Historic home: basement door before and after

This is what it's come to. Redoing a basement door makes me so very happy!

It was done out of necessity. The threshold was allowing water to leak in and some old wood rot had been poorly patched (that gray patch in the lower left corner of the outside door jam). And ewe, that faceplate for the doorknob had seen better days. And it was not original, a historic replica, so easy enough to replace with the same.

Now the door looks so spiffy, I'm thrilled with the difference and almost glad it was leaking!! Otherwise I might have gone on thinking this "before" door was decently acceptable. I think a new manual doorbell is also in order since this one is on its way to become like the door knob plate. It's so fun to ring, you turn the key and a bell rings on the other side.

Photo of the door before and after

Historic home: peek at recent past

Just when I came to terms with the fact that I'll never be the historic homeowner who finds the cool original doors to the house in the attic (namely because our attic is more like a crawl space thanks to a flat roof); I was totally shocked when I found a new snippet into the past today.

I was honestly just wiping up a little spill off the floor, when I noticed the baseboard also needed a wipe down. Then I figured I ought to wipe down the area behind the cover, where the knobs are.

Can we keep it a secret that this discovery highlights the fact that this is the first time I cleaned inside there? Shhhhhh. But I was pleasantly surprised to see a snippet of the 1980s wallpaper behind the baseboard cover.

So now I'm fairly certain the kitchen I bought, was renovated by the previous owners as it had a stripped wallpaper. And the paper sort of matches the wallpaper under the office's silk cloth tapestry they added.

Kitchen wallpaper before (tan and red stripes):

It's just so interesting to me. Just when I was thinking I had seen all of our home's surprises - boom! I get one!! Okay. It's a little one. And it's just from the 80s... but it's still super fun to me.

Lately we have learned tons about our attic and HVAC system lately. Our rooftop unit went out (ahem, the bedrooms, of course). Now we are wait for the weather to be nice enough to have a final diagnosis on the A/C; so that may be another adventure on its own. As of now, we are grateful that the cooler weather makes it bearable while we wait.  But now I live in fear that we might need an entire new unit, which isn't the end of the world, but when they mentioned a crane would be required, it freaked me out a tad.  Luckily the hubs is ultra cool and is absorbing it gallantly so I have been attempting to emulate him.

And in the last 5 ish months since I last posted?? Our kitchen was finished early March.
Contractor Chris wrapped everything up and gave his key back to me in April.
Designer Elizabeth is on maternity leave, (it was a boy!) so that gives us time to recover from the renovation and start to consider some new furniture pieces.