Let There be Lights!

Here's the thing about an old house -- it's possible for stuff to be original without actually being original.

A prime example of that in this house is the light fixtures. We think the house was built around 1885, but in the 1880s, only a few very rich people in fancy places like New York City had electrical lights in their homes; it was a brand new technology, and those lights were generator-powered. A farmhouse in the Midwest -- in an area that's still considered pretty rural 130 years later -- would certainly not have had electricity until much later. What that means is that the house also wouldn't have had fixtures for electric lights when it was originally built.

Eventually, though, electricity did make its way to Michigan farms. Some quick Internet searching suggests that the style of most of the light fixtures in our farmhouse is one that was common in the 1920s and 30s. Since nearly all the fixtures fit into that period, we're guessing that sometime around then is when the house was wired for electric lights. So, although the fixtures were added 40 - 50 years after the house was built (i.e. not original) we think they probably are the first light fixtures that were installed (i.e. original).

Master bedroom light fixture

Parlor light fixture

Fixture in the three upstairs bedrooms

 We're not hoping to restore this farmhouse to like-original condition for obvious reasons, like electric lights, and modern plumbing, and not having to cook on a woodstove. What we're hoping for is something closer to creating a home that feels like it's been lived in since it was built, with pieces from different time periods blending together (and if it can't blend, it gets left out -- I'm looking at you, 1970s). This is a long way of saying that we're not going to try to find, say, gas light fixtures from the 1880s that could be reworked to take electric bulbs -- if the house's fixtures seem centered on a particular period, that's what we'll work with.

And the good news is that we had almost all the fixtures. The kitchen fixture is more modern, but pretty unobtrusive, so we'll probably leave it unless we find something truly amazing to take its place.

Kitchen light

However, in the dining room, the light had been totally removed; at some point, a drop ceiling had been added, with fluorescent lights and a ceiling fan. The light is off-center, and the ceiling fan is wired to an extension cord that plugs into the wall. Classy. So those definitely have to go.

We're also short a fixture upstairs. There are three matching fixtures upstairs -- currently, one is in the hallway, one is in one of the bedrooms, and the other is on the floor in the back bedroom. The third bedroom, though, had nothing, so we decided to move the matching fixtures into the three bedrooms and get a different fixture for the hallway.

We thought this might take awhile, but in the course of one weekend, we actually found fixtures for both places. They aren't installed yet (ceilings need work and painting, so there's no point in getting ahead of ourselves), but they're waiting. They're also getting cleaned up, which is why they're currently pictured on lovely backdrops of newsprint...

New fixture for the upstairs hallway

Dining rooms need chandeliers.

And this one is perfect!

What's Under That? Flooring Edition

We're finding that one of the joys of buying an old house is the ongoing game I call "What's Under That?" The rules of the game are simple: one person identifies an aspect of the house and says "I wonder what's under that," and then all players start removing layers in order to answer the question. Depending on the surface, this game can have multiple rounds on the same surface.

We started this playing this game literally about fifteen minutes after closing on the house (and that's only because we had to drive back across town to get to the farm).

Originally, all the upstairs bedrooms were carpeted. The carpeting in the green room was fairly normal, but the other two rooms had something with a more woven texture that I'd be more likely to call a "rug." I'm not really sure why I feel like there's a distinction between "rug" and "carpet" in a situation where it covers a room's floor entirely, but you'll see what I mean (I hope).

This is a "rug..."

But this is "carpet."

Fortunately, neither rugs nor carpet was actually installed with any skill; basically, they were all just cut to size and laid on the floor; in the green and paneled rooms, the carpet was stapled or nailed down right by the doorway in order to keep the door from snagging on it. Other than that, carpet removal was easy -- I just rolled it up.

In the back bedroom, that was all there was to it. I rolled up the rug, swept up the layer of dust, and found the wood floor. You can see in the picture below that the floors are partially painted; apparently, that's not uncommon; why waste perfectly good paint (and labor) when you're just going to put a decorative rug in middle of the room?

Back bedroom without carpet

In the front bedrooms, though, the game continued: What's under the carpet? Linoleum.

Some of that nastiness is dust. Some of it really is the pattern of the flooring.

Yes, the thing on the floor in the above photo is the rug. See? You couldn't ball up a room full of carpet like that.

This linoleum was at least a little better looking.

Fortunately, the linoleum wasn't installed any better than the carpet had been -- once again, this was just a roll-and-remove job in both rooms. And what's under the linoleum? Ah, there's the wood floor we've been looking for!

This room looks a lot MORE paneled now that everything is wood.

This one, however, looks a lot less green. Much better!

The best part of this project was discovering that the upstairs floors are in excellent shape. They have a mix of wide and narrow floorboards that's apparently pretty common in old homes -- you kept the good materials downstairs, and in the more private spaces upstairs, people might just use what they had left over. The floors have all seen paint in their lifespans, and the plan is just to scrub them up really well and paint them again so the whole upstairs is uniform in floor color.

In fact, the upstairs floors went so well that I went downstairs to the master bedroom and decided to play again. Certainly the tiles that had been laid in the master weren't original to the house, so what was under those?

You don't have to be an expert on 1880s decor to know this isn't original.

 Sadly, these tiles had been installed using actual technique and materials, so this round of the game involved a lot of scraping. Chris took over this portion of the project because his (literal) strengths were more suited to the intensity of the scraping involved. As of right now, almost all of the tile is gone.

Much better.

We think that both the age of the tile and the cold (it's winter in Michigan, and the farmhouse is unheated this winter since "new furnace" is on the to-do lost) worked in our favor because both tile and whatever is adhering it to the floor are fairly brittle. It's a lot of work, but it comes up in surprisingly big chunks. This floor will need more love -- thanks, adhesive! -- but still should mostly be a matter of sanding it down to smooth things out and then staining or painting.

I'm hoping to play this game again in the parlor, where the floors are almost certainly a match to what's in the master bedroom, just without the layer of tile (we think -- we did have a peek under the carpet, and it looks like a straight shot to the wood). Chris likes carpet, but it's just so worn out and threadbare in all the main traffic areas that I'm still hoping to see it go even if it cleans up ok.

We'll also have to play this again in the kitchen and dining rooms once the chimney comes out and we're able to take out the weird pieces of wall/closet that currently divide the spaces. The floors don't match, and there's currently a bit of a threshold between them, so that will have to get matched up eventually. For now, we've still got that little bit of master bedroom to uncover, and then a lot of finishing to do before this project is complete.

The Basic Tour Continues: Upstairs

If you need to review the main floor, you can check it out here.

All caught up? Then on we go. Let's imagine we're back in the parlor.

Stairs!

In the parlor, right around the corner from the doorway into the dining room, is a door that takes you upstairs to the three additional bedrooms and the bonus attic room.

Upstairs landing

Directly ahead is the first bedroom, which we're calling the "green room." Next to that on the left is a second bedroom, and across the hall (so, behind the wall on the left in this picture) is the back bedroom. You can just see a door on the right in this picture, and that's what leads into the bonus attic space that's over the dining room and kitchen.

Bonus room in the attic

The bonus attic room is quite large, and we're not really sure yet what we'll end up doing with it. So far, Chris has done a lot of work just to clean it out and repair the rafters in this space. In the middle of this picture, you see the chimney that I mentioned in the last post -- it's being supported by a closet in the dining room, but it's not in use as a chimney anymore, so it'll be coming out in order to open up the space on the first floor.

Green room

Here's the green room, named for pretty obvious reasons. This is a "day one" photo, so there have already been updates to this space.

Paneling room

This paneled beauty is the bedroom next to the green room -- both of these bedrooms overlook the front yard. Again, lots of work has been done here. This picture already doesn't show the flooring that was in place when we first purchased the house.

Back bedroom

Last one -- this is the back bedroom. It's in the best shape of all the rooms in the house, so probably not a lot of work will end up going into that space.

And that's the farm! Now you can have a sense of where we are as future posts come up.

The Basic Tour: First Floor

Seems like it might be time to get a clearer picture of the basic layout of the farmhouse, so this will be just a quick tour with pictures that are as "before" as I can find right now.

You've probably seen this one before.

Ok, let's say you enter through the door you see in the picture above. That's going to take you first off into the lean-to.

Lean-to

The rather see-through wooden door that you're looking directly at in this picture is the door you just "came in" through. The door that's propped open on the left leads into the kitchen. Right now, we're mostly using the lean-to as a staging area where we can store lumber or work on outdoor projects out of the wind.

Kitchen

You walk through that door into the kitchen (so, you just walked in through the door you can't see behind the post on the far right). In this picture, you're looking into the kitchen from the dining room. Eventually, the weird dividing wall between the two will come down, but right now, the closet directly behind the step stool is supporting a chimney that's still in place on the second floor/roof.

Dining room

Wood burner

From the kitchen, you walk into the dining room. These pictures are already pretty "in process" -- the dining room had a drop ceiling when we bought the place, which has already come down, and the walls on either side of the wood burner were previously covered in tongue-and-groove paneling (which was painted white on one side, but not on the other, because reasons). In the picture on top, you can see two doorways. The one on the left leads to the door down to the basement and then to the bathroom, which opens into the master bedroom. The doorway on the right leads to the parlor/living room, which also opens into the master bedroom, so you can walk in a full circle all the way around the first floor.

Parlor

We'll go through the door on the right. This is the parlor. The door you see leads out onto the stone porch in front of the house -- there's a door onto that porch from the dining room, too -- so this is where you'd come into the house if you were fancy (and if the door wasn't swelled shut). We're hoping to put in a bigger window in the spring to fill in that weird space on the wall that doesn't have paneling. This photo is taken from the master bedroom, which is where we'll head next.

Master bedroom

The rooms are fairly small, so they're all kind of hard to get pictures of. This is the master. Through the doorway, you see the parlor -- that weird accordion door is high on the "replace" list. On the left, you can see the tile that was down in the master when we bought the place, but obviously that's coming up in favor of the wood that's underneath. This picture is taken from the bathroom, which you're not going to get a picture of because the rooms are small, so all you can really see is a picture of a fairly standard (and not in any way charming or vintage) tub/shower.

Coming soon -- the tour continues upstairs!