Hi everyone. We’ve had a busy week! For starters we now have hot water. Believe me, this is exciting stuff as although we had water, every rinse off and hand washing was with cold water. That never quite feels right, lol and we’ve started to have a few cold mornings here, too.

Paint Prepping – Paul also began seriously scraping the bay windows. He’s up on the scaffolding (I could never do that and still hate to see him up there but he doesn’t hesitate and is doing a fantastic job). With his career, he has an eye for detail and both of us have agreed that our goal is to do the best job we can for this house, therefore we are not doing a basic scrape and paint over. The more we are playing with it, we are finding at least 5 coats of paint on the exterior, therefore our goal is to scrape it all the way down to the bare wood and then repaint. We know this is a lot of labor, but this will sharpen the lines and have the cleanest look possible. It’s amazing as we work to think about how long it’s been since some of this wood has seen sunlight. It’s also incredibly amazing to see how good the condition of this wood still is (I guess 5 coats of paint has its perks).

We’ve done so much on the preparations and cleaning out of the house (and still have much to do), that not much can be seen from passersby. But take heart, we are finally getting there. This is the exciting part as we are now getting ready for painting!

• 

• 

Stubborn Stumps – Some of our local Lewisburg folks might have noticed that we also had all of the stumps ground and removed this week. We do love landscaping and want to have some beautiful foliage at some point, however since beginning our work we’ve found ourselves tripping over stumps with almost every few steps. There had to be at least 25 small stumps surrounding the front porch and the walk way and we also had a large stump on the left side of the house by the porch. We found a sewer clean out there and were afraid that the roots had grown into the pipes. Not to mention we were limited on where we could work and our cords were getting tangled constantly. Since the trees were down, the stumps had to go. We can walk there now!

Also our apologies to the neighbors for the noise we gave you all day. You’ve been so great through it all.

• 

• 

The Less Glamorous Side of Restoration – A couple of Stories: To give a little example of the work being done not seen from the street, when we first turned on the water, Paul found a leak at the clean out for the main sewer line down in the cellar. The cap had rusted and was leaking. It took him 3 trips to the hardware store, multiple conversations and a special order by mail later to finally find a cap that would fit the size of this old pipe. This size pipe is no longer a standard size used today but he found the right one and voila! He broke away the old one, cleaned the pipe and attached the new one and it’s tight as a glove.

• 

• 

• 

I also spent a day spraying for white mold in the cellar. Fortunately my brother owns a pest control service and knew how to advise me on what the mold was and the product to use. Thank you Dennis and a shout out to Frontier Services, Lewisville, TX! There wasn’t much and the beams were still in good condition but that mold had to go. So I suited up! Ahh…the glamour of restoring an old home.