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This post has been languishing for the past MONTH.... waiting for pictures. I finally decided to put it up without, as I have yet to shoot, organize, find the proper accompaniments. My apologies for words alone. - R -
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Well what can I say? The roofers have been diligently hand-soldering copper on my roof for three and a half weeks, it rained cats and dogs all last night and we have NO LEAKS!!!!!!!!!

We got seven windows back from Dayton Art Glass today and Bob's teed up to install on Tuesday. In a spectacularly bad turn of luck, it appears that most of the damage done to the lead on the attic bedroom windows was from a squirrel who must have been caught up there. Dick actually found a tooth embedded when he began cutting out the lead to replace it. I wonder if the squirrel ever got out, and if he did, whether he died a dismal death of lead poisoning. (I can only hope...)

I had curtains made for the girls' room and bathroom so those rooms are really starting to come together.

Now for the bad news...
The new garage has this troublesome leak. Rob et al have been caulking, sealing, and waterproofing to beat the band but they just can't get it to stop.

The electrical installations done a couple of weeks ago are sub-par and need to be re-done. (that's the second bunch of electricians I had to fire.) Rob's still looking for replacements.

Dan finally hit his head hard enough on the kitchen light to knock it off. Up until now, we've managed to avoid it coming down by placing a butcher block and the kids' small table underneath it so Dan wouldn't continually hit his head on it. Still he managed. This is along the same vein as the dent in our closet ceiling, (the sloped part under the stairs, where he inexplicably crushed the plaster with the sheer force of his thick skull,) and also the cracked plaster on the ceiling of the kitchen stairs. The guy has been close to six feet tall for the past twenty years or so, you'd think he'd have a pretty good idea what the evelation of his head is at any given moment. How can one not know where one's head is? But I digress. The kitchen light in question was a marvel of Johngineering so mediocre that it rivals the inane 14 gauge wiring of the entire room. (12 gauge being code and anything else just NOT.) This massive low-hanging fixture located in the middle of the room was attached to a mounting strap which was bolted to another mounting strap which was screwed into only one side of the electrical box, which was not flush to the ceiling. That's akin to tying two ropes to the front of the boat, looping them around a tree on shore and hoping it doesn't swing around and hit the dock or run aground. We went to Lowes this afternoon to purchase a flush mounted ceiling fixture to replace the pool table light that was there, rather than buying a hard hat.

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A slight post-script.

We've pulled six more windows out and Dayton Art Glass will pick them up on Friday. We are hoping that's it for the year, but the guys will be addressing the rest of the window pans in the coming weeks and if there is substantial rot, it will have to be taken care of before they can wrap the new copper around the frames. So the window restoration project is actually ahead of schedule, (it's only money...) having done 18 of the 76 leaded sashes this year.

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It's been a while since I've posted, partly because I've been busy with other stuff, and partly because work has slowed to almost nothing being done.

Congratulations are in order. That is my car ACTUALLY PARKED IN THE NEW GARAGE! Wooo-Hooo! The new garage is currently in a holding pattern. All that remains is for the electrical work to be finished up. We have outlets stubbed out but no wire pulled or fixtures attached. We also need to re-configure the temporary lights that were installed and add some to the old garage so we can walk in without tripping in the dark. (The only switch for the current lights is currently located at the top of the interior stairs.) Rob has the punch list for the other items - trim here, clean up there etc.

We've elected to pull the rest of the windows (three sashes) out of the girls' bedroom and have them restored so we can go ahead and have some interior storm windows fabricated for this winter. They were leaking enough to have drips coming down the interior wall beneath them. All in all a good decision.

Durable started today. We have had a pretty substantial leak on the stairway the last few downpours and we are eager to get along on that project. We signed the initial roofing contract with Durable last November. The first window pan they pulled revealed substantial rot underneath, so Bob's back on the job, (down at the lumber yard right now cleaning them out of 4 x 4 oak and some cedar facing,) replacing the window frames in the attic bedroom.

We've been working with a kitchen designer on the plan for the back half of the house. We'll start that project next spring after we take a breather over the winter.


The landscaping looks great out front... not a day goes by if I'm out there where a neighbor doesn't stop to tell us how fabulous it looks - what an improvement, etc. We are really very pleased with how this project turned out. Our biggest fear was that the new garage would stick out like a sore thumb and ruin the look of the house. Our careful planning, (and substantial budget,) created an integrated space that is barely noticeable from the street. We gained a large patio, (that will be accessible from the kitchen when we redo it next year,) an ample garage, and some usable basement space as well. A great improvement!

We close on the house next door on Aug 30. We are petitioning the city to move the property line so we can absorb the entire driveway onto our property, and then move the neighboring garage and pour a separate driveway for them. That should clear up the muddy 'shared' driveway problem for good. Along the way, we will fix up next door and either keep it as a rental property or sell it (if the market improves.) A woman must have a hobby to keep her busy, and apparently, this is mine.

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Doors, doors, doors.

While we were on Vacation, Bob got most of the doors finished. The pictures are (left to right, top to bottom,) The screen door for the back hall, the double doors from the old garage to the driveway, the walk through from the new garage to the old garage, the back hall door, the dining room patio doors, and the front screen doors.

I met with a geotech/soils engineer this week and we will be having some testing done to try to pin-point where the water seeping into the basement is coming from. (And more importantly, whether it can be mitigated through some manipulation of the land - swales, drains, etc.) This is really the first step towards addressing the rest of the landscaping. We want to get rid of the bunkers, and while doing so improving the water profile of the property. No question adding plants and trees back will help, but if we can do more, now is the time to incorporate earth movement into the plans.

The work that Durable Slate did before we left, particularly the flashing and copper work around the main chimney, failed to hold water while we were on vacation. We came home to water damage in the attic bedroom, Master bedroom and even some in the living room. That is to say that the leaking, worse than we'd ever experienced, went down through three floors. They sent a guy out as soon as I reported the problem but he was unable to do anything about it because it was raining... (Duh.) A crew will be out today to either finish the work up there, (I was under the impression it had been finished as we'd been charged in full for it,) or to dry it in properly.

We now have a way up to the new patio as Dave has finished the steps from the front porch. I'm eager to get the rest of it completed, which is minimal. (Soldering the seams in the copper counter-flashing, general clean-up including power washing the adjacent brick, and re-pointing said brick, trimming out the electrical and maybe restoring the powder room window.)

I've bugged the new landscaper about getting me a plan this week, which he has promised, but I don't really think it's going to happen. The property is still a mess, the weeds exploding while we were on vacation, and the grass growing tall in spite of my request for mowing.

The pool seems to be holding it's own... although with the prodigious rain it's within an inch of overflowing... (into the laundry room.) Like I keep saying, this house has some seriously bad water mojo.

Rob and Co. are working on Dan's Manspace, (the old garage.) They are building a plywood floor over top of the concrete. There is a 6 inch difference from the bottom of the steps to the house over to where the floor drain was. (The one we capped which went directly into the storm sewer.) This will now be flat, although it will still have some slope to it.




And what's up with THIS place????

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It has been almost a whole month since my last blog and we are moving right along on a number of projects.

Since last month, Bob has been working diligently on several wood projects, the biggest being the posts out back. We removed and refurbished the windows in the girls' room and they look/work great! We have been really pleased with the restoration work Dick at Dayton Art Glass did. Aside from his very competitive price, we get the sense that he enjoys this type of work and puts a lot of care and skill into it. One of the windows needed a complete re-build, but they were able to salvage the glass and match the lead almost perfectly. The good news is, yes, we found the yellow jacket nest. It was located inside the post Bob removed. The post was so rotten that it was almost hollow. Here's an example of what shape the wood was in that Bob removed.That's some fine looking hardwood there! We were unable to find a piece of oak big enough replace the posts, so Bob improvised with two 4 x 8 cedar posts, and then he trimmed on the inside, where needed, with oak to match the original design.

We also had the main gas line replaced, and the new meter mounted on the front of the new garage. It's better than in the basement, but ugly as sin and we're planting some boxwoods around it as soon as possible. All the interior gas lines were replaced at the same time, so now we can actually pass the HVAC inspection. The bad news, (of course) is that none of the fireplace lines held test so they had to completely disconnect them to pass the gas inspection and we now have no gas to the fireplaces. We'll address that at a later date, once we get an assessment of the chimneys.

The other big project this month has been the 'Great Wall' which has taken about all month. The other day the mailman asked the wall guys if they wanted him to forward their mail to here. I told them another week and I'd start charging rent. They are doing beautiful work and we are very pleased with how it looks. Initially we wanted a rock wall, to replace the one that the backhoe split apart, but it was infeasible, (read that - way too expensive in this day and age!) so we settled for a landscape block and were relieved to discover our misgivings about the institutional look of the block were pretty well dashed. They had to haul off about half a dozen trucks of fill and we ended up with two full tiers. It's been slow going, and we've had some set backs, not the least of which was Mike digging up the brand new gas line, not once, but TWICE! I noticed when I did the pictures for this post that Mike was wearing the same shirt both times he hit the line (a week apart) so I told him to get rid of the unlucky t-shirt and bury it when they backfilled the second repair. Thank goodness he doesn't have far to go to be finished - I'd be worried if he were going to have to be digging around the line again!

Before









After

And last but not least... the pool is in the process of filling as I type. The garden hose has been on full-bore for the past 35 hours and we are about two-thirds full. I'm estimating the water bill at around $500 to fill that sucker. It's not a large pool but it is a good 8 feet deep. As we had suspected, the lines were bad - both the skimmer and return lines need to be replaced so we are going to hold that thought until next year... The pool guys will lay lines overground for this season and next fall or next spring we will put permanent lines in when we move the pool equipment off of the platform that's sliding down the hill and over towards the pool house that's falling down. (Another story.)

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It's slow-going, but we are making progress.
The patio really looks like a patio. The parapet walls are essentially done. When we had them laid out, they looked too tall, so instead of scalloping them, we elected to make them about 6 inches shorter than code and we'll finish them off with a 2 1/2 inch diameter pipe railing. We can continue this railing down the new steps and along the front walk, (replacing the decrepit one currently there,) and it will all tie in nicely.

We have made some decisions on the work that needs to be done on the back of the house. Bob Sr. says he can save the frame around the dining room windows, (pending no ugly discoveries during removal of the adjacent posts,) but the news on the windows above wasn't as good. The bank of five windows in the Girls' room has to come out as the sill beneath is rotted through. He'll get to that in the next couple of days and the windows will go to Dayton Art Glass for restoration. Again, the good news here is that we will definitely find the yellow jacket nest in the process, and block the ingress to the house for all sorts of creepy crawlies when the window frame gets tightened up.

When Bob took out the living room doors last week, he found (no surprise here,) termite damage under the threshold and had to replace the joist, subfloor and floor. Thankfully, he was able to make the new threshold just wide enough to cover the parts he had to cut out so we don't have any floor patching to do. Picture is of another shredded board. Those termites were very well fed. Bob has also taken out the dining room doors, and Dayton Art Glass picked them up today to start restoration and size adjustment to fit the new oak frames Bob made.

We have the roof estimate. Sort of. I need to go through it with a fine-toothed comb, but I should be able to do that in the next day or so. Our new strategy is to 'fix' the stuff that needs to be fixed sooner or later, even if it's not leaking right now. This means pulling off and replacing all broken, damaged or poorly installed slates, (with salvaged material that matches,) replacing all the worn out copper, (essentially all valleys, window pans and dormers,) and replacing the johngeneered metal ridges with clay tile as they originally were. Did I mention that Sean, (the slate installer,) found squirrel nests up under the incorrectly installed ridge? (That would explain the squirrel poop in the attic.) It will cost a small fortune, but aside from routine yearly maintenance, (inspection and replacement of worn/broken slates,) we shouldn't have to do anything else for 30 years or so. We needn't replace the whole roof, nor use new slate. The pitch is sufficient enough that we should get another lifetime out of the current roof as long as it is PROPERLY maintained.

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What's new this week? We met with Dick about the landscaping last Monday and although we lined out where the retaining walls were to go, the ensuing rains washed out all our work. Back to the drawing board.

We finally saw the roofers. They came last Monday and Tuesday and then disappeared. As bad as the concrete crew have been about showing up, the roofers are even worse. To compound this problem, when we first got the estimate (in December,) we were told that the roof was essentially sound and we were not advised to replace it. Instead we were told that it could (and should) be repaired using re-claimed slate to match. However, when the installer came out last week he said we should replace the whole thing and we should NOT use salvaged slate. So I called the office and said what gives? Your estimator and your installers are giving me two diametrically opposed opinions. So on Friday we had TWO estimators show up. We came up with a modified plan and I'm waiting on numbers to make a decision.

Bob Sr. is hard at work on the doors. It's beautiful weather now so working outside is wonderful. He's making the new screen doors (which he built from scratch,) fit up front today. It's a bear to get them in right since the opening is neither plumb nor square, and they have to swing, too. Still no decision on the back half of the house, (whether we have to take out the windows upstairs as well as the dining room,) and materials are looking to be a problem. 10 X 10 oak beams are hard to come by. We may have to use pressure treated and wrap it in oak or cedar.

The new garage is looking like a new garage. Dan piled a bunch of junk into it last weekend. The lift door was installed last week. They guys doing it didn't inspire a lot of confidence. The door weighs about double what a regular door weighs. They assembled it like they usually do but with the garage being brand new and no power in it yet they failed to secure a way out. There was plywood screwed from the old garage side in the cut opening between the two and the door was too heavy for the guys to lift up manually so they essentially locked themselves in the garage and had to break down the plywood to get out. All I heard was a bunch of cussing and hammering but when I saw the mess (and damage) in the old garage I figured out what happened. The blue pipes in the front are part of our elaborate drainage system that we hope will end our water problems in the garages and basement for good.

This is the final sand coat on the stucco where the old garage doors were. The guy doing it was having a heck of a time matching the texture of the existing stucco until I explained that the existing was original to the house and began its life as a smooth finish. When I described the ivy we've heard covered the place he finally understood. I told him to go ahead and just do a smooth sand coat. Dan and I both love the color of this stuff but sadly it's a little out of the vernacular for our house. But seeing this color has galvanized our decision to go with a slightly warmer cream color than we currently have. And we may use this terra cotta color somewhere on the inside... I was thinking the dining room.

Last but not least, we have a mason diligently working to build the parapet wall on top of the garage. I picked brick last week and found a hand made brick that mimicked the age and condition of what we had. The color was close, only a couple shades lighter. I think it'll work out ok. We are still deciding about what to do on the top of the wall. I wanted it scalloped, and it will be stucco, but we don't want to have to paint every year, which is what will happen if we stucco the top. Rob suggested limestone on the top and it's pretty expensive. We're still looking at options.

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Since my last post we've had little completed, but some forward movement on several projects. Most notably, we finally got poured so the new garage is totally enclosed, (except for the lift door which will go on after the driveway gets finished, since concrete guys are not known for their finesse and we don't want to have to strip and sand and repaint the door.) The guys poured the slurry on Thursday and it looks great.

Something else popped up this week. Remember Dan's desire to address some of the outside beams? I had Bob Sr. take a look at them just in case it was too much for Dan to handle and guess what - it was! The first picture is of the bank of windows in the dining room. There are two rows of five sashes, one on top of the other. This whole unit is flanked by two massive 10" x 10" posts that go all the way up to the roof. These had been jongineered with caulk and a 4x4 piece of pressure treated with a strip of aluminum (painted to match, of course) and when we pulled off the metal strip, lo and behold ROT straight through and through. The second picture shows the base of the post on the right - the 4x4 isn't actually sitting on anything, the wood behind continued to rot beneath the patch job. (That's my foot for perspective.) While we had noticed some water damage on the post on the inside we were kind of hoping it was from condensation or window leakage. No such luck... the wood has actually rotted all the way through to the inside. That's 10 inches of wood! Oh, and that's not the bad news. The bad news is that these posts are structural. We will pull out the entire window unit and both posts all the way up to about a foot above the adjacent roof lines (since the rot extends up from the gutter line about that far.) Bob will then build a whole new post and beam structure and stand it up, marrying it god-knows-how into the remaining posts that hold up the roof hip over top the girls window above. The good news is that we will probably finally find the yellow jacket nest in the the process. Small victories.. that's our saving grace.

This is a picture of the guys lathing the new walls in the old garage door openings. We should be stuccoed today and Monday. Bob Sr. finished the window openings and ordered the windows yesterday and they only take a couple of days. We are still waiting on hardware for the walk thru door but Bob rigged up a handy cross bar so we can get in and out without having to walk all the way around the house and opening the door with a drill-driver.

I sort of finished my part on the girls' bath windows... I got the sashes out of the frames and Bob and I will meet with yet another art glass guy on Monday. He'll give me a bid on doing the windows one by one, (important since we have the ten in the dining room in the pipeline now.) We aren't sure if we want the art glass guy to do the whole restoration or if we want to take the steel frames to a metal shop to be stripped, primed and painted. I was thinking there's no reason why we can't use a marine grade or automotive grade paint on the suckers and never have to paint again. I refuse to paint windows every five years - with over 80 of them it's just ridiculous!

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I haven't blogged for a while which is more of an indication of the pace around here than my schedule... it's going pretty slow these days.

Steffan (the bug guy,) came out to spray for the yellow jackets in the girls' room. We spent some time staking out the back of the house to find the entry/exit of the nest, but came up short. We did find one hole where they were going in and out but we were not confident it led to the nest that is troubling us. There are so many gaps outside big enough for a yellow jacket to get it! All the beams have shrunk and pulled away from the stucco. And then there is the problem of rotting wood in the beams adjacent to the windows where we think the yellow jackets are nesting.

This is another one of those jobs that keeps popping up. Dan had been interested in restoring the outside timbers but after he punched a gaping hole indicating substantial rot, I had the big man (Bob Sr. - Rob's Dad) take a look. Because it was the first beam we decided to restore, and because it was so very rotten, and because it is a major STRUCTURAL element, (no, not decorative,) I felt we should have the professionals handle it while taking notes for future forays ourselves. We will be using a hybrid solution, part epoxy, part pressure-treated lumber, part white oak overlay to match the original beam. What you can't see in this picture is the perspective of depth. The beam is about 8 inches square, and the little hollow you see from this side is about 3 inches deep. Bob just kept picking away at it until he found solid wood. You know you're in trouble when you can remove structural elements with a dull soup spoon.

So along with the beam project, while we have the big guy working with us, (freed up from Rob's other job-in-perpetuity, a total remodel they've been working on for two years,) I asked for a bid to re-do some doors. The patio doors from the living room and dining room are in kind of rough shape. The metal frames have corroded and they stick, making them difficult to open. With the leaded sashes being so large (and old, and brittle,) they've sustained damage in the form of bowing, cracked panes and loose supports. New metal frames would have to be manufactured from scratch to match (since they don't make 'em like that anymore,) so rather than go through that expense we've decided to re-use the leaded sashes in a custom built oak frame instead. And he'll refurbish the existing screen doors and build us some for the front door (which are missing.)

Rob and Co filled the gaps in the flexicore with cement this week, as well as various other nit-noid stuff that needed to get done to prepare for the waterprooofing and final pour for the garage. the concrete guys cut the existing driveway to make way for some piping to carry storm water away from the house. We've been a little concerned about the down-spout situation in the back as all that water eventually shows up in the basement after seeping under the house.

And last but not least, the garage lift door is finally framed. Rob is eager to install it as it is taking up quite a lot of space in his shop. Some progress was made on cleaning out the garage space last week with Larry having at the large slabs cut for the walk through door to the old garage using a hand percussion hammer. There's still more to do before it's all gone - (the back hoe couldn't reach it when it back-filled a couple of weeks ago so it has to be removed by hand.)

We've had a cold spell hit again so the concrete guys can't do anything. Hopefully next week we'll get waterproofed so we can pour the week after that. I'm thinking we may be finished by June.

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It rained Monday, so the roof leaked and the roofers are behind another day. The masons are scheduled to come first and fix the chimney, before the roofers replace the slates or metalwork, presumably because masons are not so light on their feet, so whatever damage they do can be addressed by the crew after them. I got a call from the scheduler late last week indicating that I may actually have some work done this week, provided the weather holds. The good news is that I am the very next job on the list. The bad news is that they since they are in Columbus, and they don't send the weather-dependent crews out-of-town unless they have a level of comfort that they will be able to work a whole day, and it's scheduled to rain all week, we won't see them until next week, and I'll be moving the buckets around for the next little while.

The garage door arrived today to be sent off for painting. There is nothing to attach it to in the new garage yet so I guess it's just as well. I am eager to get it installed to secure the space now that we have the cut out done between the old and the new. Rob met with the concrete guy to pin him down on when we will begin to move forward on the top and back fill. I also got him to move the 'bridge' (plank that stretched form the front porch to the top of the garage, over the eight foot drop,) that was such an attractive nuisance to Naomi. (Pic is of said bridge, not garage door.)


We are quite happy with the sump pump and drain system we've been working on. The drain in the laundry room appears to be working pretty well. It's wet, but at least it doesn't run all the way around the room to the old drain anymore. The new drain keeps the stream out of the way against the cracked wall where it enters. Tommie likes it, as he'd rather drink from the floor (or toilet) than his bowl. And the sump kicks butt. A couple of weeks ago, as Rob sheepishly fixed the downspout pointing into the hole in the side of the house, he was perched on a ladder in front of the discharge. It throws about 2 gallons in a second or two of 55 degree ground water. It nailed him good!

Remember Dan's irrational desire to build a conservatory over the patio linking the living room and dining room? (His rationale: it would give us water-proofing around 17 windows, take care of the leakage down the outside basement walls in that area, give us a nice buffer to the rooms without sacrificing light and - this is new - act as a corridor to the new guest cottage for when the girls are in college and we are running a bed and breakfast. (Don't get me started... ) Well if we had more money than God, I suppose this would work. Rob found the link. I often accuse that whenever he's on the job site, the bill goes up by $4,000 (something always pops up, like another leak or some additional work,) but this time it's more like $104,000!

The floor guys put the last coat on the girls' bathroom floor. This now makes the room fully functioning, and tomorrow the girls will take their inaugural dip. (Tonight's date night.) We still have some issues up there - the window, the medicine cabinet/mirror, and the challenge of fitting a shower curtain to the oddly shaped opening. Rob and I think we have that one licked, although you never know until a theory is tested in practice. He needs to do some cutting and gluing, and I need to do some cutting and sewing.

The hole between the old garage and new garage looks good, although it's few inches shorter than we'd like because we were getting a little too close to the old window which was filled in with concrete. The wall is very thick. You can see the slab that they push out of there... it's about 10 inches. We need a little caterpiller to lift it out of the garage.




I hope to have pictures of the roofers, or the concrete guys soon. No luck today.

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I'm happy to report that we've turned off the furnaces for a couple of days. It was 76 degrees here yesterday, which worked out wonderfully as the floor guys showed up to do the girls' bath floor, and the concrete cutter showed up to re-fit the flexicore panel and cut a hole through the front wall from the new garage into the old garage, for the entrance door between. When sanding floors and cutting concrete, it's best not to have a blower re-distributing the dust throughout the house. Yup, that sure is a big honkin' saw that guy's using to get through the 10 inch wall.

When the flexicore arrived, it was cut wrong for the angle next to the house, they re-cut it to fit better and after that was done they needed to shift it back 8 inches. Did I mention it weighs 6,000 pounds? Rob, Bob Sr. and Larry made like Egyptians and jacked, wedged and rolled the slab into the correct position. The first picture shows them jacking it up with a manual screw jack. You can see the temporary wall they rocked it back on. They also used steel rods as rollers. Clever. The second shot shows how much they lifted it. It didn't take much to get it going, although it got caught on the steel bracket on the other end so they had to move the jack and do it all over on the other side. Dan and I were pretty impressed (and pleased) that they were able to shift it without having to get the crane guy out again. Now that the lid is properly set, we can finally move on. They will get ready to pour the top, and then backfill around the walls. I'm a little nervous about the 8 foot drop with the girls wanting to get out and play in the yard.
The bathroom floor turned out better than Dan or I imagined possible. The commercial sander kicked butt up there and the resulting surface was near-new. 85 years of wear gone in 60 minutes. This bodes well and gives us great hope for whatever is underneath the painted linoleum tile in the master bath. We have two coats of urethane to go, and then the plumbers are back to re-set the fixtures, then one final coat of urethane and I think we'll actually be pretty well done in the bathroom. (Except for the window, of course.)

Still no news from the roofers. They did send a crew out a couple of weeks ago to dry us in. Unfortunately, they were unable to do so, leaving me to move the buckets around until we finally get the actual do-the-work crew out here. The good news is that we were moved on to the 'priority one' list. (Like that means something?)

Tommie has begun to venture out into the yard. Apparently he only goes out when it's above 60 degrees. He's still gaining weight. One of his favorite things to do is sit on the pedestal sink in the master bath when we are washing up for bed. He likes to drink from a small stream of water out of the tap. He's done this almost from day one, but lately he's been having a little trouble balancing his bigger butt on the side of the sink. He wobbles - not a very graceful sight!

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Why?

This is a question I often get from worried friends and family when I post our trials with this house. Why on earth are we doing this? How can a house be worth all this time, energy and (especially) money? Is there nothing right with the place?

You have to realize, (and I did mention this early on in the blog,) my blogging about this is really a therapeutic exercise, as well as a record for posterity. And for the record today, I will describe some of the positive things about our home.

Let's start with the woodwork. This is one of the beams Dan cleaned last weekend. We have many of these in the house. The major structural beams are these huge 8 by 8 inch or 10 by 12 inch solid oak beams. Sadly, the ones on the outside of the house are very damaged. It will take more than a cleaning to restore them, but on the inside, Dan has managed to do a bang-up job of bringing them back to their original glory thanks to Milsek (Thanks to Rob for putting us on to it.) Dan is giddy over how beautiful the wood is, and he is obsessed with cleaning every inch of it.

Moving along the same lines, here's a sample of the random width tongue and groove oak flooring. It's in excellent shape for its 85 years, (no matter what Dan says.) This flooring is old growth, wide plank and about an inch thick. It has been nailed and plugged. It's gorgeous. The gaps between the planks simply cannot be avoided, it has shrunk some over the past 85 years, and it will swell come summer's heat and humidity. It has some squeaks, however our floor in our house in Lexington squeaked more than this one. These floors cover the majority of the lower house. In the upstairs, the planking is narrow and uniform. And still in pretty good shape, save the bathroom which we are restoring.


These are the amazing stairs. Yes those are two inch thick oak planks... on the run AND the rise. And again, they are in excellent shape. Some of the planks have warped, (can't be helped with the age,) but they show virtually no wear. Also in this picture you can see the original hand-wrought-iron railing, which is very cool. All the stairs in the house are made of these oak planks, save the attic. (And the turret.)


And finally, every door in the place is like this. Random width, tongue and groove, solid oak plank, with original wrought iron hardware. Even the cupboard doors to the storage spaces under the eaves are made like these. They are really unique. Again, they need some work, and we will have to be choosy on which ones we want to restore to total working order. The original hardware is in rough shape, so some will close, but not latch, and on others, the jambs are no longer plumb and square and so they don't even close. But they are pretty solid suckers.

Let's move on to the pro/con items. For instance, the windows, which are giving me such pain. It's only painful because they are so worth restoring. We have 76 leaded glass sashes inthis house. Yes, that is right SEVENTY-SIX! They all need restoration work. They are also in pretty good shape for their age, with the majority still operable and probably only 10 or so that will need to be completely rebuilt, (as opposed to refurbished/restored.) The windows add a boatload of character to the house.


As does this sucker... the bane of my existence... the slate roof.
For those of you who know nothing about slate, (like me, six months ago,) let me illuminate you. Rather than being the archaic, outmoded material that modern roof manufacturers would like you to believe, slate remains one of the most durable, beautiful, ecologically friendly roofing materials available. Unfortunately, unlike some new-fangled materials out there, it takes some skill to install and repair correctly. If you can keep the neanderthal monkeys off of it, it will last a hundred years or more. Especially with the pitch that we have. It is a crying shame our roof has been neglected and poorly patched for so long, but we are working on a little at a time to restore it. Our biggest issue isn't even the slate... it's the copper used on the window wells and valleys that has just plain worn out. The serviceable life of copper is about 75 years.

Here are a few fun things about the house. (Sorry no picture of the turret staircase... it's still under winter wraps to keep the draughts down.) This is the original incinerator. Most of the old houses here have had these ripped out of them. We are still playing around with ideas of what to do with it. Laundry chute? Recyclable chute? Using the flue over top of the big fantasy Wolf stove when we re-do the kitchen? Brick fired oven? It's so cool we still have this.

This is the hearth in front of the main fireplace in the living room. The other fire places are in the master bedroom, the room where we have the girls, and the attic bedroom. It needs a scrub, and I'm hoping Dan will take an interest in doing it.



This is the limestone patio outside the dining room and living room. It's where Dan had delusional fantasies about putting a lovely copper and glass conservatory over top. Those limestone blocks weigh a few tons a piece, prompting my contractor to scratch his head to try to figure out how they were originally laid. Dan and I just figure they did it like they built the Pyramids, with ramps and ropes and logs.

This is the original zinc sink from the butler's pantry - that's where the dishes were kept, so I guess that's where they were washed. The sink is joined out of pieces. It doesn't drain like it used to, because it has been bent somewhat out-of-shape and the pitch is funky, but it does not leak, the original fixtures still work and it fits beautifully into the surrounding original copper counter top. I am using it to start some trees we will be planting to take up some of the @#$%! water in the yard - big thirsty curly willows.

And finally, probably one of our favorite things about the house...
a lousy picture but it will have to do to illustrate the size of the dining room. That's the 72 inch round table that seats 8 comfortably, dwarfed in the distance. The dining room is huge, as are most of the rooms. We have less rooms and more space so we actually use most of the house on a daily basis. I could have counted on my fingers and toes the number of times we actually ate in the dining room of our old house. We eat in this dining room every day, enjoying our sizable investment in the furniture. The living room is the same - no frilly can't-sit-on-it in this house. There is no family room, rec room, media room, or rumpus room. We live in the living room. It's a lovely change from our old house where the formal rooms went to waste.

Now that I've shared some of the good, perhaps our mindset will be easier to understand. When it warms up, (outside, not inside,) I'll get some pictures of the yard and you'll be able to understand a even little bit more.