Hello New Old House Fans,
Yes, it’s been a (long) while. Life gets busy, blog gets put on hold as the old saying goes…
So, what’s been happening?
I get this question surprisingly often in real life. Little did I know that people would be so interested in this crazy adventure of a home.
Since the last House post was about the start of the front porch restoration in 2017, we’ve slowly chipped away at finishing that off.
Spring 2018 front porch.
Once the base was more stable, we finally put in the remaining side rails and panels. The outside colour scheme will be mainly a deep primary blue, with trim in a creamy off white and accents in a spring green (a similar colour was found in the layers of paint we discovered on the outside of the house). For the porch, we went with a bright white for the floor and ceiling so that it reflects light even in this sheltered space.The outdoor light fixture was replaced by a double outlet, that allows us to plug in better lighting over the porch and some fun string lights on the outside.
Current porch: New railings mostly complete, storm door needing proper stripping, lovely new blue wall. New stair railing made from the one we removed from the inside stairs.
We’d already decided on these solid panels for the side railings, when I dug through google earth to find the oldest shots of our house. Probably the original (very low) versions of the same design can be spotted! This type of railing gives some shelter from the elements and a bit of privacy.
Google Earth image from June 2009.
One corner looking more like it should.
The job that has taken the longest by far is striping/sanding back old paint and applying new layers. Sometimes summer is just so busy for both of us and this process got stalled. Since the coloumns are original I tried to give them some love, filling and sanding the larger missing chunks to restore them somewhat before re-painting.
Original porch columns fall 2017.
Spring 2018 Restored Porch columns. Once weather permits, these will get some more paint with decorative accents. already looking much better.
This summer, I hope to be able to get to the gable above to finish the painting. Deciding on a pattern for the tri-colour scheme here has been tricky. When it’s all one colour you can’t see the detail in the trim, so my aim is to highlight these features as they would have in the 1890s. Additionally, Leif completed the front fence in cedar, including an interesting gate inspired by Scandinavian design. What a difference it makes!
New front view greatly improved from a year ago. The chevron gate was inspired by the styles in Icelandic architecture.
Lovely new fence is much nicer to look at and 100% more functional than its predecessor. We did some creative cutting to accommodate the trees because trees are nice.
The neighbourhood cats really like our yard… Bonus inside view of the new fence.
Over the course of the last few years fixing things, we had acquired a stack of lath (among other bits of wood). These are thin slats of wood originally used as a support for the plaster walls. Leif decided to put them to use by building a mailbox out of them. Amazing how something never meant to be seen can be made into a beautiful and functional piece.
Leif made a new mailbox by laminating pieces lath we had ripped out of the house. Once a part of the home’s hidden structure, it’s now a functional piece of art.
In the back of the house, lots has changed (if you follow my instagram, you will have seen a few pics of this). Once a poorly built set of stairs leading out to an unfenced jungle, it had already come a long way.
Back of the house c. Spring 2016.
A new deck was installed in the summer of 2016, which made sitting outside much nicer.
August 2017
March 2018 Testing out the Blue.
The boarded up bathroom window had been reinstalled after a stint over the front door last year (as seen here). A test patch of blue paint turned into painting the whole lower part of the back wall – a great improvement! Once again, it’s nice to be finally able to do the ‘vanity’ projects like this that dramatically change the whole view. I left the top part brown for the time being because we were about to rip off the old roof/do repairs to the top of the wall so best to wait until we were done those things.
More Blue and the start of roof adventures. Renovation Mode piles of gak in full effect.
Things were getting much better, but there was a major project that needed doing sooner than later. Stay tuned for a series of posts about last summer’s re-roofing adventure!
