Site Visit by Carter

Carter went out to the house yesterday, and on the way he stopped at the storage unit in Montague and picked up the doors that will be used in the basement, front porch and back porch, as Mike is getting ready to frame the walls of the basement and porches and will need to size the door openings.

Old meets new. Carter told me how impressed he is at the craftsmanship of the work. The house is solid straight and true. This is the south-west corner. The little hole in the foundation isn't a window but the opening for the steel beam that held up the house. It will be in-filled. These are original wall studs and the new floor that you see between the old shingles and new foundation. The open gap between the new floors and the wall sheathing will be covered soon, probably when the old shingles are stripped at the time of reshingling. The ground level will eventually be higher than this and we will start to landscape next spring when I'm back again.

The doors that Carter delivered. That little green vertical tongue and groove board door will go back where it came from, this porch. The large faux grained door is from Kerras and will be the laundry room door in the basement.

The Kitchen. This is the corner where the sink used to be. That is the window at left that George Lowe signed the pane when he built the Kitchen. The sashes are in storage so they don't get damaged. the new sink will be below this window and cabinets will line the wall. The new stove will go where the old one used to sit, at the right side of this photo. The ceiling will remain open to the peak.

This is the west wall of the Kitchen, looking into the dining room. The closet to the left of the door will remain, and will be a Pantry with sliding shelving for food storage. Take a look at those great old wide boards, which used to be the exterior wall of the house before the Kitchen was built, sometime around 1916. I'm debating whether to leave them exposed or drywall and wallpaper over them. All of the rest of the paneling in the Kitchen had to be removed for the additional framing but will go back on again. 

This is taken from the Dining Room looking into the Parlour. When the house is done, the Parlour will become the Dining Room. You can see the hardwood flooring stacked in the corner that will go back down in these spaces. That is the front Kitchen door laying on its side. Mike discovered that this door had been shaved at the top to fit the opening as the kitchen sagged over time. Grampy must have done that. The door closes well but there is now a 2 inch gap at the top of the door at the knob side, so we decided that he will shave the door level and drop the header so it will fit properly. Hopefully Dad won't have to duck to get into the kitchen when its done.

East wall of the kitchen

The framed rectangle in the ceiling is for the skylight over the stove. 

The kitchen door with the new straight header

The shingles on the west wall of the kitchen were above the ceiling and are from the time before the kitchen was built. Along with keeping the wide boards exposed, I'm considering retaining them to help tell the story of the progression of construction of the house over the last century. I'll no doubt change my mind about this several times before the final decision is made.

This is the front wall. The front door is at far left. This was the front Bedroom and will now be the Living Room. The wall between the door and window was removed and Carter said this is now a very nice room.

New floor deck in the old Dining Room

The front door. I find the cross bracing very interesting. Seems almost overdone compared to conventional framing of the time and is more of a Colonial detail. Carter and I have been studying details like this throughout the house and wonder if the house may be older than 1904. However, it is possible that is was built by men who followed old framing conventions at the time. This is hard to prove but I want to do more research into this. The house did belong to the Prince Edward Island Railroad and there are records to dig into that might shed light on this.

The underside of the stairs to the second floor. You can see the saw marks in the planks. The wood was likely milled either at MacLure's Mill at the dam, or at Moore's Lumber Mill across the River, incidentally where the lumber for the addition is coming from.

The little closet under the stairs will remain. This is the one spot that I guess we forgot to strip out.

Looking into the Pantry Closet in the Kitchen

Carter stacked the doors in the old Dining Room

The soil has been leveled off out toward the outhouse

Looks like the ground level worked out between the new back porch at left and the old Red Pine. Still lots of soil left over to build up around the house.

Even with all the rain, Carter is amazed at how dry it is around the house. The soil is like wet beach sand and drains very well.

Some of you might remember the concrete stoop across the front of the kitchen and steps that went down the hill. I will have that recreated in stained and stamped concrete to replicate the PEI red soil color of the original. It was removed when Grammy had the foundation "fixed" in 1988. Hopefully this fix will last longer!

Looking into the back porch and under the Kitchen. Steps will wind down from ground level into the basement at this point. At left is a window

This long narrow gap is where the stairs will go from the back porch up to the main level. At the top and to the right will be the bathroom, and another bathroom with laundry will be below it in the basement.

A bearing wall will replace the temporary columns. The Mechanical Room will be at the front under the Living Room and the new Bedroom will be at the back under the Dining Room.

Stubbed in drain pipe for the washer in the Laundry Room

North-west corner of the new back porch. The door will be right at this corner, facing the field. The concrete stoop from the front door was salvaged and I'll reuse it here.

Bathroom wall and new plywood sheathing on the kitchen roof. The entire roof will be stripped of the old shingles and sheathed with plywood before the new shingles go on. The main floor Bathroom will have 2 windows, one at each end, and the opening centered on the  north basement wall is the window for that Bathroom.

Sure looks high in the air

You can see that the back Kitchen window, the one with the George Lowe signature, will open into the new stair hall. There will be 3 skylights above it in the hall to allow second hand light into the Kitchen through this window.

A clawfoot tub will go under a window at this end of the Bathroom

The nook where the leftover forms are stacked is the space under the front porch, and will be the wine cellar. This space will not get radiant floor heating so we can keep it cool.

The shingles of this wall will remain as the interior wall of the back hall. I will paint them yellow to match the color of the house when I was a kid.

 Precise framing

You can see through the gap at the bottom of the wall the stacked hardwood flooring in the Parlour

Looking from the Mechanical Room to the space under the Kitchen, which will be plumbed and wired to be a second kitchen if ever there is a need to make the basement an independent suite. Insulation for the floor is being installed today, and possibly the radiant tubing as well, then the slab can be poured.

A far cry from the old floor framing

Thanks Carter for the fantastic photos!