A Trip Back in Time

-

Interesting Finds

Probably the coolest thing about this house is so much history is either buried or hanging out in the open.  Before I launch into the adventure known as the dining room, I want to share this interesting find: 

I had looked around the attic before, but only when I was poking around did I spot this beauty! I intend to clean it out and restore it.  Figured it would serve well as extra clothing storage in my new bedroom.


Yeet the carpet!

Just like the kitchen, the dining room was jam-packed with old newspapers, most of which could not be preserved due to their condition.  However, I managed to preserve a few from the 1930s and '40s.  Let's take a trip!

This photo is a bit dark, but you can see how dull the carpet looked.  It probably looked beautiful and vibrant when first put in, but years of wear and tear got the better of it.

So, after I pulled up the foyer carpet - which, there wasn't much to see there other than gorgeous wood floors - my sister and I set to work in the dining room.

  Yes, we discovered more linoleum! They must have really loved linoleum back then!

If this layer of flooring was in better shape, I would have kept it.  The design was the prettiest out of the other ones we've seen, but again, time was not kind to it.

Unlike the foyer, the underlayment came up pretty obediently - what a relief!

I don't think dirt counts as underlayment... That got vacuumed up real quick!

Ye Old Newspapers

During the battle of the carpet, we discovered a lot of interesting tidbits from history.  As I said earlier, we could only preserve a few clippings as the rest were covered in grime.  

The journey back... 

Quite a few old comics were buried underneath, including my all-time favorite, Blondie!

Soldiers otherwise forgotten 

Now, this one piqued my curiosity - a horrible story of a 6-year-old abused by her parents.  This news story was about French Canadians who were busted for abusing their youngest child, in ways that I won't describe here.  The details were hard to read and process as I couldn't fathom how some parents just mistreat their offspring, and to such an extreme.  Unfortunately, the girl died after drinking coal oil.  


The Final Result

After the little history trip, my sister and I continued yanking up old flooring.  


Yuck, more dirt!


Finally! Wood floors perfectly preserved! 

Nothing felt more satisfying than discovering these amazing wood floors! There was a lot of shifting boxes around and moving stuff, but we got it done in 2.5 hours.  Teamwork makes the dream work! 


Making it feel like home
 
Slowly but surely, the house is starting to look and feel like home.  I honestly never expected to be doing this much work, but I'm loving every bit of it.  Taking old or broken things and fixing them up has always been a passion of mine - and everywhere I look in this house, I just think, "Yeah, that needs a nice personal touch...!"

And speaking of personal touches, the room we will explore next is the bathroom..


Oof...


Until next time!

~Gigi

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Rogue Kitchen (part 1)

-
Image
Plans, but... Today may not have gone as planned, but I couldn't have asked for better results! What do I mean? My original intent was to spend half the day pulling up kitchen carpet - yeah, there was carpet in the kitchen - and the rest of the day in my new bedroom fixing up.  But I spent all day in the kitchen ! Now, that's not as bad as it seems when you consider how the room looked upon our arrival:  Carpet underneath where you cook or bake? Hard pass.  It probably looked okay when it was first installed, but of course, wear and tear got the better of it. I can't tell you how much that dark green minimized the room.  Forget "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids" - it felt like, "Honey, the Carpet Shrunk the Kitchen!" All that was about to change.  No sooner had I finished breakfast and drunk at least half my coffee, I set to work tearing up the tripping hazard.  Some of it by the entrance was already loose and certainly would have tripped one of us, and another ...
Read more

From Miniscule to Grand

-
Image
Intro Allow me to introduce myself! My name is Gigi - I am a longtime musician, artist, and writer with a passion for country living.  I grew up in a small house - a VERY small house - in Northern NJ.  It had always been my mother's dream to raise me and my sisters on a homestead, with the ultimate goal of knowing how to grow our own food and live self-sufficiently.  Since the youngest moved out, that left me and the middle child still living at home.  Let's not forget the lousy economy leaving young people unable to afford solo living, much less basic necessities.  It was a struggle to make it in NJ due to the high cost of living.  But now, 29 years later, my parents bought a farmhouse built in 1911, sitting on approximately 26 acres of land! This was the only house out of all the ones visited that suited the needs of 4 family members.  Imagine, going from a 1,200 sq-ft home to now over 2,600 sq-ft of space! The first night here, we could barely navig...
Read more

A Tale of Two Bedrooms

-
Image
Kind of Overdue Happy Sunday!! This update is about a week overdue but better late than never! I'm going to kick off this post with one thing that just made me inexplicably happy: hanging up lights! Armed with a ladder, a gripper, and whichever unlucky family member that crossed my path, I managed to string this set of lights along the bottom of the railing.  And it just looks so homey! Now, onto the main topic! The '80s called... Pulling up carpet is an adventure... And you're about to see why... Underlayment yet again sticking to the floor! This wasn't just underlayment; it was the adhesive! Thankfully it all came up pretty easy with some scraping and my little rotating sander cut all of that and the varnish out. I'd say about a good 3/4 of that wood floor was unfinished, with worn varnish around the edges.  Yikes! Armed with my little device, as I didn't have the belt sander handy, I tackled the floor - which turns out to be red oak!  I finally got it done af...
Read more