Victorian Remodel: The Foyer

Original foyer from the dining room

Even though the foyer is one of the smaller and simpler rooms of our home it still required a fair amount of work. Like the downstairs bathroom the tile floor had been laid by what I can only call "laid-back amateurs." From a distance it looked okay and even appropriate to the period but any kind of closer examination revealed uneven surfaces and seam spacing that varied from 1/16 of an inch to over quarter of an inch.
The foyer has two light fixtures, a hanging ceiling reproduction and one mounted on the newel post. That one appears to be a genuine antique but it's not original to the house as it's clear the oak base doesn't match the other oak that makes up the stair railing. The oak railing and balusters were painted white at one time but thankfully had been stripped before we purchased the home. It still needs some final cleanup and staining and sealing but the stripping would have been a real headache.

Narrow stairwell on 3 walls and antique fixture

View from second floor

Reproduction light fixture - we replaced these globes

Antique fixture

Some basic demolition had to happen before restoration could begin. First there was a sheetrock box that hid copper heating pipes that had to be removed once we replaced the heating system. They had also boarded over the transom above the front door and shingled it with cedar on the outside. Next there were several places in the house where they ran external wiring through metal channels. One was in the foyer and controlled the light in the upstairs hallway. We removed that and ran wire through the opposite wall and created a three-way switch to control the light from either floor. That meant drilling through brick, fishing wire and cutting holes for new electrical boxes. Fortunately its adobe brick so fairly easy to work with. We also had to move a switch from the living room side of the wall to the foyer side and create a three gang box. In the photo below you can see the electrical channel on the wall by the stairs and sheetrock box on the right side of the door that fed the baseboard radiator.

Once those small projects were completed we tackled the floor which was one of the bigger pains of our remodel. Initially it appeared we might be able to pop the tiles loose but that proved to be a fantasy as they generally shattered. After we chipped through a section about 4 feet by 6 I realized it might be possible to pry up the plywood sheets they had been laid on and that proved to be true but it was dirty, back breaking, bleeding knuckle work.