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There were great leaps forward in the appearance of Steve’s apartment this week. They started working on refinishing the floors!

The transformation is incredible. Even though the floorboards are over 100 years old, when sanded they smell piney and fresh.

This guy uses the big sander for the main floor areas.

And this guy goes around the edges with the small sander.

Pretty grain on the naked wood. We’re pretty sure it’s “heart pine.” The wood of the Longleaf forests was the flooring of choice until they were depleted around 1900, during the building boom that produced our house and most of the others in Boston.

Several different phases of floor renovation, all visible in one image. Starting in the foreground we have the old subfloor. Behind that is the brand new oak flooring for Steve’s bar area, then the sanded dining room floor. The interior of the “picture frame” design there is in the process of getting stained darker. Then way in the background is the shiny, freshly finished living room floor.

Update: apparently, the floor guys screwed up which part was supposed to be stained dark. This picture shows them today doing the correct dark/light staining. Doesn’t that wood look great?

Peeking through the dusty front door window we can see how beautiful the front hall and bedroom look!

When we first took ownership of our house way back in July I remember being grossed out by how dirty our house was. Things like the greasy residue of years of frying in our kitchen seemed impossibly filthy.

Boy, did I not know what I was in for! Once the demolition crew came through, the plumber ripped apart the old pipes, and the electrician cut dozens of holes in the walls things really got grungy. Then the insulators came and poked about a hundred more holes in the plaster, and added bits of fuzz and foam to the already copious dusty mix.

At this point I thought our house was totally defiled. It was actually kind of depressing to be there, as it seemed so far from any kind of homey habitability. The whole house has been strewn with debris, random bits of moulding or old fixtures, assorted tools, and packing materials for weeks. All this stuff does move around from room to room however, depending on what’s being worked on that day.

Lastly, our friends the plasterers did their thing, and boy, are they messy. Although we now have beautiful clean new walls, pretty much every other surface was spattered with plaster! I’m still not sure how it’s all going to come off.

The 2nd floor bathroom, after they opened up the wall and took out the sink (it’s been living on our porch ever since).

This picture doesn’t fully capture it, but there was a period of long wires strewn all throughout the house, as well as half-busted lamps and fans dangling precariously. Each day we would cringe as Renaldo the electrician and his teenage helpers busted more and more holes in walls and ceilings trying to fish the wires through.

Chaos, dust, random stuff everywhere.

The hole where the toilet waste pipe went. You can see through to the room below.

Will it ever be clean again?

Dusty dusty footprints.

Plaster is EVERYWHERE.

What is the opposite of immaculate?

Wood dust too, and fun things like saw blades scattered about!

Dusty fingers.

This has been the only working toilet in the house for the last 2 1/2 months.

You’ve already seen our fabulous skylight. What else has been happening in our new little bathroom under the eaves?

Our double-wide LILLÃ…NGEN sink from Ikea. This is going to make nighttime ablutions much more trouble free. No more I’m-spitting-my-toothpaste-while-you’re-washing-your-face problems.

They walled in the shower stall! We are so excited for our two-person shower, with two sets of showerheads and faucets even. Phil likes it hot, Josh likes it warm.

Steve tests the shower bench. Good place to get some thinking done.

The mason obligingly working on our wacky tile scheme. We think it came out great!

I always wanted to live in a FUN HOUSE! All I need now is a shitload of mirrors.

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RED in the dining room, GREEN in the hallway, and BLUE in the living room!

yes, it really is that green

yes, it really is that green

One day, while we were nearing the end of wallpaper-scraping hell, two new Brazilian guys showed up. They didn’t really speak English, but they expertly sized up the whole house. When they were done, they cheerfully informed us it would be “200.” We weren’t exactly sure what units of measurement they were referring to, but they showed up a few weeks later with bags and bags of plaster.

That’s a lot of plaster!

Redoing all the walls and ceilings has dramatically changed the feeling of our house. They’ve been plugging away for a few weeks now, working from bottom to top, filling in all the holes and smoothing everything out. Seeing all the new walls has made it feel like the house is finally getting put back together, after having been ripped apart for weeks and weeks.

In Steve’s dining room, which was the most damaged, they actually tore down the old horse-hair plaster and replaced it with drywall.

Our dining room was in better shape and just needed to be smoothed over.

It’s kind of hard to see, but the new plaster is incredibly smooth and cool to the touch. It almost seems a shame to paint over it!

This guy works all day up on his stilts.

When we moved in, these walls were crumbling and covered in ugly bumpies. Now they’re so smooth that we just want to rub up against them! Fresh plaster smells really nice too.

We decided that every bathroom needs at least one window, and BJ said homeowners LOVE skylights.  So, we got one.  Arnie knew about the special oversized industrial skylights that fit in between our eaves with just 1/4 inch to spare.  Good thing we weren’t doing the measuring!  Best news is that Arnie told us our roof was in great condition– should last another 20-30 years and is installed totally professionally.  For once, Manny did the right thing.

Once we had the skylight in, we realized we needed a window into the hallway– it’s not yet built but is just one more period Rosenlips detail that will confuse future homeowners and keep our hallway light in the dead of winter.

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Cutting a big hole in your roof is pretty exciting.  Check out all that beautiful light.  I think I may spend all my time in the bathroom.

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This is the view men will have when they pee.

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That’s Arnie doing the installation on the roof.

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I made him take a picture from the outside since I’ll probably never get up there to see it myself.

Arrgh, I am weeks behind on my blogging responsibilities! I’m going to try and catch up in a hurry this week, so expect a bunch of posts as I wade through the back log. of blog. something about logs.

Where was I? Ah, the foam insulators. Steve was already kind enough to post a video here of the magical expanding action, but there were some other details that are worth sharing.

Although the open cell Icynine foam is reportedly non-toxic, and is partially derived from wholesome veggie sources like castor beans, the guy who does the spraying every day wears a pretty intense protective getup.

Actually, the whole scene is kind of post-apocalyptic, as the 2nd guy on the crew trims the rapidly-expanded gloop with a giant sword-saw.

He just slices it right off!

Post slice, up to the edge of the rafters. This is now conditioned, indoor space!

They generated several huge bags of waste foamy bits. Here the spray guy takes a little nap on the foam bag while the other guys refill the squirter with giant drums of chemicals.

The sword.

The helmet. Notice the foamy bits – it sticks to everything and doesn’t come off easily. The guys warned me not to get to close or I’d get it on my glasses.

Some closeups of the hardened foam. It’s really wild looking stuff, like frosting on a cake or something.

Oh no, the foam is exploding out of the cracks in the walls!

Inside, our house looks like a bomb went off. Outside there are critters afoot! Can’t wait til this place is fit for human habitation.

The FOAMING of the attic!

Tiles are a whole amazing universe unto themselves. After three passes through four different stores in Watertown, aka Tiletown, we’ve finally settled on our choices for the new bathroom.

The ones on the bottom are for the bathroom floor (tumbled marble mosaic from Indonesia). The top ones are the shower walls and floor (Italian porcelain), and the middle ones (handmade glass with bubbles) are “accent” for the shower.