In the Office: Built-In Shelves and Cabinets

All was quiet for a while --- the next major home improvement was in November 2013.  The office was not an attractive room and just didn't seem very inviting.  Plus we needed more storage room.  So, for storage, for aesthetic reasons (particularly important to me, since I work all day in there three days a week), and for resale value, we wanted to put in some nice built-in cabinets and shelves.  So here's what it looked like "before":

Here's what it looked like after we cleared out all the books and a lot of the other stuff to make room for the workmen:

And below are the beautiful new cabinets, close to finished -- they dramatically change the room!  The lower part of the right-hand cabinet contains pull-out file drawers (they were still working on those at the time of the photo).  On the lower left hand side there are standard cabinets.  There is a window seat between the two pieces.  Our painter painted them a beautiful color similar to that of the window molding, which made them look like they had been there forever.

Cleaning Out Beneath the House

The space below the house was a big mess.  Apparently people had been storing stuff and leaving debris down there for decades.  Having the debris there was bad for many reasons:  it created a fire hazard; it created shelter for varmints, critters, bugs, and snakes; it created hazards for people moving around under the house or trying to get access to electrical or plumbing parts; it created an environment for mold; it inhibited ventilation under and through the house; it created the potential for injuries and tetanus, etc., etc.  We hired Jamie's wonderful employee Deedee and her husband to clean it all out.  They spent days on it, and I think they hauled off a dozen truckloads of junk to the dump.  The fact that the space under the house is only about 4 feet high added to the laboriousness of this task.  There was a lot of old lumber (not worth saving), lots of old shutters (not usable), cinder blocks, pieces of debris from plumbing or electrical work, and general trash.  One surprising find was a large collection of old vintage coke bottles --- which we gave to Deedee because she collects Coca-Cola things.  I only kept one bottle because I liked the fact that the stamp on the bottom showed it was manufactured in Galveston.  I also kept a nice classic liquor jug.  Now the space under the house is clean and open, and I think it's much better all around.

Revenge of the Mold

Early in 2013, I pulled aside one of the living room curtains to look out, and was extremely dismayed to see black mold growing on the bottom of the window frame between the Magnetite covering and the window glass.  I checked some other windows, and sure enough, a number of other windows had this as well.  This wasn’t supposed to happen — the Magnetite is supposed to create a hermetic seal, so there should be no way for moisture or air to get in and feed mold.  I had someone from the Magnetite company come out and look at it, and they told me that the Magnetite was sealed — the problem was that the windows on the outside were not.  The caulk around the window panes was old and moisture was able to come in.

So again the house was thrown into disarray in February 2013 as we hired Uncle Bill and his crew to clean, treat, scrape and paint the window frame inside all 12 windows with Magnetite, as well as caulk all the window panes on the outside.  These are big windows, so it was a major undertaking.  And it was frustrating to have the upheaval and expense over something like this, which wasn’t adding to the beauty of the home but just fixing an unforeseen problem!

And the Paint Goes On -- the Breakfast Room Cabinets

The last thing Uncle Bill’s crew did during the November-December 2012 chapter was to paint the breakfast room cabinets.  These are the cabinets that our other contractors had built back in March, and that we were going to paint ourselves.  (Though we didn’t ever get around to painting them, Jamie did stain the countertop himself.)  Somehow we didn't take any photos of the cabinets after finishing.  Here is one that I just took in June 2014 --- please disregard the piles of books (they are to donate to the public library) and the boxes on the floor (they are to hold the books)!

Painting the Main Hallway - Finally

The front hallway was the only major room we never reached on our own – we ran out of time and steam before we got to it.  We had only removed a couple of patches of wallpaper.  In October and November 2012, Uncle Bill’s crew removed the wallpaper, repaired the walls, and painted the whole thing.  Above the chair molding we used the same Meander Blue that we used in the guest bedroom and rear foyer.  Below the chair molding we used a dark red – I can’t remember the name, but it was the result of many tests with poster board.  The paint transformed the entry to the house, in a good way.  So here is the listing photo showing the front hallway as you saw it from the front door:

Below, this is what it looked like when we had moved in and put up pictures (and a lot of clutter):

 Here are some in-progress photos from the other direction, facing the front door -- first, getting ready to tear that wallpaper off (and all furniture shoved into other rooms --- a condition we were not unused to):

 Next, the blue part is done, as well as crown moldings::

And the finished product --- a much nicer introduction to the house:

Crown & Picture Moldings

Uncle Bill and his crew were around for a lot of October and November 2012, making smells, messes, noises, and beautiful results.  They did a lot at the same time, but I will start with the picture and crown molding.  We felt that these tall beautiful rooms were meant to have decorative ceiling and wall moldings.  So Uncle Bill’s crew installed and painted (1) crown molding and picture molding in the living room, dining room, office, and rear foyer, (2) crown molding and chair molding in the front hallway, and (3) only picture molding in the two bedrooms (we wanted them a bit more casual).  It’s hard to capture the outcome in photos because it’s an all-surrounding effect, but here is an attempt:

A Recipe for Disaster: Gaps Behind the Bookcases

Because there are no straight lines in the house, and because the bookcases were level, both bookcases had gaps underneath where the floor sloped under them.  Before installing the bookcases, the workers had removed the baseboards.  Unfortunately, there was nothing behind the baseboards — just a hole through which you could look and see the ground under the house.  For some reason I took photos and didn't tell them to close these up --- I just assumed they would.  Here is the gap on the west wall:

 And here is the gap on the east wall:

When I used a flash, you could see the ground below the house!

They did not do anything to close this up.  They just built the bookcases up against these openings.  So it looked like the opening was closed, but because there were openings under the bookcases and cracks between the boards comprising the cabinets, outside air flowed through these openings, into the house, and into the cabinets at the base of each bookcase.  This caused hot, humid air to sit in the closed cabinets which resulted in........MOLD.  I didn’t know this until much later.  We ended up hiring our initial contractors to go under the house and cover up the openings, and Jamie caulked the inside of the cabinets.  This helped the problem go away, but it still gets humid in there.

October 2012: Bookcases in the Back Foyer

I wanted some built-in bookcases behind the french doors leading into the back foyer.  With my innumerable boxes of books, we had far more books than shelf space.  We needed tall bookcases because the ceilings are so high.  Here is a view of the area where I wanted to put them --- in the space behind each of the french doors in the foreground.  (Beyond the french doors, leading to the front door, is what we consider the front or main hallway or foyer.  The area in the foreground, which we call the rear or  back foyer, is a smaller room that is separated from the main hallway by French doors.  It has doorways to the office, breakfast room and guest bedroom.  This photo was taken during wallpaper days, but by the time we put these bookcases in Jamie had already stripped and painted the rear foyer with the same Meander Blue used in the guest bedroom)

I had bought some really tall disassembled bookcases from a listing on Craigslist back on March 28, and they had been sitting in the garage for some time.  In an attempt to save money, we hired a different contractor, Uncle Bill, to put the bookcases together (we got his name from the insulation guy who did the garage attic).  They ended up putting a lot of work into them, practically as much as it would take to build them from scratch.  Here are some pics of the result -- it was my mistake telling them to use a real white instead of matching the duller off-white of the existing moldings:

With these, I was finally able to unpack the last of my boxes of books from the old house.