Third Time's the Charm!

Out of curiosity, I had to go back and look...

April 20, 2011 - I epically claim, using a picture of Scarlett O'Hara defiantly reclaiming her decimated family farm for visual support, that we will NEVER be cold in our Vermont house again.

March 19, 2012 - A direct quote... "This abnormally early and warm spring feels like a little gift of sympathy handed directly to Tony and I. We will no longer have to toil in aching cold. Even though I said last April we'd never be cold again, I mean it this time!!"

February 3, 2012 - If I created a word cloud of our previous post, words like 'cold', 'uncomfortable', 'frozen' and 'human icicles' (a personal favorite) would just be jumping right off the screen and smacking me upside the head for my inability to ever learn the rules of renovation.

Three winters in this house, and three winters without heat! Is it even remotely sensible to claim that we will NEVER be cold in the farmhouse again, after three straight winters of a swing and a miss?? I don't know, but all signs point to a heating system at some point this summer, so here I am, I'm going to say it...

After working through three winters with NO heat in the farmhouse, we WILL have heat by next winter! We will NEVER be frozen in that VT farmhouse again!

Well isn't this a familiar sight...

There, I said it. But in the meantime, let me tell you about how cold we were during our last visit and about all of the fun and miraculous labors we managed to pull off despite the snow drifts and frozen fingers and toes.

Interior Repairs

Interior repairs continued to be the name of the game, as I was obviously not getting any sanding or painting done with a foot of snow on the ground. Tony and I went up to the house in mid-March hoping to see little to no snow on the ground. How disappointed yet unsurprised we were to find the yard covered in a nice new layer of fresh snow, and the interior temperature of the house hovering somewhere in the 'below freezing' zone. After pouting and cursing these endless VT winters for a few minutes, we lit a fire in the stove; while Tony developed a game plan for the weekend, I was equally busy letting my pants catch on fire/work boots melt as they warmed up next to the wood stove. Apparently I've spent too much time away from the house recently as I seem to have forgotten some basic rules, such as - don't leave your clothes to warm directly on the stove for as long as you well please. One way to take care of the winter chills up there? Flaming pants.

We've finally reached the LAST of the rotten beams...

 It's been a long haul, but it looks as though we are finally reaching the last of our major interior repairs. Aside from a little window work (installing the upstairs bath window, and switching the small window in the dining room with a full-size one in the kitchen), we were really down to one last repair - changing out the rotten corner wall studs that framed out the doorway to the back hall, but more importantly support a load-bearing corner of the roof. This is what this corner looked like when we first bought the house:

At the time I was completely intimidated by this gaping hole into nothingness. I didn't know what had caused it or how we we'd go about repairing it. Little did I know then that every single wall would be coming down eventually... no walls  = no holes = no problem!

When we took the plaster down last summer, we discovered a crazy amount of wood rot thanks to an old leak in the roof, which has since been repaired. Now that Tony has become a master rebuilder of rotten door frames, we assumed this would be an easy fix once we got around to it. After taking some photos in order to speed up the rebuilding process, we cut out the rotten wood. Boy was there plenty of it...

Out comes a giant conglomeration of wall studs...

So far, everything was going according to plan. Then, as we went to take some measurements for the new framing, we realized one unfortunate fact. This entire corner support has been sitting on... nothing... since some time last year. Specifically, since Tony and I cut out the rotten wood downstairs and installed that wood beam running across the dining room ceiling. The same 16 ft. beam we sadly realized we'd have to take down because it wasn't wide enough and had already begun bowing in the middle, therefore offering absolutely no support to the ceiling above. 

With heavy hearts, we realized that rebuilding this doorframe just became harder. Way harder...

Before we could put this framing back in, we needed to take down the 16 ft. beam downstairs, and somehow manage to install our new 16 ft. long, 6 inch wide beam... by ourselves, with no help. The same beam that we had cut at the sawmill last summer which required 3 burly men to lift just to get it on top of the car. Here we stood, the two of us versus this monster; unless we found a way to get this puppy up in the air and in place, we couldn't move on to do anything else. And so, we strategized...

Brute strength was not an option, so we had to rely on the power of our ingenuity. Tony created a new plan for notching the giant 16 ft. beam with the lovely aged barn beams we currently had holding up each corner of the old, flimsy support beam. He made some lovely custom cuts, and with a hammer and chisel we put some sweet notches into each end of the beam.

Then, mixing strength with some well-placed pieces of furniture, we slowly propped the beam up higher and higher into the air, raising it in turns just a little bit on each side. We eventually got it to look like this, and were beside ourselves with pride:

Lifting this beam was our Stonehenge

With the beam propped up in the air, we used house jacks to help finish lifting it (not seen in this photo) and also to keep it securely in place while we hammered the hell out of the side support beams. Getting these beams into a level upright position took hours of hammering and lifting of the ceiling with the house jacks, perhaps with a curse thrown in here and there. By the end of Saturday evening, we had made one serious mess but had the beam securely in place. Somehow we had made the impossible, possible! I was beside myself with pride at what we two crazy kids can pull off when we put our minds to it. Do, or do not. There is no try.

She's up and she's here to stay!

Having this giant, faded, hand-cut beam running across the ceiling looks amazingly awesome, but is a little hard to appreciate seeing as how all you see is wood EVERYWHERE you look. Once we have drywall up and leave these wood beams exposed, it's going to be a stunner, mark my words. 

Click here to see a slideshow of our big-beam weekend!

Unfortunately the next day was basically spent cleaning up the mess we made downstairs installing that bad boy, so we didn't get around to installing the wood framing upstairs. What started out as a seemingly simple repair once again turned into an epic feat of restoration, in classic If You Give a Mouse a Cookie fashion, but it was well worth it. The next and last beam will be installed near the back of the kitchen once the plumbing is all finalized. Now that the weather is thawing, we hope to get our plumbers back in the house asap to finish their repairs so we can finally get some water flowing into this house!!

 We'll be returning to VT next weekend with family and friends, where I will begin doing a little handiwork outside while Tony finishes up some of these repairs inside. Expect another update shortly! With grad school finally coming to a close in just ONE month, our time at the farmhouse should pick up significantly in the near future :)

For now, we bid a fond farewell to another Vermont winter and ready ourselves for the warming temperatures and budding trees of spring! I'll welcome these beautiful snowy days in another 7 months when I have a warm and toasty farmhouse to ramble about in.

Be gone, you charming, snowy days...

Stay tuned for lovely spring photos where the color palate won't be comprised of brown, brown and more brown. Until next time, thanks for reading!
- Melissa

A Winter's Nap

Today's temperature in Jamaica, VT: a balmy 20 degrees! All in all, that is actually pretty warm for this time of year. Winter has been fairly 'mild' here in Brooklyn... 'pathetic' might be another word I'd use to describe this lack of snowfall and warm temps! Indeed, Old Man Winter has made a poor showing thus far, but 20 degrees is still cold enough to make two people in an ice box of a house with no heat pretty uncomfortable.

That's right, no heat! Updating the blog has been delayed for the past few months thanks to grad school, which fills up my time with writings on public health challenges and community building, but leaves little time for much else. While I haven't had the chance to update this thing in awhile, we did work on the house the entire fall season. Some big changes have happened, including... PLUMBING!... but unfortunately we ran out of time to finish securing the basement before winter set in. Without a properly closed up basement, the pipes for the heating system would have frozen almost instantly, so it made no sense to run the heaters.

She's entered into hibernation mode for the next few months...

After two years of waiting, the prospect of a heated house during the winter months seemed so close! Instead, we once again find ourselves shivering in front of the woodstove like two human icicles. While another winter with no heat was a disappointing blow (I believe it was spring 2011 when I swore never to be cold in that house again), we've decided to shift gears and approach working on the house differently this season. Our new game plan is... don't go! Basically, it's just too damn cold to be inside that house for very long, especially when there's no hardcore demo'ing left to do. As unpleasant as it was, at least knocking down ceilings and walls kept our body temperatures up. With the inside of the house in fairly decent shape, we've decided to tuck the farmhouse in for a long winter's nap, and will continue to check on it every few weeks until the weather thaws a little. Worry not, though, we have plenty of house-related work to keep us busy on the weekends down here, which I will talk about in a bit. In the meantime, let's get to updating on what we've accomplished since August!

Perhaps it's best to start with our most exciting and visible change from 2012...

Painting Progresses!

 Yellow? What yellow?

Flashback to May 2012. My painting goal at the beginning of my summer vacation: sand, prime and paint the entire house by October.

My adjusted goal once reality set in, October 2012: stop making completely unfeasible goals for myself!

It's amazing that, after owning this house for over two years, I am still surprised by how long things take. This should be a mantra running continually through my mind every weekend we are up there. This work just takes time, LOTS of time, especially when you don't have a huge team of professionals helping you crank it out. One girl with a paintbrush and a small team of dedicated friends and family who make appearances up at the house cannot sand, prime and paint an entire two-story Victorian house in 3 months. It's just not possible, especially when you're doing the majority of the work only on weekends.

Thanks to a lot of tag-team efforts, we got a huge amount done on the house, and came SO close to having the entire thing at least sanded and primed! As you can see from the photo above, we fell short on the right side of the house thanks to the section above the 1st floor bathroom. We still need to replace the siding along the new roof, and repair some rotten wood along the roof life. It was too much work for one lady to do alone, so Tony and I plan on tackling this corner together as soon as the weather warms. We also got a nice amount sanded and primed on the left side of the house, but ran into a few issues here and there. Painting over the bay window proved to be a bit tricky, with ladders balanced on a block of wood and a prayer, but so far so good. Before we finish sanding and priming this side, I'd also like to take down that sad excuse of a side porch. It isn't safe to stand on and worst of all, is a preferred nesting ground for the monstrous spiders that take over our house in the summer. Once it's gone, we can properly finish prepping this side of the house for paint.

Maybe that giant pile of snow will finally demo the side porch for me

The only heartbreaking thing I must mention is... it was only this summer that we realized we needed to cover all of the nailheads in aluminum paint before putting on the primer. Therefore, I have to go back and redo the entire paint job on the front porch and front of the house :( It's almost too sad for me to even think about, so I'll just put that thought off until May or so, when I will have no choice but to face the music.

In other news...

Plumbing!

While these pictures are far from the sexiest thing around, plumbing might be the most exciting thing to happen to this house in awhile. In November our talented plumbing team came in and ran all of the lines throughout the house. We also got our oil tank and water heater installed down in the basement. Barring a few errors and unexpected complications here and there, everything was in pretty good shape! Seeing everything laid out did show us a few changes that needed to be made to our own plumbing plans, but unfortunately none of the changes could be made before winter set in. I think it's safe to say plumbing installation is about 75% complete at this point, and will be all wrapped up before summer. Hopefully, if Tony and I have all of our radiators sandblasted and painted by then, these brawny plumbing men can have the pleasurable job of hauling those babies up and into the house for installation.

Verrrry early stages of the master bathroom

In the meantime, Tony and I would like to have some of the fixtures we'll be making/restoring for the bathrooms (because we hate for things to be easy, and won't buy anything unless it needs work) done so they can be properly installed. That includes our 3 vanities, one of which Tony will be building from scratch. The above photo shows the rough layout for the master bath, including our vanity in the 'before' stages. I've purchased antique hardware to match the hinges and latch already on this old dresser, and we have a nice large slab of marble sitting on top that will need to be properly installed. Thanks to the terrible shape this thing is in, I should be able to take some kickin before and after photos!

Other Fixes 'Round the Farm

Plumbing and painting aren't the only things we've been up to! There's a million big and little projects we've been keeping ourselves occupied with aside from the two big Ps. It'd be too boring to list them all,  so I'll let these photos do the talking...

Finally, a basement door! Tony installs and secures our sweet new basement door. One less way for furry woodland animals to find their way into the house, and it keeps the entire place a heck of a lot warmer. No more gusts of freezing wind coming up from the basement!

So... 30 windows, double hung, 2 panes per window =  120 panes of glass to that need to be carefully removed, cleaned, reinstalled, and then glazed so they can face another 100 years of bad weather. Sounds like a big job? You bet it is! Good ole Momma Merkel and Mairim have been tackling this job for months on end. Susie slowly scrapes out the old caulking, removes the glass, cleans the frame, and then passes it off to Mairim to be reinstalled and glazed (a heartier form of caulking). And considering how fragile antique wavy glass is, it's a miracle when just one window is finished without cracking. To say we're halfway there would be... optimistic (or an outright lie).

 And who could forget about our old friend, the foundation??? Tony has turned into a true master mason, and after taking down that hot mess of a wall he and I constructed together last fall, he redid all of the brick work in the back. By October, the foundation was done!! We'll still have other small foundation fixes to do next summer, but this guy definitely has bricklaying down to a science and should get it done in no time flat.

Insulation is back! On probably the last decent weekend of the year, Tony and I brought another sprayfoam insulation kit up to the house and went to town on the first and second floors. We finished the library, living room, hallway, and almost all of the second floor. With only two rooms to go upstairs, we should have the whole house insulated before too long! As soon as the weather warms (if I had a penny for every time I said that...) we'll finish up the insulation and have this place all nice and cozy :)

And one final bit of big news...

Tony and I are no longer just the boyfriend and girlfriend with the crazy farmhouse project in VT! We had a proper Vermont engagement at the farmhouse with a proper antique engagement ring purchased at our favorite antique auction in Townshend, VT. Now, on top of everything else... time to plan a proper VT wedding! We certainly like to keep busy :)













Thank you all for reading this VERY lengthy blog update! As always, we've been keeping track of our  progress by taking tons of photos. The slideshow function seems to be disabled on the Photobucket website currently, but check out links to all of our new albums!

#33 - Primed for Fall and other major happenings...

#34 - A fond farewell to the outdoors

#35 - Plumbin' and insulatin'

#36 - Enter the plumbing inspection team!

#37 - A New Years visit

Here's to hoping that I find a little more time to update in the coming months! We won't be spending too much time up at the house, but hope to use our weekends to finish some of these furniture projects we've taken on, including one big one. Since we are aiming to leave our mark on every inch of this house, our brave master carpenter has decided to take on building custom cabinets for the entire kitchen! Tony is finishing up the kitchen layout and then intends to start laying out plans for building the cabinets. Hopefully his know-how and the cabinet book I bought him from Home Depot should leave him well-prepared for this gargantuan task :) Here's a peek at the layout he is currently building in a program called Sketch Up. He's only just getting started but it looks pretty awesome already!

Love that giant dining table... can't wait to fill it with friends in our warm and beautiful dining room!

Thanks again for reading! We'll be back with another entry soon! Happy 2013, all :)
- Melissa

The Summer Forecast

Beautiful and breezy with a chance of plumbing!

Also, an advisory is in effect for “lead paint dust” fogs on the horizon. 

Gird your lungs, Stevie. There's lead in dem paints!

How can it be that after so many cold months filled with anticipation and dreams of warmth and sunny days, summer is... (gulp)... coming to an end?? As always, the weeks fly by so quickly and we find ourselves approaching the middle of August. I think I can now officially say that summer is my favorite season in Vermont. I never thought that would be possible, since winter, snowbording and fires roaring in the fireplace are what most people dreamily envision when they think of this state. Alas, beautiful sunsets over mountain peaks, wildflower fields and cool evenings have won my heart. Even though heating is a genuine reality for this winter, I am going to miss the heck out of these summer months. You've been good to us, you lovely season!

He's truly a winter pup

 Despite the steamy summer days of the past 2 months, which knock Bailey out as soon as the sun goes up, the humans have been hauling arse from sun up to sun down. Our family and friends have been making regular visits to the house this summer and happily put in long, exhausting hours to help us git 'er done. House sanding, demo, window repairs, painting. You name it, they do it! Maybe they really love us, or maybe they just love the promise of hot dogs and hamburgers, grilled corn on the cob and other delights of summer cooking.

So, what have we been up to for the past 7 weeks??  It's called the three P's...

Pre-Plumbing and Painting!

Let's start with painting, because let's face it, it's just more fun to talk about... although, according to Lisa, not as much fun to do...

Sanding, schmanding... when do we paint?!

Reality set in during early July when I realized the entire house would not be painted to perfection by the fall. In fact, parts of it may not be painted, period! The truth of the matter is, it is just damn time consuming. Sanding can take a day alone, especially when working in difficult areas such as the roofline, with it's weird angles and hard-to-reach-corners. There is nothing more pleasant than tucking your head under the roof soffit to scrape down corners filled with giant spiders and wasp nests, all the while being showered with lead paint chips. It. Is. Not. Fun. But if we're going to do this job we're going to do it right, so... horrible sanding work continues.

 My loving, dedicated friends Steve and Lisa joined us for a weekend at the end of July and helped to sand the heck out of the side of the house and the second story of the front of the house. It's amazing what a difference having the second floor painted makes! As you can tell from the photo above, sanding was not our favorite task. We also now have to spray aluminum paint over all of the nail heads after sanding to ensure the nail heads do not rust through the paint. Rust has already begun to show through on the porch and front of the house, which means I have to go and re-do my work from last summer by spray painting all of the nails, priming over them, then painting again with Pinedale Shores. My heart breaks at the thought, so let's not go there...

Second floor, done!

We have also completely sanded the first story along the two sides of the house, and have started priming that area. I believe by mid-September, with all hands on deck, we should be able to have all of the house primed (with the exception of the gable peaks, which are tricky to reach by ladder). I'd love to start painting the sides of the house with at least one coat of blue, but we'll see where time and weather get us. Either way, the majority of the house won't be yellow anymore and that is all that matters! The painting saga continues for another year...

Artie Joe Merkel working his magic on the side of the house

As painting continues, things are speeding up inside the house as we prep for that holiest of words...

Plumbing!

Now that I have seen first-hand the amount of work that has been done, and still needs to be done, before our plumbers can come in to run our heat and plumbing lines, it's insane to think I once believed this could have been done last summer. We were NOWHERE near being ready. Now, we're almost there!

The list of preparations feels a little endless, but here's a few of the things on our to-do list.

• Complete foundation work under the downstairs bathroom (almost done)
• Buy and prepare all bathroom fixtures (sort-of done)
• Sister beams to all of the ceiling joists under the two upstairs bathrooms (done!)
• Finish bathroom layouts (done!)
• Sand bathroom floors (nope)
• Finish insulating walls (nope)
• Prepare all radiators and bring up to house (nope)
• Buy bubble bath for long, relaxing baths in the clawfoot tubs (nope)

Clearly, we still have a lot to do! First and foremost is FINALLY finishing the foundation work in the back, which we are very close to completing. Last weekend Tony finished laying the inside walls of cinder block for the two remaining foundation walls under the bathroom. Though I hate to say it, we also made the oh-so-sad decision to knock down the snaking, uneven brick foundation wall Tony and I built last September. Other than looking like a hot mess, it also was barely supporting the longest wall of the bathroom. With us taking such care with everything that we do, it made no sense to try and Macgyver the poorly constructed wall to make it work as best as possible. With heavy heart and an even heavier crowbar, Tony dismantled the entire brick wall.

Once we return this weekend, Tony will build a new, straight wall out of cinder blocks to replace the one we knocked down. Then all 3 foundation walls will require the front layer of brick, which will hide the cinder blocks and make our foundation 'strong as bull.' Once all of this hullabaloo is complete, the foundation work will truly be done. A grand finale 1.5 years in the making!

Let's see clawfoot tubs fall through this floor!

With the foundation completed, a flurry of plumbing-related work will take place over the coming weeks. Sprayfoam insulation, sanding, shopping, and the backbreaking task of transporting 14 cast iron radiators! Are there enough hours in the day to get it all done before winter sets in once again??

Let us hope, because I don't think my little soul could stand up to a 3rd winter of renovating in 0 degree weather! You'll find me collapsed in a snow bank along the road, waving the white flag of home renovation.

Love these summer nights!

Itching to see some photos? Enjoy our slideshows of sanding and priming the front, the approaching end of demo, and a sanding/priming marathon!

Enjoy the rest of your summer, all! Keep checking back for updates and thanks for reading!

- Melissa

Summer on the Farm

Summer, sweet summer! You have returned to the verdant hills and rolling pastures of southern Vermont. We're so happy to see you!

 Butterfly in the wildflower field next to the house...

Since purchasing the farmhouse, summer has taken on a whole new meaning for us. Summer means a warm house with no need to huddle around the wood stove or shovel out a path to the car. Summer means the disappearance of brown grass and brown mountains and the arrival of a lawn blanketed in warmth, greenery and a delightful smattering of wildflowers. The window for summer weather is shortened in Vermont and every warm and sunny day is a gift from Mother Nature herself.

Well another three months have flown by since I last updated the blog. While grad school kept me beyond busy, things have calmed down and I am currently on "summer vacation" (aka unemployed, depending on how you'd like to look at it). Destitution aside, this break from school is great and gives me plenty of time to focus on VT work!

We've spent quite a few weekends up at the house over the last few months and there is plenty that needs updating. Here comes stories and photo slideshows galore! We've made a lot of progress inside and completely transformed the lawn outside. Things are moving along swimmingly and I think we'll be in a fabulous place for this coming fall.

Let's get down to the nitty gritty!

The First Floor

The first floor checklist as it stood during our last update: Replace kitchen floor, Frame out bathroom entrance, Replace rotten studs remained unchecked. Three months down the line, all of that work is DONE! 

Finishing the kitchen floor is by far the biggest change that occurred on the first floor. After a marathon weekend of sawing, trimming and rummaging during the end of March, Tony and I managed to complete the entire kitchen floor using reclaimed wood already left in the house. At the moment, the floor has a great deal of character with boards of all widths, lengths and color, but should come together as one beautiful, rustic barnwood floor once it has been sanded. While it may not look like a 100% perfect job, it will surely tell the story of this old house. Some of the floor boards are actually old kitchen shelving with roman numerals carved in from an old numbering system. Should anyone choose to examine our floor closely they might just notice this little bit of history showing through!

One beautifully aged barnwood floor... check!

Tony also took on the unfriendly task of cutting out and replacing all of the rotten wood from the former roof leaks. There's nothing we like better than the challenge of replacing brittle, rotted wood in heavy load-bearing corners! Tony's brother-in-law Alastair also stepped up to the plate and framed out the entire first-floor bathroom entrance. It's all squared away and sturdy, silently awaiting the arrival of plumbing so we can install walls once again!

Check out slideshows of a complete kitchen floor and a fixed up first floor!

The Second Floor

After almost a year and a half of work, it was finally time to turn our eye to the second floor! Once 99% of the work was done downstairs, Momma Merkel and I took to cleaning and organizing every room. With little left to do on the first floor, Tony and I finally ordered the delivery of a dumpster so we could get to demoing the second floor. Unfortunately, before we could start ripping apart the second floor we had to start cleaning up the mess we made when we ripped apart the first. This is what happens when you demo without a dumpster...

Time to start hauling plaster and wood over to the dumpster, bucket by bucket...

It took two weekends to get through it all, but by the end ALL of the plaster, lathe, rotten wood and even a rogue toilet bowl made it into the dumpster. The backyard was clean and tidy, the dumpster was half-full and the time to begin second floor demo was upon us.

Our Farmhouse Family Portrait... Bailey looks into the future, unphased by the garbage pile below.

We've made great strides in the upstairs so far! Three bedrooms are down to just lathe, as is the back hallway. The front hallway is completely demo'd, ceiling and all. As always, a series of mouse nests chose to rain down upon me while taking down the ceiling. Let me once again reiterate: I hate demo.

The back hallway also contained a few surprises awaiting me in the ceiling: a series of boobytraps worthy of Indiana Jones. I nearly lost my head to a falling piece of pointed giant slate that tumbled down from the ceiling, only to discover that quite a few sharp objects were somehow resting on the ceiling above. After a few close calls and some careful investigating, I discovered that a stack of slate, along with 7 homemade Indian tomahawks and 3 carved long bows were waiting to fall down upon my head. This made for one strange but exhilarating discovery! Apparently these items had fallen through the upstairs attic and landed on the hallway ceiling. We still have no idea what the tomahawks were for, although I'm fairly sure they are very old homemade toys, probably dating back to a time when giving children sharp metal objects that could pierce skin wasn't frowned upon. Maybe they are worthless, or maybe they're our ticket to Antiques Roadshow! Either way, they're awesome and going on display with our other 'found objects'. They're our own little bit of Victorian folk art.

Watch your head!

Click here to see slideshows of our dumpster divin' weekend and second floor demo!

Demo will continue throughout the summer but we will make way for more outdoor work as well, which bring us to our final and perhaps most dramatic update...

The Lawn

With the arrival of warm weather, nature was a'callin and so we decided to take on a few outdoor projects. Landscaping might be some of the most backbreaking work around but it is always worth it at the end of the day. Tony and I spent an entire weekend planting a total of eleven trees on the property. The line-up of trees seemed like an exciting thing at the time I bought them, but by the time we reached digging hole #3 I was slightly over it. Good thing Bailey was on hand to help us with planting the Orange Flame Maples.

Bails puts his digging skills to good use

We now have two Orange Flame Maples to the left and right of the house, one TINY White Flowering Dogwood on the front lawn, two Weeping Willows in the fields to the left and right of the house, three Kwanzan Flowering Cherry Trees along the road infront of the left field, and three Flowering Bradford Pear Trees along the property line between our home and that of our neighbors'. 

I became tired just writing that sentence. 

There might be nothing more rewarding than watching these little trees grow tall and strong over the years. Fingers crossed that they all make it! We're rooting for you, little guys. (No pun intended).

Tony and Baby Dogwood

And finally, the most exciting change to the lawn! (at least for me) This past weekend we rented two real mothers of lawn equipment: The Terramite T7 backhoe and an industrial chipper. FINALLY, after nearly two years of doing battle with mere shovels and manpower, we rented a tractor with a bucket and hydraulic-powered shovel, allowing us to lift and move ALL of the fieldstones and boulders that lay in a massive heap on the side of the house. After two straight days of excavating the hell out of that area, Tony and I managed to have all of the rocks gone and piled up along the front of the road. We now have a clean, level lawn AND the beginnings of a rock wall! A double win. Gone are the days of the crazy thorn thicket and unknown piles of earth. We have tamed you, lawn. You will be grass once again.

Rocks no more!

Tony also went to town on the giant mound to the left of the house, finally flattening it out and moving the dirt and pebbles over to the driveway area to build up that area. He also used the back shovel to scoop up all of the roots of the former thicket near the road in the front of the house, making that area almost ready for grass seed as well. A few giant stones were also moved into place and will eventually be set up to be lovely little rock benches scattered throughout the property.

It's fairly amazing what three days and some rented excavating equipment can do! The lawn has been completely transformed, and this property is starting to look as beautiful as it should. Once we get the dumpster out of the there (and the house painted) this place will really start to shine.

Starting to arrange the rocks neatly... can you believe all of these were piled under dirt next to the house?!

Visit our sideshows to see tree planting in action and Tony, master of excavation, transform the lawn!

Today is the summer solstice which means a summer full of amazing work is just beginning! Stay tuned to see all of the painting, planting, demoing (and plumbing!!!) that will take place in the months to come. Good things are in store for summer 2012. The Olympics might be happening in London this summer, but our VT efforts will be Herculean in size!

Stay cool and thanks for reading,

- Melissa

A Post about Posts

And subflooring! And spring!!!

Last October, it felt like all of our hopes were dashed as winter cozied itself up to our drafty farmhouse and work on the foundation had to stop. It was too late to install the heaters and so we were forced to man up and prepare for another impending winter of below-zero temps, 4 foot snow drifts and a frigid home. Perhaps it was Mother Nature shining down some kindness on us, perhaps it was global warming... call it what you wish, but either way Vermont (and the rest of the country) has had one of the mildest winters of the last 100 years.

Last March we arrived at the house to find a few feet of snow, temperatures still hovering around freezing and gray skies. This past weekend afforded us a very different view... sunny skies, 65 degrees, a mainly snow-free lawn and buds on the trees. For better or worse, winter came and went with a whimper and Spring has declared itself the winner. While I am a constant advocate for the ice caps, polar bears and stopping the rise of the ocean's temperatures, I cannot lie... this abnormally early and warm spring feels like a little gift of sympathy handed directed to Tony and I. We will no longer have to toil in aching cold. Even though I said last April we'd never be cold again, I mean it this time!!

By next fall plumbing and heating will be installed and a proper VT winter will be warmly welcomed back to the town of Jamaica. But until then... be gone with you, winter weather!

Now, it's time to talk shop...

The Subfloor

Add another check to the first floor checklist because the subfloor is FINISHED! Tony and I spent two long weekends up at the farmhouse this past month and managed to make some pretty sweet progress in the kitchen and dining room area. The pictures tell the whole story, but we can proudly say the subfloor has been laid, and we've since begun laying out the hardwood floor on top of it. It's almost a shame to put flooring back over it because our subfloor job might be the cleanest-looking spot in the house. 

New subflooring in the kitchen and bathroom

We feared putting down the floor might take far longer than it ended up taking due to the unlevel nature of the floor joists, which required placing shims on every joist to even out the subfloor. Well for once, the house worked in our favor as we realized the despised lathe we'd been ripping off of the walls was actually the perfect height and width to nail down onto the floor joists. Instead of having to custom cut shims for each joist we were able to simply dig from our garbage pile and reuse these lovely little pieces to give us a near even dining room floor, and for that we'd like to say 'Thank you, wood lathe! You may have given me 1000 splinters and smacked me in the head more times than I'd like to remember while taking you down, but you saved us an entire day of work when it came to flooring.' For that, we are truly grateful.

 The despised lathe is a friend in disguise!

In the end, we were able to lay out the entire subfloor in one day, including custom cuts for the chimney and what not. I then had the pleasure of donning a fashionable pair of rollerblading knee pads and crawling around the floor screwing each piece of flooring into place. There will be no squeaks in this kitchen hardwood floor if my knee pads and power drill have anything to say about it.

We then moved onto a bigger and more challenging task, which brings us to our title. Barn posts.

Wall supports - functional and fashionable!

A little further down on our checklist you will find a note that says 'remove rotten wall studs'. This mainly applies to two problems - one in the kitchen and one in the living room. Before the roof was fixed by the previous owners, some serious ongoing leaks had severely damaged wall supports in these key load-bearing corners. We hadn't realized the extent of this until we attempted to install a new (and fairly cool-looking) wall support system. 

 

Rotten joists - clearly doing a world of good

After finishing up the subfloor, Tony went about removing all of these rotten wall joists and replacing them with nice, clean 2 x 4s. He rebuilt the damaged doorways of the arched doorway out of the kitchen and the library doorway, and then hand-notched two 8 foot barn posts we conveniently found lying in the basement. The intent of these posts is to provide support to the water damaged-area but also will play a key role in holding up a 16 foot long beam that will run across the kitchen. 

This beam runs along a ceiling joist that used to be supported by a wall that was present in the dining room area. That wall in the dining room was in line with the bedroom walls upstairs and provided support to the entire wall system above. Without the wall below, the weight of this ceiling has shifted and started falling downward. Without reconstructing a wall that would bisect the dining room, we knew we needed to support this area and fast! Enter in the barn posts.

After a few exhausting attempts to cut the barn posts to the right size, we had them firmly in place and installed the 16 ft. beam across. My head functioned as an impromptu house jack.

One head, many functions...

After our many efforts, it only made sense to discover that this 16 ft. support beam in fact had a massive gap between itself and the ceiling joist it was intended to support. As we soon discovered, this was due to our water-damaged corner which had fallen nearly 2 inches when compared to the other side of the room. Our joy knew no bounds. We immediately went about trying to raise up the falling corner and added some height to the barn post by installing extra subflooring underneath it. Writing this out in one sentence make it sounds somewhat easy when in fact this took place across a series of nail-biting hours, while using the hydraulic lift to raise up this corner simultaneously meant caving in our newly installed floor. With every pump of the hydraulic lift, our floor sunk down further and the walls upstairs creaked and cracked. I was convinced something was going to fall, and it'd probably be our new floor with us in tow. The barn post was so snug that we had to cut wall joists just to try and get extra room to maneuver the post around.

Eventually we were able to raise the house up without anything else collapsing and placed the 16 foot beam back in place. A gap between it and the ceiling remained, which we'd been told will always be the case since the ceiling is not level, and so we had to shim the remaining gap.

Our little success story has hit a small speed bump after Tony's sister and brother-in-law, our resident architects, reviewed the structure and recommended that we replace our 16 ft. beam with one that is wider, so we'll actually have to take apart our stylish system again soon. It's certainly better to do it the proper way the first time around but taking down these beams is a bit too much for the mind to process at the moment! In the meantime, we can appreciate our cool-looking barn posts which will remain exposed when we put up drywall, adding a nice touch of rustic appeal to our future dining room.

The well-earned character of these barn posts will remain visible

In our 'down time' Tony and I also rebuilt the doorway into the basement and began laying down the flooring we took up in January. A door now sits snugly in its' proper door frame, and we no longer have to duck through a hole in the wall to get downstairs. I then took it upon myself to insulate the hell out of the new framed-out wall so no more cold drafts can rise up and chill our bones from the basement. With a snug subfloor installed in both the kitchen and bathroom, and a proper doorway into the basement in place, those horrible winter drafts won't be making their way upstairs any longer!

Check out this slideshow of the installation of the subfloor and a slideshow of our installation of the barn posts and the return of the hardwood floor!

We plan on returning to the house this coming weekend and will spend some time rummaging around for old barn wood to use for flooring and possibly for the 16 ft. long ceiling support. Let's see how far our luck can carry us! If we are unable to find any quality older wood we will have new beams cut for the ceiling and also for the flooring, as we will definitely be short on both. Unfortunately we realized as we were putting back down the flooring that we won't have enough to complete the whole kitchen/dining area. I guess the old, huge floor gaps that opened up the room to the basement should have hinted at that.

Thanks for reading, and until next time... go bask in the warmth of this welcome spring season!

- Melissa

Subzero Subflooring

No snow in Vermont by early January? Unheard of! In fact 2012 has been pretty mild thus far in terms of winter weather although that changed unexpectedly last weekend, just as Tony and I forgot to check the weather report. -7? -16? A far cry from what we were used to up to that point, but alas, these were our AM forecasts last Sunday and Monday. Disheartening news, perhaps? More like terrifying! We were heading straight for the coldest weekend of our lives.

The truth is that despite the beyond-frigid temperatures, it actually could have been worse! The work we completed on the foundation this summer and Guy's basement door walls/fortress really lessened the amount of cold air flowing into the house. For the first time since owning the house, the inside was actually (slightly) warmer than outside. When the temperatures outside are only 12 degrees that might not be saying much but still, it's a plus!

Pinedale Shores stands out nicely against a snowy scene

To get us through the chilly months ahead, we've come up with a list of goals that revolve around first-floor work. We've decided not to move onto demo'ing the second floor until the first floor is 'ready to go' for its' final steps: electric, plumbing and drywall. First and foremost we're focusing on finishing the kitchen, which includes laying down subfloor and relaying a hardwood floor on top of that, framing out a doorway for the basement door (right now we climb through a hobbit-sized hole), and replacing a series of rotten wall studs. Thankfully, we're getting closer to completing our first goal. This weekend we reached the '1/3 finished' mark by finally getting up all of the original floorboard! It was as lengthy and tricky a task as any.

This lady knows how to man a saw!

We kicked off the frigid weekend by venturing to the coldest place in the house, the basement, to finish replacing the few remaining damaged floor joists. These joists, located near the back of the house, were actually no longer connected to the right-side support beam which gave the floor a nice trampoline-like feeling upon walking. After losing feeling in the majority of our limbs, we finished hammering in the new joists and could move on to task 2 - floor removal!

Tony and I spent more hours than one would expect tag-teaming the removal of the remaining 5 feet of floorboards, piece by piece. As Tony sawed through the countless nails holding each piece down, I used a crowbar to pry it up. It was slow and not all that exciting, but once we rubbed away the sawdust from our eyes we found a completely demo'd floor! With whatever feeling we had left in our hands, we hauled in a stack of subfloor pieces and roughly laid them out. We are now prepped for stage 2 of our subfloor goal.

Click here to see a slideshow of our subzero flooring techniques! 

During our next visit, we will finally be able to build something up instead of taking it apart! It will take us some time (of course, because nothing about this renovation can be a quick fix!) as we have to level out the floor by adding shims to every floor joist, but once THAT is done we can begin piecing together our subfloor. Perhaps it's wishful thinking to hope we'll get the entire subfloor down in one weekend, but we'll see! The sooner the subfloor is down, the sooner the actual hardwood floor can go down and that is one BIG to-do checked off of our list.

Not too pretty but it does the trick!

We'll be keeping an eye out these upcoming weekends for a few days that promise to hover in the balmy 30s, or 20s even. Once the weather cooperates we'll be back at the house for subfloor installation! Those two words don't get many hearts racing but to us it's nothing but good news ;)

More to come soon, all!

Melissa

A Season of Changes

2012 has arrived, as has a new blog post... finally!! It's been a cool FIVE MONTHS since our last entry. For shame, for shame. All of that wonderful freedom I was waxing poetic about in our last post quickly ended with grad school beginning in September, and I haven't had a chance to write a non-public health related word since. Thankfully, a month-long break from school is underway and I now have the opportunity to look back at all of the work we completed throughout the fall months. It would be far too much to go into each visit made to the house, and I doubt anyone has the attention span needed to review 10 weekends in one sitting, so we'll just go over a few major topics briefly. 6 new slideshows have been uploaded that can provide lovely visuals for everything I'm about to talk about. I'll list them all below.

Five months of updates condensed into one entry. Are you ready?? Go!!

The Foundation

Building this house, brick by brick

It was the dreaded word thrown about for months on end. Foundation, foundation, foundation. And after months of tireless work in the muck and mud that is the pit along the basement door... it's still not done haha. It's close though!

I paused on all of my own summer projects come September and joined Tony at Foundation Central in the back of the house. Alastair, our resident Englishman and descendant of the builders of Stonehenge (presumably), taught Tony the basics of brick laying so we could begin rebuilding the foundation walls. Alastair took one corner while Tony took the other, and they began the brick laying process. As we soon realized, it's a slow one. You have mere seconds to 'butter your brick' before placing it down, else you risk the mortar drying out too quickly, yet this tight time frame doesn't speed things along for a bunch of newbies such as us.

With Alastair and Tony's walls nearing completion, Tony and I teamed up to tackle the long foundation wall along the bathroom. Over the course of 3 days we had the wall 95% complete... a snaking, uneven, S-shaped pile of bricks. We learned a little too late that following the stone foundation below didn't necessarily guarantee a straight or level line. The wall was so uneven you could fit a whole brick along the top row in one corner, and a 1/2 inch piece of plywood in another. The wall is currently being held by a few choice bricks and other well-supported corners (we learned our lesson) so once spring comes around we intend to re-do the wall. Sad as it will be to knock our own work down, it's certainly necessary. These walls happen to be in a corner of the basement that is basically hidden from view, so we plan on running an interior wall of cinder blocks for added support and an outer wall of brick. 

Now that we're well informed in the basics of wall building, we should be able to complete the remaining foundation work in a matter of weekends. A nice hefty, level layer of concrete should speed things along and give us that level brick line we slightly missed the first time around. 

PAINTING!!!!!

Now coming to a farmhouse near you... Pinedale Shores!

No no, Pinedale Shores is not Vermont's newest retirement complex. It is... (drumroll) our house color! A hundred exclamation points cannot express my excitement about this topic. Endless hours of sanding this summer resulted in an entirely sanded front of the farmhouse (minus the peak which was a little too high for my fair heart). After sampling a multitude of greens, blues and grays, we settled on Pinedale Shores by Behr. It had everything we were looking for: a gray-blue appearance that felt warm, antique-y and clean. It was love at first brush stroke.

Even though only a portion of the front of the house has been painted, we've had countless people stopping by to say they love it or to flat-out thank us for making that yellow-green combo disappear. It turns out a lot of residents and visitors have always loved this house and are happy people have taken on the behemoth task of saving it. We're happy to oblige :)

Our dear friend Katie came up for a visit at the end of August and helped me get the ball rolling with the painting cause. We were making significant progress until I had to pause paint work to help Tony with the foundation in the back. The yellow lady now sits with a neater looking blue-gray front, but just this small portion of the house being done hints at how magnificent it will look when the whole house has been completed. Our initials thoughts were correct... this is a beautiful home and will be stunning once again.

The arrival of summer 2012 will bring a hold to all interior work as we take on painting the exterior house with all hands on deck. We realized after beginning that all of the clapboard needs to be primed after sanding, which will slow us down a wee bit, but this house WILL be painted by next summer. Scaffolding may have to make an appearance to reach the peaks unless we become really brave (or really foolish) by next summer. Let's make the old gal lovely again!

Exterior Repairs

A true DIY'er knows when it's time to call in the professionals. Such was the case with us in late October when the cavalry came in to save us from two MASSIVE exterior repairs. Their names: Guy and Billy. These two talented, hard-working, perfection-seeking contractors did a series of jobs for my parents' home over the past two years and have done an incredible job every time. They braved snow showers, no bathroom and falling temperatures to demo and rebuild the rotted, leaking roof over the downstairs bathroom AND close in the basement by building an amazing stronghold of cinder block walls on which we'll place the hatch door for the basement. The before and after of these projects are just amazing. In the bathroom, clean beams now cross the ceiling where previously support beams had been so rotten they had fallen off the wall. The roof itself was a mess that words cannot describe. A picture ought to do the trick.

The roof before repairs, if you couldn't tell

A week after leaving Guy and Billy to fend for themselves, we returned to find pure construction magic. The new roof has a proper pitch which should allow for snow runoff so rotting of the siding in this area should cease. It's metal, it's clean and it's leak-poof. It's everything we love!

 The new bathroom roof is snug as a bug

 Our new basement door walls... built like a fort!

The walls built to seal in the basement door speak for themselves. Guy, a specialist in masonry work, managed to interlock the cinder block walls with the uneven and oddly spaced stone foundation walls of the house. Its seamlessness was astounding! At least we know large woodland animals won't be able to hibernate in our home this winter. Step by step this house is becoming sealed from the elements! We only have about 100 more holes to go.

Interior Repairs

Tony and our new dog Bailey work together to remove the kitchen floor

We've reached the final frontier of this update! Interior work. This might be the briefest of all updates since working inside the house has been our last priority for the last few months. First and foremost, I am sad to admit that our slow progress with finishing the foundation meant... plumbing could not go in before winter hit. Therefore, despite all of my proclamations in the spring, heating did not go in before another Vermont winter settled in. We are cold once again! This thought initially made me want to cry but I have since accepted it and have mentally moved on. It's time to bring out the layers. Work must go on!

The entire first floor was demo'd by September. Yours truly spent a few days alone at the house in August and finished the last bit of demo in the future library. What I uncovered no man, woman or child should have to face alone. Tearing down the ceiling revealed a mouse nest colony that ran half the width of the room and was 4 beams across in length. In total, I was forced to pull down, sweep up and throw out a mouse nest roughly 30 sq. ft. in size. My horror knew no bounds. The tapestry of profanities I wove that day is still hanging over the first floor.

Mouse nest, anyone?

Before Tony and I move our sights upstairs to second floor demo, we have a list of first floor fixes that remain. First on this list is laying down the kitchen subfloor. Giant holes going directly down into the basement seem to imply that there isn't one. We took on this hefty task the day after Christmas, when Tony and I headed up to the house with our new dog Bailey, an incredible young man adopted from the SPCA that won our hearts within 2 seconds. With Bailey's excellent supervisor skills we managed to take up the boards for over 1/3 of the room, which is a pretty good ratio considering the entire area near the back of the room has a subfloor and doesn't need to be removed. The last 5 feet of floor still must be removed, which will take a bit of time since we need to saw through every set of nails holding down each board, but it can be done! Once everything is lifted we'll make sure our subfloor is even and nail down the boards. Then, it's time to sort through our massive piles of leftover wood and see what can be used to patch in the formerly vacant spots in the flooring. Completing the task will be like working on a giant-sized puzzle. I love a good challenge!

Watch your step now...

Bailey and I pose for a family portrait

In conclusion, the blog is back!!! We'll be heading back to the house in two weeks to continue work on the kitchen floor, and I promise to post about it soon thereafter. Even if grad school keeps me busy, letting 5 months go in between posts just won't fly. Updates will be more regular from this moment on, you have my word! 

Slideshows from the last few months:

#15 - Melissa and the Mice

#16 - PAINTING!!!

#17 - Laboring through Labor Day

#18 - The Farmhouse: One Year Later

#19 - Big Changes for a Fall Finish!

#20 - The 'Tail' of Installing the Kitchen Floor

Thanks again for reading and sharing in this story of ours. More to come soon. Happy New Year, all!

- Melissa