Window+Sidelights, Exterior Before+After

First, you'll notice that I've changed my header.  The change was an experiment to see how the header width affected the width of the entire blog page and, in turn, the size of my photos.  I feel the header better reflects my Urban Cottage, both inside and out, but I'll probably continue to work on it as I experiment with photo editing and the Blogger templates.  Right now I couldn't center my tag line if my life depended on it.  It's very frustrating.

On to more important matters:

All of the new windows and sidelights are installed so I thought I would show everything that's been done one final time...just in time for the holidays as I had hoped.

Let's start inside.

This is the front hall as it looked when I bought the house.  All of that wallpaper was stripped, the green carpeting was ripped out, the floors and stairs were refinished and the newel post and bannister was stripped of its mint green paint.

This was the result after that first facelift.  You can see to the left of the front door where the sidelights used to be.  They were filled in with a panel of wood on the inside (where the light switch is).

And this is how it looks now.  It's hard to take a photo with the camera pointed toward the light so this photo was shot just after dawn yesterday morning.  The sidelights really open up the space and make it feel larger.  They just need to be primed and painted.

This view is looking into the entryway from the living room after my initial facelift.

And this is what it looks like now.  The sidelights really bathe this area in light.  Unfortunately, it really highlights 170 years of people moving in and out and I can only imagine how many coats of paint.  I think I'm going to have to strip the paint off all this trim.

This is the view from the other end of the sofa...where I sit and write my blog posts. 

Let's head outside.

It's hard to imagine this is what the house looked like just over four months ago.  The sidelights had been entirely covered up with shingles and vinyl siding.  This is already a fading memory.

And this is the entry that will welcome my Thanksgiving guests.

(I should note in case you're thinking it, that I hate the natural oak sill under the front door.  I didn't want to try to match the mahogany deck so I told Sam to leave it natural.  I thought it would be darker.  But I think it stands out like a sore thumb.  I think I'm going to paint it a dark gray but I'll need to wait until it's warm enough to sand it down and prime and paint it.  It's easy enough to fix.)

The squirrel patrol is already on the job.  This photo nicely shows the waves and seeds in the glass.  Sam made these sidelights in his workshop using router bits to match the trim on the panels of the door.  They're really beautifully done.

This is what they look like at night with the lights on.  (The deck had just gotten its final coat of finish so the tape is to keep spectators at bay...and rotten children from writing their initials in the finish!)

This is the garden side of the house when I became its custodian...

...and here is now with the new windows installed.  Only these four were replaced because (1) they're the only ones visible from the street and (2) I haven't made definitive plans for the kitchen and the windows may change size or shape.   Or the windows may become french doors.  It's clear I need to do some landscaping over here.

And, finally, here is the front of the house back in April when I was photographing the house for my variance application.

This is what it looked like when you last saw it.  The rest of the windows have been replaced, the sidelights have been installed and deck has been stained.

And here it is today.

  

I'm so thrilled with the windows (save the reality that I have to prime and paint them on the inside); in fact, I'm really thrilled with everything that I chose.  I feel I've prepare this part of the house for its next 170 years of life and I feel extremely fortunate to have been able to make it happen.

I'm adding this photo a few hours after my original post because I realize that my photos are always so close up, you can't get a good idea of its scale.  Here, in relation to the Victorian next door, you can get a better idea of its small cottage scale.

As I move forward with the inside of the house, I hope that I'm able to translate the feeling of this new exterior to the interior.  I don't know how that will manifest itself but I have plenty of house spirits to guide me. 

At the Front Door

The onion lantern is installed.   I wasn't sure about it but now that it's in, I love it.

In the last photo on my recent "before and after" post, I added a photo of the front door just after painting it.  As I was adding the photo and finishing up the post, I saw a young lady walk past my front windows (on the porch!) and down the side steps.  What nerve, I thought!  I hope that isn't going to be a problem or I'll have to consider changing something to stop it.

It turned out the little darling saw the tape I had put across the door and invited herself up my front steps to write her initial--"A"--in the damp paint.

Her mother was with her but mom was texting and was paying no attention to what her little "A" was doing.

So I've been sanding down the door (wear a dust mask!) so I can put a new coat on.  I sanded down right into the gray primer and although it's not a look I want for my house, it did look pretty cool.  It reminded me of the pieces that Lori of Frugal Farmhouse Design does for her shop.

This is probably more sanding than you'd want to do for that "aged" look, but this is what the door looked like before I put on a new coat.

I taped plastic over the front door opening from the outside so I could leave the door open while it dried without having to worry about the cats.  This worked beautifully.

After a light sanding on the first coat, I put on a thin second coat.  I think it needs one more coat to bring up the shine but I'm happy with the finish.

THE SIDELIGHTS

My sidelights are done but I haven't made a decision on the glass so the ball is in my court.  With sidelights that go to the floor  like this...

...passersby have a view into the house.  One solution could be curtains and I found a great vendor, Cooper's Cottage Lace, that makes lace curtains perfect for old houses in styles such as Art Deco, Arts & Crafts, Victorian and even Greek Revival.  They even make a curtain specifically for sidelights.

This Grecian pattern would be perfect for a Greek Revival and was designed by the owner of Bradbury & Bradbury Art Wallpapers.

This is the Eastlake pattern, I'm assuming for a Victorian era home.

This pattern called Glen's Edge seems perfectly suited to an Arts and Crafts home.  The company also does custom sizing and offers loaner panels so you can try them out in your home.  

While the Grecian pattern would be suitable to my house, I felt lace is too delicate and feminine for my house, so I thought I could find glass that will offer some privacy.

I visited several glass places and no one had glass that looked "historical"; you know, wavy or seedy.  I saw a lot of things that be great for cabinets or shower doors, but the closest thing anyone could come up with that was "historical" was this Florentine glass.  It's been made since 1890 but, at least to me, it feels a little bathroom-in-an-old-building glass.

Finally someone suggested I call a stained glass company.  I never would have thought of it on my own.

But there at Burnham & Laroche in Medford, Mass. (who maintain the leaded glass windows for Harvard University) I found this handblown glass made by LambertsGlas in Germany.  It comes in sheets (how do they do that?) about 24 by 36 inches, although none of them are exactly the same, and the thickness is about 1/8 inch which also varies.  This sample is "normal seedy" but they also have "medium seedy" and "heavy seedy." I think it obscures the view enough and although it's not historically accurate, I think it's perfect.  I don't think it needs to be accurate.  It's art glass.   So it's not much different than stained glass, just in simple single panes.  And not so much more expensive than shower door glass.

And I think it will look great with the light.

Exterior Paint, Before and After

You may notice that I've changed the photo on my header.  When I started my blog, I borrowed the facade of another...

...Cambridge Greek Revival.  I'm happy to be able to retire that photo and use an image from my own house.

When you last saw the house after the columns were installed, this is what it looked like.  

A coat of paint went a LONG way to unite all the different materials and colors.

This is what it looks like as of this morning.

Isn't the difference amazing?

I don't think I've ever shown this photo.  This is what house looked like when I bought it.

I did a lot of simple projects, always working on the ugliest thing.  I replaced the wrought iron posts at the front porch, repainted the foundation, removed the chain link fence, installed a new cedar picket fence, planted a few shrubs, painted the ugly aluminum door and moved the main power line that ran down the front of the house.  The cedar fence was quite expensive but the rest of the projects were done as weekend projects for relatively little money.

All of these projects resulted in the house you saw when I was applying for my variance in April.

(Click on any of the photos to enlarge.)

And here is the house today.

Remember this view?

The paint totally integrated the original shingles into the new work...and saved me a lot of money.

The beadboard ceiling is painted sky blue.  (I'm not sure why the crown molding is painted blue.  I wouldn't have done that and I'll probably change that.)  Just waiting for the new light to be installed. 

And all the old wood trim on the pediment was scraped, primed and is now looking really great.  (The "Head of the Charles" crew races are taking place on the Charles River this weekend and I just happened to catch a plane pulling an advertising banner in this photo.) 

Here's another old photo of the house when I bought it.  This shows the old deck railings and the handicapped ramp that was attached to the back porch along with a sidewalk that ran across the entire yard to the front door.

You've seen before what I did with that space.  

This is that same view today.

I had to exclude the back porches from this phase of the overall project and they're looking a little tired and sagging but a coat of paint should go a long way to helping them blend in.

The porch ceilings are beadboard and were quite water damaged under the old vinyl siding but hours of scraping and priming by the painters have really cleaned it up.  See why I was worried about color of the primer?  It's WAY off from the color I chose.

Here is the pilaster at the back corner of the house.  The upstairs deck railing was too short to reach the pilaster after the three layers of siding were removed so we added a post and tied it in. It's good enough for now.

(I put a coat of paint on the front door since I took photos this morning)

The sidelights will hopefully go in this week and the rest of the windows should come in the next few weeks.

I hope everyone has a happy and safe Halloween.

Concessions, Splurges and a Preview

Doing a renovation requires a lot of decisions that involve money.  Sometimes there's a fine balance between what you want and how much it costs.  One of the things I've found helpful, as I did with the Louis XVI chairs, is to study the details of expensive options and then look for something with similar details that's more in tune with my budget.  You may remember this light fixture from my Chinoiserie for your Porch post.  I'm glad I didn't fall in love with the light because at $1200, it wasn't even a consideration.

You may also remember this entry set on the left with the crystal knob on the inside.  This would have been a splurge at nearly $400 but I found the Schlage entry set (on the right) at Home Depot for $144.   It doesn't have a crystal knob on the inside but it looks very similar on the outside and gave me an extra $250 to work with.

You may also remember these $24 lights I bought for the front and back porches.  Last week I had a friend hold up one of the lights on the front porch.   The large beam supported by the columns... 

...covered up half of the light so all you could see was...

...this big udder hanging down between the two columns.  It looked REALLY silly.  Sometimes you just can't plan these things.  So I went back to the drawing board to find a light that was a short pendant.

It's fairly easy to research details for a historical house; there are plenty of real-life examples and/or books to look at.  But deciding on a light fixture for a house that was built before electricity was invented is a more difficult task for me.  There seems to be a big gap in styles between what I perceived as Colonial (think Paul Revere) and later styles such as Victorian and Art Nouveau.

After my visit to Marblehead where I saw a lot of these onion lanterns, I did a little research on them and found they were used on whaling ships and as a work light into the 1800s.  The round glass helped shed water and protect the flame from blowing out while the cage protected the glass from breaking.  If you've ever been Cape Cod, you probably saw them everywhere.

So I traded in one of my $24 lights for this onion lantern pendant. I hope it works out better than the udder light.  I do think this round light works better against all the straight lines of the house but I also think this choice is a little bit of a copout.  You see these lights quite a bit but you'll see in a minute why I chose it.

These Baldwin house numbers sell for about $10 at Home Depot but I've been looking for something really unique.  

I've been looking for something vintage like this French enameled house number found on Etsy...

...and they run about $20 to $30 each, but I haven't been able to find my house number and I wasn't sure I wanted to add blue to four paint colors I'll have right at the front door.

But on my search, I just happened to come across this company in Denmark called Ram Sign...

...where I found these enameled house number in black.  They're made custom in four days.

This was a splurge compared to the Baldwin or vintage French house numbers at $69 (shipping is free) but I'm still within the money I saved not getting the crystal doorknob.

And the thing I love the most about the onion lantern and the house number is...

...how well they work together.  The clear glass with the black ring of black metal is almost the reverse of the black circle with a white ring around the edge of it.  I think they look great together.

*** House Preview ***

The weather cooperated a little bit this week and the house is just about all primed.  All of the raw wood, white primer and old brown trim have been reduced to just a few colors.  The problem is none of the colors seem to be the right colors.  I'm a little scared.

The primer on the front is very brown and the paint on the shingled side of the house is a blueish gray.  I took out my original sample cans of paint and none of them are the same.  The primer on the front is closest to what I chose, but the final paint color should be darker and grayer.  I have a call in to them to make sure there's no confusion.

Here's a closeup of the tongue-and-groove siding so you can get a better idea of what it looks like.  It was hard to see in the photos when it was unprimed cedar. 

And here it is up on the attic pediment all primed and ready for paint.    I'm really pleased with how it turned out.

Hopefully the weather will continue to cooperate.