Report #3 on their new Retro Renovation journey
While Pam and I were off enjoying ourselves at The Hukilau, Mike and Lindsey were up to their eyeballs in work, continuing the fast-paced the restoration of their Edward Durell Stone House of Good Taste. And, they experienced their first unexpected expense. In today’s installment — the third in the series — Mike and Lindsey share the tale. And, they ask for our ideas for a secondary flooring material to complement the original terrazzo floors in many other parts of this gorgeous 1964 house.
Our heads have been spinning the last few weeks with all the progress on the house and craziness in our lives. Terrazzo floors are finished (note: Mike will be giving us the full run down about the floor refinishing process in the next House of Good Taste update) and have been covered for the rest of construction, the kitchen build out is just about finished, we are starting to pack up our current home, and move in is only five weeks away.
With the demo completed, our first task included electrical and wall/ceiling work. We placed the carpet back down over the terrazzo to protect it during what we knew would be messy stages of construction. We probably won’t see them again for a while :(. With our house in shambles, we have already looked at each other a few times and said, “what have we gotten ourselves into?” Truth be told, I think we both secretly love a little chaos in our lives.
This next phase has brought us both good and bad news. The good news is that our current home went under contract before it hit the market! Our realtor has some clients that he suspected might love our house and he was right, we got a full price offer and the best part is that they love our two vintage pink bathrooms. We’ll get to the bad news in a bit.
We realize electrical and drywall work don’t carry a whole lot of retro fun, but bear with us through these nuts and bolts stages, we know the fun stuff is just around the corner.
Electrical
We initially though that the scope of electrical work would be fairly minor, but after being able to spend some time in the home we realized that the lighting situation was a bit of a mess and we had an opportunity to use the lighting to accent the special features of this home. This was our first taste of “might as well do it the way we want it and not regret it later” aka “we are going to blow our budget”. Because the house has a flat top roof, we really do need to do all electrical work now, as you can not just drop in new electrical in from the attic at a future date. Adding new electrical later would mean having opening up the walls and ceilings.
The plan consist of layered ambient and accent lighting. For ambient lighting will be installing 4″ LED recessed cans down the hallway from the front door and in the kitchen, 4 strategically placed pendant lights in the main living areas, and ceiling fans with lights in each of the bedrooms. Accent lighting will consist of wall sconces down the hallway, 12 strategically placed 4″ recessed gimbal lights that will illuminate the interior stone walls and fireplace, and redoing the lighting in the recessed ceiling that currently utilizes florescent tubes to make it softer and dim-able. We also want all of these areas to be independently controllable and dim-able, which means going from about 4 switches that controls everything to 15 switches and figuring out where to put them so they make sense, all at the same time of having to work around all the stone walls.
So what was the “bad news” we mentioned earlier?… we had our first OOPS :(. With not having any prior experience with a flat top roof home, we had the scraping of all the popcorn ceilings done as part of the demo. Well, after the first week of electrical work we realized that it would take about a month to finish all the wiring unless we pulled most of the ceilings and walls completely down. Without access from a attic, we had no idea what anything looked like behind the drywall and we were running into issue after issue with the framing and how the original electrical was done. So with humble sadness we were forced to pull down nearly all of the freshly scrapped ceilings and a whole lot of the walls too…. OOPS. But in the end it was probably a good thing as we found several areas of unsafe electrical and some termite damage we were able to repair, which we never would have known about if we did not pull down the ceilings.
- Precautionary Pam reminds: Readers, the layers of our of old houses may contain vintage nastiness such as lead and asbestos; be sure to consult with your own properly licensed professionals to determine what you are working with so that you can make informed decisions. Please also know, I do not permit such advice to be doled out on the blog — again, get with your own pros regarding what is in your house.
- Editor’s note #2: “Unexpected costs” are to be expected, yup: See our story about readers’ 140 real life stories about surprise home repairs.
Floating out the walls and ceilings
The house has a mixture of wall textures from room to room, and one of the things we personally don’t care for is heavy wall texture. We have seen a few homes with completely smooth walls and ceilings (not just drywall with no texture, but fully floated out), and we felt they would really look great in this space. We agreed that having flat walls would only enhance the texture provided by the stone walls. Floating walls is a labor intensive process that will require at least three coats and sanding between each coat. We are crossing our fingers that it turns out the way we imagine in our heads. One bright side, pulling down so much of the existing drywall for electrical, allows the floating process to go much faster with the new drywall. Those areas will not need the existing texture knocked down and should require less coats.
Flooring!!??
With the house tore up and feeling like it may never be put back together, we have attempted to distract ourselves with flooring decisions and researching companies who specialize in terrazzo restoration. The terrazzo covers the entire open living area but the rest of the floors are just bare slab. We thought the Retro Renovation community might have a few thoughts on what to do with the rest of the floors? We generally prefer only one or two flooring types in a home, so we are hoping to find one material that will work in the entire rest of the house rooms. We also do not want anything that will visually compete with the terrazzo. So what are your thoughts on a good secondary floor that might complement terrazzo?
Joe65 says
We just went through this over the past two years with our 1960 ranch-style in San Antonio with the original terrazzo, termites, and bad wiring.
Yes, your original wiring is substandard and unsafe. Accept that when buying a 1960’s house and plan accordingly. You CAN modify, per Code, ungrounded 2 prong outlets with GFCI to accept three prong plugs legally, but you can’t easily up the amperage. A 60 amp (or even 100 amp) main box barely cuts it with modern wiring. Some of those old Bell (or Edison, maybe?) breakers can’t be replaced and inspectors may not even trip them to test them due to fear of them not re-setting. We had to go all the way back to the pole to make it safe and acceptable.
Do not trust your electrical contractor OR the inspector to verify your house is up to code – or that it even makes sense. Light switches at doors to enter rooms, or coming in from outside get overlooked. You can overcome this by using motion sensors and fewer switches, but still meet code. Really!
Good luck with switch and outlet depth on the studs. I hope your experience is better than mine. Your sheetrock guy can fix the cover plates to be flush, but can’t fix a poorly installed wall box. Spacers are your friends for a solid outlet feel.
We gutted our exterior walls to the studs (some were painted panelling, so no great loss) some had termite damage (had to fix studs) some had rodent nests (smell, and no insulation since it became beds). This lets the wiring and plumbing get fixed. 1964? Do you have galvanized? If so, you might want to consider PEX before skimming those walls. You can tie the PEX to the existing iron pipe in the baths and finish it all off later.
As you discovered, a flat roof/ceiling doesn’t like recessed cans, since there’s no depth for insulation. Make sure the cans are correct for IC, new construction and aren’t retro-fits. LEDs are great, but make sure the color spectrum matches for the down lights and gimbals. I used HALO, I forget the color temp. Get the proper dimmer types for LED. Recessed LEDs, reflecting off polished terrazzo up onto a flat white, non-textured ceiling can be pretty darn attractive and lighten up the whole interior.
There’s a science for finishing terrazzo, particularly with carpet strips. If possible, don’t pull up the strips and create chunks or holes. Grind off the nails anchoring the strips and leave them flush in the terrazzo for less damage. The refinishing process “should” polish them anyway when you grind off the thin upper layer. Does your contractor own a gloss-meter? He should! Mine didn’t and I had him back twice to finish the scratches because he and I differed on what was “shiny.”
Regarding Cork: we’re planning on floating floor tiles but having a heck of time sourcing them. The “natural” color seems in short supply – one vendor backordered out of the country until August, retailers in San Antonio (and online) aren’t familiar, and trim/moldings are hard to find for cork transitions to terrazzo. Our house was spec’d with cork – we have the original blueprints from 1960 – it was 6″x9″ tiles glued down – I removed them due to a leaking A/C unit and leaking chimney having rotted them in places, and bad care in others. They were covered in plastic, then covered with carpet. Ever have a “corked” bottle of wine? Imagine a “corked” smelling house!
Even if you go cork, you’ve got color selection, glue down or floating, etc. I’m a fan of cork, and it’s definitely period appropriate for my house (heck, it’s in the 1960 original blue, blueprints) but it inspires stron opinions.
I’m not a nattering nabob of negativity (Really!) but after two years of dealing with unskilled contractors and fixing their work (I’ve got pictures!) I am pretty jaded.
ineffablespace says
I am a fan of wall to wall broadloom in bedrooms, but if you want a single floor throughout it would be pretty accurate to put broadloom bound rugs that showed 12 – 18 inches of floor around the perimeter of the room.
Rhonda says
I would go with something that contrasts the smooth, hard features of the terrazzo but still easy maintenance and of the period. Honey colored oak or another subtle hardwood would be a warm choice- in tone and temperature! I think using concrete or tile would not give enough variation in surface. Cork gives the right aesthetic, but it’s not practical if you have high traffic, dogs, etc.
Chase says
Exciting progress! I’d suggest using a hardwood of some sort. It will help warm up the space and contrast nicely with the light terrazzo floors. The cork sounds like it would also complement the terrazzo well but I’d also be afraid of the durability of it.
Cathy says
I’d probably use hardwood, or engineered wood on the other floors. Or, if you’d prefer to use some kind of tile product, you can get ceramic tile that looks like wood. Some of it is very convincing.
Diane from PA says
They also make a flooring that resembles concrete—very affordable–also through Armstrong—-it all depends on the look of the house you want to end up with Mid Century or Modern Mid Century—
Tom64 says
I’m thinking a geometric pattern that incorporates the colors of the terrazzo might be interesting.
Pattern idea:
https://www.etsy.com/listing/84742915/1950s-ad-vina-lux-azrock-floor-tile-mid?ref=market
Gus says
My house has a ceramic tile and terrazzo floor. The color of the ceramic is the same as one of the “speckles” in the terrazzo. Secretly I wonder if some type of linoleum would’ve been better, but I’m not looking to replace it (my new matra is live with what I’ve got if it works).
I have a question…are you guys designing yourselves? How did you determine the best lighting placement? How much experience do you guys have with full home renos (I saw you guys did some bathrooms which turned out cool).
Keep up the good work!
Mike and Lindsey says
Gus
We like to say that “no designers were hurt in the making of the house of good taste” lol
No interior designers have been used or consulted, nor are we in that line of work. We are mostly just obsessed with the details, ask a lot of questions, research a lot, and enjoy going to home tours and open houses of all kinds where we take note of things for future reference.
Katherine says
I like Jennier’s comment about concrete. We had some finished concrete flooring in our old MCM house and it got far more compliments than our wood and tile in other parts of the house. Butter-coating and finishing in a color of your choice could work very well and cost less than a lot of other options. Good luck!
ineffablespace says
If you wanted terrazzo in some of the other rooms, like the kitchen, You could check out Fritztile which is a thin epoxy terrazzo tile. They may have something compatible.
For wood flooring my choice would be site-finished oak strip flooring which was the near ubiquitous mid-century wood floor.
Chase says
Oooooh…. The Fritztile sounds like a really cool idea… Either used in a contrasting color or if is possible, a very close match with aluminum, brass, or stainless strips about 1/4″ wide dividing the tiles into squares or long strips running the length of the hallways, kind of echoing classic installations of terrazzo.