I took our first reservation for July last night for Sunnyside. Yikes! Gonna start moving fast on the ole place now. Work begins again in earnest tomorrow. Back to Maine today. Happy New Year!

Construction on the cottage is on hold until after the holidays. Both Greg and I are busy with other work things, Christmas things, packing things, cooking things, and leaving for a week-type things.

Merry Christmas to all.

11:30 am and it's dump day. I got up at 5 and started cooking at 6...making Christmas goodies: spiced pecans, gluten free chocolate chip cookies with cashews and peanut butter chips, orange shortbread cookies dipped in milk chocolate, and cashew peanut butter brittle (suffice it to say that I have gone through about 6 lbs of butter this morning!!)

I am avoiding the dump because I am lazy and don't want to have to go and finish cleaning the damn work site....But I need to before anything else can happen and the next dump day is Tuesday. I have one more thing in the oven and then I will go over there. There is a truckload full of cardboard alone from all the window boxes! Speaking of windows, did you know that ours were put in day before yesterday??? Can you tell I am excited?? Here are some more shots of the new windows from the inside:

Kitchen window. The walls and studs aren't straight but the window is!

These new windows in the front are awesome, I really like them, they make the place look like a cottage again. With wooden walls and the peak exposed, I think this upstairs is going to rock!

We moved one of the small square windows (the covered up hole to the left) so that the stairway would have natural light. We are expanding the stairway and the wall will go right through the old window. Its a squeeze, but there will be a wall between these two windows.

The new sliders....though they have to be removed because the door opens on the wrong side. I see why there was a bay window here now. The sliders made the room feel smaller,

but then again, you couldn't do this with a bay window!! Deck to follow. See the debris I have to get out onto the roof to clean? Its a bitter cold day here...ugghh :(

I like this series of three, showing the transformation of the front of the house because of the windows. And oh, by the way...the sky really is that blue here today! After trimming the windows we will wait for Spring to paint!

The Windows are IN!!!!!

As I write this, the thermostat on the monitor heater says its 42 degrees in the cottage. It is still warmer than it was in here the last two days when the workmen were here putting the new windows in. The place looks so much better than before. I've spent the last few hours pulling off the sticky protective film off the glass on all the windows and putting in the mullions, which, I have to say, really make the look of the place. The only hitch is that the sliding glass doors for the upstairs master bedroom came with the slider on the wrong side. That has to be replaced, which should take at least another month. Ugghh

Before:

During:

Finished without trim

A new project: The removal of the ugly window

BEFORE

AFTER:

It took me about 20 minutes to get the upstairs window out. It's been there awhile and interestingly to me....the window was only secured to the house by moldings. There was nary a screw holding the casement to the frame. When I removed the interior moldings, the window panes pretty much just fell out! Luckily I was fast and so the 4' x 4' central window pane came out in my hands in one piece. Good thing its warm today! Well, relatively


I toyed with the idea of taking out the bay window too, but I will wait for help with that one. I still have three small windows to remove upstairs and I have to make a clear path for the installers...as you can see, my pile of scrap wood is still pretty big upstairs.

Finished the knee wall and the clean up of the space underneath the main house this morning. There is the wall at the right. I ran out of gas today or I would have put the sheeting down. The morning started out sunny and nice and so I spent a nice morning digging, raking, and moving dirt. I prepared this room for sheeting and stone and so it was done by about 10am.

I still had the garage to prepare, which I thought had been done, but needed a few more hours to make the level of the garage consistent. I needed some more room under the garage doors for the stone, so I ended up taking out the big high spot in the floor there as well as the one at the back of the garage. I've pulled away about 3" of dirt from the garage floor and now its ready for sheeting and stone too.
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Took a break to have lunch and walk the dogs. By the time I went to order the stone, the contractor's office had closed for the day. The clouds and the wind are both wicked out there, so I decided to not do the sheeting today, but rather rest my back. (read: Hide under the covers blogging for the afternoon) Did I mention that I took a pick axe to my finger yesterday? Took a nice section of top skin off my index finger and so it's difficult to do much without a slight pain.

I'm taking the day off tomorrow to shop and cook for Greg's trunk show he is having in Belfast. I am making parmesan stuffed bacon wrapped dates, miniature beef filled empanadas, and something else that I have not decided upon yet...I might make a few cornmeal cookies.

I've given up my art history books in favor of a pick-axe and a shovel.

My digging project is still on-going. I spent yesterday rebuilding the knee wall that I hired someone to make for me because it was neither straight, nor the way I wanted it to look. I spent most of the morning digging a trench for the wall, which is made of about 90 cement blocks that I moved around myself. I took the excess dirt and filled the holes in the bricks so that the unmortared wall is solid. So, the wall dips in the middle and not all the way straight....it's staying!! It does fufiill my plan to increase the dry storage under the house. I also finished making the space under the house flat and ready for sheeting and stone. I still have to back fill behind the wall and also finish filling the holes in the wall...no problem since there is a pile of dirt in the driveway that needs to go somewhere. I then have to do some more digging in the garage area to level it out. I should be done by tomorrow.

Work is getting in the way again though. Greg is working as fast as his fingers will let him to get pieces out by Christmas. He is having a trunk show on Saturday night at the home of one of his best clients. I am making the finger food.

Hopefully, we will be able to remove the windows on the second floor starting on Sunday. I arrived at the house yesterday to find a three foot long snow pile in the living room. It was located just under the area where the first floor addition joins to the house. We had wicked winds here the other day when the snow storm hit, so I think the snow came in underneath the bay window.

After the windows are in, framing the walls comes next, then electric, plumbing, insulation and walls....

Already Furnishing the Cottage!

Greg thought I was nuts yesterday when I yelled at him to stop the truck on a back road yesterday. I jumped out for there, in a junk pile, was this great period Windsor chair. A bit broken, but fixable. The chair dates to the mid to late 19th century and probably hails from Philadelphia. I know there is a photo of this chair somewhere in a book in my library. The seat looks original, but the yellow paint was sanded off...so sad. Anyway, he thinks I am nuts, but I really like this chair.

Underground excavation continues. We are digging out the floor by a few inches so that a 6 mil plastic sheeting can go down over the dirt and then pea stone laid over top of that. The garage will be very neat and tidy looking after that (and after I take all the hazardous materials to be recycled.) We've actually moved from the garage to the basement portion and I found all sorts of things there that need to be recycled. Below is my dump pile, minus the sink, which we can use as a utility sink in the basement once it gets all nice looking! Depending on dampness, we may put the washer dryer down there since we never made room for them in our plan upstairs. If we do that, the sink might be a nice touch. Everything underneath the house that could be rusty, was rusty. The condensation problem is a bit daunting, but I hope the plastic and stone route will cut that down tremendously.

The most interesting find was the 50 gallon cement mixer that was crusted with old cement on the inside and looked to be a few decades old. I tried to get rid of it fast on Craig's list, but lost patience and took it to the scrap metal pile.

All of this stuff (including a vintage "STOP" sign) was crammed into a corner of the basement and sitting on about 50 cement blocks that were embedded in the dirt. I moved all the blocks out and we will backfill in here and level it out for the pea stone. I am using the blocks to build a kneewall that separates the usable basement space from the unexcavated space filled with boulders and other debris. It's not a real wall, but just stacked blocks that just tidy up the space. It runs three blocks high right in front of the boulder you see to the right in the picture below. By adding a layer of plastic and then pea stone, we will triple our storage space in this room and we will make the garage a usable space.
In our original budget plan, I budgeted $1000 to fix up and pour a slab in this area and in the garage....by doing it this way, I am cutting that figure in half at least. Because I did not want to dig, I hired someone to do it for $10 an hour. The sheeting costs a lot less than I thought and the pea stone should run us a couple of hundred bucks. To clean out and recycle all the old stuff from underneath the basement cost me a total of $8.00. I would like new garage doors, which we did not budget for, so at the end of the project, if there is money left over, that is where I would like it to go.

I spent yesterday cleaning and familiarizing myself with everything in the basement. It was dump day, so I was able to clean out and get out a whole bunch of rusted metals and other items that went to the scrap piles at the transfer station. I swear those boys who prowl around the piles of twisted scrap love to see me coming. Sometimes I can hand someone a piece of scrap from my truck and they just put it into theirs...that makes me feel good.

If you can embiggen the photo, you might be able to see the large slab of slate that sits in the middle of the garage. I was able to get this out the door and I believe it will make a really nice threshold or top step somewhere around the property.

I found a lot of dried up old paint cans, which is good, since I can throw them away without worry. There are still a lot of full cans, which will have to be disposed of properly. I had to clean because we are beginning a new project tomorrow...or rather, we have hired out to have it done. The basement is dirt and rather wet, so I hired a friend to come in and level off the floor, perhaps removing some of the dirt so that we can put down a layer of plastic and then a layer of stone over that. This serves as an inexpensive way to help keep the basement drier and help the water flow through. It will also help keep moisture levels down and be an aesthetic improvement over what is there now.

And off to the left, you can see our BASC (Big Ass Support Column) that is keeping the bounce out of the bouncy house.

With all the snow today, I may be a shut in...seeing how it is Sunday and all, it seems like a great day to work on Christmas presents and watch movies!

Happy Sunday

Back with a vengeance after our whirlwind trip to New York. Greg and I decided to tackle the "soft corner" of the house where there wasn't enough support for the large beam that takes the place of the old outer wall of the original house. I took us awhile to figure out the best way to go about it. After much hemming and hawing and a few calls to our resident consultant contractor, we went and borrowed jacks and heavy wood scraps and we were going to jack the beam to get it level (it was 3/8" off on the rear right corner of the house). But first came the support post in the basement: a 102" long 6 x 6" pressure treated support post that would sit on a concrete pill and get whacked into place underneath the unsupported wall on the first floor.

You can see in the photo below that the post goes right up through a long homemade bench that was in the house already. What strikes me as funny is that where it counts, the house is underbuilt, but in cases like this shelf, there are five support brackets underneath the shelf, each having 6 stripped screws anchoring the shelf. There was no way that I could remove the shelf and not take all day doing it, so I simply cut out a space for the support beam. I love bashing stuff, so it was my pleasure to wield a sledgehammer over my head to whack this beam into place. We cut it a 1/2" taller than it needed to be and after a bit of whacking the top into place and then whacking the concrete pill back a few inches, and some leveling out here and there, the damn thing was in place.....and I needed to go lie down!!!

Then we went upstairs to get the jack in place, and low and behold, the house has stopped shaking and the beam was spot on level. We had raised the sagging floor enough on the first floor to bring the whole damn thing in-line. This was a HUGE impediment to me mentally, for one part of me thought that we were going to have this shaky house to rent out. I was euphoric! Greg and I had debated back and forth about the best way to try and do this project and in the end, I think each one of us contributed out bit and we ended up not having to take the next step of jacking and shimming.

As well as putting the post in downstairs, Greg redid the support post on the first floor to correct the flawed support underneath the large beam. Originally, the beam sat squarely on a header with two 2 x 6" boards sistered together on either side, making up a support post. Naturally, these 2 x 6" supports bowed out because the weight of the overhead beam (carrying the weight of the back half of the second floor) was not directly supported overhead. Now, there is one solid support post directly under the overhead beam, which corrected the improper deflection of the beam above. (I think)

Phew! Today I am going over to contemplate taking out some of the old windows in prep for the new ones!

Our real jobs have gotten in the way of working on Sunnyside. Greg has been sequestered upstairs making coats for people before the holiday season really gets underway. There have been a few auctions out there for me, and today will be spent attempting to buy an 18th century needlework pocketbook at auction here in Maine for clients in LA. Tomorrow we both take off for New York on business, so poor forlorn Sunnyside will have to wait until we return next weekend. We will then have less than two weeks to get ready for the new windows. The house will really show some progress once those windows are in.

And, ok, I lied. I never got around to whacking the support post in place before the holiday tryptophan set in. I spent two days alternately baking or watching movies. So, no photos of the event. When I am not driving an hour to this auction, I will be cleaning and making some dessert for our evening hosts tomorrow night.

So, more from us after the 4th of December...stay tuned!!

We are at the wood buying stage of the program. Yesterday, we started shoring up the cottage. Greg took some of the old studs and made them into supports for the big manufactured beam that "holds up" the second floor at the back of the house. The beam is almost 1/2" an inch off level and only had two 2 x 6" boards holding direct weight. Greg put in two more post and hammered them into the others and now, one end of the beam is perfectly supported. This will be important when we jack up the other end of the beam so that more load will be transferred. Before we do that though, we have to put in a proper support post underneath the house, directly under the wacky column that "supports" the manufactured beam. The existing column sits squarely on the floor board between two joists and has nothing underneath to support it, like a foundation wall. So, we bought a concrete pill which I dug into place and then tomorrow, I will cut the 6 x 6" support column and wack it into place. I think this should do wonders for the stability of the house.
Pictures of the work tomorrow.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Another day of recycling yesterday. I really want to try and use as many old boards as possible in the new scheme. I am removing old nails and cutting the tongue and groove boards down. getting rid of damaged ends, etc. I hope to have enough materials between the tongue and groove boards and the old studs to make the kitchen cabinets. Have come across so many old 19th square cut nails, that I decided to try and save those as well. There has to be some decorative wall treatment I can do with old cut brads.

Put out a curb alert on Craig's List to get rid of the bathroom vanity. I honestly think it was never used, for it looks brand new. Within about 30 minutes I had some guy from Waterville ask me to hold it for him. He is driving down tomorrow to pick it up. It's a good feeling to know that a lot of this stuff is not going to land up in some landfill.

We placed the window order yesterday. We probably could have found them cheaper at some big box store, but we wanted the good quality Anderson windows that are not as cheap as the ones at one of those BB stores. And, I feel good about ordering from Viking...they are a local Maine company and probably need the business. I've asked our BFF contractor to put the windows in for us. I can see where the previous windows have leaked and since I have no experience in putting in an 8 foot sliding glass door, I want it done properly. The small square windows that are probably original have caused all sorts of leaks, so I want to get those done up right too. We have to take out the bay window (there are leak marks all around it) that was installed in 2000....I think I can probably sell it to pay for part of the other windows. I cannot wait to get rid of the front picture window...it's old and not too weatherproof.....and its so ugly!

SOLD!

Got rid of the Thomasville Oak Hutch that I was about to give away to the Goodwill. Craig's list rules! A nice couple from Bath drove up to see it this morning. They were waiting when I got here, and she walked into the house and gasped that she loved it. They just bought their first house after 19 years of marriage. I love these stories almost as much as I love making the money.

Exciting day today. Besides finally getting the floor up in the bathroom, we had our building consultant, Larry Jones of Whitecap Builders, come in and look over the place. He pointed us in the right direction with several things, and gave us the ego boost we needed when he agreed with us that the project was not overwhelming.

We ordered windows and doors. 10 new windows and a set of 8' sliders to replace the upstairs bay window. We are replacing the front picture window and accompanying side lights with three 6 over 6 mullioned windows that match those downstairs. We are replacing the side door with a window to make the downstairs bathroom.

We discussed what to do in the basement and decided on plastic sheeting and four inches of pea stone to level out the floor and keep the moisture levels down.

We got rid of the last giant piece of furniture when the walnut head board found temporary digs at the Goodwill today. I thought we were going to have to break the thing up for firewood because it wasn't going down the stairs when the walls were up. Guess we might've waited to get those beds down the stairs!

Here are some photos I took during a break. It's been the best November on record here, warm clear days. Wouldn't I love to be on the water today!!

View from the soon to be second floor deck

View from the second floor windows at the front of the house. Neither Greg nor I want to put in walls up here cause the view is so amazing. If we were going to live here, we would leave the second floor open. As a rental though, It needs to be more than one bedroom.

Merithew Square

The houses on the North end of the Square..still out the front window

Renovation IS glamourous!!

It's taken me an hour to take up just half of the homasote floor in what was the upstairs bathroom. There are nails every inch and the flooring itself is dry and brittle and stuck down along the tub with old moisture. Good news is that the floor underneath is in wicked good shape!

Found a board the other day in one of the upstairs rooms that has someone's initials on it written in chalk. We carefully set the board aside and I photographed it to send to the Bayside Historical Society. I inquired whether the Society collected old boards and was enthusiastically informed that the society had a wonderful collection of boards from other cottages. Our board is now amongst friends in the Historical Society Collection!

Though we feel like we didn't accomplish anything yesterday, we got the whole upstairs gutted. The photo below shows the view from the window at the front of the house. The sunny patch at the lower left is the stairway opening. We took out the second floor because the homasote ceiling height was at 6'7" and I just barely made it around the rooms. When we first bought the place, I was upstairs and turned around suddenly, breaking a light bulb with my head and tearing out the fixture....yeah, it was time to take out that ceiling. So, we had to take out the walls and will reuse the boards elsewhere in the house. After insulating, we will take the new walls all the way to the peak of the roof so that the two rooms upstairs will have 20 foot ceilings in places. Two new peak windows will really help with the light upstairs as well.

A good pic showing the bathroom while I was removing the fixtures. We will save the cast iron bathtub, which is in fantastic condition. Note how wet the under flooring is. We have leaks from all the old windows upstairs. Meeting tomorrow with a contractor friend who will help us with that.

And, the final shot of the bathroom totally deconstructed. We want to make the bath a bit bigger, perhaps by a foot or so in width..I think it will make all the difference.


Hauling away the second floor in the man-truck.....whew...what a day that was....This took us about six hours total. Greg started at 6 and left at 8:30, then back at 11 for another hour and I worked from 7:30 to 11 and then made the dump run. We were both whipped...shows what a 43 year old man cannot do anymore!!

I'm gutted this evening.

Cannot move. We hauled and toted all yesterday and took this morning to partially gut the upstairs. This is the view from the stairway into the second bedroom. And that is the bedroom wall in the foreground. We will try and reuse the wood for wainscoting or for the kitchen cabinets.

Greg and I nailed cross beams up between the roof joists and then while I was getting rid of the bathroom vanity and the rest of the walls in the bathroom,he was pulling down the bedroom walls.
Here are the before and after shots of the bathroom: We got rid of the very pretty green plastic tiling. Underneath was not something waterproof, but rather more homasote.
I cannot believe how open the second floor looks. With walls going all the way to the roof, the rooms will soar with airy-ness. I took photos but am too tired to find my camera and fiddle with posting the pictures. Tomorrow you can see the transformation.
I also planted about 80 bulbs today and took down the awful "Victorian" corner braces on the porch. Speaking of the porch, found that the support posts for the covered porch outside are just floating..I moved one over about three inches when I yanked one of the fiberglass corner braces off. Jeez, I am now realizing that our home renovations, as inexperienced are we are, is going to be great!

My Sunday for those of you who are not my facebook pals

1. Recycled: four computer monitors, two tvs, and two VCRs with the Belfast Rotary Club
2. Took to the scrap pile where someone will take them apart and reuse the insides: FOUR air conditioners from the 1950s and two lawnmowers.
3. Gutted: one bathroom where I found an erotic magazine from the 50s behind a wall
4. Took guts from the bathroom and the ceilings on the second floor to the dump
5. Went to a funeral
6. Made milk chocolate cashew peanut brittle to bring to dinner hosts tonight
7. Planned a deal to purchase a client's great-grandfather's desk
8. Had to lie down so my back could heal!

It's electronic recycling day today....I know we can do microwaves, but can we do air conditioners as well?

The power of Craig's List!

I spent the last few glorious days in Maine outside in front of Sunnyside, raking up two years or so of leaves. After filling 12 contractor bags full....and I mean full....I was wondering what to do with the bags. It seemed a shame to take them to the dump and unpack them onto the brush pile. So, I put them up for free on Craig's List under the heading "Eco-Insulation for the outside of your home" I listed them around 10pm. By 9am the next morning, I had an email excitedly asking me if they were still available. A man and his wife drove 60 miles round trip to pick them up because hay bales have gotten out of sight expensive. He saved $40.00 on hay and I saved about the same amount by not taking them to the dump. Love it.

Just had an email about the Fugly Thomasville Hutch that is still left in the house. Hopefully, that will be gone this weekend. I decided to keep the table for now since it works perfectly as a large work surface. We'll donate it to Goodwill when the time comes for it to go.

In Boston for the night. Greg and I found excellent shoe deals at Marden's in Portland yesterday. $69.00 for a pair of $300 loafers in my size. I can't believe they had Ted Baker shoes for $49.00!

Won't be back at work at Sunnyside until Saturday....and that is a clean up day for the ceiling upstairs.

I have some random images that I have taken of the house in the last few days. Just taking a break from leave raking and listening to the Black Eyed Peas on the stereo.

View from the stairway up to the bathroom and the absence of ceiling! Woot Greg!!



The last of the wall was removed yesterday..money shot!

Looking from the square straight through the house to the water...love the double front doors, they are probably my favorite part of the house.

yes, these will be removed and new ones put on...but the view from porch to view is spectacular!

umm, house shake much?? One of my temporary supports for the second floor.

This is the only support for the stair, I raised the corner there by about 1/8"

I put a curb alert on the "free stuff" posting on Craig's list for 10 contractor bags of leaves last night. Got rid of them today. Here in Maine, lots of people use filled leaf bags to surround their house as insulation...I've done it at our own house. Some woman emailed me to ask if they were still there and she is sending her husband out from Union, probably a 60 mile round trip to pick them up.

I am just glad that they didn't end up at the dump!

Demolition progresses rapidly. Greg got up blessed early yesterday and by the time I awoke and remembered him getting up, he had half the ceiling down on the second floor of the cottage. The ceiling was a low hung homosote ceiling with stained trim pieces in between the sheets like you see below. This is the bathroom ceiling, which I have to take down today. The ceiling in the bedrooms was so low that I could stand on my toes and bust my head through the homosote sheets. Now it looks like this:
We will raise the height of the cross ties and then take the walls all the way up to the peak, creating airy spaces that are perfect for summer houses. Of course the window comes out as well and will be replaced with more appropriate windows.

I stayed home for part of the morning and did real life things, like try and interest clients in artwork coming up for sale. I took the dogs over to Sunnyside around 10am and Greg had just finished with the upstairs. It looks amazing, but he was tired and cranky, so I made him walk with me for a hour...it was nice enough to take the dogs swimming for a minute, so they had a great time.

Greg took the dogs home and I decided that it was nice enough that I should get the two air conditioners out of the upstairs windows where they have been for 30 + years. It didn't take but a bit of yanking and out they came. I now just have to add some plastic sheeting to the exterior of the windows and we be good to go for the winter, or until we get some new windows.

Before:

After:

The absence of the air conditioners really opens up these little windows on the inside. There was actually sun streaming through this window, giving so much more air and light to the rooms upstairs. The cross breeze is amazing and I can see how the architecture of the dormer will play into our charm scheme when done up properly:

I believe the temperature for November 9th was around 60 degrees yesterday, so I took the opportunity to rake the leaves on the lawn...10 bags worth. I arrived home last night sore and barely able to move!

Cheers!