Here is a great site with links to some amazing homes and restoration stories.

http://www.oldhouses.com/old-house-restoration-stories.htm

Here is a couple of pictures to show what we have done to bring the beauty back to our stairs. We plan to add old with new for the finished result. The hand rail is all sanded at this point and is white oak. It will be stained very light in colour or perhaps left natural. Under the lip of each tread we will be installing 2 LED's, one per side. They will be hooked up to a pentometer. This will allow them to be dimmed. Instead of wood balusters we have procured wrought iron ones that are finished in copper. Upon test fitting some they have proved to be just stunning. One real advantage to this whole process has been the freedom of creativity. We get to do what we want for the effect we want. It is just great!!

Here is a before and after for our livingroom. These pictures are a little older now and right now much of our upstairs furniture and possesions are over running this and other spaces in the house. We are trying to salvage as much of the original trim as is possible. Those magnificent baseboards are in fact 13.5 " high. They are pine. As a matter of fact the whole house is or was trimmed in pine. The only other wood in the house is the Banister and knewl post which is white oak. currently they are being sanded and repaired. The carpet that was in the living room was brand new and most of the paint was too. Sadly it didn't last too long. Another of the elements we have added is the lovley maple hardwood. We positively love the way it looks.

Here is a comparison of the original bathroom and our current work in progress. The new bathroom will have a low 4.6lpf toilet as well as a pedastel sink. It also has a custom made marble shower. This has turned out very nicely. However anything has to be an improvement over the shower we were using in our basement. At a ceiling height of about 6' in most places one can imagine the bending required to get under the shower head. The new shower has a very organic and earthy feel. Something we are trying to maintain in the house with the use of stone and wood and earth toned colours.

THE CHANGES MADE

We'll start with the Kitchen and how we have made this project happen so far. We bought the house and held our apartment with a month of overlap. This proved to be a godsend. Granted this month was December. Of course it has Christmas and Newyears in it to complicate ones efforts at renovations. Living off site is well worth the extra money and had we known how much easier it would make doing reno's we may have opted to do it for 2 months and done the upstairs at the same time. Our goal was to rid the home of all the ugly colours (exhibit A see left) and make things more pleasing to live with. During December we gutted the whole main floor rebuilt it from exterior walls all the way back in. When people say they don't build them like they used to is an expression we now better understand. The amount of wood in this home could easily build 3 more by todays standards. So now with fresh wire, insulation, and new plumbing we basically have a new old home. All the charm on the outside remains while the inside has been freshened up. For the kitchen we opted to remove the tired old laminate floor to make way for the lovely black granite tiles. The old cabinetry was ditched in favour of some IKEA's cabinets. The counter top too is Granite that was installed from a local suplier. For what it is worth we will never use this person again. It was a horrible install that still remains uncomplete to this point some 7 months or so later. We bought new appliances as the house was sold without them. We opted for a gas stove which we just love and a new Samsung fridge bottom load freezer equiped with pull out drawers. As a result of all this we have a kitchen perfect for the 2 of us to cook in. Feels well laid out and brings a smile to our faces when we walk into it. It can also be noted from the picture the window frames which we made. They were modeled from the exsisting frames in the living room. The old original ones for the windows on the right hand side of the house were long since removed and replaced with a very basic style that did not suit. This is another feature of our home that we are most enamored with.

guitar lesson

ONTARIO GOTHIC CIRCA 1887

This is our home. We bought it in December of 2005 and are in the midst of repairing 119 years worth of mistakes. We are proud of our work to date and have plenty more to do. As a result of our endevour we have learned a great deal and grown alot from the experience too.

About the house. It was originally built according to our research in 1887. This is the second dwelling built on our this particular lot of land. It is a "carpenter Gothic" or more commonly known here in Ontario Canada as a "Ontario Gothic". It is a frame house of almost 1100 sq above grade. Very basic for its time it would have been a working mans home. It started its life as a 4 bedroom home. No indoor plumbing and a summer kitchen off of the back. From what we have gathered a bathroom was added in the early 40's if not before. They took over the smallest bedroom for this. Our clawfoot tub which was removed and will likley be restored and put to use in our basement bathroom is dated from February 22nd 1943. This is inline with the sheetrock that was patented from 1942-43. In and around late 1962 there was a renovation that changed entry ways to the remaining bedrooms and apeared to remove a wall between 2 of the rooms to make one large bedroom. This left the home as a 2 bedroom house. This second bedroom was a decent size of roughly 9'x17'. At some point in the late 1980's the basement was partially finished and allowed for the home to again have a 3rd all be it virtually windowless bedroom. At this time the house was divided in a fashion that we are still not entirely clear on into a duplex. It remained this way from our understanding for some 15 years. The summer kitchen is long since gone. Likely in the early part of last century as the wood the boarded up the exterior wall with was very wide planked. some peices as much as 15" .