Beverly Jamison's Page

Beverly: I just closed on this house on April 30th so I haven't done anything to the woodwork myself. As of right now I haven't even moved into it! I'm not sure what the PO's did in particular (if anything)-I guess I just got lucky that it looks so great. Overall I consider myself very lucky to have found this house--it is in incredible shape to be >100 years old.

Hello Beverly! It is a running joke with my wife (who was wearing the mask in the picture) and I about our ugly ironwork on our front/back porch. Yes, I most definately plan to put columns back there :) I think they were put in during the 50s or 60s.. with a lot of other houses in the area. There is a house across the street that has the columns that look similar to the ones that use to be on the house (on the front porch, just the top portion remains of 2 of them). There also use to be some dentil mouldings on the front porch, but the details still remain on the rear porch. Eventually I will get all of that looking the way it should. I think my mother in law is the only person who likes the iron. I told her she can have it when I get rid of it lol!

About your doors. I have not done any refinishing YET..but I have some advice for you. Borrow a few wood working books from the libary to get some info. I have been doing this to get info on our woodowork. I plan to use shellac.. Since my wood work is dried out now from me stripping all the paint off with soy gel, and then using denatured alcohol to get rid of what was left, I was thinking of using some kind of wood reconditioner, then using the shellac. But as I said, I haven't tried it yet, but will soon. I am going to experiment in a few areas before I do everything so keep in touch. If you use stains or some kind of varnish/poly etc... things may be different. Reading up would help you out though.. it has given me some insight and some ideas to try. At least you have 2 doors left, and that is a start. I think your design is pretty common and if you look on house salvage websites, you should be able to find that pattern pretty easily.Yes masks are a pain but they really help with mold and dust. Good look with your house project and thanks for the nice comments! I look forward to seeing your progress !

You can find a good clawfoot tub on craigslist for pretty cheap. We found ours for 200 bucks, and we refinished it ourselves for about 50 bucks :) It came out great, well I think so anyway. We were just picky about the feet, since I wanted some fancy looking kind, and also at least a 5 foot tub (6 footers are a bit harder to find but I hope to find one sometime). There use to be a clawfoot tub in our house but the former owners took it out :( The main bathroom in the house was upstairs (which was a maids room in the original plans) and really tiny. We instead made the smaller upstairs bedroom into our master bath,..and the old bathroom into the upstars laundry room. There use to be a butlers pantry off of our kitchen but it was taken out, and a small half bath put in down there.

I know the feeling about people in the area remembering your house from the past. Our neighbors have lived next door to our house since the 1960s, and just down the street before that. They even helped work on our house sometime in the 1970s and still remembered the layout...It is a cool feeling to know yo are preserving something for future generations. Keep in touch and I can help you out with as much as I can.

Thanks for your support. I can't tell you how many times I started this thread and said no, it is silly. Now I'm so glad I did because of the support I've gotten. I've started writing it and already changed my approach. I have decided to write it from the eyes of the former owners, explaining their family and lifestyles and why they did what they did to the house.For example the second floor was added by a man with 10 children. That might explain the need for more bedrooms. Thanks again for your support.