Now You See Them, Now You Don't

The restoration work continues on our porch and quite a bit has happened since our last update.  Pat and the team from Drury Designs discovered some dry rot in the beam supporting the radius of the porch and some rotted support beams on the underside of the porch.  Some of this was expected with the age of the house and all of it will be taken care of.

The team continued the work by supporting the corner from below and across in order to remove the wooden pillars and prep for the removal of the stone columns.

The porch corner is well supported during the restoration.

Soon afterwards, the mason arrived with the heavy equipment needed to carefully take down the columns and move the heavy pieces of stone.  The mason stacked and marked each stone such that he will know exactly how it needs to be rebuilt once the new footings are in place.

Where did the stone columns go?

We sure hope that Pat checks all the licenses of his sub-contractors.  While the mason certainly did good work, we are concerned that he is a bit young.

The mason?

We are very pleased with the progress that has been happening with our porch.  It is exciting to see this sore spot of the house get the attention it needs.  

You Never Know What You Will Find

We have found that this phrase is one often shared among owners of old homes, and our home has proven to be no exception.  From pipes that go nowhere, to walls inside other walls, and an exterior door that doesn't lead in, our house has given us all kind of head-scratchers.

One recent oddity was discovered while fixing up the room that will become our children's playroom.  Since many of the old electrical receptacles have layers of paint on them, I like to replace them as we work from room to room.  This particular room had a receptacle that was actually right in the base trim!  While this is the only outlet like this in our house, I have seen this in other homes in our neighborhood and it is fairly common.  Regardless, I fully intended on moving the outlet up into the wall and patching the painted trim.

This is not exactly up to code.

What I wasn't expecting was to find that there was no outlet box.  This particular outlet was just hanging out without anything between the wires and the wooden trim and lathe.  Further exploration yielded the light switch was the same.  Wow, that is dangerous!

New home and old home of the outlet(s).

 So I added a box further up the wall where there are now two, much safer, outlets.  The light switch also has its own plastic box as well as a Dr. Seuss's One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish switch plate to go with the playroom theme.

To Here or To There?

You just never know what you will find!

Dining Room - Windows

The dining room windows are finally done! We had the windows replaced last October, and I just finished the curtains last week.

Here is what the old windows used to look like:

A cracked pane in one of the old dining room windows.

The old dining room windows on the front side of the house. The lower window on the left has no glass in it at all!

The view from outside. 

This is what they look like today:

The new windows!

The view from outside.

Here are the curtains! The green in the fabric matches the wall color, and the dark magenta peony flowers match our chandelier. I got the new roller shades for my birthday. It's funny how your birthday presents change into more practical things as you get older!

The side window. There is no longer a big crack in the bottom pane!