Rural Renovation Records and Revelations
Our journey through time with a 1786 Cape Cod in rural Vermont.

I started out as pulling a few weeds from the cauldron (as I call it) that is hanging in front of the house. The next thing I knew I found myself tearing all of the stones away from the ring and re-stacking them. The grass, over who knows how many years, had grown all over the rocks and most of the stones were wobbling and falling down while I was pulling the weeds.

Best before shot I could find. (Walking Sweet Pea)

So now everything is nice and stable. Unfortunately I found out that this whole contraption was built to cover an old tree stump. Most of it has rotted out, but I will need to backfill a few inches before I can plant anything in there. Maybe some annuals. I did find what looked like old dead strawberry plants. I’m not sure how they’d do in our climate, but its an idea.

After. (clean and stable)

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I’m not sure if it’s the lighting, or the fact that the grass is so green (compared to last week), but I love these images I captured the other day.

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Becky at That’s A Cute Little Farm House posted about the game of tag going on, and basically tagged all of her readers, so I figured I’d join in. I also had a little fun by making panoramics of the view from each door. I highly recommend clicking on the panoramic photos so that they open up in our gallery. Here you can actually scroll though the whole wide angle view.

The first is out the kitchen door. I had to snap this one quickly since the animals were trying to run out. This is our primary entrance and exit since this door actually faces the road.

View out the kitchen door:

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Next up is the front door. This door is currently sealed shut with plastic since it was very drafty over the winter.

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There are two doors on the back side of the house. One is a sliding (more…)

I saw the UtiliKilt on DIY’s Cool Tools, and thought about how comfortable and cool it would be to have one of those while working in the hot summer heat.

Especially this one while working on the house.

Anybody else like the idea? Convince me that I’m not crazy.

With a little bit of work I think the attic will be a great space for storage, and potentially a loft type room. Although I don’t think converting this space is something we’d do in the near future, there is definitely enough room. Even though I don’t see a lot of work happening up here soon, I’m trying to keep a path to the tour, so this is next in line.

The first thing the attic needs is to be re-insulated and sealed up against the elements. As far as I know just throwing insulation into a large pile doesn’t really provide a great R value.

I do love the hand planed timbers that are up there, especially since they are in such good condition. If this ever became a loft I’d love to keep them exposed.

What I don’t like is what you can see better when there is no flash on the camera. The eaves on this part of the house are pretty much non-existent. Thus there is nothing to seal the point where the roof and walls meet up. Surprisingly everything has remained fairly dry. In the short term I did cover all of those gaps with heavy gauge plastic sheeting until we can address it further.

More detail of the timbers:

I’m not really sure how these stairs got lost meeting up with a wall like this, but I have to assume this was not the original placement of the stairs themselves, or maybe the wall that is parallel with the first step. This should be pretty easy to correct when the time comes.

Well, the swing/slide set is gone! We weren’t very fond of it and the location was completely horrible. It was right out in the middle of the yard, which really ruined the view of the pond from the back patio. A couple up the hill from us asked if we were going to get rid of it a few weeks ago, so I decided to give it to them as long as they took it away. Saturday afternoon the husband came and took it in a few large pieces with his brothers.

I never did manage to get a good shot of it without snow.

Now I’ve got a large hump in the lawn where the base was. Obviously getting a mower in there was difficult, so that will need to be trimmed down a little. I love how the view has been opened wide up. There is also one less obstacle for the dogs to get tangled up in.

That last piece, which was for a clothesline will be coming down shortly.

Hi Everyone, I just wanted to take a quick moment to introduce the newest author over at the The Gang’s blog.

Sweet Pea is a one year old Pot Belly Pig that we adopted from the Windham Humane Society. She is still getting settled in, but I’m sure she will be posting soon. We have never had any experience with pigs before, but she is extremely sweet and very smart.

Currently, Sweet Pea is residing in the mud room until she has fully adapted to her new home and family. She loves her “dog door” which gives her free access to an outside pen area. She also enjoys going for walks around the property and is comfortable wearing a harness with a leash.

More info to come soon! Welcome to the house Sweet Pea!

Visit Sweet Pea and the rest of our pets at The Gang’s Blog.

Ok, now that the weather is nice, and I hope to begin some real work next week I’ve decided to put together a multi-part tour to help generate some ideas. I’ll try to do one new room/section per day, and would love any input you could share.

I was planning to begin with the outside, but I need more photos so I’ll mix the interior and exterior as I go.

The History:

So starting with the in-law apartment… this was the most recent addition to the house. My guess is the was added in the 1970′s or 80′s based on the decor, and modern although shady construction. Many people in the area have told us that we should rent it out, but I don’t see any plans on doing that. In my dreams, the upper room will be a recreation room, and the lower a home theater.

The Plan:

This room had significant water damage from when the pipes burst, but I don’t really think the carpet would have lasted too long either way. I am concerned about the construction of the floors up here because there is quite a bit of sag in the room. Mission number one up here will be to inspect the structure and see what kind of reinforcements are needed. Mission two will be assessing whether or not we can gain some extra headroom for the kitchen below, which oddly is the only room in the house with low ceilings.

The Evidence:

The stairs from the kitchen leading to the apartment. Notice the unfinished walls. These had to be like this for 20 plus years.

The Lower room features a propane stove and very large window. There is also access to the backyard/driveway via exterior stairs. The stove has a line run outside, but thre is no tank so it is not functional. I would like to replace (more…)

Well there is a secret here at the country house, and I have a feeling the animals are figuring things out. I’d love to share more, but for now I’ll leave it up to them to toy around with.

Read the story over here at their blog.

Anyone wanna take a stab?

Cross posted at Mike’s Notes.

I got around to fixing the chandelier in the kitchen finally. When our heating guy was fixing the baseboard the slightest bump caused it to fall and hang from the wires. So it’s back up, cleaned and looking pretty. I think we’ve decided that it will stay since it really fits the style of the kitchen very well. Eventually a few pieces of the stained glass need to be replaced, but for the time being it will do.

Morgan, one of our cats has been dying to get outside (he hasn’t been out since he was rescued in the basement of the Javits Center). I’ve been opening a few windows during the day and he’s loving the fresh air.