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

The New 'Typical Work Week'

Only one month ago, my typical work week still consisted of sitting down to a computer at 9am and remaining there, minus the occasional break for wandering, until 5pm. Now, in the midst of my 'summer of freedom' before grad school kicks in this coming September, a new work week looks rather different. By 8am, an hour before I'd normally start working, I am already 15 feet up in the air clinging to a ladder while I sand down the front of the farmhouse. Instead of ringing phones or city traffic noises, I hear the sound of the river following its course across the road, and the birds flitting about from tree to tree. By 9am I'm baking in the sun, and will continue to do so until 6:00pm when the sun finally goes down behind the mountain. My day will be filled with rotary sanders, hauling bricks or perhaps digging up large rocks to clear the thorn patch so it can be mowed down. By 8:30, we close up shop and head for the hotel, where we immediately pass out in a fit of exhaustion.

All in all, this work day suits me very well. I might actually prefer it to a day in an air conditioned office. Go figure!

For as insanely cold as Vermont can get in the winter, it apparently also knows how to get pretty hot! Last month, Tony and I spent the 16th through the 24th (minus a brief two day return to NYC) up at the farmhouse working from sunrise to sunset. Our company for that workathon was Antonio, a NJ carpenter that has done work for Tony's family before. We sweated our way through each day, but the warmer weather and longer days had us flying along in terms of progress. In that time we tackled quite a few different tasks, so I think it best to break the review down one by one. And what better place to start than with our least favorite word...

The Foundation

As it turns out, having an accomplished carpenter on the job can really speed things along. Who knew? The tagteam of Anthony and Antonio spent the entire week down in the basement, completing nearly all of the woodwork that needed to be re-done before a new brick wall could be laid down.  A&A went section by section, cutting out the old rotten support beams, putting in temporary supports, cutting new pieces to fit, and securing them. This process was, in the end, fairly excruciating thanks to the giant, rusted cast iron nails that still hold this house together so snuggly. The old gal simply did not want to give up her original beams, rotten or not.

Those rotten floor joists are outta here

By the end of the week, Tony and Antonio had replaced all but one rotten support beam. More damaged beams had been discovered as they went along, but they managed to take care of them all. Once all of the new beams were in place and were properly supported, they began the process of replacing all of the rotten floor joists in the bathroom, kitchen and library. At any given point, a wrong step in any of those rooms might have sent you on an express trip down to the basement floor. The house, still stubborn to give up its original structure, held tight to each and every floor joist that needed to be replaced. The fellas struggled downstairs, cutting each of the 20 + beams into 10 or so different pieces, and then pried each piece off of the ceiling above. The amazing attention to detail that was put into this house has made this whole process a nightmareish one, but we're thankful for it nonetheless! The quality of work Wales Cheney put into building this home is probably the only reason it's still standing.

We will be returning to VT this weekend and Tony (and possibly Antonio) will finish up the job in the basement. Then, we begin contacting masons to get in there and lay down new brick. Once that is all complete, never again shall we utter the word 'Foundation'!

Meanwhile...

The Exterior

In order to prevent there being too many cooks in the kitchen, I spent my week outside working on the yard and on the house itself. Mrs. D got the ball rolling during our last visit by sanding down the windows and painting them with primer. I picked up from there and kicked the painting process into high gear. Over the course of the week, I managed to sand down the entire porch area, including the porch beams, the second story above the porch and at least half of the front of the house. I was able to sand as far as my little ladder could reach, which was about half way up the second story windows. Before I can continue, we will need to bring in a much bigger (and much sturdier) ladder from NJ. The biggest problem I can anticipate is swatting away wasp nests and giant spider webs from the roof line without panicking and falling a few dozen feet. We're still formulating a plan on how to do that safely.

Once the porch was totally sanded, I painted the entire area with a plain white primer. This small step immediately improved the appearance of the front of the house. Well.... somewhat, anyway! It's amazing to see how a plain coat of fresh paint can already begin to bring out the beauty of this home. I am very convinced we're going to have a lovely house on our hands someday.

A white-washed porch!

For now, we must continue to sand sand sand before any painting can be done, and I can vouch for the fact that sanding down the house is not a pleasant job. As soon as the sander is placed on the old, chipping paint, it explodes off the house in a fury of dirt and paint chips. I spent an entire week lightly coated in a flattering yellow-green dust. As unsavory as the need for sanding is, it's a necessary evil that must be done. I plan on continuing along my path of dusty destruction this weekend, and I sincerely hope that two sides of the house will be sanded and ready for paint by mid-August. We'll see how my timeline actually pans out!

Odds and Ends

A few other projects were tackled during our visit, thanks in part to a surprise housecrash by my lovely friends Meredith and Azhar Alami! These wonderful individuals put Jamaica, Vermont into Mapquest and embarked on a 4 hour drive without actually knowing the location of the house. They hoped that they would recognize the house just by sight, and thankfully it's not easy to confuse this house with too many other yellow/green Victorians. They brought with them not only jokes but the will to work, which is my favorite kind of farmhouse guest! Together, we knocked down the ceilings in the living room and front hallway, and also took on some landscaping work. Azhar managed to make more progress on my thorn patch landscaping project by cutting through the still untamed section of thorn and raspberry bushes. By clearing the land, he helped uncover more giant rocks that must be dug up and moved. Once this area has been cleared of boulders, we will be able to till the ground and put down grass seed. Finally, the overgrown thorn patch will be a thing of the past!

Chaos presides over the entrance hall as the ceiling is demo'd

The Conclusion...

Spending a whole week in Vermont allowed us to great a deal of work done on the house, but the extra time also let us make some great local discoveries. By stopping to chat with other builders and local folk, we got to know John of Okey Dokey Baking, a talented baker from NY now residing in Jamaica who is trying to make a name for himself at the Jamaica Farmers Market. We also met Nelson of Coleman Hills Lumber Mill. Nelson is one of those amazing farmers that is so in tune with the world around him, he can predict the yields from his maple trees just based on the direction of the winds each spring. His lumber mill and farm, magnificently situated at the top of the Green Mountains, is one of the prettiest farms you could ever hope to behold. Also, it is only 15 minutes from the house, as opposed to the Home Depot which is a 50 minute drive. All of the wood is cut to order, often with the bark still attached. Just a side note, but the cows that graze at this beautiful farm provide milk for Cabot Cheese. I now officially approve of all Cabot products. If they're getting their milk from these cows, then they are making some happy cheese!

Cows happily grazing while Tony is gazing

As beautiful as the weather is in Vermont at the moment, we're still well aware that fall is on its way. We have plenty to do on the house before the cold weather returns, so we plan on hauling ass the next month or so! We'll be returning for at least 3 days this coming week, and I have plans to spend the following week at the house solo, sanding the exterior without pause. Time is of the essence and we must get these projects done while the warm weather sticks around!

Click here to see a slideshow of our foundation transformation and a prettier exterior!

I believe it's safe to say that our foundation woes are nearing completion, and by this coming weekend the majority of our work should be done! Then, our TBD master mason will put up a new wall, and all can rest well knowing that the house will be sitting on study ground for another 100 years.

Another summer update is looming on the horizon. Stay tuned!

Melissa

Founding Fathers and Foundations

July 2011 has been 'all quiet on the blog front' thus far, but that changes today! We have finally emerged from a pile of house rubble and rotten beams, just in time to make an update or two before the month of July disappears into the ether. The good news is, we haven't had time for typing because we've been too busy demoing, and finally building things back up! This month we've spent nearly two weeks in total working away on a variety of issues up there. The main focus is, and continues to be, our dreaded foundation. We kicked off the month by spending our 4th of July holiday weekend up at the house, tag-teaming a handful of to-dos. Here's a little recap of what we accomplished...

Red, white and blue... and green!

For 4th of July weekend, we felt it was only appropriate to remember our country's fight for freedom by waging war ourselves. For three days, Dallaryan/Merkel forces attacked the farmhouse on all fronts, taking down rotten support beams, crumbling brick walls, and hideous green window trim, bringing the house a little closer to a fresh start. The outcome of this battle? Farmhouse - 1, thirty years of neglect - 0. We're winning the war on house restoration!

The main 'to-do' of the weekend continues to be our least favorite word... foundation. After three days of crow bar wielding, Tony and I had not left one shaky brick standing. We knocked down four separate brick walls and placed wood supports to fit throughout the entire area. This fun-filled process involved digging out a few feet of earth from each wall, prying the wall apart brick and brick, and hauling and restacking bricks in piles throughout the basement. Needless to say, by the end of each night we were pretty beat. Perhaps mason work is best left in the hands of masons.

It's like jenga, but with bigger consequences



Once all of the walls were successfully knocked down and the house was securely supported on a few brave wood beams, we set about cutting out the rotten house supports. It seemed like this should be an easy process, since you could basically tap the beam with your hand and pieces would begin to fall, but unfortunately that was not the case. Rotten though they may be, each beam is securely in place with massive century-old cast iron nails. Prying teeth would probably be easier than prying a 7-inch wide piece of wood away from these walls. In the end, after hours and hours or work, we only managed to get a piece of one support beam off of the house. With 5 or so beams to go, the future was looking a bit scary...

In other news for the weekend, Mrs. Dallaryan and a visiting weekend warrior named Sergio set about completing a handful of cosmetic tasks, including sanding down the window trim in the front and finally painting over that terrifying green color with a white primer. They also began the cleaning up process of a massive growth of trees and bushes in the front yard. While Tony and I only managed to tear things apart downstairs, Mrs. D and co were making things slightly prettier in the world above. Seeing visible improvements to the house, small though they may be, gave us a much-needed morale boost!

Click here to see a slideshow of broken-down walls and fixed-up paint!

4th of July weekend was just the beginning of a really successful month of work at the house. In the coming days we'll put up a new post with plenty of captivating photos and mesmerizing stories from our July renovations. I'm sure you are sitting there, thinking to yourself ... 'Did they get all of the support beams replaced?'... 'Is the foundation finished?!'... 'Have they finally settled on a house color?!'... but unfortunately you will have to wait a few days to have these questions and more answered :)

Stay tuned for our July recap, and thanks for reading!

- Melissa

A 'Rocky' Start to Summer

Below zero temperatures? Ice forming inside the house? 4 foot snow drifts? All things of the past, my friends, because summer has arrived!!! Today is June 28th and we are officially one week into the summer season. These days, Jamaica is happily boasting temperatures in the 70s and 80s, and the regular summer showers have turned the drab, brown landscape into a greenery-filled wonderland. We can barely keep up with the grass, which seemingly grows to Serengeti length in our absence. After the winter we had, I will appreciate every day of this warm and sunny weather.

So, as you can tell, there has been some downtime with the blog! A month and a half of downtime, to be exact. In our blogging absence, we've spent two hard-working but successful weekends up at the farmhouse. Our first update will be about Memorial Day weekend, when Tony, Mairim, Alastair and Miriam rang in the summer with lawn mowers, wallpaper scrapers and faulty foundations. A little barbequing did occur as well. Yours truly was not present for that weekend, but was instead teaching art in the wonderful land of Kenya. No worries, though... Tony provided me with nightly email updates so I was still as good as present!

Forget the beach... we excavate for Memorial Day!

As promised in our last blog entry, 'big foundation repairs' was the name of the game during our next weekend at the house. Plumbing is not able to go in until the back foundation is repaired, and so the plan for the weekend was to bring in the excavators and their impressive excavating machine to have the back wall dug out, and then have the concrete pourer and his impressive concrete pouring machine pour us a new foundation wall in the back. Of course, as we learn time and time again, there might as not be a schedule during renovations of this scale. As Tony sadly described in his email to me, the excavator began digging until he got a good look at the back foundation wall, and put the brakes on the entire process. Apparently, the back wall was in was worse shape than we originally thought, and he worried the entire structure might be seriously compromised if he began removing the brick wall with the supports it had at that moment. With a mighty (and fairly expensive) excavating machine idling next to him, Tony was informed he'd have to run a series of supports throughout the basement before any brick walls could be removed. Otherwise, this lovely house could pull a tragic Humpty Dumpty during excavation. Just like that, the plans for the weekend were shot. Concrete guy, we never knew ye.

The excavation team... they came, they saw, they left.

The rest of Tony's weekend was less than picturesque. He spent the next few days down in the basement trying to figure out the best way to support this shaky section. Another excavator we'd met previously stopped by and offered Tony some enormously helpful pointers on the best way to support the structure, which Tony then began to carry out on his own. Free advice is always welcome advice! He was able to run a few more supports along the side wall and under the downstairs 'bathroom', which is the area with the most problems. Thankfully this room doesn't connect to the upstairs so it's poor foundation and sloping walls don't really affect the rest of the structure.

While Tony worked below ground, the rest of the Dallaryan/Standing crew worked on maintenance above ground. Mairim and Miriam showed their wallpaper removing skills and cleared the hallway and staircase walls of all of its old paper. This is a big help as we plan on trying to salvage those walls, since putting up new angled drywall along a steep staircase would be a feat slightly beyond our skill sets. While the ladies toiled away inside, Alastair christened our new sit-down mower, which my father was able to get for us for a mere $100. This bad-boy mower comes complete with headlights and attached mulcher... serious business, but the lawn proved to be serious in its own right. It took this professional racing fan two days just to do upkeep on the lawn, and he didn't even get to the entire property. Looks like we better find a way to add a few more hours to the day so we can fit in some mowing while we're up there on the weekends. The to-do list just keeps growing!

Click here to see a slideshow of Memorial Day in Vermont, DIY style!

Unfortunately, Memorial Day weekend was supposed to be a weekend of huge progress, but in the end it just presented us with more to do... like restoring an entire foundation ourselves. In attempting to find the silver lining to our foundation woes, we can at least say that we're now fully aware of all of the foundation issues, and they can be fixed before it's too late. It's better to fix the foundation now when everything is so unfinished, compared to years from now when everything else is finished inside. Having to jack up a house with new walls would lead to cracks forming everywhere, so once this foundation is fixed we can install our drywall knowing it will have plenty of crack-free years ahead. We just have to keep saying, "We think we can, we think we can..."

Finding the Foundation

My triumphant return to the farmhouse occurred the weekend after I arrived back home. After a few weeks in the Kenyan desert, Vermont's greenery was just what I needed to see! Unfortunately, the weather didn't choose to cooperate, and we spent two rainy (and chilly!) days getting down and dirty in the basement. Thoughts of summer pleasantries clouded our judgement, and so we had to go out and buy warmer clothing before we could get down to our 'weekend warrior' tasks. With our spirits high, we got down to the business of figuring out how to support the house effectively so we could knock down the old bricks and get new support walls going. After facing down a few gigantic spiders and a few hundred tiny ones, a plan was set in place.

Tony and I slowly began going along one of the shaky walls, jacking it up with a hydraulic car lift until everything was level. We then would cut a piece of wood to fit perfectly between the support beam and the stone wall. Once that was wedged in place, we'd move the car lift further down the wall, knock out the bricks, put in a new wood support, and so on and so forth. After 2 days, we had two walls totally knocked down and supported on wood beams. In between of all of this success was lots of digging outside in the mud, mainly to clear away the area around the stone support wall, hauling bricks from here to there and general unpleasant tasks, like climbing into tight dirt-filled spaces on our bellies. It was unpleasant and exhausting work but it was very necessary, and by Sunday evening we were feeling like two very accomplished young renovators.

Our foundation wall - so delightfully unsturdy!

During the weekend a few masons also stopped by to take a look at the foundation work and provide us with estimates. The prices they came back with made our bank accounts very sad, so at the moment we're really weighing our options. $10,000 handed over to a stranger or dedicating a few weeks to this project and spending the cost of a few bags of cement? We seem to be leaning towards the latter. We'll be heading up to VT next weekend for an extended Fourth of July stay, and plan on giving laying brick the old college try. After all, how do you learn something without doing it? A few tutorials and Tony and I might just become professional brick layers ourselves :)


Click here to see photos of shaky brickwork and foundation fixes!

Another update will follow next week! I see fireworks, sturdy brick walls and a few more muddy shoes in our future...

- Melissa