Former glory

We thought we had beige/brown terrazzo. Of course, we knew it needed to be cleaned, because it has obvious grimey build-up around the walls that mopping won't remove, but we were shocked when we found out that it was originally white...and could be again.

The representative of a local stone restoration company came out to do an estimate, and he gave me a demonstration of what to expect from their services. He asked me to show him the spot in the house where the floor is in the worst condition, so I pointed him in the direction of a group of 9 tiles near the back door that I thought were damaged and covered with 66 years' worth of wax (and who knows what else). He sprayed some Mar-Tek Pro-Strip on one tile, scrubbed it with a brush, and toweled the area dry. Here's what resulted.

Stripped terrazzo tile

He was almost as surprised at the dramatic difference as I was. This tile was put down 66 years ago. Who knows how long it's been since this floor was stripped and honed? Maybe never.

His estimate: $2422. Naturally, we'll be getting other bids, but this is definitely on our Must Do list.

Details

Charles Eames once said, "The details are not the details. They make the design." Accordingly, we have changed quite a few things about the front of our house.

First, a cage of burglar bars originally covered a large portion of the front porch. Not only was it unsightly, it screamed paranoia and had to go. In fact, the inspection report listed it as a hazard, so we stipulated that it be removed before we took possession of the house.

Burglar bars...gone before we got here

Also, our mailbox originally was positioned in the flowerbed beside the driveway and looked like this:

Old mailbox

Besides needing a paint job, it was inconveniently located, so we offered it free on Craigslist. Someone came out almost immediately and removed it, which involved a good bit of digging and ultimately pulling out of the ground with a large pickup truck. (Giving things away on Craigslist is the fastest, cheapest method of getting things cleaned out or torn down. People will take absolutely anything if it's free, no matter how much work they have to do to get it.)

The new mailbox is on the front porch, which is more attractive and makes much more sense.

New mailbox
Kingso Locking Stainless Steel Letterbox - amazon.com

The old porch lights were brass carriage house style, which were completely wrong for the house. Here they are in ignominy, sitting in the free CL pile.

Old porch lights

We happily replaced them with something far more in keeping with a 1950s ranch style house. They look great with our door hardware and coordinate nicely with the mailbox.

New porch lights
George Kovacs Outdoor Sconce - allmodern.com

The previous hardwired doorbell had been pulled out of the wall and left on the front windowsill months or perhaps even years before. We replaced it with a Ring Video Doorbell. It works with your smartphone, allowing you see and talk to anyone at your door, even if you're not at home. It also has a motion detector, which alerts you of any movement on your front porch or in your yard.

New doorbell
Ring video doorbell - lowes.com

Finally, we bought a 5-foot doormat to put in front of the double doors. Of all the purchases we made, it is probably my least favorite. I thought it was a plain rubber mat, but it turned out to be the felted type and has to be hosed off more often than a rubber mat would. That aside, I like the pattern, so I'll still chalk it up as a win.

New doormat
Aqua-Shield Elipse Doormat - allmodern.com

All in all, we're making good progress. Next on the list...the terrazzo floors.

I got the lowdown missing painterman blues

In case you didn't see the "before" posts, here are the doors that were on our house when we bought it.

Old doors...now long gone

We knew that they would have to be replaced almost immediately, so one of the first calls we made was to a door company. New slab doors were installed a week ago, and they were scheduled to be painted on Tuesday. (For you longtime readers: Yes, I chose the same Sherwin Williams Copper Mountain that I used on the door of the "modernist nest." I love that color!)

Door at "modernist nest"

We had purchased two narrow star escutcheons from Rejuvenation, and I had shown them to the owner of the door company when he came to give me an estimate, but when the doors arrived, the dead bolt hole was drilled too close to the hole for the doorknob set for them to fit. After a little initial disappointment, I realized that I wasn't really married to the idea of escutcheons anyway, especially when the porch lights were installed and I saw them with the plain knobs, and I definitely didn't want to live with the old doors another two or three weeks while new doors were fabricated. To be honest, the orange paint may be enough of a statement without any extra adornment. If I eventually decide that the doors look too plain, I can always find other escutcheons or add some sort of decorative wood ornamentation.

All that said, the doors are still unpainted. They're sitting in all their white primer glory, waiting on the painter who never showed up.

He was at the house last Saturday installing fans and light fixtures. A painter by trade, he found that he could make good money doing handyman jobs in addition to painting. He was quite personable, very professional, and extremely capable. He said it would take him about an hour to paint the front doors, and he said he would do the job $100, so we agreed on Tuesday at 10 a.m. On Monday I texted him to see if I needed to buy anything besides paint, and he texted back immediately to say I didn't.

On Tuesday, the appointed time came and went, but I wasn't too concerned. Punctuality doesn't seem to be a trait many workmen have these days. Almost everyone who has come to the house to give us an estimate or to do work has blamed traffic for a late arrival.

Sometime after noon, I texted him again to say that I had expected him at 10 o'clock and to ask if we had miscommunicated, which my iPhone auto-corrected to "Did we miscommunication?" (Don't you just love being made to look moronic by a machine?)

I never received a response from him. Did he get a better job offer? Was he involved in a terrible car accident on the way to my house? Was he the victim of an alien abduction?

After getting estimates of $850 and $450 from two major local paint companies...completely absurd for two doors, when painting every room of the house was less than $2000...I will wait to hear from him. I'm disappointed that the doors are still white, and I'm impatient to get the work done, but wait I will. At least for a week or so.

If you run into a painter named Steve, have him text me.
I have a can of orange paint with his name on it.

Work, work, and more work

Life these days reminds me of an old song: Welcome back, my friends, to the show that never ends...

For the past few weeks, it seems we haven't had the house to ourselves except to sleep. A steady stream of estimators coming to give us bids has been followed by painters, plumbers, door installers, and handymen. As I was starting this post, an electrician was working in the next room, dropping wiring and installing a switch for a new ceiling fan in the living room. After that, he moved to the kitchen to install a switch for the garbage disposal that the plumber put in a few days ago and then removed an old ceiling fan and light fixture in the family room and relocated new ones. The new front doors will be painted on Tuesday, and that ought to be it for a while.

Since I'm pretty chatty, one upside to all the traffic is that I've met a lot of nice people lately. The far more important upside is that the house is almost back to normal modern. Within an hour or so, all the curlicues of past "updates" made to our 1950 home will be gone.

And thanks to the magic of Craigslist, old light fixtures and ceiling fans were hauled off from the curb less than an hour after I posted them as give-aways. The last two that will come down today should be gone soon too.

As hard as it's been, I've waited to hang pictures until all this work was finished, so it looks as if I have a busy week ahead of me, but at least I'll be working in relative solitude (meaning no workmen, only a 5- and 6-year-old for company).

Starting to come together

The not-so-exciting part of renovating

Sure, choosing new rugs, decorative pillows, lamps, cabinet pulls, light fixtures, door knobs, ceiling fans, appliances, and plumbing fixtures is fun. That's the showy part of giving an old house a facelift. I've spent hours upon hours lately doing just that, and they're all ordered.

Now comes the other part of renovating. The electrical, the plumbing, the painting. Equally, if not more, important and certainly more expensive...but not particularly exciting. I've spent several days getting bids, and now it's time for the electricians and plumbers and painters to do their respective things.

The previous owner put in a large, new electrical breaker box outside, but there's still one of these fuse boxes in the hall closet, which will be replaced with its modern counterpart soon. I haven't seen glass fuses since I was a kid!

Fuse box in hall closet

We need a plumber to check the water pressure and to install a garbage disposal and dishwasher and to revamp the icemaker hookup, which was done in an unusual janky way, to say the least. Nothing exciting to see here, folks. Painters will come out to put a fresh coat of Sherwin Williams Dover White on the walls. All the trim and built-ins are painted a creamy white, but the previous owners slapped a coat of bright white on the walls, I'm guessing just to clean it up for showing, so we're toning that down a bit.

sherwinwilliams.com

Exciting or not, all these things are part of the process when you buy an old home. After all, the combined effect is what's important. As tedious as it is to schedule bids and work, in a couple of weeks we'll be happy with the results.

And the transformation begins...

Anyone who has bought a home built in the 1950s or 1960s knows that time can take a toll in many ways, one of which is a complete destruction of continuity. Often a hodgepodge of add-ons faces a new owner, and such is the case in our new house.

We have brass doorknobs in several styles. We have chrome doorknobs in several styles. In some places we have brass on one side of a door and chrome on the other...in mismatched styles. We have deadbolts in the most peculiar places. (I had never before seen one on the door between the living room and the hall that leads to the bedrooms, but there's one in this house. And on the master bedroom door. Creepy.) We have light fixtures and ceiling fans of every conceivable era, style, and color.

Yesterday we bought five 52" ceiling fans like this. They will go in the bedrooms, the living room, and the upstairs apartment, now called the boys' playroom. We had planned to Airbnb it, but the boys made a convincing argument for turning into their space...something about keeping their toys out of sight and their bedroom neat, but you know how that will go. Nevertheless, they won us over.

52" Verano fan by Casa Vieja
lampsplus.com

We've ordered this 60" fan for the family room/dining room.

60" Casa Aleso fan by Casa Vieja
lampsplus.com

Our kitchen is relatively small and currently has a massive and ornate ceiling fan instead of a light fixture, which will be replaced by this fixture.

Lattice flush mount fixture
lampsplus.com

After buying several samples cabinet knobs and pulls, we finally decided on these unusual ones with a 1950s feel, which influenced our decision in the choice of a kitchen light fixture.

A279BN CKP Brand modern pull
coolknobsandpulls.com

Our soon-to-be very plain double front doors will have round retro knobs, the Orbit model by Schlage, and narrow star escutcheons from Rejuvenation. The rest of the doors, interior as well as exterior, will have the same round knobs.

 

Narrow star escutcheon
rejuvenation.com

Schlage Orbit door set
lowes.com

Instead of a Sputnik fixture over the dining table, we've decided to go with this cone light look.

Ronald cone pendant
franceandson.com

My power drill and I are going to be very busy in a few days, but once we're done, the house will look like a new place. New, that is, with a nod to the way it might have looked in 1950 when it was built.

Part 2: How bad is too bad?

Remember when I asked in a post a few days ago if a house could skip "bad" and go straight to "too bad"? After making an appointment to see said house, here is what we found upon entering.

We were a little surprised that the sellers hadn't made even the most minimal effort to clean out the house. It would quite literally take a crew with a dump truck to get rid of all the detritus that was left behind when the previous owner vacated. That's probably one of the reasons it's been sitting on the market for 170 days.

The verdict: It is a lot cooler than we had expected...and in worse shape than we thought, inside and out. In addition to the mounds of trash and abandoned personal belongings, we found obvious water damage, possible mold, and general dilapidation of wood and stone structures outside.

Still, we haven't ruled it out, if for no other reason than that both bathrooms have vintage Pomona tile designed by George Nelson sometime in the late 50s or early 60s for the Distinguished Designer series (which included tiles by Paul McCobb, Millard Sheets, Dorothy Liebes, Saul Bass, Paul Laszlo, and Dong Kingman). At some point, the top of the vanity in one bathroom was replaced with marble, but I found a lot of 76 of the tiles on Ebay, and failing finding the same tile later, we could always have it tiled with a complementary untextured tile. (Yes, I'm already starting to obsess.)

ebay.com