unEarthingMe

An American Foursquare with a porch across the front and wrapping halfway around the right-hand side, this is a handsome, comfortable house that has, unfortunately been vinyl-sided.  This is the first house we bought in Staunton.  The one we have been "temporarily" occupying.

Before shot - before new roof, before removal of pesky walnut tree, before painting over barn red trim & foundation and before removal of peeling red gutters.

porch needs some work
during

This house was described as Queen Anne on the MLS sheet but, I'm thinking it's a Folk Victorian.  I am, however, no expert.  Interestingly, the ceilings upstairs are quite low.  There was a lot of economizing going on here.  One of the neighbors said her grandmother used to own it.  I asked if she could dig up some old photos to help with the rebuild of the porch railings.  They were originally quite low and wouldn't meet code now but, I'm hoping to get a look at them and try to improvise something that would meet code, not be the ugly mess on there now, and be architecturally congruous.

J's Room a slideshow of the progress

A.'s room is on what we call the scary side of the house.  This side seems to have suffered some smoke damage and I'm amazed that the former owners had people living in there.  We will be completely gutting this side of the house, starting with A.'s room.  The ceiling is textured giving all of the soot plenty of nooks and crannies to adhere to.  B.  unearthed some of the most beautiful wallpaper we've ever seen and saved a nice piece to use for dating the house.  There are heating grates in several upstairs rooms that open to the room below.  This allowed the heat from a gas stove below to rise up into the room.  In A.'s room, this grate isn't even attached to the floor so one could easily fall through.  I can't believe they had a child living in this sooty room with the death trap (or at least, ankle-breaker) floor.

B. has begun removing the old plaster in here.  This room is going to take some time.  All the plaster must be removed and it must be rewired, insullated, and sheetrocked.  We also need to add a new central heating/air system which means some duct work. 

We've finally closed yesterday on the house we'll be occupying (at least for a year or two) and B. has already run new wiring to the outlets in J.'s room.  Her room has a pole mounted between two walls but, we're going to build a wall around it and call it a closet.  There had been a door added connecting her room to ours and I can't believe I didn't get a picture of the crazy way they had hung a door there before B. demolished it.  I guess a hollow core door had been on clearance.  It didn't fit (too large) but, that didn't stop them from building out some chunks of 2x4 and hanging it anyway.  We need that space for a closet for our room so, today, B.  got to work on removing crazy door and knocking out that section of wall.  He found some old newspapers tucked up towards the ceiling (one from 1898) which, of course, if you know B., made his day.  Here is some of his progress.

First image shows where J.'s closet will be - to right of door in recessed are to left of/behind tools.

Second images shows where B. painstakingly cut-out lathe just enough to fit outlet boxes.  After cutting loose some scary wiring in the attic, he fished new wire down behind the walls to the holes and then set the boxes.  Not only is there nice new wire in our room and J.'s, we also have many more outlets than had previously been there.

Third image is of B.'s demolition.  This is post door removal and post plaster removal.  Once this section of wall is removed, he'll build a closet for our room.  Below is a view of the same area from our room into J.'s.

The fifth image is of B.'s treasure.

These last two are the splintery lathe B. gets to play with and the icky plaster debris he gets to breathe.  Fortunately, he is a little better than I am about safety equipment - a little.