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.