Rejuvenation Projects Blog

After the builders compled this home, Rejuvenation asked if they could shoot some film footage in the house for use in a video. That video was recently posted on the Rejuvenation site. You can watch it here. See if you can spot the cameo appearances of The Loveleigh House.

This is one of the most satisfying entries to write. This is where I get to report that the project is complete. The finishes are in, the house is all cleaned up, and the staging furniture is in. We have already held one open house to let people through to take a look, and the feedback was very positive. We will continue to have the house open for viewing every Sunday afternoon until it’s sold. More pictures and information about the house and the times it is available for viewing are are available here. Here are a few pictures to show off the finished product:

Exterior

Living Room

Kitchen

Family Room

Clawfoot Tub on Hextile Floor (Master Bath)

Sorry you haven’t heard from me for a while. It’s been a busy time. The house has been slowly progressing toward completion. We are just dressing things up a bit. One of the things I’m most excited about is that the sanding and finishing on the floors is getting done. It’s turning out wonderfully. Believe it or not, this used to be the gym floor at a school in Hilsboro. Now it’s a beautiful floor in a home in NE Portland:

Reclaimed & Refinished Floors

Reclaimed & Refinished Floors2

We also have the tilework done for the kitchen backsplash:

Backsplash Over Stove

Plumbing fixtures are all in, including the awesome clawfoot tub in the master bathroom:

Sweet Clawfoot Tub on Hextile Floor

Paired Sinks In Master Bath

And, last but not least, the carpet is in:

Carpet In Upstairs Bedroom

As you can see, it is nearly done. We have a few touch ups to do, and then we’ll be putting the furniture in. The whole look and feel of the house is coming together nicely. I think we are succeeding in adding lots of touches to the house that make it seem as though it is old, but in fact it is new. More information is available on the builder’s web site.

We’ve finally hit that point that Rejuvenation has been waiting anxiously for. We have installed those schnazzy light fixtures. With every bit of detailing that goes into the house, the sense of elegance and historical character increases. The installation of these light fixtures just brought the aesthetic appeal of this house to a new level. I’d love to say more about it, but I’ll let the pictures constitute the thousand words:

Standing in the Entry

Living Room

Dining Room

Kitchen

Master Bath

See more pictures and project info at the builder’s web site.

One other thing that I was excited about this week was that I could finally get a better look at the wood front porch. The story on this wood is that it was salvaged from the demolition of a garage that was previously on the lot. The wood has been sanded out and laid back down as decking for the front porch. It looks way better than I thought it would:

Front porch w/ salvaged wood

On another note, I just have to complain for a second about city inspectors. We recently set up forms to pour the concrete walkway and driveway. These forms have to be inspected before concrete can be poured. We called for an inspector, who showed up and told us that the forms did not have enough slope built into them to move the water away from the house. So, we failed the inspection. We adjusted the forms to have more slope, and then called for a reinspection. The same inspector came out and told us we had too much slope. So, we adjusted the forms again, and called for another inspection. This time, the inspector showed up, got right of his car and went straight into the porta potty on site. After finishing his business, he signed off and told us that it looked fine. The crazy thing was that he didn’t get anywhere near the forms to actually look at them. For all he knew, we didn’t make any changes at all to the forms since his previous visit. It’s hard not to interpret this whole thing as one inspector’s idea of an ego trip. Meanwhile, progress on my house is at a complete stand still. It’s so frustrating. How can the city afford to do ridiculous stuff like this when they just laid off a huge portion of their staff because of budget problems? It’s one of those things that makes me want to rip my hair out in frustration over the obvious insanity of it all. Furthermore, there is no recourse when this stuff happens. Inspectors can be ego-tripping jerks whenever they want and suffer no harm for it. Meanwhile, homeowners and builders lose hundreds of dollars a day in expenses for that stuff. How is that okay? Alright, I have vented now. Let’s get back to the more encouraging side of things.

Diogenes (a Greek philosopher) once said, “Blushing is the color of virtue.” As I work on building a house, I pause to visualize the metaphor of a house “blushing.” How might this house wear its virtue as a color? Unfortunately, I am artistically challenged and lack the vision for an answer to such a question. So, I called on the services of a professional designer (Joanna Ontiveros of Linen & Thyme Staging). True to form, I think she hit the nail on the head. She made it possible for this house to “blush” so to speak, and to go from the bland and monotonous look of primer to the glowing and attractive look of a house that is displaying its virtue. As you can see in the pictures below, its virtue is in its historical detailing and its confident presence in the neighborhood:

Exterior w/ Paint

Living Room w/ Pocket Doors to Dining

Family Room

Master Bedroom

Master Bath

It seems that the trend in colors these days is to go after any and every shade of taupe imaginable in the endless pursuit of neutrality and appeal to the widest possible audience. Personally, I get tired of taupe pretty quickly, so I am very pleased to have a masterful selection of colors in the house that are calming and inviting while also not being taupe. All I have to say is thank goodness for interior designers.

Vist the project web page to see more pictures and project info.

The floors planks for the hardwood floors are reclaimed wood from a gym floor that was in a high school in Hilsboro. The floors look a little funny in the place at this time, because they still have all of the gymnasium markings on them. When I walk through the house, I feel as though I should be dribbling a basketball in the house and looking for a hoop to shoot it into. Of course those free throw lines will come off when the floors are sanded. After sanding and finishing, the floors will look like beautiful finished maple.

Reclaimed Maple Floors (dining room)

Reclaimed Maple Floors (Entry)

Reclaimed Maple Floors (Living Room)

I know that bamboo flooring is in vogue these days, but I much prefer reclaimed wood floors. Bamboo still necessitates that it be grown and harvested and processed somewhere and then shipped here. By contrast, using reclaimed wood puts no additional demand on the market for harvesting new resources (bamboo or trees or anything else). It is also readily available locally so there is minimal transport required for it. So, all things considered, I think it is far more sustainable to reuse existing wood, as opposed to growing, harvesting, processing, and shipping new wood for a project like this. In addition to that, reclaimed wood has a story that comes with it. It has been somewhere before, and the story of where it has come from is usually quite interesting. Also, I just really like the way older wood looks.

While all of this progress has been happening on the inside, there has also been some more detail work done to the outside. The front columns are wrapped and detailed. All that remains is the railings. The porch decking has also been laid down, and it looks phenomenal. Unfortunately, I don’t have a good picture of it right now, because it is covered to protect it from the elements until it gets a treatment. The reason it looks so amazing is because it is also reclaimed wood. Specifically, it is wood that was salvaged from the garage that used to stand on the lot when we bought it. Rather than just tear the garage down and scrap it, we decided to keep as much wood out of it as possible for reuse in the house, and the decking was a perfect application for this. The planks are fairly wide and have a rich grain to them, as only old wood can. I’ll be sure to get a photo of that as soon as I can. In the meantime, I suggest checking in to the builder’s web site for more updated pictures: http://www.bridgecityinc.com/

Front

Front Porch Details

The finishing process is coming along nicely. On the exterior, we now have all of the siding done, including some of the detailing work. I am very pleased with how it’s coming together. Each step we take seems to make the house look more and more historic.

Exterior (front)

The interior is getting its detail work as well. One of the details that I’m most excited about is the crown molding, along with the pictureframe molding just below it. I’ve always enjoyed this was wonderful feature of historic homes. I also appreciate the utility value of the picture molding, because it actually allows you to hang pictures without putting nails in the wall. That’s a great idea, in my opinion.

Family room w/ a view of the crown & picture moldings

Another element that helps this house to start to feel more like a home is the presence of cabinets. The boxes are hung, and looking good. It’s much easier to envision how the space will feel now.

Kitchen w/ cabinets

The finishes that are scheduled over the next several days will change the look of the house considerably. We have paint colors selected, and will begin painting the exterior as weather allows. Also, floors will be installed by the end of the week. I am particularly excited to see how the floors change the look, because we will be using reclaimed wood that was previously part of a gym floor. It still has the free throw lines on it. Of course, the lines will be sanded out before the finish, but it’s still pretty fun to look at. I’m sure I’ll post again once the floors are in.

More details and pictures are available on the builder’s web site.

We are starting the finishes. This is the part where we get to dress the house up and make it look pretty. At the present moment, we have most of the exterior siding done, most of the interior trim done, and some of the tile work as well. Though it is only an early preview at this point, it is possible to get a sense for the efforts we are making to incorporate a lot of historical details in a new home. It is not easy to make a new house look old, but with some thought and planning given to the design aspects early in the construction, we are able to plan for quite a number of features that will give the house a sense of craftsmanship that is typical of many historic homes that you might see in the Irvington or Alameda neighborhoods. I am thinking of features such as large beam corbles in the overhangs of the eaves, hextile in the bathrooms, crown and parting bead trim, and Rejuvenation light fixtures of course. The sum total of details such as these (and many others besides) is enough to make a person think that the house might be a remodel of 1920′s craftsman. My measure of success in whether or not we achieve our goal of making a new house look old is if most of the people who come into the house ask how long the remodel took. If we get questions about remodel work in a new construction house, then that is a good sign that we succeeded in making the right impression on people.

Front of house in the shade of a giant sycamore tree

Master bedroom windows with trim (not yet painted)

Hextile in the bathroom

See more pictures and updates on builder web site.

Much has happened over the past several days to make this house feel more like a house. All insulation went in, and drywall is now hung. We insulated to Energy Star and Earth Advantage Standards, which generally require performance at least 15% above normal building code. All that basically means in this case is that we used traditional fiber insulation, but we used a variety that has a higher R-value than normal. It’s quite surprising to me that this isn’t done as standard practice, since the cost is not much higher than normal insulation. In other words, a minimal investment in better insulation during construction would easily pay for itself by within a year or two because of the lower utility bills.

Now that the drywall is hung, it is much easier to get a sense for the size and proportions and feel of the rooms and spaces in the house. It feels very nice. The open floor plan on the main, combined with the 10 foot ceilings, makes the space feel large and airy. It is easy to imagine kids running through the rooms and people mingling in the kitchen and dinner being served in the dining room and so forth. The mudding and taping of the drywall will be done over the next couple of days, and then we will be preparing to add the finishing touches. See more pictures at the builder’s web site:

dining & living room w/ drywall

family room with drywall

Progress has felt slow lately, but that is also somewhat deceptive. The truth is that a lot of progress is happening, it’s just not as visible as what we’ve seen so far. I am referring to the progress made on finishing out the installation of the systems of the house and the inspections that go along with that. About the only thing that looks different to the naked eye now from a couple weeks ago is that there is more clutter and stuff in the house. That is actually a good sign, though, because it means we have all of the stuff on site that is necessary to finish off the systems and close walls. As you can see in the pictures below, there is just more stuff visible (e.g. outlets, wires, pipes, fireplaces, etc.). All of that stuff is about to be inspected, and then we are going full speed ahead toward insulation and closing off walls.

Living room fire place...and other stuff

Kitchen - all wired and plumbed

No, it's not Rapunzel, it's wiring feeding to the electrical panel