Ok - so here's the first pic I am adding to my blog. This was taken right before Christmas when we still had snow on the ground. I will have to find a "before" pic of the house. When we bought it (almost 12 years ago) there were no shutters at the second floor windows, the front door was painted white with a heavy white wrought iron storm door (no - it wasn't cool), the side lights on either side of the front door were spray painted white from the inside (yes - you read that right), the bushes were very overgrown and there was a plastic eagle in the peak of the porch roof (lovely). Oh, and the stone work above and below the windows was nearly all black. I tried everything to clean them, power washing, bleach, muratic acid - but finally my brother in law who works at a machine shop suggested trying part of a stone grinding wheel they use at the shop. Well - it worked fabulously. I would take a palm sized piece of the grinding stone and rub it across the stonework and it lightly sanded the dirt and grime away. It was like magic!

I'm sorry my pics aren't real clear - I like to take them without a flash since it gives more "mood" to the pic. This is our foyer just as you walk in the front door. We have a small vestibule with a door that leads into the foyer. To the left is the dinning room and to the right is the living room. Straight ahead is a doorway that used to be a closet under the stairway landing. I opened up both ends of the closet and replaced the solid door with a glass paned door (you can't see it in the pic) This gives us better flow thru the house now. If you enter this new hallway and go to the left you enter the kitchen and if you to the right you enter our breakfast room that is also located behind the living room. I installed the black and white flooring which is just vinyl. (some day we hope to replace it with marble) The stairway is painted black and white. It's an interesting story (I think) how that happened. After we moved in we had so much work to do that we decided to wait to carpet the stairs (that was the original plan anyway) So just to make it look more presentable I painted the stairs black and white. Well I didn't do alot of prep work since it was to be a temporary solution. After it was finished we decided we really liked it and THEN a year or two later I had to heat gun and strip ALL of it since there had been so many layers of paint on them. The end result was worth it. (I think) You can see the radiator in the pic - we originally had steam heat provided by a mamouth 60plus year old boiler. This summer we replaced it with a new boiler and converted over to hot water. So far out heating bills have been quite a but lower and the heat is more even.

So before you start thinking I have nothing left to do in my house - think again. This pic is of the 3rd floor bathroom. It has not been usable since we have lived here. When we moved in, at the advice of a plumber, we disconnected all of the fixtures since the toilet tank and bowl were cracked and there were no shut off valves on anything. There is a clawfoot tub but it's out in the hallway since, as you can see, there is no floor. I had to pull up the old floor because it sagged really bad and needed to be leveled and we also needed access to the plumbing. This is what it looks like today. There was plaster on the walls (well most of the walls) but it was not worth saving so we had a dumpster brought in next to the house and we gutted the entire floor. This allowed me to insulate since there was NO insulation at all. Besides this bathroom there is a bedroom and sitting room. It was probably a maid's quarters originally. If you look at the pic of the house from the outside, the bathroom is under the middle dormer with the two rooms on either side. Ok that's all I have time for tonight. I hope all of this uploads!