Doorbell Button Is Re-Lighted to Meet You

When the attic was renovated to become the new entertainment space and man cave, I had a second doorbell chime added there since it's a long way from the main chime, under the stairs on the first floor, all the way up to the third floor. The attic project and second chime installation came along just after I had the exterior of the front doors refinished as the first task by Clemmons Flooring, who ultimately refinished all the hardwood floors and many of the mantles and the hallway and dining room wainscoting and also several doors.

Not sure if it was the wood refinishing or the electrician, but somebody must've messed with the doorbell button at the front door and not only destroyed the bulb but also misplaced some of the interior housing.

It wasn't until the last few months that I even realized the doorbell button no longer lit up, which is how I discovered that there were problems in the button that had not been there when I first installed it myself back in 2003.

I've fixed it now, which is another small item checked off of the extensive to-do list. So if you come by the house in the evening or night, you'll find it easy to locate the button to summon us to greet you at the front door.

The Van Gogh Is a "Go" Again

Van Gogh Guest Bedroom in 2009

Lord have mercy, it takes me longer than a month of Sunday sermons to ever get some things done. Take, for instance, the rear guest bedroom on the north side of the house, dubbed "The Van Gogh." (In a past iteration, it was decked out with various prints of Van Gogh paintings.)

Plaster Restored, Floors & Mantle Refinished, Freshly Painted in 2014

When I undertook plaster restoration, painting, and refinishing of the mantles and floors in the latter half of 2014, I decided at the last minute to include the front room that will someday be my study. That room had been the dumping ground for all my boxes and books and everything else from the time I bought the house, and then it was made much worse when I left the faculty of Wake Forest and had to bring all my office stuff home.

The study was the last room to get renovated in the fall of 2014 (well, before I also decided to finish out the attic!), and so I had to clear it out. Since the Van Gogh had just been remodeled and was barely furnished, it was the logical alternative for all that storage stuff:

In the intervening two years, it's been a challenge to find (1) the time and (2) the motivation to restore the Van Gogh to proper use as a guest room (I mean: it has its own private bathroom, for pete's sake!).  When the Christmas holidays rolled around, though, I finally got inspired enough. And it really was a full four-day project!

And another bonus: I ended up finding lots and lots of things either lost or long forgotten, and I couldn't be more pleased about that, either.

I'm pretty pleased for now with the result. The finishing touches of getting up some wall hangings and the full-length mirror were completed at the end of May. Still to do: drapes and valances...

Long-time Roediger House crew likely remember that the tall-lamped corner you see in the above picture is the corner which once held a very small full bathroom, before I added on new ones (door to the right) in 2008-2009. Here's how it looked in 2003:

Also, towards the end of this old blog post, you can see some other pictures that sort of capture it...wish I'd had my wide-angle lens back then!

More Rooms Restored to Use

As I noted back in the fall, the house has been in tremendous turmoil with all the floor refinishing and plaster restoration and everything else. I've managed to get rooms put back together to then have to turn them asunder again. For instance, after getting the dining room in shape after its repair and repainting near the end of the summer, I then had to turn it into a bedroom, then into a TV room, and then just into a storage room. I had a similar up-and-down with the South Parlour, which was set up again for the first time IN YEARS back in December, only to then be cramped again with shifted and stored furniture and stuff while floor refinishing was done.

The visits by my two sisters last week, though proved to be a powerful incentive to tackle some of those rooms again and also to simply clean up all the clutter and piles and mess that had built up in places like the kitchen and the master bedroom. Both the North and South Parlours are now open for visitors. The kitchen got a massive cleaning and clean-up from piles and clutter.

Here are photos of three more areas that have been brought back "online" for use:

Second Floor Center Hallway Sitting Area

My Study (temporarily a bedroom)

The Wyeth Guest Bedroom (from doorway)

The Wyeth Guest Bedroom (from windows)

Floor Refinishing: Second Coat

Ricky and Nubee Sneed from Clemmons Flooring LLC were back at the house on Friday and hung out with me the whole day. That's because they wanted to make sure they got two coats of poly laid down on the stairs and the first floor hallway. Here's how it glistened in the late afternoon light while still wet and fresh:

The continued Siberian air mass occupation leaves us in a perpetual deep-freeze here in Winston-Salem, so I was more than ready to make another fire on Friday night. It was a good evening to sit fireside since the main floor and the upstairs are off limits while the poly cures.

Fire No. 30

Final Phase of Floor (re-)Finishing

The last portion of floor refinishing needed here at the Roediger House is the high-traffic area of the first floor hallway, the entryway foyer, and the stairs going from the 1st to the 2nd floor.

With all the other work going on in the house, it hasn't been possible to get this lined up, and when I did, it turned out other workers and contractors were not finished on time and we had some stutters in these steps.

Yesterday, though, Ricky and Nubee Sneed of Clemmons Flooring LLC got underway on it. Thanks to a winter weather cancellation of school in Guilford County, I got to be home instead of working, which gave me one final chance to smell how awesome this 110-year-old wood is when it's being sanded.

Here's one shot of the hallway, looking towards the front door, after Ricky and Nubee had laid down the stain and the base coat of poly:

And poor Cyprus did not really seem to understand why her movements were being restricted by the child gate:

Speaking of winter weather, the high yesterday barely reached 20°F and it was projected that overnight we would dip slightly below zero!

That's some bitter cold, coupled with ridiculous winds and gusts that sliced right through you. So I finally broke down and built a fire to make the kitchen cozy on a Thursday eve:

Fire No. 29 (since addition was completed)

Finishing the Original Master Closet

I never did take a picture of the junkpile that the small original master closet really was, prior to this past Christmas holiday season. That's when Ricky and Nubee Sneed of Clemmons Flooring, LLC, set to work on it, lining it with cedar planks and installing shoe shelves and a clothes rod. I'm so very happy to get yet another renovation item checked off the list, and they did a great job on it.

Here are the emptied-out "before" shots:

The debris is from some electrical and plumbing
work that was routed up the chase to the left.

And here's a shot of it right after they finished, and before I started stuffing it with my shoes and suits and sport coats:

Here's the finished and utilized look of it:

Meal No. 1175: Grilled Steaks with the Sneed Crew

The stars of Clemmons Flooring LLC, Ricky and Nubee Sneed, brought their better halves to the house today for a big New Year's Day lunch, so there was a big crowd around the table. Ricky brought the steaks and pork tenderloin, Nubee brought some amazing baked beans, and I put together some salad, baked potatoes, and garlic bread. We feasted. They left. Naps followed.

Study of a Mantle

This is how the morning broke over Winston-Salem, as I watched from the upstairs porch in the early hours of the day:

The other beautiful thing of the day: Ricky and Nubee Sneed of Clemmons Flooring LLC finished up the trim and mantles in my study. Here are a few before pics:

And here's a shot of it after they finished up today:

The Return of the South Parlour

Another room has now come back "on-line" following all the plaster restoration and floor refinishing: the South Parlour. And it's looking mighty good, my friends.

First, a run-down of the plaster restoration:

The boys had trouble with bubbling under the paint.
This is why some areas had to be sanded and re-primed.
Hence, the juggling poodle in the floor pics below.

And then Ricky and Nubee Sneed from Clemmons Flooring LLC sanded and refinished the floors:

Isn't "juggling poodle" an apt description
of the problematic paint areas on the far wall?

This led to a heavy Cy:

This rug was in my mother's house, and it's part of what came to me from her estate:

This sofa was also from her estate, and I had it repaired and recovered over the summer:

I dug up a couple of pictures from the mid-1950s (?) and around 1960 of my parents with my older siblings on that same sofa:

Still to do: crown molding and picture rail, so that some art can go up on those beautifully-redone walls. That will just be bonus adornment, though!