Progress on the Tenant Unit

We interrupt the Road Trip Recap to bring you a few pictures of what we've been doing to the tenants' unit this week.

We've had almost a two-week gap between occupancies, so we took the opportunity to replace some of the very scary cloth wiring:

Seriously, this crumbling old LIVE wiring was going through boxes that were hidden within the wall, stuffed with newspaper and plastered over more than sixty years ago. Why the Box House hasn't burned down already, I'll never know. It's such a relief to have this replaced.

Mom and Ted did most of the actual rewiring. We correctly guessed that there were sconce boxes in the wall above the fireplace, based on our house forensics downstairs. As with our living room, the tenants' living room also had major work done in the 1940s, where the ceiling fixture was removed and capped, the sconces were removed and plastered over, and the light switch plastered over. All that remained were five wall sockets. We found and opened everything.

While they rewired, I painted. Actually, I used Behr's Venetian Plaster. It is applied with a trowel, takes forever, but the results are fantastic--lots of lovely texture and it hides all kinds of lumps and bumps in the plaster and lathe walls.

We chose colors from the stained glass windows in the living room:

Okay, to tell the truth, we chose colors we liked, and then said, "Hey, did you notice how well these colors match the glass?"

What is not noticeable right away is that the previous owners did not tape the wood trim when they painted the rooms white. There's paint splashed on all the woodwork. I'm still trying to figure out what to use to remove it without removing the finish, which has a lovely patina.

Here's the fan Ted installed after opening up the ceiling box. We needed to add a support rod to hold the weight.


An antique chandelier from eBay went into the dining room. Arrgh. See the white paint on the wall behind it? That's not my crappy paint job. I had everything taped. That's white paint on the wood, all the more noticeable because of the color contrast.

Sconces were also purchased from eBay, and installed. Grr. The white paint is really noticeable on the trim here, too.

We still have quite a bit of work to do. We discovered that one of the vintage chandeliers that came with the house has frayed, bare wiring so that's all getting replaced. And I decided to strip the sconces in one of the bedrooms. All in all, we hope to have everything done by the weekend (touch wood).

More than We Can Chew, and an Homage to Dad

Oh dear, oh dear, what made us think that we could paint, install new lights, and rewire the upstairs unit by June 1st--when we have a family reunion in Iowa to go to between now and then? Arrrrggghhhh...

In the meantime, we've achieved almost nothing on our own unit in recent months. Our kitchen still has three different kinds of beat up cabinets, our dining room and living room sport "test" patches of paint colors, and you still need to use the bucket in the bathroom to dump extra water down the toilet to encourage it to flush everything away. (And I apologize now to Ted's parents, who will be visiting us in a few weeks; the toilet is not on the short list of things to do.)

But, we did manage to find a good spot for this:

My Uncle Russ, my father's older brother, is an artist. Last Christmas I commissioned him to paint a portrait of Dad, who died five years ago this summer. (Hard to believe it's already been that long.) I was a little nervous asking him, unsure how hard the task would be emotionally, not to mention technically. But he was very gracious and agreed.

It was also hard to pick a photo to base the painting on, because my dad HATED his picture being taken. Photos of him smiling are as scarce as hen's teeth; I have photo albums filled with pics of him ducking behind other people, turning away at the last second, hiding behind his finger--his middle finger. This photo was one of our favorites; he was happy, laughing, and enjoying some good playtime with Jakob, his first grandchild. It's how we like to remember him.

Thanks, Uncle Russ! You captured Dad's smile beautifully!

Rental Apartment Renovation

Well, today was kinda bittersweet as we said good-bye to our super awesome upstairs tenants. At the same time, I'm kinda excited to get to work on the unit. First task--painting.