Today was B E A Utiful. A balmy 70 degrees….an Indian Summer we are in I tell ya! We took advantage of the weather to get a TON of wood taken care of. Remember all of that wood that I mentioned someone had been painting over and over again for the past 100 years…literally? Well, yeah…that is what needed a’ workin’ on.

Hundreds of feet of antique trim and door toppers needed to be stripped which in itself is a mess. We did hire out quite a bit to be stripped last winter and are just now getting to stain it. But. Adam had to strip quite a bit more today using a stripper (not the kind that came to your mind) and a power washer.

We then stained all of the upstairs wood a yellow pine to match those floors. There is one bedroom upstairs that I chose to leave the trim/door headers painted. The guest room is painted in a really neat mossy-type green and I painted all of the woodwork in there white.

Downstairs, thank God, no one ever painted any of the woodwork, except for the bath and the kitchen, both of which I am keeping in white for now anyway. We are truly thankful that all of this wood is intact because it is oak and much much more pricey. As it is I spent an entire Saturday a few weeks back at an antique salvage place in Lincoln picking out antique trim and door headers that we are short on since we’ve added walls, doors, torn down walls, etc…Most of what I bought that day was pine, some oak, but mostly pine and I about fainted at the cost of it!

But this put soooo much into perspective for me as far as our home owners insurance. Side tangent, I know but bear with me a moment: We’ve struggled with our insurance company for the past two years. Our insurance for this home is outrageous! They will not let us insure it for any less than replacement cost which, of course, is what we want but to them “replacement cost” includes replacing all of the wood work in the entire home which is no longer made. So….they have an extra $125,000 tacked on for “costs” that they say it would take to replace all of this darn wood. We keep telling them, “people…if this house burns down we ARE NOT DOING THIS AGAIN!!!! We will build a nice new home with normal wood, trim, doors, windows, floors, stairs, etc”. They don’t care. We thought it was just our insurance company but supposedly not as we have gotten quotes from many now and everyone says the same thing. Due to the age of the home there are certain things that must be insured as an antique. Ok, end of side tangent.

Here is just a few pieces of the trim for the upstairs…

And the trim and door toppers for the main floor bath.

I’m not sure who this lady is but she offerred up free labor so we took it!

Thanks, Mom.

Adam doing some strippin’:

Excuse his facial expressions...it is so hard to get good help now-a-days you know

Since everyone else had their pictures taken I promised I would too…extreme close-up:

After two and a half years of work on this darn house…let the before and after pictures begin!

A little history…the home was built in 1910 and therefore will become a centenarian in just a few short months. I belive it is considered an arts and crafts style home. We have done ALMOST all of the work on our own. We just recently hired a contractor to help finish a few little teeny things but otherwise we’ve done it all…lots of elbow grease folks.

The house has all of the original woodwork including doors, pocket doors, etc. Oak downstairs and yellow pine upstairs. EVERY little piece of wood was painted some odd color upstairs…I swear to you! We have worked really hard to keep all of the original woodwork by stripping it all and refinishing it to its original color. Uhhhh, yeah…more elbow grease.

We do not know the original history completely yet on the house but we did find this photo behind a wall when doing some demo in one of the rooms. On the back it says Simon Fuller Overturf and Minerva Eastlake Overturf and then below that it says man & wife.

So…here is the house when we first purchased it:

….and today:
So, what have we done so far to the outside: privacy fence around entire back yard, wrap around deck (first ever deck that Adam built~high five to him!), power washed and painted the eaves & trim, etc. New doors & windows. Landscaped. New lighting, number plate, yada yada yada. I would really like to still replace that front picture-type window. I can’t stand it. I mean I REALLY. CAN’T. STAND. IT! This is kind of what I am thinking but we’ll see…

Still to do (next spring/summer): New roof and gutters. Lets face it, we are fresh out of money folks and the bids we got in for the roof and gutters equals roughly the price of a 2010 Ford Focus (no joke~not sure if it is the steap of the roof or what). And, no…I would NOT buy a Ford Focus it is just the point that we could go literally buy a car out-right for the price of our roof.

UPDATE: The house with the new roof! (also the day we sold the house)