All we need is a bathroom, right?

Here's an update on the bathrooms...

Our goal was to have a working bathroom sometime in October so we could start spending the night there. Even though we had no furniture, we were anxious and willing to sleep on an airbed. Well, we did get a bathroom but I wouldn't say it was working. We unfortunately neglected to specify that we wanted hot water. And even though the water was hooked up to the pedestal sink, the drain was not installed (huh?). Fortunately, we have a very nice neighbor and he generously offered the use of their bathroom.


For now, a few quick pics of bathrooms. The first is the bathroom off the kitchen. It was the only bathroom in the house that looked like you would be willing to use it. We expanded it to include a shower and added the bright paint job to give it a pop! By the way, I learned it's incredibly hard to paint a bathroom with a 12-foot ceiling with no light and no air-conditioning. Not my best work. Here's the before and after.






The next bathroom finished was the guest bathroom upstairs. It was in really, really bad shape. Absolutely everything had to go. After borrowing a couple feet of floor space from the next room and sending the claw foot tub out for refinishing, we've got a beautiful new bathroom. Love that periwinkle color! We have yet to work on the window which is in really, really bad shape. We had a contractor look at it and the first thing he said he'd do is turn the lower sash right side up (!)

The master bathroom is now located on the old back porch. The porch had been enclosed many years ago to accomodate the kitchen and bathrom for a tenant. We had difficulty designing this space because it didn't have enough wall space for a vanity and mirrors but our contractor came up with the perfect solution. After removal of the kitchen appliances and the addition of lots of marble, we have a beautiful master bathroom.

And the final bathroom in the house is the half bath at the end of the downstairs hallway. Originally, it was the bathroom for the tenant who lived in the (now) dining room. It was not original to the main house and was added on by protruding onto the back porch. We considered removing the bathroom completely but thought it didn't make sense to reduce the number of bathrooms in the house. We elected to downsize this bathroom to a half bath and use the space we gained to create a pantry in the kitchen. Not much progress on this bathroom except its not really gross any more.




That's all for now on the bathrooms. More later!

The kitchen

Here's an update on what's going on in the kitchen.


Here's a picture of the soon-to-be-kitchen. This room is to the right of the front door and has those incredible cranberry red stained glass windows. We think this wing was an addition to the main house in 1879 and was used as a dining room. It has a big crystal chandelier, too, which we'll use in the soon-to-be-kitchen.
In our quest to replace all the old wiring and plumbing, we had to tear out much of the walls. We also borrowed about two feet of floor space from the next room to make room for the fridge. It was pretty messy for awhile.

Here you can see the beginning signs of the kitchen's L-shaped island. The island will be home for the dishwasher, sink, and eating area.

And just when all the holes in the walls have been closed up, it's time to texture and prime the walls. Another messy job.

Then it was time to paint. We realized it was going to be easier to paint before the kitchen cabinets are hung because the ceilings are very high - 36" cabinets above, 24" cabinets above that, 6" of crown on top of that, then another 24" of wall space before you get to the 12" crown molding at the ceiling. We didn't want to be reaching over cabinets to paint the wall at the top. So, that meant we had to pick a color asap. I about had a stroke trying to make a decision on color! It had to be the right one the first time because we didn't want to paint it again. We ended up with this grayish green that looked good with the granite selection but I just wasn't sure it was the right color. But it was time to paint, so we painted.

The kitchen cabinets are from KraftMaid and arrived well before the room was ready. So they sat in their boxes stacked in the dining room for quite some time.


And here's what it looked like last weekend - the installer is almost done installing the cabinets. By today the cabinets should be done and the granite contractor should be arriving to measure for the granite countertops. See the gap on the wall between the upper cabinets? That's where the range hood will go. Our installer, Richard Bloom of WUD Cabinetry, also makes custom cabinets so we asked him to make a custom range hood that looks like a fireplace mantel.


Knowing the kitchen is the heart of the home and ends up being the central gathering place for friends, it was important to have a professional design. Our kitchen designer, Nancy McCall from Designs Galveston, provided countless hours of expertise to bring it all together. We can't wait to see the finished product. And you know what? That gray/green is growing on me!

The Front Parlor

Want to see what's going on inside the house? I'll start by showing you the progress so far in the front parlor. It's the room just to the left of the front door in this picture.

The house layout is called a "side hall" layout because the front door is all the way to one side and the hallway runs all the way down the right side of the house. But that was before several additions were added. Another really cool feature is the Jefferson windows. These two tall windows next to the front door go all the way to the floor. When they're open you can walk right through to the front porch.

The picture above is the first photo taken inside the front parlor during our first walkthrough. Although it was technically the front parlor, it had been converted to an apartment sometime in the 40's or 50's. The wall behind the bed is the dividing wall built between the front parlor and the back parlor. The door to the right of the fireplace leads to the tenant's bathroom/kitchen, a small room that most likely used to be the smoking porch. I hear it was common in those days that the men would adjourn to the front parlor after dinner and the women would adjourn to the back parlor. I understand some families still do this.

This room has a fireplace with an antique surround. We'll try to keep this original feature but it will have to be painted. You can see the high water mark from Hurricane Ike about 12" from the bottom. I've been told its made of ironstone - what's that?

And here's the antique door that goes in the fireplace. Since the other fireplaces are missing this door we've been searching for replacement doors on the web. After finding out how much they cost we've decided to delay the purchase until after we win the Texas lottery.

This picture shows where the new dividing wall is being added between the front and back parlors. We moved it forward a couple of feet because it makes the front and back parlors of equal size - about 17' square.

This picture shows the wall we opened up to the hallway. When we bought it, it was just a regular door - the entrance to the tenant's apartment.

Here you can see the new wall in place between the two parlors. The old wall hasn't been removed yet because there's still a tenant living in the back parlor. That's another story that will require it's own post!

Here's what it looks like now almost four months since we bought it. Instead of calling it the front parlor it is now being called the living room. The drywall has just been textured and it's starting to look like this project might not have been a mistake after all! But it's far from finished. Estimated date we could actually spend the night is about Sept 30 but it will still need a lot of work.

Attic treasure

Look what we found in the attic!

I haven't actually been in the attic; it's been too hot. One of the air conditioning contractors found a box with a bunch of these things....

Tickets to the Fifth German Mayfest in May, 1876! Admission 50 cents. And the Treasurer's name in the lower right corner? Our own Joseph Brockelmann, one of the very early owners of our house. The tickets are numbered on the back for the door prize drawing.

Now the question is...what do we do with them? An obvious choice would be to put some of them in a frame to hang on the wall, but wouldn't there be someone, somewhere, that would like to have some of these old tickets? I remember reading somewhere that the population of Galveston was about one-third German in the late 1800's. There must be a German contingent still here on the Island. Maybe I should ask at the Galveston Historical Foundation, or at the Rosenberg Library, which is a popular place to find historical information about the early inhabitants. I'd like to get these tickets into the hands of someone who really appreciates them. Any ideas?

Chandeliers or toenails?

Today I'm cleaning the old chandeliers. They are really nasty dirty. I'm surprised they still work.

There are three crystal chandeliers in the house - a big one in the old dining room (which will become the kitchen), a medium-sized one in the foyer, and a smaller one in the owner's bathroom/kitchen (which will become a study/den/library/or something). They are so dirty that David just wanted to throw them out. But I insisted they could be cleaned, and if they're really crystal, they might be valuable.

How can you tell if it's really crystal and not some genuine artificial faux crystal-like product?

Doug helped us load up the chandeliers in our truck when he was here on July 5 so we could take them home and work on them in air-conditioned comfort. Ever since then, the big one has been strung up between two sawhorses in the kitchen. And there it sat for the last three weeks.

It's really tedious and cleaning things is not really my thing so it's easy to procrastinate. To make it more enjoyable, I've been listening to the classic rock radio station. (When did my generation's music become classic?) And I was thinking, what would I be doing today if we didn't have this big old house to work on? The first thing I thought of was how I'd like to be at the nail salon having someone paint my toenails while I do the crossword puzzle.

My attempts to clean so far have involved the vacuum cleaner, soap and water, glass cleaner, a rag and a tiny paintbrush. Unfortunately, some of the little wires that hold the crystals together are so fragile that they fall apart in my hand as I'm trying to clean them. I guess I'll figure out how to fix those later. You must be able to buy chandelier replacement parts on the internet, right? You can buy almost anything from the cyberworld store.

The crystals look pretty clean now but the black wrought iron doesn't look so good. Can it be painted? Or would it negatively affect the value if it's an antique? Maybe I should just leave it kinda dull looking. Besides, they're really old and it might keep the flavor of oldness in the house.

Either way, when the house is done and we can finally invite our friends and family to visit, I'll make sure they look up at the chandeliers and see how clean they are - and hope they don't notice the old chipped polish on my toenails.

Susan

"It's like a horror movie!"

Hah! This is a memorable moment!

David and I were having breakfast at a local cafe in Galveston on a Sunday morning in late May when the phone rings. It's the tenant who lives in the main house. Some demolition had already started on the house at this point but we hoped to keep the tenant undisturbed for as long as possible before we had to start demolition on his space. Undisturbed was the key word here. Even though David was the one on the phone with the tenant, I could clearly hear the tenant. And, boy, was he disturbed!

Seems he was rudely awakened that morning by hundreds of cockroaches! He said they were coming out of every crack, hole, nook and cranny, and were running amok in his apartment. They had even crawled into his hair! They were everywhere! And they were big - the big flying 2" kind. He had lived there three years and had never seen a roach. But now, "you have to do something about this right now, man!"

We promised to call the bug man as soon as possible and, in the meantime, we'd bring him a supply of bug-b-gone stuff from Home Depot.

As soon as we arrived at the house, the tenant told us about his date. He said she woke up screaming and tried to run out the door with no clothes on! "It was like a horror movie!" Fortunately, his door goes to the back deck so she didn't run out the front door. He tossed her a shirt.

"You know how hard it is to get a date? I haven't had a date in a week!"

Then he says, pretty confidently, "I don't think she's coming back."

You'll be happy to know the bug man has taken care of the problem. He said these are the kind of roaches that live on the ground under raised houses and they'd been laying lots of eggs. But it had been so dry they weren't hatching. With the recent rain they'd all hatched at the same time. The bug man said, "I've never seen so many roaches in one place ... except maybe in a restaurant." Now doesn't that make you want to go out for dinner?

We said thank you and gave him a big check.

Photos of East End HIstoric District Homes

I have attached a link to a group of photos of historic homes in the East End of Galveston, www.travelphotobase.com/s/TXGH.HTM.

I added these hoping to show that Galveston is not all about the seawall.

These photos were taken before Hurricane Ike. You can see how many old trees lined the streets. Almost all of them were killed in the salt water surge that came before the storm.

Our house took in 11 inches of water. Houses three blocks down the street had 6 feet of water.

Our house is on the fifth row of pictures, on the left. Wish we had the trees back. Oh, and we just spent $950 to have four of the stumps ground out - six more to go.

David