putting the puzzle pieces back

Today the crew of two is putting the trim back on the windows, upstairs and down.  Set up next to our freezer and washer and dryer is an air pressure pump to power the air nailers.  Set up outside are the saws.  The biggest task was to bring the window frames out a half inch to be flush with the new walls.

insulation goes in next

It looks like ground up newspapers to me, but I'm told it is cellulose.  Anyway, it insulates and saves energy.  The room almost looks pretty after what it's been through.  Ready for drywall.

gutting the back room

The remodeling continues.  The back upstairs room (Sarah's room) had compromised or totally missing insulation and drywall joints damaged by the tiny local earthquake several years ago.  So the thin paneling goes out the window and we wait for the insulation guy who blows it in.  Then drywall covers it all up.  Now I have to rent a trailer and take this junk to waste management.

new cellar doors

In the twenty-five years tending this property,  this is the third new set of outside cellar doors.  This time, instead of a board overlapping the center joint, which both covered the slit and strengthened the right side door, I braced both doors underneath (ouch! those metal 5-foot pieces cost $17 each) and used only an aluminum weather strip to cover the crack between the doors.  And, I added a lifting handle.  Final coat of paint yet to be applied.

new windows

First our house was just a square stone house, a cube if you leveled the roof.  Then a flat-roof addition was added, people guess about  1890.  Then came a porch in the back and then the porch was walled in.  The windows my father put in new in the mid-1950s were rotting.  So new ones go in.  Here's the back one facing west, ripped out, and a day later with the new.

dirt cellar woes

Here's a photo from about 1960 of our place. The original stone house was built after 1825. We know that because it never had a fireplace. The Franklin stove, which made the fireplace unnecessary, arrived in the Monterey area after 1825. So I like to think our 18 inch think stone walls were there since 1835.

It was probably built as a retirement house for the Eby family farm behind it. The addition to the house is a late 19th century wooden structure, circa 1890. The barn was built by my father in 1954, with a little help from me. Much of its timber frame was taken from the previous barn.

The house was also built over a spring. It has been dry since at least 1951 when my parents bought the property, the the hole was always there and serves as a french drain (a plain hole in the ground).

All this to say, that having a 19th century dirt floor in your cellar is very "green," but comes with a bit of a cost. This year we've been aware of two.

1. Is borderline level of radon in the house coming from the earth?

2. If we laid concrete would that solve our rodent problem in the cellar?

Details later.