Nearly 15 months to the day following the first email to our friends at
Thoughtful Development - and 140 years after the original house was built - we moved into Larner-Jones House.
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| Perhaps Tan? |
It was a little bit uneventful given how much remains to be done, but a milestone nonetheless. We have talked to many people who have spent more than 15 months just looking for the right property in the Falls Church market, so with perspective we can say that we have moved quickly. That doesn't keep passersby from still wondering what is going on, or occasional visitors to consider carefully (from the outside) whether or not they should enter.
Still, things are coming along. The siding has gone up on 3 of the 4 sides of the new addition, and exterior painting has begun. When it came out of the box the siding was a tan color, which prompted a neighborhood debate (or so we hear) on whether or not we were going to change the color of the house from its distinctive deep red. While test painting a few interesting patches of purple or yellow might have been entertaining, we have been planning to keep the house the same color since we bought it. As can be seen from the picture above, the screen and back porches have been added, although finish work remains on both.
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| Cabinets Installed |
The kitchen is mostly completed, with the cabinets going in this week. As with any kitchen install, there were inevitable problems with the cabinets. The drawer fronts were incorrect (although correctly ordered), and at least one cabinet needs to be re-ordered at a different configuration. The quarter sawn oak flooring in the kitchen and family rooms is in and finished, and looks great. Of course, that is a neat trick to pull off given the juxtaposition of our kitchen flooring to 1850s antique heart pine in the old house, which is simply fantastic following a sanding and merely a clear finish on top.
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| New House Bathroom |
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| Old House Bathroom |
We also have fully functioning bathrooms, with the girls' baths being first to have been completed. Both are nice and unique, and the girls wasted no time moving in to them. Coupled with eye-catching paper blinds on loan to us by the window treatment store, the bathrooms are in service without getting that fishbowl feeling. In the bathroom that was converted from a small bedroom in the old house (at right), you still get a feel for old house construction. The ceiling lines look like they were put in place by a Friday night carpenter, and if one gets the sense he or she is walking downhill from one side of the room to the other, it is not imagination. New beams can do only so much.
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| Stuck! |
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| Cool Newel |
An interesting side effect of living in a house under renovation is the ups and downs of the myriad challenges that pop up during the work. One of the more entertaining episodes was watching the finish guys wrestle with a 1-piece, 8-foot-long vanity for the master bath that simply was not going to go through the portals into said master bath (at left). After taking out an already-finished doorway including the drywall and framing above it, victory was achieved. On the other hand, watching the stair guys work their magic to make a modern handrail merge into an antique newel post was quite impressive.
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| Old House Bedroom |
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| New House Bedroom |
The upstairs is virtually complete, and the bedrooms have turned out very nicely. Each is different, from the bedroom in the old house with its original flooring and windows (at left) to the fantastically coordinated bedroom in the new part of the house (at right). With the completion of the kitchen (for the most part), the bedrooms, bathrooms and laundry room, we have the ability to do most things required for modern civilization. A big next step will be countertops in the kitchen and master bathroom, so that plumbing can be hooked up, we can clean dishes, and we can stop borrowing sinks in our girls' bathrooms. Which everyone will appreciate.
There is still quite a bit to do, and hopefully we can make rapid progress on the finish work that remains. For example, the basement is far from done, and each football weekend that passes without a functioning media room is mourned appropriately. Every visitor's favorite question is "when do you expect to be done?", to which we merely smile and remember when we thought it was that simple.
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Now if we could just get rid of that tarp...
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