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Lots of Pope House Progress

Front light fixtures.

Everybody is working hard and having fun at the Pope Residence! There’s so much progress that it’s hard to keep track. That’s a good thing.

Now that the place is electrified, we put up the outdoor light fixtures. Most of them have light-sensitive bulbs in them, so they should come on at night and go off during the day. The front porch has to have a switch, by code, so we got one with fancier lights on it. I think they look great, and we already have a plan to cover up where the old fixtures were. Signage!

The other fixtures all look like this.

Another big push has been to get all the bathroom floors in, now that the plumbing is all set. And we do have subfloors now! They look really good, ready for the real flooring (tiles in one bath, vinyl everywhere else).

Sooo excited about the floors.

Plus, among many other deliveries from Lowe’s, we now have the flooring for the main part of the house, and it looks so good. Luxury vinyl flooring is an amazing thing. Most of the lighting has also arrived, but it’s all staying safe inside its boxes until installation time!

The stairs are a real thing of beauty, and I’m so impressed by how little they impact the back bathroom. Chris routed a bullnose edge on all the treads, which will give them a real hand-crafted touch. The landing is all done, but we are waiting to finish the rest of the stairs until work is complete on the sunroom addition roof.

Going up! And the bathroom pipe.

The addition roof should be finished today. Chris and Easton, assisted by Randy’s sawing help, have been up there banging and installing the new metal roof and flashing, so there will be no more leaking back there. We are putting a beadboard ceiling in there, when we are done. It should be very pleasant, with space for a reading/plant nook.

Color Time!

Since it’s getting close to that time, Kathleen and I were instructed to go pick out paint colors. I think they are going to be really pretty.

Roof crawling.

We chose the colors for the trim and walls that aren’t brick, as well as the painted ceilings. The main color is called Rosy Pashmina, and will complement the brick really well. It’s a shade lighter than the actual bricks, but will blend in with them, we hope. It goes mostly in the back of the building.

The trim is a “designer white” called Wings of an Angel, which is a very light cream. We wanted to be sure to get a warm white to go with all the brick and wood.

Color-ific.

The main bathroom is a calm yellow (if you can call any yellow “calm”) called Deviled Eggs. I hope it doesn’t always make me hungry. It’s toned-down nature will go with the rustic decor of that room quite well.

My office bath will be a very vivid red-orange called Steelhead Redd. It shouldn’t be overwhelming, since one wall will be metal and the brick wall will be the cream color. Besides, I like vivid bathrooms. I love the one in Bobcat that is a paprika color.

And in a move that I hope works out well, I selected a very pale blue (Dreamstress) for the ceilings that are currently white. I think they will register more as white, and will be a nice contrast to all the warm colors. I always wanted a ceiling that looked like the sky, and it reminds me of the tradition of painting porch ceilings the “haint blue” color.

More Progress Photos

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Electricity and Flooring Decisions for the Pope Residence

This is the flooring we think we’re ordering.

Floors are Sad

Last week’s renovation progress was good, just with the usual ups and downs. The main “down” was realizing that the floors in most of the first floor are not in good enough shape to keep. That was a real bummer for all of us. We do think we can salvage the front room with the fireplace and feature window, which is where most of the guests and visitors will go.

For a number of reasons, we went with the luxury vinyl plank option for the rest of the floors, since there’s no guarantee that there won’t be more shifting of floors, and we don’t want to break tile or mess up wood. We selected one that looks fairly rustic, and should complement the rest of the design for the space.

Much reinforcement on these beams!

Yes, we did get the sagging area in two of the offices fixed up and leveled. Chris and his team did a great job, and both offices seem much less “bouncy” now. There were some concrete pieces left by the air conditioning guys that came in handy to shore up the beams.

Let There Be Light: Safely!

Electric!

The other big improvement is that Cody brought in a team of electricians, who ran all sorts of modern and up-to-code wiring in the downstairs. We will be able to plug all sorts of things now, with no danger of overloading anything! The conduit is on the surface of the brick, which has added to the mix of old and new we’ve been building on. Some of us like the silver electrical lines and others don’t. There is an option of painting it a color that will blend in with the bricks, later. We’ll see how it grows on us.

Repairing brick that had a lot of issues.

Speaking of bricks, Easton and Randy are still chipping away at the exposed bricks and repairing any areas that need it. It’s looking a heck of a lot better now!

The Staircase Dilemma

Where the stairs and bathroom will go.

We had to put some brain power into making decisions about the final big thing that needs doing, which is the remodeling of the addition that holds the bathroom off my office and the future interior stairway. Chris had to be pretty patient with me when I rejected his original plan rather strongly (it was going to make the stairs completely enclosed, cause the original window to look into a storage closet, and make the ceiling of the bathroom only six feet high). Luckily, we all got together and exchanged ideas, and now the plan is to move the back door two feet over, so the first run of stairs can end at seven feet rather than six. Then it will turn and enter into a light-filled foyer for the second floor entrance. The light from the upstairs windows will filter down and brighten the back of the house. Ta da!

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Something Beautiful in Taylor

This light fixture looks wonderful on the stairs. It looked weird in a bedroom.

Anita and I felt like we just HAD to share with you a few pictures of our favorite part of the Taylor renovation, which is the stairway. This was pretty much the WORST part of the house before. There were piles of junk and ancient carpeting everywhere and mysterious walls of fencing on the INSIDE. You could barely get to the stairs to go up to the master suite. And then you had to stand on some pretty ancient carpeting.

Chris and Anita did a great job removing the pieces of wood from the wall and painting the railings and walls a gleaming white (Joanna Gaines would be proud). Plus the original stairs that once had scary carpeting are now a rich brown.

To top it all off, they took the rather odd chandelier that was in the downstairs bedroom and put it above the stairs. Now it looks like a feature! So shiny and pretty.

We look forward to sharing more of this project with you when Anita’s able to write up a summary of the final parts of the process. She’s mulched the flower beds, cleaned the windows, removed all the equipment used in the renovation, and is happy to say it’s ready for a new owner to love.

We will have the listing available as soon as it’s ready and the professional photographs have been taken.

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