For You, Mom

You've been asking for another post here for a few weeks now and since you're on the opposite side of the country right now and any other gift will have to wait until you're home, here's an Einsel House post for you today.  Happy Mother's Day! : )

The basement windows at this house have been an issue as long as we have owned the place.  Previous owners raised the level of the yard in front of the house by about a foot, basically covering the basement windows on the west and north sides of the house.  When we bought the house the west facing basement windows (front of the house) had been removed and the holes filled with concrete.  The concrete is immediately obvious from inside the basement, but when outside the only evidence of the former windows still visible are the original window lintels, which are now right at the soil line.

The west facing basement window had not been removed, but it was in a sorry state when we bought the house.  Poor drainage coupled with a poorly sloped yard meant that whenever it rained water funneled to this window, pouring through into the basement below.  By the time we bought the house the sill for the window was completely gone and the two sides of the window frame were half rotted away.   The window itself was still in place, but we removed it in 2009 to stop it from further deterioration.  Then, because we had other more pressing issues during those late days of 2009, we temporarily "fixed" the resulting opening in the side of the house with a piece of foam board secured in place with liberal amounts of expanding foam.  (Classy, I know.) Outside, we covered the atrocity with a straw bale.

And so remained until this spring.  On one of our nice March days I pulled back the straw bale and dug out the long abused window.  Charles helped to break loose the foam board, and then we stood back and looked at the result:

Not very inspiring results for an afternoon of hard and dirty work.  But it was at least a starting point. 

(On a side note - I was surprised to uncover the poured concrete window well that is visible in the pictures.  It gives a good idea of the original level of the yard prior to it being raised by previous owners.) 

The nice weather in March gave way to a cold and wet April, so the straw bale (partnered with some plywood this time) went back over the gap in the house.  Meanwhile, I cleaned up the original three light window.  What had been the bottom exterior side was partially rotted, so I removed what was too far gone and treated what remained with a rotted wood stabilizer.  I also decided that when reinstalled I would rotate the window, so that the former exterior bottom (most exposure to water/weather) would become the interior top (least exposure to water/weather).  With the window primed and under one coat of paint I got to try my hand at glazing - and found I rather enjoyed it.  Luckily we had enough correctly sized panes of old glass to put two panes in each of the window's lights.  Another coat of paint, and the window was ready to go.  The frame was another story.

After taking the pictures above, I pried out what remained of the two sides of the frame.  They were too far rotted to try to save.  Each piece was a true 2" thick and 11" wide.  I called the local specialty lumber shop, but the owner said he could manage either 2" thick OR 11" wide, but in order to do both he would need to glue pieces together.  That didn't sound like a good idea for wood that was going to be used in a basement window frame below grade.  At my mom's suggestion (Hi, Mom!) she and I went back up to the old Second Empire house we salvaged bricks from last year.  This time we salvaged wood.  While we didn't find any 2x11 boards, we did bring home a 2 x 9 1/2 that we thought we could make work.

With mom's help, we cut pieces for the new window frame.  Under the gray weathered surface of that old wood was beautiful quarter sawn oak.  I commented to mom that you'd never find 2 inch thick quarter sawn oak used to frame a house today.

Back at the Einsel House, I decided to dry fit the pieces we had cut for the new frame before painting them.  That turned out to be a good idea.  At some point during that long afternoon I decided that it was definitely easier for the Einsel House's builders to build the stone walls around the already constructed window frame than it was for me to try to fit a new frame into the already constructed stone walls. When I finally got everything to fit together nicely, I pulled everything back out.  Since this wood will all be below grade I wanted to prime and paint all sides of each piece before installing them for good.

The remaining steps took almost another two weeks, but I can type them out much more quickly:

-seal, prime and paint (2 coats) the new sill and frame

-assemble frame in wall

-fill remaining gaps in top board with epoxy filler, sand, prime and paint (2 coats)

-install repaired window

-tuck point gap between the stone walls and new frame (I called our mason who gave me the correct mortar recipe for this step)

- build a stone retaining wall to bring the window well up to the current level of the yard

And, as of late yesterday afternoon, here is the "new" window:

I'm very pleased with this.  

So pleased I may even take my lunch outside today and eat it while admiring my work.  : )   

Let It Rain

The shed roof is shingled!

Even without addressing the siding, it's already quite an improvement over what it looked like when we bought the place:



Up next will be giving new life to the stack of barn siding we salvaged a couple of weeks ago.  It makes a deceivingly small pile when neatly stacked, but I know how much area this siding covered on its old barn and I'm pretty confident we'll have enough here for our project.

And in one more "let it rain" bit of news, at right was the view out our bedroom window Thursday night. 

Previously, the sump pump and gutters were all tied into a 4" footer tile that empties into the creek near the springhouse.  While it did okay in a gentle rain, in downpours it quickly became overwhelmed causing water to come through the basement walls, particularly at the northwest corner of the house.  It also became a problem during the flooding at the end of February when the creek rose high enough to cover the outlet of the footer tile, meaning the sump pump and gutters could no long drain.

The new tile is a 6" solid tile  that is supposed to be impervious to blockage by tree roots.  It empties into the creek at a point about five feet higher than the footer tile (high enough that it would not have been submerged even in this spring's flooding).  The sump pump and all of the gutters from the stone part of the house are tied into the new tile.  The old footer tile is still in place, and the contractor we hired thinks that with the pump and roof water all now directed to the new tile, the old footer should again be able to handle its load. 

There's a chance of thunderstorms later this weekend, and I've got fingers crossed that the new roof and the new tile both pass their first test.

Good Riddance

At work today I was strongly tempted to spit on the calendar page that said February before turning it to March. 

Illness and revolving snow storms had already placed this February among the most overall craptastic months I can remember.  But last night managed to top it all.  In the course of 72 hours we went from blizzard to tornado warning and flood.

This is what our creek looked like at dawn this morning:

And this is what our basement looked like at dawn this morning:

I've been up right now since 2am.  I caught the basement early in the flooding, but Charles and I couldn't do a darn thing to stop it.  It was too dark at 2am to see it, but the creek had risen so high that the tile the sump pump drains into was itself underwater.  Because of this, no matter how long the sump pump ran it was unable to push any water out.  The water in the basement just kept rising.  God bless the crew from the local heating and plumbing company (same ones who installed our furnace & heat pump) who came out at 4am.  By 6am they had figured out the problem and had rigged a temporary tile that is by-passing the buried tile.  It is still pouring water about ten feet away from the house along the hill down to the creek. 

At its peak the water was somewhere around 10-12 inches deep throughout the entire basement.  Once the by-passed drain tile was in place the sump pump ran non-stop somewhere between 5 and 6 hours to empty the basement. 

It's going to take a lot longer than that to clean up the mess though.  The back room of our basement had a dirt floor.  It now has a mud floor.

The picture below (which is of the bin that collects dirty clothes under our laundry shoot) shows how high the water reached:

When the by-passed drain went into action the water was less than an inch from reaching our furnace, heat pump, hot water heater, washer and dryer.  As it is, the only valuables we may have lost are our shop vac and cordless drill.  We were lucky we didn't lose more down there.  But our greatest possible loss is outside the house.

I don't have any pictures of the stone bridge to post here.  Most of it is still under water anyway.  Most of what is left of it anyway.  Back in my 'plans for 2011' post I said we planned to make rebuilding the bridge a four year project, but after last night our timeline has been cut drastically.  Right now the middle of the bridge is still standing, but it appears the entire east side has mostly collapsed (and the west side was already collapsed before last night's storm).  One more backhanded slap from Mother Nature and I fear we won't have a stone bridge at all.  Our basement is one heck of a mess, but it's the bridge that has me fighting back tears. 

 So if you're reading this and have a few prayers to spare for north-central Ohio they would be much appreciated.  At least one neighboring county has been declared a "state of emergency" and based on phone calls and the internet I know that many, many of our family and friends are dealing with their own flooded homes right now.  I'd especially appreciate prayers for my parents.  In the morrow they face the not unexpected but still very painful loss of a much loved family pet.  In the morrow they will also face the continued job of salvaging what they can after pumping eight inches of water out of their own (partially-finished) basement.

So good riddance February.

(...and God-speed Redigen...)

Spiders are Scary

I stumbled today upon the blog Hyperbole and a Half. And I found this:

Spiders are scary. That is a universal truth. I don't know why. I don't need to know why. All I know is that when this:

comes crawling across the floor at me, my brain interprets it like this:

That is a spider with a swastika and the words "I KILL YOU" carved into its flesh and it has knives and guns strapped to its legs. That's how scary spiders are.

Now - This is my laundry room:

It’s in the basement. Of a mid 1840’s house.

Built out of stone.

I made myself a rule the day we moved in. I don’t do any laundry after dark.

For over two months I followed this rule religiously.

But yesterday at 8:30 p.m. I realized that there were clean clothes sitting in the drier. I debated with myself briefly. Then I flipped on the basement light and headed down the stairs.

(More H & 1/2)
...Blind optimism and impulsivity often cause me to ignore logic and instead
make decisions based on a hopeful projection of what's going to happen next… In hindsight, there was absolutely no reason to believe that it would not happen.
But for some unknown reason, I ignored a lifetime's worth of cautionary evidence and pranced merrily onward into the unavoidable consequences…

I made it into the back room of the basement and had the drier door open before I saw it. Charles (who is well aware of my self-made “never after dark” rule) had heard the creak of the basement door opening and came to investigate. He reached the top of the stairs just as I hit the bottom step. “GET OUT OF MY WAY!” I screamed as I came at him, taking two steps with every bound.

Dutifully, he moved out of my way. As I stood there in the dining room, trembling and out of breath, he looked at me with exasperation and said, “Why did you do that?” Good question. Then, dutifully, he went down to the basement asking, “Okay, now where did you see it?”.

The spider (and I) lived through last night’s encounter. But since then Charles has (dutifully) emptied a container of this stuff on all of the basement walls and windows:

For now, I think we have enough clean laundry to get us through about four days.

(And if you haven't already, do head over to Hyperbole, it's quite entertaining stuff.)

A Pick Me Up

Although it was the weekend, I set my alarm this morning early enough that I could make the 7:30am Mass for Palm Sunday. Waiting for the next service would have cost me two hours of progess at The Einsel House. After Mass I went to McDonald's for an Egg McMuffin and a large vanilla iced coffee. As I pulled up to the first window to pay the teenage employee was counting some money in her hand with a somewhat bewildered expression on her face. She turned to me and said, "I assume you know the lady who was ahead of you?" I looked at the white minivan now stopped at the second window. It didn't look familiar. The cashier continued, "She left this money to pay your bill." I looked back to the van now pulling away from the window ahead of me. It still didn't look familiar. Feeling rather bewildered myself, I paid the 17 cents still owed for my breakfast and pulled forward to pick up my food. I had planned to splurge on the iced coffee as a pick me up, but it paled in comparison to a stanger's random act of kindness. God bless that lady, she made my whole day better by starting it with a smile.

The little dorm-sized refrigerator in the EH kitchen now has this sheet of paper on the front of it. Being able to put an "X" in another box is a good feeling at the end of the day.

Two of the most recently filled in boxes include painting the living room ceiling:

and the primer and first coat of paint in the dining room:

The basement also shows signs of recent work. Our new bat boxes have been primed and have part of their first coat of black paint:

And hanging from the ceiling are four of the house's original floor registers. We had these sandblasted and they are now primed and waiting for spraypaint:

Next up is a picture of my Aunt D, who stopped by for a few hours on Saturday and helped us prep the dining room before primer went on the walls:

Thanks, D!

And finally here is Cecilia looking quite at home in

her playhouse/jungle gym

(a.k.a. the scaffolding our contractor has in the north end of the kitchen):

(A corresponding picture of her brother would have shown him upstairs in his bright yellow bedroom in front of a small TV, Wii remote firmly in hand.)

Lemons and Lemonade

It's another entry in the list of unexpected repairs at the Einsel House. First was the broken stone lintel over the front door. Second was the sagging roof over the north end of the kitchen. And third is the dining room ceiling/back bedroom floor.

Truthfully, "unexpected" is probably a bit of an overstatement. From the start the back bedroom made me nervous. There is a bit of a bounce in the floor, and of course we knew the studs along the south wall had dropped significantly. The south wall has been raised and a new support added in the basement, but the bounce in the floor remained. It shouldn't remain for much longer though.

The story here is a bit like a game of "Telephone". Charles and I are almost never at the house while our general contractor is working. So my mom often relays messages from us to our contractor, or vice versa. Several times I had asked my mom to double check with B that the back bedroom floor was safe. Every time mom told me that B had assured her the floor was fine. At the same time, mom mentioned to me several times that B had asked if we wanted him to take out the dining room ceiling. Now, the ceiling had no cracks in it, or any other obvious reason to replace it, so I always had mom relay to B that we saw no need to replace the dining room ceiling.

At this point, you can perhaps see where this story is going.

The dining room ceiling and the bedroom floor are one-and-the-same. It seems so obvious now, but keep in mind that the conversations related above occurred sometimes weeks apart, and we were preoccupied with the 6,741 other projects we have underway at The Einsel House. It was our contractor who finally connected the dots. Once again, I had brought up my concerns about the safety of the floor in the back bedroom. My mom took B up to the room to point out my concerns and B said, "I agree. That's why I want to open up the ceiling below this and see what is going on." Ah ha! The clouds parted and the sun appeared!

So last Tuesday the dining room ceiling came down. And it's now quite obvious why the floor felt a bit bouncy. The area of particular concern is pictured below:

At left is another picture of the problem area. If we had any doubts about the original layout of this portion of the house, uncovering this ceiling has laid them to rest. The current dining room definately had a wall along the north part of the room that was later removed. Originally, that wall served as the support for the floor joists of the bedroom above. When that wall was removed the joists were simply sistered together for a length of about 6". And (as you can see in the picture above) sometimes the joists did not even touch each other, so a small block of wood was placed between them. In the picture at left the joists on the right side of the photo are under the north knee-wall of the back bedroom and the joists on the left side are under the bedroom itself.

The wall in the dining room came down years ago and obviously the bedroom floor never caved in, but we would rather be safe than sorry. And the bedroom above this has only been used as attic storage for the past several decades. We plan for the room to house a bubbly preschooler with a known penchant for jumping on the bed.

So what's the plan? The obvious solution would be to place a beam under the sistered joists. But the walls that the beam would need to be anchored in are both stone walls. We could put the beam on supports placed against the walls, but the dining room already has one corner boxed out for ductwork and we don't like the idea of adding two more areas like this to the same room. So, B and his crew came up with another idea. They are having new floor joists made that will be long enough to span the entire width of the back section of the house. (That's the dining room and bathroom on the first floor, the bedroom with the area behind both knee-walls above.) There will be eleven of these new joists, and each will be sistered alongside an existing joist.

In other news, this week was the first time I've ever seen horsehair plaster:

At least three different horses contributed to this part of the Einsel House. We found the white hair pictured above, some black hair and some red hair.

And in still other news this week, my uncle informed us early in the week that because of the new ductwork and the location of a main beam in the basement, he was having difficulty placing the drier vent. He wondered if we had considered moving the laundry back into the basement. So say hello to my future laundry room:

You know the saying, "What do you do when life hands you lemons?" Well, if I had posted this last Monday or Tuesday it would have been a pretty sour entry. But by the end of the week I had found the sugar necessary to make lemonade. With the dining room, it came in simply seeing the ceiling opened up. I'm simply fascinated by seeing how this house is put together. And peace of mind is a nice thing, too. I'll sleep better at night knowing my daughter isn't going to wake up on the dining room table.

As for the laundry area, yes, it will be in a 160 year old basement. But, that means it can be messy and company will never know! And I will have so much more room, both in the now open room upstairs, and for the laundry itself. (I can leave my ironing board up all the time!) And best yet, we can now finish a laundry shoot in the bathroom that the previous owners had started. Lemonade is a pretty good drink after all!

Patience

I wanted so badly to get a first coat of tung oil on the dining room woodwork last weekend. So badly. It didn't happen. But after two more days of solid sanding, we're at least close. 95% of the room has been aquainted with fine grit sandpaper, there are just a few stubborn spots on one door left to keep working on. At about 6pm on Sunday I gave up the final vestige of hope that the first gallon of oil could still be opened that night, and once again I contented myself by putting mineral spirits on a rag and rubbing it into the smooth, raw walnut in various places. And I told myself to just be patient.

(Patience: A minor form of despair disguised as a virtue. ~Ambrose Bierce)

The picture above was taken in the dining room. That's the bathroom door dominating the picture. There are four doors that we have sanded down, but the bathroom is the only one we took off of its hinges. That is because the bathroom door was the only one that no longer closed. Our contractors have been correcting some settlement issues in the basement, and as a result the wall the bathroom door was in has moved quite a bit the past couple of months. The picture below was taken Sunday when I placed a level on top of the bathroom door frame.



This door frame was level when we bought the house. After taking that picture I carefully dismantled the entire frame. We'll let our general contractor handle straightening the door jamb, and then we'll carefully put the frame (and door) back up.

But, to show that the havoc to the bathroom wall is worthwhile I also have the following series of pictures from the bedroom directly above the bathroom:

At left is a stud from this knee wall in its condition when we bought the house. In the center is the same stud after about a month of slowing correcting the sagging beam in the basement. And at right is a current picture from the same knee wall. (The stud from the first two pictures is now behind insulation, but these double studs are only a few feet left of the one in the original pictures.) The contractors tell us that they are not planning to raise this wall any more. Although there is about another inch the studs could be raised, doing so would result in a very crooked bathroom floor downstairs. The bathroom floor is already a little bit wavy, but I'm not too concerned. After all, it's an old house, a few crooked floors seem appropriate. As long as the contractors are not concerned that anyone will fall through the floor, I'm content.


To close today I have a couple more pictures pictures featuring Mother Nature. Here's a view of the stone bridge over the creek, taken from Charles and I's future bedroom:

And finally, a view from the kitchen. This is looking across the field to the cemetery where John & Elizabeth Einsel are buried.

The winter weather may complicate getting work done at the house, but it sure is providing some beautiful scenery.

Thank You, Skinny Guy, Thank You

A few more pictures that I took at the house yesterday. Here's some work by my uncle, getting ready to place two new outlets before the wall and ductwork in the living room reach the drywalling stage:

And below is evidence that the HVAC contractors have been at work:

Actually, the picture above also shows off the work of our masonry contractor, who built the stone pillar between the two large ducts. When we bought the Einsel House there was one large hole here. The stone threshold in the doorway above that large hole was literally falling into the basement, and we're still not sure how the large timber in the middle of the picture was held up before the masons built the new pillar to support it.

But for the final picture today I have to return to the HVAC crew. I'm afraid that sometime this week one of their employees has to venture into the space under our kitchen. This didn't get done before New Year's because they had to wait for the "skinny guy". The picture below simply does not do justice for how completely nasty the poor Skinny Guy's job was/is.

Even a skinny guy will have his back scratched by the floor joists above him as he army-crawls through this nastiness. And as you can kind of tell, the ground is a rocky mess, which has to be hard on the stomache in such cramped quarters. And of course you have to figure there's also the usual crawlspace accoutrements of spiderwebs, spiders, and mice carcasses in various states of decay. I feel for you, Skinny Guy, I do.

In fact, I feel so badly for you that after leaving the house Sunday I mixed up a batch of brownies intending to leave them at the Einsel House for you. But unfortunately my tried and true best ever brownie recipe (one whole cup of cocoa goodness and more sugar than flour, yum!) is with all my cookbooks locked in a storage unit for which we are paying $48.15 a month in rent. And the runner-up recipe I pulled from the internet Sunday night produced pathetic dry lumps that didn't even deserve the title of "brownies". So, Skinny Guy, I'm sorry. Some frosty winter day in the future, when I'm baking gooey, rich brownies in my snug and warm Einsel House kitchen, I'll think of you and be grateful for the hideousness you were willing to endure this week. But tonight I'm stuck refilling my kids' milk glasses as they work on the crumbly brown mess sulking on the kitchen counter.

Give It To Me Straight

alternately titled, "Yes, We're Aware Our House Has Issues".

Compare these two pictures:

Much better, yes, but I every time I pull in the drive and see this part of the house my eye goes to the same area. Not the pile of junk (which has been cleaned up, by the way. This picture is about a month old. The door is also red now, and the storm door and outdoor light fixture are installed as well.) Not even that irksome casement window which should never have been allowed within 100 yards of a nineteenth century house. Nope, my eyes go straight to the roof.



When we bought the Einsel House we thought the roofline looked a little droopy in that area, but like anyone in love with an old house we downplayed it. The roof at that time was such a Joseph's coat of materials it was difficult to tell what was straight and what was just illusion. We also knew that this roof used to have a bell cupola on it right where the roofline sags and we thought this might be part of the issue.

But alas, putting on new shingles only made the issue more obvious. And while painting we realized that the problem wasn't limited to the roof. I've done a bit more playing with pictures to
explain what was happening at the north end of the addition.

As I have explained before, the kitchen used to be two separate rooms. The previous owners took down the wall dividing the rooms and opened the ceiling on the north end of the room. It makes a wonderful open space, but the old walls obviously needed a bit more help than they were left with. So to address the problem we have a new contractor on the job. This is what the north end of the kitchen currently looks like:

The jacks and cables were put in place early last week. The walls and roof look better already, but they are not straight yet. The contractor is letting everything sit for a few days before tighting the cables and raising the jacks again. Although the jacks will eventually come down, the cables pulling the walls back together are permanent. We will have them cased in wood to match the beams along the ceiling. These new beams will also have vertical supports to the roof peak as well as supports at 45 degree angles to the left and right of the vertical support. (Obviously the ceiling fan will need to be moved.)

According to our contractor, the kitchen was considered an area of active settlement. The wall removal and cathedral ceiling were both done within the past 10 years, so presumably the sag in the roof and bow in the walls had all developed within the past decade. But the Einsel House has another area of "middle aged sag" that started much more than a decade ago. To explain this I will need to start in the basement of our 160-odd-year old house, where there are more temporary jacks in place, with a concrete base poured for the permanent support.

To explain what comes next I put together a very simplistic diagram of the floor joists in the back room of the basement. The two dark lines represent large beams. At both ends of the room the floor joists run parallel to these beams and are anchored in the foundation walls. But the middle of the room has floor joists running between these beams. Something like this:





The point of this drawing is to show that the two beams in this section of the basement have joists joined to them only on one side each. So for the past 160-odd-years, these beams have carried more weight and pressure on only one side each. The result it that both beams are essentially rotating in place, with the bottom of each rotating away from the center of the room. The picture to the right is of the beam at the north end of the basement. There is not supposed to be any gap where the floor joists meet the beam. Theoretically, if the beams continue their rotation the floor joists would eventually pop completely out of the beams and the entire middle of the dining room floor would drop into the basement. We would obviously like to avoid that scenario.


So, what's the plan, you ask. Well, Mr. New Contractor has two more steel cables ordered. He will use these between the two beams and basically try to pull the bottoms of each beam back to center. He freely admits he has no idea if he will be able to get the beams to move at all. But even if the movement cannot be corrected, we can at least stop the rotation at its current point. After that, permanent supports will be added under each beam.



And as we continue I want you to start humming to yourself, "The footbone's connected to the ankle-bone. The ankle-bone's connected to the leg-bone...." Because when you have settlement issues in the basement you can about guarantee they'll continue as you move up....


Here we have the dining room. This wall is basically right above the south beam discussed above. Check out the ceiling line.





And moving on up we have the back bedroom. It ain't pretty. (And I'm not talking about that carpet.)




The vertical supports have dropped so far that the ones in the center of the wall are no longer connected to the top beam at all. The good news is that the top beam has both ends anchored in stone walls, so there is no corresponding sag in the roof over this part of the house.


More good news, according to our contractor, is that inspite of the way it might look, these walls are actually perfectly sound. In contrast to the settling in the kitchen, the settling in the stone part of the house appears to be inactive. Scroll back up to the picture taken in the dining room and study the woodwork around the bathroom door frame and the wood chair rail. Both are perfectly straight, even though the floor and ceiling have an obvious sag. This wall was altered when the bathroom was expanded, again somewhere around a decade ago. And since the woodwork done at that time remains straight, it appears that all of the settling in this area predates the expansion of the bathroom. (This is in contrast to the kitchen, where all of the settling occured after the work done by the previous owners.)


So again, you ask, what's the plan? Truthfully, we're not exactly sure. We'll start with the steel cables in the basement and attempt to pull the two beams back in place. If that works, hopefully it will provide results that will carry all the way up to those verticle supports in the back bedroom. But our contractor has no idea if it will work. He says those beams have probably been in their current position for half a century or more, and he has no idea if it is even possible to return them to their original position. Even if they can be pulled back, he isn't sure the walls above them will correct themselves to their original positions. But we're not going to worry about a Plan B until we've given Plan A a go.

And since this post is already long, I'll finish the update quickly. I was under the weather a few days last week and not at the house (thus the Old Winchester saga in place of Einsel House news - part 3 will be coming soon). Over the weekend we did get some work done in the two front bedrooms. There are four paint samples up on a kitchen wall but no winner yet. I'm contemplating using pure tung oil on some floors and/or trim and have done a trial on a piece of walnut but again haven't made up my mind yet. And that's about where we are.

Oh - and if you've been considering a visit to the Einsel House, don't let this post scare you away. As I've been told repeatedly over the past few weeks, this old house is solid as a rock (no pun intended) just the way it is. : )