Catching Up

My computer has been offline for a good week, so even though lots has happened on 62nd Street, not much has happened here on the blog.

The biggest issue was the rain. As soon as we got the first floor situated under the second, it started raining, and rained pretty much every day. Eric and his crew got in a couple days of work on the foundation, but it wasn't until last week that the rains finally broke. The last week has been sunny and clear.

So the foundation is going in, and the house should be set down on the new foundation in the next two weeks. Eric and his crew poured the new footings last week, and they are working on the forms for the foundation this week. After they pour the foundation, they'll build the walls of the basement, and then Phil will return to set the house down, and then lower the second floor back onto the first floor.

We've also been working inside, doing lots of clean up and organizing. We tore down the furring strips in the kitchen (that held the old suspended ceiling) and all the wallpaper in the kitchen and dining room. The wallpaper was easy to remove, but it was holding water against the plaster - so now the walls are drying out, and we can see how the rooms will need to be repaired.

I spent yesterday on my hands and knees, pulling carpet tacks out of the stairs. The stairs got a lot of rain on them, having no ceiling above them, but since they were painted at some point, the paint protected the wood. Now they're cleaned up and ready to be sanded and varnished, once the house is enclosed.

We also took the stair railings back to Parker Street (the railings that were removed when the second floor was removed) and stripped them. The paint comes off pretty easily, and underneath, the railings are beautiful fir with a shellac finish. We're pretty committed to stripping all the paint in the living room and dining room - a huge job, but the wood is beautiful and it should make the house really shine.

We've also been sorting all the pieces of the house. The front porch pieces are in the dining room, and much of the exterior stickwork, as well as the second floor trim, is in the living room. Other upcoming jobs include replacing the inappropriate front door with one of the doors from the Cheney's house (we asked Noel to save the front and back doors before they demolished the house), fixing broken windows, and doing more clean up.

The site is drying out, the mud is mostly gone, and we're seeing real progress. Now that the move is over, things are moving along.