Front & Center-ish

The BEFORE pictures:  Drafty, leaky, creaky, hard-to-open "vintage" (not sure which) front door with single-pane leaded sidelights and arched transom.  Front steps with nice bluestone on tread and top, but otherwise uninspired. 

"Simple" jobs in old houses are never-ever simple.  And, after (over) thinking through a few never-ending, endlessly-tangential potential projects, we were... gun shy.  We admit it.  We've been pecking away here and there, but we've been a bit nervous to take the next bite out of TOPH.  What if we open things up and rip things out and find things we can't (afford to) fix right now?  Do we have a Plan B (through Z) if things go sideways? What about diagonally? Decidedly wide of plumb? Seriously shy of square?  Those thoughts become manic, you know?  And paralyzing.  So that's my (our) excuse for not posting.  People only want to see the highlight reel, right?  OK, wrong.  We now realize that you DO want to see the devastating discoveries and tragic tangents.  And, truthfully, that's why we bought this place and embarked on this great adventure anyhow, right?  Anyone can go to Home Depot with a handy-dandy measurement of a rough opening for a front door, buy one, and pop it right in?  Um, not so much.

So, here goes!

Rough Opening
We love the guys at Exeter Lumber.  They laugh at us AND with us -- always reassuring.

• Jamie Murphy: "OK, so you're looking for a front door.  What's the rough opening?"
• Me: "Um, what are my options?"
• JM: "You know, the measurement between the studs that the door unit will fit into."
• Me: "Yeah, um, there isn't really anything structural in the wall itself.  It's sort of a box."
• JM: "Right, what's the measurement between the studs?"
• Me: "There aren't really any studs.  There are 2x4s that hold the current door in place."
• JM: "Right, that's the rough opening.  What's the measurement?"
• Me: "Well, those 2x4s are kind of middling old and eaten and optional, so we want to keep our options open.  We can peel back all the way to the posts."
• JM: "Posts... Like a timber frame?"
• Me: "Exactly. Eight-feet-on-center-ish."
• JM: "Ish?"
• Me: "Ish."

So, we established that whatever "studs" were in the wall were expendable so we were somewhat flexible as far as width.  As long as we stayed between the posts, we could build a "rough opening" to support and secure the door in place.  (The other guys at Exeter Lumber LOVE when I come in.  And, yes, grown men do titter.)

• JM: "OK, so what height are you looking for?"
• Me: "Well, we've got about a hundred inches from the first floor to the ceiling and we're guessing the beam is in the ceiling, not below since the current arch transom goes pretty much to the tippy-top."
• JM: "The first floor.  Of course your front door is on the first floor.  It's a colonial, right?"
• Me: "I meant the first OF the floors.  That you walk on."
• JM: "How many floors are there?"
• Me: "No idea.  At least a couple.  Not sure which one will be the final floor, or if we will rip some or all of them out and put in slate. Depends on what we find."
• JM: ...
• Me: "At some point under there, there's a sill timber.  And the floor and the door jam will be somewhere north of there."
• JM: "OK, so 96 inches it is!"
• Me: "Did you just pull that number out of your ass?"
• JM: "Yep!"
• Me: "Perfect.  Now we're talkin'."

Jamie Murphy @ Exeter Lumber
ALWAYS Smiling, that one!

So, we established that we had some flexibility.  And then we got down to the business of choosing a door.  Suffice it to say, there was considerable frustration (and Jamie-patience) over the multi-variable flexibility of our space.  We knew we wanted a 36" door with sidelights and a transom.  We were taking a flyer on a transition back to a non-arched transom, mostly because we wanted to gain as much light as possible in the East-facing cave that is our front and center hall.  And a flat-topped transom was still squarely within the realm of potentially authentic.  (See later post, when I get around to it, re: repurposing the old leaded sidelights and transom as something elsewhere... decorative.) 

We finally found and ordered a Simpson "unit" that would fit overall, and had mullions that lined up somewhat proportionally. (Why is this last item met with such incredulity by manufacturers?  Yes, sir, I would like it to be symmetrical and not completely out-of-whack looking.)

Once it arrived, I commenced to oiling and priming various parts in remote regions of TOPH, while hubby started the demolition.  The steps had to come out first.  They were snugged up to the house and sill in such a way that we couldn't see what we were dealing with, and suspicion was mounting about sill condition.  How were we actually going to frame this thing in?

Four Discoveries

Discovery #1: Hubby asked me one day, after he made rubble of the steps, "So, what do you want to put there instead."

I answered, without hesitation, "Just a cool slab of granite.  I'm sure we could find something around here."

An hour later, hubby calls me out, "Hey, you may want to come out here.  I found something."

Under the edge of the steps, he found something contiguous and solid.  Granite.  A week with an air chisel later... and we had a four by six front step.  How cool is that???  Further digging, chipping, jack hammering, and general making-of-rubble resulted in the discovery that this slab was, at one point, used as a front step, but before that was actually a central piece of foundation that was displaced from a vertical position directly adjacent to its current resting place.  They either couldn't figure a way to lift it back into place and secure it, or they just liked the step (we do too!) and filled the foundation void with brick.  The brick, however, made an excellent conductor of moisture and pestilence.  The sill under the door -- originally at least an 8x10 timber -- was mostly rotted or eaten away and sistered and faced with untreated lumber to support the floor and door in the hall.

Hubby did an amazing job (with ample and able phone support from family-friend Jess Dowd) of puzzling out how to fill the voids and gaps of stone and wood.  And, perhaps MOST challenging was figuring out how to establish well-supported straight lines, in relation to.... whatever.

Discovery #2: Door demolition revealed a pencil notation on the part of the door's millwork "Shurbuck Job", which solved the vintage question.  The Sherbucks, a family of bakers from Portsmouth, owned  TOPH from 1940 up until 1951, so the last front door  replacement was their project.

Discovery #3: TOPH does indeed have salvageable wide-plank pine floors -- in the center hall, at least.  We had given up finding them.  The view from the basement looking up showed a network a knot-missing, holes-cut, gaps-gaping planks.  But, that is apparently a sub-floor or decking for a second (shocker) mostly whole floor, as far as we can see now.  The wheels are turning re: how to get back to that "level" of floors.  At this point, every door in the house has been cut to swing over later layers of maple hardwood and other materials.

Discovery #4: Colonial homes were vastly overbuilt.  The sheer weight of materials and the quality of hidden and ingenious joinery is staggering.  So many people look at old houses and see dilapidated and broken and dirty and "old"... whatever.  Houses today are NOT built like this.  To attempt to meet the standard they set would be cost-prohibitive in this day and age.  But, we can try to restore and repurpose and appreciate what we do find.

The sill is a bit rotten in one area?  That's OK.  The posts are supported adequately (plus what we can add/amend/sister/fill for good measure.)  And there is more than enough "good" beam left to support a square-ish and plumb-ish frame for the front door, since that's all that is supported there.

Check out the single-piece wainscot, apparently milled from a very large tree...  Take that, PVC tack-on chair rail!

Are We There Yet?

OK, so this project took a little longer than expected.  And we did find some things that were at-first horrifying.  But, on the whole, we found much more good than bad. (I'm not going to talk about wiring for the front and hall lights.  I'm just not.)

We are just about to order the crosshead and trim.  I promise to post "after" pictures with those in place, and the lights rehung, and the effected clapboards fixed.  I'm going to paint a little bit of the "future" color, just so we can start getting there in our minds.  We are already there in our hearts.

As for "the rock"...  Well, we need a piece of heavy equipment to move it into its proper forever-home under the new door.  And do some "light" grading.  We've decided to TRY and take out the cement boxes someone poured around the basement windows.  They did that instead of fixing the grading at some point.  The "boxes" reach outside the drip edge so they just catch water and funnel it into the basement (or fill up with water like aquariums if we actually put the windows in place...)  It's kind of sad-comical, actually.  So it's not just about "the rock"... Nothing is simple in old houses.

Living and Learning... About Goats

Learned: It takes three goats about six months to selectively clear about an acre of rough scrub and woods.  They did an amazing job on poison ivy, brambles and prickers of God-knows-what varieties, trash tree saplings, invasive plants, and annoying burrs. And they left the more mature white oaks and sugar maples and hickory and elms alone.

Learned: Foraging goats with only supplemental grain and hay will grow and thrive faster and fitter than barn and pasture raised goats.  You should have seen the difference between Coco (Stella's buckling) and his cousins at Riverslea.  He looked like a Greek-bred God compared to them.  His horns were huge and regal.  His coat was thick and rich.  His eyes were bright and alert and animated. A testament to whole foods and clean livin', when you think about it.

Stella and her kids Coco and Violet in Spring 2013.

Three of Stella's FOUR NEW KIDS from February 2014. Our "keeper" Mikaela is on the far right.

Stella says she is swearing off kids altogether.

Honk, our 2014 season buckling frmo Riverslea.  He was the DUMBEST GOAT EVER.

Slackers & Angles

First and foremost, let me apologize for not posting anything recently.  I have to admit to a little despondency in the neighborhood of our to do list.  We are pecking away on so many things that it is hard to see (or feel) any progress.  But, we have made some academic discoveries. (Can I get a glovey clap?)

In earlier posts and discussions we had been puzzling over the "lines" of the house.  We want to respect her bones, but we need to make some decisions about restoring/ignoring some of the changes that previous owners have made over time. 

For those of you who would like to review: 

• Establishing a Basline
• Musical Windows: Symmetry, Rhythm & Balance

Since those earlier posts, we have discovered a bit more about the house through research, demolition discovery, and crawling around in odd places.  Specifically, the slope of the roof and the overhang are not original to the house.  The roof used to be steeper and it didn't used to have as pronounced an overhang as it does now.   How do we know?  Well, I don't know what they are called, but the VERY long beams that stretch across the attic back to front are no longer attached to the house. They are still in place, but just laying there -- too big to extract, I imagine.  The ends of said beams are short of the outside edges of the roof/eaves by several inches.  Also, the angles at each end where they used to match up with the roof structure are significantly steeper than the current roofline.

Credit where credit is due: ArchiDorks Nicole Rauzi and Tobias Sullivan (and Christina Gutierrez, I think), you were RIGHT! And thank you to Chad Mathrani of Vermont Natural Homes for making this discovery of loop-closing mysteries.