02 Oct The First Floor is Done

I’ve been mostly missing from Face Book and totally absent from my blog for about three months because Jill and I have been finishing some major projects in the house. We wanted to get these done before Fall slipped into the hectic holiday season, so we put everything else aside and hunkered down. We do major projects every year but this year our projects had stacked up, in part because we had gone to some auctions and found stuff we had to have, like a huge stained glass window we thought we could install over our entry doors at the front of the house.

So here’s a list of what we’ve accomplished.

1) Painted the master bedroom.

2) Repaired the linoleum runner in the pantry

3) installed antique leaded transoms in the dining room:

4) Finished the woodwork in the first-floor hallway:

5) Installed a new pair of antique doors–with stained glass–in the front:

6) Installed a huge antique stained glass window over the entry doors:

7) Installed an antique tile backsplash in the kitchen:

8) Finished the tile of the dining room fireplace:

9) Re-finished the kitchen floor (no photo)

10) Installed a new faucet in the pantry (no photo).

11) Installed a new antique light in the first floor hallway where there had been no light:

12) Installed a new antique light on the second floor landing:


13) Painted the dining room. (No photo yet).

This work completes the final phase of our first floor. Which is to say that it’s done. People often ask us if the house is done. It’s a running joke. Well, sure, the house is done, more or less. But done done? That determination changes as Jill and I go to auctions and find cool stuff we want to install — like the stained glass we found recently. That said, we’re fairly confident that the first floor is done done. The next big project is the third floor bathroom. It will get a new tile floor, a new antique tub, and toilet. It’s a big job I’m not looking forward to. But one morning, without much forethought, I’ll find myself on my hands and knees in that bathroom, tearing out the cheap tile we’d put in as “interim,” my head filled with visions of how cool that bathroom is going to look . . . soon.