Queen Anne Victorian House
First Floor
Foyer
Parlour
Library
Dining Room
Butler's Pantry
Kitchen
Second Floor
Third Bedroom
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My partner and I recently bought a beautiful Queen Ann Victorian house
in the heart of North West Portland, and nestled between two other
Victorian houses.
The house, built in 1896, has only had three prior owners in the past
102 years.
Luckily, the house did not suffer from a major renovation during the
1950's, and instead still has much of its original charm. We have
started an ambitious multi-year plan to restore and carefully renovate
it.
We are currently refinishing the dining room
floor and walls, and redoing the pantry.
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This is what the foyer original looked like. This picture is taken
from the front door, and looks into the dining room, and then the pantry at the very end. The door on the left leads
to the library, and on the immediate left
is the parlour.
In the future, we are planning on removing the carpet from the floor
and tiling this area.
September 1999: Added a telephone jack.
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Due to the lack of closet space in the house, we bought an armoir,
that neatly tucks underneath the staircase.
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This is what the parlour looked like before we moved in, when it was
used as a home office. This picture was taken on the other side of
the sliding doors that separate the parlour from the library.
The fir floor had been painted three times: a musturd colour, then
red, then brown. But, the middle part of the floor was only given a
single coat of paint, perhaps because a rug was always intended to
cover the floor. Although painted floors were very common during the
Victorian era, we decided that we would rather the natural beauty of
the floors showing. Although not historically accurate, we decided to
use polyeurothane to give the fir floors a tough and easy to maintain
finish.
From November 1998 through to March 1999, we redid the floor. We were
really reluctant to take a big sanding machine to the soft fir floors,
since one wrong move with the sanding could put a big mark in the floor,
which could be difficult to hide. So, we instead opted to use a more
labor intensive approach.
We first tried to find as many of the rug nails in the floor as
possible, and removed them. We then chemically removed as much of the
old paint from the floor as possible, using Jasco. In some areas, we
had to apply the chemical stripper a second time. Chemically
stripping the floors often would reveal more rug nails.
At this point, the floors would still have some paint on it, as the
first coat of paint would never completely come out, and some spots
might still have the second or even third coats still on. The next
step is to sand the floors with as course of a grit as can be found,
which usually was a 36 or 40 grit paper. We used a 4in x 24in Porter
and Cable belt sander, and a small 5" orbial sander and a detail
sander to get close to the walls and right into the corners. This
sanding pass should get rid of almost of the remaining paint as well
as sand out most of the marks in the floor.
After the 40 grit pass, we removed the old filler between the boards
using an exacto knife. We then refill the cracks with new wood
filler.
We then do two more sanding passes with 60 and 80 grit paper with the
4in x 24in Porter and Cable belt sander and the 5" orbital sander and
detail sander for the walls and corners. These passes should remove
any scratch marks from the earlier sanding pass.
We then do a final 100 grit with the detail sander. We then applied
an oil-based sealer, sand with 220 grit paper with the orbital sander.
Then we apply 2 layers of danish finish, sanding in between with the
220 grit paper. Before the oil-based sealer, we carefully cleaned the
room, ending with cleaning it will mineral spirits. Between the
coats, we ended the cleaning with a tack cloth.
Furnishing the Parlour
Over the refinished fir floors, we decided that we wanted to have a large
rug, one that would occupy most of the floor, just as the Victorians would do.
This approach would also help keep the fir floor, which is very soft and prown to damage, in better shape.
The picture on the right shows the floor redone. As can be seen, only
the border of the floor is exposed. The picture also shows the rug
and the camelback sofa that we bought for the room.
This is room is behind the parlour and connects to it via sliding
doors. In an old victorian homes, this room was not part of the
formal area of the house where guests and callers were received.
The picture to the left shows how the library looked when we
moved in. This picture was taken on the other side of the sliding
doors that separate the library from the parlour
(a bit of the sliding door is visible on the right had of the
picture). The door on the far right leads to the dining room and butler's pantry beyond that is visible. Hidden
underneath the rug is the fir floor, with several layers of paint on
it, the top coat being brown. Of course, given how expensive paint
is, the middle of the floor only has a single coat of light blue
paint.
Refinishing the floor
I started doing this floor in April 1999, and followed the same
procedure as with the Parlour floor. In
addition, some of the floor boards creaked in this room where one
board ended and another started. Most of these joins were accessible
from the basement, so we put small pieces of wood between the joists
and the boards (and Liquid Nail) to stop this. This floor was finally
finished on September 11, 1999.
How it looks now
The pictures to the right show the library with the floor refinished.
As with the parlour, the goal was to cover the refinished floor with
as large of a rug as possible, in this case an 8x8 rug.
Also shown are
two wingback armchairs that really engulf you.
Miscellaneous Projects
September 1998: One of the first projects we did was to raise the height of the
lighting fixture. The light came down to about six feet. So, we took
out several of the links in the chain holding it up.
September 1999: There is no power outlet between the doors to the
foyer and the dining room. I am currently adding one.
The dining room had a coat of pink paint over about four layers of
wallpaper. The walls were in rough shape as some of the lath and
plaster underneath had cracked; some of the previous wall paper
was put ontop of wall paper that had partially fallen off; and
some of the previous plaster repairs to the wall were not wall done.
Furthermore, there was a pipe from the chimney going into the dining
room (from when there was probably a wood/oil heater in the room before
central heating) that was hastenily patched over.
Refinishing the floor and walls
In March 1999, we started stripping off the paint off of the fir
floors (see Parlour floor), and in April, we
started stripping off the wallpaper. The wall paper is off, and I
have been fixing cracks in the lath and plaster. I also removed the
pipe going to the chimney and rebricked the hole, and plastered over
it.
In the first picture, you can see the floor partially stripped of the old
paint. The floor in the lower right has not been touched yet. If you look
very carefully, you will see some pieces of blue tape. These indicate
nails that seem must either be pulled out or hammer below the planks.
In the second picture you can see part of the wall. Actually, the
spot in the upper middle is where a chimney spout used to project into
the room, undoubtedly for an old wood heater. I took out the spout,
and bricked over the hole, and pastered over the spot. Also visible
in the picture are some cracks in the lathe and plaster. Some of the
keys holding the plaster to the lathe had broken, making the plaster
loose in some places. Rather than rip all of the lathe and plaster
out, my approach was to make holes in the paster, and put in enough
new plaster to form new keys to hold the plaster to the lathes. This
seems to work well.
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Here is what the pantry originally looked like. This is a view from
the kitchen looking in. The dining room is on off of the pantry on
the right hand side. Note the pass-through window at the end of the
pantry. This leads to a closet, which was supposedly used so that the
kitchen could be better isolated from the dining room during formal
meals.
The Butler's pantry was painted a festive shape of yellow, hiding the
woodwork. We started this room about January 1999. Most of the old
yellow paint scraped off of the woodwork using a heat gun, and some
sanding has been done. We will be putting tile on the countertop and
installing a ceramic cast-iron sink.
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Here is what the kitchen originally looked like. The door on the
right behind the old stove leads to the pantry.
The stove is no longer part of the house, as we felt it was too large
and would unduely dominate the kitchen.
We will soon be updating the kitchen to add modern conveniences, such
as a dish washer, a deep sink, more counterspace, and to make room for
our side-by-side fridge.
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Here is what the third bedroom originally looked like.
The floor in this room had been given several coats of paint,
including a green and a brown. Furthermore, close to the center of
the room, there was a large gash, filled in with newspaper and cover
with a piece of tin nailed into the floor, and painted brown, to match
the rest of the floor. Given the location of the gash, it was
probably caused by the post of the bed during the occupency of the
second owner, when she rented out the rooms to streetcar drivers.
As of Febuary 1999, we have sealed the gash with woodfiller, removed
the countless number of carpet nails that were pounded into the floor,
stripped off the old paint, sanded the floor, and refinished (see Parlour floor). Although it has a nice hard finish
on it, the floor certainly has not lost any of its hard-earned charm.
Distress marks abound on the floor, which gives it a nice charm.
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