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.