REFRIGERATOR ALCOVE

Winter was simply a bitch. It dragged on until late March, and I had to curtail my plans to use all dry, snowless days to begin the much-needed repairs on the outbuildings.
There WERE no dry, snowless days after mid-January.
Prime among these repairs were the barn and greenhouse/garage roofs, both which had serious holes, leaks, and structural problems.

One project was finally tackled four months after moving in; that of expanding the refrigerator alcove. It was February, I was restless for a project I could actually DO, and I was tired of walking to the studio for food.

This opening housed a dead refrigerator when I moved in, and my own larger model was relegated to the studio, the room to the west of the kitchen. This made it somewhat tedious to cook, which I do regularly.

The opening was about an inch smaller than my fridge, so I put the task off while I installed heat, repaired the water heater, and worked my ass off to pay for the move's remaining/mounting expenses.

One Saturday in February, I'd had enough, and using my Sawzall, jig saw, and multiple hand tools, I set to work.

The wood facing was attached with square nails, so I figured it was a bit older than some of the other trim in the kitchen. It wasn't chestnut, and wasn't as old as the fireplace mantle, but I decided to work around the trim without removing it. I removed the dead fridge, cleaned out the alcove, and removed the plaster and lath.

                         The kitchen before moving in. Even the tiny dead refrigerator was a tight fit.

The alcove floor after pulling out the lath and plaster on the sides. On the ground are the remnants of rodent nests, debris, and a few artifacts that fell out of the stair stringers above. Among these are a zinc mason jar lid with milk glass insert, a deteriorated Barlow knife, a large cut spike, a medicine bottle ("Dr. Setharnold's Balsam") complete with cork, a small zinc bottle top and a hand-forged farm hook.

 

Once cleaned out, I noticed several interesting Vestiges. The floor of the alcove was installed much later than the kitchen floor, and investigation in the cellar revealed that this was once the stair entrance to the cellar.
That the studs are made of 1" thick wood slabs, some complete with their rough-tree profile (look at the edges), was surprising, especially as they were installed flat side out. Modern buildings (and this house's exterior walls) are framed with the flat side (the wide side of the stud) facing sideways along the direction of the wall.
What intrigued me even more were the hand-planed siding boards at the base of the studs. They resemble exterior siding from very old early Colonial structures; thick, beveled top and lapped bottom, and adding serious strength to the structure.
But this is an INTERIOR wall, and it always was. The original corner of the building is in the blue-hued room beyond. I know this because I removed the wood from a recently-trimmed over vertical corner post and found it to be of 'gunstock' design, an obvious 17th/18th century architectural marker, and one that nearly always supports two plates at a ninety-degree angle.

'Gunstock' corner from the Harvard Carriage Shed. Note the wider left end, which would have been the top, and would support thick horizontal plates meeting at a ninety-degree angle.

                         My best guess is that the horizontal boards are some sort of wainscot.

 

 

I measured my refrigerator and the space between the studs. It was the same. I needed to trim the facing board on the right back by three-quarters an inch (and remove the shelf and scroll-sawn trim above, alas). Even then it was unlikely to fit. I'd need a minimum of a sixteenth of an inch per side (an eighth would be a realistic minimum, but my magic is strong), but I cut the facing trim back and prayed I wouldn't have to sand and plane the studs; they were loaded with small nails and were, after all, eight to ten inches wide apiece. Making them thinner would be just a TAD problematic. The facing board on the left was flush with the studs, and was not to be trimmed except in an extreme emergency.

 



 

Apparently my magic IS strong! I think I had the help of whatever else lives here. With some shoving and side-to side jockeying, the Big Fridge was sweetly placed (shoved, kicked, pleaded with) into the alcove. You can't put a sheet of paper between the trim and fridge, and I knew it would stick out a bit, but it fit!

And I got to keep the top of the scrolled trim.

 

Funny thing was, it took almost two months before I stopped going back to the studio to get things out of the fridge, even though it was now in the kitchen. The fridge was in the room to the right, to the left of the windows.



                                 WINTER

 

                                                          Deep

I’d rather not dwell too much on this past winter, especially now that it is as glorious a spring as I’ve seen in years. Perhaps it was the deadly winter that makes spring so sweet this year.

We had a white Christmas. Then a white New Year. It went on like that for some time.  It got colder and colder, and the snow came every week and just would not melt enough to do anything but create a layer of ice on top. On the 21^st of January, the snow fell over the partially-melted snow from before, and that set the standard for the next couple of months. Snow turns to ice, snow falls on ice, rinse and repeat.

 

                                                             Deeper

 

                                     More on the way; the beginning of ten inches

By early February, there was no walking on the farm without falling and breaking something essential. Just getting from the steps to the truck became well-nigh impossible. It was a daily chore to clear the snow from the truck.

                                                                    Two feet

 

Salt became scarce, then was nonexistent in the stores.

I couldn’t do anything but huddle by the fire and turn up the wall-mounted gas heaters.

 

The fireplace, though pretty, just created a wind-tunnel from the dog-door to the chimney, so it was useless as a heat source. The dogs liked it, though.

 

The wall-mounted LP gas heaters, special ordered from Montville Hardware (the Best Hardware Store in the World), saved the day.

Then the unthinkable happened.

The water heater, which I had repaired when I moved in, developed a major gas leak when the pilot assembly disintegrated.

I smelled something strange when I left for work that morning, but it didn’t smell like gas.

That evening, when I returned, the smell was gone. But the heater quit just after I lit it, and going into the basement, I knew just how lucky I’d been. The cellar was filled with fumes. Apparently the gas came out at such a volume that it blew out the tiny pilot flame, saving the house.

Something in this house likes me.

I set up a fan, blew out the fumes and froze for a week until the gas company could make a delivery.   I also thanked my lucky ghost.

 

                        Some people get stick-ons to make these patterns, but these are real

It was pins and needles all winter, with no money left after the weekly expenses. It took me until Christmas to pay the surveyors, then I dropped a thou on the gas company, then another for taxes. I supplemented my heat with some oil-filled electric jobs, but after my second three-hundred-dollar bill from CL&P, I put those things away.

Finally March came. It was still cold, but the sun was working on the ice. By early April the last patches of ice melted, though it took a lot of salt (now available) to get the last bits to go away.

                                           March 22nd. Jennie King's birthday(my mom)

No work got done on the place between late December and late March.

Then I set my jaw, made a list, and got to work.

The sun was coming up earlier and setting later. Maybe I could actually get things done!

Then Daylight Savings Time began and I had light in the evenings. I had never appreciated it so much before.

Restoration of The Standish Farm, here I come.