And, Behind Door #3...

Just when I thought I'd seen it all, in terms of odd color choices...  It seems the Care Bears may have had a little known colonial influence...

In our travels through the many and various basement, attic and garage hiding places of TOPH, we have found a large collection of windows, doors and screens.  Since we moved in this Summer, and the house was still largely "winterized", we made quick, if amusing, work of matching each port to its appropriate ventilated pest barrier.  And we attempted to store the take-offs in a way that made sense.  But, let's just say we had some left over parts.

When the drafts of first frost came, we learned quickly where stop-gap measures were needed. And, as luck would have it, our match-making skills proved generally successful.  The many-doored passages to the outside suddnely made sense.  Although, I must say it is cumbersome to navigate multiple knobs and latches in a cramped space with groceries and children, I do get the yankee-logic of an air lock.

However, there are doors in the house that open directly into living spaces.  It was our intent to shun those passages in the Winter months, but, even closed, they were radiating cold.  There was just no way the previous owners lived with them like that...  Ah.  Spare parts!

In the rafters of the garage hubby found a solid tongue-and-groove door with some old hinges and thumb-latch hardware on it.  It fits the outside of the tavern door jam perfectly.  It swings out.  The old hand-hewn panel door swings in.  Clearly it's been there before -- the hardware matches up perfectly, although some pieces are missing.  No biggy.  We will likely figure out a way to secure it and not open it again until Spring.

The kicker is the color.  Now we have a purple house with blue doors and a bright green (we're talkin' verde gris) "over" door.  This just keeps getting better.  I feel like I'm in a colonial Care Bears movie.

The Chill is Upon Us: New Community, Old House

Our world is a little bit upside down.  When we lived in Annapolis, Spring was the busy time of year.  Weekends and evenings (and quite a few sneak-away-from-work hours) were spent getting boats ready for the season.  Tedious hours were spent getting logistics sorted for the sailing season.  But it was all worth it.  The more prepared we were for the season, the better we were able to enjoy our hours on the water.

It was a busy time when the community shared information on new products and processes they were using.  The talk about the coming season centered on new sail plans and purchases, new crew line-ups, ultimate strategies for long-distance races and tactics for the all-important race to the dock/bar.

Now that we have moved North, the sailing season is shorter and Fall is longer, but (apparently) way too short to complete all of the many Winter-prep projects required to keep us warm and safe at TOPH.  The to-do list for Fall included tree trimming to keep branches away from the house, replacing five basement windows to replace some of the the old, rotten ones (removed earlier in the Summer), ceiling demolition in the tavern to allow for plumbing repairs and some window replacement in the main house.

The tree trimming has been slow-going.  Hubby has been pecking away at it over the last six weeks, but our chainsaw has proven unequal to the task, requiring multiple sharpenings over the course of an afternoon.  Plus, tree work with the kids "helping" is slow-going with constant checks of their giggling-proximity to every given projectile and cutting tool.

The basement windows are more a financial challenge.  This is perhaps on of the only areas of "investment" in TOPH where were were willing to go with the cheapest, effective measure.  However, the window sizes are not stock or common, therefore either significant reframing efforts or expensive custom windows are required.  Sigh.  In the short term, hubby built two "hutches" to match the three contraptions already here.  They look like 3-sided dog houses that sit over the window wells.  Under those, I have used "found" materials to affect some protection from the colder temeratures.  The flat-frame screens I made to lay over the window wells for pest protection during our fully-ventuialted Summer have been covered on both sides (with air pocket in between) with several yards of painters' canvas I had lying around.  Hoping they will provide enough of an insulating barrier to protect window-proximal pipes -- we'll be keeping a close eye on those.

The ceiling demolition is more of a mental-physical barrier.  It sucks having yards of dust, debris, frass, feces and fodder fall on your head.  And working with power tools over your head is rather taxing (and death-defying.)  it's not a project you can work on for more than two hours at a time, yet the prep and clean-up take a good hour.  Finding time and motivation has been the greatest factor.  On the other hand, not having a living/family room for five months has posed its own challenges.  The critical mass of willpower (directed at Couch + Fire + TV/Book) is building a decent head of steam!

And finally, we took forever to make a decision about windows for the main house.  Then it took 6 weeks for our "sample" to arrive.  Truth-be-told, it took hubby less than two hours to install it.  And we like it.  A lot.  Now we just have to line up the pecking/ordering order for the rest.  Each one is about $325, so we figure we can do 2 each month without breaking the bank.  Some rooms have only one window and some have three, so it should all come out in the wash.  Although we'd like to do all nine on the front of the house in one go.  In the meantime, there are several that are "breezy" shall we say, so we have made a stop-gap purchase of shrink film, which is actually quite invisible to the naked eye when installed properly.  And, that is how we are spending our Thanksgiving.

So, back to my sailnig analogy.  Hubby and I have both remarked that it is a little tough embarking on projects in an old house in a new community.  Our community of sailing/Annapolis friends was always willing to lend a hand or opinion on a wide variety of boat projects.  Most folks we've met here, though, are not old house people.  So, although they find our house "charming" and projects "interesting", we have found very few with affinity or experience.  And, perhaps it's becasue we barely know them, we have been reluctant to ask for help when tasks require more hands.  Mostly we miss the commaraderie of the boat yard (and The Boatyard Bar & Grill) in terms of group-think and the inevitbability of drop-by helping elves.

Don't get me wrong, we LOVE living here and we are meeting new folks every day, but community takes time to build and we are freshmen.  We are thankful for all of the new folks we are meeting, but honestly, we miss (and look forward to) the sophomoric comments and sage-senior advice that come from old friends. 

So, on this Thanksgiving, we hope you'll join us it toasting friendships new and old.  Here's hoping the former grow finer with time.  Cheers and warm, homey hugs, all!

From the Outside Looking In...

From the outside looking in, it isn't quit right yet.  It isn't quite right looking from the inside out either.  But overall it looks way better than I thought it would and it was much less muss and fuss than I would have expected.

After enormous loads of research, great debate and considerable consternation, hubby ordered and installed the first new window at TOPH.  Kudos to him, because, in a massive paradigm shift, he left me in the dust of indecision and an epic damming of impetuous energy.  I don't know what it is about windows in an old house. Or maybe I do.

There is a quite a complex framework for decision-making.  The following was ours, in no particular order (perhaps THAT was my problem?)  We looked at cost, aesthetics, energy efficiency, modern-use festures and installation appraoches.

Google Image unearthed with search phrase:
Ugly Replacement Windows on Antique House

The product-alone cost of replacing windows, if you believe the hype, ranges from $150-$1,500 for a standard double-hung unit.  There are "replacement windows", which are cheap and easy and vinyl, for the most part.  They have wood-clad upgrades, but that sends them into the same price range as the others, so that was a non-starter.  My biggest issue with them, though was aesthetic.  They "fit" into your old window holes, but come in a smaller range of sizes than the other options.  So they make up the difference with vinyl fillers in the form of coping and flashing and trim.  The result is less window and more white crap to put it bluntly.

The other end of the spectrum is authentic reproduction windows -- the ones with single-pane, wavy glass in "true divided lights" like they were originally.  Apart from being ridiculously expensive, notoriously energy inefficient and exceedingly difficult to maintain, it set the restoration bar a bit to high for us.  I don't see us doing laundry in copper steamers over the fire on a regular basis.  And, as far as I know, George Washington never slept here at TOPH.

In order to preserve maximum "lite" size and aesthetic we wanted, plus achieve the energy-efficiency and modern functions we wanted, we (briefly) considered using "new" windows (case, frame and all) as replacements.  However, this type of window replacement would require major surgery on interior and exterior trim, in addition to repairs to plaster walls and latex-over-lead painted siding.  On our budget, we are tackling one (or a few) projects at a time.  This approach would just open up too many cans of worms at once without the time or money to finish any of them properly.  And, as it turns out, the window sills are very old -- possibly original (clearly hand-hewn and planed) -- and in reasonably good shape.  Why fix something (one of the very few things) that isn't broken?

One down and 53 to go!

So we had basically arrived at a little-known option.  There are a few companies out there who sell replacement sashes in a wide range of sizes.  Plus, they have these "balance kits" -- essentially modern-engineered, multi-track inserts that fit into the vertical sides of your rough-ish window opening.  They allow for all the insulated, double-hung, tilt-in/out options of modern windows without disturbing existing trim and casing. The sashes themselves are argon-filled, double-pane, low-e glass.  There are thousands of options for muillion sets which can be interior and/or exterior.  Right now we have only the interior sets.  When we get around to siding and painting the exterior of the house, we will add the exterior sets and paint accordingly.

NOTE: Very happy about using a product local-ish family owned company (BROSCO) and ordering through our local lumber yard (Exeter Lumber).

It took about 4 weeks for our made-to-order window to come in.  Hubby ordered one for a not-so-obvious window in his office that we though would be representative of the scope and scale for the rest of the house.  And, again, kudos to him.  I just couldn't pull the trigger on this one.  And now it's done.  It took him less than 2 hours to take out the old and install the new.  Just needs a coat of exterior paint to protect the wood surfaces while we get around to the others.  Hmmmm.  What color?  Pink perhaps?  Let's scare the neighbors!  Hehehehe.