Hi everyone! My apologies for the delay in posting this time. We’ve been out of town and had a few other things going on around here, and I looked up to see it was suddenly several weeks since my last post! Let me see if I can catch everyone up…

As many of you know, there is a certain crispness in the air these days. And when the wind blows, there’s a subtle change you can feel. The season is changing here in WV. The leaves are just beginning to turn and a few lay scattered around on the ground.

With that, our countdown has begun for any work we hope to do outside. Therefore, it’s lean in and as you would say “all hands on deck” for everything we can possibly do before the winter sets in.

We’ve been working with a wonderful kitchen cabinet designer and are moving along with our plans to bring the kitchen of this old home into the 21st century, but never fear, it will hold an echo and look of the old. Trust me. 😉 Because we are continuing to work as long as we can on the exterior, the cabinets will be planned for the winter season, but oh wow is it fun to see glimpses of what will be in this home. We truly want it to be a beautiful heartbeat of the home, nurturing a warm, food and family space. More to come…!

As for the exterior, all I can say is WOW! Paul has once again out done himself with long hard days, and it shows. Even passersby are stopping to comment on the progress. As with everything else on the home’s exterior, he is removing all of the old paint, stripping it down to the original wood (involving three steps: grinding, scraping and sanding), then caulking & replacing boards as needed, and finally painting it back. This technique is tedious but truly gives a beautiful crisp fresh look to the ole’ girl!

Here you can see his work on the right side bay windows. Scaffolding is back up and of course, Paul is up there doing the lifting, literally. 🙂

He’s repaired holes in both of the top eaves (and hopefully stopped any future winter residents from flying in this season. Sorry, no attic residents allowed now. lol).

Beautiful! Comparing the top portion to the bottom, you can see a real before and after! Wasn’t she grand?!

Next he moved to work on the top right 1/4 of the house (the portion you can reach by walking on the porch roof – no scaffolding, meant I could help! There was no way I was getting up on the scaffolding, sorry Paul, but this, I could do!). As always, he has done the heavy lifting but a couple of days I was out there, caulking and painting with him. A few pics to see the before first, then his work, then where we are now. Gorgeous!!

You might see some scraped paint on the front porch. This is his work he saves for rainy days.

A quick side note, some of you may have noticed this home has brackets around the top exterior walls of the homes. The pattern of the carving and the finial is not one we’ve found exactly out there, therefore it was probably custom made. With that in mind, we needed to save as many as we could. This was my department. As Paul worked on the outside, he would pull down the old heavily painted brackets and bring them to me. I’ve been working in the back room, scraping, sanding, heat gun melting and chipping away at the old paint on these beautiful brackets. Then painting them back.

See below…some of them were broken and Paul repaired them, I then began the tedious work of getting them clean and painted back. Even though it is taking a bit on each one, I’d say it was worth it. What do you think? Aren’t they elegant?

You can get a real feel of how this home is going to finally look! Wish us luck as we keep working on as much of the exterior as we can before the season changes too much. Keep you posted…