The Historic District

Mick_VT wrote:The previous owners of this place saved it from dereliction. They installed a well and a septic. When they bought it it had stood empty for a handful of years after being a rental. There were holes in the roof. They said that the water had been coming from a spring, which had dried up just after they bought the place, it had been piped into a cistern in the basement.

Still freezing tonight, too, ha ha! Only -6 here, so there's some improvement! My stove is working double-time...we rarely turn on the forced hot air, but I just gave us a shot to catch things up. Lots of work....

Your house sounds just like mine! The daughter of the family that built it had it til 1950...she was quite old and not able to fix the cedar shingle roof. Things ran down (you can see the siding in my link....). A recluse bought it in 1950-something, put on a metal roof, asbestos siding, some hacked windows, and then allowed it to continue downhill. The lot grew right in, up to the house, according to legend. At least the asbestos covered the siding for me to come later!! And prevented brush from impacting the walls.

A nice artsy historical couple got this place in the 80s, cleaned everything on the 1st floor up VERY well and restored, did not replace anything. They spent massive $ clearing the property back from the sucker brush, helping the apple trees to come back. The 2nd floor was never built; they didn't have the funds to do it. But what they did was done well, to completion, and not 1/2 @zzed...someday I'll have to put a new septic in, but the 1962 metal tank is still doing fine, they say! Drilled well, too.

For the last 10 years, a guy from 'away' had it...SEASONAL. Things got a bit messed up. Luckily, we bought it from him before too much of that 'sitting empty' happened....

So here I am, I am building the 2nd floor into a 'master suite' with 2nd bedroom, bathroom and big linen closet. I've restored the siding you see, so far, and will be done with that next year. We hope to be in the 2nd floor this winter!! Nice and warm up here now, I had it dense-packed. Last winter was "the experience" of no insulation and so on....altho it's a tight house, it DOES get cold! This AM it was 64 in here; do-able for only using a stove!

The door to the foyer had plastic faux stained glass in the center panel and below ("1897") that drove me nuts with how wrong it was. I appreciate that someone tried but I hated it !

I had antique Florentine glass and clear red cut to size over a month ago. I was too afraid to check if they survived the move until yesterday. They were fine so then I had no excuses. The red fit perfectly and the Florentine could have been a smidgeon longer but I did what I could to set it securely with glaziers points and Dap glazing compound (no other option in this market except for an even worse product from India). Since the foyer is cool and the door is shut 100% of the time I expect that it will be three weeks or longer until it has skinned over so I can paint it. I completely forgot to paint the muntins FIRST with oil paint but since this won't be exposed to the outside elements I hope the putty under paint will survive.

It is such a relief that the door looks as it should now:

Big difference. The lower mid panel just looked off before compared to the other three long side pieces, even though it was in the spirit of the mid panel they put there.

I hope the cure time goes well, and you can happily paint the last bits to match when the time comes.

Thanks, Lily. The door feels much more balanced now. The stained glass place that I bought the Florentine glass from had to cut it on an angle to get it from the piece they had. It is a little noticeable in the photo, but much less so in person.

The plastic panels really bugged me but I was so afraid the glass I had bought had been damaged in the move I just couldn't look until I was ready to deal with the door.

I know that fear of breakage. We've moved a number of times, and I still have a set of sconces (new oldish looking) from our old studio in their boxes. I haven't opened them in years, but I haven't heard the tell tale broken glass pieces shinkelty-tink when we've moved them either, so it's quite possible that the shades are still intact. We have had breakage with modern glass in a few of our larger art frames when they were put down too hard during moves over the years though, so I can easily understand why you were so concerned about the stained glass panels. I'm glad they survived though--stunning.

I've lived in homes with plexiglass parts of divided windows, and it bugged me too.

Great job on the door! This design with a large centre panel was hugely popular in Europe too (around 1900) and it's roughly what our original stairway windows looked like. The small panels were intricate stained and bevelled leaded glass in various pale pastels and the two tall vertical side panels were casements. Unfortunately most of the glass was blown out when the house across the yard was bombed out back in the 40s (apparently two adjoining houses were more or less razed by bombs) and in the 70s the lead of the remaining originals was in very poor shape so all the windows were replaced entirely. My dad saved what he could, i.e. all the surviving leaded glass panels and that's just enough for one window out of the three that we once had.

Scroll up to my previous post for pics of the dining room before with those dark burgundy walls. There's still more work to go (antique cabinet installation) but I now have a light colored room. With the main windows facing north it feels so much brighter:

Willa - just love your new paint colors! Such an improvement from the PO's color scheme. Did you strip the trim or paint it another color?

Thank you Texas Red. I would never wear a yellow article of clothing, but I seem to gravitate towards it as a pleasant and useful wall color.

TexasRed wrote: Did you strip the trim or paint it another color?

I used the realtor's listing pics for the before. She really lightened them up a lot as the burgundy was REALLY dark, and the trim is a very dark brownish grey. Because there was a lot of old residual lumpiness around the trim where it met the wall, I needed to re-cut in the grey paint (also a challenge to exactly match - very close to Benjamin Moore's "Willow"). Cutting in was a trial, including having to go back over with yellow wall color to neaten things up. Since the house is pretty modest, the trim is all paint grade pine. At best it may have been faux-grained 120 years ago. There are many, many, many nail, staple and thumbtack holes in the trim around the window casings, so stripping back to wood would be pointless as the beauty of wood filler would really shine then !

Willa, that looks very nice, very nice indeed. The colours really make the trim pop.