Not long after the front porch was taken down, we had to start working on cleaning up inside. We began an initial demo in order to determine the condition of the walls and roof structure. As it turns out – not too bad. (Other than the rat and bat poop).
Some interesting things we found were:
- Evidence of the building being used as a Post Office. The front room was divided from the back with a cased opening. On one side of this opening was a door. The other side had a pantry/storage space backed up against the opening. Looking further, we found marks on the opening indicating that there had once been a counter, although the structure of that counter is lost to time, it was good to have some evidence that it was, indeed, a Post Office as local lore says.
- With in the walls, our demo team found an old, vintage or antique, child’s shoe and a greeting card also of vintage era. Unfortunately, no photograph was taken and the items were removed before we had the chance to document and preserve them. Truly a loss.
- Also found within the walls, was a pile of old razor blades. They weren’t in the bathroom (likely of 1960/50 era) but were in a wall in the area used as a kitchen. People would insert their used blades into a slot in their built in medicine cabinets that opened into the wall. I’m not sure that that was exactly the case here, but the razor blades were clearly disposed of into the wall cavity.
- The building had been electrified. Remains of vintage Knob and Tube wiring was left primarily in the attic space.
Two different widths of wood flooring had been used. The narrower width was found in the front room, kitchen and bath area. As there is also a subfloor and the because the floor in the front room is in pretty good condition (dirty but in good shape) we will work to preserve this section of the original flooring. Flooring in the kitchen had major water damage due to windows being broken out and no porch covering to prevent rain from coming in. The bathroom are had major damage. The bedroom area had a later era of wide flooring and it is not in a condition that is restorable.
The walls in the front room had been plastered from floor to ceiling, they had damage from human abuse and time. Walls in the kitchen and bedroom area had plaster on the top portion and bead board on the bottom, separated by a chair rail. Interesting is that there a two different styles of bead board and chair rail that change mid-wall in the bedroom. Looking closer, we could see that there had once been a wall dividing the bedroom space into two rooms. The bathroom walls had been plastered. There was no indication that there had been tile or any other water-resistant finish. None of the plaster in the house, bead boards, or chair rails were salvageable.
Behind the kitchen, there was originally a back patio with a ceiling. It had been poorly enclosed at some point with a screen and later with plywood. It clearly was an exterior space as the two walls adjacent to the rest of the house were clad in exterior shingles.
Between the Kitchen and the bedroom space there was a brick chimney. Interestingly, the chimney began about 3/4 of the way up the wall, suspended with wood cross braces and good workmanship. The chimney had an opening on the kitchen side, clearly designed to connect to a wood burning stove’s pipe. On the bedroom side was another round opening. Hmmm??? But, looking further there is another round opening leading to the bathroom, and still another that leads into the front room, and another from there to outside. It appears that the stove vented through the pipes in those 3 rooms in an effort to heat those spaces perhaps? There is no evidence of fire damage and the openings were in good shape. It would be nice to see just how these were interconnected.
Demo took over a year to complete mostly because we wanted to draw up plans for its restoration and needed to determine what to save and what needed to go.