J. Howard Beach House

Every new owner of an old house asks the question “I wonder if we will find some sort of treasure hidden in the walls?”  We were no different.  We found all sorts of loose floor boards, always cut in sets of three, with seemingly random numbers painted on them.  I found the first set after pulling up the flooring in one of the bedrooms above the kitchen, up the back staircase.  I called Randy to open it with me, thinking if we found a bag of money, we could celebrate together.  Ha!  Wishful thinking.  Alas, what we found were simply cut boards to provide room for the electrical wires for ceiling lights below.  Sorry to disappoint.

So with our demolition over (or so we thought), the cleanup began.  With excitement we arrived each day, with good intentions, and stayed on task, for the most part.  We started washing walls, windows and floors, and began the arduous task of removing wallpaper in the few places it remained.  We had been avoiding one room upstairs for a number of reasons, one of which included the fact that it had multiple layers of wallpaper that had been well glued beneath the top layer of wallpaper we had already removed.  Randy perfected the art of wallpaper removal using spray bottles filled with a store bought remover, one in each hand.  He imagined himself a double fisted gunfighter in a shootout in the wild west to entertain himself during what seemed to be an endless and monotonous task.  He wet down the walls and then S-C-R-A-P-E-D the paper away.  Happily he showed me how to, and so it went for days, as our wrists and hands ached so badly, we would have to stop.  For anyone who has done the same, you have my sympathy.  One weekday, when he was at the house alone, he began on an interior wall in the same room.  As he scraped, he hit a section of the wall about two feet from the corner, that felt a bit soft.  He wondered why, and before he could finish the thought… “What will Lori think if I tear this open?”, he was carefully prying open a spot in the wall to see what was beneath.  What he found was a vertical line of sheet rock at the end of the wood lathe and plaster and two original vertical hemlock beams side by side.  “A DOORWAY!”  It was sheet rock that had been soft beneath the scraper, and as he followed the line upward, what he found was not just a doorway, but an arch.  A beautiful archway, between two rooms that had once been a bedroom suite, complete with one of the home’s fireplaces.

We had wanted the larger of the two to be our master bedroom, as it had a beautiful archway over the windows that mirrored the arch we uncovered beneath the drop ceiling in the dining room.  So, there it was, a hidden archway, and two bedrooms instantly became one beautiful suite.  It did not take him long to break down the wall, deconstruct the framing that filled the space and release the house from what had closed it off for so many years.  As he stood in the newly revealed archway, a gust of wind came rushing through the windows from below the original arch, swirled around him and then raced out the front window and was gone.  It was a powerful moment, a clearing of sorts, and the house was free again.

As if that was not enough… downstairs, just off the entryway, was another room with a fireplace.  This room had been renovated by prior owners at some point, and it was our intention to tear down the chair rail and paneling below.  The walls were flimsy and we knew we would eventually need to gut this room, along with the bathroom next door. Randy began tearing out the paneling, starting at the door and worked his way around the room.  Once again, part way across the interior wall, he came to a point where the wood lathe ended, and again found the bones of a framed up opening.  With the knowledge of what might lie beneath, he tore at it with the enthusiasm of the Karate Kid.  This doorway was wider than the one upstairs, and after all was said and done, what he uncovered was the frame of an old pocket doorway.  The room now opened up into the old bathroom/laundry/pantry room.

I like to imagine the house when it was built, before indoor plumbing, and wonder about these rooms.  This first floor suite, off the front foyer, may have served J. Howard in his business dealings and entertaining.  I imagine it was his office suite, with the pocket doors opening to an inner sanctum of sorts, complete with a sprawling and stately desk.  There he would work and hold all sorts of business meetings by day.  At night, the doors might be shut, creating an outer room housing the home’s library, with books lining the walls, coal burning in the fireplace to warm the room, and comfortable chairs waiting for guests after dinner.  The rear door which enters off the kitchen would have probably been used by the servants to enter and exit inconspicuously.

When we were cleaning the woodwork and specifically the many beautiful old wooden doors, we noticed numbers mounted to many of them.  When we bought the house, there were six bedrooms.  Eight rooms in all had numbers, including the two downstairs rooms just mentioned.  It is our understanding that at some point in the home’s history, one of the owners used it as a boarding house.  This explains why someone would have done these renovations, in order to maximize use of the space, making four rooms out of two.  Although we also hope to welcome guests, we want to return the home to its original grandeur (minus the wallpaper).  So, it was not bags of gold coin, or stacks of money hidden in the walls, but we found our own kind of treasure.  J. Howard Beach, we like your style!

 

The dumpster arrived at the house before we did.  It had been ordered for the day of the closing, and we hoped to have it for a week.  This was wishful thinking.  After donning air masks, the first thing we did was to tear down the shredded draperies. The sun was able to shine through the wavy glass window panes once again and the golden afternoon light flowed in.  Like sunlight reflected off the water, rippled light patterns began to dance on the walls.  By sundown we had a good deal of the wallpaper down.  It was ready to be released, and simply pulled away from the plaster walls with little effort.   The small amount of flooring had been removed as well, which included carpet from the living room and old vinyl sheets from most of the closets and two small bedrooms.  It felt like the house could breathe again.  We sat in the red wooden front porch swing before leaving and watched the last of the evening light wane on the hillside across the river to our east.  “Could it really be ours?”  Randy was filled with utter excitement over it all.  I on the other hand, felt a mixture of relief, in light of the closing (no small feat these days), disbelief that such a stunning place could be really be ours, and brief intermittent moments of anxiety at the enormity of what we were embarking upon.

 

We had scheduled the closing to coincide with a vacation from my job.  I had eleven days to work non-stop with Randy, who’s schedule would allow for him to work on the house nearly every day for the next few months.  During the two and a half weeks we had the dumpsters (yes, there turned out to be not one, but two), we cleared out the remaining contents of the house, workshop and barn.  The basement alone, took a total of four days.  We donned full white hazmat suits and air masks for that job and carried buckets and bags of dusty debris up the stone bulkhead steps to the wheelbarrow waiting at the top.

 

 

 

Outside, we spent an entire day cleaning out the gully between the barn and stream which had been used as a household garbage dump.  This was a disturbing reality for us, as we could not fathom dumping trash in such a lovely place, but this is not uncommon for old homes, as local trash sites simply did not exist a century ago.  We happened to do that on Earth Day, which seemed apropos. Mostly rusty metal, glass and plastic remained, which we meticulously removed and carted away.  The largest item we were able to unearth was the rusting and worn-out bench seat from a long gone automobile.  It took a long rope and the two of us heaving and tugging it uphill along wet leaves to get it out, no small feat.

Anything worth saving, but unwanted, went out to the figurative curb.  We were hoping people would just come and take things, which they did, and we met some of the neighbors as they gave new homes to old furniture.  Two of the neighbors even re-purposed wood and metal from the dumpster, which left us with needed space to fill.  Windows, walls, woodwork and floors got the first of many washings, and the house began to shine.  Four suspended ceilings were carefully taken down and hauled away to expose the cracked and in some places, crumbling ceilings.  One of our favorite discoveries was the wainscoted ceiling in the kitchen.  It matched the floor to ceiling wainscoting on the walls, which we loved.  There were at least six colors of paint in the room, and a few layers of wallpaper on the top two feet, behind the drop ceiling.  We had our work cut out for us!

The last and heaviest item to go into the dumpsters was plaster. Lots of plaster!  As we cleaned the three fireplaces, we came to realize that two of the beautiful facades and mantles were quite loose.  A decision was made to take them down, which revealed loose and crumbling brick that had been added to hold them up.  They too came out easily, revealing a final layer of beautiful brick and mortar, all in decent shape.  Above the mantles, the brick chimneys were covered with plaster.  We wondered about exposing the brick, and before long decided to go for it.  Randy worked for days, carefully chipping away and carrying out bags of debris.  Aching hands and wrists accompanied him home each night as the work progressed.  I had returned to work by that point, and eagerly awaited news of the day, as I took the short ride home each evening.

Our meticulous cleanup included removing any old nails or hooks we found and boy, did we find hooks!  Beautiful old hooks were nailed in and lined each of the closet walls, small modern screw-in hooks were in the woodwork and walls in every room, big rubber coated hooks were in the basement, workshop and barn, and medium sized screw-in metal hooks were outside in the porch posts and ceilings.  We must have removed at least thousand hooks!   The beauty and simplicity of the lines of the house were appearing before our eyes.  We had known the possibility from the beginning, but it was becoming more a reality with each day.  We arrived back at our home down river each night exhausted, excited, and dreaming of what potential the next day might hold.

 

 

It was a cold and gray January day.  We had seen the house online, and thought we would take a ride to check it out.  In the listing, it said the house was built in 1870, and we wanted an old house.  The online photos were dark, and the rooms were mostly bare, with crumbling roll up blinds and draperies shrouding the windows.  Not exactly inviting, but we could see the potential.  Beautiful woodwork, hard wood floors, big windows and beautiful old doors.  Calkins Creek ran beside it, with an old green barn leaning out back and a sloping woodland landscape coming down toward the house from a ridge behind and next to the property.  Randy and I got out of the car, and walked around.  It was a dream.  Way bigger than we needed or wanted, and clearly needing TLC.  The trees on the property were all stately and large, including a large spruce next to the house, a few tall sugar maples at the edge of the forest, and an old apple tree between the house and the stream.

We decided to walk across the bridge to the General Store, and inquire about the house.  We met Vanessa and Rocco behind the counter.  Husband and wife, second generation hardworking owners, running the store.  Randy, who can strike up a conversation with anyone, ordered a sandwich and was engrossed with them in no time.  Before long, they were encouraging us to call the seller and Vanessa offered us the phone number we needed.  We went and sat in our warm car and while Randy ate his sandwich, Lori made the call.  We wanted to see the inside, and wondered if she could show it to us, that day.  She was not exactly close by, but was willing to drive up and meet us.  Linda met us three hours later and the rest is history.

We liked Linda right away.  She was a cheerful woman about our age with bright eyes and a wide smile.  She brought her friend Sonny with her, and we thought her wise to care for herself in that way.  She liked us, too, and we could see her enjoying our reaction to the house, as she gave us a tour.  The inside was even more beautiful than we imagined.  The old wallpaper was stunning, and there was lots of it!  Ten foot ceilings vaulted above a grand center hall staircase with a wrap around banister on the second floor.  All of the doorknobs were porcelain, and the original light fixtures hung at the top and bottom of the stairs.  Both Randy and I found ourselves touching the wallpaper as we climbed the stairs.  It was golden and felted, cracked and faded, but just gorgeous.  We were in love with it all!  We looked at the house three times before making an offer.   Linda had been a close friend of Ginny, the previous owner.  Ginny and her husband George had lived there for forty years.  Both were known and loved by the local residents.  When people meet us now, after they realize where we live, they say “Oh, you bought Ginny’s house!”  They had both passed away, Ginny outliving George, and leaving Linda in charge of the estate.  Linda had expressed to us how happy she was to see a couple who loved the house as much as Ginny and George did.  “She would have wanted you to have it.”

We signed contracts in February and closed on the house in April, 2017.  We have been working on the house nearly every day since then and hope to move in at the end of June.  It is a restoration project, not a renovation (with the exception of the kitchen and baths, which will certainly be more modern than the original outdoor cold storage and outhouses).  We simply fall in love with it more and more each day.