Free time?

I really worked my butt off today. Up early for a run with Tank, then a fast scan of the NY Times and the Gazette. Up on the scaffolding by 10 AM, following a wasted trip to Lowe's looking for 4" cove molding to replace that which was lost in a reroofing a few years back. Got the second coat of paint on the NE corner of the house, raced inside to do laundry and vacuum, back outside to scrape paint, weed the front garden, back to cleaning and more laundry. I'm so pleased at the new paint. The new color is a gold, very close to the original color. Scraping archeology unearthed a layer of blue, a grey, and lots of white in addition to the gold.

MK got home from church and coffee with a friend about 1, and helped me dismantle the scaffolding from the north side and haul it onto the porch roof so I can reach the third floor dormer. He doesn't do heights, so the upper stuff is my turf. This is OK, since I'm just a little on the OCD side when it comes to surface prep. anyway: scrape, sand, scrape some more, sand, wash, renail siding, caulk, then paint... It's a process.

Then I made dinner and collapsed on the sofa, but only to read up for the city council meetings tomorrow and Tuesday. I feel very tired, and maybe a little virtuous. But I love getting this old house in better shape, even if the progress is minute. This week we look forward to more electrical work, and a visit from the plumber: the drain from the basement utility sink is leaking a small river across the floor.

Electrician No. 3

Our electrician was here today, and made progress. He's a good guy, very creative (you need to be creative -- not to mention tolerant -- when working on a house like this.) He's our third electrician. The first, a sincere sort, basically flaked out on us. The second turned out to be a nightmare (I can't rehang that fixture. It's against code!) That despite the fact that "code" wasn't going to apply in that particular situation (adding a wall switch for a pull-chain operated fixture). We let him go. But number three, John, is a keeper. Upbeat, creative, smart, he's perfect for this place. Today he added outlets to the kitchen counters -- there were none -- and we're thrilled. Last week he wired in the new double wall oven. He's also rewired some old fixtures and been completely unfazed by the old gas lines (for the long-gone gas-lights) which fill the walls. He's moved some weirdly positioned outlets (in the floor?!) and added circuits so you can, for example, run the vacuum and still have the refrigerator kick in. Such is progress.

Photo explanation

The photo of the house was taken in the early spring of 1906. The front and side porches had yet to be completed. The side porch was screen in and turned into a summer kitchen sometime before 1910. It was later fully enclosed. The front porch was also enclosed, in the 1970s, and was turned into a real eyesore. It will be torn off and rebuilt in an appropriate fashion.

The current house was built around the original 1872 cottage, the outline of which is still visible in parts of the basement. The "new" house is half American Foursquare and half Victorian; the north side sports a tall, deep gable reminiscent of the earlier fashion. It's as if the architect (or more likely, the person who drew up a likely widely-available plan) chickened out at the last minute and chose to avoid a fully "modern" plan.

Where to start?

Once the house was ours, the big question was what to start on first. Being entirely impractical, I started on the badly overgrown yard. It was difficult to see the house from the street, as there were two huge spruce trees blocking the view in and out, as well as lots of crummy overgrown shrubs, etc. I started clearing them out, got frustrated, convinced MK that one spruce had to go, and contacted a tree service to take it down. I got a little carried away and had them take down a big walnut tree as well, which was a smart move; it allowed enough sunlight to the rear of the lot for a small garden.

Once upon a time this was a much larger lot, and old, being lot 1 of block 17 of the original 1839 plat of the city. About 1960 the north half was sold and a faux-colonial duplex was built on it. The duplex was for sale at the same time as 225, but we couldn't afford dropping another $200K at the time (it needed some work to boot) and let it go. That was a mistake. In a sketchy neighborhood, it's a good thing to have control of your next-door neighbors. Anyway.

MK and I undertook quite a bit of interior painting after the house was unmasked. The lavender living room gave way to a nice terra-cotta color, the master bedroom went from orange and blue (honest!) to a nice bronze shade with vaguely tan trim (this was the only room in the house with painted woodwork) and the kitchen went from icky 1930s green to a brick red. Stripping 100+ years of paint from the cabinets would come later.

It was looking better.

About the same time we discovered that the house across the street, a huge tumble-down gothic affair, was a serious party house. Drunken idiots carrying on until 5 AM-type party house. Not good. There were a number of run-ins, police calls, and late-night raids. But we got it shut down, and ditto the crack-house around the corner on Market St.

The challenge was getting bigger. I like challenges.



The yard cleaned up pretty well. One of our neighbors, a long-time resident, stopped by and exclaimed that she had no idea that our house was so big, having been hidden by the spruce for so long. She then expressed delight at having new owner-occupiers, and in a subtle manner, questioned our sanity for having bought the old Mellicker Place. Gives one pause.

The Background

This is your basic old house renovation blog.

Some time back, my partner, MK, and I were driving home from the hardware store. Instead of taking the usual arterial street past downtown, we took a side street and came across a real-estate open house for a big, ancient, poorly maintained old house that looked destined for a bad future.

We stopped.

We poked around. We came back. We came back again. We measured. We called in professionals.

We bought (after much deliberation.)

It's our big, old, baby. The old Mellicker Place.

Two and a half stories, 2100 sq. feet, of spectacular birch woodwork and floors, cool front and back stairs, 14 x 30' kitchen, butler's pantry, pocket doors, 5 bedrooms 2nd floor, 2 on the third, tall ceilings, ancient wiring, really scary plumbing, and a 1905 boiler that works pretty well. Nobody ever messed with it much, save for a hideous 1960s French-provincial bathroom remuddle and a ghastly enclosure of the 40' wide front porch, which looks like half a double-wide was smacked onto the front of the house. It's not a mansion, just a big old American Foursquare which was built over and incorporating a much more modest 1873 cottage.

It's a great place.

We had lived in a mint 1920s bungalow in a very desirable close-in neighborhood, which was quiet, low-crime, and very attractive. We just wanted a bit more space and to be a little closer to downtown. Our new house has a lot more space, is much closer to downtown, has relatively higher crime (we learned what it means to have a crack-house around the corner) and is quite convenient to a hospital and several psychologist's offices (deeper meanings?) but has its charms. The bungalow sold (to a cash buyer, no less) within three hours of being listed, for the same price that we paid for 225.

Our family, such as it is (or was) consists of two dogs, the big, sweet and mellow Tank, a German Shepherd-Great Dane mix, the lovely the deeply crazy Princess Molly, a purebred Australian Shepherd, and cats Mr. Higgins (at 18, about ready for the next world,) Edgar, a zippy 14 year old, Howard, a cute nitwit aged 7, and the late baby Maud, a stray kitten who came with the house and who died aged about 10 months. We grew to love Maud a great deal and miss her like crazy.

Such is the beginning. We bought the house in 2006, and the blog will weave in and out between Then and Now, as does most of life itself.