1st Floor - Family Room and Dining Room

The room with the window faces the backyard, it was originally the dining room and had a single thin long window. The door on the right goes into the kitchen. There were pocket doors that separated the dining room from the second room. In a 1920s remodel, they removed the pocket doors and added arches to make it look more like the craftsman houses that were popular then. They also added a bank of windows instead of the single narrow one.  In the 1980s, the owners replaced most of the windows with vinyl ones and replaced the bank of windows with this one double panes with grid window.

There was a wood burning stove in the house when we bought it. I didn't like it much, but taking it out became a priority when the insurance agent said they wouldn't insure the house with it. We were trying to figure out how to get rid of it. Four days later the movers showed up with our furniture. One of the guys said how much he liked it. "Really, you want it?" So he brought two big friends and a truck and that was that.

The wood stove when we moved it

We still had the heat protector on the wall and floor and the pipe and it's attachment in the wall. We took out the pipe right away. The heat protector on the wall and floor were there until we took them out so the new floor could go in.

The wall wasn't sheet rocked like the rest of the house. You could see the 1940s wall paper and old reddish paint on the molding.

(Mike added a little personal art with the white paint primer).

My sister and I went to look for gas fireplaces. I am fairly decisive, so looking at the fireplaces was something like, "no, no, no, no, that one." He showed us mantel options which had to be custom made, and scheduled a time to come measure. So to make up for the long drive and the short shopping trip, we had a nice long lunch.

The fireplace exhausts to the outside of the house. I had the gas line run under the house and up through the wall. They also added a gas valve outside so that we could hook up a gas barbecue.

After the floor went in, I sheetrocked the area that the new fireplace mantel wouldn't hide.  I could've sheetrocked the entire area, but why deny some future owner the pleasure of seeing that wallpaper.

I had the cable guy and an electrician come and do their thing for the TV. Of course, after the fireplace went in I had to have them come back and redo the places I had them put the outlets so they wouldn't show. Oops, maybe I didn't think that one through.

The Ugly Pipe Connector

For some reason taking the pipe connection off the wall was not a high priority, even though we had to look at it every single day when we watched TV.  Finally, (a year and a half later), I got the ladder out and climbed up and unscrewed it and it popped right off. Really? I was imagining a big mess; soot, dead bugs, soot.  I patched the sheetrock and painted.

It looked so good I felt inspired to make a shelf for the TV to sit on and the cable box to go under. Mike saw me dragging out the mitre saw and decided not to ask.  Girl on a mission. The next day, with my sister and brother-in-law's help, we lifted the TV up and shoved the shelf in.