The Veranda

Click here to access photo page
6/25/2005      We've decided to try to restore the existing windows rather than replace them.  They all have to have their window putty replaced and the counter weights in the walls reattached.  The rope has long ago rotted away.  The glass is the original wavy kind called 'historic' glass when it's found in restoration catalogues.  This room was once a porch where people could sit and watch the sun set over the mountains so we'd like to keep the effect intact if at all possible.
    As a matter of fact, this room is where the original owner was found in a chair after she died.  My understanding is that she used to sit in there and I guess she just passed away peacefully one evening.  Not a bad way to go, I suppose.
7/14/2005      8:30am:  The ceiling was already falling down when we bought the place so it wasn't that difficult to remove a lot of what remained.  I had to do this to get at the floor of the bathroom directly above it.  Filthy work.  The dust is overwhelming at times and whatever that stuff they used to insulate the walls with is again falling out all over the place and requires constant clean up.  I have to use a respirator mask when I'm around it and run various air cleaning devices.
     2:20pm: Man, I cut just one wire and the entire ceiling caved in!  A century of dust and dirt all came down on me at once and created a mushroom cloud of filth, which billowed to the door leading into the dining room but then stopped before it got any further out of control. It took me two hours to clean it all up with the shop vac and four contractor bags.
10/16/2007     "Where to start, then where to go,
    "To honor such forgotten woe,
    "And make some grandness of this space,
    "Her last breath taken at this place.
    "And if her long lost kin return,
    "And tell us things we've longed to learn,
    "We'll take them to this mended wing,
    "And pray they'll hear their angel sing."

     The veranda is the next project.  This is where Margaret Foster was found back in the early 1970's. the last owner of the house who is remembered fondly by all the remaining neighbors.  The kids loved her because she would gather them up and buy them ice cream despite the fact that I don't think she made very much money.  She wrote Hallmark Greeting Cards for a living.
    She had no relatives that I know of, only a friend of her deceased daughter.  Later, when the friend lost the house and moved on, there was no longer anyone to remember Margaret at all, only fading recollections of a nice old woman who once lived here.  Most of the people I've spoken to don't even recall her name and simply refer to her as 'the old lady'.
    I'm going to put great care into each movement as I restore this area.  Even though it will no longer be a sitting area  to watch the sun as it sets over the Appalachian Mountains, it was her spot.  I want to make it nice in honor of her memory.
    Maybe I'll put a comfortable chair out there after all,  just for posterity's sake.
    In the meantime, back to business!  The room has that horrible blow-in insulation all over the place from when I renovated the bathroom above and I've been slowly vacuuming it all up so that I don't end up breathing the stuff.  The game plan is to move the washer and dryer to the other end so no one has to look at them from the dining room area.
    I'll be building a custom closet where they've been standing for these past (almost) four years, which will give us some much needed storage room and a place to hang our coats.  
    The floor will all have to be leveled as it is still slanted from when it was an outdoor porch.
    The walls will all have to be taken out and insulated before replacing the plaster with drywall.  Fortunately, this is where we've had all of our dry wall stored since the day we bought it so there won't be too much effort put out in that part of the plan.
     The windows are very old and partially rotted, but they have that neat wavy glass in them and I'm going to do my utmost best to salvage them.
     Here we go again!
10/25/2007     It's a cold, wet day so I spent most of it ripping out old dry wall and collecting that horrible blown-in insulation in bags and throwing it outdoors.  It takes longer to do a demo job in small sections but when a room is as narrow as this one it's a good idea to work in as clean an environment as possible.
10/29/2007      Still removing old dry wall and insulation.  One useful bit of info is that to remove and bag up this junk it takes one bag for each 3-foot by 18" section if the bag is to be something a human being can actually lift.  The insulation material in an area like this pretty much fills the bag and then the dry wall is just heavy enough to pack it down a little and not be too heavy.
     While this may seem like trivial information to some, let's look at it this way:  I've done only one third of the veranda so far and have 18 bags that I now need to take to the dump.  When you're doing cost projections it's important to document such things.
11/8/2007    Spent most of the day sealing up cracks and crevices with foam, stapling Tyvek into the wall and hanging insulation.  Lost of fun, let me tell ya!
12/12/2007     Traveling to North Carolina and assorted other interruptions have greatly slowed down the progress on this room.  The new leveled floor is now 2/3rds in so the next step will be configuring the appliances.
12/17/2007    The veranda and I are no longer on speaking terms.  I battled with it all day and the old studs all needed added pieces of 2X4 just to line the dry wall up, yet it still had all sorts of peaks and valleys.  That caused a lot of damage when the screws went in and nothing seemed to go right.  Worse, the sheets aren't quite flush so that will mean hours of adding extra joint compound and sanding.