The old shall become as new

A couple of years ago, Gus and I bought a 100 yr. old house with the dubious idea of renovating it. Notice I did not use the word "restore". That would be because the house was so far past its original design that it would have cost us more money than we had to invest in it. As can be seen in the photo below, two dormer rooms were added to the attic space and a small porch on the side was enclosed to create an additional room. Yes, it is an investment. Real estate of course is usually an increasing commodity and that is true for our little corner of the Pacific Northwest. Lots of folks move up here to get away from the city life down in San Francisco. Little did we know actually what we were in for! We wound up having to rip out 8 ft. false ceilings to reveal the lovely 10ft. ceilings that hid beneath. We tore out the red shag carpet to discover beautiful Douglas fir floors underneath so we had those refinished. One of the upstairs bedrooms bounced like a trampoline when we walked across the floor so we (Gus, actually, I cannot take any glory for myself here!) had to re-enforce the floor with huge beams the size of Goliath's forearms underneath. We decided to keep the old windows instead of replacing them because we felt that the house would retain much more of its character if we didn't remuddle it any further than it already had been. We have a guy in our neighborhood that restores old windows so he re-built them so that they function as they were originally intended. After working like dogs for several long months with the help of some very talented and loyal friends, we were able to call it home.

We even had to re-enforce the foundation.


This photo was taken 2 yrs. later. We still have a ways to go on "finishing" the project, but we are making progress. At least now it looks gorgeous from the street!