While We're Discussing Trees

I love this big tree in the front yard. It's a perfectly formed Maple, and the tire swing is awesome. Charlie and I hang out there when we are ready to take a break. It looks even better when it is green.

Vroom Vroom Firestarter

This is the big dead tree that Joel caught on fire. In fact, if you look at the upper branches, you may still see some char. We do need to remove the dead tree, but burning it from the top down, probably is not the best way to do it.

Apparently 100 year old lapboard siding is backed with tar. It was used to waterproof and bug-proof the house. It's also highly flammable. One match, and about 20 seconds later you can experience flames shooting 30 feet in the air. Jody got his ears singed getting it back under control. It was very very funny----after we knew the house wasn't going to burn down.

Something was out of Synch

This is a wide angle shot of the South side of the house. What you see are the upstairs windows, which are all evenly spaced, and the downstairs windows which should be evenly spaced. Note the middle lower level window. The hole is where the window used to be--for some reason, it was too high, and scooted over to the right. It threw the whole side of the house out of balance from the exterior view, and we just can't figure out why it was done that way. There is no real reason from the inside. It's in the master bath, and there is plenty of room for it to be centered correctly. So, easy solution--with the window replacement, we just had the window moved. Now everything is back to being even and symetrical, and Sariah can stop stressing about it.

The Power of Metabo

A few posts back I showcased our favorite new tool--the Metabo Paint Shaver. This photo is a close-up of the window trim, in all of it's glory with about 6 coats of chunky lead paint. Yum Yum, Tasty.

The photo below is about 30 minutes later. We were able to take the trim around 5 windows down to bare wood, like it was brand new in about an hour. It's literally like 80 years of coats of paint just evaporate.

The greatest thing about this tool is it is designed to remove lead paint. All of the discharge goes through a spout in the handle that is configured to take a shop vac hose. We still wear a respirator and goggles, but for this type of work, you can't get a better solution.

Herron House in "Rear Window"

Or we could say Rear Windows in Herron House. All of the upper rear windows are now done. Yeah!

Free is Good

We'll be adding a small screened in porch on the back of the house. Jody had a friend who just happened to have two columns sitting in his garage that he wanted to get rid of, so they were graciously donated to our house restoration (Thank You!). These will flank both sides of the porch, and will tie it in architecturally to the front porch. Sebastian will love it.

One Day, This Will Be My Office

This room is in the 1 story partof the house on the rear, where the roof was never built correctly. With the roof sloping inward, water ran into the house, rather than out of the house. To make matters worse, when we were fixing this problem, and un-scheduled rainstorm came up--dumping about 3 inches of water into this room while the roof was completely off.

Joel pulled the nasty old carpet out of the room on Saturday. The door is going to take some refinishing, as you can see the water damage at the bottom. This is the only room in the whole house that we are going to have to completely re-build on all sides, to that is possibly a little bit on the lucky side. We are keeping our fingers crossed that the plywood planking on the floor will dry out ok, but we may have to remove it, and just start over.

One day, we'll wrap this up, and it will be the office. It's going to be really nice once it's done...trust us.

There's A Ribbon Tied Around My Finger

....to remind me to bring the camera home. It appears to have been forgotten at the house this afternoon. That said, there are no photos from the house today. We do however love this product. After a lot of hesitation because it is a very expensive tool, we bit the bullet, and bought the Metabo Paint Remover. It works FANTASTIC. Of course, it is made in Germany, rather than China, and there is a lot of truth in the quality of German Engineering. Sariah was able to strip down the trim on 5 windows in an hour to the point that it looks like brand new wood. The video on the website shows it just ripping through paint, and claims it can cut through up to 8 layers of paint in one pass, and clear 1 square foot every 20 seconds. It's an amazing tool that works exactly as advertised.

Everything Old is New Again

The new fascia boards are up on the porch, paulonia is being installed, much of the wood has been scraped, and the skirting around the entire perimiter of the house is new. Joel has removed the storm door from the front door, and Sariah already started refinishing it. It is much better, just needs a little bit of buffing and a fresh coat of polyurethane. In some of these photos, the new windows can also be seen.

Yes Virginia, There is Flagstone

This image may be a little harder to see. In the middle of the photo is a flagstone walkway. When we first started visiting the house, you couldn't see it at all. The grass had completely overtaken it. Sariah sprayed it down with vinegar; her non-selective herbicide of choice. After a couple of days the grass was dead, and Joel used a scraper to pull it away and expose the flagstone again. The grass is kind of brown now for fall/winter, but there really is a flagstone walkway there.

Canned Music is like Audible Wallpaper

Someone in the history of this home liked wallpaper - they liked wallpaper a whole lot. Every single square inch of wall space in the entire house has wallpaper. Every room has a different pattern of wallpaper. It's visually stunning--and not in a good way.

Benjamin and Alie offered a great suggestion of using hot water and fabric softener as a wallpaper removing solution. This does actually work better than the store bought solution at a fraction of the cost, however, there is not any quick and easy way to remove a whole house of wallpaper. One room at a time, we will get through it. This is the dining room. The windows are all fogged up because we are also using a steamer, so it's like a sauna in the room.

Three Rules of Work: Out of clutter find simplicity; From discord find harmony; In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.

I'm hoping to find a great deal of simplicity. I know I have found clutter. The living room is fully in the midst of being a construction zone, and stuff is EVERYWHERE.

Definition: The wood of broad-leaved dicotyledonous trees (as distinguished from the wood of conifers)

Pulling back the carpet showed us that a lot of the original hardwood floors are shot. So, we found a great deal on Craigslist for 3/4" solid pre-finished hardwood oak floors with cherry finish, and bought enough to do the entire first floor of the house. Upstairs, we decided to carpet the bedrooms, and the hall and loft appear to be in good enough shape to be sanded, stained, and refinished. At least we can retain some of the original wood floors.

Isn't it Lovely?

The House Looks Amazong at night, doesn't it?





Actually, in the midst of everything, Sariah left for a week to attend a conference in Prague, where people still sword fight daily in the street.

Ouch! My Eye!

These are decorative railings that go on the top of the front porch. The little yellow device sitting on the left hand side is a Wagner Paint Eater (this is not an endorsement--it's actually not a great product). Everyone knows that sanding without goggles is a stupid thing to do. But--don't we all do stupid things sometimes? It was a beautiful day; about 85 degrees outside, and Sariah decided to sand the railings without putting her goggles on. This move landed her with a paint chip in her eye, and a trip to the ER. Thankfully, after much pain, and saline eye wash, there was no scratch, and she was ok. Note to Mom: She will not sand without goggles ever again.

The Sky Is Falling

Retained water on top of the old tin on the front porch roof caused the middle of the front porch ceiling to rot and cave in. Most of the ceiling is fine; however, 3/4 tongue and groove beaded ceiling board is not made anymore, and we couldn't find it in good enough condition from salvage, so we have to replace the entire porch ceiling. This was unexpected, and a big disspointment.

The Windows Are the Eyes Of the House

In order to get the right slope on the roof over the office/utility room, we had to shorten the windows on the back of the house. Because of the bad slope anyway, the sills on the windows were entirely rotted, and they just fell apart when they started to be taken out. You can see Jody in action on new window install. We were able to get White Aluminum Clad, Stain Grade Wood Interior Pella Windows on a Close-Out from Lowes that were the right size for the house. We actually were lucky enough to get enough on Close-Out for the entire upstairs and the large windows on the rear of the house that are in terrible shape. Look for more window photo updates coming soon.

It's A Jungle Out There

Many years of no pruning leaves things quite overgrown. Joel and Sariah removed the awful awnings and did much pruning. Note the roof on the utility room at the back of the house, and it's lovely flat dimensions. It actually was built up roughly 13" inches and sloped in to the house, rather than away from the house. Don't ask us why, we can't tell you. The good news is, the roof is now completely re-built, and now slopes in the correct direction.

A Tree Is Only As Old As The Wood In It

Or in this case, a house is only as old as the wood on it. Unfortunately a lot of the wood on the North side of the house was quite rotten, and had to pulled completely off by David. This gave us the opportunity to add some house wrap. Joel ordered 1800 square feet Paulonia siding to lace in with a 4 1/2" reveal to match the original wood from the house.

Contractor Joel Enlists Help from South of the Border

With all of the roofing torn off of the house and garage, it was time to get the new roofing put on. We bought all of the materials and called in Daniel and his brothers, who roof very very quickly. This charming little building with the cupola is the old milk house. We are ordering up a rooster weathervane for the top of the cupola.

The Albatros---er, I mean, House.

We have a few problems; namely wasps, carpenter ants, wood rot, peeling paint, who knows how many layers of roof, sagging joists, and I'm sure there are a few more I haven't listed. To get things started, we had all of the rain gutters (that were growing trees) removed, and the shutters that were holding back water and creating huge wasp breeding grounds. While scraping paint, the bases of the columns on the left hand side of the porch crumbled, which really accentuated how out of balance the front porch was. Luckily, re-roofing was already on the list of things to do, so Jody stripped off the countless layers of roof, and jacked up the front porch. In the meantime, Joel went digging through miles of random stuff at Hayley's Salvage to find four matching column bases so the columns could be re-set. We used roughly two cases of wasp spray to get rid of all of the flying critters, especially after Charlie got his nose stung by one. I think it will be last time he decides to sniff at a wasp crawling on the ground.

A Daunting Task (or...What Were We Thinking?)

I guess we got bored. There really wasn't another project to do on our current home, and when that happens, we start looking for a home in need. Requirements: within an hour of Nashville, more than 80 years old, retaining some original architectural elements, acreage, and priced right to be restored. We found it in Shipps Bend, a little hamlet in the village of Centerville. A virtually abandoned 3600 square foot Georgian Colonial Revival built in 1926 on 9 acres. The town square is about a mile up the road, the views are beautiful. The land is fantastic--gently rolling pasture with a pond. It used to be a dairy farm, so it's good arrable land that will be great for farming. The house comes with a two car detached garage, and a brick storage building that used to be the retail shop for dairy sales. Behind the garage is a chicken coop that is going to take some work to bring back to life. We haven't seen the pond on the pasture, but we have been told it is there. A bush hog is desperately needed. Our primary renovation team consists of Joel as General Contractor, Sariah as part time support, Jody as Construction Foreman, David, Carpenter Extraordinaire and Ros, expert on all good things needed from Lowes. We are not planning on finishing this project quite as fast as the last one, but we'll have a lot more sweat equity into it before we are done.