On a shelf up near the ceiling, on the third floor is this metal container. At first we thought it was something used for showers since it was in a room with an old wall tank toilet. But perhaps it was part of an old heating system?  Another mystery to unfold…,

They dovetailed the sheathing. Wow. Still beautiful under there over 100 years later. 

Side #2 is mostly stripped today thanks to Lowell, Todd, Tucker, Ben, and Austin. 

You can see where they added the third floor after the 1894 fire. The magic house unfolds its mysteries…

The Typar is up and Jim is working on fixing the structure of the first round roof area. 

Painting the window trim in prep for the new siding. 

I looked all over the house, finally found it. 

Who done dat? 😃

The stripping of the siding, that is…

Front side almost done :

The siding project is beginning. 

A neighbor stopped by and expressed sadness that we were removing the old siding. We would love to just have it scraped and painted but after many years of neglect, unfortunately, it is shot. There is water running down the walls on the inside and it is damaging the plaster in several rooms. When it rains out, it rains in our parlor.  Time to start anew. 

We are going with Hardi-plank, which is a cement fiberboard warranted for 50 years. It comes preprinted and we chose the closest color they had to what is there now – Boothbay Blue. 

The stripping is just beginning. 

Oh and we removed the “dog house” – the portico that was covering the beautiful front door entrance. It looks so much nicer without it!

While sorting through old books today I opened a book entitled , “Newburyport’s Rufus Sargent, An Architect Rediscovered” by Betsy H. Woodman, and saw it was signed and inscribed to the previous owners and included, “thanks for the loan of the photo!”

hmmm what photo.

Flipping through, I found an amazing photo from just after the fire in 1894 !! In addition, she describes the history of the original build and some of the rebuild. What a find!!!

So my Dad was right, the roof is definitely turn-of-the-century construction, since we can see here that originally there was no 3rd floor.  He could tell by the rough hewn beams and sawdust insulation in the attic

Sorting through treasures and trash.

Getting to “know” the prior owners through the task.

Antiques, clocks, pilot, glass, lamps, dolls, ballet, plants

Today I am beginning to tackle the third floor…

UPDATE:

2 days later, here we are.  Don’t worry, I saved the “interesting” stuff and consolidated it with the other 3rd floor items in the ballet studio.