Magnolia House

The Secret Door Project

So, before we ever owned the Magnolia house, I was trying to figure out how to get stuff upstairs. I concocted a plan to make the sun porch ceiling removable and add a six foot attic door in the upstairs bedroom so we could send stuff up and over.

And it worked. Two beds, a couch,  and a claw foot tub would never have made it up here. And then there was all the dry wall...

This room is our coffee and TV room, and we've been staring at the six foot wide hole into our attic for months. This weekend was close up the hole weekend. The tricky part is anything that goes into the hole has to be able to come back out so we can get big stuff in and out of the upstairs.

So, we decided on a cubby hole and door. Our file cabinet will fit nicely in the cubby, and some sculpture will go on the shelf. We were going to make it a secret door, so it looked like a part of the wall that opens, but after enough messing around with designs, we changed our mind and embraced the door and cubby for what they are.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The cubby hole screws into place in two pieces, and the right side of the door jam is removable, so with a little effort, we can open the hole back up for those occasional big things that need to be moved one way or the other.

We finished out the trim in the room as well. I'll post a picture of the finished product next time.

Running out of steam, but getting closer...

Cynthia is off to Portland to prepare for our daughter's wedding. 

We made it pretty far before this weekend, which was our deadline.  We are some wainscot and paint away from assembling the upstairs bathroom.

Downstairs we have a tile shower and wainscot to do as well.

We have our living room and dining room set up downstairs, and all the rooms upstairs set up.  They have paint, but need trim work.  We're getting close to the completion of phase 1!  Whew!  The kids move in next week, ready or not!

Three days closer...

Here's a chunk of the drain plumbing from our house.  100 years of plugging going on. 

Pretty much all the electrical and plumbing are now replaced!  We worked away through the three day weekend and made some great progress.

We reconnected the kitchen sink, and rebuilt the laundry room wall with new tongue and groove boards to cover up the demo'd wall that gave way to new utility sink and washing machine plumbing.

Today, Cynthia set up our bedroom upstairs.  We have just one room all cleaned up.  The others are still works in progress.

Oh, we connected the bath tub downstairs too, so we both took hot baths in a bathroom under construction.  A hot bath is a hot bath, whether you're staring at tile or studs.

The upstairs drywall is also almost done, but dust is still flying everywhere.  Our bedroom will be our "clean room" and get sealed off during the day.

How did I miss this one?

I ran across this picture in my camera. 

Cynthia told me early on, "This may sound silly, but I want to demo the chimney.   Save it for me."

And I did.

Look how happy she is.

 

And the walls come tumbling down

Saturday, Cynthia and I stripped the upstairs of the fiberboard paneling and ceiling tiles. 

The trim work was the toughest.  The finish work was basic, but excellent.  Every joint was beautiful.  I hated pulling if off, but it was necessary...

Wall board and ceiling tiles flew out the upstairs window to the ground below and then we gathered up the debris and hauled it to the dumpster.

We had people thinking our dumpster was a public works project and neighbors starting throwing their trash in it.  At one point I heard Cynthia hollering out the upstairs window at some one trying to throw an entire queen-size mattress, box spring, and frame in there.  She caught them in time.

The dumpster's nearly full now.  The yard debris pile still towers in the side yard, and my neighbor, Juan, is taking the scrap metal.  The electrical bid came in last night at $21.5k, about twice what I was hoping for and over a third of our overall budget.  We'll do some more work on that.

We're thinking through contingency plans for when our kids arrive in town in June.  We may not be quite done!  If we have one bathroom for a while, I guess that will work...  We're still shooting for the whole tamale.

"No hay dumping.  El uso privado sólo."

 

 

 

 

 

Another piece of history to the right...