Bringing down and sanding off

Invasive wisteria vine

What do you do with a massive 60 some year old wisteria vine?  If it's smothered your crape myrtle and threatening to do the same to your live oak, you have it cut down, of course.

Styron's tree service spent the better part of a day cutting down the vine, the crape myrtle, and several other stumps and trees in the back yard.  It took 4 hours to cut out the wisteria and crape myrtle and it broke my heart to see our shade go as well as several nice branches on the live oak.  But hopefully we've saved the rest of it, and we'll plant a new crape myrtle to fill the bare spot.

                                                                 The big hole in our yard

Paul finally finished adding new floor joists and piers and he's been slowly jacking up the house.  Slowly, the floor is getting more level.  We took a 3 day break and spent it in the mountains, where we stopped at Preservation Hall, an architectural salvage store outside of Asheville.  We were happy to find the upper half of four 3 over 1 windows.  They match the original wood windows in the house and we plan to install two of them in the front of the added on workshop, and two on either side of a future fireplace.

Now that the underground work is mostly finished Paul headed for the roof and fresh air.  He's tearing out an old furnace chimney in preparation for moving some walls inside.  I finished sanding the living room and began working on sanding doors and the next room.  We love the old, wide trim around the windows, doors and baseboard, except when it comes to scraping and sanding off all those layers of paint.  Will the sanding ever end?

Smiling?

Living room ready to patch and paint

Where to start?

Before the trees leafed out in April we decided our first task had to be an attack on the jungle of vines in our backyard.  They were taking over the trees, and although they made a great privacy fence, they were out of control.  As we started yanking the vines out of the trees, our neighbor decided to go at them with a chainsaw.  Almost 20 feet high and 10 feet deep in his yard, he just cut them all out including the trees they lived in.  Now we get a nice breeze and have a wide open view - it's a blank palette for us to landscape as we like.

                                                                  Our wall of vines

                                                               The new view

For the past 3 weekends Paul has been under the house reinforcing floor joists and building new piers.  When the attic was refinished years ago, the additional weight was too much for the non load bearing walls.  This caused a sag of 1 and 1/4" in some areas.  Now they are reinforced and he has started jacking up the house, 1/8" at a time.  Crawling around in the dirt with 18" of headroom hasn't been pleasant and he can't wait to begin work above ground.

                                                            Coming up for a breather

While Paul has been under the floor, I've begun scraping and sanding the trim and doors in the living room.  Several coats of paint are on the trim, but the last one is the worst - heavy latex glopped on without sanding first.  I have a little routine going: after working inside all morning, I head out into the yard for the afternoon.  Old beds of some sort were lined with broken chunks of cement which I hauled to the curb for pickup before tackling the weeding.  Raking uncovered a partial brick path and a few cement pavers, along with several buried cement blocks.  (I also dug up matchbox cars, a spoon and marbles-opening a little door into the lives of previous owners.) A friend gave me several vegetable plants so I dug up a little garden and our herbs are growing in pots waiting for a place to go in the ground.

Now that we've started,  the list seems endless - actually it is endless - but we'll keep plodding along one step at a time.

Now it begins

We wanted a small, easy to maintain cottage with enough room to pursue our interests in painting, jewelry making, photography, carpentry and music, as well as room for overnight guests.  Being close to the water was a priority and the yard had to be big enough for a workshop, screen porch and garden.  It would have been easier to find a house that met our needs outside of town, but we wanted to be able to walk to the water and bike to downtown activities.  

So this cottage style craftsman in town fits the bill, and we purchased it in March.  Although it was built in 1949, it has a lot of characteristics of a house built a decade earlier.  It has some features of a ranch and some of a bungalow, but can best be described as a cottage style craftsman:

Typically a one story building with a compact rectangular plan;

a centralized main entrance consisting of a partial-width porch

and flanked by windows; a symmetrical facade, a side gabled

low-pitched roof; horizontal wood siding; and Craftsman stylistic

details (exposed rafter tails, wide window and door casings, 

triangular knee brace supports, etc.

Old House Dictionary: An Illustrated Guide to American Domestic

Architecture, 1600=1940 by Steven J. Phillips

The wood siding has been covered with an 'interesting' asphalt siding and the pine floors inside are mostly exposed except for the kitchen and dining room which have multiple layers of various flooring on top.  For better or worse, the original 3 over 1 windows have been replaced with vinyl windows.  The bathroom has been partially remodeled, the kitchen is virtually non existent, and everything needs cleaning and painting.  The floor is uneven due to finishing off the attic (more on that later) and the workshop addition roof leaks, but overall the house is fairly structurally sound.  The house and yard have not been maintained for 15-20 years so there are lots of cosmetic issues.

The floor plan is similar to many bungalows with the right side having a living room in front, dining room in the middle and kitchen in back.  There is a laundry room addition off the kitchen.  A small hall is off the dining room and the left side of the house has a bedroom, bathroom and then another bedroom.  There is a third bedroom at back between the back bedroom and the kitchen.  A workshop with an outside entrance was added on to the bedroom side of the house.  

All in all, the house needs a lot of work but since Paul is a carpenter, he's not expecting any surprises.  Still, we figure it will be a few years project if all goes as expected.