# Living Room Restoration



## Angel241 (Mar 4, 2008)

We quickly cut down the dropped ceiling so that we had beautiful 12ft ceilings. In the process, we decided we would build a bar between the living room and kitchen. The first problem came when we cut a board out and the kitchen ceiling began to sink. That problem was quickly fixed with a large supporting beam at the top of the bar. 

Several of the other problems included the fact that the ceiling was in no way, shape, or form level and that the hardwood floors were covered in linoleum and tar paper. 

The first part of the process was taking all the tin down so we could run a wire brush over each one of them to loosen any junk and then to prime them. 

While doing that, we tried EVERYTHING known to man to get the tar off of the floor. This included heat, gasoline, kerosene, stripper, mineral spirits, paint thinner, etc... In the end it came down to good ol' elbow grease.


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## Angel241 (Mar 4, 2008)

The ceiling posed another huge challenge for us. After we had gotten the tin down and primed, we ran into a snag when we tried to hang it again. It turned out that we weren't going to be able to just tack it back up on the ceiling because NONE of it was level. The ceiling waved in every direction possible. We also had to replace a couple of sections of ceiling using plywood because they were rotted out.

We came up with the idea of using old lath board to shim each piece so that it was level on the ceiling. Since we had such a huge excess of lath lying around from tearing out plaster, it turned into the perfect stuff to use.


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## Angel241 (Mar 4, 2008)

After we got the rest of the ceiling tin hung up and the ceiling edges drywalls, it meant that we were then able to prime and paint the walls.


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## Angel241 (Mar 4, 2008)

Even after we had gotten all of that done, we still hadn't really come up with a way for us to get the tar paper off the hardwood floors. We had been under the impression that it was oak because after some scraping that's what was revealed. It later turned out that the floor is Douglas Fir with a few oak boards that were replaced where a wall had been originally. 

We had talked about just covering over them, but that would be accepting defeat and we couldn't have that. We finally decided that we would waste some money (and sandpaper) and just sand all of the garbage off. 

Several hundred dollars later, we had a nicely sanded floor, but it definitely took a while. By the end of it all, it took 20grit paper and basically burning the stuff off the floor to get it to come up.

We decided to go with Bona's Oil-based Polyurethane and sealer. We decided against staining the floor as it had some character to it we didn't want to cover up.


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## Angel241 (Mar 4, 2008)

Since we still needed the scaffolding in the living room to get the ceiling trim up as well as the lighting, we decided to do that after we got the floors rough sanded. It also gave us a chance to put the boards up on the front of the bar. 

Any marks from the scaffolding was then sanded off using the big orbital for our final sanding.


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## Angel241 (Mar 4, 2008)

Here's the floor with the final coat of finish on and drying. Unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to get a photo of the room with all the trim before we moved furniture in. It's large trim to match what we put on the ceiling. 

The worst room in the house was finally done!


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## robbie2883 (Aug 12, 2008)

awesome work man....i wish i had the patience to do that kind of work!


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## mercurycnz (Aug 27, 2008)

Good job


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## AtlanticWBConst. (May 12, 2006)

Excellent job. Much hard work really produced something nice. 

The colors really work. The ceiling edge ideas with the lighting look great. Thanks for posting the pictures. 

NICE WORK!


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## Shamus (Apr 27, 2008)

I honestly do not know of anyone that would be willing to tackle that project, Truly a huge amount of elbow grease and sweat equity on that room. Very nice for sure.

Gives me some encouragement to do more with my home project.

Again, very nicely done and well worth the effort.

A question about the chimney. How far does it extend beyond the ceiling? I've seen a few that took a turn because of changes in the structure over the years, Just wondering if that was original work or a change at some point in time. I'm guessing, from what I am looking at in the picture, that it's a change.


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## Angel241 (Mar 4, 2008)

Thanks everyone. It has certainly been a lot of work, and actually took us 3 years to even get around to doing it because of how much work was going to be involved.

The chimney is original and extends from the basement all the way to the attic. It was taken off the roof years ago by the original owner of the house. Our 2nd chimney will have to come down as well as it is degrading terribly. 

There's only one reason we've been able to come up with as to why the chimney turns like that. There are no inner supporting walls in the house. The supporting walls are all the outer walls, and because of that, in the attic are two HUGE beams that basically hold the entire house up. From what we can tell, they forgot about the beam in the attic when they began to put the chimney in because that's what it curves around.


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## shumakerscott (Jan 11, 2008)

Looks great! Any more DIY pi'cs on your renovation? I'm always looking for ideas. Again, great job, Dorf Dude.


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## Angel241 (Mar 4, 2008)

I do have more photos. There's some in my gallery. Unfortunately, our ex-room mate took off with all of our pre-demolition photos of the house and photos of some of the things we had to do. 

The people that owned the house before us never fixed anything properly. In the kitchen, whenever they got sick of the linoleum they put down, they would nail 3/4" plywood to the floor and lay some new stuff. There was about 8 layers of plywood we had to cut through in the kitchen just to find out we had to cut original floor out due to rot. 

All the walls had at least 5 layers of wall paper and then they put this awful panel board over that. We tore almost every wall out due to the poor condition the plaster was in. Actually, one dividing wall in the house was actually cardboard.

None of the dropped ceilings are done properly, so it's probably a good thing that none of them are truly weight bearing.

I'm going to try and get those photos back from our old room mate in the next couple weeks so I can get them scanned in.


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## Termite (Apr 13, 2008)

Having not seen the rest of the house, I'd wager that you could sell that house based on the appearance of that room alone! 

A truly magnificent looking outcome. :thumbsup:


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## Angel241 (Mar 4, 2008)

The latest portion of the house that we've been working on is the hallways, which just like the living room, were covered in this awful brown panel board that we couldn't stand. In the process, we also redid the front stairwell - restaining the wood work and refinishing the steps.

Please don't mind the clutter/mess - things have been very disorganized as we've had to shift things from room to room as we've worked.

Front Stairwell









Front Hallway - first bit of panelling removed









Side Hallway


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## Angel241 (Mar 4, 2008)

We started off by pulling out any of the old panel board in which there was 3-4 layers on each wall ALL different colours. After that, we knocked out any remaining drywall and plaster/lath board that we came across.

Front Hall









Side Hallway - You can see the insulation that we had put in when we built the second bathroom 2 years ago


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## Angel241 (Mar 4, 2008)

The drywalling of these hallways was a tad bit tricky because the NONE of the existing framework matched up to where it was level. Half the wall would be level, while the other half wouldn't be. We did our best to try and correct it, but it isn't perfect by any means.

Front hallway









Side Hallway


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## Angel241 (Mar 4, 2008)

After that, we figured out what colour we were going to paint everything, and cleaned up the hardwood so we could figure out what we needed to do in repair before we sanded it.

The floors in each hallway had some considerable water damage unfortunately. We believe the front hallway had originally had a water fountain in it because there's a hole for plumbing in the floor as well as water damage around it. We had to replace a few boards there due to rot. 
The side hallway had some rot from where the chimney was leaking at one point. We also replaced a couple boards there.

Front Hallway









Side hallway


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## Angel241 (Mar 4, 2008)

The last several weeks has been an effort in getting the floors sanded and ready to be finished. The hardest part has been the front stairs. They are 100yr old Oak, 10' across in length, and are as solid as a rock. It's taken me every evening for the last 2.5 weeks to get the 8 stairs sanded enough to where we could finish them without it looking like garbage. We decided the risers were in too poor of shape to even refinish, so we partially sanded them, and will be painting them this next weekend.










This past weekend was spent getting the finish put down on the hallway floors as well as the treads of the front stairs. Everything seemed to turn out ok. We were worried about the stairs because there were a lot of marks left in them from the belt sander I had used that the orbital couldn't get knocked down. Surprisingly, it doesn't show too badly, and they turned out looking pretty nice.

Front Hallway









Side Hallway - this was a pain due to the direction the wood grain runs.









Side Hallway - kitchen view









Front Stairs - looking down


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## Angel241 (Mar 4, 2008)

The floors are by no means perfect - but it's still better than running carpet all through the home 

Next up - Trim!... yay...


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## Angel241 (Mar 4, 2008)

In the meantime - here's yet another project that we've almost finished lately.

The previous owners, for whatever reason, pulled the original doors off the front of the house and built this awful wall that you could practically knock down by pushing on it. It looked awful (and by no means provided any security), so we decided that we would do what we could to try and replicate what had been on the house originally. We also decided that we would fix up the front stoop with some nice stone on top and brick in the sides of it, but we havn't come close to finishing it yet.

Here's the front of the house as of last summer - it needs a lot of work too. Next summer, we'll probably scrap all the old siding and put new stuff up, since the paint on the aluminum is chalking terribly.









You can see in this photo what was originally on the house. The doors were on casters and would slide sideways, opening up the front stairwell. For practicality purposes, we didn't go with the casters.









Here's what we replaced the whole front wall with. I still need to get in there and refinish the window above to match.









Here's some of the stone that we got laid down on the inside of the doorway before we knocked the old wall out. 









Now that the front doors are finished, we'll be getting the whole front porch done hopefully in the next few weeks before the cold sets in so we can get it all sealed up.


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## fbennett1125 (Apr 19, 2008)

wow, you do good work. your house is looking great. looks huge inside too.


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## Demochick (Jan 19, 2008)

Love the floors,and the color with the dark trim makes it seem warm nice job


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## Angel241 (Mar 4, 2008)

Thanks! The house is roughly about 5000sq ft finished and unfinished, although we ever really measured any of it. It's large, but the amount of finished space is about a 3rd of the total space of the house.


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## EdinDesign (Jul 29, 2008)

LOVE how you brought the doors back to a more original look!
Good work!! :thumbup:


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## Angel241 (Mar 4, 2008)

We're trying our best to make/keep things looking as original as possible. I need to take a day off and get into the library in town to look for any other old photos of our house since we have no clue what the rest of it looked like on the outside. I'm guessing the old wood siding was probably red, although there's no way to really find out.


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## EdinDesign (Jul 29, 2008)

I can relate to that, Angel... we're working at keeping the vintage feel of our 70 year old house. Not as old as your school-house, I would imagine, but challenging nonetheless. We're fortunate that we live in a community with lots of older homes so we often spend a Saturday viewing open houses so that we can see - first hand - the finishing details used in bygone eras. Our own kind of research... voyeristic research, but research!! :whistling2: Things are slowly coming together here... and for you it would seem!! I'll keep an eye on your thread for future developments/posts :yes:

BTW... love the idea of painting your exterior red... seems totally appropriate! I notice in the old photo you posted that the front was also flanked by what looks to be white trim up the corners of the entranceway... something you're considering, too?


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## Angel241 (Mar 4, 2008)

That's pretty neat that you're trying to preserve that 70's feel.Viewing open houses in the area is certainly one way to go about getting ideas  You don't hear of that too often!

Yes, we will probably do white trim around the doors and the window, although I'm probably going to finish the window itself to match the colour of the front doors since it seems somewhat out of place to me. 

Our house is possibly up for Historical Society nominations the next time they come around. The last time, it was cited as being "Notable" but hadn't quite hit the age mark needed. Finding out that information is part of the reason why we're striving to get it as close to original as possible  

Ya gotta love all the history involved in an old home


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## EdinDesign (Jul 29, 2008)

Angel241 said:


> That's pretty neat that you're trying to preserve that 70's feel.


:laughing: No, not a house built in the 70s, it's 70 years old! BUT, preserving a 70s house would be kinda neat, too!

Good luck with Historical Society nominations!! Our house isn't old enough yet to rate a view from our Herritage Society... I'm a smidge jealous of you, Angel!! Having said that, however, where I live if you have a herritage home you HAVE to follow the society's rules to the letter when renovating. While I'm glad this is so (I'm crazy about old homes and want to see them preserved), I can certainly see how this could be challenging at times!


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## Angel241 (Mar 4, 2008)

Oops! So sorry! Where was my mind at yesterday?! :laughing: I can be a tad ditzy sometimes. A 70yr old home isn't too bad  

The cutoff for age here is 75 years if I remember right. Here, you only have to follow their rules for renovations if they are going to be paying for them.


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## Linkin16 (Nov 14, 2007)

First off...great job the work you have done looks great.
I too have an older home that the previous owners did some interesting repairs on so I can understand that part. Seeing how good your room looks where you took out the drop ceilings created another new project that I think I would like to do in getting rid of the drop ceilings in my livingroom and kitchen to bring them up to probably just over 11 ft. But to keep peace here at home I will wait until my restoration of the upstairs is completed. :thumbup:


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## usef4u (Oct 4, 2008)

This is really so excellent. It is really wow. A great piece of work. I am really impressed by Angel 241


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## marc412 (Apr 6, 2008)

I love the colors you used with the wood flooring... who helped you choose , I see alot of people are using darker colors these days and it looks great


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## Angel241 (Mar 4, 2008)

Linkin, if you decided to go with the raised ceilings, you would not be disappointed! It really gives our living room a nice open feel to it with the warm colours making it feel comfortable. If we could open up our kitchen too, I would in a heartbeat!

The colour of the living room actually took us a while to really figure out. Originally, I had wanted to do a nice red in there, but since our kitchen and adjacent hallway are a rich plum colour, it sort of limited what we could do in the living room without things clashing too harshly. My fiance, Matt, had actually found the colour which had probably been at the bottom of our list before hand. Once we got the chip home we knew it would look great. We went with the dark trim to draw attention to the tin work on the ceiling, which we actually painted two different colours. 

Despite some of our doubts, it really came together well and has given us a good basis for how we should do the rest of the house!


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