Dotting Is and Crossing Ts

Six months later I can say I am officially done with the foyer. Whew! Never thought I'd write that! I was waiting for the little table to arrive via FedEx and it arrived today. While it is true I still need to work on the front doors and the pocket doors leading in to the parlor, those are big enough projects that I can consider them projects in and of themselves, so they don’t really count. It is all about compartmentalizing, people. That is how I keep from going insane.

The "before" pictures are really a retrospective of before and during the project. Anyone interested in the entire project, start to finish can select the “foyer” label from the drop down list on the left. The “after” photos at the end are all new shots taken today. I think they come closer than a lot I’ve taken at capturing the real color of walls, wood, carpet and rugs. You can thank the late evening, overcast sky for that. Between the front doors and the window in the stairs, a lot of my shots tend to get washed out.










































After, finished, done, ready to move on!

The Front Door

I decided to try and get in one more project before I succumb to a long winter of football, red wine, and bad Saturday afternoon movies. I've put off the front door long enough and now that the foyer is 99% finished, it might as well have a revitalized front door to go along with it.

The foyer is waiting on the delivery of a small table to go just inside the front door and then I can stick a fork in this bad boy and call it a day. I shied away from the Ethan Allen table for a few reasons. First, it was the hand painting on it. I loved the design of the table, but the painted flowers just didn't sit well with me. If I'm going to get something with hand painted detail on it I need to see it in person.

Even with that, I came close to purchasing it, mainly because I really couldn't find anything else I liked. I looked at so many tables, I got the point where I just didn't care anymore. I just wanted to be finished with the foyer and this purchase was the one thing holding me up. When I got to the last page of the order form on the Ethan Allen web site the shipping and taxes nearly doubled the price of the table. It felt like the old bait and switch, so I backed out.

I then found another table on another site. It was almost the same price of the Ethan Allen table, but shipping was free. I ordered it and then got and email saying I could expect delivery on 2/11/2011. I'm not joking. I went back to the site, canceled the order, and bought a nearly identical table – honestly, other than this one being in stock and costing $10 more, there is no difference – that should arrive on Friday. If it does, there will be a nice selection of before and after pictures of the long, drawn-out foyer project. I estimate I have 120 hours of labor in the stairs alone.

Anyway, this post was supposed to be about my pour front doors. You can read the back story about the interior here, but this is about in the outside. The 2 big issues about the outside are 1, the plywood nailed to the bottom of each door, and 2, the modern mail slot.



It turns out the plywood was hiding something. These are double doors and the one on the left is stationary and held in place with 2 slide bolts, one at the top and one at the bottom. The bottom one had a blow out at some point. Somebody either ran in to the door or something and ripped out the wood around the bolt. This is right where the bottom mortise and tenon is, so it was good they did something, but that ratty old plywood had to go.



I stripped the paint off and then glued and tacked in some pieces of wood to sort of hold things together. I can't fill with epoxy because I want to replace the mortised slide bolt.



After that I put a beveled panel over the hole and added a bottom rail. After I did this, I came up with a better idea. I could apply a brass kick-plate to the bottom. I'm not sure if I'll undo what I've done.



The mail slot that was there was a modern brass plated steel number that looked pretty crappy. The plating was already flaking off even though it had not been there that long. I put on this nice antique cast bronze number. The main issue was that the new one I took off was wider than the vintage one I put on, so I had to add wood to the slot that was cut in the door.



Not an issue on the outside because I will be painting. The inside is another story. More on that later.

Stairs + Carpet = Sigh of Relief

I got the carpet runner installed on the stairs today. While not perfect, I am happy with the way it came out. I've carpeted a few rooms in my day, but never stairs. The big concern was the mitered corners on the landings. This was a wool stair runner that I paid $32 a lineal foot for, so I ordered the bare minimum and there was no room for error.

I originally was going to go with the traditional installation of tackless strips and seam tape. After reading on-line I found a few entries that said for wool carpet you should not use seam tape. Instead, you should seal the ends with latex and stitch the seams together with needle and thread. Instead of the tackless strip, you should use a crown stapler.

Well, I used fabric glue instead of latex and the stitching proved to be very difficult. Mainly because of the fabric glue. I bought both straight and hooked upholstery needles and broke 2 of them before I gave up. Getting the needles through the set fabric glue was not easy. Instead of stitching I made my own seam tape with green bedsheets and fabric glue. That and a few staples made for a very strong seam. The crown stapler was very nice to work with, and the staples are nearly invisible.







The first corner is a little off. The pattern meets at the inside corner, but is a little off at the outside corner. Really, I was just over-thinking it. I was so worried I would really screw up, I looked past the obvious and made it much more difficult that it needed to be. Other than those reading this blog, I doubt many will notice.


The next one I got dead-on and it took a fraction of the time.


In the end, I had exactly 1-foot of extra carpet. For now, it will sit like this at the top of the stairs. Eventually, I will have the same runner in the upstairs hallway.

Sneak Peek

If I din't already have commitments this weekend I could install the new carpet runner. It arrived on time as promised by rugsale.com. What this means is, I could have made it for the home tour this year.



Just as in most cities, the home tour is an annual event here in Eureka. Two years ago I won the residential preservation award and so I was asked to be on the home tour. The problem was, I wasn't sure if I could finish the foyer in time and I didn't want to be rushed. As it turns out though, I could have finished.

While it's true that I didn't finish everything on the list I wanted to get done in preparation for the tour, I did finish enough that I would have been comfortable inviting people in.

There's always next year.

Not an Artists Rendering

It specifically is not an artists rendering because I am not an artist. Photoshop is one software program that has always been difficult for me to get. I once sat with a book that had step-by-step instructions on how to merge two images with one masked and I still couldn't get it. I understand the theory. I'm reasonably intelligent. I often pick up these sorts of things quickly. It frustrates me to this day that I could not get this. So much so that I've wasted the first paragraph of this blog entry on the fact that I can not mask out the background of one image and superimpose it on to another in Photoshop. How's that for neurotic?

Annnnywho, I got an email from rugsale.com today informing me that my stair runner carpet should be here this Friday. If that is true, then I can install it this weekend. That will be huge. After that, I just need a few small pieces of furniture and some pictures on the wall and I can stick a fork in the foyer and move on to the front door.



The mirror is real, but I'm sure you will be shocked to know that the small demi-lune table is not really in that photo. It looks so real! I've been Googling my fingers to the bone for the past few days looking for tables for the foyer. A hall tree would be the proper Victorian piece for this spot, but I've decided not to go that route. I found the piece above at Ethan Allen.

When I started looking I first went to Ballard Design and found a nice little table right off the bat and it was on-sale. The only problem was the sale table only came in white and the one in the picture with the mahogany finish was not even available at full price. I get the feeling they had zillions of the white ones left over and they were desperate to dump them.

I then went to Overstock.com and found nothing that appealed to me. After that I let Google tell me where to go. This is where it got interesting. If you Google 'console table' you get a number of sites that all seem to have the same exact inventory, and they all offer dozens, if not hundreds of different tables.

After looking at 3 or 4 of these sites I began to think they were all the same site only different domain names. It doesn't matter what link you click on you get the same selection at the same price. After looking at page after page after page of small tables I gave up at those sites because nothing really jumped out at me. I then just typed in ethanallen.com and found the table above.

One thing you'll notice about the table above compared to similar tables at all of the other sites is that the table above has no lower shelf. Almost all of the others have a lower shelf 6-inches or so off the ground. I do know this style of table, when it was in fashion, would not have had the lower shelf. I think the real reason for the lower shelf is to make up for poor craftsmanship. Oddly enough, the table from Ethan Allen is less expensive than many similar tables at other sites I looked at.

Decisions Must Be Made

So, today I purchased the last piece of the puzzle for the foyer project. I bought the runner carpet for the stairs. It was not an easy decision for a number of reasons. First, it is a design element choice, and those are always agonizing for me. Paint colors, drapes, rugs, furniture and the like are always difficult for me. More often than not I change my mind after I've made the purchase. Not good.

In this case, it is really not good because the runner carpet is expensive and non-refundable. Like it or not, I bought it and it is going in. The other difficult aspect of this decision was the width of the runner. Unless I have something custom made my choices are 27-inch or 40-inch. The plan all along was to do 27-inch. That is what was there originally and it is a nice fit for the width of the stairs. That was until I refinished the stairs. The treads are really beat up and the more I cover them the better, so I went with a 40-inch wide wool runner. The stairs are 46-inches wide, which means it is basically carpeting on the stairs, with 3 inches of wood showing on either side.. I'm hoping it will not look odd.

I looked locally first and found no wool runners available. I could buy some unpatterned wool carpet and have it cut to be a runner, but that is not really what I wanted. I wanted pattern with boarders. I purchased this on-line and the company is adamant about no returns on runners once it has been cut from the roll. Even though I found it on-line I purchased it over the phone.

The salesman made it very clear that I could not return this runner. After the transaction was complete on the phone I had to confirm by email and type “Yes” in to a little box, indicating that I knew there were no returns. After I sent that back they sent another email with the final bill and shipping information. I didn't get that email until I got home from work and my first panicked instinct was to call someone and beg them to change my order to the 27-inch runner. I ran to the stairs and measured one last time and convinced myself I must call to change it....then I convinced myself it would be ok....then change it...then ok...change...ok....change....ok

Then I poured myself a glass of wine and convinced myself that I didn't care. It will get here in 2 weeks. I will install it. It will bug the crap out of me for a few weeks and then I won't notice it anymore.

Warts and All

I think I would have made the annual Home Tour being held on October 3rd this year. The front door and pocket doors won’t be done for lack of hardware, but the rest of the foyer and stair hall will be. The only things remaining are the base shoe molding and the stair runner carpet. I also need to redo one piece of the picture rail, and of course do a lot of cleaning.

I’m going to start shopping for stair runner next week. There are huge selections on-line, but I will first see if I can find something local. I dread going in to local businesses to shop for this sort of thing. It is like if I don’t walk in wearing a suit and tie I practically need to jump up and down to get someone’s attention. It is very frustrating.

The first place I went to when I shopped for carpet for my last house, I told the salesman I wanted to install carpet in 3 bedrooms, a hallway and the stairs and the first thing he showed me was the indoor/outdoor carpeting. I looked at him with an irritated glare and said, “No, inside my house”. His response was, “Well, I just assumed….” And then he trailed off. The rest of the time we spent together he acted like he had someplace else to be. Honestly, must I be forcd to shave a put on cologne just to shop for carpet? I ended up spending close to $3,000 on carpet at a different store. That place screwed up the installtion schedule, though. From the time I purchased the carpet it took more than 6 weeks to get it installed.

The plan is to do a 27-inch runner all the way up the stairs. The treads are a little beat up, so I might go a little wider. I knew they would be far from perfect, but there has never been a plan to replace them. It goes against my philosophy of ripping out and replacing something just because it isn’t perfect. I realize that needs to be done at times, but it will always be a last resort for me. I try and adhere to the 3 Rs of environmentalism: Reduce, Recyle, and Resuse.

I told myself I was going to hire a pro to sand the floor this time. This is my 5th time sanding and refinishing a floor and the process still somewhat eludes me. This one came out better than some and worse than others. I think part of my problem has to do with the crappy equipment I must rent from Don’s Rent-All.

I swear the sander I got on Saturday was from the 1950s. It did not even have the lever to lift the drum off the floor. They are really the only game in town, though. It is either Don’s or a 30 mile round trip to Mckinleyville. Unfortunately, without more competition there is no reason for them to upgrade the equipment. Most of the rest of the developed world uses the U Sand instead of the drum sander, which is a technology that is 100 years old or more. Come on Don’s! It is 2010. Get with the times.

The main reason I did the floor myself this time was because I woke up Saturday morning and thought, “Ok, what’s next”. The answer was the floor. At that point I could have started calling people to get estimates and set up a work time or just go and rent a sander. It seems easier and quicker just to rent the sander. Maybe the reason I am such a DIYer is because I have such poor planning skills. Had I planned better I would have started calling for estimates 2 weeks ago. I have a feeling I will be installing the stair runner myself.

The following pictures are titled, "What I did for my summer vacation", because thanks to the airport fiasco I didn't go to Philadelphia. It still hurts.