Solid ground

I've often talked about the importance of having solid ground beneath me.  I meant something more akin to knowing where I stand on a given issue or feeling confident that I'd made the right choice than the literal ground...being solid.  In this case I mean it is literally "very important" because, for example urine soaked particle board is not okay, neither is carpet in a kitchen, nor linoleum tile in a bedroom or tongue and groove flooring that has been refinished so many times that the tongue is exposed.

Yuck, urine soaked particle board is just yuck.

That goes for carpet in a kitchen as well...yuck.

Linoleum mastic is not my friend.

The Turret bedroom floor was ravaged.  The floor joists were also stretching too broad a span for their size.  The floor dipped several inches and was very spongy to walk on.

Hard wood in the Turret bedroom.

The hallway was in the same shape as the turret bedroom and is now hardwood as well.

The original pine flooring we revealed under too many layers was so lovely we just refinished it in most of the rooms.

Wow, I love this floor in the Master bedroom.  It just glows.

The stairs, and first floor got a buff and recoat.  They look awesome.

Only crazy people strip second floor woodwork

This is understood.  The wood is soft and meant to be painted.  We do not deny that the undertaking was insane given the complexity of the millwork.  It is done however, and we do not regret it.  This was a rooming house for ages and the second floor was divided into units that must have turned over many times, each time requiring a fresh coat of paint.  The painters did not clean the woodwork well...or at all between coats, therefore the layers were lumpy (they painted over fuzz...bleh), beaten, chipped and  so gored with various lock sets and hooks and so forth that we simply couldn't do a light sand and call it good.  We started chipping away at it one day and found that since the surface hadn't been properly prepped after the first painting, most of it just flaked off with a putty knife.  We went at it in June and it's finally ready for a fresh coat.  Phew!

These giant double hung windows in the turret bedroom...now that they have been stripped, are fully fundctional.

If it weren't so beautiful, we never would have been able to stick with it.

Some millwork was cracked or cut into for a lock set.  We Bondo and glued the hell out of them.  Bondo carving is an under appreciated art form.  They look as good as new.

If walls could talk

I can imagine a thousand stories these walls might tell, but the latest would involve recounting tales of us revealing the layers with awe.  This home was layered with an astonishing array of wall treatments from painted wainscoting to paper that marked every era of its past.  I have a true appreciation for their durability as well, for they seem to have been holding many of the plaster walls up.  After stripping the walls down to bare plaster, we had a lot of repair to do.  The walls were repairable, a couple of the ceilings however were beyond help (by that I mean that one day a piece about 4 feet square came crashing down and scared the hell out of me) and needed to be sheetrocked.

Layers, layers, and more layers.  Some rooms had six or eight, some ten...

I love the soft metallic sheen on this one.

After we stripped the walls and cleaned them, Ryan drilled holes around the loose areas in the plaster and injected adhesive to re-secure it, then he rough plastered and fine plastered and final plastered and...you get the picture.  That part took a while.

This is the room with the offending ceiling that came crashing down.  It was really cool too.  They had painted it red to go with the cherry wallpaper.

Plaster work was finally completed in June.  We sealed it up with a good primer.  Should be good for another hundred years.

Squirrels are vermin.

I suppose you're wondering what we've been up to over the last several months of non-blogging...let's catch up shall we?

I know a lot of squirrel lovers.  I've heard accolades of their fluffy little tails, seen performances of lithe nut retrieval and heard myriad humorous stories about them running about being very cute...I was almost on board I admit, but after the experience of the last few months of defending this house against their virulent and destructive onslaught, I fall squarely in the anti-squirrel camp.

I imagine they were accessing the roof through the use of what we fondly refer to as the "squirrel highway"  for quite some time before we acquired this house.  The offending trees growing out of the foundation and several limbs have since been removed, animal control set live traps to catch the latest (and hopefully last) naughty little guys, and oh my goodness was there a mess to clean up.

They were quite comfortable having chewed almost entirely through the framing members in the roof to create an elaborate maze through many rafters.  This process necessitated a thorough demolition of the existing third floor.  A picture is worth a thousand words right?

About an inch left in this 2x4 and the attic was full of them.  If she weren't so well built she would have crumbled:)

From the East looking West the space is filled with light.

From the West looking East

New Oak floors throughout.

Needless to say this was a bit beyond the original scope we intended to take on before moving in to this house.  Oh well.  Now the structure has been restored, all squirrel feces removed...yuck, all mold issues resolved and proportions that suit the space much more nicely than the job that was done in the 70's.  It's been a long, bumpy and unexpected detour, but wow is it turning out nicely.