Getting My House Back!!

[RAT900]

Oh Happy Days!

My daughter finished Nursing School and is working again

she and her husband found a place over in West Asheville, made an offer and are going to contract on Monday....

I am getting my house back over in center Asheville

it has been 3 plus years....

now I can retreat from this horrid horrid area of NY again at will

and can hide in my beloved mountains

and continue restoring my old Craftsman bungalow

2011 is off to a decent start!

[Lars D]

What's up with the Vanagon? The Rabbit?

[RAT900]

What's up with the Vanagon? The Rabbit?

Son in Law's....both converted to run on cooking oil.....can't drive behind him too long...you find yourself thinking of stopping for Fries or Chinese food

[DRKWNG]

Very good news!!  And a very nice looking house you have there.   

[the_Journeyman]

Asheville is my neighboring town.  It really is a cool city to live in or visit ~

JM

[krolik]

Very good news!!  And a very nice looking house you have there.   

+1

[Timmy Tucker]

Congrats!. You'll be in my neck of the woods as well. I dig the house, craftsman has always been my favorite style.

[Stella]

Your place sounds & looks therapeutic. Congrats on the daughters graduation & move!
I envision a few eames & nelson & Rat designed pieces inside, wood burning fireplace, glass of cognac...

 

[RAT900]

It was a 90 year-old tumble-down with sagging eaves and wet-rotted knee braces and crumbling facia boards.... was a rental for probably 20 years...total neglect...in short it was perfect for me...

1/3rd of an acre, dead-end street, on the side of Beaucatcher Mtn....the 2 story side has a beautiful view of old downtown A-ville, go out the back and we're a short 4 minute walk through a stand of trees to McCormick Field...(Home of the World Famous Asheville Tourists Minor League Team)

The exterior restoration is nearly complete...need to landscape.... and with daughter and her family out I can really go to work on bringing the interior back up to original spec

We put in the wood-burning stove in the fireplace

all the woodwork and wainscoting inside amazingly was not painted over during its life as a rental...just needs to be cleaned and waxed...the plaster part of the walls will be a project

still has the clawfoot tub in one of the baths

it is my home

as opposed to the dreadful soulless dwelling I inhabit up north

[fastwin]

Great news! Sounds like a really cool old fixer upper. I'm a complete goon when it comes to woodwork and related home repair craft. Hell, I can't even cut two pieces of wood the same length! Inherited that from my Dad. Great with mechanical stuff but he never got the measure twice, cut once idea... of course neither did I. Good time of the year to get back into it and start your projects. Enjoy!!

[the_Journeyman]

That sounds like an awesome location too Rat!!!

JM

[Kopfjäger]

 

[RAT900]

We had a problem with the old white oak tree....over the course of 90 years it had grown into the roof eave...and it had raised the porch foundation which raised the roof a few inches.

The choice was to take out the tree, grind the stump and reset the foundation stones......or work with the tree and adjust the roof and diminish the height of the sill plate sitting on the stone foundation.




We opted to keep the 3 century plus year old tree as its branches shade and lower the house temperature considerably during the summer months




So after we dropped the roof back down to true level...we discovered of course the tree was even deeper into the roof eave (pivot arc and all that)

here is our work-around....we had to cut back the width overall of the eave's overhang anyway because of wet-rot on the facia board that extended behind the facia into the eave strips...we went back 3 inches, to get to good wood to nail the new facia planks into....after the old roof shingles were torn off we ran a chalk snap line from the roof peak to the ends and hit it with a circular saw.....we went deeper to accommodate the tree and built the facia around it




I'll be long dead and gone by the time the tree grows back into the roof....we did the math on the foundation heave by the tree over 90 years and at a same growth rate the house has another few decades before it becomes a problem again.....someone else's problem....and they will discover all the work we did under the porch deck to respect the tree's seniority over the house







Last my daughter standing on the new porch deck during the painting party and barbeque we hosted for her conscripted friends....
we left the solid pressure treated beams in place going directly from the foundation top to the overhead beams and once the new deck was down we boxed the pillars/columns around them....originally the columns were just boxed plank wood sitting on the deck top




You can see how we tapered the sill plate below the porch deck to offset the heave....we also built all new "real" knee braces using solid pressure treated wood to replace the old boxed-plank rotters

[Kopfjäger]

I want to come and visit, but you gotta bring some Meatballs. 

[AJ]

Awesome work-around with the tree, it looks great!!  As does the whole house, what a great restoration project!