The First Day

Enthusiastic and knowledgeable friends are a huge asset in finding out just what you've got under the roof of old house. Jim and Lauren were quick to come over with pry bar and hammer to help us with uncovering some interesting features.



First task was to remove the boarding on the stairs to reveal lovely old spindles still intact:

Then Jim and Michael prised up the carpeting:

The original newel post had been sawn off when the panelling was attached, but Jim found us a perfect replacement that only needs to be sanded and painted.

Outside, Jim peeled back a bit of the stucco and, sure enough, there is wooden siding hidden underneath:

We actually have three different kinds of stucco on this house: on the lowest level there's "beer bottle" stucco with embedded chips from actual old green and brown glass beer bottles.

Above that, covering the main and upper floor, is a paler stucco without the embedded glass fragments,

and on the front porch there is a truly ugly two-tone mix that I have just learned is called California stucco.

You can see the effect here, with Jim and me examining it.

All of it will be coming off in the next month or two.



Jim incidentally, has named our house, which is in the Grandview neighbourhood , Grand Cottage.

How's that for an oxymoron? I like it.