The Historic District

Finally putting some pictures up of the outside of our house and some projects that we've completed. Definitely slower going than we originally anticipated, my wife has had a rough time battling some of her auto immune diseases which slowed us to a complete stop at times. Even though its taking us much longer than we would like, friends and family are still impressed with our progress.

1st project completed was our dining room. We bought a Markel slip shade chandelier and designed the room around that. Many firsts for us, crown moulding, gold lead ceiling, dealing with old radiators (removal/painting), and refinishing floors. We have plenty of built ins around the house so we closed up the original one to make it look more seamless. I also added some trim in the window seat portion and wrapped the crown and baseboard around the built-in to give it a more seamless look. My wife also refinished the furniture piece we're using as a hutch to tie it in to the rest of the room.

A couple more shots

Absolutely stunning! Well done!

When we first moved in our 1st order of business was to remove the overgrown rhododendrons from our front yard. It was so overgrown that our formal living room was completely dark. They were taller than the 1st floor, trapped moisture against the siding, took up a good portion of our yard and was very buggy. I bought my 1st chainsaw for this project. I started cutting them down and digging around the roots with the intention of attaching a tow strap to our discovery and yanking them out. This would have taken forever and as luck would have it we have some pretty awesome neighbors. Ann from across the street came over to introduce us to the neighborhood with some baked goods and said her husband may be able to help us. He came over about an hour later, looked at it and laughed (I think the laugh was for his wife thinking his puny little homeowner tractor could tackle this job). He informed me that his machine wasn't up to the task but on their way out for dinner they would stop by Rick's from up the road and see if he could help. I thanked him for his time thinking I may see this Rick guy in a month or never. Well he rolled up in his tractor within the hour and helped me dig them up and haul them to the back of our property over the course of 1-2 hours. When we originally started pulling out the rhododendrons we didn't even plan on finishing the entire project until the spring (this was done in the fall), but with the help of our neighbors we were able to save countless hours.

Wow, they were truly overgrown. A shame they were close to the house and needed to go because they must have looked amazing when in bloom!

Mick_VT wrote:Wow, they were truly overgrown. A shame they were close to the house and needed to go because they must have looked amazing when in bloom!

Yeah it is I bet it did look amazing. We planted some hydrangeas in their place that are starting to look pretty nice. Once they're in bloom this year I'll put an updated picture.

Maxall, great work, your home will love you forever now that it can breath properly. The paint on the home as whole looks to be in great shape. Looks like the previous owner took some care in doing maintenance. Dinning home is also looking great, and you hanging lamp certainly is impressive. Well done.

The radiator and hanging lamp really work well together.

It's unfortunate that you had to lose such beautiful plants, but they were not appropriate for that location.

Pretty house!

A few years ago our neighbors son, who does landscaping, asked me if I would like some old bricks from a job they were doing. Of course I said yes and he brought over a whole truck load of bricks. They sat there for a quite awhile and were enjoyed by the chipmunks and squirrels. After I fixed our sagging porch and replaced the front stairs I was finally ready to do the brick pathway. Its ~ 80ft long by 3.5 ft wide which flairs to 7 ft at the porch and 5 ft at the driveway. A friend from work helped me dig it out by hand which we hauled to the edge of my property and dumped down a ravine. We did this pathway over a 4 day period. We initially wanted to do a herringbone pattern but after considering the complexity of the pattern, the waste, and the added complication due to the arcing path we had planned we choose to do a soldier border with a running bond in the middle. We also had some brick left over that were already at our house that had some lettering casts in the bricks so we integrated these in as best as we could in a random pattern.

Day 1&2: Dig out the dirt.

Day 3: Add the base layer I did 3 two inch layers which were wet down and then compacted with a plate compactor that I borrowed from my neighbor.

Day 4: Add the paving sand 1.5". I did this by using two pieces of pvc pipe that had an OD of 1.5 inches and then used a piece of 2 by 4 placed on the pvc to screed the sand level. Also make sure you have a crown in the middle or a bit of a slope so the pathway will shed water. Afterwards I used a trowel to fill in the voids left by the pvc. After this it was time to borrow my neighbors brick saw (its great having neighbors with tools). Lay out the bricks that were spaced along the pathway. At first I tried using some scrap dowels but after 10 min I started to just eyeball it. I made sure all my cuts were in the center. Definitely the most time consuming part. Put in the border with 12"iron stakes.
Afterwards I put in the polymeric sand I don't even remember how much sand it took but this was single most expensive part of the project. After the sand was brushed into place I put two 2 by 8 ft pieces of 1/2~ plywood down over the bricks and started to use the plate compactor to really get the polymeric sand packed into the gaps. I would have broken countless bricks without the compactor and without it, it would have taken forever doing it by hand. I did this about 3 times before the sand was at the top. Then its just a matter of wetting the pathway to set the sand.

Total cost was $500 for this project. Probably about 50-60 man hours total. Hopefully this lasts awhile I don't want to do this again anytime soon. I still have about a full pallet of bricks left over for other projects.

I also included some pictures of the stairs that were built. I had to pour a concrete footer. I used azek for the risers and sides, and Batu for the treads which is similar to Ipe. The stairs are 7ft wide.