Rebuilding From the Underground Up

Ryan started the second week of November in the backyard. We don't actually have many trees on our property, but our neighbors Bonnie and Art have a quite a few in their yard that like to grown into ours. Most the trees are the hearty Mulberry variety, which if you know Mulberry's, you know how quickly they can become unruly. So the Mulberry branches had wound their way into our yard, even wrapping around electrical lines. We also have a large rhododendron by the garage that had long since passed the point of control. Ryan wanted to tidy up the yard before the first snow and start the spring with a clean slate as far as landscaping goes. We actually don't plan to do anything extravagant with the yard. We do have plans for a deck, but would like to keep the yard fairly simple besides. One thing we're not sure about is what we want /will be able to do with the cement structure that we found out was a fish pond in the past. It's poured concrete and appears to be quite solid and unlikely to give up easily, so we'll have to see about that come spring.

With some branches and shrubs already down from work that we did earlier, Ryan rented a chainsaw and chipper and decided to finish off the job. He had hoped to have the rentals back by 1:30pm the same day he rented them to get back some money, but by noon it was clear that the project was going to be a day-long event. When he left that house that morning, he was excited to play with his rented "toys," but by the time I stopped by the house on my way to work, the novelty had worn off and the battle with the chipper had begun. Apparently, the chipper doesn't do all the work and there's quite a fight that occurs just trying to get the brush through so that it can become mulch. It was a long day, but the backyard looks large and neat and ready for the winter.

As I mentioned in my last posting, Ryan started taking down the left chimney in the front room that proved to be even more unstable that we had guessed. We are thinking about possibly leaving some of it to incorporate into built-in shelving on that side of the room. It would be an interesting look, but we're not sure yet if we like it. For the time being, that part of the chimney will stay.

On Tuesday night Ryan was finally able to attend the HARB (historic architectural review board) meeting. We had been warned by numerous people about difficulty with the board and obtaining approval from them and were nervous that they might be a roadblock in our plans. After all that build-up, Ryan met with the board for all of five minutes and they quickly approved our plans. Like many problems, it seems that we are able to avoid any issues with the board by presenting our plans clearly and professionally. Ryan reported that they were glad to see someone working on the house and appreciated our well put together proposal.

On Thursday and Friday Ryan prepared the foundation for "man weekend" by cleaning out the mortar joints of the stone foundation with a wire brush and pointing tools and an air brush. A while back I wrote about pointing in relation to a description of the brick work in the house. The foundation is made of bluestone in varying sizes and besides a few patch jobs it has not been touched since the house was built. Ryan needed to clean-out the old disintegrating mortar and get the walls ready to be reinforced with new mortar. Pointing itself refers specifically to packing in the mortar. The process/method is usually referred to as tuck and point, which is sort of an all encompassing term, but the tuck describes applying the mortar and point refers to adjusting it and packing it into the crevices between the stone. As we start the rebuilding process, the foundation is the first and most important piece of the puzzle. The crevices between the stone have to be tightly packed with mortar to stabalize the foundation and make sure that it's prepared to last another 150 years.

Late Friday night our friends Mark (you may remember him from September entries when he was here with his wife Kate) and Pete, another of Ryan's roommates from college, arrived in town from Boston. We are very appreciative that they were able to take time out of their busy work schedules to come down and hang out and do some work. I had to work Saturday morning, but the boys headed over to the house to begin re-pointing the foundation. I arrived after lunch to join the party. The work is not physically demanding besides an ache in the arm form working the mortar into the crevices. It's fairly mindless work that at the same time must be done with attention to detail. I followed Ryan, Mark, and Pete with a wet sponge which I used to smooth the mortar that had been applied so that when Ryan paints over the walls, the waterproofing sealer will go on smoothly and easily. Sera, one of my coworkers stopped by to lend a hand later in the afternoon and we had a quite a crew going by the end of the day. Since we had joined the work so much later, Sera and I were still in the groove of work when we ended around 5:30, but Ryan, Mark, and Pete were loosing focus and spending more time sipping beers than mixing mortar by days end as the task became tiring. We got the large room done, but Ryan will have to tackle the back room of the basement this week before Thanksgiving.

It was great to see some friends and it continues to be amazing how willing our friends are to help us out with this project. It's exciting to think about how many people will have had a hand in the restoration of the Zeller house by the time the project is completed!