Beautiful, huh?

That's what I thought. Then I saw the inside - disaster, disarray, and entropy in action. I fell in love with the concept of possibilities and went to work! It kept me busy for the entire seven years Harry and I were married.

	This is the second floor hallway.On the left you can see where the roof leaked around the chimney. Above, the ceiling leaked and peeled. The end of the hall was a dark hole. But Harry built a bookcase at the end of the hall for videos, and I patched and painted the ceiling and the walls yellow, and it looked like this for three years. January 2004, I repainted it a southwestern orangey pinky reddish tan and April 2006, a dark tan glazed with a pale creme.

Here's the second floor bathroom before I worked on it

Here, after Harry put in a new tub enclosure

I patched and painted and rugged

The Master bedroom was my first major "big" project

here, in before and after pairs

are the holey wall near the bed,

. .

the king bed cranny, pale and then burgundy

and the fireplace corner

The Master Bath section got so big that I had to give it its own page, http://heywoodlorraine.com/masterbath.htm

 

A couple years later, we re-created the bath on the main floor http://heywoodlorraine.com/mainbath.htm

 

The "White Room," before I finished painting the floor.

I finished the White Room the first week in May, 2002, and Harry built in a sewing table and a painting table for me. I used it as a studio for a year or so, and then we moved my studio to the basement and moved a friend, Doc, into this room for a while. Later, after the fire, this room was repainted. I don't know much about its condition now.

During the time the Master Bath was waiting for Harry to do the next thing, I started work on the dining room and dragged Harry in to do the woodwork - We finished just in time for an end of the year party. After the fire (after I left) the dining room was painted all in an off white and the huge sycamore leaf pattern has been obscured. Sigh.

Here's the before of the buffet wall -

And a shot of a dinner party before walls or finished ceiling -

After rebuilding this inset window, I attempted my first tile job

I'm glad Harry talked me into using brackets and glass blocks to make the shelves instead of the old broken bricks I had before

 

The kitchen has gone through its changes, too. Here's the stove area

At the other side of the kitchen, my coffee bar Harry built. The floor was sub-flooring painted red and waxed shiny - later I tiled it.

adhesive and backerboard and then thicker adhesive and the tiles and then grout - Here's the floor pre-grout.

Here's the old woman making a major mess. I will never again use large tiles on an old floor. Next time, it's small tiles or I'll keep the sub-flooring!

Then I scrubbed and buffed and scrubbed some more until the wee hours. This is an awful picture of an awfully tired old woman! Then Harry made threshholds and I added a soffet and Harry put in lights and a spice rack - I painted it Butternut and we bought a new electric stove and a new convection oven, and I made curtains and the kitchen is done!

The "Great Hall" picture wall used to have dozens of pics of both my family and Harry's, but now just Harry's mother.

This room was Harry's closet when I moved in; then it was our office; now it's the main floor guest room. The sponge paint on the wall was one of my more successful experiments, but it got painted over after Harry kicked out the two windows and put in a sliding glass patio door

Here's the stairway from the "great hall" to the second floor

Here's a shot of my side of the office before we added a ceiling and painted it

Here's a shot of my side of the office before I cleaned it up. This is about a fifth of the room

And the office now

Here are three or four shots of the attic. The first room had acid yellow splatter with years of wallpaper and hanging down paint. The first pic here is the north wall before - The second is now. I needs new windows.

In a former life, a kitchen sat in this tiny hall, but more recently there was an open clothes rack here.

This room was open rafters and my first visit to it there was a long dead squirrel on the floor. We insulated and had some rank amateurs sheetrock, so there is still another bucket or so of plaster to even things out before this room gets painted. It also needs two new windows.

Lorisa and I did this bathroom, but we toned down the goldenrod with a nice butter yellow. First shot is with its rusty old tub and open 2 x 4's when we started.

Not a good picture here ... too much glare to show the texture. This dormer was fun to finish. It has multi-shaped walls and had very little living plaster. We patched and plastered and then painted. When Bruce, my grandson, lived here, this was his "bed room" with a kingsize boxspring and mattress. Literally wall to wall bed. Now it's just a closet.

Now, to start at the beginning with links to my writing, family, and other such stuff, http://heywoodlorraine.com/