Coming Home.....

When we purchased our home I already knew this was my husbands old pediatricians home, my husband grew up down the road from here, talk about going full circle. His pediatricians name was Margaret Reynolds and she had moved up here from New York City just like my husband and I did but she moved up here to retire. Since there wasn’t a children’s doctor around these parts some of the townsfolk got together and talked her into going back into practice. I know this story from some of the townspeople who knew her. Margaret lived in this great big old house alone for over forty years and after passing her ashes were buried in our backyard on our raised tier where she still resides.

Margaret loved this house from the stories people told me and never wanted to leave, probably why she wanted her ashes to rest here. One day about a year after mister man and I moved in we were in another town antiquing. We stopped at a small run down shop out of curiosity, the place was a mess with box after box of old papers and whatnot piled on top of each other with barely room to walk. Turns out this shop owner was the one who cleaned out Margaret’s home after she passed and sold most everything and that’s when mister man started hitting me in the arm. There, laying on top of a bunch of old papers in a box was of all things…. Margaret’s Medical license issued in 1948. The gentleman, after hearing our story, was kind enough to just give us the license. We brought it home where it hangs in my husbands’ office today.

Isn’t it amazing that after being removed from our home and it was gone for over fifteen years, it’s now back? And in the same room that was Margaret's office. And the one person who had a connection to Margaret is the one who found a piece of her life? I hope she somehow knows that her license made it home.

Happy Faces!

I just had to share this picture with you because it made me smile. No Dylan dog isn't in that group this image came from a friend down south (notice no snow)....thanks Christy! These doggies are all at a birthday party for one of their golden friends. Dylan is going to need one of those just look at all those happy faces!

Barn Renovation Part 3: The Journey Continues & Thank you

When I last left you mister man was finishing up the front granite stonewall. While he was busy our contractors were busy straightening our barn. As you can see the original floor had to be removed since the joists weren’t close enough together and it made straightening the barn out that much easier. The sills were all rotted since they weren’t pressure treated, they were 220 years old and once again water was a problem so the barn had a definite lean backwards.

New floor joists going in the middle to give the contractors somewhere to stand inside. Everything had to be beefed up and brought up to code.

This picture you’re looking out the other end of the barn and you can see the barn boards have been removed to make way for the other granite stonewall mister man will be building on the lower half. That granite wall will be one long wall in mister man’s workroom.

Mister man’s workroom with the floors removed, it was a dark and dank little place and was used as a chicken coop at one time. We know this from items we found buried under the floor. Look how cool the floor joists are, whole tree trunks, those are being left in place since no rot.

Plywood was placed down on the new floor joists so the guys could have their equipment inside in case of rain. They’ve only done the middle of the floor up to this point, the cross boards were placed to keep people from accidentally walking off into space.

If you look at the beam just above the cross boards you can see steel cables running along it, these cables were used to slowly bring the barn back into an upright straight position before placing the new sills. Since they had to bring the whole barn forward a total of eight inches, which is actually a lot, and it’s attached to our home it had to be done slowly over several days.

The beams on our barn were attached to each other just by sliding them together in notches. In order to make sure they never split apart again each corner where the beams met were reinforced with thick metal plates.

After straightening out our barn then the window framing went in and as you can see the new insulated windows are longer/larger then the old windows. Look, mister man cleaned up most of his mess in front but that cement mixer needs to go, unfortunately he felt the need to purchase that silly thing!

Just look how big that window is going to be, yes the whole wall! Can you imagine how I felt seeing that? I was jumping all over the place with excitement! The half round window is going right above the big window the light will be amazing!!!

Since the frame is so big the contractors had to place some cross framing to hold it in place until the window was installed.

Here’s an inside look at the annex just off the carriage barn where I'll store pillows and textiles and aside from being striped to the bones it hasn’t been touched yet. Sort of looks lonely to me.

And once again we have another pile of dirt but this time out back I was surrounded by piles of mess everywhere.

This small mountain of dirt is out the back of the barn where they had to dig out in order to place the new sills. Trust me it reached a point where I didn’t think I would ever have a clean house again since this job started in late summer and I wanted windows open. It's New Hampshire and here we don't need air conditioning 99% of the time so windows are open. Our entire home was surrounded by some kind of mess and this wasn’t going over well with me.

Stay tuned for next week for an amazing transformation!

I would also like to thank Ursula over at Aged and Gilded for the wonderful limited edition candle from Seda France. I won her Valentine Day giveaway and I wish you could smell these candles of tuberose, clove, white floral and spice, they’re out of this world!!! Tuberose is also my favorite flower so I was thrilled to have won these votives. Thank you so very much Ursula!