Landscaping

We spent April vacation week in our OB Gingerbread, working all day, every day. The only time we left the property was to walk the dogs and go to the grocery (a nightly event). Most of our work was scraping, sanding and painting the front of the house. I took a break one day from the scraping to do some landscaping.

After painting the porch skirt (changing the blue to tan), I took the pile of broken bricks left from taking down the chimney part way and used them to create a border for the landscaping in front of the house. I doubled the size of the foundation beds to allow shrubs and a row of hostas. I also circled the oak tree and connected it with the foundation bed on that side of the house.

For Christmas, the Falmouth IT Department gave me a generous gift for new plants from Mahoney's. I took a drive out to their OB location and purchased two lovely dwarf holley bushes. I planted them on either side of the front step and moved the hydrandea over. There were tons of hostas that I moved around. I also brought some plants from our Marion home: day lillies, iris, catmint, astilbe and dahlia bulbs. I planted everything in a location that would suit the plant type (sun vs shade).

We will wait to put some mulch down after we have finished all the scraping. It should help to cover up all the little paint chips. Already it looks cleaner and more defined.

One man's trash is another man's treasure

A couple weeks ago while taking our morning walk, Barry and I passed an old, ugly chair sitting by the side of the road with all the other trash, waiting for garbage pickup. It was clearly an antique that had been neglected. We talked about it the rest of our walk home and decided to go back and rescue it. This picture doesn't show all the mildew and chipped paint. You can see the upholstering was a rag! It was truly ugly.

We have spent the last few weeks scraping and cleaning it. A healthy coat of oil-based primer to feed the wood was followed by 2 coats of paint. We used the same paint that will be used on all of the trim inside the Vineyard house.

Our goal is to take it to the OB house and put it in our bedroom. Since we just purchased a new bedspread for our bedroom, we decided to find material that would compliment it. The new bedspread is a coral color. I have never apholstered anything before, so this was a challenge. It may not be as great if a professional did the reconditioning, but we think it looks terrific! Hope you do too. We will use some of the extra material to make a toss pillow to go with it.

Porch benches

When we purchased our gingerbread in September, there were a pair of old benches on the porch. They were painted blue with light blue contact paper on the top and were positioned against the front railing on either side of the porch. We used them to sit on and for tables.

We brought them home to fix and paint. Over the winter, we removed the contact paper, scraped and sanded (repeatedly) and finally painted the new color of the railing, an artichoke green. Wendy finished them by stenciling flowers on the top.

Unfortunately, we did not take any before pictures but we can show you the after picture! We are looking forward to taking them back to the house, sitting on the porch in our new rockers and having a glass of wine! Hope you will join us...

Getting ready for spring

The OB house has been all closed up for the winter, although we have visited a couple times. Spring is fast approaching and we are getting the itch to get over there and start working. All winter we have been collecting items to take over and thinking about projects we would like to tackle this spring. (remember we can't do much work during the summer, it isn't allowed).

One major project this summer will be a new roof. We have hired a contractor to do that work and he is supposed to start that this week. :)

In preparation for the new roof, we needed to install ceiling collar ties inside the house. We have no beam along the ridge to hold the side beams together. Collar ties connect them and will hopefully secure the house before the new roof is installed. You can see from the picture that the collar ties installed hold the sides together. We don't want the house to spread any more than it already has. Check out the spaces at the peak already.

So, we went over for the day a few weekends ago to measure, cut and prime the 2X4s we were going to use. We went back last weekend to install them. Now there are collar ties connecting almost all the beams in the house. This isn't the glamorous stuff like painting, installing new fixtures or decorating but so necessary on an old house to ensure it will be around another 150 years!

Our activity is picking up and we anticipate many more postings over the next several months. Stay tuned......

Kitchen Makeover

Our OB kitchen is a cute galley kitchen with cabinets and counters that are in great shape. Their only drawback is their strong yellow color. The walls and ceiling were painted a gray color with brown trim.

When we considered painting the room, we sought a color that would soften the yellow cabinets. We went with a "blue" shade of gray by Benjamin Moore called Feather Gray. We chose a darker shade for over the counters to resemble a slate backsplash. With the bright white ceiling paint and soft Decorator's white trim, we were able to create a bright kitchen while softening the strong yellow cabinets. We are very pleased with the new look.

Bathroom makeover

One of our goals for the Fall was to clean the inside of the house and hopefully get a fresh coat of paint in one of the rooms. We spent the first 3 weekends cleaning, with the help of Liz and Gracie. It is always amazing just how great things look after a good scrubbing.

We were able to paint the bathroom and kitchen. Here is a "before" picture of the bathroom. It was a "white" with brown trim, loaded with towel racks and hooks. There was a small cabinet mounted on the wall next to the toilet and a flat, cheap mirror over the sink.

We removed the towel racks, hooks, cabinet and mirror. After filling all the holes, we sanded and washed the walls in preparation for painting. We started by painting the ceiling an ultra bright white. It brightened up the room instantly. Next, the walls got two coats of a Benjamin Moore Feather Gray and the trim got 2 coats of a beautiful Decorator's white.

Lastly, we assembled a space saver for over the toilet to help with the storage shortage. Barry bought a great, multi-color window valance called "Cottage" that matches well and adds some color to the room. We put back the towel racks, including a new hand towel ring. We did not mount the mirror back on the wall in hopes that we could find a new medicine closet. Actually, we are going to look for a vintage medicine closet to clean up and install.

The bright new colors create a clean, fresh feel to the small room. Creating our own look makes the cottage more ours and not like we are visiting someone else's.

From the Ground Up

The cottage was built on a tent platform. There is a crawl space but no foundation. The piers are brick and mortar or cement blocks spaced several feet apart and on the corners. The are some supports that have been added over the years.

The poor foundation has led to sags and uneven floors.

There is a floor furnace which is affectionately referred to as an "Hibachi Heater" in the Campground. When it was installed, a hole was cut in the floor and the furnace dropped in. They left the floor joists hanging. This was more than 20 years ago. The floor has sagged considerably over that period.

The pictures in this posting show the floor furnace as well as some of the supports, One that you can see is actually a tree stump. There is also a picture of the side of the house showing one of the piers.

Kelvin Sims, a retired Facilities Director, came to the island to provide some technical support as we attempt to straighten things out. We began with the West side of the foundation. This is the left side as you face the house. We used two 20-ton bottle jacks to lift the sill. We also used some screw jacks we purchased from Ellis Manufacturing in Oklahoma City. There is a picture of the screw jacks that sopport the corner as the sill does not connect in the corner. We moved from the front corner along the side to the back corner. There is a picture of the pier near the back of the house that shows that we raised that section nearly two inches.

The West wall is now nearly level. Now we need to move toward the center of the house as everything sags to the middle. We will need to dig some holes to pour some footings so we will be able to lift the middle. We will also add support along the length of the sill so that some of the rises and dips can be straightened.

Remember the cottage was built on a tent platform with 3"x4" timbers spaced 24" apart with a single 3"x4" timber down the center of the house. This leads to the rolling effect of the floor.

The crawl space is between 13" and 18" deep. It will make digging quite interesting. We will begin our excavating next week.