Magic Chef Stove!

We just purchased a new stove. It is a Magic Chef from the 30's. It is in pretty good shape and it is perfect for our gray, white, and black kitchen. We are going to pick it up after the new year. So far I havn't been able to find out much about 1930's Magic Chef stoves. I have seen much larger ones. This one is about all that our small kitchen can handle. The neat thing is that I had a dream about buying an old Magic Chef stove. It was an odd dream because we weren't looking for a stove and I had never really thought about Magic Chef stoves in particular.

Before

Before

Here are earlier pictures of the inside of the house when we first bought it. And also one of the dining room after removing the carpet and replacing the ruined wood floor, but before restoring the trim. The floors in the front three rooms and the hallway of the house had been drilled full of holes by the hundreds of screws that the previous owner had added before carpeting in an attempt to stop the floors from squeaking. This is no exaggeration. We have a liter bottle full of the screws that we removed. Some of them were even bolted under the house. I will post a picture of the bottle soon. Discovering that our wood floors were ruined on the second day of ownership of the house was the most depressing thing that has happened in our journey of home ownership.

There is also a picture of the olive green bathroom unfortunately you can't see the "Victorian toilet" patterned wallpaper that was on the wall with the sink.

We have lost the digital files of two of the worst rooms in the house:

1) the "country" kitchen- think yellow and orange flowered wall paper, 70's paneling,dropped fluorescent lighting and pine curved plate rails.
2) the half paneled and wall papered front bedroom with acoustic tiled ceiling.

Rainchains

So we need to get rain gutters. Our old ones were removed when the house was painted. I wasn't too excited about them until I heard about copper rainchains. Rainchains are used in Japan instead of downspouts and they are really pretty when the water flows down them. I have just purchased 4 of them- 2 for the front of the house and 2 for the back. While not historic in the US, I figure that the Arts and Crafts movement has a lot of Japanese influence so why not... I found mine at Cherry Blossom Gardens. They are based on an old design from Japan. http://www.cherryblossomgardens.com/arain.asp

Serendipity?

living room into dining room, originally uploaded by Kimberly4.

After the refinishing was done we picked our new, lighter paint colors to contrast the darker trim.

The living room color that we chose happened to be the exact match with its first paint color. We discovered this when we removed the old thermostat and saw that it covered some of the original color.

Living Room

living room, originally uploaded by Kimberly4.

The trim was all painted a glossy white that was peeling showing where it had been painten a teal green before. This photo shows the trim after it is stripped but before refinishing.

front porch

front porch, originally uploaded by Kimberly4.

The door is oak veneer. It was very sun bleached but turned out well with refinishing.

Restoration Bonanza

This year has been our most productive year of the three years that we have owned this house. The exterior is painted. The interior trim in the living room, dining room, front bedroom/tv room and hallway have now been stripped and refinished and then the walls were repainted. (The colors didn't come out anything like I expected but I do like the results.)

We had central heat and air installed. Woohoo! Our house now looks and feels like a completely different house. Finally no more peeling paint! It almost seems like the house of someone who must be far more adult then us. It no longer looks like a college rental.

My summer has been spent finishing all of the exterior and interior projects that were started but needed more attention.
I have been referring to myself as the "house slave." I would feel sorry for myself, but I did still manage to sleep in untill 9 or 10 each day, and I always quit work by 4 or 5. So it hasn't been all that bad.

List of projects:
1) I stained the beadboard ceiling on the porch but then didn't like the result. It was too uneven, so I primed and painted it instead.
2) I primed and painted the door trim. This was also going to be stained, but I felt that it wouldn't go that well with the dark house color so I opted to paint it the trim and sash colors.
3) I bleached, sanded, stained and varnished the front door. It is quartersawn oak veneer that was really sun bleached unevenly from where a screen door had been. It took a lot of effort to get it even looking.
4) I patched all of the holes in the walls from the electrical rewiring from last year, and I patched all of the cracked areas from the central air/heat installation. I patched around the ceiling registers and took the registers down and spray painted them copper and bronze.Then I primed and painted all of the patched areas.
5) I stripped the paint from our porch star light and then taped each glass pane ( Joel helped with this) and primed and sprayed it a bronze color.
6) I sanded, stained, and varnished all of the woodwork in the hallway including its 6 doors. I then repainted the walls a purple color.
7) This weekend joel helped me repaint our bedroom. I had already done the closet the week before. We choose a brown milk chocolate color that is really p

Project Trim

We had begun to strip the trim in our living room, but after 2 years of sporadic effort we had only managed three windows, the fireplace mantle, and the bookshelves that flank it. When we heard from a fellow blogger and home restorer (Thank's Heather!) that she had hired someone to finish the trim in her home we were so excited. There was hope in sight! Someone else was actually willing to strip paint for us?

So we get his number and call him up and learn that he also does exterior painting. They work for an hourly wage and thought it would be three guys working for six to eight weeks with 2 working full time and one working part time. After adding it up we decide that with some juggling of funds, tax returns, overtime, and closing out a retirement account from another job we will actually have enough to do both the exterior painting and the interior stripping and refinishing.

That first morning I stay home from work to make sure that they have what they need and that things will be ok with our dogs. They arrive promptly and quickly get to work. I hover around inside not quite sure what to do with myself. Spying through the window I see a worker painting with a brush. "OH No" I think, they are already painting without any prep. We have made a huge mistake. So I rush outside and discover that it is actually stripper that he is brushing on. I can't believe it. They are actually going to STRIP the outside of our house!

It takes about three weeks and they remove about three quarters of the paint on the exterior. Then another 2 to paint it, and it seems that there are 4 guys now working instead of 3. The hourly wage plan is starting to hurt and the interior trim still isn't started!

After much discussion and the promise that the interior will only take 2 weeks we decide to continue, but also decide that it is a good time to refinance and to take some extra cash out of the equity.

Four weeks ago we moved all of our furniture from the living room, dining room, and front "TV" room into our garage. We did this so that so that we could undertake the project of having our wood trim stripped and refinished. Since then we have been living in our back 2 bedrooms and the kitchen. It is surprisingly comfortable, but we are starting to get sick of it and are now spending much more time in the back yard.

The trim in the three rooms is finished and beautiful. They also stripped a hallway and were going to refinish it, but we have decided that we had better finish it ourselves and save some of the equity money for central heat and air.

1921 Bungalow

house front, originally uploaded by Kimberly4.

This is a picture of our 1921 bungalow when we first bought it. We have removed and/or pruned the overgrown bushes. We also removed the 50's awnings and wrought iron stair railing.

Mahogany House

Our bungalow, showing off new paint. I like the new paint color the best when the sun is out.

Right side

Right side, originally uploaded by Kimberly4.

Side of porch

Backyard

Backyard, originally uploaded by Kimberly4.

Cosmo and Ruby are after me!

New and Improved!

IMG_0654, originally uploaded by Kimberly4.

I can't believe that this is the same house! new exterior paint = good.

House History

We are the home's third owners. It was owned by the Smith family and was sold to us by their children when their father, Maurice Smith, passed on at the age of 96. He died in our house, as did the other former owner George Remington.

We found out about the first owners, George and his wife Maude, by looking up records in the library. Once we found out their names we were also able to track down both of their obituaries. Georges’ obituary says that he died in the family home of a sudden heart attack on May 25th, 1931 and even lists our address as being THAT home. Spooky! His wife Maude died about 10 years after that. We are not sure if she died in our house or not, but all those who did seem to be peacefully at rest because as far as we can tell we don’t have any ghosts.

George was born in 1856 in Massachusetts, but settled in Nebraska where he was active in the Masons and served as master in “The Blue Lodge” They came to California in 1920 from Nebraska presumably to retire.

Maude is described as being very active in the Methodist church and she served as president of the W.C.T.U. (Women’s Christian Temperance Society) and was a president for seven years of “The Order of the Eastern Star.”

When we first found out about the Mason connection we were amused because we had previously placed a Mason ashtray with the Eastern star symbol on it on the front porch. We found it at a yard sale and thought it looked neat. Serendipity? But then again, I doubt that Maude would of have approved of smoking.