817: Our New Project

Our latest project is the house next door, or as we like to call it - 817. It was home to Eleanor and Charlotte until October and we purchased it the end of December. The house was built by Eleanor's father and she lived in it for 84 years until she died on June 23. She'd had a lot of dizzy spells and falls last winter but when she went to the hospital in early May we all thought she'd be back home before too long. After all, she'd been teaching piano lessons up until her last fall... and I guess I just really didn't want to believe she wouldn't be back home.

Charlotte was Eleanor's roommate (she's the one pictured)- they'd shared living quarters since the early 1980's. Before that Eleanor's roommate was Charlotte's sister Elizabeth - but when Elizabeth became sick with breast cancer Charlotte moved here from Michigan to help take care of Elizabeth and after Elizabeth died, she stayed on.

The two were a wonderful pair - both artistic naturalists with excellent minds and musical talents. They were night owls. Before Dave and I moved our bedroom to the attic I would "check" on Eleanor and Charlotte as I was getting ready for bed. I'd look out our bedroom window down into their kitchen window and usually see them at the table -having a late supper or cup of coffee. Reassured they were all right, I'd go to sleep. Later, though, after the girls took over that bedroom I felt more like a spy than a psuedo caretaker so I quit looking out the window. After all, they were 86 and 91 - they certainly seemed to be getting a long better than some of the younger people I knew.

After Eleanor went to the hospital we got to know Charlotte better. She often stopped by for coffee in the late morning or early afternoon. At times she spontaneously joined us for supper out on the patio - but that wasn't all that often since we're big meateaters and she's a vegetarian. She was always gracious and ate anything we could offer - whether it was corn on the cob or potatoes and carrots. She taught me to make a fantastic bread this summer and shared her knowledge of gardening.

When Eleanor died her house was left to her three nephews and since they would have had to totally update the house in order to rent it to Charlotte, they decided to sell it. Charlotte was wonderfully upbeat during this whole time. She spent her evenings going through books and newspaper articles, clothes, dishes, etc... Lucy and I spent afternoons with her going through books and putting them in piles: one for donation, one for Eleanor's family to look through and one to take with her when she moved. She found herself a downtown apartment that would take Erno, her cat. Almost everybody wanted her to move to an assisted living place but she told me she didn't want to live with all those old people. (Keep in mind Charlotte will be 92 on March 9.) So by mid-September Charlotte moved into the Opera House - how fitting as she is a pianist, a celloist and singer. The train tracks are right beside the building and when a train blows its whistle she hurries to the piano and presses keys until she finds the same tune. The kids and I have visited her a few times but it just isn't as easy as walking acorss the yard - now I feel as though I need to make an appointment and I'm not very good at that kind of planning.

When we heard the house was going to be for sale we talked with Bob, one of Eleanor's nephews and told him we might be interested in it. Our plan is to use the upstairs for "guest quarters" - it'll have two bedrooms and a renovated bathroom with a shower. By March Dave will be all moved in with his office occupying the dining room and another space in one of the main floor bedrooms. The dining room will have a big table that can be used for eating and projects - but will probably mostly be used by by Anna and me for weeekend quilting projects. I was going to have the other main floor bedroom be for my quilting things but have since decided against it. So it'll probably be a sitting area. The kitchen will be, well, a kitchen and for now, the basement will remain unfinished - who knows what it'll end up being. If you scoll down you can see pics of the house - before, during and after.

817 Main Floor

The main floor of 817 consists of a back porch, kitchen, dining room, living room, two bedrooms and a very pink bathroom. Here are some before and during pics:
This bedroom will be some office space - it's nice and bright with windows on two walls. There's also a nice size closet. After the flood Charlotte used this as her work space and the walls were entirely covered with ideas for sketches and her nature artwork. In both this and the next room we did a lot of scraping, mudding, and texturing - just look at the ceiling for an example of what a lot of the walls looked like. There's a pic of me working on the floors - from the dust on the camera lens don't you think it's a good idea I have a mask on? I did!

This is the room that I was planning on using as my quilting room, but will now be a sitting room. At one point it held a piano and Eleanor taught piano lessons in it - later, she used it as a bedroom. We moved the chandalier in here out to the living room. There wasn't an overhead light out there so we had one wired up and this will match the dining room light. We also took out all the electric heaters as we had central air put in. At one point, probably in the 1950's, the house served as a model home for electric heat. Unfortunately, these old heaters were slowly going out - one section at a time. The heaters in these back bedrooms had apparently gone out and were then replaced by newer versions of baseboard electric. You can see the old electric ones in the pics from the living room (below).

Here's the living room. As dining room and living room were redone only about five years ago, mostly all we're doing here is painting and redoing the hardwood floors. In the pic of Dave doing the floors you can see a little of the dining room and the living room. What do you think of the color? You'd best be liking it because it's all over the main floor!


I don't have a good picture of the kitchen prior to it being painted the green color - but it, just like the living room and dining room, had been done about five years ago. In this pic you can see the back entryway - it (as well as the kitchen) was sort of a butter yellow color. We found original hardwood floor underneath two layers of linoleum and a layer of plywood so we tore it up last weekend and will get it sanded down sometime next week.


As you can see it was a family affair - the kids helped pull out more than 2,000 staples.


Sophie also helped do some more scraping in the pantry area - don't worry she only did it for about five minutes before calling it quits. Also - notice the mask and the safety eyewear!

Here's the pink bathroom. As we've spent A LOT of money on gutting and renovating the upstairs bath, this one will stay pink for awhile. Michelle came and helped me do some "wallpapering" of sorts - it's done with brown craft paper all crinkled up and then pasted to the wall - but I'm not really happy with it so we stopped. I've decided I'll finish the papering but then leave the staining and/or painting of it until Mom comes home from Arizona and can help me with colors.

There you go - that's it for the main floor of 817. I'll get pictures from the upstairs posted sometime next week.