2006-Oct-16
Old House!
Posted in Just Thoughts
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Well today we had to go out to pay the property tax. While dh was there he found out the clerks uncle (who's 80) grew up in our home as it was owned by his parents once. Funny we keep meeting people who used to live here! Anyway dh was talking to her about us wanting to find out more about the houses history. We can get a compleat listing of that for 8.00 at the land registry office. But she looked up a bit of info on her computer for us. Our house we thought was built in 1880ish is much older! It was built in 1850!! Making it 156 years old! That is likely one of the oldest houses in this town. The original info said it was built as a signal family dwelling in 1850 with a barn on the front and a summer kitchen. The summer kitchen is still on the back of the house dh uses it as his shop for now. The barn on the front of the house was taken down at some point and one built in the back yard. But this explains a lot! We think at one time the entire up stairs was all open with out dividing walls between the rooms. Mainly because of the lay out and NONE of the walls up there are load barring walls. Same as with the walls down stairs. When we opened up the living room wall to put the chimney insert through we found 9 layers of wall paper about 6 layers of paint. Then the old plaster and strapping. The first layer of "siding" on the house is vertical log type boards and that would have been the original out side wall. Then latter asphalt shingling was added, then horizontal wood siding, then there's 2" thick insulation over that and the newer board and baton that was put up the year before we moved in.
At one time when we were at a local history museum looking at building styles over time here we found out that plaster/strapping wasn't used until about 1910 ( I think have to double check with dh on that!). Knowing that and also by looking at the way the house is we can tell that the plaster was added much latter and the only walls inside and out was the vertical logs. Some of the old strapping in our house is milled and others hand split because they are rough and not even. Also the beams in our home are huge barn type beams with ax marks and even some bark left on lol. So despite having a few problems I think it's doing pretty good for it's age! LOL And we laughed at it lasting so long in such good shape when non of it would meet "modern" building cods. heehee obviously it's save and was built to last! |
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