A Dutch Colonial without a Gambrel roof

[LTParis]

From the history we had learned from it, two brothers started construction on the site circa 1925-1930. They seemed to have built the place with a duplex in mind, but for their use. Tons of doors to close off everything, identical layouts for each half of the house.

Finally got to sleep in our house last night, after the hot water debacle. Two things I wish I had would be ample counter space in the kitchen and larger bathrooms. Need to figure out how to maximize the space.

[Don M]

How did you resolve your water heater problem? Great that you finally were able to sleep over!

[LTParis]

New hot water tank. Was able to reuse the burner, transformer, and some other parts to keep the cost down (as costs go for oil fired systems).

[Don M]

Good deal! Please keep us posted on your progress!

[LTParis]

I really need to start a blog on all this. I could gobble up 299main.com but I am a little weary of having my home address as a domain name. Suggestions? ColonialRevivalReno.com?

Anywho it's been a month since we have owned the house, and 3 or so weeks since we moved in. We've started a couple minor projects. (pictures to come)

Kitchen. Painted inside the built in kitchen cabinets. My wife could not stand the faded mustard yellow paint, so she went for a cool blue. Also put up new curtains in there so at least it had some non-floral character. There is still so much that needs to be done that hopefully we can do next year. The fridge is really on it's last legs but given the space in the kitchen I really can't buy anything deeper, and at best slightly wider. I had been thinking of a countertop-depth or built-in style fridge but you pay such a premium for them, and thanks to the hot-water heater debacle that drained a good portion of 2012 renovations and improvements budget.

Kids Bedrooms. The first 24 hours saw my wife tearing some small sections of the first layer of wallpaper in the kids bedrooms. It took another on-and-off time for two weeks to strip those two layers and the paper backings. After some spackling of my son's room, I pained the first coat with Behr's Tropical Splash (blue). Unfortunately the color helped show a lot of the imperfections I missed with the spackle. So now it's the second round of spackle and preparing for the next coat of paint.
My daughter's room, thanks to a built-in, will take longer to do.

Linen Closets. The old paint just looked kind of nasty, so I threw on a fresh coat of white paint for now.

I haven noticed some things of concern.

Cracks. When we first looked at the house, we saw some long ceiling cracks that we figured is foundational settlement cracks (the house is at least 82 years old). But after carefully mapping the floorplan, I see that the cracks are at parts above where a room's wall is. For instance in the living room there is a long crack where the master bed meets up with the closet. I'm not sure if I really should be concerned. We are talking 82 years.

Ants. Seeing more ants in the house. Looks like carpenter ants. :/

[eclecticcottage]

Spring is when carpenter ants become more active-check to see if they are, and if they are, treat now!! We had them at our Old House and they are bad news...we had an entire wall section missing under old siding (I mean, under faux brick siding which was put on over the original wood siding). When we took off a piece of the faux brick siding, we could see inside the house-the wood siding and the backer was completely gone. They had also destroyed the header and some of the studs in that area as well. They usually go for areas with water damage.

As to blogging, I am still pondering posting exterior pics of the Cottage (except close up pics of the window frames I had to scrape/sand/fill/caulk/paint) for the same reason as you are thinking about the address. Just one of those internet things. I got my blog name from the style here at the Cottage, and that it is a cottage.

[Don M]

We had carpenter ants in our Cider Mill & they like damp wood best. If you have them then you probably have damp wood too. Once we dried things out the ants left. I did spray them but they would have returned if the water leak hadn't been corrected.

[LTParis]

I wonder what the threshold when I should call them? So far they have seemed to die down. I sometimes will see 2-3 in a day, sometimes 0. The only wood that could be damp would be the kitchen back wall where the sink and dishwasher is. Everything looks dry from below. Then again they could be feasting on the outside decks and just working their way in.

[Don M]

Look for a nest of them in a damp spot. They are fairly large black ants!

[LTParis]

Funny thing is it's not like if people do not search me they can't work up a huge dossier on me anyways. On one forum I have over 16k posts.