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?)

 

 

 

Spring Projects

For the past few weeks I've been anxiously watching the weekend weather forecasts, fingers crossed for good weather.  I've got multiple projects started and more that I'm itching to start.  But a few days ago Charles politely suggested that perhaps I should finish a current project (or three) before I take on anything new.  He's probably right -  if because if there's such a thing as DIY-ADHD than I've definitely got it. 

About a month ago I finally gave up on the blue paint in the kitchen.  I had high hopes for it in the beginning, but after two years I had to admit it wasn't growing on me.  It took several tries to find a new color for the room - the pale yellow in the picture to the left lasted only a few days before being painted over with a more tan/gray beige.  Schwartz, by the way, loved having an 8 foot ladder in the kitchen.

Other recent interior projects included Cecilia's quilt - finished last weekend - and the living room baseboards.  The latter project has been delayed by attempts to match the color of the new baseboard to the original walnut trim.  A local paint store has graciously allowed me to take home various stains, and I'm getting closer but still not quite satisfied enough to finish the new baseboard.

Outside, I spent the first nice day this spring digging out a basement window on the north side of the house.  The yard around the house was raised a foot by previous owners and the basements windows (at least the ones that were not filled in with concrete) were in desperate need of attention.  We had temporarily dealt with this by blocking the windows with heavy foam board secured around the edges with expanding foam.  Classy, I know.  But the remaining north facing window is now dug out and ready to be rebuilt. 

The first layer is topsoil added by a previous owner.  The middle layer is concrete window well poured before the level of the yard was raised.  Below is a closer view of the window opening.  The window sill is completely gone and both sides are rotted beyond repair.

The window itself was salvageable and is currently resting in my mom's wood shop.  I replaced several panes of broken glass, reglazed the window, and primed it.  Cecilia put a first coat of paint on it tonight.  Our masons left a bag of mortar, so as soon as I get more cooperative weather I'll tackle rebuilding the window sill.

In the meantime I've continued on the shed project.  With help from Charles and my mom one of the doors built over the winter is now hung on the shed.

The bottom and inside edges of the door will be cut to size once the second door is hung, but I'm already so tickled with how this is looking. 

And finally, one last project that's in the works.  I've got my mom to thank for this again.  Over the winter she rebuilt the sashes for the springhouse windows.  They're in her workshop now (with the basement window) primed and ready for paint.  But before I primed them mom brought them over to be sure they fit the springhouse.  This is just a hint of what the finished windows should look like, but I'm pretty tickled with this as well.

Based on the forecast for this weekend hopefully I'll be able to share a bit more progress on these projects soon.  :  )

It's Pretty

Of course, sunshine is pretty too.

"Plans are only good intentions...

...unless they immediately degenerate into hard work."  ~Peter F. Drucker

2010 was quite a year here at the Einsel House. Here's a selection of scenes around the house from the beginning of 2010:

By December things looked a bit different:

And if we can accomplish half of the projects I have planned for 2011 then things should look different still by next December.

So, what’s in store for 2011 you ask?

The Shed

This poor little building is long overdue for a little love. The picture at left was taken in October of 2009, but it basically looks the same now.  Our plans for this spring/summer are to tear off and replace the rotten awning, recoat the metal roof, wrap the entire building in tar paper and then cover it with salvaged barn siding.

The Stone Bridge

This is perhaps the most intimidating project on the horizon, but given the rate the bridge is eroding I know we should not put this off. The plan is to rebuild the bridge in 4 sections, starting with the northern half of the west side. I suspect this may be a four year project.

The Springhouse
Although the springhouse was the focus of much attention in 2010, the work on this little building is not yet finished. I want to replace the windows and finish work on the roof, as well as plant some ivy or other ground cover around the new stone walls in front of the springhouse.

More Masonry Work
We’re saving our pennies so that we can have our masonry contractor return this spring to repoint the east side (back) of the house. The previous owner of the EH repointed the north side of the house, and our mason did the west side in the fall of 2009 and the south side in June, 2010. Once the east wall is repointed this spring/summer we will save up and hopefully be able to have the chimneys rebuilt sometime in 2012.

The Kitchen
I'm quite excited about my plans for this room and predict I’ll dive into this project sometime before January ends. More details should be coming in a post soon.
The Yard
The yard here is currently a blank if somewhat bumpy slate. My (perhaps overly ambitious) plans for this summer include clearing a small area along the creek for a stone bench that Charles’ parents gave to us last year and planting a vegetable/herb garden in front of the kitchen wing and surrounding it with a picket fence. And of course more general leveling and stump clearing.

So here’s to twenty-eleven. Do I think all of the projects outlined above will be completed a year from now? Probably not. But we’ll have fun trying!

Saturday at the Springhouse

Saturday was a simply lovely day here - sunny and 68, which doesn't happen too often in mid November in Ohio.  Charles and I both spent the day outside, Charles tearing into the hodge-podge built/piled along the north wall of the little unpainted shed beside the driveway and me working back by the springhouse.  I was thrilled to be able to finish the new stone walls in front of the springhouse.

Here's a picture taken about 2 hours into my work on Saturday:

I always feel about three times my age the morning after this type of work. 

There was a small pile of stones beside the springhouse left over from earlier work, but I used those quickly.  So my work on Saturday was puncuated by trips down into the creek bed to find new stones and then lugging them up to the springhouse.  A couple of times I had to interrupt Charles's work on the shed to have him move a stone that I simply could not handle.

Here's the same walk pictured above (from the opposite angle) taken about four hours later:

This next picture was taken about mid afternoon.  I was standing just inside the springhouse door to get this view.  The walk pictured above is the one that goes to the left in the picture below:

An end-of-the-day overview is next:

The blue tarp is covering a large pile of dirt.  (You can see by the depth of the stone walls how much we had to dig out to make the new stone walks level with the threshhold of the springhouse's door.)  The tarp and dirt will probably have to stay put until we begin the gargantuan task of rebuilding the stone bridge.

As I put this post together tonight I decided to dig back through some earlier pictures of the springhouse.  I'll close with a springhouse picture taken on October 17, 2009:

There's a lot more work to be done to this little building, but when I opened that last picture I realized anew just how far we've already come.

Operation SOS - Part 5

After a very productive day last Wednesday we were rained out early on Thursday.  There wasn't any rain on Friday, but there wasn't any sun either.  I went out at one point, but decided quickly that trying to pick up wet, heavy rocks with wet gloves and then carry them across the slippery ground while increasing amounts of mud were clumping up on my shoes probably wasn't the safest idea.

But it was back to work on Saturday.

I found this little guy when removing the tarp we had put down for the earlier rain:

I carried him to the safety of the woods along the creek before we began shoveling into the dirt pile he had been burrowed into.

Thanks to the help of a family friend, my mom and I were able to focus almost entirely on the stone walk and wall outside the springhouse.  Inside the springhouse, Adam (a once-upon-a-time preschool student of my mom's who still likes to spend an occassional weekend at The Farm) put in a hard day's work completing the job of knocking out the old plaster ceiling. 

It was very neat to see the original cedar shingles and rafters (which are small tree trunks) revealed. 

Work progressed outside of the springhouse as well:

I was originally planning a loose gravel or mulch walkway, but when digging we uncovered an old fieldstone sidewalk buried under about a foot and a half of dirt.  Two large stones were broken by the backhoe before we realized what they were, but the wide stone in the middle of the walkway is from the original sidewalk. 

And remember this?  That second step in the picture above is the right half of the old lintel above the front door.  (The left half is now a lintel over a window on the south side of the house.)

Operation SOS - Part 4

Lots to update here, but it's finally stopped trying to rain and I should head back outside, so I'm going to rely on pictures more than words to show what we've been up to around here the past two days.

First - the springhouse after the work earlier this spring:

 

Our masons did an amazing job making and installing the new door:

Tuesday we kept busy clearing overzealous trees and branches away from the building.  I spent much of my time sanding and priming while my mom removed several areas of rotted wood.  Here's the sill of the back window just before she removed it:

This back window had one original sash still in it.  When mom removed it she noticed that around the edge a thin strip of the original paint color remained.  We were both thrilled to see that it is very similar to the color I am putting back on the springhouse's woodwork.  The old paint is on right edge of the sill in the below picture (the door frame in the background has the new color on it).

Springhouse with door and window frame primed and painted:



Yesterday's work was backbreaking.  The first few hours I spent beginning to remove the plaster ceiling in the springhouse:

I had walnuts (and heaven knows what else) falling on my head until my dad arrived with his backhoe and we switched to a different job.  Here's a picture looking along the front of the springhouse before my dad began digging:

Over time, erosion has carried so much dirt down this hill that the ground was about 2 feet higher than the threshold of the springhouse door.  The plan is to dig out a walkway level with the springhouse floor, and build a stone retaining wall to hold back the higher ground.  So the digging began:

Once the backhoe had done it's worst, mom and I set in with shovels.  Here's my mom working on the trench for the drainage tile:

We tackled tree roots:

And we tackled rocks:

Lots of rocks:

The barn kittens kept us company on a nearby stump:

And, finally, here's a picture with the drainage tile in place, just before we quit for the night:

Operation SOS has resumed...

That's "Save Our Springhouse" for anyone who wasn't around here last spring.  And I'm on vacation from my desk job this week - so there should be lots to post about the next few days.