Fire And Rat Shot

6 June 2020

Amy has continued to make progress on the parlor. The ceiling and walls are all painted. She cleaned the floor and sanded the polyurethane off, ready for linseed oil. Yes, I am planning on doing something about the boarded up window.

Here she's done half the floor with linseed oil.

And it's all done! A light fixture and two missing window sashes are on MY list to do.

Amy has now started to tackle the long overdue project of painting our wrap around porch floor.

I'm going to try my hand at fabricating some window sashes from scratch. I took apart a couple of old damaged sashes that we saved so I can see how they were made.

I've also stared working on restoring the mantel and fireplace in the office. In the early 70's, the fireplace was sealed up so that the chimney could be used to vent the oil burning furnace. A second layer of bricks was added to the hearth at some point also. These were the first to go. This photo shows the "new" layer of bricks were put in around the base of the mantel columns, and the front piece of the column base is missing.

I've got the first few bricks removed.

A plastic toy embedded in the mortar from the second layer dates the change to the 70's.

I've got the extra hearth layer removed. This revealed that a new layer of fire brick was also placed inside the fireplace prior to it being sealed up.

I started chipping away at the concrete at the top of the original fireplace opening.

As I removed each layer of masonry, I had to scoop out the soot and debris piled up behind it. It was full!

I finally got the blocks and mortar out of the way that had been used to seal it up. Then I started removing the newer fire bricks covering the bottom of the fireplace.

I cleaned everything up, replaced the missing wood piece on the front of the left column base, and did some work to re-level the original hearth bricks.

When you start working on things, it's not unusual for interesting details to reveal themselves. First, the house almost burned down at some point in time. Probably not surprising. The damage to the wood here suggests to me that it was actually on fire.

Second, there were rats, or snakes, in the house, and the occupants attempted to get rid of them when they saw them. Or someone was just shooting up the house for no reason. This is one of at least three places in the house that has been hit with rat shot.

Other wildlife that has showed up around the yard this spring. A common, non-poisonous, ring neck snake.

And a hyalophora cecropia, north america's largest moth species. It's sitting on a 4x4 post.