Our ca. 1880 house

[nezwick]

Pulled all the tape and plastic off the kitchen this morning - we love how it turned out. The curtains were left by the PO but we are going to use them since they match.







I also took some time to clean up the old outlet covers and reinstall them (for now until I get GFCIs) - before and after.





Next, we started on one of the upstairs bedrooms.

Before (floral print paneling):





Tinted primer:









After one coat of paint (you can also see the other old door in here):

[nezwick]

Finished up that upstairs bedroom today. The colour we chose for the walls doesn't seem to clash too badly with the 1970's shag carpet either. We like it! Next step here is to paint the ceiling white.









And then got started on the living room! We masked everything and then filled in all the nail holes in the walls and smoothed out a couple of the cracks. I will do the actual plaster repair later, after we are all settled in.

Before:








In primer (tinted):








Already we can see that the grey makes the ceilings appear taller and the room in general appears larger. Much better than the PO's light lemon yellow. She said the room has been yellow for 50 years. Paint comes tomorrow.

[nezwick]

Got more done today.

Living room painted and it looks great! Also replaced the 4 "newer" outlets because they were loose and scary. Now they are safe and blend into the baseboards much better than the old ones.









I then started to clean out the closet under the stairs. It was like peeling back the layers of time. First, I removed the PO's latest piece of wallpaper (not attached) to find this linoleum. It was pretty cool, but it was also not attached to the floor and it was in bad shape (torn up/cracked).




This was what was underneath - the original 1880 pine flooring. Great shape in here. There is a linoleum border around the outside of the closet, and it actually appears to be in half decent shape. I will be leaving it.

[Julie&Glen]

Instead of doing GFI outlets you could use a GFI breaker for that circuit. This would allow you to use regular outlets yet still have GFI protection and keep the old faceplates

[Texas_Ranger]

1) That first shot of the angled wall at the bottom of the stairs looks eerily familiar! I'm 99% sure I've seen a picture of a similar situation somewhere else, exact same angle!

I KNEW I'd seen something like this before!
Here you go!
viewtopic.php?f=4&t=23498
Slightly different angle maybe, but very similar!

[nezwick]

^ I was actually just reading that thread today. What a drastic change - someday I'll be rid of all my panelling too!

I'm still not exactly sure what to do about the ground fault protection in the kitchen. The problem is: the kitchen, dining room, and all outlets except 1 in the office are on the same circuit. My computers would probably constantly nuisance-trip the GFCI. I'm not in any position to re-wire the house but I do have plans to try to split up this VERY overloaded circuit here downstairs and get it as close to code as possible.

The laundry room is an issue as well - there is only one outlet in there, and it's one of those 1930's ungrounded outlets. The washer and gas dryer are plugged into this via those idiotic little adapters. Yes, VERY scary and unsafe. Once we get caught up on our bills, my first electrical project is definitely going to be replacing that with a proper 20A branch circuit.

On a happier note, we moved in last Thursday and are almost all unpacked. We love our house already!

[Texas_Ranger]

My computers would probably constantly nuisance-trip the GFCI.

Just yesterday I read a post by an electrician about this... "These days, GFCI's generally trip because there's a problem;"
(http://www.electrical-contractor.net/fo ... Post201854 2nd post)
So, unless you were running something like 10 computers at once I doubt they'd trip the GFI.

Besides... I know that in sheer theory, permanent power strips are not up to code, but in fact for computer equipment it's flat out impossible to avoid that. Why not take that one outlet in the office that's on a different circuit and connect the computer stuff to that using a high quality(!) power strip with #16 wire? Technically that's only barely inferior to connecting another outlet to that circuit inside the wall.

[Nan-nan]

1) That first shot of the angled wall at the bottom of the stairs looks eerily familiar! I'm 99% sure I've seen a picture of a similar situation somewhere else, exact same angle!

I KNEW I'd seen something like this before!
Here you go!
viewtopic.php?f=4&t=23498
Slightly different angle maybe, but very similar!

Woo hoo! We're famous.
P.S. That angled wall was a bear to deal with with flooring, trim, mudding, etc. Hope yours is more fun!

[nezwick]

Well today after work I got the grass cut and did a little more trimming of the hedges and bushes. It's starting to look better, and we can actually get in the front door without brushing up against hedge.

I also went into the basement to start sealing all the HVAC joints because as you can probably imagine, NOTHING was sealed. Not even the joint between the air handler and the main trunk! The duct run to the office was not even connected to the main trunk anymore - there was about a 1cm gap between the duct and the trunk.

I got most of the taping done in the main basement and already almost used an entire roll of metal duct tape. I would have preferred to use mastic but the metal tape will do. Maybe tomorrow I will get into the crawl space and finish up the taping. I already notice a HUGE difference in the house - airflow from the ducts has surely tripled. The system also does not run as constantly as before.

I also traced the electrical run from the furnace back to the panel and OF COURSE it is improper. There is a short run of new 14/2 grounded NM joined to some ancient 14/2 NM in an old junction box with the lid missing. The old NM then runs into the panel. Oh, and it's on a 20A breaker. The sad part is, the entire run between the furnace and the panel is ~15 feet. I will be replacing all this at the same time I do the laundry room.

I can't complain too much since I had a fairly good idea of what I was getting into when I bought the house, but the people who did the electrical, HVAC, and plumbing retrofits in this house were either incompetent or just lazy.

[sooth]

OMG Nezwick, I think we own the same house (or just about).

I've been spending a few hours here and there taping all the reams (and huge gaps/holes) in my HVAC since I bought the place. Some of the vents were just horribly set up, crooked, had too many useless elbows, etc. I also have several spots (mainly where the ducts "connect" to the upright ones at the basement ceiling/first floor) where they aren't even connected, and the joints are all crumpled. It's so bad it's funny.

My electrical was also ALL redone (the entire house was rewired) but the people who did it were amateurs. It's got a ton of poorly tacked wires, lots of spare wire (which is handy), and a few areas are not really done "to code" (like the attic, where there are huge lengths of wire just loose and sitting on/in the insulation.