Chim-Chiminey, Chim-Chiminey, Chim-Chim-Cheree

One of the very first projects we anticipated when we bought the farmhouse was taking down the extra chimney. From what we could tell, it maybe wasn't in great shape, and more importantly, it served absolutely no purpose.

The chimney on the left is purely decorative

At one point, the chimney may have served a cookstove in the kitchen, and we know that it once served the wood burner that's still in the house. But prior to our ownership, the wood burner got moved to the dining room and got a new chimney (which featured in its own blog post last fall). To keep the chimney from collapsing into the house, the previous owner decided to just put in a small closet, which is clearly to code.

We almost did this project last summer, but the threat of rain coupled with some indecision about exactly HOW we were going to get up there and remove the chimney when the roof is fairly steep and also you can't step on it because you'll crack the tiles. That meant that by THIS summer, we'd had a full year to prepare our game plan and gather supplies.

And it turns out... that actually paid off.

First, we got ladder hooks, which are pretty much what they sound like -- they attach to the ladder and allow it to slide up the roof and hook over the ridge, distributing the weight of the ladder. Like so.

Testing the ladder hooks

Then my father brought up ladder jacks, which look like they should be used as bear traps or something, but actually attach to the ladder and allow you to set boards across the two ladders to make a flat, stable platform. For added safety, we had harnesses tied off to the bucket van. So from there, dad and I were able to spend a morning up on the roof, trying to gently take out the chimney without dropping bricks or loose mortar onto the roof tiles. Chris took the hard job of trudging up and down ladders all day to haul down the bricks and mortar we removed.

The actual taking down of the chimney was not significantly harder than playing Jenga. A fairly light tap with a hammer was enough to loosen up most of the chimney, and bricks came out with basically no effort.

By the time we were reaching through the roof into the attic, however, the whole chimney was swaying significantly every time you touched it. That didn't seem great, since we didn't really want to knock down ten feet of chimney into the attic. When we regrouped inside for further demo, Chris and Dad rigged up a couple boards to brace the chimney a bit... and then the rest of the chimney was also super loose and in about the same amount of time it took to measure, find boards, and screw in the braces, they'd taken down the chimney past the point where the braces were helpful.

Good-bye, chimney.

Soon enough, we were finding the tools that had been dropped down the chimney earlier, shockingly well-preserved bird skeletons, and a lot of years of soot and dust and dirt and general nastiness that had to get scooped out. But eventually, we reached the kitchen!

Yes, this is the "closet" that was supporting the chimney.

I'm standing in the kitchen, looking up to the hole in my roof.

So then the chimney was gone, and we were left with a hole in the roof, which is the downside to removing a chimney. Fortunately, this was easily remedied.

No more skylight!

This was the point where we decided to be smart and let this be a two-day project. The next day, we were sore, but back at it. After a little aerial YouTubing, we figured out how to use a slate ripper, which is a tool that looks like it's not going to do anything, but somehow manages to slip up between roof tiles and rip out the nails so you can remove a tile without having to remove every single tile that overlaps it. Then we set about taking out the partial tiles, installing new tiles... and fixing the tiles we accidentally broke with the ladder. Oops.

New tiles!

Finally, it was time to splice in some new metal over the ridge, re-attach the lightening rod assembly, and ta-da! -- a totally fixed up roof!

Roof, now with less chimney!

From up close, it's pretty obvious which tiles are the new ones, but from the ground, it's like the whole chimney never even happened.

No chimney!

All in all, this was one of the more rewarding projects. Once we took the chimney down in the attic, for instance, we were able to get in and finish up the insulation project from the last post. Having the chimney out is also going to let us (hopefully yet this fall/winter??) move ahead with putting a wall back in between the kitchen and dining room. So I guess the "reward" here is more projects, but it still felt really good to get this big one done.

Final 2018 Projects?

Well, 2018 wasn't quite as productive a year as we might have hoped, but we had another good push on projects here in the 11th hour. Now that we have heat, December was actually a little project marathon.

First, we wanted to keep all that lovely heat inside. Most of the windows have storms, but a few didn't, so Chris built new storms for those. We also moved the storm door that was previously on the (modern) door between the kitchen and the lean-to out to be on the (original) door into the parlor; Chris also added plexiglass to the dining room screen door for some additional insulation.

              

Probably the biggest end-of-year project was painting the parlor. It was covered in wood paneling, which over the years had taken on a decidedly greenish tinge. Plus, we'd patched in a fairly large section where the front window no longer existed, and that paneling was darker and less green, so the whole thing was looking a bit shabby.

This took forever (ok, it took basically one full day) because of all the trim and because we had to brush every single groove in the paneling where the roller wouldn't reach. In the end, though, the room looks so much brighter and fresher!

Also, we put up some Christmas decor. Because Christmas.

The TV is sitting on an impromptu project -- it used to be on a rickety folding tray that was barely big enough to support it, and we'd picked up this old radio cabinet at an auction way back when we bought the farm. It's been sitting in the lean-to ever since, but Chris got a quick coat of polyurethane on it, and now it's all shiny and doing its job holding up the television (and providing a little much-needed storage). 

The next day, we had dueling dining room projects: I was patching the plaster, and Chris was turning the wood burner so it didn't stick out into the room so much. As you might expect, both of those seemed like they were going to be quicker projects than they really turned out to be. But we did get an unexpected bonus -- behind the wood burner, covered by the protective mat, we discovered another heat register!

As you'll see in the pictures, we did even a bit more -- on Boxing Day, my family came up to spend a day just hanging out at the farm, so Chris and I went up early and set up the dining room table. This had been the table and chairs from our house, which we replaced... a year or so ago?... and have had sitting around waiting for the dining room at the farm to be ready for them.

Wood stove in progress and completed...

         

Patching in progress and (mostly) completed...

       

We may still make it up there one more time before it's technically 2019. There's hope that the dining room might get primed yet this year. But basically, it's looking like the end of projects for 2018.

Here's hoping that 2019 brings

• A completed chimney removal, roof repair, and wall (re-)instillation in the space between the dining room and kitchen
• An end to the upstairs bedroom project that was literally one of the very first things we started
• More project wrap ups
• Less bats

Curb Appeal: We Have It (Now)

So, when last I was posting, I believe the exterior of the farmhouse looked about like this:

Already better than when we bought it.

Since then, a LOT of things have been done to the outside of the house, and I have to say, it's looking pretty darn spiffy. For one, my dad painted us a faux-window to even out the visual balance of the big window into the parlor.

Symmetry. It's a good thing.

We also got the weird bit of siding over the front porch primed and painted so it would match better with the actual siding.

We also got the lean-to painted to match, and repainted the trim. But the biggest improvement is that my dad rebuilt the porch steps, using the old stones to create new pillars. It was a huge job -- the old steps had to be broken up with a jackhammer, and there was a LOT of debris to clear away -- but the result makes an amazing difference.

So nice!

That sidewalk was an unexpected bonus -- while he was clearing out the porch debris, my dad uncovered the pad at the bottom of the steps. It looked like it kind of disappeared into the grass, and after a lot of digging, Chris discovered a sidewalk that goes all the way around to the lean-to!

Just recently, we were at work on the porch again, but this time, we were just cleaning. Cleaning the cedar siding along the back wall of the porch had probably last been done... never. So just a little elbow grease made a visible difference.

Unwashed on top. Washed on bottom. Yes, that's a backward way to clean.

This past weekend was sunny and warm, with no rain in the immediate forecast (it's been a surprisingly rainy summer this year), so we were able to get out and seal the wood -- the walls and the new steps and the porch swing -- and the masonry, which will hopefully help protect the mortar against future weathering.

It's like a real house!

We're pretty pleased with how things are looking -- and so are the neighbors. We've had a lot of comments about the snazzy new porch steps, and everyone agrees it looks a lot less like an abandoned, haunted house than when we first bought it.

That Time I Didn't Die

The best thing we have purchased for this farm so far is a bucket van.

It's a van. With a bucket.

We thought the bucket van would be a much safer alternative to a ladder when it was time to work on high up places, like the roof, or a chimney, or any of the second-floor-level exterior siding and windows. And it is.

The first thing you should know about the bucket van is that it's pretty fun. Ok, my sister didn't think so, and I'm pretty sure that Chris places it squarely between "better than a ladder" and "not nearly as good as solid ground." But I think it's fun to ride in.

This next photo was taken just before I probably would have gone to the emergency room if not for the bucket van.

But everything looks so calm...

See those two pieces of siding right below my crowbar? Under that siding was bats. I took off one piece of siding, and a little bat was staring at me like "hey, there used to be a roof over my head..." and then it flew away. Then I pried up the next piece of siding... and seriously about seven bats dropped out and zoomed away. And when bats suddenly come whooshing out of your siding... you jump.

Had I been up on a ladder, I am quite certain I would have jumped two stories down. In the lovely bucket van, though, I jumped about a foot, which brought me to the other side of the bucket, safely enclosed by the high sides.

Have I mentioned I really like this van?

Not only did the bucket lift help keep me safe, but it allowed us to make pretty short work of the rest of the siding on this end of the house. Just three more sides to go!

This Place is a Dump; or, What's Under That? Lawn Edition

So, one day, Chris asked me to fill up some buckets from an ash pile out in the lawn so that we could use the ash to fill in some holes elsewhere in the lawn. Yes, the lawn is incredibly uneven.

I started to dig... and it quickly turned out that this was not just an ash pile. It was a burn pile. As in, the place where previous owners dumped their garbage and then burned it, either in the days before or as a free alternative to municipal trash service.

The thing is that those previous owners didn't just put things in the pile that would actually burn. For instance, glass. I filled about two five-gallon buckets with broken pieces of glass, and that's only digging down about 3 - 4 inches in a space about the size of a twin bed.

And speaking of beds...

I also pulled out a boxspring? mattress? one excrutiating coil at a time, including at least two times when we had to hook a loop of metal coil over the hitch of the truck in order to pull it out from the ground.

This past weekend, Chris finally (and bravely) took a rototiller to that area, which -- in addition to evening the ground out quite a bit -- turned up even more broken glass and a few more coils of bed. Guess we'll be embarking on another archeological dig through the recent past soon. At least we don't have to come home, carefully wash it all, and then try to reassemble all the pieces in order to learn about the previous occupants...

What's Under That? Siding Edition

I'll be the first to admit that the exterior of the house looks... weathered. Or, as our niece said, like a haunted house.

It's a bit gray. Gray is the new black, right?

We knew the siding would have to go. For one, it's gone unpainted for so long that I'm pretty sure it wouldn't really accept a coat of paint. For two, we already had a pretty good idea of what was under it... wasps. Lots and lots of wasps, building their nests in between the top layer of siding and the layer underneath it.

So, on the first nice day of spring, the Great Waspicide of 2017 began. The good part was that they were very, very sleepy wasps. Basically, I'd pull off a piece of siding -- with my hands, because it's really at the falls-apart-if-you-tug-on-it stage -- and then use the pry bar -- and, ok, often just my gloved fingers -- to squish all the wasps. They just sat there and took it.

The lean-to has been the easiest part. Under the hard board siding is a layer of real wood siding, which has now been entirely uncovered and de-wasped, and which after some scraping and cleaning, should be ready to get painted something less pink.

Calling it "cotton candy" instead of "Pepto Bismal" doesn't really improve things.

The main house is harder. Mostly, that's because a whole lot more of it is way above our heads, which so far has meant one person on a ladder removing siding, and the other person on the ground, holding the ladder. This makes for pretty slow going, as it involves a lot of going up and down and moving the ladder around. It's also slow because apparently the one weather feature we can count on up there is wind, which doesn't really inspire one to get up on a ladder to tug at siding.

At this point, we've pretty well decided that there's some bucket lift rental in our near future. But even with just two of us and a ladder, we've achieved almost one side of the house. Ok, it's the smallest side, but still.

This is far less pink than expected.

This new layer of siding is made of asphalt, so it's basically like roof shingles, but as siding. We've been patching up holes as we go, but we're still not sure what we'll do as a final step. We'll probably at least see if this can be primed and painted. From what I've seen, I'm not super hopefully, but I've been wrong before. In the meantime, there's still siding to remove and wasps to murder.

What's Under That? Dining Room Walls Edition

Just because I haven't been posting, it doesn't mean that no work has been getting done. In fact, it's finally warming up a bit here in Michigan, so we can open up the windows and finally get the farmhouse cleaned up!

One project that's been ongoing for quite awhile has been the back wall of the dining room. When we bought the house, that wall had some faux brick right behind the wood burner, with wood paneling on either side. The wood paneling could have been worse, but still.

The paneling in question is over on the left, popping up behind the wood burner.

It was, apparently, so nondescript that we didn't even get a good "before" picture. Alas. But then one day, Chris asked The Question... "should we see what's under that?"

Good question. The answer? Kind of a hot mess, actually.

Here's what you're seeing. The brown dots are leftover adhesive that was doing a no-longer-especially-good job of holding on the paneling. The yellow is a skim coat of plaster that had been put on over two layers of wallpaper (the main layer is the kind of blue-gray color) because apparently plastering over wallpaper is a thing?

Also, while we're talking about the dining room, let's take a moment to remember the weird partial wall between the dining room and the kitchen. That bit in the middle by the step-stool is a closet, and above it is the chimney that's getting removed eventually.

Even more paneling. How lovely.

There were two main jobs here: popping the paneling off the divider walls, and scraping the plaster off the wallpaper (and, as a related job, removing whatever wallpaper got left behind). One of these was significantly easier than the other.

Almost one big room!

If you guessed the paneling was the easy one, you're absolutely right. The plaster scraping was tedious. One the right side of the wood burner, at least some of it came down fairly easily; on the left, that stuff did not want to go.

In the end, we finally got it scraped away, and these warmer days have made it possible to goo up the walls with some wallpaper remover to strip off the final remaining layers of paper and paste, so we're finally just left with the plaster.

Ta-da!

You can see what we think might be the shadow of an old picture rail there at the top, and hopefully when we get things all squared away with the walls, there will be one again. Due to the paneling, the baseboard is missing on this wall, so that will need to be replaced, too. But for now, we have at least one clean slate to work with!

And, because I really did like it, one final salute to the original wallpaper from that wall.