The Den...all buttoned up

Hello again!  We left you with our den in pieces.  It got a little worse, and then much better after that.  Over the course of about a week, Jason (with a little help from Garreth to wrestle timbers into place) gave us back a beautiful room that is now significantly more structurally sound.  But before we got to that point, the other half of the wall had to come out...

The original wall from the outside, with crooked sashes and siding.

The original wall from inside, with horribly fitting window and botched-together bracing.

All new picture window!

New timber going in...

And new siding!

Notice the mix of old and newly-milled siding...

Garreth got up bright and early to put primer on the new wood.

Wood trim going back in along with new insulation.

New drywall...

Fresh primer...

And finally getting to move back in!

Jason even replaced the worst sections of the rotten flooring and evened out the baseboard that looked like it had been reshaped with a hatchet.

Repaired flooring.

 A couple of days later, while having breakfast, we found a little bonus gift on our kitchen mantle.  Last spring, a good friend of ours, talented photographer and fellow old-house owner, Watson Brown, gave us this lovely portrait he took of our house.  While demolishing our den, Jason somehow had time to custom-make a frame for it using original siding from the house that he wasn't able to reuse as siding and even sunk some of the rose-head nails into the wood for a decorative flourish.  I literally teared up a little bit.

Finally, we'll leave you with this, on this gorgeous spring day!!

Some Changes to the Den

Greetings!  We can't believe it has been almost a year since we last posted an update from Greenwreath - the time has flown!  Between work, the house, the pets, and a myriad of other excuses, there never seems to be a moment to sit down and write a post.  We promise we will try to do better, starting with the den...

The den has probably been the most lived-in room since we moved in, and after a year of staring at bowing walls, water-stained floors and windows so crooked they looked like they were scowling at us, we decided it was finally time to tackle whatever nightmare was lying in wait beneath.

The den before we started

Rotten floors

The mantle, no longer attached to the wall

I happened to go away for the weekend to visit my parents, so naturally, as soon as I left, Garreth called Jason over to start this little project.  This is what I came home to...

I was only gone for 4 days.

We found a weird, botched-together assortment of timbers, rotten siding, evidence of a fire, destruction caused by our pesky little friend, the termite, and we even learned that the windows we now have were not original.  The way the present framing cuts into the cross-pieces, it appears the original windows were much smaller.  The three ghost marks running up the chimney face are the outlines of studs that used to hold the drywall in place over the brick.  What was left of them fell out when the drywall came down.

What is going on in here?

Burned sill

Jason returned in the fall, after he milled new siding, to finish gutting and replacing the walls...

Lola, always helpful

Starting to re-frame.

Olive the Cat and Lucy T. Basset Hound inspecting the new work

New siding!

The end of the work day...

Jason re-uses everything he can save, so the siding going back onto the house consists of a mix of newly-milled and salvageable original.  You might also have noticed that some of the timber remaining in the wall is not exactly structural or necessary.  It is always an excellent idea when replacing so much of the original structure, to leave remnants of the old so that anyone in the future can hopefully tell what exactly the house has been through.  We wouldn't want to erase all that history of change.  Check back to see how it turns out in the next installation!

Kitchen Remodel

A lengthy series of events led to us having to rip out our kitchen wall in late November.  During our first real freeze.  First, we attempted to get our downstairs gas pack and upstairs heat pump functional, in preparation for the oncoming winter months.  To our chagrin, we discovered that neither actually worked.  The upstairs unit was replaced with no problem; however, the gas pack made us sick.  Literally.  After a couple of days limping along on a small propane cylinder, we started smelling gas in the house.  We then decided that we should replace that one as well, and this time with an electric unit.  Have you seen the price of propane lately?  Also, our old propane tank is buried in the yard and was installed in 1987.  There is no telling what state it is in and how much longer it would actually last.  Back to the kitchen...  We already knew that there was structural damage to the kitchen wall, sill, header and floor, much of it behind the old gas pack.  So, when the gas pack had to come out, we decided to call Jason back in to fix the house, before re-installing a new unit.  Lucky for us, he made himself available.  We think he just took pity on us being without heat.

The kitchen wall before

At this distance, there appears to be no issue, but upon closer inspection...

There was a reason behind these cracks, mildew-stained drywall and barely-attached mantle.  Water had slowly worked its way in over the years, soaked the timbers and invited all kinds of termites to make a home (and a meal) there, so everything attached to those timbers starting letting go.  It also solved the mystery of why the kitchen was so drafty!

The gas pack out and the rotten siding coming off (new heat pump on the left).  Garreth said this side of the yard looked like NASA's junkyard.

Close-up of the ruined old sill and studs

Our brave little space heater trying to keep us warm (yes, those are streams of daylight around the wainscoting)

The old sill out

Termite damage

Drywall removed.  The chimney still has the original plaster attached.

That is a t-shirt we found stuck inside the wall.  Gross.

The wall removed from the inside...

...and the outside.

Termite damage to the kitchen ceiling/2nd-story floorboards.

Chimney - in pretty good shape!

New studs. 

Jason was worried we would get cold, so he tacked up some plywood to brace us for a particularly cold night.

Frozen olive oil - that's how cold it was.

Window back in place.

Packing out the wall with spare wood to make sure the drywall is level.

New drywall!

New kitchen wall!

New siding

Siding, freshly primed.

The troublemakers that started this whole thing.

All of this work only took Jason a week!  There were a couple of awesome bonuses that came along with replacing this wall.  We found out that the kitchen window had not been properly framed out, so when Jason had to put new studs in, he made sure they fit the window frame.  We figured this was probably due to the original windows being removed at some point in time.  We also learned that the window on the other side of the fireplace was originally a door, leading to the outdoor kitchen.  Old pictures to come!  Also, the new siding Jason put on is better quality than the other stuff added in the late 80s, and Jason beaded it to match the 1800s era siding on the front of the house, AND aligned it with that siding.  Sigh.  We love him for that!

The Living Room Part 3: 3D

We are seeing some wonderful things happening in our living room!  After the sills were all dealt with, Jason and Dan were able to replace the joists with new timber and put in some new foundation piers.  We are so relieved that the room is going to be solid as a rock for years to come.

New joists!

New piers!

Lola, inspecting the work.

And new insulation!

 Once the structure was deemed solid, the flooring could go back down.  Since Jason numbered the planks, there was no guess work in replacing them:  each plank was put back in the same place.  The only exceptions were the two planks directly overlying the sills at each end of the room.  Because of the severe termite infestation in the sills, the termites also ate the floor planking.  We were able to source tongue and groove pine flooring so that at least the two planks that had to be removed were replaced with like material.  You can barely even tell that they are a slightly different color to the rest of the floor (due to the differences in natural wear and tear that our house and whatever building these two planks came from saw through the years).

New plank beneath the far wall, and Jason' numbering system.

Once again, Jason’s attention to detail served us well, because not only did he use a hidden-nail technique when reinstalling, but he also made sure to mark on the baseboard where the edge of each plank rested so that the floor fit precisely as it did before our renovations.  Even the old scratches still line up. 

Attention to the details

He assured us that you would never know that this floor had ever been removed…

What do you think?

Check back to see how it finally comes together with new drywall and paint!