The bath was under restoration. Meanwhile the monstrosity of a fireplace had sat uncovered for 6 months.

“Paint it white,” my dad said. “Put curtains around it,” (Like the elephant man?)
We just smiled and said, “We’ll just wait.”

A lot of the houses with redone fireplaces end up with tile. We knew we wanted to try to remain true to the house but had little clue what was there. The brick pointed to brick, but the hearth to tile.

And what mantle to install. We spoke with contractors and carpenters and finally settled upon a brick mason named John Marsh.

The inside of the chimney was relined.

We picked out a pallate of recycled brick and John went to work, using scars on the wall as a guide.

Frisbee poses wiith new fireplace.

We hired a local woodworker to build a mantle and provided the doug fir.

I love the detail of the standing brick.

The plastered fireplace. We have since replaced the mantle. But you will have to read on to see the new one.

In the first month in our new house (March 2002) we added heat and quickly painted a bedroom.

Life might have continued on with me painting everything white had I not gone to a fantastic home tour in our neighborhood We quickly bought every book we could find on bungalows and took our first visit to the Gamble House.

Ahhh….. So Beautiful!!!… (and the girl’s cute too).

That summer we taught summer school (booooo!) and we plastered and painted one more room. Plus we had our fir floors stripped of many layers of paint by some guys who rolled out of the back of a van, Cheech and Chong style.

Kris prepares the room for painting.

Fin

I also decided to cedar-line a closet and build an organizer using my first real tool (Dewalt 14.4 v Drill)

Crazed look in eyes = woodworking bug takes over brain.

The Horror
Our home inspector warned us not to use the fireplace due to the illegal drywall box surrounding it.

The Spring of 2003 I decided to remove the mysterious box..

What the?

Come Closer Clarice…

Closer still.

Someone had done something unspeakable to our fireplace. So that explains the 200 or so bricks I found burried in the back yard.

In the Can (Is that crass?)
Meanwhile in the bathroom, the 70’s rocked on. Spanish tile and a huge “oak” cabinet.. plus gold framed mirror and round “makeup staition / yacht lights”.

Here is the bathroom after I got the bright idea of painting the oak cabinet white, the walls red, and switching out the light fixtures while Kristin was out of town. (Too much HGTV).

One of the saving graces of the house was the original clawfoot tub. Unfortunately it was so disgustingly dirty that I can only warn you …

_Look away! (That was a clean day.)