This post will encompass both a few "loose ends" that we have recently tied up, along with some "Before" shots of the bathrooms we are planning to renovate soon.

I'll start with the nicest pics and move to the scariest! 

NICE PICS....

Here is the current state of several areas of the house, including the staircase, the dining room, the guest bedroom, and the nook.  First up is the staircase; the major change here is that the runner and carpet rods have been installed.  Funnily enough, the runner was professionally installed, while the rods were a DIY project.  Guess which one is more accurately done?  Yep.  The DIY project.  At any rate, we are really happy with the overall effect, and surprisingly the carpet runner also cuts down on noise if the dogs decide to go storming through the house.  The other new thing in the stair photos is the very large five-foot-long mirror, hanging in the hallway.  This is a gorgeous piece which we had been lusting over for a while at Pottery Barn.  One day we went into the store to check it out again, and much to our shock we saw that it was on sale for 50% off!   Needless to say, we snapped up not one, but two of them--the other is hanging in our master bedroom now, sorry no pics of that. 

Next up is the guest bedroom.  This room is looking really nice, especially since it's no longer violent smurfy blue.  What can I say, even we make color mistakes sometimes!  The new color is a much more appropriate "colonial blue", the name of which naturally escapes me at the moment.  The bed was another bargain, snapped up at an auction for a pittance.  Brian did a great job of reinforcing the creaky antique-ness of it without sacrificing any character, and once we get a mattress--which will have to be specially ordered, thanks antique bed!-it will be ready to host guests.  You might also notice the gorgeous wide plank floors in this room, which have been refinished by Brian in some strange alchemical procedure involving fireplace ash (no, seriously) and a lot of ruined pants and socks.  The end result is really, really great, though, which of course means that now I want him to strip the polyurethane from the hallway outside the room and do those floors the same way.  Hehe...nothing like making more work! 

Next in this series is the "nook" which is a small room tucked away at the top of our main staircase.  We're still in the decorating phase, but it's coming along nicely.  We're constantly searching for small paintings and other neat little old things to put on the walls, so in future posts hopefully we'll have pictures of what we have found to cover the walls of this little space.  In the meantime, it's a charming little spot to read a good book and enjoy the light from the south-facing window. 

The dining room--ahhh, the dining room.  If you have been following along with our progress over the years (OK that's a scary thought--it's been years, plural, that we have been working on this house!) then you will know that a red dining room has been the object of many of my dreams.  At last, it's nearly complete!  We have added shades for the chandelier, as well as long-awaited custom window treatments, and the piece de resistance, a handmade Federal style convex eagle mirror.  I highly recommend checking out The Federalist if you are in need of a hard to find or special piece for your home!  We were able to completely customize the size, color, trim, finish, etc. of our mirror and the demilune table (which has yet to arrive), and each piece is entirely handmade of the finest materials.  It's about the same price as purchasing a moderately good quality antique at an auction, also, so the value is not bad.  There is a long wait for your items, but to us it was worth the wait to have a piece that was perfectly matched to our requirements.

Here's a neat picture of a project that Brian did recently using old nails taken from our house.  We found these nails when we demolished (not entirely intentionally) an old fireplace in the dining room.  He was able to bend them carefully into shapes, so he spelled out the approximate date of our house with them, then mounted them onto an old piece of pine from a wine case, and mounted the whole thing into a shadow box.  This now hangs inside our back hallway, and we think it's pretty cool.

And on a funny note...

Now for the NOT SO NICE PICS...

As we mentioned in our previous post, we are about to embark on a roof-replacement project.  In preparation for that, we took a few photos of the attics.  Check this out:

We're also about to renovate the last two rooms in the house that actually qualify as "SCARY!  GROSS!" and other non-flattering adjectives.  Those would be the two upstairs full baths, one in the  hall, which we will call our guest bath, and the other in the future nursery (no news yet, but I will update when we have something to tell!).   The pink bathroom is the guest bath, and is in precisely the same state it was when we bought the house, with the exception of having been thoroughly scrubbed top to bottom about a million times.  It didn't help.

The blue bath is in a similar state of scariness.  This was actually the master bathroom when we bought the house.  Yeccch.  (By the way, Brian got creative with his photo captioning--enjoy!).   One funny thing about old houses is the various aspects of screwyness you encounter when attempting to renovate.  For instance, in this bathroom, there is black rubber (?) baseboard material bordering a good part of the room, however where the cabinet (AKA portal to Narnia) and the attic stairs are located, there's 2" wood molding as a baseboard.  The reason for this is apparently that there wasn't clearance for a full 4" rubber molding (darn!), so they just randomly stuck in 2" wood and called it a day.  In trying to figure out what we could add as baseboard in this room, we basically have come to the realization that plain white 2" cove base tile does not exist.  So, we'll probably opt for 2" wood baseboard all around in order to be consistent, and just paint & caulk the heck out of it, and hope for the best with regard to water infiltration.  We're only mildly concerned about this, since of course our own master bathroom has wood molding and wooden wainscoting all the way around, but if anyone out there has any suggestions as to where we might find a white 2" base cove tile, we'd be interested in hearing. 

In terms of what we are planning in these two bathrooms, the key word is "basic".  We're doing the shower enclosures in white subway tile, the floor in a satin-finish white mosaic-type tile, and the walls will be greenboard in a paint finish.  I'm sort of neutral to negative on fully tiled bathrooms, and wallpaper doesn't do much for me either, so paint is the natural choice.  We had briefly considered wainscoting, but the lines of the rooms are so broken up already that it just wouldn't really look right.  Paint it is.  We're also adding vanities instead of pedestal sinks, along with new tubs, new toilets, a new window in the pink bathroom (no, really, we think we need one), new flooring, new ceilings, new plumbing...and so on.  Gut renovation is our friend, in this house.

And in case you aren't now thoroughly mortified by the thought of people living in this house, this next set should help.  Many of our longtime readers will already be aware of the ongoing struggle we have had with our basement (root cellar?) flooding numerous times and causing all sorts of havoc.  The most common havoc is that our propane fired hot water heaters have gotten fried at least three times, which starts getting pretty expensive after a while.  We finally bit the bullet and installed what we hope will be a permanent solution:  an offset water heater which is fueled by our oil burner instead of our propane tank.  Wish us luck!

And that's all we have for now!  So, get away from the computer and go watch The Sopranos--that's where we're headed. 

That 1740 thing is very cool. I don't understand how you did it so you have to give me more details so I can rip off your idea for my house :)

Ok, call me crazy but I really like the first bathroom you posted aside from the wall tile. Especially the tub! Arch salvage places sell them for a nice chunk of change so if you are going to get rid of it, you can probably find someone to buy it from you.

Love the captions. Keep the updates coming. My reno is in a complete state of standstill so I need to live vicariously through you :)

Looking good!

You'll have to share more info on how you did that thing with the nails. I want to steal your idea ;)

I realize the wall tiles are not so appealing but I kind of like the rest of the features in the first bathroom you posted. Especially the tub. Before you throw it in the garbage, you might want to call some arch salvage places. They sell those old rounded tubs for a pretty penny.

An Amazing house! an AMAZING golden retriever! i'd recognize that pose anywhere.....while you call it, "the bill fainting pose (we just did a renovate too...twice over budget, over time, etc.), she's so happy with the results we call it "the happy girl pose"....:)