Emerson Hadley House - 1895

[mjt]

Hello everyone. Made it over from the other forum as well.

We've owned the Emerson Hadley House for four and a half years. In that time, we've made a little progress addressing the lack of maintenance by previous owners. As I'm sure you all know, it never ends. But we are in a bit of a lull between large projects at the moment. Every once in a while you need to recharge your batteries and bank account. So, most of the activity this winter consists of little piddly projects.

OK, so on to the house.

The architect for our house was Cass Gilbert. Apparently the house was featured in an architectural publication shortly after it was built. The first picture is from that publication in 1897.


This one is from 1973:


And lastly, from our second winter in the house:


These albums show a lot more, though the pictures don't always tell the whole story. Check out my blog for some good giggles.

[Wackyshack]

fantastic house and projects. Now you are making me wonder if I could install a gas fireplace on an outside wall, but vent it as there is no chimney or money to build one from scratch.

[jschneider]

Beautiful place... I just spend the last few minutes looking at your photos.

[mjt]

Now you are making me wonder if I could install a gas fireplace on an outside wall, but vent it as there is no chimney or money to build one from scratch.

I don't know why not. That's how it's done in new construction - they just vent out the back through the outside wall.

Ours, of course, are vented up the existing chimney. And we got hit with the up-charge because our chimneys are more than 30 ft high... It was worth it though; the installers only had a 20-ft ladder and it cost them more than the up-charge to rent the cherry-picker.

[Wackyshack]

Okay but if my hubby yells I will tell him you told me so! LOL!

[Casey]

I like how in the 1897 pic. the cornice, dormers, and hood molding over the upper middle doorway were painted in a muted shade to blend in rather than pop.
If that was mine, I'd be up there with a scraper and find out what the color was.
Casey

[mjt]

Over the past month we've been working on the attic. Demolishing the old servants bedrooms in the back and re-framing the space for a larger guest bedroom. An album with many pictures can be found here: https://plus.google.com/photos/103935904018627712618/albums/5851999179212310113.

The front part of the attic was never a finished space as far as we can tell. Here are a before and after photo. Old insulation removed, new sub-floor on top of the old one to help solidify things, and new framing almost complete. The knee wall on either side of the curved space is 5-feet high. The curve was too interesting to hide. In addition, it would have been a nearly 40 foot long horizontal line that sagged several inches in the middle. Breaking it up with this detail helps to camouflage that it's not level all the was across.

The curved wall is the one on the side of the house in the exterior pictures above.

[Casey]

I think it's sagging because that valley rafter is carrying about half of the roof load on that side and was extremely undersized to begin with. With modern materials, that member would no doubt be 3 1/2x 14" deep parallam beam. It literally is supporting 10 rafters, as to be 6 times the strength of a single one.
Casey

[mjt]

Well, there's been lots of "Yak Shaving" going on around here - in order to do the attic, we've had to do 326 other things. One of which is transform the old master bath into the master closet.

Here's a before picture:


The pedestal sink is going to end up in the attic bathroom.

And a current picture:


The cabinet on the left was recycled from elsewhere in the house. The top portion has glass door that had an issue requiring me to fabricate some molding - click here for the story on my blog.

In the next week or so I should have the raised panel for the end of the wardrobe on the right. She Who Must Be Obeyed loves the LED ribbon lights under the shelves in the wardrobe.

[mjt]

It's been a busy couple of weeks here.

The Cass Gilbert Society brought two busloads of people to tour our house and we were on the neighborhood home tour last week. That meant about 90 people for the former and around 600 for the latter. Lots of great compliments from people who, from a distance, have been watching what we're doing.

As part of the neighborhood association tour, I got "volunteered" into trying some technology experiments. We had QR codes posted around the house linking to various slideshows and a "guided" tour (with embedded links to the same slideshows). Check out the guided tour blog post here: http://fixfarrington.blogspot.com/2013/09/the-guided-tour.html. Both worked pretty well for people who know how to use smartphones; not so much for folks who don't. To be expected, I guess.