Counting Our Blessings, Others Not-So-Lucky

Basically the Irene experience here at TOPH was anti-climactic.  We lost power for about six hours during the day yesterday, but, thanks to an energetic romp at the through-the-woods neighbors' house, the kids crashed for a long nap and we got some reading in.  Excellent Sunday afternoon, by all accounts.

The power came back on in time to cook dinner.  I hedged my bets with a pressure cooker. I figured as long as it got up a full head of steam, it would keep cooking even if the power decided to conk out again.  Yummy barbeque pork.

So TOPH came through fine.  No major roof leaks, no major basement flooding and no major tree damage. Unfortunately, some of our friends and family were not so lucky.

My hubby's aunt and uncle lost their dream home on Cat Island in the Bahamas.  They've spent the last few years managing the massive logistics of building in that remote locale.  Finding building materials and skilled contractors is not as easy as picking up the phone down island.  Materials were brought in by horse and mule and brandless motorized contraptions. Managing opinionated local and migrant laborers from afar was even harder.  Getting furnishings to a home there requires IKEA-like palette packing, generous relationships with  customs officers and scarce-vehicle transport.

Formerly "Rainbow House" on Cat Island in the Bahamas.

They had painstakingly installed a whole-house solar power system there, transporting it piece-by-piece friends' sailboats as they came through over several cruising seasons.  And it's all gone. 

One of the major points of contention with the building laborers was cement.  The house was constructed of concrete block, but they were stacked and fastened together with mix-on-site materials.  The quality control when it came to the consistency and content was impossible.  The challenges were either opinion or shear laziness -- it was never clear which.  But, physics always win.  A structure is only as strong as its weakest point.  And Irene found it.

Not quite as dramatic, but equally devastating, our friend Dave was home with is dog Cyrus when a good-sized tree was uprooted in the yard of his rented cottage near Annapolis.  Thank goodness they were not hurt!  And here's hoping he is able to salvage some of his soggy belongings once the tree is stabilized or removed.

Dave's House in Edgewater, MD. As my hubby
put it: "You sank my battleship."

When you see destruction like this, you really start to think what might easily be lost. In the corner of the house where the tree hit was a curio cabinet stuffed with trophies and pictures and memorabilia spanning several decades of sailboat racing, his lifelong passion. We are truly grateful that he and Cyrus are OK, and hoping that much can be salvaged. There are some things insurance just can't replace.

And, some rays of hope, if you will.  As we were all watching Irene make a slow-motion, full-on mess up the east coast,  folks farther south were coming out of their shelters and things were looking up.  The air was dry, the atmosphere "scrubbed" and the colors amazing.  Thanks my to uncle and cousin for sharing.  It was nice to have a preview of  the light at the end of the tunnel.

Sunset in Wilmington, North Carolina as the
final bands of Irene spin onward and upward.

We've heard from the folks down on the Cape and all appears to be fine, altough there is no power.  No surprise there.  No word yet from our friends in coastal Connecticut and Vermont.  Hoping you stayed high and dry, y'all.

Irene: Checking In, Signing Off

This will be my last post until the AI (after Irene.) We are headed to the Cape to help with family property prep there and then, hopefully, coming back to be here at TOPH when the storm passes. But, it may not be possible to get off Cape traffic-wise tomorrow, so we'll play it by ear.

Things here are battened down as best as can be expected. The basement window wells were wide open with their summer screens. Can you say cascade effect? So, we put the winter "dog houses" on the ones in the paths of the greatest roof-run-off. The others are either closed off with the remnants of windows or have their horizontal screens sheathed in contractor bags and canted appropriately. Its not perfect, but it's better than nothing.

We put the new washer and dryer up on wooden palettes. Spin cycle is a little more of a jig now.

And we bought a new sump pump today, realizing later that identifying the actual low point in the TOPH cellar was a bit of a joke. And the debris from the recent plumbing, wiring and window projects would surely plug it up anyway. Well, we have it. If (when) the water comes up over 6", any outflow will be positive. Power to run said pump is unlikely, though.

We called Unitil about the precariously teetering remainder of a 300-year-old ash, which is currently leaning on a utility pole down the hill. They said they would send a truck out to look at "trimming" it. Good luck with that. And sorry to any and all down-current.

We shall see. Fare-thee-well TOPH. Buck and Purcy (the cat) are in charge 'til we get back.

Clean Dirt & Spider Detente

I was never really a fastidious housekeeper.  In our old (new) house, I would keep up as best I could and get truly compulsed a few times a year.  And, if those few times happened to coincide with holidays and/or large-group entertaining, I often called in reinforcements to help tame the beast.  The thing is, that house was new and the surfaces could actually get clean.  On really "clean" days (and when the house was on the market) I could actually wake up in the morning to a level of shine and order that approached hotel quality.  Sigh.

Here at TOPH, the whole clean thing is... relative.  First of all, when we moved in, the house was "broom clean" which meant, literally, that some had walked around with a shop broom and a piece of cardboard and cleared up the loose debris.  Second of all, the first month we lived in TOPH (actually camped with mattresses and patio furniture), there was this constant stream of contractors.  Clem the Plumber (and his awesome fireman/sidekick/assistant Brenda) and Kenny the Electrician (and his dry-witted pinch-hitter Lyle) and the cable guy and the internet guy...  And then the movers came.  Twice.  It was a parade ground in here.  Third, it was "musty" in here and hot out there, so we have basically had the windows and doors wide open for two months.  And the outside tends to come in on the breeze.

It's not that I haven't cleaned at all.  In the rooms where we are actually living with furniture, I've swept and mopped and wiped the woodwork down, etc.  And we have scrubbed the "vintage" kitchen into comparative submission.  But, it's hard to tell what's actually clean, when the baseline is old, stained, dull, dusty and chipped.

Here's a great example. Once Clem and company were finished with "the boiler," I decided to tackle the front hall.  I Shop-Vac-ed up all of the bits from the constant rain of ceiling and the boot grit from in between gaps in the wood floor and the cob webs from every perpendicular joint. Then I got out the Simple Green and a scrub brush and a sponge.  What I found under the film of dirt, dust and a decades-old film of mop water was a Birdseye maple floor.  What I also found was that whatever finish had previously protected that beautiful grain was coming right off with my gentle, but thorough cleaning.  Hunh.  So the dirt was actually protecting the floor.  Not in the market/mood to refinish those particular floors right now.  Maybe next time I should leave well-enough alone.

The TOPH "theory of relativity" also applies to spiders.  When we first moved in, it was a massacre.  They were everywhere (involuntary shudder).  So, whenever  I saw a spider, I killed it (and it's little babies too!)  After a while, though, we figured out that the window screens were no match for the no-see-ems that seem to manifest whenever low-tide and sunset coincide.  And that no window or door is impervious to a particularly determined mosquito.  And the spiders had that all figured out.  Their favorite spaces for webs, were our most vulnerable borders, therefore we have reached detente.  They stay out of my shower, bed and any area where I regularly have to put my hand (light switches, window cranks, etc.), and they are welcome to any spot where delicacies abound.

In fact, they are helping with an important, silent offensive. TOPH has a few resident boring beetles and carpenter ants.  We have identified and treated some problem areas, but nothing structurally tragic so far.  Several of these old-house menaces lay dormant and hatch at irregular intervals.  They cannot, as it turns out, spread or thrive into future generations if they can't swarm after they hatch.  They are programed to "go forth and prosper" until they find a new (not previously marked with pheromone trails) food source.  If they they are trapped at mamas house, they become sterile and die.  (Evil laugh and hand wringing.)

So, when I see our "allies" spinning intricate webs around the structural hardwood underpinnings of TOPH, I give them a little cheer of encouragement.  "Feast on the flesh of those 4-day-old virgins!"

But if they spin one more strand in the tool handles of the DIY collection (involuntary shiver) I will bring Armageddon down on their eight-legged asses.

10 Vignettes of Small Town Living

1) You can stand in line for your car registration and a livestock permit at the same time.  It's different people in different offices, but the town hall is small enough that you can hang out in the middle and see who's free first.

2) If you have a Catch-22 vehicle registration/inspection situation that may leave a vehicle only marginally registered for few years, they ask if you're only planning on driving around town and suggest you probably won't get pulled over anyway.

3) They look at you a little funny when you ask about a Historic plate for a car that's only 21 years old.  Evidently, "Antiques" are older here.  "She's just now old enough to drink!"

4) Permitting is not only easier, it's not really required for all the things you think it would be. We're thinking about getting some goats, so I asked the Planning & Zoning guy what we need to do. "Well, first you'll need some goats.  Have you talked to the lady over in Chester on that sustainable farm?"

5) There is little need for an economic development commission when everyone is so enterprising and helpful and resourceful.  "You know there's a lady over on Union Road.  She got some goats awhile back.  Now she rents them out to neighbors with poison ivy and what not."  Hunh. 

6) The public comment period is open for proposed changes to town ordinances, tax codes and such.  The bulletin board in the town hall boasts two hand-highlighted pages of plain-English that are stapled up for all to see (and surrounded by little waves made from colored construction paper.)  Around the official notices are stapled hand-written "public comments" on personal stationary and notebook paper and monogrammed note cards.

7) An hour with a PhD arborist is free ($40 if it's more than an hour on Friday.)  All trees on our four acre lot are now categorized as "good, bad or ugly."  We now know the trees with the most fireplace-BTU potential, the cost of a lumber truck to come take our "stock" to the mill (and the pros and cons of the four local mills), and which "problem children" are mostly likely to "really mess up your chainsaw and your chipper."

8) We need some non-DIY tree work done along the road.  I sort of groan when I hear a "detail" might be necessary to direct traffic around the lane while they work.  "Oh, it's no big deal.  You can go through the town and it's about $60/hour for a cop and a cruiser, but you could just contact the auxiliary.  They'll usually send someone if you make something nice for their bake sale."

9) The guy across the street found a random wire hanging low over his driveway.  Evidently a squirrel was playing Tarzan in some nearby grapevines and... Guess how long it took for a bucket truck and two guys (from the right company for the right wire) to come fix it?  Sixteen minutes.


10) Instead of charities selling candy bars and magazine subscriptions, the folding tables outside the grocery store are occupied by members of the local grange handing out free magazines with articles on baking with (actual) whole grains and building your own solar heated water trough "so it doesn't freeze just as soon as you fill it."

Boerdom & Selective Service

No, I'm not bored (and I can spell, usually.)  And no this is not going to be a soap box about the draft.

This is about figuring out how to reclaim some of our land from a 20-year free-for-all of poison ivy, trash trees, brambles and burs. Less than 100 years ago there was nothing here on the southern shore of Great Bay but pastures, orchards and marshland cris-crossed with stonewalls and cattle fencing.  Today, in between the tasteful estates and late 20th century developments and remnant antique homes (like TOPH), there is a healthy bit of agriculture still going on, but mostly there are multi-acre patches of young, scraggly woods.

TOPH is nicely situated on a hilltop, a hilltop that used to command sweeping views of Great Bay to the northeast.  Our parcel now is just shy of four acres  Let's say, for simplicity's sake, that TOPH basically sits in the middle of a roughly eyeball-shapped lot.  Aside from a sloping swath of "lawn" between the bell-shapped stone walls out front, and decent-sized (and barren) "door yard" out back, the rest is trees and brush.

Clearly we'd like to reclaim some of the water view.  And we'd like to identify and preserve some specimen trees and some shade trees and some strategically-placed privacy trees and bushes.  There is some strong  gardening potential on the southwest end.  And, in the future, when we are ready to rebuild the barn, we'd like a little paddock space on the northeast side.  Nothing radical.  Nothing quick.  Nothing now.

But I did peruse some resources through the various state agricultural extensions about the best ways to selectively clear land.  And out of all the possibilities (clear-cutting, heavy machinery, expensive environmental engineers and contractors, sheer back-breaking labor), one stood out.  Goats.

Evidently, goats are "selective" in all the right ways.  They eat poison ivy and sumac and brambles and underbrush and dried leaves and sapplings of all sorts, but they leave mature trees alone.  They eat grass tops, but not the roots, which is politically correct and environmentally sound. Their poop is basically "organic" since they are herbivores.  And, interesting fact: they eat a great variety of things, but they don't eat much more than they need, so they stay fit and don't poop alot. 

I pilfered this pic from the Field to Fork Farm web site.
  I love their "movable feast."  This is not the normal "goat" pasture,
but it needed a trim, and the goats were happy to pitch in.

This all sort of sounded too good to be true, so my son and I paid a visit to Field to Fork Farm in Chester today.  We just dropped in, actually.  Met the whole family.  They could not have been nicer.  (Wow! What a cool place!)   


Daniella is "the goat lady."  They have a division of labor there that seems to work.  And she certainly seems to know her stuff.  We walked along a gorgeous, rolling pasture with some large shade trees and scenic knots of vigorous pine.  Aside from that, healthy grasses, alfalfa and clover.  Sigh.  Perfect.

Apparently, this pastoral wonderland was not-so-long-ago an impassable scrub forest with little redeeming value.  I couldn't help myself.  The question-peppering spewed forth.  "Wow, that must have been a lot of work.  Did you need heavy machinery?  Did you hire a contractor?  Did it take long for the seed to take hold?"

She looked at me with this miraculous knowing grin.  "The goats did it."


They put up a fence (like the one still standing among the trees on our southwest end).  They lined the top with a charged rope (catalogs sell pulse chargers that are solar powered!)  They turned them loose with a water tub and a salt/selenium block.  And that was it.

OK, in the wintertime they had a little shed and a little water-warmer ma-jigger.  And they do an annual vet visit (house call) for the herd.  They feed theirs only enough grain to keep them kid- and people-friendly -- and they were friendly.  And they fed them small amounts of "selective" hay in the late fall and early spring -- only the kinds of things they wanted to seed the pasture with.  Because, right on cue, these little agro-phenoms spread perfect, fertilizer-encased seed all over the pasture.  Sigh.

They chose Boer goats because they are big and hearty and good for meat (they eat the grass-fattened males, all except their favorite buck).  And they crossed them (a little bit) with Nubian to get tougher feet.  Success!  The only one with yeasty feet (nice) is their buck, the only remaining 100% Boer.

I have to say I fell in love with the Boer goats I saw at the Stratham Fair a few weeks ago.  They have these long ears that flip up at the end.  They are just the cutest things!  So, I'm not sure about the goat-eating thing,  but it makes sense that you don't want to keep too many of the boys around.  Hunh.  Food for thought.

What will the neighbors think?  Well, there's the obvious.  Livestock = Smelly.  But, I've got that one covered.  "Their shit don't stink."   Literally.  I sniffed it.  It smells kind of like arugula with Vidalia dressing.

Anyway, so I'm going to spring this on hubby when he gets back from the Cape tonight.  What do you think?

The Sky is Falling (!?)

I remember so many times, mostly early-on in my professional life in marketing and communications, when the sky was falling and I played the roll of, or professionally promoted the sentiment of, Chicken Little.  It happened in the politically-hyper, left-right roller coaster of DC during the early-90s.  It happened in the anti-gravity, upward waves of NASDAQ in techie-Boston during the mid-90s.  It happened in the late-90s when suddenly the world wide web went mainstream and it was hard for us mere marketers to figure (for sure) what was up, down or sideways.

After 2000 rolled around, I got married, then built a house, then eventually had better-living-though-chemistry twins.  Not much phases me after that last part.  Drama over.  How do I know?

The sky is literally falling and nobody cares.  Well, it's not so much that nobody cares...

See, in our old house (the brand-new, custom-built, all-in-working-order one), a small pool of unexplained water or a problematic grout corner -- it mattered.  You saw it. You put on your troubleshooting hat and fixed it (like NOW) or called someone to fix it (like YESTERDAY).

Now?  Not so much.  The sky is falling.  No, really.  Chunks of ceiling are literally falling down.

You've already heard about the gift that keeps on giving in the tavern.  (Four Floors & A Ceiling)  We're walking, we're walking... Keep up!

In the central hall, the seemed-like-a-good-idea-in-the-70s "textured" swirly plaster is literally sloughing off, leaving sunken continents of "vintage" plaster.  The mystery-fiber ceiling in the northeast-facing sunroom?  Sagging pitifully in long-ago soaked areas.  The paint on the ceilings in five of the six rooms with actual dry wall on the upper plain?  Peeling.  Coming off in odd chips in places where the deltas of heat and cold and dry and damp finally dealt the death knell to the elasticity of eggshell.  And bubbling off in strangely roller-shaped swaths where someone decided to touch-up a smokey corner or draft-dusted doorway with oil-based Hatfield over latex McCoy.

And then there's the spot -- it's more of an "area" actually -- right over the head of our bed.  At some point pre-last-chimney and/or pre-last-roof, there was a leak.  And there's evidence of it in the ceiling just there.  There's no active water now, but the strata of previously abused materials take umbrage with changes in humidity.  When the dew point approaches "air you can wear", little pieces of ceiling soak up the sogginess and PLOP.  It suddenly becomes too much for gravity to ignore.  And a hunk or pebble or bit falls.  Onto my head or pillow, or some other area of ear-destined bedding.  It's like spitballs from heaven.

And yet, I feel no utter compulsion to fix it NOW.  Or to call anyone in particular.  Is it my twin-addled mommy-mind?   Is it my been-there-done-that political/communications attitude spilling over?  Or maybe there's just so much to do here at TOPH, that my brain-transmission is firmly in D (for denial.)  Whatever.

Yep.  The sky is definitely falling.  And I'm OK with it... for now.
 

Diversionary Tactics & Tasking

Life in This Old Purple House can really swallow you up!  Where did the summer go?

I had this grand vision that the kids' rooms would be all set and settled by the time school started.  And we'd have a box-free, semi-finished living space by now.  Sigh.

So we're part-way there.  My daughter's room is reasonably done and settled.  My mom got her this incredibly gaudy (and AWESOME) vintage lamp with winged mermaids and cherubs and other fancy stuff.  It's this enormous multimedia affair (porcelain, gold leaf, bronze, brass...)  It has some harp issues and it needs a shade -- oh, the possibilities!  In the meantime, she is very happy with the bare bulb scenario -- the mermaids appear to be sunning themselves under privatized solar power.

My son's room is furnished, but unpainted.  The humidity has been a killer this summer.  This requires us to actually plan (hunh?) certain projects as opposed to following the whim of wafting coffee vapors in the morning.  I'm thinking we'll have to consult the almanac for likely dry, temperate 5-day windows in September.

We've been on a mission to get the last of the PODs unloaded (costing us $399/month to have the two behemoths sit there), but hubby had to take off for the Cape last night (with the help of our up-for-anything daughter) to deal with our dear, neglected Infinity.  We have ignored her so completely during her prime summer-wind season that she chaffed through her dual mooring lines and landed on the beach. My heart is aching for her.

I am here at TOPH with my son, who is sick with a horrible, lingering summer ick. Hopefully, he will feel up to helping me unpack some.  And organize some.  And clean some.  Perhaps laundry and dishes are more realistic goals for today.

God, I would love to head down to the Cape for a couple of days for my mom's birthday, but I fear my horizontal hacker would be an unwelcome guest.  And we've got so much to do at TOPH!

The wielding-of-overhead-power-tools (and the catching of awkward, gravity-loving chunks of "vintage" debris) required to take the remainder of the ceiling down in the tavern has proven to be a two-man job. With hubby working on the weekdays, the project has been slow-going.  It had been our goal to have actual living space finished for our annual Oktoberfest (our first at TOPH).  Actually, that's still the goal.  I just have no idea how to make it happen.  Maybe we'll have to press-gang ourselves for some early-AM (shudder) sessions.  Who knows?  Maybe power tools in the morning are just what we need...  More coffee, please.

Temptation & Curiosity

I've posted our first poll (see right bar), which closes exactly 24.5 shopping days before Christmas.  Big-box investment? Stocking Stuffer? Scary Alternatives? No Peaking? You choose!

There are so many areas of burning curiosity in This Old Purple House. This morning I was thinking about how this multifaceted, multi-variable project is kind of like one of those uber-planned (and luck-laden) spy-thief thrillers.


Remember Stella (Charlize Theron) from The Italian Job?  She needed her scopes!  Whereas her dad (Donald Sutherland), he did it by touch.  Then there was Left Ear (Mos Def) -- he just blasted his way in (with finesse, of course.)  And last, but certainly not least, Handsome Rob (the truly yummy Jason Statham), who patiently waited in traffic (in the sequel), because that's what the job required.


So, put yourself in first-time-master-planner Charlie's (Mark Wahlberg) shoes.  Which tool should we have on our wish list for Santa?

DEWALT 12-Volt Max Inspection Camera Kit ($300)

or

Kids Spy Net: Flex Neck Snake Cam ($15)

Or neither?  Please weigh in on the poll and add any comments you feel relevant to the decision/discussion.  Thanks, all!

Establishing a Baseline

Short and sweet today.  I posted all of the historical docs and maps and photos in "Reference Pages" (see links at left).  Essentially, this is what we "know".  Everything else we've got is:

• Basically immovable landmarks and clues: foundations, stonewalls, well heads, relational references to other documented properties and landmarks, etc.
• Info from the local Historical Society (Wiggin Memorial)
• Resources from the local Library (also a Wiggin Memorial)
• Anecdotal "Evidence" and Oral History from locals re: the last of the Wiggins to live in this house around the turn of the last century.
• Observations from driving around town looking at the (many) other period homes, their architecture, their size, their scale and those little plaques provided by the local Historical Society (hint!)

Based on all of the above and a couple of hours perusing "A Field Guide to American Houses", we are pretty sure the house was built after 1767 and before 1790, and most likely in the pre-Revolutionary period of that window.  It's certainly a side-gabled Georgian.  It now has paired interior chimneys, but it may originally have had one central chimney (with very cold outlying bedrooms).  The major sticking points (I think):

The space between the top of the second floor windows and the roof overhang puts it later in common applications.  But there are notable exceptions (Brice House in Annapolis and Williams House in Deerfield).  Also, there are a couple of 1717 and 1723 houses around here with a good 14" between windows and roof.

The front door is the (potentially original) solidly Georgian (1700-1780) front door paired with the more commonly Adam (1780-1820) leaded elliptical fanlight and sidelights (also potentially original) on the front door. But, leaded glass elements and fixtures were commonly wedding gifts and Richard was unmarried when he was deeded the land in 1767.  Maybe the fancier front door was a wedding present?

Still pondering.  As always, input welcome!

Muscal Windows: Symmetry, Rythm & Balance

If the sincerest form of flattery is imitation, then it stands to reason that in order complement something, you must first understand the essential elements you wish to emulate.

As near as I can tell, there are three essential elements of 18th century architecture.  First, there is symmetry -- colonial homes are all basically symmetrical.  Post and beam structures were beholden to the span length/strength of locally available timber.  There wasn't too much creativity in design because, in a truly communitarian culture, where you learn from others trials and errors in relatively new surroundings, things settle at the base and the average.

Second, there is an energy and rhythm -- one that emulates the order and pace of the utilitarian life of the household.  This Old Purple House was, first and foremost, the homestead of a 50-acre dairy farm in a close-knit community of family and more family.  Although rural by today's standards, its location was convenient to the busy road between Portsmouth and Exeter and proximal to a busy ferry crossing.  One can imagine that this house saw a lot of comings and goings.

Third there is the balance of heat, light and draft.  Hearths and windows and doors.  Colonial homes were designed around chimneys as the hearth was truly the heart of a colonial home. Window glass was available (at a premium) so larger windows were strategically located to provide maximum usable light in daytime living areas, while smaller windows were placed in bedrooms to preserve warmth at night and in winter, plus permit airflow in the summertime.

Wood was readily available and cheap, so colonial homes had lots (and lots) of doors.  This Old Purple House is a great example.  It is literally a warren of interior halls and doors, which provide privacy, but also an intricate zone system for heat containment and strategic drafting.  I can almost imagine the ladies of the house moving in some habit-driven dance of opening and closing as the weather and seasons changed.

OK, so based on the symmetry, rhythm and balance we have observed in This Old Purple House so far, we have arrived at the first big decision we will make that effects the facade of the house itself.  The windows.

Last Winter, while we wrangled with the former owners to arrive at a contract price, a squirrel somehow got into the house but couldn't find a direct route out, so he tried to chew one through the mullions between the first course of window panes in just about every window of the house.  We could, of course, buy a gallon bucket of wood putty and start retooling them one-by-one.  But I personally have more important and less tedious things to do between now and 2016.

So, we are looking at replacing windows.  We looked at replacement windows (blek).  We considered new construction windows (and the related detours of retrimming or residing or resurfacing just about every interior and exterior vertical plane of the house in short order -- Cha-ching -- NOT).  And have now come around to the current thought leader: replacement sashes.

No matter which we choose, we will get some significant energy savings (and rebates, we hope) and some  modern conveniences like tilt-to-clean and two movable sashes.  Yay!

So now we are back to the symmetry, rhythm and balance thing.  The windows that are in the house now are not original.   Most in the main house are circa 1950.  Some are double hung (6-over-6).  Some are cottage-style (6-over-9 or 9-over-6). There is little-to-no rhyme or reason to the pain size and proportion.  Pictures we have from the 1920s show enormous 2-over-2-pane style windows on the whole main house.  We know those weren't original, for sure.

This Old Purple House circa 1920

This Old Purple House was in
the same family from 1767
(and the land before that),
until the early 1900s when it
was sold to the Odde Family.

It was called Greenacres then.

Then we took a closer look at those pics.  Colonial folk were thrifty, right?  Reduce, reuse, recycle?  Who had windows in their barn? Ah!  People who had leftover windows from their house, that's who!  So, there were 12-over-8 cottage-style windows with basically square panes... Wait, haven't I seen those somewhere?  Yes.  The "tavern" was a barn then too.  And it got some leftover windows.  Lookie, lookie.  We have old warbly, bubbly glass!  So, now we know (generally) what they had originally.

OK, so here's where we throw it out to you guys for thoughts and opinions.  On the main house, the windows on the first floor are 10-12 inches taller than the windows on the second floor.  So, we can either try to match pane size and proportion (my pick) or we can match pane count and layout (hubby's pick).

Essentially, my way would end up with same-same pane sizes, but 12-over-8 cottage windows downstairs and 8-over-8 double-hungs upstairs.  Hubby's way would be double or cottage in both applications, but the panes would be larger and taller downstairs and essentially square upstairs.  What say you, blog-follower-folk?

Four Floors & A Ceiling

NOTE: This one is a long one.  Hubby suggested I get your opinions on some things (since you're here and all), and I figured you need at least enough info to give educated guesses/advice, so here goes.

I am an impulsive planner. I am sure there is some psychological pigeon hole for people like me, but I'm OK without a label. Clearly, I'm embracing it, whatever it is.

Every once in a great while I get a bee in my bonnet and I draw up a grand plan for whatever it is I'm planning to do. And I'm very proud of myself.

When I was in the "professional" world, things like status reports and benchmark surveys and quarterly analyses kept me honest. I was good at planning and forecasting, sticking to them and making them happen. But now I'm a mom and my full-time job is "homemaking" in every sense of the word, and then some.

Although there is a certain routine and rhythm to our days here, four year-old children have a way of turning plans into puddles. And our quarter-millenarian (my term -- all the options on Wiki for 250 years were wrong, long or nonsensical) house has a way of arbitrarily (and quickly) changing your priorities.

The other thing that happens with both young kids and old houses is absolute stalemates when best laid plans suddenly require a detour, which itself necessitates several intermediary steps, and so on.

Case in point. We're thinking we would like a room in which to sit and read and watch TV, and maybe entertain some friends and neighbors. I believe it's called a living room. Yep, that's it. But we don't have one. Yet. This house has a tavern. And it needs help.

Let me take you back a month or so...

We decided we could live with a living room (great room, whatever) that was dark and wood-bound. Of course eventually (very common word around here) it will have bigger windows and window seats and a wall of bookcases with a rolling ladder and... Cha-ching.

So, all we needed to turn the "tavern" into our living room was a refinished floor and a couple of grounded (not cloth-wired) outlets.  (We were planning to get this all done before our furniture arrived.) So, I started sanding with a boatyard favorite: a "vintage" Porter-Cable Random Orbital 6" Vacuum Sander (no link for that one!)  Love that tool.  Worked beautifully, but it took several days of trial and error and prowling the industrial parks of Portsmouth and find the right sanding discs and figure out what grit would actually remove "vintage" sap-wax without heating it to a shiny glaze or irreparably marring the soft "vintage" pine.  Very fine line there.  So several days in, and we had gotten about 1/8 of the 800 sq. ft. room done.

Change of plan.  Not going to happen before furniture arrives.  Put on hold until movers go away and relative baseline living returns.

So, the movers stacked all things "great room" unceremoniously into the now unusable northeast facing "sun room".  All I can say is, we suspect Buck was "involved" in our floor sanding frustration and delay, because...

The day after the movers left, Clem the Plumber was back to turn on and test the new boiler and bleed the system.  The water went into the system.  And the water came out of the system.  Through the tavern ceiling.  (We had anticipated a whole house of exorcistic plumbing, but had yet to find any major leaks or failures.  Found it!)


The pipes ran straight down the middle of the very large, beam-spanned ceiling to feed the radiators at either end of the bunk room upstairs.  The only access to said pipes was either through the level and lasting oak floor in the bunk room or the already spotted, now sagging and sodden, ceiling in the tavern.  No contest.

Clearly, before we could continue with the "just refinish the floor" project, we had to get at the pipes and make repairs in the ceiling, right?  (And, thanks to Buck, our furniture and electronics were out of harm's way when the deluge came!)

So we spent an entire day tearing down the mystery-fiber panels between the beams of the ceiling.  (Thank God for the Shop-Vac!)  We found ourselves in a steady shower of debris that had been sitting on top of said panels.  Contents included 93 cubic feet (I calculated it.) of mouse poop, corn cobs, walnut shells, and tiny four-legged skeletons; sawdust, wood scraps and nails (from the 1953 bunk room floor project); and, paper dolls, postcards, purposefully diced-up parental correspondence, toy parts, doll parts and a well-worn Brownie beenie.

So, after all that, we could fix the pipes, right?  Not so much.

No pipes yet visible.  It turned out the mystery-fiber ceiling panels were attached to a tic-tac-toe of 2x4s and 2x6s, which were in-turn nailed (generously) up to the underside of one of two layers of very old, unfinished plank-pine, loft-type floor.  Hunh.

Over that there was a void of 8" or so and then the more modern diagonal-sheathing-type sub-floor for the oak floors in the bunk room above.  Did you follow all that?

OK, so in the "void" was the biggest surprise we've found in the house so far.  Steel I-beams (shadowimg above the cedar hand-hewn beams of the ceiling) and a modern-ish 2x6 structure supporting the floor upstairs.  Hunh.

OK, so now here's where the "plan" completely derails.  We can't "just refinish the floor" anymore.

Hubby wants to open up just enough of the tic-tac-toe and layered loft floor (reminder: these are strata of the ceiling) to get to the pipes down the middle.  And then leave the rest (with the remainders of mouse meals, mice and feces sifting down on us from above), finish the floor and furnish/live happily, temporarily after... until we get back to it.

I, on the other hand, acknowledge that a whole-hog remodel of the space is way outside the realm of time, money or mental capacity at present.  However, taking out all of the ugly, not-even-rustic-looking tic-tac-toe and layered loft floor would leave the ceiling at tabula rasa: beams and a view of the underside of the diagonal sheathing from the floor upstairs.  I can live with that!  And, over time, before putting in a "real" ceiling back in-between the beams (circa three years from now), we could rewire/replace the ceiling fixtures (enormous wagon-wheel and jelly-jar affairs), play with recessed lighting, run piping for radiant heat for the later-to-be master bedroom in the bunk room, rough-in plumbing for the later-to-be master bath up there...  The possibilities are endless, but the the interim would be aesthetically-pleasing enough.

So,  there you have it.  Hubby wanted me to "engage" the audience.  So, should we open up only as much as we need to get to the pipes, or should we get it over with and open the whole thing up?  Or, perhaps you all have some other idea we are missing (due to mouse-poop-induced brain fog)?  Either way, we'd get back to the "just sanding the floors" part within a month and furnish/live in our living room (under Buck's watchful gaze) within six weeks.

Comments, questions and counseling welcome.  Really.

A Shoebox & A Shop-Vac

Those of you who know me know that we moved to This Old Purple House from a brand new home that we custom designed and built from scratch. On the darker days, it's easy to wallow in memories of climate control, modern appliances (plugged into three-prong outlets) and everyday cleaning that didn't involve a Shop-Vac. Sigh.

When we built our last house, it was B. K. (before kids). I spent oodles of time reading and cutting up magazines, surfing and pilfering photos from the internet, visiting home expo centers and kitchen design emporiums. Not to mention the weekends spent going to yard sales and estate sales, plus impromptu curb picking on big trash days and field trips to architectural salvage warehouses. And, of course, there was property porn -- haunting open houses and skimming virtual tours of on-the-market houses I found on purpose or by happenstance.

Our second meeting with the architect we chose involved the purging of a large shoebox of clips, print-outs, brochures, samples, swatches, catalogs, feng shui analyses and, of course, cocktail napkin sketches. On alternate days I think we made his job incredibly easy (Why did we pay him when I did all the work?) or incredibly hard (That man worked a miracle. He captured the essence of all things shoebox!)

Rooms and walls were designed around heirlooms and trash-treasures. Lighting was placed just-so to highlight personal collections. The space fit us to a tee. Heck, we lived on the lot for 3 full cycles of seasons before we tore the old (vintage 1960s blek) place down and started over. So we knew exactly where the views were, where the sun and moon rose and set, where the storm water went (and didn't)... The place was frickin' perfect. Sigh.

So, now, here we are in a house with approximately the same square footage, but nothing fits. Between windows (small, but plentiful), doors and hallways (a veritable warren), radiators and fixtures and built-ins (more about these later), there isn't anyplace to put furniture in this place!!! Except the bunk room, of course, but that's furnished with an homage to master carpentry, which is entirely bolted to the floor. Everywhere else, the floors slope and roll. The ceilings and walls meet at corners that are square-ish. The walls are "textured". The "white" ceilings chronicle the history of weather and plumbing the way the rings in a massive tree trunk tick off the years. God, I love this place. Gah!

For now, I must remind myself that it took four years to compile my "shoebox" the last time around. And I didn't have the "help" of two 4-going-on-14 year-olds. And I was starting tabula rasa and building an "eclectic" collection. Whereas here, I am literally tying to fit massive (and beloved) Jacobean oak into 1700s colonial (aka Munchkin Land).

For now, I must find my happy place and soak up the orientation of all things. I must find ways to make this house a home, both now and in the future. I must get better at shimming. And sanding. And, perhaps most importantly, I must learn to love the Shop-Vac in the middle of all things, because it's on casters and it helps me to figure out which way the world is tilting. Today. And today is like no time in shoebox years.

Rosy Cheeks & Butterfly Wings

When we first moved into This Old Purple House, we set our kids up sleeping in the bunk room. Our furniture was not to arrive for a couple of weeks, so it made sense to put them in there, where the built-ins would make it feel a little less like camping for them. Plus, it was close to the only reliably working bathroom in the house.

The (hyped) excitement about the new house, though, was that our twins would, for the first time, have their own rooms. So, once Clem the Plumber and Kenny the Electrician were set to their tasks replacing the major systems in TOPH (more on this later) and the sump was hard at work on the primordial ooze in the pool, I was left with no choice but to actually deliver on two finished rooms. Sigh.

I started with my daughter's room since it was the least intimidating -- an all-cosmetic job. I spent hours in the wee hours of several prior mornings online in the dark reading horror stories about the removal of old wall paper from plaster walls, so I was prepared for the worst. And then it peeled right off. In large sheets.

As it turned out, the impossibly-original plaster walls behind the 1960s strawberry-fields-through-a-kaleidoscope wallpaper were crazed with an intricate and complete system of hairline cracks that allowed the walls to "breath." The hot air of summer, the cold air of winter, the dust of autumn and the damp of spring over 60+ years had turn-turn-turned the wallpaper paste into a thin, brittle layer that mostly came off with the paper. Nice.

So, this was not going to be your typical spackle-and-sand, baby-smooth scenario. Any pressing pressure on the walls caused alarming shifts in the network of cracks. Sanding was definitely out. But, as a mother, I owed it to my daughter to stem the drafts that clearly permeated every surface of her room-to-be. And, as an antique homeowner, hoped to find some way to stabilize the potentially-crumbling walls without resorting to the wallpaper-as-Band-aid approach. So I bought 3 quarts of DAP Fast N Final Interior and Exterior Spackling and a very wide blade. Time will tell, but this product (consistency of super-lite meringue with a bit of chalk dust in it), filled and spread perfectly. I also used DAP ALEX Caulk with Silicone to run a finger bead into the gaping cracks at the corners of the room and window trim. The theory there was to, again, block the drafts, but also allow the walls to move with the house. Time will tell on that one too.

The texture of the walls was still akin to that of aging Mexican stucco, but there are people in the world (somewhere) who pay BIG bucks to faux-finishers for just that effect. So I decided to embrace it. However, my daughter had chosen a coolish shade of lightish pink for her room. Looking at the swatch and looking at her "authentic" walls, I had to beg to differ. So I visited our local Benjamin Moore store to look for alternatives. And right there on the mis-mixed $10/gallon rack was this gorgeous, warm melon color. And right there next to it was a can of butter-yellow porch and floor paint. It was meant to be. Paired with a nice warm, matte, hides-everything linen white on the walls, it was perfect!

After a generous roll-slathering of a non-low-VOC, oil-based primer (forgotten the name, but it's a brand now owned by Benjamin Moore, not Zinnser or Kilz) with the consistency of Elmer's Glue, the web cracks and crazing disappeared. (My apologies to my chemical-free friends, but sometimes you've got to bring out the big guns. You know you use chlorine bleach when all else fails.) Only the gentle hills and valleys of the walls remained, along with the "layered look" of past patch jobs around the windows remained. The one truly smooth and flat area was where a fireplace was professionally concealed sometime in the last century. If you squint, you can see the outline. Charming and mysterious, I think.

When I finally began to paint (waited 8 days of room-closed, windows-open, and fan-on for the primer to finish its off-gassing), the color choices came alive. No second guessing here.

Then my daughter peaked in. "Mommy, that is NOT lightish pink."

Think fast, think fast, think fast.

"You know what? This color is EXACTLY the color of your rosy cheeks," I said convincingly. "When I saw it, I knew it belonged in your room."

"Really?" She grinned encouragingly, trying to picture her own cheeks without the benefit of a mirror.

And I, feeling encouraged, added, "And the floor is going to be exactly the color of butterfly wings. Remember the ones that used to flutter by in our garden in Annapolis?"

"Perfect!" She was beaming and gazing around the room that was to be all her own.

Perfect.

From the Primordial Ooze

When we first toured This Old Purple House, it was under four feet of fresh snow. In fact, our showing was delayed a day for the blizzard that dumped said snow. Although the house was as sad and cold as any I had seen in the collection of "old houses in need" I had collected and tracked online, I must admit that TOPH looked colder and sadder for its blanket of wet, heavy white stuff.

We made some assumptions from what we saw that day, one of which was that the pool was a goner. First of all, the words vintage and pool generally shouldn't go together. Second, the pool "deck" (poured concrete slabs visible from summertime satellite imagery) had some disconcertingly extreme highs and lows around the edges that could not be attributed to drifting snow. Finally, the location of the pool placed several hundred square feet of non-permeable area above the grade of the house, which was less than 15 feet away. The words drainage and nightmare came to mind.

Although the idea of summer fun and fitness were tempting, TOPH had many more pressing priorities than a pool, especially if was going to be a money pit and time dump unto itself. So, the quick-final task of digging out and/or filling in the pool were on the to-do list before we were even under contract.

So, imagine our surprise when we came back for our final walk-though (in June) and saw that the pool was tightly covered by an expensive custom, albeit older, cover. The seemingly heaved deck was actually stepped up in places to accommodate a higher "mosaic" wall on one side. And there appeared to be no water damage or drainage issues from the improbable grading -- still puzzling about those hydrodynamics...

Still, it remained covered. We closed on TOPH and began the initial tasks of debugging the kitchen, sorting spaghetti-esque "vintage" wiring (that's another pairing you never want to see: wiring and vintage), and bracing for exorcistic plumbing failures.

While we toiled on priority tasks of food, water and Wi-Fi inside, Mother Nature embarked on a scorching heat wave that made us long for the uber-air-conditioned comfort of the Mid-Atlantic. Suddenly, making that pool work, whatever the cost or effort, became a priority.

Local sources told us it was covered for seven years. In that time, a hearty mix of compost and carrion collected and decayed. Let's just say we avoided skin contact with the resulting liquid.
We did not add chemicals to the soup, knowing that we would be pumping it off into the woods, which run downhill almost directly to Great Bay. To that end, we found an old sump pump in a dark corner of the basement and set to the task of removing somewhere north of 10,000 gallons of primordial ooze. (On what grounded circuit, you ask? Excellent question for another day.)

It took about 10 days of running (and regularly unclogging) the pump and 150-foot hose. We were down to about 14 inches in the deep end when I started power washing at 2700 psi in areas where I could reach or stand. We used a gallon of Simple Green on the nastiest areas. And then pumped some more. And thenm the pump gave out leaving the nastiest of the nasty at the very bottom of the deep end.

My hubby fashioned a manual rope tow for a 16-gallon shop vac out of an old halyard and scaled the slope in a pair of old knee-high off-shore boots. From the shallow end, together we lifted the full vac into a huge wheelbarrow which he carted out to the woods twenty times. And, at the last, at the very bottom, we found... a central drain. Hunh.

Well, from there, it was easy. Six gallons of Clorox and a hose filling 3 hours at a time off the well, it was full in 9 days. Clem the Plumber fashioned a replacement for the missing bleeder valve on the obsolete pump. Plugs were pulled. Switches were flipped. And it started on the first try. And the light even works!

The icy artesian well water is NICE. And I, for this season, shall avert my eyes from the crumbling "vintage" tile and weed-choked phlox border. Ideas for the mosaic wall are welcome. Next Spring.

Buck-ing Responsibility

I believe a brief introduction is in order. We purchased This Old Purple House with three inclusions, all of which were in "the tavern," as we call it.

The main house is a fairly large 1700s 4-over-4 colonial. And, attached corner-to-corner on the northwest side, is a barn of sorts. It sits on a granite foundation, with no apparent access from any side, although there is a semi-modern concrete wall in that corner of the main house basement that reads "1962". What's behind that wall is a curiosity for another day...

On the first floor, it is one huge room -- about 800 square feet. The floors are worn plank pine. At one point they were waxed, but, for the most part they are now bare and both dust-colored and -textured. The 10-foot ceiling is spanned by 10x10 chestnut beams. The walls are dark pine tongue-and-groove paneling from floor to ceiling. A narrow, winding staircase leads from one corner to another single-room expanse upstairs that we call "the bunk room". It too is walled in pine, but it is further outfitted with a symmetrical series of built-ins -- beds, dressers, closets, cabinets, shelves, etc. It's all there. Permanently.

Back to the tavern down the winding, corner stairs... I mentioned some "inclusions" with the house. I should mention that all of these items are technically movable, unlike the furniture upstairs, which I could take or leave. These contractual inclusions appeared so permanent in the existential sense that we let them be and took them as is. Time will tell how these items fit in to our life here.

First, there is a bar that sits near the only outside door. It's a belly-up sort -- the kind with overhangs, but not so much that you could cozy a stool up and under. There are several shelves built into the innards of it, but none that accommodate a handle of booze standing up. (What were these people drinking?)

There is also a piano. It's an early Ludwig upright with heavy-handed wood carvings. At some point someone painted it red with some faux-grain glaze. It's been played hard and put up dry -- you can almost see a semi-sober, no-sheet-music-required piano man struggling to bang out a tune with a tipsy tart teetering on the edge of his bench. Today, let's just say that if there were a kitten on its keys, it would be well-fed given the resident mice in the chord case.

Finally, there is a dead animal, or that's how I thought of it as we negotiated the deal on this seemingly soulless essentially-abandoned house. He, as it turns out, is actually a very alert multi-point buck, mounted above the fireplace. And, I've come to believe, he is very much alive, spiritually speaking. He has proven to have a worthy opinion about things that go on here. So far he has given us nothing but sage advice, which I will recount in due course. But, in the meantime I wanted to make introductions. Now, if I refer to "Buck," you will have some idea to whom I refer. Fair enough?

The Three Rs

Do you believe in a cosmic reset button? Well, I sure as heck do. Regardless of religion or spiritual acuity, just about everyone can recall a time when everything was going along swimmingly and something (or some series of things) happened to turn it all upside down, forcing a new direction or perspective.

So, that's what happened, without further details or ado. After many years and professional and personal incarnations in- and outside the beltway (and the most recent comforts of living in a new, custom home), my husband and I have moved with our two small children to a very small town in New Hampshire. Here we found a house that needed us. And I believe the feeling is mutual.

Over the last few weeks, I have regaled our friends and family with tales of humor and woe -- our first experiences in This Old Purple House. It is at their urging that I begin this journal and share with anyone who cares to follow our long and winding road of renovation, restoration and redemption. The Three Rs, if you will.