Since moving into our 1918 craftsman house six years ago, it’s been lovingly referred to as The Brown House. My oldest daughter named it that when she was two and it stuck. My old blog before this was called the Brown House News.
Well, The Brown House is about to start undergoing some much needed renovations and repairs. And since we have a green LEED certified contractor who rocks and truly understands my neurotic desires to stay true to the historic correctness of our house – I’ve decided I should chronicle the happenings and choices made here while we go about the process.
We are starting with the garage, replacing rotting wood trim around the house, a new roof and paint. Demolition, of sorts, on the garage starts tomorrow!
One side of the garage is caving in from rot and wood decay. This is why I’m getting a new garage before a new kitchen. I’m still waiting patiently for that one. And according to the contractor’s drawings of the cabinets he is personally going to build (that use sustainably harvested woods free of chemicals, wood glues and formaldehyde compounds) to match the existing built-ins original to the house – I think it will be worth the wait!
The garage work beings tomorrows. Dumpsters, BIG dumpsters are in place. There are two of them because the existing roof on the garage is made of asbestos and we are are choosing to go the extra mile of making sure it gets disposed of properly by Waste Management opposed to being taking to the dump and seeping into the earth. We must some good Samaritan points for that on our carbon foot print!
The garage space is too small to hold a car of today’s standards, at least ours that holds our big family and our big car seats that go inside it. So the garage is being made into storage spaces for all our bikes, skates, scooters, outdoor play things and yard equipment. Right now there are no doors and we just pile it it all in for all to see, hopping nothing looks too appealing for the takers. Meanwhile the more appealing things have to be wheeled around to the basement every time someone wants to go for a nice bike ride. As a result, bike rides don’t happen all that often! So this is very exciting.
In the plans are carriage doors for the garage. After seeing this on Pintererst I got my heart set on oak.
This is what ours looks like now – not so pretty!
Today our ontractor brought over drawings of doors he is going to make for the space. And, he’s such a nice guy, it just so happens he has some local oak wood he harvested himself from nearby Lenior City that has been drying at his outdoor drying rack at his workshop. And, it’s ready to use. And, he’s going to build them for the same price as a lower grade of wood that would have been painted.
So YEAH, we are going to have locally harvested, locally hand built carriage doors very much like my dream picture.
I think this renovation business is going to be really, really fun.
Thanks for publishing, I truly adore your work, keep
it up.