The Jefferson House

"Alls I ever wanted..."

2010-08-31T13:20:00.000-07:00

Yep, I have a walk-in closet. I can walk in (in exactly 3 steps), turn around, and walk out. I'm happy. :)

Walk-in closets were unheard of 100 years ago. Even small closets weren't standard in every room. That means, any house that old with a walk-in closet has had something rearranged or added. My closet had both! When we lifted up the ugly, and seemingly unsanitary carpet, we found 3 different floors underneath. It is part original closet (1.5 ft deep with 1 pole across), part original bathroom, and part addition. Fun.

It was also extremely non-functional and just a tad gross. When considering the things that I really wanted done before we moved in, a clean place to keep my clothes was definitely at the top of the list. I don't consider myself to be extremely girly, but what woman doesn't dream of a nice wall of accessory shelves? So, the closet wins as the first project that has actually reached completion.

Before:

After:

New shelves, poles, paint, carpet, and trim, (plus the elimination of the random piece of lattice fencing) makes for a nice, clean place for my wardrobe to call home. My shoes are very pleased.

Just as a bonus, I thought I'd let you in on a little bit of the Megan-brain. Here's the closet design, by me:

Clearly I missed my calling.

The First Mess

2010-08-07T06:30:00.000-07:00

I have a bad habit of getting too excited about something, so I don't take my time, and therefore, end up making a mess. This is a deep-rooted problem that can be traced back to early incidents of jumping in the pool fully clothed, and painting with acrylics before changing out of my church dress. So, I expect a lot of mess making to come with fixing up the house. Unfortunately, this began with my very first project.

I bought the wood for my new closet shelves, got really excited to stain it, and quickly applied a coat to all the pieces, which looked like this:

However, I wanted them to look like this:

I used the wrong stuff. I know what you're thinking. It's a closet. Who cares? Well, me. I thought about just leaving them this way, of course I did. But, no, I'm a problem solver.

I put on my stripping gear...

Ha. No, no, I'm not that kind of girl...I'm talking gloves and goggles. (Cute sunglasses work just as well.)

and went at it with the magic goo.

The good news is, the shelves will look the way I wanted them to. The bad news is, according to the back of the can, I may: go blind, develop tumors, break out in a burning rash, suffer neurological damage, experience migraines, be diagnosed with cancer, have children with extra limbs, or just keel over die.

Heavy Lifting

2010-08-01T11:01:00.000-07:00

We officially closed on the house on July 23^rd. There are a few projects that we wanted to finish before moving anything over, so we planned to get started immediately. The first big project we wanted to tackle was installing central AC and heat.

By “we” I really mean our good friends at Leiber Heating & Air. The house is currently cooled with window units and heated with radiators. It’s tough to think of restoring a house in late summer in St. Louis without central air. Plus, I wanted the radiators out of the way and the windows free. So, we talked it out with Karl Leiber and came up with a plan.

Step 1: Remove radiators and old pipes. Problem: Radiators are wicked heavy. I don’t know this because I’ve lifted one. I know this because I curiously tipped the smallest one towards myself, ever so slightly, once it was detached from the floor, and I almost died. It started coming over, I lost my balance, and I saw my short life flash before my eyes as the beast was about to crush me. Somehow I made it out, but now I know. Heavy.

Since I’d obviously be of no help, and I didn’t marry one of those Strongman guys that can pull a semi with his teeth, we went to the place where magic happens - Craigslist. I'm convinced that you can list anything for free on Craigslist, and someone will take it within 24 hours. So, we posted all of the radiators and pipes for free, under the condition that someone detaches and removes them. We got 7 calls within an hour. Amazing. So, we chose the guy that sounded least likely to end up trapped beneath one of these things.

This is Larry. And Larry. No joke. There was a third guy, too, but I don’t know his name.

This all went off without much trouble. Well, it was a whole lot of trouble for the Larrys. It looked like some form of torture, actually. The biggest guy, Larry, did most of the actual lifting. He would growl, lift, and then yell the entire way to the truck. In the end, they seemed happy to have the stuff.

The Leibers are now about halfway through with what they've declared the biggest pain in the butt in 25 years of service. I'm starting to feel a little bad about having them do it. It requires a lot of crawling and sawing and bending and other things that are really no fun to do in a 24" crawl space. Karl also said "no" the first 10 times that I asked to hire them for this. Did I mention that they're really good friends?

We're Moving!

2010-07-31T13:03:00.000-07:00

Thanks for visiting my blog! I’m creating this as a journal on our new house and the process of making it our home. We call it the Jefferson House, not because we really want it to be called that, but because that’s the name of the street it’s on and it just kind of stuck. When we were trying to decide on a house to buy, we were split between two, one we called “The Benton House” and this one. We were pro-conning the situation with some friends and going back and forth with “Benton House” this and “Jefferson House” that, when our friend asked the big question, “Well…which one is going to be ‘The Wehrle House’?” I’m happy to say that the Jefferson House and the Wehrle House are now one and the same. It’s just that Jefferson House is a little more catching for a title.

So…here it is, 121 years young:

I wouldn't say it needs tons of work, probably just the right amount that it is possible to do it, but we will be really, really glad when we’re finished.

We decided to move for a series of reasons. First, we wanted more space for our home-based business. Then, we wanted a bigger garage for the same reason. Then, I accidentally saw a 100 year old house pop up on a real estate search. Then, I realized, “Oh, yeah, THAT is what I want. I want an old house that I can fix up.” I’ve always wanted that, actually, I guess I just kind of forgot how much until I found this one. It sounds silly, (now that we own the house, I can stop pretending to be rational about the decision) but I knew I wanted to buy this house after taking the first 3 steps into the entryway. So, most of our original reasons for moving basically morphed into the one reason of, “just because.” Plus, a few months ago, I stepped out of the shower and forgot that my bedroom curtains were open, and, well…I’m pretty sure my neighbor saw me naked. So, once that happens, you really have no choice. You just have to move.

Thanks for reading, especially the first entry. The first one is always awkward. I plan to keep this updated with projects, pictures, and hopefully some information and ideas that might be useful to others. Not that I know anything. In fact, if you know anything, you may not want to come back. I hope you will, though. Visit, comment, point and laugh, whatever. Glad to have you.