I got tired of looking at the hole in the closet ceiling. The next reno/restoration project is the entry hall on the main floor. The winter blahs also played a role, as there’s a good sized, south-facing window in this area that gets fabulous morning sun. This lead to wanting to arrange the furniture to make a sitting area, which lead to building shelves in the closet to put the shoes away, which ended in the decision to replace the floor and trim.
Actually, that was the beginning.
The hole in the closet was cut to determine the structural nature of the house. Near as I can figure, the house started out (in 1927) a bunglow with a walk up to the attic – a cosy space with dormers. A second floor was added (best guess 1990’s) providing the current 3 bedrooms and bath, essentially extending the attic up to full room height.
When I first walked into this house, I knew there should be an entrance to the living room from the main entryway. And thus began the quest to identify whether the wall, that should have a doorway, is a structural, load-bearing one. Looking at the floor structure in the basement suggested not, but common sense, from looking at too many home DIY projects, agreed to disagree.
Common sense striped the drywall in the closet wall and ceiling in the hall, and yes, the 2nd floor structure rests on a beam that runs above the wall, i.e. it’s load bearing. (Photo looks up from the entry hall.) Two rounds of trying to find a contractor interested in reconfiguring this wall1 to add a door have amounted to a lot of ghosting, i.e. no work. It’s a high stakes project (do it wrong and the house has structural issues), but a small job (not like a complete reno of a kitchen, bathroom or basement).
I gave up. Time to put the wall and ceiling back together, redo the trim to match the rest of the house, replace the vinyl floor and move on. Literally, I’m getting the itch to find a new house. By which I mean a house that’s 135 years old. Probably a Queen Anne. Need turits.
To begin, shelves were built in the closets to clear the shoes from the hall. Shoe racks slant downwards towards the front, so the shoe heel hooks over the back rail. I failed to find an explanation why this is the tradition, but since all the lumber required was in the basement as scraps, it worked. Also found paint (dark floor enamel) that sealed the shelves well enough.
That got the shoes put away. Then I pulled everything back out of the closets so they could be repaired and painted.
Now to the rest of the hall. Working top down, the ceiling is first. It had some cobbled together crown moulding, perhaps made of door casing topped with some quarter-round in some places. As an adventurous DIYer, I shouldn’t criticize engineering the trim, but the quality of the work was improvable. There were huge wades of filler (putty-like) in every joint. Below are illustrations of what I call ‘DI-don’t ‘s’:
Two different baseboard styles on either side of the door.
Over time, caulking discolours, or changes colour at a different rate than paint, so what started as the solution to make joints look perfect, looks like water stains on the ceiling, or dirt on the baseboards.
As the picture rail worked so well in the adjacent bathroom, I decided the hall could use the same treatment to broaden it and reflect a more likely trim of a 1920’s Arts&Craft bungalow. Not much to report on removing the old crown moulding. It came off with minimal damage to the wall and ceiling surface – just a little bit of filling required to restore bits pulled off with the caulking that ran between the trim and drywall. Painted up fine with a coat of oil-based stainblocking sealer, then latex ceiling paint. Did the one coat, pause, apply a bit more paint after half an hour approach, rather than waiting to add a full second coat a bit later.
Next step is the walls. In preparation, all the old trim was removed: door casings and baseboards. Mostly this required finese, treating each attachment point to the wall differently. The trim was installed with anything from caulking to the wall, to 2 1/2″ spiral finishing nails hammered through metal drywall channel and then into 100 year old 2×4’s at 12″ intervals (geerr). Minor repairs to the drywall were needed where the surface was damaged – in some spots it looks like a hammer used to pull off previous trim only succeeded in crushing the drywall.
The most interesting bit was one side of the door frame to the diningroom. I wondered why the casing overhung the jam. Removing the casing, I found the answer – the drywall stuck out 1/4 to 1/2″ from the door frame. Why, I can’t imagine.
To remedy, I cut back the drywall with a combo of multi-tool, Japanese saw and utility knife, then made a proper drywall corner between the wall and the frame. It was very dusty and ideally the frame butts the wall covering, but this way the doorway is a little wider, and everything is flush that should be.
Prime patches. Paint. Move on.
To the floor, Part 2.
1 Adding enough framing in the basement and first floor to support the second floor above the door opening.