First Things First

Things are moving along with our old house, so time to report in. We spent three hours last Thursday walking through the house with our contractor. That all went well and he seems to be in agreement with what needs to be done and more or less how we’ll go about achieving it. We’ll be signing a contract with him once he puts together the estimate.

Since we have determined that the plaster walls are too cracked and have been covered in layers of wallpaper in some rooms and skim coated in others, it all has to go. Yes, its the old horse hair plaster over lathe boards. It’s going to be a dusty, messy job, but one that Bob and I will add to our list of responsibilities. 

But before we start that project, all the interior trim boards need to be removed. We want to save this part of the original house. At some point all of the trim was painted, but a bit of detective work reveals that it was originally stained and varnished. The wood is something like poplar, not oak, so there is no rich and interesting wood grain to be revealed. Instead there is indication that the trim was given a faux finish--a treatment that mimics the look of wood grain like in oak. Our plan currently is to strip it and sand it and then repaint it one color throughout the house.

Trim around the tops of doors and windows.

Bob begins to remove the trim.

We’re curious about the use of poplar. It stands to reason that poplar was a less expensive option when the house was built. I offer that possibly poplar was preferred because of its lack of grain, knots and other variations. Maybe it was just easier to mill. Perhaps folks really liked that faux grain look. I don’t know. What do you think?

We're referring to the corner pieces as bull's eyes.

 

At the bottom of the door trim are plinth blocks with their own profile. 

The baseboards are constructed in two horizontal pieces--

the top trim and the taller bottom piece. 

Notice the piece where the baseboards meet in the corner? 

We think they are called corner posts.

We’ve come up with a system for numbering and labeling each piece of trim. Some windows and doors are being eliminated for the final layout of the house, (We’re adding a modest addition—more about that later.) so we’re hoping that we will have enough trim to go around. We have to account for pieces that have been damaged or may not survive being removed. In the end we may need to have some trim made to match. Thankfully there is a business close-by that specializes in that kind of work.

Next time we’ll show you some inside “before” photos and give you an idea of the layout of the rooms.

Thanks for reading,

ChrisAnn

Here We Go

Welcome to our blog about our newest adventure in home creating. This is house number three, but will be by far our greatest undertaking. 

Some of you may remember our first house in Winchester, Virginia—the cute little Cap Cod. We made a lot of changes most notable, taking off all the wide chalky aluminum siding and window awnings to reveal the original 1940s wood german siding which we scraped, primed and painted.

Then there was our 1970s country home in Indiana County, PA which we worked on over the past 15 years. Starting out as a very basic Patwell split-entry, we basically remodeled the entire house inside and out, right down to replacing the 3 inch Ranch baseboard with 4 inch Colonial. 

But this house, our newest adventure, has a bit more history. We believe that it was built between 1890 and 1910 and most likely was a farm house. Currently it's in a small town neighborhood—no it wasn't moved, the streets were added. 

There is much work to do, but our old house has “good bones,” as Bob likes to say! As some of you know, there is nothing like an old house.

This time we will recruiting help—the contractor is waiting in the wings. Also, we will be on an accelerated plan—we hope to have the majority of the work done in 8 months. 

Since the house will be undergoing a major facelift and since most of our free-time will be devoted to the renovation, we've decided to do a blog. Neither of us has done any blogging before, so this will be new, too. But we are hoping for two things: that we can keep our friends and family in touch with our project (best way to let you know we're alive and involve you in the conversation if you are so inclined) and we will have a journal of writings and photos at the end of the project.

We're excited! A bit overwhelmed, yes, but God has led us thus far and we're ready to go. We expect there will be more than enough little surprises along the way—problems to solve and a story to discover—the story of our old house.

Hope you'll join us,

ChrisAnn