O Christmas Tree

I wonder how long it has been since this old girl glowed like she does every night now? The first time we looked at this house, Charles knew what belonged in ths space. We even had an outlet put in so that we could put our tree in here. It looks like the space was created for this purpose. It looks amazing! The pictures don't due it justice. If you are around some evening in the next month, I highly recommend a quick drive by to peek at the turret.

Getting Ready for Winter

We are spending some time and money right now trying to make the cold spots disappear! This weekend, we had the transom fixed in the kitchen and re-installed it. We attached a piece of wood to the bottom of the back door and put a sweep on it. I painted over the red on the back door since we are planning to cover it with plastic for the winter and, hopefully, the kitchen will be done by the time we need to uncover it. We put new weather stripping on the back door and fixed the locks and stuff on it. Then we covered the windows in the turret with plastic to get it ready for the Christmas tree. With all the stuff we are doing, we are making quite a change in the feel of the house when it is cold outside. While we are keeping the thermostat down, the house is feeling warmer with less drafts.

Our First Snowfall...

Andrew Johnson had been in office for just two years following the assassination of President Lincoln the first time someone stood like I did this morning and looked out the window at the top of the stairs over this front yard covered, like it was today, with a light coat of snow. It is a wonder to me just how much can be covered up with a light coat of snow. I can almost imagine the house with the old porch knocked down and the rotted wood replaced, repaired windows and a new paint job when I see it through the light coat of snow. Were they also getting ready to puta Christmas tree in the window of the turret and looking forward to a beautiful Christmas with family and friends. Days like today, the voices and music of the past seem to mingle together through the years and become one beautiful story.

Looking out towards the horse barn.

Almost looks like a postcard, doesn't it?

Beadboard Ceiling

I just know that when you look at this picture, you are having the exact same first thought that I did...that has GOT to be the kitchen ceiling. It can't be anything else.

Here are a couple of the pieces of beadboard that are getting ready to be processed. Doesn't that look like the most amazing kitchen ceiling?

OK, first we have to run it through Christopher's planer a couple of times. It was quite cold Thanksgiving morning, but we got a good sized pile done.

That gave us pieces that look like this. You can see that most of the chipping paint has been removed by the planer, but the v-joint and the tongue and groove edges still have to be worked on.

Here we are outside working on a few of the boards. Scrappers, a heat gun and a rotozip took care of the majority of the paint.

Here it goes! The pieces are tongue and groove 3/4 inch beadboard. They probably graced the ceiling of an old wrap around porch on some old house that may not even be standing any more. The ends are not made to accept tongue and groove, so we are using Dean's biscuit joiner to make them attach together securely.

This weekend, we did get about 4 feet of the ceiling up. It looks incredible and I hope the kitchen will be one of the hubs of this old girl one day again soon! I will post more as we get it closer to being done!

Think Pink

Now that the ceiling is prepared, we are ready to insulate. The best thing about insulating is that when someone potties upstairs, and I am cooking in the kitchen, I don't have to listen to them peeing!!! It is a definite improvement!
The complete ceiling, ready for beadboard!

2x9 1/4...2 x 9 3/4...whatever they cut!!

This ceiling has been it's own set of challenges. Hand sawn ceiling joists for this ceiling were cut anywhere between 2 x 9 1/4 to 2 x 9 3/4. On top of that, we had the new plumbing which dropped down below the old and new joists to get the slant right for draining. Then we had the new joists which were 2 x 12's which dded up to quite the puzzle to put together to get the ceiling ready for the beadboard we are putting up. Here are some pics of the work in progress...

The little ones hanging out on the scaffolding-looking goofy!

Charles on the scaffoldng trying to figure out how to move the can lights low enough and then support them in the new framing and bridging the gap between heights with 2 x 4's.

The section over near he cabinets was pretty straight and didn't have any plumbing to contend with thank goodness.

Ben had fun with the chop saw. He was measuring, marking and cutting. Seth was on the scaffolding working with Charles.

It's Official-We Live Here!

There is something about hanging a picture on the wall that says-HOME and we hung the first picture this weekend. It is in the dining room and we smile every time we walk by it. And it only took 6 months to get this wall and room ready for a picture!!

Details

This weekend, quite a bit of time was spent working on the details of the house. This is one of the dining room walls-(for those who have been here, this one is in the dining room, between the kitchen door and the turret). The plaster had fallen away and, at some point, someone had tried to patch it with drywall, which had cracked and was falling away too. So this build up started with the brick wall and took three layers of plaster to get it smoothed out. It is my smoothest plaster job yet and I think it will look pretty good with paint!
The turret is such a beautiful feature but had fallen into quite a bit of disrepair. The outside still needs some wood and flashing work, but inside...I scraped, primed, caulked and painted in this little space for about 6 hours on Saturday. I painted the insets and the ceiling the same color as the wall and WOW, is this space looking good or what??? I still have a lot of touchup to do, but I am surprised by how good it looks. I painted the inset panels under the front window with the darker color too and the details of this room are really standing out. I will finish the touchup this week and paint over the plaster patch and hopefully my new wall hanging will come in. That will leave me with the ceiling in this room which needs some mud and paint. But, that will have to wait until we are done with the scaffolding in the kitchen. The dining room is really looking good!
Seth and Ben were camping with scouts on Saturday, but Sunday they were trying their hand at tuck pointing. Most of the tuck pointing that needs to be done is on the lower 2 feet of the house and they are catching on quickly. They really seem to get into the spirit of this old house and are not intimidated by anything we put in front of them. We are using the lime and sand mixture that matches the original. Well right now, it is really white compared to the old mortar, but it will get dirty soon, I am sure. This time, we used our waste lime pile for sand, so it is a little darker than the first batch. Charles was covering the old vents and doing some mortar and brick repair getting ready for insulation next month.
We started replacing the skim coat that was falling away in Seth and Ben's room today too. They can't wait until we get this done so they can finish painting their room. 'The Lodge' as they are calling it, will be open for business soon.

When All Else Fails...(the furnace wouldn't come on!)

When all else fails, make sure there is not a mummified bird in your furnace! We had turned the furnace on a few times and it had run just fine...but not this week! Friday night, we went to turn it on and it would not stay running the first time. So we flipped the braker and tried again...this time, just the motor ran, nothing else. So we called Dad for advice. Charles blew on a few hoses and ended up cutting one of the air pipes that went outside in case it was blocked. Eventually, even the motor, which had had a whirring sound, wouldn't even come on. Charles unhooked it to see if he could figure out the problem. Then I heard "Oh man..get me a paper towel!" He came out a mnute later with this. Dad was right all along, there was a blockage in the line! So, when all else fails, and before you call the service man, make sure there is not a mummified bird in your motor!

Chimney #'s 2 and 3 and Views from Above

We were concerned with breaking all the bricks on the back patio when we took down the second chimney, so we devised a bucket plan. The chimney came down about 6 bricks at a time which was a little tedious, but the good news is that all of the bricks stayed in one piece.
Here is Seth unhooking the bucket to empty the bricks. Cleanup was a breeze after this method too...
Hauling the bucket up and down wore Charles' back out, but it didn't take all that long to get done.
The view from the top down the chimney. Charles is standing in the attic looking down from the hole he just made.Here is the hole he left when the chimmney was down. He pulled the roof shingles back, removed all the botched patching materials and flashing, pulled up some dry rotted plywood, repaired the joist to go over where the chimney was. Then he placed new plywood, tar paper and shingles down for a hopefully dripless repair.

We have one more chimney to remove...here it is! Can you belive that there are no leaks in the ceiling from this one? All the water must be running straight into the crawl space. This view shows what shape the chimneys are in though and why they had to come down...

Great shot of the kids playing in the south yard taken from the roof.Here is the roof hatch as seen from above. From below, you just see the back of the tar paper...we knew it was there because the roof moves where this is over the top. We plan to repair this access at some point, but it is not leaking, so it is not a priority right now!This shot was taken looking down onto the top of the front porch. The front porch will be removed, taken back to one level and returned to the original appearance next year (somehow) and the black part of the roof we see here will no longer exist!

Attic Treasures

It is definitely not the pot of gold we were hoping to find, but buried in the old insulation and coon presents Charles was removing from the attic this weekend, we did find these two perfect old bottles. We will have to put them on a little shelf somewhere and continue to wonder why someone put them in the attic???

Who Are You????

Since the middle of August, there have been 364 visits to this blog. I would love to know who some of you are! If you would like, drop a line so we can see who is out there!

The New Mole Team and a GREAT Buy!

You have to look closely to see Charles and Ben under the house, but they are there. We have to measure for the new duct work. It is time to get the old girl ready for winter. The cold air returns that ended up on the side lawn this summer have to be replaced!
I took this picture from the entryway while Charles and Ben were underneath getting their measurements. We are going to replace two of the returns and then have a common air return in the laundry room. That should do the trick to make the furnace run good. The cold air return that are in the house are HUGE, probably for an older boiler or coal burning unit.
Here they are after they got out. You can see why we are drying it out under there. It is still kind of wet from Hurricane Ike when a river ran under it! It has to be dry for the insulation crew to put their stuff in.

Charles knew a guy who was selling his business and asked Charles if he wanted this 40 foot ladder for $100!!! So here it is, strapped to the top of the van. This sure will make taking down the chimmneys and painting the eaves easier!

Hole Number 3

While digging out for this hole, we discovered the old clay drain tile underground. This system is no longer working since we filled in the big cistern in the back of the house where I am sure all of the rain water used to run. But it was a neat find anyway.
Ben's job for this fill in is to scrape the old mortar off the old bricks. We are reusing what is here whenever possible, even when we are making changes to the old place. These bricks are from the chimmney that had to come down on the north side of the house.
Seth also took some lessons from Pepere this summer and had a hand at laying this brick wall. We are leaving the third hole under the house for an access and will add a door to this one.
Here is what they got done on Sunday afternoon. It still needs to be taller, but will stop the rain from flowing in so we can dry out under the house and get it ready for duct work and insulation.

Mortar and Hay

Ben took some lessons from Pepere this summer when he was here working on the brick work and is not at all afraid of this weekends project. As we removed the wooden pieces where they had made the access for the foundation work, many more bricks came down.
But by the end of the day on Sunday, they were all back up in place. We used two mortar recipes, one for the inside bricks and the toothpaste one for the outside layer to match the old mortar and avoid damage to the old bricks.

By the end of the weekend, we had a nice rebuilt wall, new vent and some of the tuck pointing completed on that side, under the window... We also made a slight dent in the dirt pile on the side of the house to fill in the hole!

Saturday, Mr. Kemner came by with his tractor and the kids watched in fascination as he raked and then bailed the field to the north. Teddy loved the tractors and Mr Kemner loves Teddy's hugs around his legs!

The kids had to climb up to see how big those bales are...(this was a one time deal as the size of them makes me nervous for playtoys.)

We have 6 round bales in the field now. It looks so much better than the weeds did! Thanks Mr and Mrs Kemner!