House Progress "The New Room" Part 2

OK, OK I admit progress has been slow. Traveling, making a living, all conflict with working on the old house. However, things are moving along. Here are some pics from last March. This is the SW corner of the room with the floors insulated and down, and the washer and dryer and well pump installed.

 Here is the same corner today. We've begun to enclose the appliances with some great 18th feather edge paneling we found. Too short to use on a wall, its great for this project. The only hold up now is to find pintles that will fit these great turnip ended old hinges. Did I ever show you the wonderful old 18th C windows we put in? Aren't they fine? OK the white paint has to go. I wish you could see all the bubbles in the glass, we've been saving this glass for a long time for something just like this.

Here is the SE corner of the room, with Cy's new TV. We stabilized the wall behind the TV with some left over wood so we could wall mount. This too will be enclosed with the paneling.

Here is the NE corner, still in March, sheet rock and insulation and wiring done, ready for some mud.

This is in April. We hired the foam guys to come in and spray closed cell insulation on the ceiling, so we could be warm and still see our old beams. Here they are covering the beams to protect from the foam.

How's this for a great picture? The guy is in process of spraying foam. Man, I'm getting out of here, its really smelly!

Almost done!

Starting the clean up. They are using wire brushes and claw hammers to release the duct tape covering the beams which protected them from the spray.

Looking cozy? Should be a nice warm winter this year.

Fast forward to August. Since the foam must be covered by fire code, we choose to hand plaster it, rather than put up sheetrock. There was really no way to fasten the sheetrock without hiding the beams. So we spent a long painful summer working on our ceiling. Because the foam left hills and valleys, and is not by nature smooth, I used a teeny tiny trowel to put up the plaster, working along with the grain of the foam and going in between the beams. Here you see Cy putting the final touches on the long sanding process, all hand work, no sanding blocks would work here.

And of course what do you have to do after you sand a lot of plaster? Vacuum it up of course. I am now deliriously happy, because the next step is putting up lots of masking tape and buying paint. Yeah!

Onsite Auction in Rhode Island

Oh, what fun we had. This is my favorite type of auction, which sadly does not happen much anymore, at least out here in New England.

This particular auction was at a 1691 house, see above,  named the Josiah Crane house, a lovely gambrel roof house with beautiful property. I love the fenced in flower garden in front.

This is the giant tent they set up in front of the barn. They started the auction here with the nice smalls and better furniture, like the highboy. After the exciting bidding on the more expensive things, they started a "walk around" to auction off the stuff that was arranged around the outside of the barn, iron charcoal making implements, odd chairs, drying racks, all kinds of obscure farming bits.

Apparently they found a lot of great old stuff up in the barn, and in the outbuildings. This wonderful old wagon was in parts up in the barn. It sold, of course.

After the barn stuff we all walked around to the outbuildings. Here is the Colonial era schoolhouse, with all kinds of wicker piled outside.

Sadly, here is the inside of the school house. There was an antique loom piled in the corner to the left, which I of course bought and hauled out, with risk to life and limb. Well, actually the nice son of the owner hauled it out for me. All we had to do was try and fit it all in the van, unload it, spread it out on the driveway and get out the bug spray. The powder post beetles that had destroyed the back wall had made a start on the loom, or at least I was worried they might have.

Every old farm needs an outhouse! The nice Coke machine in front sold of course

Here's something I've never seen in New England before, a corn crib.

If you look underneath, you can see rough granite pillars that hold up the crib, for air circulation, or so I was told by local people. And the holes in the side are for the same reason.

Here is the old stone blacksmith shop. All the old iron and plows and stuff inside were sold.

What a great day we had. And if you're looking for a property in New England, and maybe Rhode Island would work, here is the realtor's info, Andy Schilke 401-793-6399. The property includes all the beautiful buildings I've shown, as well as 40 acres and is on the Beaver River.