Sewer Main Revisited

The high-pressure water blasting made no difference in clearing the blockage(s). The plumber was kind enough to charge us only for his time, and not for the use of the pressure-blasting equipment.

Current plan now is to dig a hole (either through the basement floor, or outside in the yard) down to the main to add a clearout. That way the auger can skip the three turns and go directly into the straight section.

We will be asking plumbers for bids later. For now, I am focusing on the floors.

The Kitchen Walls

This is what the "breakfast nook" looked like before and after I stripped off the wallpaper (also before it snowed).

I learned that I should not have used a razor blade to scrape the wallpaper off the wall. Doing so engraved some gouges into the wall that I will have to fill and sand before painting. Next time I will use a less-potentially-wall-damaging putty knife.

About Those Kitchen Cabinets

The internet has little to tell me about the cabinets made by Scheirich Kitchens. Most of the info I have gathered came from the responses to a post on The Pioneer Woman's blog.

Angela In CA said Scheirich was pronounced "Shy-rik". Good to know!

Many of the commenters referred to the website for Spencer's Scheirich Cabinets for replicas and replacement parts.

Generally, anyone who mentioned Scheirich cabinets adored them, and waxed nostalgic about how they used to be in gramma's kitchen, or at the little cabin by the lake, et cetera. They loved the cabinets' durability and quality of construction.

A comment from Jen states: "I don’t know about yours but I can’t fit a box of cereal, ketchup bottle or anything in mine! My new plates have to be put in at an angle and the door barely closes on them.... The things are hard to clean too! You wipe too hard and the varnish will come off and when they dry you have a light spot where you rub."

That was the only negative comment regarding these cabinets. Well, should I encounter those drawbacks, maybe I can do something about them. The shelves in the cabinets are fixed in place, which could be aggravating. Perhaps I can modify them to be adjustable-height. I'm not too concerned with keeping the insides of the cabinet boxes perfectly vintage.

Also, coincidence of coincidences, good friends of mine who live nearby (near where we live now, not near the house featured in this blog) have these exact same cabinets in her kitchen! I only noticed a few days ago! Theirs are in better condition than mine, and probably have the original handles. Plus, theirs has very nice glass doors on the cabinet over the fridge. I'll be sure to post a picture of that.

Dangit, where did I put my camera?

Name that Room

I can't seem to settle on a name for this room. It is not the formal living room (formal? Us? Ha!) on the main floor, but the more casual room downstairs.

It will be used for entertaining friends, watching TV, and passing from the patio/pool area to the rest of the house. There will also be some exercise equipment in there. Whether we will use it as an exercise room remains to be seen.

The Rec Room? The Family Room? The Lounge? The Den? The TV Room? What would you call it?

EDIT: Tom has informed me that "the lounge" was an euphamism for the bathroom when he was growing up. So strike that one from the list of suggestions. :)

However, now I am inspired to fill the downstairs bathroom with tiki decor. It will really be "The Tiki Lounge"! Hardy har har!

Selecting Floor Tile for the Entryway and Kitchen: Suggestions?

I don't aim to decorate my mid-century home with period-style furnishings, but I do want to keep the features of this house consistent with the time and spirit in which it was built.

Originally, the entryway and kitchen had some kind of speckled, multicolored resilient sheet flooring, which we discovered when we removed the pink, wall-to-wall living room carpet. Doesn't it look festive?

I love the idea of a durable, nonporous, easy-to-clean floor in these areas. I'd settle for a new layer of sheet vinyl, but Tom feels strongly that it should be some kind of ceramic tile. I have asked him several times about just how strongly he feels about vinyl vs tile, and he is unmoving.

I must confess I am not inflexible on this; I dig ceramic tile. Also, this decision needs to be made quickly, if the work is to be done and we are to move in before the end of January.

However, I still want to restore, not "remuddle". I am hoping to find a ceramic tile usage consistent to the era, but the retro research I've done so far only shows ceramic tile in bathrooms. Was it ever used in other parts of the house? Would it be anachronistic to do so?

To-Do List

House Systems

• Get the sewer main cleared. The high-pressure water-blasting device freezes if the weather is too cold, so the service call was rescheduled for a few days later, when we are expecting warmer temperatures. Then the plumber can run the camera down the line and see just how damaged it is, and we can decide what to do about it. Maybe replace the line, maybe just pour root-killer in every so often. We shall see.
• Fix deadbolt on door to deck (even though the current security brace is kind of interesting to look at).
• Replace existing vintage (programmable?) thermostat with new programmable one. I think the old one has character, but I can't find instructions for it, and the hubby does not trust it, so away it goes.
  
  
  
  
• Put a filter in the HVAC system. The mildew remediators said they went to remove the old one and found there wasn't one at all.

Appliances

• Buy a refrigerator. There currently isn't one.
• Trade dishwashers between current house and new house.

Flooring

• Installation of unfinished hardwood flooring in living room. Will be red oak 1/4" x 2 1/4" to match that on the stairs up, and in the upstairs hallway and bedrooms. Have not yet decided on finish. Am consulting a post on Retro Renovation: "What color stain to use for mid-century oak flooring?"
• Refinishing of stairs and hallway, repair and refinishing of hardwood flooring in bedrooms. At least one plank is termite-burrowed, and the other room has a poorly-putty-filled hole.
• Do we want a carpet runner on the stairs? Here is one way to do it, again from Retro Renovation: "Carpet runner for the oak stairs"
• Installation of ceramic/porcelain tile in entryway, probably over the original vinyl/linoleum flooring (I feel like we should keep it, buried in the precambrian layer, as a record of what originally was there).
• Replacement of tile flooring in kitchen, to match that in the entryway. Even though the kitchen floor is functional, as long as the workmen are there, it makes sense to do this now.

One of the bidding contractors (the only one I thought to ask, duuuh) said he could start January 9 and the project would take about four weeks. Which means we wouldn't be able to move in until February. How frustrating...I want to have my tiki-themed housewarming party now! *pouts and stomps feet*

Status Report

Sewer main is somewhat unclogged. We can now flush the toilet without water backing up in the basement, but the pipe was too clogged to allow the camera to go more than 20 feet from the cleanout. The plumber advised we go easy on the toilet paper, at least until his return December 28 to scour out the sewer main using high-pressure water. Then we can try the camera again and see if the sewer line is damaged and if so how badly.

We have three guys giving us cost estimates for installing living room flooring and repairing (termite damage) and refinishing the bedroom floors. Should have all the estimates by the end of Monday.

Mildew remediation completed. Spore density test came back much much lower. What a relief.

I need better photos for this blog, if I'm going to ask people to look at it and advise me.

The Living Room Flooring

When we bought the house, the living room had pinkish wall-to-wall carpet and heavy pinch-pleated curtains under a heavy valance to match. During the mildew remediation, we discarded all the pink textiles. After it was gone, even with only plywood subfloor under our feet, the room looked ten times better.

Underneath the pink carpet, in a path leading from the front door to the kitchen, we found some kind of sheet flooring. Probably put there to withstand the most heavily trafficked area of the house. It looks like it may have had a colorful confetti-esque design which faded from age.

I have begun to remove the pink floral wallpaper from the entryway walls. The vinyl top layer stripped off pretty easily, but the fuzzy backing is still waiting for me to get back to it.

A neat thing about the coat closet is the switch in the doorframe to automatically turn on the light when you open the door.

The Kitchen

Sometime in this house's history (possibly the 1980s), the kitchen was redecorated. The original multicolored linoleum flooring was buried under white ceramic tile, the backsplash became white tile with blue Delft-style accents, and the countertops became blue-gray laminate. No idea what the original sink was like.

Scheirich Kitchens medallion, under the sink

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However, the kitchen cabinets seem to be original. They are battered but well-made and still solid. Here is what they looked like on a manufacturer's postcard (image from the blog Viewliner Ltd.).



In one of the base cabinets, I found a wooden cutting board stored in a bracket mounted underneath the drawer. The cutting board itself would have been very attractive, if it had not been for the impressive crop of grey mildew growing on both sides.

The fuzzy cutting board

Mounted on a wall cabinet by the sink, there is an odd little metal thingy. It seems to be some kind of hinge, maybe a base for a swinging arm? What could it have been used for?

What is this mysterious doodad?

A hole has been cut in the blind corner cabinet to accommodate a dishwasher.

The Floorplan

I've always liked having scale drawings of the places I live. For this adventure, I made a layered diagram on the computer instead of using pencil and graph paper. Maybe I got a little carried away with it...

These drawings are not perfectly accurate. I expect I will return to them often to make corrections as we go about fixing the place up.

The house and lot.

There are a total of four levels (if I counted correctly). The bedrooms and bath #1 (1), living room and kitchen (2),...

...the rec room and bath #2 (3), and the unfinished basement (4).

The Beginning of Our Split-Level Adventures

Tom and I had been on-again off-again searching for a better house for maybe a couple of years, but without luck. Of the houses we could afford, we rejected many because of foundation damage or other daunting stuctural qualities, and the rest because Tom and I had differing aesthetics; he wanted a ranch-style home like he and his friends grew up in, and I kept finding myself drawn to blocky bungalows and other quirky little abodes. I finally gave up, resigned myself to staying in our current home indefinitely, and stopped wasting my realtor's time.

A few months later, in a moment of boredom, I again looked online for houses. This time only two fit our search criteria, one of them a ranch-style split-level with inground pool. The pool deterred me; I wanted nothing to do with the maintenence and liability. But something about the house amused me, and I sent a link to Tom in jest. He replied with serious interest, and I reconsidered. I called my realtor and we went to see it.

It smelled, of dirty carpet and stale air and mildew and dust. The house had been vacant for about three years and the lack of ventilation (we supposed) had allowed light grey mildew to bloom on doors and acoustic tiles. The windows were covered with dark, opressive curtains. However, the spaces of the house were welcoming, and almost immediately my imagination populated the house with visiting friends.

Even the stairways between the levels were inviting. I don't remember ever having been in a house with that layout before. I wandered up and down the stairs just experiencing the levels, with a big goofy smile on my face. The more we explored the house, the more we liked it.

We went home marveling that we had found a house that we both liked simultaneously.

Closing was December 3, 2010.

I will learn to crop photos soon.