The porch steps are a great place to display Halloween pumpkins.

Our first Halloween at the new house! Amelia was dressed up as Amelia Bedelia, complete with a blue hat with roses, and she had a great time going our trick-or-treating (she was a little afraid of the "scary monsters" at first, but then she enjoyed giving them candy). There were TONS of kids out in the neighborhood and some great Halloween displays!

Here is an original doorknob and plate from the third floor. The original door hardware on the second floor bedrooms was removed and replaced with new brass doorknobs with locks. We are going to take the new ones out and put back something close to the original shown above. Hopefully an architectural salvage place will have something like this.

There are several types of original door hardware in the house. Here is a doorknob and plate assembly that is typical for the first floor (where all the original hardware is still in place). As is the case with other aspects of the house, the details are most elaborate and formal in the "public" areas on the first floor.

Amelia decided that she wants a green room. We tried two different colors of green and settled on the lighter shade shown in the middle.

Amelia and I went down to a paint store in Wakefield last weekend (Melrose Paint and Decorating Center) to get paint samples- it's the closest place to Lawrence that carries Pittsburgh Pure Performance Paints, which are zero-VOC, low odor, Green Seal Class A certified and offer great color options. Amelia experimented with red for the master bedroom, but we decided to use the lighter "sand fossil" color shown on the upper right.

Here is a current view of the exterior, after the black plastic shutters were removed from all of the windows and the (non-historic) balustrades were removed from the porch deck and roof. Now the original porch looks much more elegant and we can begin to think about exterior paint colors.

Here is the roof in progress- you can see the difference between the old black roof on the left and the new brown roof on the right. The contractors are also doing a lot of carpentry work, including new red cedar shingles on the dormers.

Fortunately the beautiful stained glass windows on the staircase landing were in nearly perfect condition when we bought the house. They look like an early arts and crafts style design, consistent with the staircase details and the four-square plan of the house.

AFTER: Here it is with new blueboard, ready for skimcoat plastering.

BEFORE: The house needed a lot of new plaster work, including the ceiling above the staircase landing (shown here). There was some water damage from earlier roof leaks, as well as cracking and flaking on the original ceilings.

AFTER: Here is the view from the alcove into the hall, with the old door frame completely opened up. We are going to put in a french door to provide a bit of privacy and still let plenty of light into the hallway.

AFTER: Here is an image of the alcove showing the extent of the mural, as well as the original framed opening behind the old shower stall- confirming that room used to open directly to the hallway as we suspected.

BEFORE: Here is a view of the alcove (which had been partially converted into a master bathroom with an odd half-size tub) before we started demolition and discovered the Dutch landscape hiding behind the walls!

This face looks like it might be a piece of pop art. Can anyone help us find similar cartoons?

Look what we found behind the walls of the former master bath...

Emery Terrace Neighborhood Plan 1906

Ninety Nesmith is lot 48 on the plan for the Emery Terrace neighborhood. Is the 1906 date on the plan a the lower bound on the date the house was built? The MLS record has a slightly older date of 1900.

Bruce's mom found an intriguing drawing and plans of a house almost exactly like ours in an old book about farming. It looks almost identical except for the porch, and the interior plan is flipped. We're going to try and find historic photos of our house to see what it looked like originally.

Glen on the roof

Here is a picture of Glen taking measurements on the roof- Fred (our GC) took the photo taken from the lift, which is parked in the driveway right now- Amelia calls it "the big truck".

We did it! Got our building permit on Wednesday. The process was easy and quick, so now we're ready to start the roofing. I chose a dark brown, three-tab shingle made by IKO called "Heatherwood". I've been looking at roofs all over the place recently, and black/gray roofs look great with cool exterior tones (blue/grey) but they don't work well with rich, warm tones (brown/tan/ochre) which is likely what we will use. So, the roofing will start on Monday-- hooray! It should take about three weeks to complete. It's clear that we won't be able to move in until November what with all of the interior work as well, but it will be worth waiting.

I'm heading over to City Hall for a building permit today so we can get the work started. Hopefully we can get the roofing work underway this week!

The first before and after

The first renovation was to remove the shutters from either side of the front entrance.    Amelia approves.