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!

New Set of Eyes

Sometimes it takes a new set of eyes and a fresh perspective to figure things out. We were going ot make this a lot harder than it was by matching wood up on all the sides and joining them with biscuits. Dean came in, took a look and asked why we didn't just come in on the frames and make new strips.
There was a lot of detail work to figure out, especially with the sill that had to be cut, added to, biscuited, glued and clamped to get it to look right. And they had to figure out which pieces could be used and had been used to make up this window frame.
I don't know saws very well, but this bad boy had me drooling! This saw is a nice set up that Dean brought over to make the work go faster. Not wanting to replace the blade, we made sure we found all the nails before we started cutting!!
Once this is sanded, caulked and wood puttied, you will never even be able to tell we made a change. Thank goodness for a new set of eyes and a new perspective! This window looks GREAT!! Thanks Dean. Enjoy the jelly!

Who's There?

Sometime in the last 140 years, someone covered this doorbell with several layers of paint. It took me about 3 hours, some stripper, stripping gloves, screwdriver, steel wool, toothbrush and brasso to uncover what lay hidden...

It is a real treasure, isn't it. It is going right back on the door where I hope it will remain for several years to come.

Details

With the chimney down in Bailey's room, we were able to bleach and clean the ceiling in her room and kilz the spot where the mold had started to grow.

We were also able to remove the old electrical cord, put up the last piece of crown molding and get that caulked and painted.

We put up her ceiling fan/light. It is one of the Reikers we got that has the heating elements in it. We can shut the door at night, set the temperature for the room and know the two little ones will be comfortable...I love these things!!This in in Bailey's closet. This roof patch seems to be holding too, so the closet is dry. Now it has a ceiling, purple paint with cream woodwork and a cream floor. The old hooks are covered with dress up clothes as is the hanger and we can really start to make this room look nice! Bailey loves her closet and all the shelves and room!

Ike Storms Through

I was amazed that a storm that made landfall 600 + miles away could do so much damage and still drop so much rain. We did get lucky in that we didn't have any real damage, just a lot of watching, but the water amount is still impressive...

The stream to the south of the house had filled in most of the 6 or so acres that it sits on. This is the water coming in through the gate that goes to the old barn.

Where it met up with the water that was encroaching on the workshop. This gate leads into the burn pile in back of the barn.

This is the fence that seperates our property from the private lake. Normally, there is no water here at all. Here you can see how high up on the fence it came.

One of our big concerns was that the water from the city would go over the dyke into the water of the 'private lake' which would then contaminate our property...you can see here how close it came to doing just that.

Here is the water line in back of the workshop.With the sump unable to keep up, we made makeshift damns and covers to the remaining holes under the house to try to stop the crawl space from filling up. The water was coming up fast.

The front yard was like a lake, especially after we built the little damns. Charles was showing off how nice his legs look in the rubber boots in the water...

I Won the Battle Against the Electrical Panel and Wires

During the day when it is just Teddy and myself here, I am trying to find things to do that allow him to stay close. So today, I battled the old electrical service and won!!! Those thick wires are really kind of hard to get through. The entryway corner looks so nice with the panel gone! I like the paint color too as it is almost the same color as we are going to put in the kitchen. We just have a little bit of drwall to patch to cover where the soffet needs to meet the wall and then I will be ready to paint the entryway. The stairs are also in the process of going back to bare wood so I can really make that staircase pop like it deserves to.

In this picture, you can see the old paint color clearly and a little strip of the pinstripe border that a previous homeowner put up. It probably really drew your eye upward and made the height of the entryway stand out. It was obviously put in before the electrical panel was put on the front of the house since it was behind the box built for the old electrical service. It is kind of neat to wonder when I find a little thing like this piece of wallpaper who put it up and when. It is part of what makes these old treasures really neat.

The Never Ending Bathroom

Well, it is not entirely it's fault, but this bathroom is taking forever to finish!! In the last three weekends, we have finished taping, mudding and sanding inside the bathroom and the sink area. This job was interrupted by a birthday party/trip to the zoo day, an evening and a day of fixing the van, a trip to Chicago and the lovely repair of the turret.

Painting the inside and outside bathrooms. (Please note both Charles' and my lovely work clothing for the house...old sweats, stained clothes and a wife beater t-shirt...we are styling when working on this old girl...)

And we stripped the hallway floors with lots of 50 grit sandpaper and a belt sander that thankfully has a two year warantee. We found that under the brown paint there is a dark walnut stain on the old floor. I think that it will look really nice with the cool blue gray on the wall in the hallway, so we are going to stain this part dark like it was.

We are using several items that we found on the premise to build the vanity area. The countertop, we purchased at Hood's. The sinks and light fixture were from Lowe's. The faucets were ebay...but the trim, we are reclaiming from stuff not being reused in the house.

The front and back aprons of the vanity were pieces of wood, one was in the barn, the other leaning against it. They have a nice detail in the front of them that we like. The legs were in the barn and we will put on after the floor is done.

This is where we are after this weekend. The laminate countertop burned up on of our saber saws. Then we got out Charles' fathers and it started smoking too. Charles went down to Home Depot to see what could be wrong and they were baffled, but sent him on his way with new blades for the saw and some rotozip blades. Well, the saw started smoking again, so we switched to the rotozip which would go through it, but not without making the sawdust really hot. We ended up drilling holes all over around the remaining circle and then connecting the dots. W got it out, but WOW. Who would have thought it would be so difficult. A return trip to Home Depot may have helped solve the problem and while we love Hood's for many items, the older laminate can, over time, get really hard and difficult to work with...so we will purchase everything but that when we can at Hood's.

So, we have a mirror, light, one sink and the vanity top in and will hopefully get the other sink in soon and then finish the floor...

The inside bathroom is coming along too. Here it is with the door (no trim), towel bars with the kids individually colored towels. I also got the toilet paper holder put on and the drywall mess is pretty much cleaned up. We have to put on the window and door trim here and it will be finished!!