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?)

 

 

 

The Good Old Summertime

The last few days have been classic summer.  On Sunday we had a family reunion and then I took the kids on the local preservation society's annual garden tour.  I thought the kids' patience would last through maybe four or so gardens, but they wanted to see all eight.  I've got some great kids!  Then for supper last night I enjoyed a big plate of sauted zucchini, red onion and tomato with some lemon pepper seasoning.  Mmmmm!  And the zucchini came from my own little garden:

I'm putting all those salvaged bricks to good use!

Weeding

Earlier this week (Tuesday if I can trust my memory) we had some thunderstorms roll through which were followed by the rainbow pictured to the left.  

As the rainbow faded away I walked around to the front of the house and took the picture below.  Notice all the weeds?

All four days this week after work I've been outside weeding.  Monday was the shed.  Tuesday I started in front of the kitchen.  Wednesday I finished in front of the kitchen and started in front of the house.  And today I finished the front of the house.  The lilac bushes and LP tank still need some attention.  I'll hit everything with Round-Up to kill any strays I've missed, but once weeds get so big I just have to pull them.  (Round-Up is certainly easier, but I can't stand looking at dried up dead weeds.)

I've had company while I work:

It will be nice to get home from work tomorrow to a house that's back to this:

And The Sun Will Rise

Although I should have gone to bed early last night I stayed up to watch all four hours of the 25th anniversary performance of Les Miserables.  I'm tempted to watch it again tonight.

Sorry about going MIA.  Life has been dropping a lot in my lap recently and none of it's been much fun.  But rather than dwell on anything unpleasant here I'm just going to put up a couple pictures of the last little project I completed here before the current annoyances cropped up.

Here's the before:

And the after:

There's grass planted where I took out the scrawny half-dead lilac, and ivy planted under the remaining lilacs.  The electric box and meter are necessary evils.  Since we have to read it every month when we pay our electric bill, I laid a path of field stones to the meter.

And because she's so darned cute, I'll include this picture of Tiny the Cat:

Like me, she's obviously quite enamored with the Einsel House's deep windowsills.

Before the Befores

As promised, this post will be full of older pictures of the house.  We've collected these from several sources - all various previous owners or renters of the EH.  The picture in yesterday's post is the oldest of the bunch.  (I'm still dreaming of finding a picture of the original front porch.)

Continuing with more exterior pictures of the house, here is an aerial photo taken in the mid 1990's:

We'd been told that the house used to be surrounded by trees, but seeing this picture still made me catch my breath.  The only tree in the above photo that was still standing by the time we bought the property is the solitary walnut alongside the drive at the bottom of the picture.  I do wish some of the trees around the house were still here.

Next up is the old bank barn:

I'm told the original barn sat basically where our pole barn now stands.  Although this picture only shows the front of the barn, there was a long "ell" off the back of the barn that extended down nearly to the creek.  Looking out the window as I type this, it's hard to believe the view of the pasture used to be so different.  The old barn was torn down in 1996/97, in preparation for putting the property on the market.  By all accounts the barn was in poor condition when it was torn down.  (It was also, by all accounts, full of large old growth timber.)

Up next, the south side of the house, mid 1990's:

This is one of my favorite old pictures of the house. I've got a list of "someday" projects for the EH, and high on that list is bringing back that little side porch.

At left is a close up of the porch from the picture above. I love the pilaster at the top of the right handrail (which also gives me clues as to recreating the original front porch, another "someday" project). I'm also pleased that this picture shows the interior walls of the porch were covered in clapboard siding. The large pipe that is visible was the vent for the bathroom. If we ever do reopen the side porch we will almost certainly move the bathroom's location at the same time, meaning we could forego this one detail.

The pictures below show the same area, circa 1996 at left, and today at right:

The door and window in the 1996 picture went out to the porch pictured above.  The current door goes to the bathroom.  I wish the 1996 picture was brighter so that I could make out more details on the door. (Looks like we need a larger area rug!)

Our 1996 photographer did a 180 degree turn after taking the above picture to snap these two pictures of the kitchen:

(I hope you'll forgive me, P, if you ever see this blog post, but it was one of the best pictures of the old kitchen.) 

These earlier kitchen pictures intrigue me. What I see in these pictures (especially the horizontal board 2/3 up the wall) seems to reinforce my belief that the kitchen addition dates from the 1880s or earlier.

At right is a current photo taken at the same angle as the right picture above.  The ivory light-switch and plate in the current photo are black in the earlier photo, if that helps you orient the two pictures.  The left picture above shows the wall that used to divide the kitchen wing into two rooms.  (Note the flue cover, and compare it to the location of the chimney in the picture below.) 

The last picture I have to share today shows the back of the house, again circa 1996.  See the little cupola over the kitchen roof?  No one I've talked to can ever remember it having a bell, but it seems obvious to me that it was intended to house a bell.  The cupola blew off during a storm sometime after 1997.  Replacing it is another item on the "someday" list. 

And with that, I'll end this post.  I've got a cake cooling in the kitchen and a seven-year-old boy who is quite anxious to frost it.  : )

Recognize this place?

This is the same view of the house as the pictures in the blog header.  Taken circa late 1970s I'm guessing.  Look at those trees.  I'm not sure who the guy working on the porch is.  Nor am I sure why all that wood is piled up by the old side porch.

More 'old' pictures coming soon....

Snow Day

I took that picture on Wednesday when Charles and I walked down the lane to check the mail.  Charles and the kids have not had school since Monday (and I don't think it looks too good for tomorrow.)  It's not often that I get a snow day, but thanks to this winter storm we did get one day with all four of us at home. The snow itself isn't too problematic, but the thick layer of sleet/ice on top of that snow meant that I got to devote Wednesday to my kitchen.  It was a glorious day.  : )

  I went from this:

to this:

And I tacked up this little section as well:



I owe Mother Nature a thank you.  My weekends have been monopolized lately by life-other-than-the-house and that's a trend that is going to continue well into February, so I was very grateful to have an entire day to putter about putting up more beadboard.  These were the last two sections of beadboard in the north end of the room.  I've got a fair amount of painting ahead of me and then it will be on to the kitchen cupboards/crown molding portion of this project.

Holiday Home Tour

My mom's birthday is this coming weekend, but we treated her a week early by buying her a ticket to the Holiday Homes Tour sponsored by the local preservation society.  So last Sunday afternoon she, Cecilia and I spent several hours driving through the countryside to tour various houses.  I was most eager to see the two 1830s Greek Revival homes included in the tour.

I had my camera along, but did not take any pictures of the homes' interiors.  There were two reasons for this - first, I didn't want to take advantage of the homeowners' generosity; and second, every house was packed with people.  Any interior picture I took would have revealed more about current trends in winter appearal than it would have about the architecture of the homes in which the pictures were taken. 

But I did take a few exterior pictures.  : )

The picture below is a bit bittersweet for me.

That is very similar to the side porch that our house used to/should have.  Granted, our side porch was smaller and a bit less ornate.  Our porch had only one window with the door (although my picture cuts it off, the house porch pictured above had two windows with a centered door) and our porch had only two pillars (compared to four), but still the idea and the feel is exactly what I hope we can someday bring back to our house.

This is what we've got now:

But in my mind... 

I'll start by taking out the paneled wall with the window.  Put two simple square pillars flush against the stone walls to the left and the right.  Give the pillars some simple molding on the very top and bottom.  I might even add some decorative wood trim like pictured above, but it's nothing too intricate or ornate, this isn't the Victorian era yet.  The porch is, say, five or so feet deep.  Its back wall consists of a door (into the dining room) to the left and a window to the right.  Now - I'll put a divided pane window back into that shuttered hole in the small stone wall.  Add appropriately-sized louvered wood shutters.  (Yes - they have to be wood shutters.)  With shutter dogs.  (I love shutter dogs!)  Now, I'll settle into a rocking chair on my lovely porch.  There's a terra cotta pot on the top step in front of me with some red flowers in it - geraniums, maybe, or begonias.  My handsome husband steps out from the dining room, joining me with a glass of cool lemonade to sip while we enjoy the view.  (It's almost always mid-June in my imagination.)  The kids are laughing while playing on their swingset to our right while to our left a barn cat or two - or five - lounge on the stone walls in front of the springhouse.  Our whole view is framed by the tree lined creek, which can very faintly be heard gurgling in the background....

It's going to happen someday.  Might take 30 years, I'll admit.  But it'll happen.  Even if it's my grandkids playing on the swingset.

(Which reminds me of one of the guests at our open house last October.  While looking at some pictures of the house taken just after we bought it she looked up at me and said, "Wow.  You must have had some, uh, imagination when you bought this place."  If she only knew!)

But - back to the present.  And the home tour.  The second 1830's home on the tour was my favorite.  I've driven by it (perhaps a bit too slowly I admit) multiple times to admire it.  After seeing the interior and hearing the home's history my admiration is even greater.  Vandals started a fire in the house in the mid 1950's and it sat vacant and boarded up for over 30 years.  The current owners began their renovation in 1989 and have done a remarkable job. 

They reconstructed that front porch from original pieces fished out of a gulley alongside the house. 

Here's a side profile of the house:

One of my favorite features is this picket fence along the west side of the (new) garage:

I want to do something similar in front of our kitchen - a picket fence surrounding the area in front of our home's frame wing, with the sidewalk down the middle dividing the area into a small herb garden to the right and a small vegetable garden to the left.  (And I hope to turn this daydream into reality well before 2040.)

But as cute as the picket fence and little front porch on the yellow Greek Revival are, neither is the home's focal point.  The house's most stunning feature can not be seen when driving by.  You've got to get behind the front door to see this:

I really didn't take any interior pictures during the tour - this one came from the local newspaper.  But that staircase was just too stunning not to share. 

All in all it was a lovely afternoon, and I'm grateful to the homeowners who were willing to open their homes for the tour.  It's such a joy to see old homes celebrated as old homes and not remodeled to within an inch of their lives.  Perhaps someday, quite a while from now, we'll have the Einsel House polished up enough (and stuffed with enough antique furniture) that we can return the favor open our own front door for a holiday homes tour. 

Looks Nice

When the UPS man got out of his truck on Tuesday I could see him eyeing the house.  And as he handed me the new rug for our dining room he said, "I've got to tell you, coming up the drive here I was thinking, 'Man.  This place looks nice.'"  Ah, that warms the cockles of an old house lover's heart. 

And I know exactly what he meant.  I just wonder if he noticed as he left that watching the house recede in the rearview mirror is just as nice.  : )

As for the new rug, here it is:

It is an indoor/outdoor rug, which hopefully will hold up well (it admittedly takes a lot of abuse being under the table.)  It was shipped rolled up, so there are still a few waves in it that should smooth out with time.

As you might be able to see in the picture, the table legs each have small wheels on the bottom.  I don't want the wheels to leave dents in the new rug, so I picked up some clear casters to put under them.  But now every time I walk through the dining room those casters worry me.  Surely this isn't the beginning of a slippery slope that ends with a clear plastic cover on the sofa? 

Surely.

Small Things

Yesterday I hung these plates on the wall in the kitchen. Now every time I walk by them I smile.

The bottom plate started the collection. I was two years into an MA program, with a week sorting through archives in the Pennsylvania capital just behind me. Now we were swinging south for the wedding of one of my cousins. The delicately flowered plate cost me $17 at an antique store in tiny Lucketts, Virginia, the too heavy stream of traffic on Route 15 outside the store a harbinger of the looming Northern Virginia sprawl ahead. With the plate carefully wrapped in paper, I tucked it into a briefcase in the van, gently cushioned between hundreds of pages of fragmentary notes and quotes about interracial marriage in colonial Pennsylvania. With the plate safely deposited we walked across the street to a park.

Neil was six months old.

And I was twenty-four.

My thesis was still eight months from completion.

The middle plate came from an antique outlet along Interstate 75 in the city where my husband was raised. My mother found the top plate in the attic of their home - a home that's been in my family for 70 years, purchased in 1940 by my great grandparents Neil & Leoda. My great grandmother died in 1965. My son's namesake survived her by 13 years, passing away two years before I was born. He was stolid and undemonstrative by all accounts, but the same subtle smile still comes to each of his grandchildren whenever conversation turns to memories of summers spent with Grandpa at "The Farm".

My own grandmother was 9 when her family moved to "The Farm". Years later the home of her earliest childhood was torn down. That home's last owner allowed my grandmother and her sister to walk through the house one last time before it was torn down. My grandmother left the house that last time carrying a doorknob as a souvenier. She offered that doorknob to me last fall, to find a new home at the Einsel House:

But lest anyone think all I've accomplished lately is small things like hanging a plate rack and installing a doorknob, before I close I'll include a few pictures of the "bigger" things that have been going on around here.

Back of the house, October 2009:

Back of the house, August, 2010:

The back bedroom, December 2009

(this is actually two months in, I don't even have a true "Before"):

The back bedroom, August, 2010:

Working Weekend

As I worked on the house yesterday it occurred to me that there was a blessing in not closing on the EH until October. Namely, it was OCTOBER. As in, not July or August. We worked our tails off last fall, but at least we weren't doing it in 90+ degree weather.

But read that first paragraph again. Did you catch it? Not the "hind-sight is 20/20" revelation. Before that.

....I worked on the house yesterday...... (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

As this blog shows, during the months of June and July I was completely lacking motivation to do any work on the house. Actually, that feels like an understatement. "Lacking motivation" sounds apathetic. The reality was during the months of June and July I loathed the idea of picking up a scraper, sand paper or paint brush. It was much nicer to come home after work, ignore the unfinished areas, the piles of tools and unpacked belongings and instead make real dinners for the family, fold (and put away!) laundry, read a chapter from Anne of Green Gables to the kids, and have an hour or so to myself each night.

But it's August now - and I've spent the last two Saturdays working on the house from sun-up to sun-down - and (I think I better whisper this)................I've been enjoying it again. :)

I snapped these pictures this morning. Last weekend I yanked all the weeds growing along the sidewalks in front of the house, but I left this morning glory that has grown up the old gate in front of the house:

Most of my attention last weekend and this has been focused on two windows on the back of the house. These are the last windows that needed to be scraped, repaired, primed and painted. At left is a picture of the window I worked on yesterday.

This window presented a couple of challenges. First we apparently have a hive of bees living in the stone wall between these two windows and the main entrance is between the wood window frame and the stone wall just below the upper right corner of this window. I managed to plug the hole with caulk saver and some caulk, but that didn't stop the bees from milling about, trying to get back into their home. Amazingly I did not get stung, but Charles (who mowed the lawn yesterday) had plenty of opportunity to laugh at my antics, scampering up and down from the window repeatedly throughout the day as the buzzing around me waxed and waned.

Which brings me to the second challenge presented by this window - getting away from any overzealous bee was not as simple as taking a few steps down a ladder. That's because this window is located over the Bilco basement walk-out door. After a few tries at leaning precariously over the Bilco door I rigged some makeshift scaffolding, namely a board between two ladders. Below is a picture of yours truly at work scraping. The window to my right (by the Little Giant ladder) was the focus of my attention last week.

As I write this morning the window is primed and caulked and waiting for paint, which is what is in the plans for after church today.

By the time I finished the sun was setting, and I took the camera with me on a walk around the pasture. Here's one last picture for this post. It's a familiar shot of the house, this time in the glow of a setting sun:

Still here

I've had several comments over the last couple of weeks about the lack of posts here. I suppose this should make me feel guilty for being a lazy blogger, but to be honest it actually feels rather good to know that people enjoy reading here and miss new posts when I'm on sabbatical.

Since my last few posts featured Einsel scenery and Einsel wildlife, I thought those readers still hanging around would perhaps appreciate an update on the Einsel House itself. So last night (just before a round of storms blew in) I headed outside and took some pictures.

Below is the same shot of the house, taken in September, 2009:

I miss the chimneys. Other than that I'm happy with the improvements. Charles took care of getting our internet connection and TV programming installed. Thankfully he was able to have the new satellite dishes installed at the back of the house, so they no longer mar the historic feel of the house as you pull up the drive. (The gas grill outside the kitchen takes care of that job now.) Unfortunately for Charles, a nest of wasps had taken up residence in one of the old satellite dishes. Just as Charles yanked the dish free from the ground the wasps swarmed out to inform him in no uncertain terms that they did not appreciate having their happy home disturbed. Unfortunately for the wasps, stinging Charles on his bottom was not a successful negotiation method. The wasps had only about a minute and a half of celebration before Charles returned with a can of Raid. Their former happy home went to the local scrap yard a few days later.

Below is a closer shot of the south side of the house. This is the side that our masons repointed this spring. They also replaced the lintels above two windows on this side of the house.

A similar view from last fall:

And a view of the front of the house:

(I suppose I should have moved the vehicles for a "cleaner" picture,
but I guess I was feeling candid. Or lazy.)

The most recent change to the exterior around here has been the addition of a swing set/play house for the kids. This was a Craigslist find:

Here's Cecilia and a friend enjoying the new playhouse, with Bubbles the Guard Dog on duty:

Interior pictures coming in a later post.......