by bungalow101 | Dec 6, 2022 | Random Musings
Long ago, when feebly attempting to restore a Folk Victorian, I discovered that the biggest challenge of restoring an old house is battle fatigue. It’s extremely easy to get disheartened. I know I’m not your mother (Disclaimer: I think I’m everybody’s mother.) but I restored this miserable Folk Victorian & learned some great lessons. I had to, in order to survive! I also had to keep going so that I would lose only $50,000 instead of $250,000.
I started the restoration with a more experienced partner who thought it would be a great project & when it turned out not to be, of course bailed on me. And, not surprisingly, my contractor was a complete bozo who bailed on me too-a blessing in the end.
To make things even more crazy, soon after I purchased the property, the Recession hit hard so my wood flooring company lost over $30,000 that quarter as we feverishly slaved12 hours a day to keep jobs coming in & our guys’ families fed. And every dollar I put into the restoration, working on it in my non-existent spare time, turned into 50 cents. Kind of like black magic. The really awful kind of magic that turns fluffy little kittens into poisonous bufo toads before your very eyes.
WHY DID I TAKE ON THIS CHALLENGING OLD HOUSE RESTORATION?
The wonderful neighborhood in which the house was located, Tampa Heights has a rich & colorful history as Tampa’s first suburb & boasts a large historic district. Most of the houses are lovely Victorians, bungalows, some Med-Rev’s with a smattering of Urban Renewal (Boo! Hiss!) infill. After decades of neglect & resultant blight, it has an active neighborhood association & I was eager to contribute to its revitalization. Additionally, I’d also never put my hands on a Victorian & was looking forward to dolling it up with periwinkle paint & gingerbread. However, the house was in bad shape & the challenge of restoring the old house was ridiculous. Yet, I continued on with the delusion that someday I would have a living room & a kitchen, looking out on the back yard, (which of course was nothing but a patch of tall weeds) like these folks had.
JUST HOW BAD WAS IT?
Here in Florida we joke that the only thing keeping an old house standing is the termites holding hands. Well, that was pretty much the story here. I ended up saving only a tiny amount of the original structure. Everything we touched just turned to dust. Pretty much every piece of lumber had to be replaced-walls, ceiling, floors, windows-everything.
STEPS TO BEAT THE AWESOME CHALLENGE OF RESTORING AN OLD HOUSE
So what did I do in order to keep my wits sufficiently intact to get through this awful mess?
0. After much weepin’ & awailin’, I reassessed the amount of time, money & attention that the project would actually take. This was a hard one because the original estimation of effort, etc., was about 1/5 of what the situation was.
1. I made a list of the tasks that needed to be done in sequence. Each step that looked scary, I broke down into bite size bits. If they still looked scary. I chopped them up more. This is the important part. The chopping.
2. I evaluated my resources, determining what I needed for each of my steps & wrote a plan for securing items/people/skills that I didn’t have. My contractor was a scumbag who showed up some days but not others & left the jobsite such a mess I got cited by the City & had to buy many materials twice. Hey! This is Florida! If the termites don’t get it, the moisture & the heat will. And Code Enforcement’s riding right behind!
There was still a ridiculous amount of work to do, including going backward because we had missed some framing inspections. Here in tropical storm country they take those hurricane clips seriously!
3. Once I was aware of what was in front of me, I focused on purpose. I have been a dedicated & vocal preservationist my whole life. My mother, born in 1919, taught me about the times in which she grew up & about her mother’s life on the farm. I loved those stories & when I grew up expressed this love by preserving the built environment where these lives were lived.
As a neighborhood activist for many years, I know the power of neighborhoods. I had been connected with the neighborhood association from pretty much the first moment I arrived in Tampa Bay. The first house on which I put in an offer was just around the corner. I knew & loved many folks in the area who had put blood, sweat, tears, time, $$$ & heart into revitalizing this terrific remnant of Old Tampa.
4. I took really good care of myself. My inclination when I get stressed is to head for the ice cream & potato chips. I chose veggies & protein instead & religiously took my supplements. I went on at least one walk every day & did my yoga stretches. This point is very important because if you fail to maintain your health, it becomes more difficult to perceive, to think, to make good choices & to maintain your jolly disposition.
The challenge of restoring an old house can make you old. Time & money, the main buzzkills in life are being stretched to the max. Whatever you thought it would cost, you’re going to 3X it. You’re going to sleep less, worry more & even with your PPE, you’re going to be in contact with some grisly stuff.
Yeah, I do think I’m your mama, so watch these videos on health & nutrition. I am so not kidding here.
5. Part of my staying healthy was making sure that I did not expose myself to construction debris. My first walk through of the house resulted in a sinus infection that lasted 8 weeks. I got myself a nice stock of N95 masks & made sure I wore one any time I went in after that. I learned this lesson doubly hard when one day, I stopped by, maskless & decided to just peek in. At that very moment, a wall came crashing down like nuclear blast of mold & plaster dust. And probably cockroach detritus. I was filthy from head to toe. I went home, totally grossed out by the clothes I had been wearing & jumped in the shower. A second 8 weeks of painful nose. I expanded my mask policy to include peeking in.
This is a group of videos about the importance of wearing the correct PPE. It applies any time you are on a jobsite. Whether or not you are performing the work, you are in a potentially unsafe environment.
I kept 1 through 5 going because without those I was doomed. It is too easy to become discouraged during an old house restoration & allow those things to slip. Too busy, just a few potato chips today- I’ll be better tomorrow. Nope! I held firm making sure my special treats gave me the nutrition I need to withstand the stress of running a project 37 levels about my knowledge base. I focused on one task at a time, completed it & moved on to the next. I love check marks & I accumulated them like a miser with his gold.
6. I celebrated every win & tossed the failures out the window. (I had quite a pile!) I stoked that purpose by cruising the internet for gingerbread choices & pictures of restored Folk Victorians to keep me looking forward. Finally, it was time to face the last challenge of restoring an old house- go outside in the Florida August heat, humidity & mosquitos to plant the garden. We’d wait until the sun went down when it was marginally cooler, put on our bug repellent (Mine was olive oil with crushed garlic which didn’t smell too great but made my skin quite lovely.) pick up our handyman, don our headlamps, & work on the dark gardens for an hour. Any longer was unbearable.
And then one day, it was complete & I received my certificate of occupancy & the newly restored house was added to the inventory of contributing structures in the historic district! A few months later, I was awarded a banner from our local preservation advocacy organization for my “outstanding historic preservation project.” My beautiful little periwinkle with plum doors, Folk Victorian!
TIP: Another good one to read before you plunk down your hard-earned cash is HAVING A SUCCESSFUL BUNGALOW RESTORATION, Part 1.
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by bungalow101 | May 11, 2022 | Random Musings
Into every life walks a handful of people who impact your life profoundly. Jane Powell, bungalow author, restorer & advocate, was one of them for me.
In the winter of 1998, I walked out of my 1966 MCM house in Pasadena where I had lived as a renter for 8 years & gasped to see a FOR SALE sign in the yard. My landlord, who was a darling fellow, had purchased the house shortly before the housing crash in1990, & after having it on the market for some time, decided to put it up for rent. We had moved from Arizona where housing prices were about 1/3 of what they were in L.A. & we decided that renting was our best choice. We were very happy there & eventually would have probably purchased it but for the fact that it was 3 stories hanging off a cliff and my knees were starting to object. And the earthquakes were pretty pretty wild suspended 100 feet up. But hey, my husband always assured me, our house was on bedrock!
Faced with having to move, I kinda panicked. I am not known for being easy to please. I am known for my ability to kick 100 houses to the curb & here we were with an unknown deadline. The L.A. market was heating up, the house was stunning, the area, amazing & I was trying to run a contracting business, set up a lender & find a house that I desperately wanted, totally uncertain as to how long I had before my bags were packed & on the street.
THE SEARCH FOR THE PERFECT HISTORIC HOUSE
I looked at my 100+ houses. At that time, you didn’t have the option of cruising through images online. Your Realtor printed a list of options for you & you drove & drove & drove. The main area in which I was looking, Eagle Rock was hilly & the streets very windy so it was challenging to find the houses, aided only by my trusty Thomas Guide. (Life is way easier now!)
Eagle Rock is a bungalow community in N.E. Los Angeles. Later I learned its history & its culture, but at that point, I was just looking for a house, a horrible undertaking given the amount of destroyed historic fabric I encountered. I mourned the loss of these features & every day I would come home & cry, & end up with a tummy ache. I realized that I was going to have to DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT, but at this point,I was clueless as to what this might be.
Then one day, I found my house-a 1910 Craftsman with long, matted, pink shag carpeting that reeked of eau de doggee. Looking up from the scary carpeting I gazed at sprayed popcorn ceilings & wondered at the lumpy stuff coating all the wood trim- wainscoting, plate rails, & box beams. (Yeah, someone had sprayed between the beams.) A heavily resin coated spool table sat squarely in front of one of the leaded glass bookshelves that flanked the fireplace. A television sat on the spool, clearly a place of honor as all the furniture pointed at it.
On the positive, I had walked in through the original door with its 1910 hardware & beveled lites. The living room was large with a nice, big picture window, looking out at a mature pine. The original gas lights were still there on the box beams, now fitted with electricity. x The leaded glass doors were still there beside the fireplace. All the interior doors were there with their lovely old hardware. All the original woodwork was there & I could imagine the wood floors under the gross carpet, waiting for me to come & rescue them.
In the dining room, little Dollar Store pigs modeled tiny straw hats bedecked with itty-bitty flowers, atop the Douglas Fir plate rail because, as the homeowner explained, she loved, “Country.”
There was a vinyl pop-out window behind the sink in the kitchen cheerfully adorned with more molded resin tchotchkes depicting life on the farm. The bathroom had blue plaid wallpaper, with pink flowers trailing through it.
The closet of the master bedroom had been turned into a half bath & a truly disgusting vanity with a sink sat outside the closet door, in the bedroom. Yeah, I yanked it out & replaced it with a antique washstand & ceramic washset, but I didn’t use them!
But, it had many original features that were beautiful & I could see past the pigs & spool to know that this was my house.
We put in our bid. On the street, on the hood of my Realtor’s car. Trembling, while trying to look casual. My husband hadn’t even seen the house & here I was, leaping alone into this huge decision. I didn’t care. It was meant to be my house.
BUNGALOW KITCHENS ON THE CHEAP, BY BUNGALOW AUTHOR, JANE POWELL
I was terrified. I had no idea what it would take to take this house back to 1910 & I was already 30% over budget. The kitchen was my greatest concern. I jokingly told my husband that I needed to find an article called, “Bungalow Kitchens on the Cheap.” I was on the edge of retracting the offer. I mean, I’d seen The Money Pit, & though I’d never owned an old house (or any house for that matter) I had lived in several & knew their tendencies.
That night we took a walk through downtown Pasadena & went into a bookshop. I poked around the magazine rack whilst Hubby browsed the Sci Fi. This magazine sat on the shelf with an article by Jane on creating old kitchens on a budget. Honest. This really happened.
The deal closed & we started rehabb’ing, pulling out the carpet, scraping the gooy stuff of the woodwork, & refinishing the floors. A month later, we moved in. I couldn’t live with the chemical smells so kept the house wide open during the day, but at night, closed it (It was late December, chilly even in Southern California) except for the windows above my bed. And I ran a fan. I slept in long underwaer & sweats & wore a knitted hat pulled down over my ears & almost to my eyes. Yeah, I was cold, but I didn’t care!
DOING SOMETHING ABOUT IT’
I had seen Realtor signs about the neighborhood & one day ran into said Realtor at Trader Joe’s. It was home tour time in nearby Pasadena & for some reason I asked when we’d be having our tour. She told me that the committee was meeting that night to start planning the first one. Honest. This was the answer to my question of what could I do about it?
I rolled up my sleeves & became a neighborhood activist. I learned how to speak for these buildings, telling their stories that I could hear clearly, but found that others needed to have the volume turned up.
PLEASED TO MEET YOU, BUNGALOW AUTHOR EXTRAORDINAIRE, JANE POWELL
After the first tour was pulled off beautifully, I invited Jane to come and speak at a town meeting. She had written Bungalow Kitchens & Bungalow Bathrooms which I adored. I was stunned when she agreed to come to our little town.
Jane was so much like me that it was scary. We both had red hair & drove P.T. Cruisers. Purple was our mutually favorite color & we loved kitties. We both fervently believed that there was a special place in H-E-double-chopsticks for people who destroyed historic buildings. We were a coupla loud broads on a mission.
I have always loved old things- houses, furniture, clothing. When I was 6, I had an elderly neighbor whose very elderly mother was bed-ridden. She was left alone all day so every day after school, I scooted over & listened to her tales of how the world was when she was young. It changed me. Growing up I owned a vintage clothing store, collected antiques and always lived in old houses.
But my passion was unkindled, my path undetermined, until I bought that magazine & met Jane Powell.
Jane passed in 2012. Her heart & her humor left an indelible imprint on many of us. She transformed my life giving me beauty, purpose & community.
These many years later, I am still made happy & content by old houses. Now retired, I have the time to indulge myself & my chocolate is still bungalows.
Thank you, Jane Powell, bungalow author, expert preservationist, delightful individual & darn good friend.
TIP: READ ABOUT JANE’S BOOKS HERE.
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by bungalow101 | Apr 20, 2022 | Random Musings
This post is an overview of my old house restoration videos, arranged like my site, INSIDE, OUTSIDE & ALL AROUND. Plus, there’s a special section of THE MASTERS, without whose creativity, genius & pioneering spirit, our bungalows would not exist. There’s also a wonderful section on LIFE & TIMES which will tell you about the culture & technology of the period.
In each section, playlists are grouped by subject. Each video has been thoughtfully chosen to provide the most information, best images & most charming presenters for the given topic.
I find that fully understanding the bungalow requires having knowledge of its history, both as to both design & philosophy, some education on how the various parts work, some familiarity with the culture of the period & lastly, why preserving these charming houses is so important.
The videos will provide you with all of the above, directly from the foremost experts in preservation & art. I hope that you love them as much as I do!
LET THE OLD HOUSE RESTORATION VIDEOS BEGIN!
ARCHITECTURAL SALVAGE
The best resource for the old houses, salvage outlets are educational & entertaining.
AMERICAN ART POTTERY
Our country’s first contribution to the world art scene.
ARTS & CRAFTS LIGHTING
Lighting tips & a visit with some master artisans.
BATCHELDER
A genius artist of Craftsman art tiles.
INTERIOR DETAILS
What to expect inside a bungalow.
BUNGALOW KITCHENS
An extensive playlist with some great information & wonderful images of kitchens.
I LOVE LINOLEUM
What is linoleum, how is it made & why is it so dang cool?
KNOB & TUBE
What is it? Is it dangerous to have this type of wiring in your home?
MOLDING
Brent Hull, preservation master, explains how to choose appropriate moldings for your bungalow.
OLD GROWTH WOOD
How is this gift from this gift from the ancient forest different from that which is harvested today?
OLD TOASTERS
Beautifully designed & sometimes dangerous, see toasters developed after electricity was tamed.
SAFETY FIRST
When your house is a jobsite, there are some things that you need to know to keep yourself & your family safe.
WOOD FLOORING FOR YOUR BUNGALOW
Basic information on installation, patching, sanding & finishing.
BENJAMIN MOORE
Some great tips from my favorite paint manufacturers.
BUNGALOW DEFINING FEATURES
What the heck is a bungalow, anyway?
CHIMNEYS
A key character defining feature. Learn about how they are built & the problems they can have.
EXTERIOR SIDING
Learn how to deal with problems in 100 year old wood.
FOUNDATIONS
You can learn about them without getting dirty.
HISTORIC KIT HOUSES
Was your house built from a kit????
SCREEN DOORS
Gently letting the outdoors in.
WOOD WINDOWS
What’s all the fuss about?
BUNGALOW NEIGHBORHOODS
The high quality of life in an on old neighborhood.
ERIC LAVELLE’S MACHINES
This master preservation craftsman shows us the antique equipment he recues, restores & uses in his daily work.
HISTORIC HOUSE MUSEUMS IN THE U.S.
These museums allow you to step back into the daily life of times past. It’s the best way to learn about our culture.
HOME INSPECTIONS
Learn how to get the most from your inspection.
RESEARCHING THE HISTORY OF YOUR BUNGALOW
Videos to supplement the article on what to do & how to do it.
STAYING HEALTHY
The experts weigh-in on how you can help proof your body against the stresses & strains of historic restoration.
THE ARTS & CRAFTS MOVEMENT
Information & images that will show you how the Movement influenced the design of your bungalow.
WHY PRESERVE?
The experts explain the cultural, social & economic benefits of historic preservation. This is my favorite playlist.
TIP: If you want to know how you can benefit by becoming an educated bungalow owner or admirer, read my article HERE!
GREENE & GREENE
The brothers who brought the Arts & Crafts Movement to the West.
MACKINTOSH
Charles Rennie Mackintosh & the Glasgow style.
WILLIAM MORRIS
The father of the Arts & Crafts Movement.
CHARLES ROHLFS
A designer whose beautiful works were perplexing because they could not be categorized.
STICKLEY
The man, the designer, the entrepreneur.
FLW
A close look at Frank Lloyd Wright, the country’s most famous architect.
100 YEARS AGO
World events during the early 1900’s
FASHION & BEAUTY
How cultural changes impacted the world of fashion.
THE BEGINNING OF ADVERTISING
A consumer culture is born.
WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE
The determined fight to be granted the right to vote.
ART & CULTURE
The music, the cinema, the leisure time of the early 20th Century.
I hope that you have found these old house restoration videos to be as fascinating as I do. I perform a great deal of research & often surprising information pops up in these films that broaden my discoveries. And watching them is so enjoyable!
For more info on my favorite subject, the bungalow, go to my site map & enjoy the drive!
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