The Future: Much To Do About Our House
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I can hardly believe how far we've come on our old house. Yet, there is still much more we have to do. Here's just a taste of what's in store...
The Kitchen
Here's our ambitious plan for the kitchen. There used to be a very crowded kitchen with a nook and a laundry room attached. We've moved the laundry machines already, and soon we hope to remove the old laundry room walls and really open up the space. We also plan to bump out the end of the kitchen to make a new shallow 3-sided bay window.
In order to make our bathrooms, we demolished the master bedroom closet. So we need to make a new closet, which will go behind the jog in the top right corner of the kitchen. Below that is a second sink, which will make things easier when Wayne and I cook meals together. The rectangle in the center is an island, which may or may not be fixed in place. In the bay is a small dinner table, where we'll take most of our meals.
To the left of the refrigerator will be a pass-through to the dining room. We haven't worked out all the details on that yet, but I think it'll be a nice touch that will echo a built-in feature we have in the living room.
In the bottom right, there is a staircase which will lead to the basement and a door to the backyard. In order to make the staircase be fully indoors, we're going to add a modest addition to the side of our house.
Our house still has its original siding, red cedar shingles which were probably unpainted when first applied. At some point they were painted, and now the paint is failing. Given the state of the shingles, it will be easier to replace them than to try to strip them (and they may have lead-based paint, to boot). We've decided to go back to natural red cedar shingles, treated with an almost clear linseed oil. But there's more...
Since the exterior walls were never insulated and because the structure has never been reinforced for earthquakes, we are going to remove all the old sheathing (the layer of wooden planks encasing the house that is between the shingles and the exterior wall studs). Removing the sheathing will open up the walls for insulation. We will most likely hire an insulation company to spray polyurethane foam. Insulation will help seal this drafty old house and keep the heat inside and exterior noises out.
We will then replace the planks with large sheets of plywood, which is more stable in earthquakes than small boards. That is, they provide "shear value," which prevents the house from tilting from side to side (from a rectangle to a parallelogram).
Finally, we'll have to strip and repaint (or replace) all the other exterior details, like the dentil molding, columns, and faux rafter tails. The window trim we will do when we get to the windows.
Some folks like the old fashioned windows we have, with their wavy glass and weight-and-pulley window mechanisms, but we'd rather have a well insulated house. Don't get me wrong, we are definitely going to retain the look of our old double-hung windows, which have a "true divided light" upper sash. But our windows will have better glass and won't rely on weights to be operated.
We have a dozen old windows that need work. After they're done, there will also be window trim to redo. That's the decorative wooden pieces around the window. Some of the trim we will strip and repaint, others we will replace entirely while trying to match it to the original.
It's a jungle out there in our back yard, as seen in the last photo on the Photo Gallery page. We have wild blackberries, nasturtium, a giant anise plant, and two wild plum trees that are too close to the property line and have incredibly tart fruits.
We hope to have a little patio close to the house, then a patch of ground cover (a lawn, perhaps) surrounded by nice flowering plants and a couple trees. We've talked about having a tiny citrus grove; replanting the meyer lemon tree we removed from the front yard and adding some orange or tangerine trees. It's all a bit ambiguous right now, but we definitely hope to do something in the backyard after the exterior siding is done.
Then there are all the other jobs...
- The dining room is currently Wayne's storage room and mini-workshop. It is home to the sawhorses, hand tools, hardware, and a sliding compound miter saw (which he affectionately calls "the green monster," pictured to the right). The rest of the large power tools are in the workshop proper, a.k.a. the basement. This room will be our temporary kitchen while we're working on the kitchen. Then, we'll have to do some wall patching, trim work, and painting. Eventually it will be where we keep our desks and computers.
- We must also update all the old electrical work. Our house still has some old "knob and tube" wiring, which we want to upgrade to modern standards.
- The master bedroom will need to have its closet made and trimmed out. We'll need to remove an old door that is now obsolete, as well as move the room's light switch.
Whew! I think that's everything. It'll be so exciting and beautiful when we're all done. I hope you can come visit some time!
