A Hole in a perfectly Good Roof...

One of the artifacts of our nifty old building was an additional set of 'service chimenys' in the old kitchens... Just an 18" square column that served the ovens and the 'trash burners'(the alternative heating at the turn of the previous century- waste not, want not).

They appear to be right in the middle of rooms that we were hoping not to be burning trash in so we have to take them out! This is a brick-by-brick process that starts on the roof and creates a serious hole that goes right through the building in two places!
That's the Sky!
That's our basement... well our crawl space... well, calling it a crawl space is a bit grandiose... it may be really a slither space...

So Victoria and I came up with the crazy idea that we had a hole anyway, why not put in a skylight (or two)? There is, of course, no standard skylight size that fits this situation but that hardly even slowed us down...
We created a wood light-chase and painted it with three coats of heavy duty white oil based primer which will grab any sunlight and send it into the house... Then, up on the roof, we secure it to the old chimeny penetrations...
and make sure that the banding has alternating, overlapping ends so that water has to really, really work to get into the house...
Now we put the skylight on top, using lots of goop and goo that promises complete weather-proofness, and it looks like this:
Getting it centered is the only option in this moment... once that goop sets up there's no going back!
Looks good from here! (Of course, I also went down, off the roof, and checked from the inside as well- had to...) Then, we attach the skylight for the rest of its natural life...
and, just to be sure, we put even more goop over the screws, just because we can!
So now, even on an overcast day, we have a flood of the sky coming into our home...

It's an Inside job...

Well...

Starting essentially from the beginning, Victoria and I have looked at the envelope (the outside of the house) and TOTALLY re-imagined the space... this, of course, means that we have to remove all of the walls in the interior and put in new ones where-for now- only we can see them (in "FutureLand"!)
Putting up walls in new construction is a snap- lay it out on the deck- nail it together- tip it up into place! Putting up walls in an old house is not a snap... it's not a button, or zipper or even a buckle!

In an old house, with chimenys and stairs and bearing walls, etc., you don't have a big flat place to layout your entire wall so you can put it together. So you get to look at each individual wall as a puzzle that has to be divided into parts that get individually assembled (usually at the other end of the house where the room with the biggest open floor is) and then passed through openings and doorways, to be reconvened as the wall that you imagined in the correct location.
It's a lot of math. Oh boy, yes it is...

One of the "Funny" things about old houses is that while we know that they all probably started out true and square with flat floors and ceilings, 100-or-so years later they don't have any of those things. Often, as you measure to fit the new wall into the old place, you have to measure the ceiling heights along the path of the wall and cut different stud lengths for each position along the way. And, Yes, it's almost as much fun to take apart your new wall, after putting in the studs in the wrong order, as it was to put it together the first time! Squishing closets in between masonry is fun!
Eventually, if you do a lot of this for 3200 square feet, it begins to resemble what you imagined when you looked at the back of the napkin together...

The language of framing sounds like a badly written piece of Film Noir- your day is populated with 'studs' -King studs and Jack studs- and 'cripples' and 'headers' and 'sills' and 'plates'... Heady LaMar brings lunch and there's always scratchy violins playing in the middle distance...
Here is Xan in front of the left-hand wall of her Kookie Bar!

Another one bites the dust? the dirt? whatever...

In order to make the changes that we want inside, we need to move some of the bearing walls inside the house around... not far, but far enough to warrant putting more support under the house directly under the place where the walls will carry the weight of the roof and the floors above...

In order to do that we have to feed the 'skinny guy' to the house:
Corey is ready... Hair is covered, Mask in place, knee pads on...
Going...
going...
and then there was a slurping noise and a loud burp and that was the last we ever heard from Corey...

Well, not exactly...
Here he is, sliding around under the house, looking for the blue wires that we drilled down through the new framing so he would know exactly where the holes had to be dug for the concrete pads that had to be poured.

Either that or he's looking for a cool, dark place to take a nice nap...
Special thanks to all the skinny guys who can, and did, fit under the house for this project! We'd make you a cookie but then you'd gain weight and then who would we send under the house?

Bringing the outdoors in...

This is the 'new' part of our sweet old house!

The House was built somewhere around 1900 and, sometime in the 20's we think, when they thought that indoor plumbing was the wave of the future, they added this wooden framed addition to the back which has all of the substantial plumbing in it...

Well... it's gotta go! We've struggled with the idea of how to make it work but there isn't enough there to make into something that isn't there so...

Duwayne and his crew go to work and
cut the roof off of our house!
Then, like some giant munching through the christmas gingerbread, parts of the back began to disappear!
The walls of the upstairs cascaded down to the backyard leaving that open airy feeling to the place that is so appealing...

The second floor disappeared into the dumpster and we had a moment to really appreciate the fine color choices that the last owners had made for the bathroom walls...

Until, with a huge cacophony of saws, bad language, and the sound of heavy things falling from great heights...
it was all gone...

The canvas back here is prepped and now?

How About This One?

Xan is not fond of going to the lumber store...

You see her here in front of a pile of two by fours with one reject standing behind her against the wall...

How, you might ask, could there be a way to not LOVE a two by four?

It amazes us what is offered for sale - ones that are warped, twisted, cracked, moldy, knotty (maybe even naughty), cupped, spalled, chattered, and even covered with bark!
OOps! another reject!

This trip we were only purchasing 40 pieces of lumber... about one afternoon's framing for the two of us...

But we had to sort through about 160 pieces of lumber to get there!

This is our reject pile:
Sooo...

Xan likes to go to look at formica samples for the Kookie Bar counters, loves to look at the sparkly ceiling fixtures (potentially for her new room), and doesn't even seem to mind the quick scans of the clearance shelves...

No more lumber please!

Discoveries...

"Discovery" is easily the most terrifying word that a homeowner can hear from their contractor... it means more time, more planning, more problem solving, more expense... at the very least!

When you are your own contractor it isn't any easier to make discoveries... so far we've done 'okay':

Discovery 1:

A postcard sent in 1941 that slid between the mantle piece and the brick, complete with a canceled stamp...

Discovery 2:

The Kitchen Fire...
on the ground floor in the right side kitchen there was a serious fire. It started at the stove and quickly engulfed the entire ceiling heating the room to the point where the walls on all sides were scorched five feet down.
The previous owner had simply put another layer of sheetrock over the damage, moving on, making no mention of it to the city.
When we had the rest of the sheetrock off we were relieved to discover that the tongue and groove saved the day! It kept the heat from getting into the joists or studs and so, after we lose the charcoal, we still have complete structural integrity... whew!

Discovery 3:

The Trivet of Whompaquanesset
We discovered the ancient burial site of this regional artifact when we looked between the tongue and groove sheathing and the flue chimeny.

Discovery 4:

Strength in the Attic...
If you look past the knob and tube wiring that was still in use when the building was shut down by the City, and past the feeble attempt at blown in insulation, you will notice that there is great structural health in the way that the roof is supported and the size of the weight bearing cross members!

Discovery 5:

Movement in the structural brick...
This little space between the original (non-weight-bearing) wall and the outer wall means that the brick has moved out of plumb. Not the best thing. Not so severe that we have great concern but it does lead to further investigations.
We found the flaw is in the very upper left side of the building and that it was repaired some time in the late 60's (mortar type and technique) and hasn't moved since then, so, if we don't blow it things should be fine... should be...

Discovery 6:
Sometimes it's a good idea to sit down with a lovely piece of toast and figure out what to do about all of the discoveries of the day...

A Social Occasion to share...

Victoria and I had the amazing good fortune of meeting and spending time with Laura and Bianca when we were here in Paducah during our first trip... Laura is a real estate agent that showed us a bucket load of properties in two days with all of the crawling around under houses and into attics that I do; Bianca is her assistant who magically produced the full disclosure forms for almost all the properties...
Victoria, the the manner that she has of asking people the most intimate and direct questions and have them answer her, asked about their personal relationship and, as the conversation took it's inevitable turn toward whats-it-like-here-in-Paducah, we found out that they were going to be married in June!

Somehow, (Somehow! Victoria's charm is how!), we were included on the guest list and received an invitation to this wedding... We made a traditional gift of bread, baked with shaved dark chocolate and toasted pecans inside, so that they could begin their new life in the 'breaking of bread' and nourishing each other...

Xan wrapped our gift of 'the conversation' goblets stunningly taping to the top a great fortune that we'd found at the end of a dinner with Gretchen...

The wedding started with a gathering on the upstairs plaza of the new Arts Center... this little town did an amazing thing with this building! We were under a tent but looking east over the Ohio river and Illinois about a mile away... beautiful sky, slanting light...

The ceremony was opened with a sage smoke purification and some drumming, followed by a chant to gather the energy of the assembled (that's us) and bring it forward to create a space of honor and sanctity for the wedding party...

Please remember that we are telling a story that occurs in Western Kentucky!

The wedding itself was simple and joyous with the families of both espoused in from distant places... here are some photos of the reception...

Gretchen and Xan

The room, done in an asian theme, with this chandelier that was made by sewing thread through the centers of white rose petals!!!
Along with all of the other things that Laura and Bianca did, they grew these flowers and made this hanging themselves...

the cake... the couple...

A busy Wednesday...

This Wednesday began like any other here... up around 5:20 and working on the taxes for a few hours before waking Xan...



At 8 am we read aloud for half-an-hour on the couch in the coffee house
At 8:30 am we met with Caryl Fallert who has offered her space for the potluck that we are having for Mark and Terry Smith (wildravens.net) who are visiting/shopping the Artist relocation program
At 9:00 am we met with our banker, Larry Rudolph, and we signed the papers for our loan!
At 10:30 am we were at City Hall with the 'before and after' drawings for David Flowers and he gave us permission to begin demolition!!!


At 11:15 we began demolition on our new house...

Now we wait...

Xan is cutting in the hole for the new Deadbolt lock that we've added in the front door... handily using her chisel and hammer!

This is one of the last things that we can do before the building permit clears City Hall... we aren't supposed to do anything that resembles demolition until the plans are reviewed and we are given a 'green light'.











This is April at the Permit Desk in City Hall, and here I am watching her do her magic with the reams of papers and walkie talkies and wall-mounted scheduling charts and phones... We are being told that our project is so small and, because we are not changing the outside of the building (especially the side that faces the street) we should have very little impact on the system in general.

We are being told that we can expect things in the middle of next week...

Now we wait.

Waiting involves revising floor plans (based on 'discovery'- what is really under the wall covering...) and doing the taxes, and doing math for load bearing (ovens in the middle of upstairs floors), and work time tables... you know waiting!

Waiting also involves taking the old fishing gear that I stuck in the van and getting hooks and sinkers and the old sliced turkey and teaching Xan how to fish on the river!


As it turns out, we were there on the Barge with 'Shorty' and Terry and a young couple (at the far end) and aside from the miniature catfish that Terry pulled in, Xan was the only one who caught a fish!

This is a 1-1/4 pound white perch that Shorty says he'd eat if he were hungry enough... but...












We took it home and learned how to clean it and we cooked it up with all sorts of wonderful seasonings on it and decided... Shorty was right!

Tofu and Broccoli for dinner!