Renovation of an Old Victorian

Pointing old bricks is NOT something fun to do. It is tedious and boring. But the old mortar is crumbling and the whole garage will be crumbling and falling down if it doesn’t get new mortar soon. Got all the fancy trowels and a mortar bag thing that looks like a pastry bag, but every time I wind up smashing the mortar in with my fingers. Yuk – a mess that is going to take a loooong time.

As you can see by this outside “before” pic, we had our hands full when we bought this house. It was truly on its very last legs! The leaky roof was rapidly destroying this house, with several collapsed ceilings to be dealt with. Even the stairwell hallway had collapsed, due to plumbing leaks. Some of the stained glass windows had been stolen and plywooded over, and had to be replaced, although there were some beautiful etched glass transom windows that remained. It was scary when we first moved in – there were some squirells and – yuk – some bats living upstairs! (And we even thought we heard some ghosts for a while.) But we fell in love with the architecture and the features – like the built-ins, pocket doors, original chandeliers, and the basic structure itself. (We loved the turret) There are 2 fireplaces, and a front and back stairway. And the price was right (56K) They don’t make houses like this anymore! So we dug in and started tackling this huge project…

Painted Brick – Our old Victorian kitchen had a very ugly bricked over hearth that had been painted over with a shiny, peeling red paint. We couldn’t figure out what to do with it – get it blasted out or something. But we used Ralph Lauren paint (after pointing the brick) and then smoothed on a subtle contrasting paint over the grout lines with a rag, and came up with this result. It was actually quite easy, and inexpensive.