Even with the rainy days, we ultimately had a few clear ones to make headway on a few projects and found ways to keep our selves sane. With the heavy rain, came a wet cellar. For those of who don’t know, our cellar is quite large but only part of it is cement, while the other part has a dirt floor. We’ve done some reading on this and found this is actually not a bad thing for various reasons and…
This week at the house started off a little off schedule. Hard rains came in for a couple of days and our original work plans had to be put on pause. What’s more, we were given a whole new set of more pressing work plans instead. You see, although there is a new roof on the house, one of the side back rooms began leaking from the middle of the ceiling, straight into a box with speakers in it (that’s…
New Sneak Peeks! Also on one of our sanity/can we break the monotony moments, we started removing paint from the staircase rails and the columns in the parlor. And look what we found underneath! Beautiful Wood! More to come… Cellar Doors – Here are our current awesome cellar doors. Yes, a trip to the ER waiting to happen, complete with rusty nails and sharp metal edges exposed. So far, we’ve managed safely but, they are on the way out. Besides,…
Paul has been continuing to work as well on those beautiful bay windows. He scraped some of the old rust off the very top and added aluminum flashing on the eaves to protect it (just in time before the rains came). He continues to work his way down on the exterior, level by level, scraping the windows and trying to remove as much of the old paint as possible and exposing the original long hidden wood. We’ve been told over…
This week I was able to finish mortaring the bricks on the cellar doors. This now lets Paul begin building the new cellar doors. He’s already chosen the trim and hardware and begun work on them. I wish I could give you a snapshot but not just yet. Trust me though, they will be beautiful and a far cry above what was there before. Paul’s work is so clean and precise. For those following along at home, as you may…
The front bay windows definitely have proven to be a challenge but we knew they would be. Normally a 2 story house would have you up about 18 feet to work on 2nd floor windows but because this home’s foundation/cellar has a large portion above ground and sits on a sloping downward hill, the actual height needed to reach not only the bay windows but the roof for repairs, would need to be about 26 feet. Paul has done an…
This week we began moving along a lot more visually from the street view. Although we were working steadily this whole time, much of what we’ve done has been behind the house or inside. We continued our painting on the front foundation, this time on the right side of the steps. This is quite a process as it required us fixing or replacing the loose mortar in many spots and addressing the boards around the bricks, then 2 coats of…
I want to tell you a little bit about our process and what you’ll see (this applies to painting as well as most of the work we will do). We will definitely be bringing in contractors at given points but right now, it’s the two of us. As we investigated hiring the help to get the house painted, we were told it would be next year before we could get a crew to do it and with winter coming, we…
This was not on my list this week but I couldn’t help myself. Each day I walked on the porch and into the parlor, I saw the beautiful side window and the lower half was covered with what appeared to be some sort of paint or masking tape, or both? While driving through the town I noticed another home with the exact same window on the porch and it’s so beautiful that I had to take action. I took a…
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…