The Parlor Floor

 After almost 2 years we finally have the parlor floor finished! We began a few weeks ago with rented sanders (2 different kinds), a belt sander, a random orbit sander, a heat gun and a wire brush on a drill all in the attempt to remove 1 layer of latex paint over ancient varnish over the original milk paint. We got 90%+ removed and called it good enough; an 150 year old floor will never look new and we are content with that. I didn't sweat removing all of the milk paint, I'm intrigued by the red floor edges and the green baseboards, it's an old house quirk that I love.

 And then the floor finish, I AGONIZED over it for weeks. I loathe polyurethane, I think it looks fake and we do try to avoid petroleum by-products whenever we can. I really want to keep the house as much as it was when it was built including what finishes they would have had access to so in the end we used raw linseed oil. I researched it and we bought this product, using it avoids the mold issues that linseed oil can have and it's completely organic, an important consideration because really, if you can't eat your floor finish then why use it?  ;)  We applied 2 coats, wiped the excess (there wasn't much) and then let it rest until the wax came. The wax arrived today, we applied it, buffed it and and voila'! My lovely floor. Every year we will need to reapply the wax, but that's an effort that I'm willing to make for such a beautiful end product.

 Should the floor become scratched we just reapply wax in that spot, no fear of lap marks as with polyurethane. If the scratch is deep enough we would apply linseed oil first then wax, so much easier than brush-on products.

Now we can begin to move furniture in that's been sitting on the porch while this project d-r-a-g-g-e-d on and figuring out how to arrange paintings that have been in storage since we bought the house. I'm excited!

In Which We Camp Out In The Living Room

We had decided last year that the drywall in the downstairs bedroom would have to come down, we thought we'd probably put drywall up again but the multiple rotten wallpaper layers should be removed first. And remember that I already had multiple holes blown through the drywall from previous Exploratory Missions. The boys and I began demolition this week, only removing as much drywall as I could finish in a day. Once the drywall is down there are multiple wallpaper layers over a layer of fabric and then below that is the original wallpaper that the Smithsonian dated to 1840. This bottom layer has to be sprayed with a vinegar solution and then scraped, after that it has to be washed several times to get the traces of glue and wallpaper remnants off. The paper had been patched in several places, we removed a patch and you can see how light and pretty it once was.

At the bottom of this paper there are traces of salmon colored paint, which is faintly visible on the trim board as well. Can you imagine what this room looked like 170 years ago?

We had several unexpected discoveries. One was that the boards over which the wallpaper is glued, are hand planed. I'm fascinated by that and loathe to cover it up now.

A partially scrubbed wall

The unscrubbed section

We also decided to remove the one and only closet in the whole house. It takes up an entire end of the room and makes the bed placement really awkward. What we found confirms some of our earlier suspicions that the cabin part of the house was moved here from elsewhere. Behind the drywall/wallpaper layers were boards that didn't match the others, we took one down and discovered a doorway!

Micah looking into the crack where the doorway was.

My theory is that the cabin was moved here in the late 1830s to very early 1840s, instead of lining the doorways up (which would have given the house an odd jog along the outside wall) they cut a new doorway to match the door in the back part of the house. Then they had the hand planed boards added in the bedroom solely so that wallpaper could be laid (I can find no evidence that they were ever painted or sealed in any way). At some later date some of those boards had to be replaced and that's when they put up these whitish boards.

Looking down inside the wall where the doorway was

The right side of the doorway, still with the nails where the jamb boards were attached

When we were scraping the paper we found section after section of intact paper and took various photos of the seam lines (that's what confirms the early date). The paper is 19" wide and 42" long, seemingly little effort was made to run the paper straight up and down, most of the seam lines have a noticeable list to them.

We moved our bed to the living room last night where it will stay until we're done with the walls. Since I don't want to cover the hand planing again I'm tossing around just sealing the boards, or maybe giving them a light paint wash.

The Last of the Plaster (almost)

 Our Memorial Day weekend project was taking down the last of the plaster upstairs. We had one whole bedroom still plastered and the hallway upstairs, I didn't get a whole lot of shots before we started working, but here's the general idea. The hole in the ceiling is where Levi stuck his foot through, he and Micah had to go in the attic to kill all of the red wasps before the real work could commence.

 We tried to save the piece of plaster that this date was written on, Gill cut carefully around it and lifted it out. It just turned to powder in his hands and ran through his fingers.

 Removing plaster has got to be one the the filthiest jobs ever. I'm so glad that we're almost at the end of taking it out.

 After the plaster was on the floor the boys and Gill shoveled it out the upstairs window onto tarps.

The bare walls, that's the clapboard siding that you're seeing.

 A few views of the roof, the rafters aren't pegged as they are in other parts of the house, but there isn't a ridgepole here or anywhere.

When the Thornburghs decided to add onto their home in the 1850s to make it into a Federal style dwelling, what was the outside wall became an interior wall. What you're looking at is the outside of the cabin and a chimney that was on an exterior wall. It now runs through the center of the house. The hole is what was cut so you can access both attics.

This is the chimney on the west side, although it's the newest chimney it's in the roughest condition. We are planning to remove it this summer.

After the plaster and lath were out we washed and washed and washed the floors. And then we washed them some more. :-)

Now onto insulating and then putting up drywall.

Thinking About Lighting

We've taken a hiatus from working on the kitchen for several months, but once the weather warms up a bit more we want to tackle the few remaining projects with a will. I have worked out where every jelly cupboard, pie safe and appliance will go, finally figured out the issue of how to have work space without using modern countertops and am now trying to work out lighting. I want chandeliers that look at peace with the age of the house and the decorating scheme, but don't necessitate an ambulance call when I look at the price tag. For instance, this:

Isn't it lovely? Indeed. And the price tag? $2360.00 This one and the next are from Authentic Designs.

The one above is a more modest $552.00, but still unaffordable.

Then I began looking at the options from Circa 1820 and found several choices that I really like. Such as this one:

It costs $278 and comes in lots of delicious distressed paint combinations.

Or this one above. It is a mere $198. I ordered a print catalog, I really prefer shopping that way and I'm hopeful that just the perfect light will be there. Many of the lights that will go in the rest of the house were either already here or were given to me by my family, so I actually haven't had to spend any money on lighting so far.

RIP Outhouse and a Kitchen Diagram

In the hideously overgrown mass of wilderness edging the yard we found the remnants of the outhouse. Now people such as myself, who have no normal interests, get inordinately excited at thoughts of antiquated human waste receptacles. If you are more well adjusted you might wonder about an entire post dedicated to this topic, so I'll throw in a paragraph at the end about my kitchen diagram to tip the scales toward the more socially acceptable side of life. I've known about the outhouse since we signed on the house in July, it was really hard to get a good look at it though because of the maze old sumac, grape vines and other flora that had completely engulfed it. I just assumed, as with most other things here, that we were looking at the original outhouse dating from the mid 1800s. Once some of the overgrowth was trimmed away it became apparent by looking at the nails that this was not the original necessary. Well...one can't have everything. Since it's in such rough shape I guess we're just going to raze it. Maybe I'll put some raised beds in that spot.

The one seat is still present and has its cover, the other is just a hole.





The kitchen is coming right along and my Thanksgiving estimate seems attainable. Maybe the kitchen won't be finished, but it will be in service anyway with at least a functioning sink and stove. Gill and I went antiquing to try to find something to use for counters and cupboard space and I found a *fabulous* giant corner cupboard. We took the measurements and then came home to see where we could fit it in. We came up with basically nowhere. I decided to make a scale model of the kitchen and little scale cardboard cut-outs of the furniture we have so that I can see how everything will fit before we buy pieces that won't work. Though I did recently read an estimate that it will cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $57,000 to redo a kitchen, so I'm feeling a lot more flippant about blowing a few hundred on furniture that won't end up in our kitchen. :-)

 

Of Freebies and Built In Cabinets

While running to the store today we happened to get behind one of the semis returning from Koch's chicken processing plant. The "bouquet" when they're loaded with birds is awful, and empty is not much better. Gill quickly turned down a side street to escape the smell and there, out with the garbage, I spied something, just a quick glimpse really of something filthy, battered and old. A quick conference and we were racing around the block to see if the "thing" was really trash or a treasure. Gill picked it up and put it in the truck and told me it was an old cabinet, square nailed.

I cleaned it once with trisodium phosphate and Levi has cleaned it several more times. I think it has great potential, Gill thought maybe it should hold spices and hang in the kitchen.

 I *had* toyed with the thoughts of not having any built in cabinets in the kitchen. The idea of an eclectic mix of jelly cupboards, cabinets and bins sort of appeals to me. I could always change my mind later, right?  :-)  And besides, it would be period correct to arrange the kitchen thusly (so I say to convince myself).

 

 



It has an odd looking method of assembly, the above picture is of the top. And the back piece is one solid, albeit cracked, piece of wood 17.5" wide.

 

 

Cleaned up it is much lighter and a lot less reddish than when it was dirty. I'm not sure of the wood (I'm not very good at that) and Gill left for work before it was clean.

 



 

 

It was once bright yellow and possibly grey at a later time. I think maybe we'll just linseed oil it and not repaint it, that way it will mesh perfectly with the rest of my storage menagerie if I do decide to forego a modern kitchen. 

Chapter the Eighth: In Which I Call In An Expert

We had previously, in one of my, hey-let's-start-a-demolition-project-at-bedtime extravaganzas, uncovered the original wallpaper in the downstairs bedroom. This room was created by placing a wall a third of the way across the cabin thereby making 2 rooms. What I believe happened was that for whatever reason they put horizontal boards over the green paneling and then papered directly over that.

 

At some later date they nailed fabric over the wallpaper and then put up another layer of wallpaper and later papered 2 more times and then painted it green and *then* they put up drywall. I have been trying to ascertain when this first wallpaper layer was installed in hopes of it helping us to date the time frame in which the cabin was constructed.

 

 

Historic New England has a fabulous online collection of old wallpaper and the Smithsonian  Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum has a phenomenal collection as well. After looking at tons of examples of wallpaper online I was pretty sure that this paper was fairly old, but I really needed confirmation so.....I called the Smithsonian! I thought "hey what do I have to lose, they'll either be helpful or tell me that peons should direct their questions elsewhere." I spoke with Greg Herringshaw, the assistant curator of wallcoverings and he was so nice and helpful. He had me email him some pictures and sent me this reply:

 

Dear Paris, it is difficult to place a date on patterns like this as they are not really indicative of any style, and have pretty much been 200 years.  That being said, the density of the pigment on the paper pasted to the boards suggests this is a block print. Block-printed papers use very chalky opaque pigments to print, and the colors are printed one on top of another so you get a buildup of colors. Machine-printed colors are much thinner usually allowing you to see through to the color below. If your paper is block-printed I would put its date as 1850 or earlier. Manufacturers started machine-printing around 1840, and this paper with its small design would have been a good candidate for a machine print had it been available at the time of production. I really can't see enough of the other two papers to give you any information. If you happen to get off more of the top layers of wallpaper I would suggest looking for horizontal seams or joins. This would confirm an early production date.

 

I had Micah take off the rest of the drywall above and below the above picture and guess what we found? Horizontal seams! My hunch was correct and this is in fact an early block printed paper. I'm so excited, you'd think I just won the lottery!  :-)

 

The horizontal seam indicating an early wallpaper
 

 This is the response I got from Greg after we sent him pictures of the horizontal seams:

Paris, congratulations! That is a good find. Speaking in general terms, France started making continuous paper by machine around 1820, England around 1830, America around 1840. This transition to machine-made paper did not happen overnight as the machines were expensive. Also, for a while after this the better wallpapers were still printed on handmade paper. I'm just curious, is there a secondary pattern going on behind or around the leaf and floral motifs? These early papers could not be cleaned so the majority of the surface area was covered with some type of pattern to help disguise the dirt. I would guess your paper was produced in America based on its simple design "formula" so could safely date it around 1840.  Greg

 



Chapter the Seventh: Use Primary Sources!

New Market isn't much of a town and though its zenith is long past it has never been historically of much account either. In most histories of East Tennessee it merits a 3 sentence entry in the laundry list of small towns with nothing much to recommend them.

In Historical Background of Jefferson County by J.B. Malone we read: "About 1819 James Tucker opened a house of entertainment ten miles northwest of Dandridge on the stage route from Knoxville to Abingdon, Virginia. The place became known as Tuckertown, and during the next few years a small village grew up in the vicinity. As the town became established it provided a new market for produce and passengers on the stage route and was later given the name of New Market."

In Touring the East Tennessee Backroads by Carolyn Sakowski the same information is repeated: "In 1819, James Tucker started a house of entertainment on the Great Stage Road. The village that developed was known as Tuckertown until a general store opened that sold its wares for anything that was available for barter. People in the area started talking about "the new market" and the name stuck."

So that's the official story, Tucker builds his tavern in 1819 and the area becomes known as Tuckertown and then morphs into New Market as people begin to settle the area. Except that the Jefferson County Court Minutes don't support that story at all. I've been doing the deed research for a few months and have wandered down several interesting rabbit trails, one of which is the history of James Tucker and his tavern. I decided to look at the Minutes book last week and began reading it page by page starting in late 1818.

On Friday March 12, 1819 about 1/3 of the way down the page we read: "James Tucker Jr hath leave to keep an ordinary at his own house in New Market who entered into bond with security for the faithful discharge of his duty therein and took an oath more effectively to prevent gambling." And with that we turn history on its ear. He established the tavern in a place already known as New Market and I have yet to read of any mention of a "Tuckertown", I'm not saying I won't come across it, but I haven't yet.

 I am reminded again why it's so important to go back to the original sources whenever possible and not just repeat the words of another writer/researcher. It takes more time, but in the end we are assured that the facts we are stating are indeed facts and not fantasy.

Chaper the Sixth: Wiring, Lighting and the never ending porch saga

I haven't blogged recently because there isn't much new to report. We did end up removing all existing wiring in the house after uncovering little gems like this.

Scary wiring

When we took down the plaster and lath in the parlor ceiling that's when we discovered that the previous electrician had never really updated the wiring system, they had installed new wiring at the box and then just spliced into the old knob and tube stuff. Beautiful. We have only safe wiring in the house now, so I can stop worrying about burning the house down and fixate on other worrisome things.

light fixture #1

My parents remodeled their house in the 1980s and thankfully saved the original light fixtures. We are going to install one of them in the parlor and the other in the dining room. They are lovely, heavy, brass fixtures with a great patina and I just love them! I can't decide which fixture should go where though.


light fixture #2

Gill and the boys are still working on the porch, instead of a simple floor tear-off and redo it has turned into a gigantic hassle where nothing is square, level or logical at all. It doesn't help that Gill works 7 days a week and has so little time.  :-(   They are progressing, just s-l-o-w-l-y. We're making great strides with the kitchen ceiling, approximately three and a half decades from now we might be ready to tear out the floor and replace it and *then* we can start building the kitchen. I have days where "whoever thought this was a good idea?!?" runs in an endless loop through my brain.

Just a picture of Magdalena (which, we discovered, is a family name on Gill's side!) loving up Levi.

Chapter the Fifth: In Which We Discuss Log Structures

Since our house is partially a log cabin that was then added onto to form a countrified version of a Federal Style house, we decided to remove the plaster and lath in the front hall to reveal the logs. This was an after-supper-hey-let's-start-a-demolition-project-right-before-bed sort of job. We're eventually going to remove the rest of the hallway plaster to expose that whole log wall. The inside cabin dimensions are roughly 20x18, there is a fireplace on the west wall and doors on the north and south sides (the south side door is long since boarded over). There is an upstairs sleeping loft with fireplace and faux grained walls.

To the left is the chimney in what was the outside of the house originally

I learned that in East Tennessee there are basically 3 notch types that were used pre-Civil War, the Saddle Notch, V-Notch and Half Dovetail Notch. These logs are, I believe, the Half Dovetail. You can read about notching here.

a close-up of the notching

The logs are 13"-14" high, but only 6"ish deep, this was a fairly typical way to build these structures, I've been told.

Mid-August Update

We finally, after much agonizing, decided to take down the plaster in the parlor. It needed patching, but was in decent shape overall; the need to insulate and rewire trumped our desire to keep it intact in the end. It took us one short afternoon to tear down what had stood for 130+ years and I still feel remorse about it. Once the plaster and lath were out and we could really see the "bones" of the house we were amazed to see such varied building techniques and a lot of recycled lumber.

Notice the recycled beam in the corner

Removing the plaster gave us a good shot of how plaster keys should look from behind.

Plaster keying from behind

The parlor is definitely not balloon framed as we were told by someone who came to look at the house. It is actually modified post and beam construction.

 

 

 

Gill and the boys also began work on the front porch. They tore off the flooring and are replacing the rotted out sills with treated 4x4s.

 

 



 

 

In researching ways to remove creosote from wood I discovered a fabulous cleaning solution that works better than anything I've ever tried before. Into 2-3 gallons of very warm water you mix 1 cup oxiclean and 2 tablespoons trisodium phosphate. Another bucket should be filled with lukewarm water. Dip your sponge in the chemical bucket and scrub the wall until the sponge is dirty, rinse it in the cooler bucket and repeat until the wall is clean. The results are *seriously* amazing. Need proof? Here you are!