Striptease...I mean eze!!

I've said it before, and I will probably say it a hundred more times...what would we do without our friends?  Yesterday Patti Bates came over with her paint stripping kit.  We set up our work station and began to scrape layers of old paint off the eight table legs I purchased at the Bouckville antique show last weekend.  We applied several coats of a stripeze type chemical and made some headway.  However, it wasn't until Joel got home from work and broke out his heat gun that we achieved complete success.  Some of you know what I intend to create with these legs, but I will keep the rest of you in suspense until I am done with my project.  Thank you Patti!

Late last week I had the pleasure of speaking with Lyn Wardwell's sister Terry who also lives in California.  She delighted me with her childhood recollections of living in the house and provided me with helpful insights as I continue to plan my interior and exterior designs.  I loved hearing that the family gathered for meals at a large round cherry table in the corner of the dining room where the two big windows meet.  We chuckled over her memory of passing a box of Cheez-its crackers through a hole in the ceiling over the refrigerator to her cousin in the room above.  I couldn't wait to get up to the house to find the opening, which I did!  See below:) During our conversation, Terry asked if we were going to have shutters on the house.  When we purchased back in May there were no shutters, but each window was adorned with beautiful scroll holders.  We saved them as we contemplated adding shutters back onto the house down the road.  It seems that Terry and Lyn's father came up with his own paint color for their shutters called Litchfield Green.  She described it as not quite forest green but not too light either.  Since our siding is going to be sage, green shutters are definitely a possibility.

Incredible progress has been made on the house in the past several days.  Steve continues to work on the outside and has installed almost all of the windows on the front and sides.  He carefully removed the eyebrow window from the third story and is having the broken panes replaced.  Larry and Josh are busy inside taking down ceilings and walls.  The upstairs looks like a scene out of a ghost story...hauntingly beautiful!

Over the Rainbow

Earlier this week Steve presented me with these Benjamin Moore paint palettes and asked me to make my final choice on trim colors.  I have been contemplating this decision for awhile and have picked...you will all just have to wait and see!!  I am glad to have theses beautiful hues in my possession, however, because even though I don't have to settle on room colors anytime soon, I plan to have some fun with the design process.

Well, my wish for the front of the house to be all "Zipped" up by week's end has come true.  Early, in fact.  Yesterday afternoon when I stopped up, Steve was putting the finishing touches on the last front window.  He was even able to move to east side of the house and install one of the windows and half of the green wrap there.

Joel has been holding off on ordering another dumpster, but the debris just kept piling up so he went ahead and requested our 6th.  Look how full it is in just 3 days.  The guys are still inside taking down old Sheetrock and insulation from the ceilings, so I imagine there are a couple more dumpsters in our future!

The last interesting tidbit from this week's work on the house came when Joel started to deconstruct the pantry to see if there is anything above the ceiling in that room as we wish to raise it and also the floor so that the space will be even with the kitchen.  Behind the shelving, he found this wooden grate venting to nowhere.  We have found many aluminum and steel grates, and even some heavy metal ones sprinkled throughout the house, but this wooden piece is quite nice.

While We Were Away...

Check out the surprise waiting for us upon our return from a week away down in Emerald Isle, NC.  Steve also took a little vacation, but he was hard at work again last week on the house and was able to install 4 of the front windows!  We are so pleased with them and especially like the Poplar White exterior trim color which ties in beautifully with the roof.

As you can see in this next picture, he was successful in his efforts to bridge the 2 inch gap from the upper house to the lower portion with the furring strips and second layer of Zip wrap.  The windows sit perfectly within the wrap and will accept the siding with no problems.

Hopefully the west side of the house goes as smoothly and quickly and we will have the whole front complete by week's end??  Steve is a rock star!

My college friend, Dell, came up from the Albany area for a weekend visit and we had a great time scouting out the wares at the Bouckville antique show.  I was specifically looking for these tractor seats which aren't as plentiful as I was expecting, but I only need 2 and here they are!  I will keep you posted on my plans for them once I launch into my artsy project:)

More Challenges

You have got to love Steve for his sunny, positive attitude towards everything renovation related.  Whenever we encounter a problem, he calmly addresses the "challenge" as he calls it, and we carry on.  Our latest setback is that the house leans back a little more than 2 inches.  As you can see in the picture below, when Steve dangled a weighted line to see if the front of the house is plumb, he discovered that it is not.  Joel and Steve discussed several solutions...4 as a matter of fact.  We could jack the house up from the back and try to tilt it forward to compensate for the lean.  We could do nothing and just attach the siding and deal with the imperfections as it butts up to the front door and windows.  We could create a transition in the middle of the house, over the front door, which would be visible but probably solve the problem, or we could build tapered furring strips that are nailed all along the front.  A second layer of Zip wrapping would  be applied, and the front door may need to move out a bit to allow for the siding.  I think we have chosen this last option.  Stay tuned for updates!

Steve has been heading up the hill fairly regularly to get wood from the Amish.  Joel offered to take the truck the other day and load it up with some pine and hemlock.  He followed Steve's directions with all the lefts and rights and ended up meeting Daniel Miller at his rough cut/hand hewn wood barn.  They had quite a nice conversation about the lack of rain and other such topics.  Daniel may make me a wooden storm door with a doggie entrance in the future:)  Steve uses the hemlock as the bottom face plate around the house, and the pine is used to frame out the windows and doors.

I have been busy reading and researching more of the history of the house.  Several people have recommended the following book to me, most recently Lyn Wardwell Berman.  Her mother penned the last chapter which was very helpful and interesting.

Thankfully Jervis had it on the shelf earlier this week as I had just driven up to the Westernville Library only to find that it is closed on Mondays!  I was so excited to see what information Margaret Wardwell's writing would reveal that I read the 3 pages in my car down in Rome then immediately headed back up to Westernville to pace the cemetery in search of the White family grave site.  After  30 minutes or so I found it and the exact stone I was looking for...it is kind of hard to see, but if you look closely you can make out the name "Caroline."

According to Lyn's mother's article, Caroline was the last surviving child of Moses T. White.  When she died in 1907 at the age of 74, she requested that the stone by the front door of the house which was her favorite "sitting spot" be her grave marker in the family plot.  Her wish was very simply honored.

Knock knock...

Who's there?  It's Kelly and Mike rapping on our NEW front door!  They came up for a visit on Sunday evening and were our first friends to test out the recently redone entrance.

So rewind to Saturday.  Joel and Steve met up at the house in the wee early morning hours and accomplished a great deal.  Joel started to dig out the wells for the basement windows.  Steve cut and attached the Zip siding to the front of the house with Joel's assistance.  Finally, just around noon, the new door and sidelights went in with ease.  Very exciting!  While all this manly labor was being conducted, Cathy and I decided to go antiquing.  We only visited one establishment, but we each bought something and had a great time.  When we got back to the house I was treated to the most wonderful telephone conversation with Lyn Wardwell Berman who now lives in California.  She shared heartfelt memories of "the farm" from her childhood.  She and her siblings and cousins all visited, played at and at different times lived in our house until the late 1970's when it was sold out of the family.  I will share tidbits of what I learned as time goes on, but want to showcase this photograph now as I find it very romantic and nostalgic.  This is Lyn's grandmother, Mabel Olney White who married Daniel Wardwell, thus bringing the two families together.  Remember awhile back I said that I needed to find out more about Moses T. White and his descendants?  Here is the connection to the White/Wardwell homestead! 

Recognize the fireplace?!  Lyn pointed out the lithograph above the mantel which is the original to the one Mary Centro shared with me last week.  Also of note is the plank door behind Mrs. Wardwell which leads into her living room, our den.  This is the hidden opening that Joel uncovered just last Saturday.  How bright and cheerful this room looks...my goal is to recreate the same happy feel:)

Ready...Set...ACTION!

It felt like a Hollywood movie scene yesterday at the house.  Joel went up late in the day to get some work done.  As soon as he arrived, he called to tell me that he had never seen so much action on our work site and that I should grab some coffees and head up to watch.  So I did!  We had trucks and vehicles parked not only all over our front yard but also across the street edging the cornfield.  Steve had finished laying planks on the new foundation (more about that later!) and had just lowered the house back onto it.  Joel was unscrewing the large bolts that had held the wooden supports for the jacks.  Steve's brother-in-law, Warren, was there with three men to cut down two huge trees and trim up several smaller ones.  We even had an "extra"on the set.  Mr. Rapke, who is in his eighties and lives three houses up the hill, had come down to see what all the fuss was about.  He told me that he helped replace support beams in the middle room of the house many years ago when the Wardwell family lived there.  I enjoyed speaking with him about the area north of the lake.  His family has lived there for generations, and he had much information to share.

The scaffolding seen to the right of Mr. Rapke belongs to Lenny, the mason.  He and Carl came earlier in the week to rebuild the stone foundation.  Their next task is to repoint and shore up the chimney.  After that they move to the back of the house to assist in the lowering of the Rustic Room floor onto a newly constructed stone and cement base.

Doesn't the finished product looked sturdy and sound?  Finally, the front of the house rests on a straight, strong foundation and we can move ahead:)

We continue to have visitors!  Joel's brother Jeff was cycling around the lake the other day and popped in to see our progress.  Here Joel is showing him what Steve discovered behind the faux brick fireplace in the den.  The original bricks are actually quite pretty.  All we need to do is clean them up a bit and perhaps replace a few.  I am excited because the plan was to create a whole new façade.  I like this scenario much better!  Steve removed the wooden mantelpiece and saved it for us to strip, repaint, and replace.  It feels good to be able to maintain and showcase the original beauty of the house as often as we can.