This Old House- pretty much finished

Ok, nothing is ever really finished when your house is over a hundred years old but....

hey look, it's our new bathroom. 

This old house- getting there!

This old house- walls

            Our basement bathroom project is coming along. We now have walls!

This Old House- framing

Before and during

Warning: extremely photo heavy post. 

Old houses are charming in many ways. I love our wood floors on the main floor of our house, and all the little details that would just never happen with contemporary design. I like thinking of all the times and people this house has seen. 

But.

You knew there was a but, right? Old houses are hard. Our house is over a hundred years old. Sometimes that means that there isn't the closet space for our contemporary cluttered lifestyle. Pretty much always it means that whenever we do a project in the house, we will discover something new about the internal parts of the house, and hopefully it won't be too terrible and hard to fix. 

We're embarking on a project to remodel our downstairs bathroom. It's a strange little half-bath, with only a toilet and a shower, and mostly no one uses it. This means our family of four shares the one full bathroom upstairs, which is fine for now but I can see causing problems down the road once the kids are older. 

So, here are some before shots of the bathroom in the basement. It's so tiny and narrow it's actually kind of difficult to get a picture of it, but I did my best. 

And here are some shots after the first day of construction.

Getting ready to pour new concrete. 

This is where my washing machine used to be, and will be again. 

This old house-an update

 

 

Coming along, coming along.

 

Before

 

One of the mixed blessings of living in a hundred year old (more or less) house is that something always needs attention. Right now it's our front porch stairs.

 

                                    Having carpenters at the house is the best entertainment.

                                               A tarp tent to keep out the rain.
                                                  

 

 

                                               Discoveries.....the people before us left their marks.

 

I like thinking of the other stories that have happened in this house, the other families who made it their home. I like knowing that this house has nourished and held other lives, and that we get to be a part of that too.

This Old House- almost there!

This old house- color and light

The house project is slowing down a bit as we come up against some limits- both temporal and financial. Still, we now have color and light. Big steps for those basement stairs. We choose a warm but light blue for the walls- I think it was called Blue Horizon. I wanted something that would feel open and light in that space. Especially since I am often dragging laundry up and down those stairs. Dan also had the idea to add a skylight. Brilliant! I can already feel the difference it makes being able to see the sky- even when there's not much light outside.

Brixton boogies with bongos

Brixton is our music man. He loves singing, his music class, listening to music, dancing, the whole thing. For his birthday he received many new instruments, including this set of bongos from Uncle Michael the drummer. He's starting.

and just a little aside, we have primer on our new walls and it's starting to look like a house in there again.

This old house- dry wall

this old house- coming along

This old house- an update

Dan and Philippe are magical! Every time they come to work, so many things get done and the space gets transformed again. We now have walls, and the start of a roof. Soon we'll be able to open that door and I can do laundry without carrying it out the front door and around the side of the house.