A Weekend at the Zeller House, Always Worth the Trip!

The first and only storm so far this winter came on Valentine's day. We didn't worry about travel, because my parents weren't scheduled to come out until the weekend. My dad had plans to come out Friday afternoon; my mom, early on Saturday morning. After changing his plans to come on I-80, because of what can only be called negligence on the part of PEN DOT, he re-routed to the Pennsylvania Turnpike. When an truck carrying hazardous chemicals overturned on the turnpike, it turned his trip from five instead of three hours to nine hours! Just twenty miles east of Harrisburg at 3pm on Friday afternoon, it took him six hours of back roads driving to reach us here at nine that evening. Ryan and I went out to stock up on Martini supplies and when my dad finally arrived we welcomed him with a Martini and some dinner we'd kept warm for him. After my dad's Friday drive, I wasn't even sure that my mom should attempt the trip, but she got on the road by 7am on Saturday morning and taking the turnpike as well, because 80 was still closed, she arrived in town before noon.

While I was at work, Ryan and my dad continued the work that Ryan had started, reinforcing the old roof rafters and then cutting out the existing ceiling joists to create a vaulted ceiling in the pre-existing part of the master-bedroom. I met my mom after work and we headed over to tour the house. When my Mom and I arrived at the Zeller House, Ryan was showing around a local couple who Ryan will be working with on a green renovation of their house just down the street. My dad had already taken in the grand tour, so I showed my mom around. Remember, they have not seen the house, besides what they have read on this blog and looked at in the photo gallery, since September 10th. Of course Ryan and I see the dramatic changes, but I'm sure it's even more shocking and exciting if you are just now getting a look at the first six months of work! Wow, has it really be six months already?

We headed out for a late lunch and by the time we finished up it didn't make sense to get all suited up for any more work that day, plus Ryan had to run out and by a new compressor after the one he had been using essentially self-destructed for the second time this year! We took in a hearty breakfast on Sunday morning and bundled up for a day of work. Actually temperature in the high 20's felt almost tropical after the single digits we'd been experiencing. Ryan and my dad continued work on the master-bedroom ceiling, while my Mom and I set to work taking down the second floor of what had been the back wall of the house. Now, of course, the second floor of the back addition is now the back of the house, but for structural reasons the existing back wall had remained up. The bricks slid out with ease after a few taps with a small mallet. My mom and I got a good system going. I was up on the ladder removing bricks then I would hand them down to her, she would put them in buckets and then once the buckets were full we would drag them over to the edge of the master-bedroom deck and hurl them into the backyard. We created quite a pile that I look forward to carrying out front to a dumpster sometime soon!

We made pretty quick work of the wall, even taking out the two windows that had previously looked out onto the backyard. When the wall was down to the level of the second floor, we all really got a sense for the first time of the space that the master-bedroom will inhabit. Ryan and my dad finished up the ceiling and we all moved downstairs to take apart the chimney on the south end of the front room. If you remember, we decided to keep one of the front-room fireplaces and chose the one on the north side both because we plan to make that the living room and because the one on the south side was pretty much unable to be salvaged. With the bricks piling up in the backyard, we stopped work and spent some time cleaning up the debris we had created with all the brick removal. At that point we decided to quit while we were ahead and call it a day.

As you can see from the pictures, we managed to have some fun at work. It was great to finally have my parents here giving us a hand at the house and my dad even pledges to return to help out again. We're waiting....and we're waiting for the siblings, Ryan's sister Lauren and my brother Alec have yet to see the project. Don't worry, we've got plenty of work for you guys anytime you're in the neighborhood!

Well, it looks like I didn't manage to find time to write about last weekend until this weekend, so I'll fill you in on the past week as well. The big project this week was the basement stairs. They were too steep and each stair was too narrow, so Ryan set to work with a jackhammer to make room to build some new and less precarious stairs into the basement. Three jackhammers, a very sore back and a handful of choice words later, the necessary concrete was extracted and a new set of stairs was erected along with the frame of the stairwell that will lead through a door in the mudroom down to the basement. The window order is now final. We went with the Marvin windows and it turns out that we got a great deal and the cost is still under what we budgeted for windows. The Marvin's offer both high efficiency glass as well as fiberglass frames, the newest, most efficient frames on the market! Because the sizes of some of the Marvin windows are not what we originally planned on, Ryan set to work altering the necessary openings. We found out that those house anchors that we need to put in in order to secure the exterior walls of the house from bowing further are available locally, so we can save the gas that we thought we'd use getting them in Philly. Arriving in the mail this week was an exciting green product that we are going to use to strip the paint from the brick in the mudroom, so that we can have beautiful, exposed brick walls there. The product is a soy-based product called Soy-gel that is made from American grown soybeans. It is odorless and no sanding is required. Paint-removers are often some of the most hazardous products you can use for the person working with the substance, the air, and the runoff when it is washed away.