Saturday, May 28, 2011

Pretty Posts

Tradition is to use trim colors on turned porch posts on a Folk Victorian house. The problem is, there are no instructions on how to paint them. I couldn't find more than a couple pictures of painted posts, none close to the shape of mine.


How much is too much? Not enough? How do you know when you get it right? I guess it is just done to taste, or maybe you stop when you get tired of painting little colored stripes around the posts. It ended up taking almost 2 weeks to get the posts done, mostly because I would paint a section, take a picture, then paint another section, trying to figure out just how much color I wanted on them. Of course, after figuring it out, I had to do 4 more posts, just the same. The reward is, my porch is starting to look really good.

With the long weekend, maybe I will start putting the ceiling on the porch. It would change the look tremendously as the open rafters are unfinished. I would have left the rafters exposed and painted but whoever built the porch did a very unsightly job of attaching it to the house. Not something that can be repaired without tearing the porch roof clear off so putting a new ceiling up seems to be the best alternative.

Saturday, May 21, 2011

Metamorphosis

The transformation is nearly complete! Four years ago, my little house had grown quite sad in appearance. In 1985, I moved into my cheap little house, bought at auction for only $17.5K . By 2008, the paint had faded and peeled, the masonite siding had swollen in places, warped in others. It was just ugly, the only good looking part was the roof, which I had replaced a few years earlier. I decided it was time to make some improvements. Initially, the plan was just for some painting and siding, it turned into a major makeover.
The outcome pleases me! I love how my house looks now that it has new paint, siding, windows and a door. It is definitely unique in the little town I live in. With the new turned posts and colorful gingerbread trim, the addition of the porch brackets will finish off the ornate look popular in the original folk Victorian style home.


There are many things yet to be done. My deck in back will have proper legs put under it as I didn't want it attached to the house again and it will have a new roof put on it. The porch ceiling needs to be installed and painted. It will be ther rust color from the trim, as will the front door. The soffitts will also be replaced as poor material was used on them previously. I would like to re-face the porch steps as well. Of course, the rest of the house needs painted, only the front is done so far. I'm really proud of how far I've come and look forward to finishing the rest of the details.

Friday, May 6, 2011

Happy Mother's Day to myself!

Yes, I LOVE these new porch posts. How much better gift could I get for Mother's Day than having my siding and porch posts done? I don't know if this house really had a porch before it was added to back in 1975. That was before I lived in Norton so I don't know what it was like. I did find a picture of a house that was very similar to mine when they were built. It was one of the pictures I found when I started researching my house.



I discovered my house is "Folk Victorian" style, even though it was built a couple decades after that style was popular. FV let the middle class have some of the fancy details in their homes that wealthier people enjoyed on their Victorian and Queen Anne style homes.


The little house with purple and blue trim has a pair of doors on the small wooden porch. The one to the side as one walks onto the porch, is in the same location as the tall, thin window in my library. While working on that window, I discovered there had originally been a door there.


Overall, I am quite pleased with how the house is coming along. The addition of a 4th post across the front of the porch gave a more balanced look and the turned posts lend that extra
touch of vintage to the look.


Tomorrow is dedicated to doing some painting. I will be going over all the gold trim with better quality paint and painting the window and door trim with the same gold color. Guess I will be up the ladder again this summer. No worry, it is all downhill from here as far as my workload goes.