Let the dust settle

September 4, 2010

.... or fly. I seriously think we must have the dustiest house in the city. Well, maybe not absolute dustiest, but close. Why you may ask.....

Alok and a former neighbor of the Kaufman house worked on destroying (I mean, remodeling) the apartment bathroom. Here it was at the start of the day:








As it progressed:




The wires behind the two light fixtures





And at the end:

My mom checking out the bathroom




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Since this apartment now goes straight into the landing, etc due to water damage, it is a bit disgusting inside.

As they worked on that, I worked on removing the wallpaper. Which do you think took longer, the bathroom destruction or taking off this much wallpaper:






Wallpaper removal. Seriously. This was the worst hallway ever. It is also very slanted so I almost fell of the ladder twice today. All injuries were avoided. Here it is after:





My cousin's daughter, Jewel, also came by to help. She checked out the work that her dad has been doing on the house and washed down some of the walls for us. Thanks, Jewel!

We also had a few people working on the front yard today: my mom and my aunt, Marsha. Marsha spent over 6 hours on her day off pulling out the ivy from around this tree. Here it is before:

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And after:







Those stones were there, they just had to be uncovered. My mom also cut a lot of ivy and we realized we have a very wide front side walk. It's about a food wider than before the start of the day.

We were ignoring most of the outdoor work and were focusing on this inside. We have come to the realization that we are looking at a late winter/early spring move in date. Seriously. So, we decided to make the house not look like an old, abandoned building on the outside (BTW, some of my mail was bounced back from the house because they thought it was abandoned). More yard work will continue tomorrow. We may even bust out the lawn mower (gasp!).

In addition to all of the work today, we had a very cool visit from two ladies..... the Brown sisters that are now in their mid-upper 80's, but grew up in the house (they were the one who drew those cartoons on the walls). They came in and gave us a tour and talked to us about what the house looked like when they were there. Oh, we also gave them the hallpass we found in the wall. It was their sister, Betsy's. They were going to pass it on to her (they said she was in 9th grade, not 4th as we read on the hallpapss). They also told us that the certificate from the Palmer school that we found from 1914 was their aunt's. Pretty cool! Their perspective would have been from the 30's- ish. Here it what we learned:

The front porch was two seperate porches. The house was actually a split house and the two porches represented that (Note: this is not how it likely was originally, just when they bought it).

The area by the front door stopped where you see the step on the immediate left. If you look over by the far left in the back to where you see the window in the background, that was a separate, second porch.

When you walk in the front door and turn to the right where the Kaufman's had the large mirror, there was a door that led into the original front parlor (I'm busting out old pics here to illustrate):

There was a door where that mirror was.... this is the area that had the horrible plaster board under it that was impossible to scrape, seen here:

The area directly to the right of the picture was the door

The door went into the original parlor, which was smaller and wasn't elevated as it is now:


The sister's said elevating this was a mistake, as people often fell on the stair. They did not know there was the set of pocket doors that we uncovered that are still in good shape, but they did use the second set of pocket doors (the ones that are now cut off).

When they lived there, the kitchen was much smaller.


The opening you see here... well, they debated as to whether or not there was a window. Regardless, this was the outside wall and the kitchen stopped at the opening. That area that was built onto the kitchen was a back porch. The door to the apartment which is in the other area of the kitchen, was the outdoor entrance from the back porch into the apartment.

The moldy apartment closet was where the babies would sleep in the crib. Most of the girls lived there for a bit post-marriage. Oh, one of the sisters was also married in our backyard and her dad put the flagstone down that is now buried under ivy:


They also showed us where the apartment staircase that was taken out went upstairs. We don't have a good picture of it, but it went directly into the back hallway upstairs.

When you go upstairs, our gutted master bedroom to be was "mother and daddy's room" as they said. These two ladies shared the room that is attached to it. Their grandpa lived in the back area that the Kaufman's added on to. The laundry room was the maid's room. The flat room off the yellow bedroom that had the spiral staircase and is currently the source of our leak was a small balcony for the yellow bedroom. Overall, the layout hadn't changed too much.

What was interesting is that we thought that the Kaufman's added bathrooms because it was a bed and breakfast. They only bathroom they changed was the tiny one in the upstairs yellow bedroom. This one was a half bath and they made it a full. They also added in a bathroom in the addition. The one under the stairs, etc all existed previously.

The Brown ladies said they would stop by later to see the finished product. That may be awhile....

The one cool thing is that we are thinking of adding in the staircase that was removed. Don't worry, we're not going to start that now.

That's all for today!

Jessica