Visitors

Early one morning a couple of weeks ago, Jeff and his sons were working on the roof and an owl landed in the tree right next to the house. The next morning the same thing happened. Gary and I went up to the property at dusk just to see if it was around and there it was in the tree- a barred owl. Then another one. We stayed for about an hour and watched two owls hunting all around the house coming very close to us. We did this for a few evenings. One night about 7 PM we went up to see them and what do you know? They had two babies with them! They were feeding them and teaching them how to hunt all right in front of us. One of the babies was curious and landed on scaffolding next to us and stayed there for about 5 minutes. The babies would emit a high pitched shriek and a parent would come and feed it then the baby would land in the grass and fly off with something he caught. This went on for five evenings and then they were gone. I'm guessing they have to teach them how to hunt in daylight and then they are on their own as we haven't seen them since. It was fantastic to watch. Here are some of the photos we took of these remarkable birds.

Repointing

Jeff gave my husband and I a quick lesson on how to repoint stone but we thought if we wanted to move into the house sometime this century, we should get a professional to do it. Our stone mason, Vince Iacampo (stonemason.org) started yesterday. My son Brad spent two weeks with his friend John jackhammering the old mortar off before he went back to Colorado. I hope it comes out good because if it doesn't, I'm pretty sure Brad will come back and kill us all.

Up on the roof

The chimneys are finally going up. We have stayed as close as possible to the original design but with a bluestone cap. The brick we picked out is Robinson - Cambridge and we are using JM Construction. As you can see from the photo below, Jim likes to live on the edge.


Here is the almost completed chimney. There is one more to build.

More sand blasting was done on Sunday. The cherry picker we rented is something no family should be without.


This is the future dining room wall with some of the plaster jackhammered off.


This is the same wall completely uncovered and sandblasted.

Bobcat!

In a previous post, I mentioned we had seen bobcat tracks in the snow on our property. We were able to find it's den (deer legs and lots of deer hair in the opening of hollowed out apple tree). We were determined to get a photo of it so my husband spent two hundred dollars on a critter cam which has a motion detector. We mounted it on a tree opposite the den and in a couple of days the camera had taken twenty-four photos. We ran home and downloaded the photos on our computer. Here, for the very first time, is our bobcat:
Two hundred dollars for a lousy groundhog.

Here he is mugging for the camera:


We took the camera down after he fell out of the tree. It was just too humiliating for all of us.

Headaches and sudden stops

The new roof is going up and causing major headaches for Jeff. The building is slightly out of square so every rafter has to be cut individually. It's 100 degrees and humid. Some of the original rafters in the attic are charred. They must have had some wild chimney fires. Thunderstorms are threatening. The engaged dormers in the front had to be changed a little and we decided to put more elegant windows in them now that the stone work on the outside looks much, much better. Thanks, Brad and John. We've also decided to put an eyebrow window in the living room ceiling - something I've always wanted. Building can be hazardous to your health as Jarrison can attest. He was walking up the staircase to the third floor holding two big boxes of nails and was almost on the top step when the stairs collapsed. Luckily, they hit a ledge on the second floor and Jarrison didn't end up in the basement. It must have been a wild ride but there was the inevitable sudden stop. He thought his ankle was broken but fortunately, it was only a bad sprain. He was back to work in a few days. We have kept all the chestnut rafters in the barn and will do something with them in the future. I've included a picture of the barn.

A new face

While the roof was still being worked on, Brad said he felt the mortar on the outside of the house had to be removed and better yet, he would do it. This was an enormous undertaking as the house had been over mortared and only some of the stone was showing through. Of course, when Brad and his friend John (a fellow WVU grad) started working on the jackhammering the heat wave hit. It was almost 100 degrees every day. They removed all the mortar from the entire house. The difference can be seen in the photo of the side of the house. Now all we have to do is repoint all the outside walls. Simple.

Terror in the attic

Jason (why is it always Jason?) ventured up to the attic once more to confront what ever animal attacked him last time. He reached up and took down a large box and out it came. This is a six inch long flying squirrel - don't be fooled by his appearance - he is able to make grown men jump from attics. Actually, about six were in the box and one ran up Jarrison's leg and we were all running around trying to catch them. Jason caught one and was going towards the window to throw him out and I said "Don't throw him out the window!" He said "I thought you said they could fly?!" "They glide! They don't have wings!". I had never seen a flying squirrel before. They are adorable but you don't want them in your attic.

More demolition

With the outside taken down the builder, Jeff and his sons Jason and Jarrison, headed upstairs to the attic. These are brave souls, indeed. I guess Jason drew the short straw and climbed up in the dark. In about 30 seconds we heard shouting and Jason jumped from the attic onto the attic stairs, broke those and I'm sure set some sort of speed record. He had been attacked by a semi large animal. Of course, all the guys were laughing but no one else went up there that day. A few days later, studs were up (after leveling a four inch difference in the attic deck), beams were added to stop the inch flex in the floor of the upper bedroom which would have ripped open the seams in the sheetrock ceiling below. Jeff marveled how straight the walls were in a stone house built so long ago. It was time for the roof. When the wood was taken off the ceiling of the closets in the upper bedrooms, it revealed a slate roof with original rafters of chestnut that were 30 inches on center. Again, Jeff marveled ( Jeff is doing a lot of marveling and not always in a good way) that it had just sagged under the weight and hadn't collapsed. On top of the stone on the front and back sides of the house were chestnut beams 14 inches wide, 8 inches thick and 36 feet long on which the roof was anchored. It was amazing that that long ago men cut down a chestnut tree that tall and wide and hand hewed two beams and then hoisted them up thirty feet to set them. No lumber yards - you want a beam you go out and find a tree and then make one. A small section of one of the beams had to be removed because of rot due to a leak. My son Brad tried to cut it with a chainsaw and in a few minutes, the blade was shot. Jeff went through 4 new sawsall blades before he finally cut through it. The loss of the American Chestnut was a real tragedy. It was used to build everything, the nuts sustained families and livestock and it was incredibly beautiful in the spring with huge creamy-white blossoms. Three billion trees died from the blight and only a few are left today.

Here are a few more demo photos.

Spring at last

Finally, winter broke and our house plans were finished. Permits were issued and it was time to demolish the additions! We received bids on the demo from $6,000.00 to $24,000.00. We decided to have Jeff do the demo since he planned to do it by hand to save the beams and some of the windows and not damage the stone. Not to worry - the addition on the side was never attached to the house it was just built next to it! There was a lot of rot since the flat roof in the kitchen had been leaking for some time. An old stone wall was found underneath the siding in the back but was in terrible shape. The sheetrock on the ceilings in the original stone house came down and revealed insulation that was full of mice and the things mice do. The smell was terrible. We took down the sheetrock from the interior walls and found aluminum wiring and more stinky insulation. To solve the problems of how to get new wiring and duct work into the stone house, we decided to stud out the interior walls. Much easier than going through stone so we are actually building a house within a house.

Snowbound

It snowed quite a bit last winter - here is a picture of the house in February.  The old Studebaker belongs to the sandblaster.  Investigating the back fields, we found what appeared to be bobcat tracks in the snow.  We followed them to an old hollowed out apple tree in one of the stone rows.