1862 Greek Revival Farmhouse in Michigan

[Gothichome]

Oak tree those floors look outstanding. You decided to just go ahead with the pro sanders. That took all the fun out of removing the black goo, do you feel cheated?
Oh, I think your next antique show and tell should be a cider press.

[oaktree]

Thanks, Gothichome! I cannot believe how well they turned out...I never imagined these were in my house!

I did a lot of goo removal! It was really awful, and I had helpers. All the paper had to be taken off before the contractors could sand. I am extremely happy that they were able to sand even though the goo was not completely gone...it was very hard work.



For people doing this in the future...the linoleum/paper can be removed with spatulas. It is slow and hard work. To remove the tar, you can use a sharp paint scraper...mineral spirits/lacquer thinner can help, but I think it was staining the wood with black. A strong heat gun helped. I was not able to get all the tar off by myself because it was hurting my RSI. Luckily, my flooring contractors were able to sand through the remaining tar...they just had to use a lot of sand paper because it gums up the paper quickly.

Cider press...excellent idea!

[Nicholas]

Hi nice work on the chimney, something I can appreciate, coming from a family of Italian stone masons, in the SE Pennsy/Philly area.

[oaktree]

Hi Nicholas, thank you!

I'm glad you approve. I also found someone who came from a family of stone masons, and I am really impressed with the craftsmanship. I want him to fix the rest of my stone too some day.

I have been doing as much of the tedious, unskilled work as I can to save money. So far, I have:

- removed a ridiculous amount of wallpaper (multiple layers!)
- dismantled the entire kitchen, which had a ridiculous amount of cabinets
- removed the kitchen soffit, which was full of excessively long nails, while insulation was dumping everywhere
- removed tarpaper off the kitchen floor
- removed gas stove from fireplace (someone else disconnected it) and bricks off my wood floor (made me really appreciate the stone mason)
- removed all trims, also nailed down with ridiculously long nails

I have been extremely lucky that the people I've hired to do the skilled work have all been outstanding. Seeing all the DIY stuff in the house before made me think twice before attempting to do too much myself on deadline. I'm about to start a new job in a couple weeks, so I won't have as much time to tackle big projects myself.

I doubt that I would have discovered the wood floors without my flooring contractor. I hired him to install linoleum (which is still going to happen in the places where there was no wood). He was quite determined to see if I have wood flooring and spent over a day just tearing up layers of material to see what was underneath in each room. I would have looked under one layer of flooring and assumed that I didn't have any.

[oaktree]

Quite exciting progress!









I couldn't get to the upstairs to see what it's like there yet. I cannot wait!

[Mick_VT]

I'm loving the varied coloration on that wood, really nice tones

[oaktree]

Thanks so much, Mick!

[Wackyshack]

Do you have any heirloom apple varieties? Someone in one of our living history groups found an article on heirloom apples in America and the ones we eat in the store are only there because of shelf life and easy care of the trees. (so they said).

The house is amazing. Pealing back all those layers in the kitchen... that must have been interesting. Was it hard to get the black stuff off the floor? Ours are covered in pergo and I know the jerk house flipper only covered what was too much work or damage to bother fixing.

[oaktree]

Hi Wackyshack!

I think these trees are original to the house. If they aren't, I think they grew from seeds from the apple trees that were original to the house. So, my feeling is that I have a variety of apples that is 155+ years old. I guess that counts as an heirloom variety. I am looking forward to trying them once they are ripe! I think they are going to be different in taste, smaller, and probably more likely to have bugs (which you just cut out) because they aren't engineered to be insect resistant.

The the kitchen floor was difficult, but I think the results are definitely worth it. Thanks for the kind words!

[Mick_VT]

You will know if they grew from seeds from the original trees, the apples will likely be sour and / or poor tasting. This is not always the case, but much more often than not. Apple trees are generally cultivated from grafted cuttings (from a good tasting tree) because most wild apples and natural wild hybrids (trees from seeds of cultivated trees) are sour and not very useful for much other than hard cider. nTrees that have been part of an orchard are usually much lower than the trees that have grown up around them, though they may have some tall limbs. The reason being that they would have been pruned to stay low enough for picking, Its uaully quite a distinct shape. In the winter here in town you can see many old orchards inside the edge of the woods behind houses simply by the shape and regular plantings. Come summer you cant see them at all with the foliage.