New Columns

It might be too soon for before and after photos, but the new columns Joe built for the gable over the front steps does finish the last of the construction on the outside of the house and so it feels like a turning point worth highlighting. The first photo is the house nearly a year ago when we were first considering the project, and the
second and third photos show
the house with the new
tapered columns--
that's right, no more 2" x 6"s
propping up the smallest gable.

Inside the house has come
very far. All the walls are painted, some of the switch plates installed, floor finished, kitchen mostly installed, and all of the new windows installed. The plumbing is finished and electric will be finished early in the week. This weekend we are focusing on all of the trim work-scraping what we have decided to salvage, and building what is missing. We will start with cased openings, then plinths and baseboard, then windows and doorways.

We've not been active with the blog for a while, but lots of things are happening as we wearily enter the last stage of this renovation. I keep trying to remind myself how lucky we are to have this opportunity, when the truth is that many days I want to bang my head against a wall. I think I'm just really tired. But no matter--we're almost there.

Stained Floors

We have stained the floors! We went with Sherwin Williams stain (Ranch Oak) cut with the same brand of mineral spirits. We went dark to help blend in the burn marks that could not be sanded out of the dining room floor. The first photo shows the heart pine in the kitchen and the 2nd photo shows the entryway which has very
narrow white oak--this is the
flooring in the majority of the
house. Last night I applied Pro
Finish gloss Poly (Home
Depot)--no photos of that yet.
The next step is to sand lightly with some worn down screens using a buffing machine, vacuum dust and wipe down all the floors with mineral spirits, then apply a coat of satin Poly, sand again, clean again, and a third coat of satin Poly. We're getting there . . . Thanks to Chris Finley for getting us this far. He is the local hardwood
refinishing guru and we find
ourselves often asking: "WWCD?"
(or, What would Chris do?).

Floors and Windows

Just a quick update:

Here is one of many patches we made to our hardwood, and a look at one of the new windows. Bye bye drafty, beat-up, lead-painted windows. We actually tried
to save them but it became clear that salvaging them in the state they were in was going to be a whole lot of work with no payoff . . . however, we kept the casing and just ordered new sashes and the tracks they slide in. We are recycling the old window weights. The old sashes will be used as stationary windows in the garage that will become a studio. When we have time to scrape and paint them they will be installed around the top of the garage walls near the ceiling to provide light while maintaining lots of usable wall space. That's all for now!

Laundry List

Dear friends,
I hope to keep up better with the blog as we are starting to get close to the really exciting part--the finish! Lots of things are happening in a simultaneous frenzy, so this will feel a bit like a laundry list. The first photo shows the handsome attic vent Joe built. The second image shows the school house fixtures and globes
my Mom and Wes sent us--we love
them! They are from a 100+ year old
school in Bangor, Maine and we are
so happy they have a new home in
Jonesboro. The third photo is of
our primed shingles--right now it is
all shingles all the time for me. My
neck and back hurt and my hand is
bruised from the handle of the paintbrush
pressing against it. I have been doing this
monotonous task while Joe and his dad have
been installing windows (which is pure
torture). We ordered the sashes and tracks
they lock into (rather than order an entire
window in it's casing)--but of course,
the angle of the bottom plates didn't
match the angle of the tracks, and
many of the windows are out of square.
So instead of putting them in in a jiff,
they had to do surgery to the house to square the casing up. While this was happening I wondered if this is what it's sometimes like being a surgeon? Opening someone up and then finding a COMPLETELY different problem to deal with. It made me feel better to think of it in these terms because we are just dealing with windows. I'll post photos of them in another
blog entry. The fourth photo is of one of our
cleaned original hinges with probably six layers
of paint removed. We have lots
of door hardware yet to strip.
The last photo is of a part of the entryway paneling. The little strips of trim that have curves in them were impossible to scrape paint from without damaging the wood, so I bought trim as close to the original as I could find and am installing it throughout the entryway. Before signing off tonight I want to thanks our wonderful, thoughtful friends John, Missy and Joe who came by on Saturday to take part in the shingle-painting detail. And really, thinking back a bit further, I need to thank everyone who has helped us get this far: Joe's Dad and Mom, sister Denise and her husband Barry, nephews Ryan and Logan, and niece McKenzie and nephew-in-law Jake who have all been in the trenches at some
point or another with us during demo or when
something incredibly heavy needed to
be lifted--like say, a boiler in the
basement. I will not blame any of
them if they have put our cell
numbers on an alternate ring tone
so they know when not to answer.
Thanks one and all!

Repairing and refinishing the floors

While I was in Maine for a week visiting my family, my beloved was sanding the hardwood floors. It is amazing how fresh and new the wood looks right now--and imagine--it survived 90 years of being walked on, moving furniture around, pets pawing and skidding, carpet installation, termites, and a fire. In the second and third
photos, we have close-ups
of the termite damage. The
sub floor will have to be fixed,
which means we go under the
house once again (grab
the kleenex)! We spoke to the
local hardwood guru and he
is in such high demand that
he cannot fix the floor in time
for our deadline, so we are
bracing ourselves for the
intimidating task of patching
the hardwood ourselves.
However, he did identify the
kind of wood we are dealing
with (white oak with a few
random strips of red oak)
and was so kind to bring us
enough of it to patch it (I
can't begin to think of where
we could have found it--it is
the most narrow hardwood
I have ever seen--I think
just 1.5" wide). Also, look at
the darker spots around
the nails in the hardwood
(third and fifth photos).
Anywhere there were staples
or nails in the wood there
is a black stain. We think
the fire heated the nails so
much that the wood burned
around it--it goes straight
down into the wood and
cannot be sanded out. Or
in the heat the nail released
something that stained the
wood. In the fourth photo
you can see the deeper
burned areas in dining room
floor. This was sanded
extensively, but it is charred pretty deep, so we stopped there and are going to go with a dark stain to help camouflage it. However, the fire is a part of the story of the house, and being kind-of a purist, I am not inclined to go to great lengths to hide that. I believe this is what people who live in old houses refer to as "character." The last photo is an area of the floor where we made a doorway wider to accommodate slightly larger French doors, so we will add some plywood, and patch the hardwood over it. So, in the coming weeks we will buff the twice sanded wood, wipe it down with mineral spirits, stain it, and top coat it with Polyurethane. Other things on the to-do list include stripping paint from all the door casing, continuing to strip the piles of trim in the garage, and painting and hanging two more exterior doors. I'm making this sound too easy. Rest assured, there will be cursing.

There's a Possom in the Attic

Yes, there is a possum in the attic. I had been hearing pretty loud noises and assumed it was just the squirrels lobbing acorns onto the roof. However, our unfortunate framer came in to do some work on the hallway and pulled the staircase down only to be greeted by two beady eyes and some enthusiastic hissing--he said it scared the crap out of him. Sorry Miguel! I didn't know we had a squatter. This is what I imagine he looked like. So we have set a friendly trap with a drumstick in it and are hoping to catch and release as soon as possible. We can't finish the insulating in the attic until our little friend is gone.

In other news, we have Sheetrock up and the guys are in the process of applying the mud. Stay tuned!

Blood, Sweat, Tears and Insulation

The first phase of insulation has been completed with the recycled newspaper having been blown into the exterior walls. Once Sheetrock is hung on the ceilings the last phase of insulation will happen with the cellulose being blown in between the rafters. In preparation for the Sheetrock we have covered the hardwood floors with plastic--our house is starting to look like one of the kill rooms from Dexter.

Because the insulation feels like a turning point (it helps so much to define the space) I have been reflecting on the work of the past five months,
and most of all I feel really lucky. There have been many low points, like the day the inspector uttered the phrase "widespread termite damage" right after we purchased the house--I remember feeling nauseous. Or the weeks Joe and I spent crawling around under the house cutting out old cast iron pipes wrapped in questionable material. It was 100 degrees and we were wearing hazmat suits and respirators, my knee caps looked like badly bruised apple skins from the rocks and pieces of brick in the dirt. There was more than one occasion when I sobbed under the house. I timed my breakdowns to coincide with the sound of the Sawzall Joe was using. There was plenty of cursing, there were urgent care visits and Tetanus shots, and in customary fashion my dear father-in-law shed some blood along with us for the cause. Before we bought the house we optimistically thought that the demo could be done in a weekend with a bunch of help from family and friends--we couldn't have been more wrong--it took FOUR MONTHS of heavy lifting and three 30-foot dumpsters. There were many days of the incredibly hot summer when we were alone and armed with the wrong tools. Those were the overwhelming moments when I thought we had made a bad decision, or wished I hadn't been an art major because I surely wouldn't be doing something like this had I any money at all. Surprisingly, those feelings have always passed. We might work like dogs, but we are so lucky. After our first house sold we were able to pay cash for this diamond in the rough, and all those years of art school spent learning how to make things have made us very capable people. Where we have the money we use sub-contractors for some of the specialty work like plumbing, electric and Sheetrock, and where we don't have the money, we fortify ourselves and move forward into the unknown. That is in part what is going to enable us to have a very small mortgage payment after this project. Living responsibly is important to us, and bringing a nice old house back from the brink to offer the historic downtown neighborhood one more finished project feels good. My mom has a great ability to see a house for what it can be, rather than what it is at the moment, and my dad at a much younger age (24 yrs old I think) moved his family to the Maine woods to a house built in 1820 with no electric and no plumbing and no elder family members close by to help like we have. He wired and plumbed it himself. That seems incredibly brave to me. At 24 I was not that mature and certainly not that brave. My father-in-law has been building houses for years and is able to fill in the large gaps in our knowledge. Joe's parents are incredibly supportive and have good ideas. It seems an appropriate time to reflect on our trials and tribulations and to give thanks for this incredible opportunity.