I was raised in a Catholic home. Although I no longer practice the religion of my ancestors, one of their practices still holds my attention. It is the observance of the sabbath day. A day of rest, reflection, and worship. I am no historian, but I do know that the five day work week evolved out of respect for this tradition, allowing both Christians and Jews to observe their sabbath days. A lengthy discussion could be held here on the topic of what day is the “real” sabbath or seventh day and how the current seven day calendar evolved. I did some research here, and will say it is quite interesting. For the sake of today’s post, I am going to skip all that. Hold this thought though, I will come back to it later.
Interestingly, my last post was on Christmas day. We had just finished the living room, and were looking forward to relaxing through the holidays. That day was exceptionally warm, well above freezing, and we were outside enjoying the warmer temperatures. One of my brothers and his family came to visit on the 26th, just as the temperatures began to plummet. We opened the two upstairs guest bedrooms for them, which had been unheated. Their plaster walls were cold, and it took a good part of the day for the heat to catch up. The furnace seemed to be running more than usual when they arrived, which made sense to me. Temperatures outside went down into the single digits, and we bundled up for a walk to the river to see the ice building and jamming under the bridge.
They stayed for two nights, and during that time, the house seemed a bit chilly. I came down in my socks in the morning and it seemed that the air in the kitchen was a few degrees colder than the rest of the house and the floor was terribly cold. We bundled up in extra sweaters and blankets in the evenings, enjoying each other’s company and the fun of family. My daughter joined us one evening for dinner with her fiance and his son. Together we all celebrated the holiday. Somewhere in the background, I could hear the furnace working and working and I was wondering why it just seemed to keep running. It was very cold outside, so it made sense. Our plans were to leave when my brother did, to go and visit Randy’s family in New England. We had packed our bags and said goodbye to our guests, when it dawned on me. I remembered that in a small store room off the kitchen, we had a broken window. This room is accessible from the outside only, a room which we currently do not use. We hope to add a second bathroom there, later this year. Randy had pried open the jammed door sometime over the summer (it had probably been stuck shut for years). He had pulled out the old insulation and rotten flooring to access and replace the electrical wiring there, leaving the floor open to the beams below, which accessed the crawl space below the kitchen. As I stood in the frigid air, balanced on the beams and nailing up a small piece of insulation to cover the open window, the science of hot and cold air flow was running through my head. The open window was pouring cold air in, down through the rafters and into the crawl space. The crawl space was connected to our basement. We were loosing heat, big time! Most of our water pipes are PEX, but we still have a few copper pipes under the kitchen floor that run through the crawl space. Yikes!!
Randy came out to help, and together we realized the magnitude of the problem. Thank goodness the pipes had not frozen. We needed to act fast, as the temperatures were forecasted to dip well below freezing that night, and stay in the single digits for days. Instead of heading north, to visit family, we got in our car and made a b-line to our local hardware store for insulation. We made two trips that day to purchase foam board insulation panels, a temporary and quick fix. We worked together in the freezing temperatures to seal up the floor and walls. I had to go indoors every half hour or so, as my fingers would go numb, warm up, and then return to the arctic air. Crisis averted.
The next morning, we decided to insulate an interior wall on the first floor, between a room that was unheated and the center hallway. This wall had also been previously gutted down to the studs and left for later finishing. We realized that here was another spot where heat exchange was working against us, and something needed to be done. This time, we used traditional fiberglass insulation, in preparation for the sheet rock that will eventually follow.
We bought some beautiful upholstery fabric to create an interior curtain for the front doorway. It has created a vestibule of sorts, insulating the beautiful old doors. In the first weeks of owning the house, we had taken down the double storm doors that had covered the front doors. We wanted to open them up again, so they could be seen and fully appreciated. We plan to replace the single pane glass panels with double pane thermo glass in the doors, but had just not gotten to it yet. It was fun to dust off my sewing machine and create something beautiful and decorative within the interior of the front entrance hall.
The bulkhead doors were loosing heat, as well, with nothing between them and the basement. While I was sewing, Randy framed the doorway that led to the bulkhead steps, and filled the frame with another sheet of foam board insulation. Later, when we stood at the wall where the basement meets the crawl space, we could still feel a draft. Unlike the rest of the foundation, this one was not as thick. It became obvious that we would need to insulate this foundation around the crawl space, below the kitchen. A BIG job! Now, with that said, we have plans to do some renovation in the kitchen above. We had ordered new appliances, due to arrive any day, and had dreams of re-configuring the sink and adding a dishwasher. All of this will entail rummaging around in this crawl space, transferring the water lines to pecks and re-routing the exit drains. With all the work needed in the crawl space, and wanting to act fast, we decided to take a short cut here. First things first. We needed to insulate the bluestone crawlspace walls.
Now, Randy is always using the internet for reading and research. If he does not know how to do something, he will read about it, ask for guidance from local experts and then act. He has become a master at many arts, in this way. Somewhere along the line, he had read about the insulating quality of straw bails. He had done some raised bed gardening a few years back using them and had bountiful harvests. We want to add a garden this spring, and so an idea was born. He ordered twelve bails of straw. Not hay, but straw. He stacked them along the two exterior walls of the crawl space and sandwiched a layer of thick plastic between the stone and the straw. The draft disappeared. Hallelujah! Come spring, we will have a straw bale garden and sometime between now and next winter, we will do a proper job of insulating the crawl space.
The last thing we did was add another layer of insulation to the windows. You know, that shrink wrap plastic that covers the interior of the windows. Cheesy, but efficient. And for all the teasing I get from Randy about using a blow dryer on my hair during the winter months, I will say that it was good to have a powerful unit for the job. I was the expert here 😉
Our electrician called and offered his time during January. He is studying to be an electrical engineer, and worked with us a bunch over the summer. 
His available work time became a scarcity come September. He spent an afternoon with Randy wiring an antique dining room light fixture and outlet. The old outlets were all mixed up after we had re-wired the kitchen, as they were connected. Apparently, with old wiring, if you update portions of a line and not all of it, it messes with the polarity of the rest of the electric. We could plug the vacuum into the outlet in the living room and the kitchen lights would go on. Not good! We had stopped using them completely months ago, and had been dining by candlelight. Romantic, but not so practical. We found the fixture last summer in MA during one of our visits to New England. Now there is light!
The appliances arrived on January 7th. We plugged in the new refrigerator and put the gas stove and dishwasher in storage. It won’t be long until we start the kitchen renovation. 
We bought the house in April and worked nearly non-stop until the end of December. It has been nine months and is now the anniversary of our first encounters with the house. We have created a rebirth, so to speak, a restoration in progress. We did so, not only because we wanted to, but because we needed to. Because we were living inside our work-in-progress. We needed a functioning kitchen, a reliable heat source, walls that were insulated and windows that would keep out the cold. We had a blast doing it! As winter set in, and the days got shorter, we realized just how tired we were. It had been such a relief to finish the living room, and think of taking a break. With the cold snap, came another unexpected set of projects, and there went the rest of our holiday. When the insulating was complete, and the worst of the cold subsided, our focus turned inward. We wanted to pause for a period and in so doing, take back ourselves, individually and as a couple. A turning inward of sorts, to reflect, refocus and devote ourselves to things long neglected. The month of January has been a pleasure.
We have enjoyed a number of things rejuvenating, heartwarming and just plain fun. Outings with friends, new books, great music, Sunday drives, antiquing, winter hikes, crafting paper mobiles, making drinking glasses out of recycled wine bottles, hosting dinner parties, even some dancing.
It is not the seventh day, or even the seventh month, but we took a sabbatical (a word derived from the Hebrew word shabbat, i.e. sabbath). A much needed and well deserved break.
J. Howard Beach House 