Mostly Painted

Modulo some work on the front steps and back wall of the house, most of the painting is done and it looks great.

I found the trim from the front porch under the house and it's not in great shape, but it's still available (most Victorian house trims from this period were off-the-rack from mills, and there are multiple local mills that still cut to the same profiles), so with a little work I think we can whip the front porch into shape. But that is still pending.

In the meantime, I think the front door came out really well. The painters took it off and sprayed it out in the yard, which took a little shuffling on our parts to keep the cats inside and maintain distance from the workers, but it worked out.

One thing I designed into the house when we were designing the remodel was the ability to close off parts of the house from each other, and that has been very worthwhile. We closed the doors from the parlours and the kitchen into the downstairs hall, then closed the door between the front and back upstairs hall, and put all the cats in the back part of the house. That gave them about 4/5 of the house, including most of the cat boxes and cat food locations, while keeping them away from both the front door and side door (which needed to be painted). It worked really well, although there was a lot of sitting at various doors and crying about not being able to get to favourite sleeping spots.

The painted side porch looks great. I love how it looks like it actually belongs on the house. I need to get screens into the screen frames (they're stacked on the porch right now) which will make it look more finished.

Just a reminder of what it used to look like:

(Just take a moment and enjoy the fact that the previous owners had painted just the inside of the side porch for some reason.)

Unlike the front porch, the side porch stairs are completely resolved. I mean, they were built from scratch so that makes sense. They're pretty simple, and I think they work well for the period of the house.

And here's the view from inside the porch. Again, the ceiling is painted blue which is pretty cheery on overcast, gray days like we've had a lot of.

Just visible here you can see my fancy new wicker chair for the side porch. I'm excited to be able to sit out on the porch and enjoy watching the neighborhood. Back when we first moved in we would sit on the side porch, then it became clear that the floor was completely rotten and dangerous (because of some bad framing below, and the horrific rot in the floor itself) so we stopped hanging out there. But it's just really nice sometimes to sit out there in the evening and be connected to the street and our neighborhood, while also being a little private.

I'm really looking forward to this porch.

posted by ayse on 02/09/21