creating a Primary Suite in a 150 Year Old House

 We rarely get to create a 'modern' Primary Suite in an old house.  Bedrooms are typically small and cramped and if we manage to squeeze in an additional half bath, we congratulate ourselves. 😂

That's why this house is so unusual.  We started with a 4 bedroom, 1 bath home.  But the way the rooms were arranged, it was a perfect setup to swap one small bedroom to become a bathroom and closet.  

Before Floor Plan

To-Be Floor Plan

Plus, we had this funky little 8x8 foot room that will become a unique little sitting area (plus some nice storage).  It appears to have originally been a walk in closet from the hallway - but when we opened up the wall, we loved how it brought additional light into the bedroom and we decided it had to be part of the Primary Suite.

Look at how much it's changed!

It seems so much bigger, even though it's still a very small space.

It's so much fun to see it all coming together!  

But we had some nasty surprises.  The second floor bedrooms all have pine floors.  That's pretty typical - the first floor has the fancy woodwork and the second floor is much more basic.

However, when we tore up the carpets in the newly opened spaces, we discovered the pine floors were in bad shape - and because we were incorporating multiple rooms, it presented a lot of challenges to try and piecemeal the flooring.

So we made the difficult decision to install new flooring in the hallway and primary suite.  It will certainly be nice to unify the spaces, but I'm still sad to say goodbye to the 150 year old floors.

The space is coming together!  Can you start to see how it will look?

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Paint Colors for the Maison Mansard

There have been so many questions about the paint colors for the Maison Mansard, so I thought I’d share a bit about the process I used to choose them.

 

Photo: Restoring Your Historic House, Scott Hanson

Victorians liked color for their exteriors.  The early victorian period typically had custom mixed colors, but towards the end of the 19^th century pre-mixed colors started to become available.  Scott Hanson of Restoring Your Historic House has shared this color swatch from an early paint company in Portland, Maine.  And I used it as inspiration for our Second Empire Home.

 

But it was a little tricky because I wanted to use pre-painted siding.  I choose LP’s Smartside smooth finish for two reasons - 1) smooth siding is a more historically accurate look and 2) it won’t need painting for 5-10 years.  That makes it much easier for the future homeowner.

 

But that meant I had to do the body of the house in one of their predefined colors.  That was a bit limiting, since many of these colors were very ‘modern’ looking and didn’t really work with an old house.  I also wanted to pick a lighter shade, because I’ve learned that mansards typically had siding a darker shade than the main house.  And finally, the houses on either side are gold/buff/yellow shades and I didn’t want 3 houses in a row to be similar colors.

 

So, I choose the lightest blue color – called Summit Blue.  There aren’t a lot of blue houses on the street, and it will allow us to use a darker blue for the trim.  

But then I needed to find a couple of accent colors, to highlight all the trim work we installed.  After lots and lots and lots of experimentation, I choose a dark green and a bold gold.  They’re also on the Portland Paint company’s paint chips (although why would anyone call a paint color Drab???  This was obviously before marketing departments got involved with paint color names!)  Is it historically accurate?  Who knows? Because the house was moved in 1960 and we couldn’t find any good photos, figuring out the original color wasn't possible.  But I’m really pleased with the combo and it seems to compliment all the woodwork trim that we included.

So here are a few photos with the color combinations.

There isn't a lot of the contrasting accent color on the house - but those little details really make the trim we've added stand out!  And we've gotten lots of compliments from folks as they've walked by and seen the color scheme come to life.  

It's hard to see in the photo, but all the soffits are painted the green accent color

 

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Some Days I Question My Sanity

When I stumbled across these antique balusters at Portland Architectural Salvage, I should have just kept going.  But no, I stopped and marveled at how fabulous these would look on the little front porch of the Maison Mansard.  And in a weak moment, I decided I was up to the challenge of stripping that old paint and restoring them.

I need my head examined.

This is our little front entry porch.  The existing railing isn't the right style for this home - these balusters will be so much better.

I spent the next 3 weeks painstakingly removing the paint.  I tried all the usual methods - chemicals, infrared heat, scraping, cursing.....😂. Cursing doesn't help with the paint, but makes me feel better. 

At last they were cleaned up enough to repaint and it was time to do some repair of the splits and chunks that were missing. 

Finally, I could start the repainting step.  The guys created a painting jig for me, that let me spin the balusters around as they got painted.  

I primed each one with a high quality oil based exterior primer

And then I faced the paint color challenge.  I've been to the paint store so many times, they chuckle when I walk through the door.  Picking paint colors for a Second Empire home has been a challenge for me.  But I appreciate that the Victorian aesthetic uses color to highlight architectural details.  

So I started trying different colors on different parts of the balusters.  We'll also use the color scheme on other details of the house, so getting it right is important.  I hated some of them....and started over.  

Why am I smiling?  I have so many balusters to paint!!!

At last, I came up with a combination I'm happy with.  I love that they don't look brand new.  They reflect the history of the past, which will be perfect on our 1880 house.  Now I just need to paint the next 15 of them!  Like I said, I need my head examined! 

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