Winter Scenery

Yesterday morning provided perhaps the most beautiful scenery yet this winter.  And thanks to a new job where that scenery translated into a two hour delay, I had time to put on some boots and enjoy a quiet morning walk through the snow. 

 

 

 

 

(Did you notice the springhouse is in the picture above?)

 

 

 

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.

Enough Already

This is still at least two feet lower than the water was the night of February 28th, but the creek is obviously still rising tonight.

And it's not going down anytime soon.



It's Pretty

Of course, sunshine is pretty too.

Bridge Over Troubled Water

Technically that's not quite right.  Troubled Bridge Over Water would be more accurate.  Or Water Under Troubled Bridge. 

Eh, I think you get the point.  Let's just cut to the pictures.

I'll start with a before.  The picture below was taken in September, 2009 just before we closed on the property.  It shows some settling, but the stone walls were intact.

And what we've got now.  First up the east side.  There's actually more stone hanging on here than I expected, but it's precarious at best.

Notice the collection of debris on the top of bridge near the upper right corner of the picture.  That debris shows the high water mark which was reached sometime around dawn last Monday.  Below is the same picture with some (ahem) high quality computer work to show the high water mark.

I was honestly surprised when the water dropped to see that some stones on the east side of the bridge do still remain.  The left side has collapsed and the right side is bulging severely, but it's better than I expected.

The west side though is much worse:



I did not take any pictures Monday morning, but the one below will give some idea of what the bridge went through last week.

That photo of the bridge was taken after a storm in the 1990s.  In it you can see that the water is nearly level with the top of the box culvert (the smoother water at the center of the picture).  Last Monday the water was about two feet higher.  It completely covered the culvert and when it came under the bridge it was under enough pressure that it shot out of the culvert about a foot above the level of the rest of the water.

Even before this flooding we knew the bridge needed attention.  The original plan was to rebuild the bridge in its original state and splitting the project into four summers - west wall first two summers and east wall the following two summers.  But after last week it's obviously time to 'make a new plan, Stan'.  (Sorry, couldn't resist another Paul Simon lyric.)  Various family members have been sharing ideas and no final decisions have been made, but the general consensus is that we need to start by removing what remains of the current stone walls.  All of the stones from the collapsed walls will need to be carried to the creek bank and stacked to be reused later.  Hopefully we can dismantle what remains of the east side of the bridge before it collapses, causing the remaining large stones to break.

After that there are two possibilities.  Assuming it's not completely out of our budget, we could remove the current bridge entirely and replace it with a precast box culvert that is larger than the current culvert.  We could then have new sidewalls built using poured concrete reinforced with rebar.  If a new culvert is as expensive as I expect it to be we could keep the current culvert (assuming it survives this spring) and simply have new side walls of poured concrete with rebar.  Either way we would then use the salvaged stone from the original bridge to rebuild stone walls in front of (and hiding) the new concrete side walls.

It dosn't take long to type that out, but the reality of the job feels much more daunting.  For now I'm limited to the mental gymnastics involved - it's still much too wet to do any work along the creek.

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...)

Wildlife

Charles noticed this fellow by the creek last weekend. Anybody have any idea what kind of snake this is? We've seen plenty of snakes around the property, but I don't think this fellow is a garter.

Back to the House

As promised, I'm moving back on topic. The masons were back at work on the springhouse yesterday, and I'll have another post on their progress coming soon.

In the house, my mom has been busy putting her carpentery skills to work. In the dining room, she put up baseboard and chair rail in the corner with the new boxed out duct work. Once I finish get it all shellaced, it will look like it has always been there. Mom has also put up various pieces of trim in the living room. The past couple of days she has spent back up in the back bedroom, building a small closet into the northwest corner of the room.

Charles has been busy with the play, but he did find time to haul off two more loads of scrap metal. So far Charles has made over $200 just cleaning scrap metal from the property.

My uncle J has also been back at the house. As we get each room painted, he follows along replacing outlets and switches. It makes such a huge difference to see clean plates go up over new outlets. Pictured below is a sample of my uncle's work. Two outlets in the living room were in boxes installed on the woodwork. J removed these sections of baseboard and cut holes to install new recessed boxes. He also had to carefully chip into the stone wall behind each outlet, making just enough room to allow for this change. He then put brown outlets and covers on each (we're using ivory in the rest of the house, but thought brown would work better since these are in the walnut baseboard.) The light colored rectangle in the floor is the site of the first outlet in this room, it was installed in the floor rather than the wall. We removed the outlet and my mom patched the floor. Right now the patch is still bare wood, hopefully it will blend in better when we put the next coat of finish on the floor.



As for me, I've been painting. I hope to finish the second coat on the office walls tonight. The color is called Spring Forward. It's something of a muted teal.


And I've been painting in the Book Nook as well. The purple here is called Kimberly (how appropriate!). The nook will get carpet and then small baseboards, but other than that it is basically finished.

A Different Perspective

I was going through the pictures we took last weekend and this one jumped out at me. I love how the new front door is framed by the trees.

I need to take some pictures back in the house as well. The bathroom has 1 coat of paint on the walls. The living room's purple walls are now under primer, and some of its woodwork has shellac. Tomorrow's goal is to get the final coat of paint on the bathroom walls. Tonight's goal is to finish our school district income tax return....

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.

Winter Scenes

Coming up the drive:

The view from Charles and I's future bedroom:

A Little Bit of This and A Little Bit of That

Another busy weekend under our belt. The weather was wonderful again (at least on Saturday) and we had a variety of visitors as we worked on a variety of jobs.

-We started the weekend off with a visit from the "honey wagon". The septic tank is now empty and cleaned out.

-Charles spent much of the weekend along the creek bed pulling out junk. The creek was used as a dumping ground for years and it will take us years to get it completely clean again (when Charles reads this he's going to laugh and say, "Well there's an understatement!"), but he got a good start this weekend. My Aunt B joined us at the house a couple days and she and Charles worked together in the creek on Saturday.

-Charles also spent part of Saturday gutting the south wall in what will be our daughter's bedroom. No pictures of this, I'll just say that with the hole on the front of the house filled back in, Celia's room is what makes me feel faint.

-Charles' mom was also at the house on Saturday. She was a huge help by watching the kids.

-I spent much of the weekend working on the front entrance and the two front windows on the house. The picture below is not a perfect before and after, but it will at least show some progress. The transom and sidelights are currently removed to reglaze and to replace some broken glass. (And try to look at the woodwork and not that door. Leaded glass looks great on some houses, but definately not the Einsel House. A solid paneled door painted deep red is in the plans for next spring.)

-My dad came over when he was off work to repair a flat tire on the loader tractor.

-My mom spent the weekend working on the back of the addition. She built some temporary stairs for the back door, and on Sunday she removed some extremely weathered plywood that had been put up over an old doorway. The blown-in insulation underneath had several open pockets, so (with help from Uncle J & Aunt L) she filled in the holes with new insulation and replaced the plywood with boards to match the rest of the board and batten siding. This job continued well past sundown on Sunday.

-My Uncle J also spent some more time in the basement, replacing several very corroded and nasty pieces from our well pump. And speaking of Uncle J, below is a picture of him taken last weekend pulling the chopper. (The tractor originally belonged to my great grandpa. We've been a Deere family for a few generations it seems.)

Next week should be interesting as we change gears a bit. On Tuesday our HVAC contractor returns for a final walk-through before they begin replacing the ductwork in preparation for installing the permanent furnace. We should also have a new contractor start work on the house next week. He will be addressing some structural concerns (just typing that makes me nervous) as well as replacing a few windows and doing some drywall repair. And after five weeks of exterior work I'm getting anxious to head inside the house. On my list for tomorrow is picking up some paint samples for the kitchen walls. Fun, fun!!!

Wish I was ten years old again

Because I would have had a blast playing in the woods along this creek. While we talked with another contractor Friday afternoon, our children spent the entire time exploring along the creek. Since leaving, our son has drawn at least three maps of the paths he plans to clear through the woods. They're going to love living there.

The picture below shows the stone bridge that crosses the creek (if you can find it in the midst of all the greenery). The creek bed is basically dry right now, but we've been told it can turn into a fast moving stream very quickly during spring rains.

The last picture shows the springhouse. This poor building has obviously been largely ignored for a long time. Right now it is difficult to get close enough for a good inspection. As the picture shows, the small lower door needs some work and although you can't tell from this picture, the entire floor inside is collapsing. But all in all, the building definately looks like it can be saved. The springhouse cannot be seen from the road at all, and the first time I drove down the lane my jaw just dropped when I caught sight of it. Spring houses (like stone houses) are very rare around here.

That's all the eye candy for today. For now we'll keep collecting bids from contractors, waiting for a call from the sheriff department.