I found this draft dated early 2015 and couldn't find it in the posts, so here it is. If you've already seen it, my apple-ogies. I've been deep into the kitchen, bathroom, and bedroom finishing, and hate to show a half-finished project, so I have delayed. I will dribble some out a bit at a time, as the End is coming soon.
It's been terribly, terribly difficult this year.
STANDISH HOUSE
THEN AND NOW
(originally written after the first snow of the snowiest year on record)
It's been a while since my last post, but the beginning of winter is no time to write when the cold and snow are on their way. But I do have a special treat. Read on.
Winter has hit in full force, and the past three weeks have been spent in preparation for it. The barn is shored, the greenhouse has finally been emptied of all its trash, and all the close-to-the-house brush clearing has been done, The pond is frozen, two inches of snow covers the ground, and I've had my annual run-out-of-LP gas-on-the-coldest-day-of-the-year episode. Yes, I awoke on Tuesday to a sputtering bedroom heater and immediately cursed my cockeyed gas tank gauge. I then awoke on Wednesday to seven below outside and thirty-four in the house. It would be a week before I could get the gas company to bring me more. But I learned from last year and had installed an emergency valve that allows me to hook up a 20-gallon grill-sized tank in a pinch, and this was certainly that. I have heat and hot water again, and it's a good thing, as temps won't go above freezing for much of the next week. It's still cold in the house, around fifty.
This being the case, I've decided to finally do some interior restoration starting today. It's about damn time; I haven't done anything to the interior other than infrastructure repair upon moving in. Today I'm moving everything from the living room into the bedroom and intend to update the living room completely. It presently features some fine wide cedar paneling on the fireplace wall, a heart pine floor, and stained pine trim around the windows and doorways, none of which are original. The drywall has been taped but not floated, and all seams are visible. In addition, the ceiling sports two faux box beams that scream out "1960s!" The fireplace wall paneling was designed to match the paneling in the back room, apparently the only old paneling still in existence in the house.
So today, after moving the furniture, I intend do the initial investigation as to the original configuration of the room. I'll start by going into the attic/second floor to remove a floorboard and examine the joists from above. That will let me know with what I'm dealing. I hope I'll have another post tonight with pics of the investigation.
In the meantime, here's a treat for you historyophiles. One of the Izbicki siblings, Bertha's daughter Barbara, brought me this picture of the house taken in 1938, when Chester and Bertha bought the derelict Standish House. I took one look at the disrepair and asked "Was this taken before or after the Hurricane?" The house looks like it's been through one, but it was actually taken in summer, months before The Great Hurricane of 1938. That storm devastated Long Island, southeastern Connecticut, and much of Rhode Island. The storm surge brought twenty feet of water into the streets of downtown Providence. Providence is less than forty five miles from Preston.
Note the south addition is only one-third the size of that addition today, and that the side door is fully visible and not enclosed. The roof cornice on the gable end has a set of horizontal returns (missing today and not authentic to the original Cape design) and the front of the house sports a large porch, complete with Victorianesque column brackets. Several outbuildings can be seen on the left side of the picture. They are all gone now, as is the view of the pasture on the hill behind those buildings. The entire hill, still a pasture of the dairy farm up the road, is now obscured by a tall hardwood forest. A 1930s-era car is in the driveway, and a now-disappeared rock wall divides the driveway from the south yard. Careful perusal of the picture show strange lines or dark streaks from bottom to top; these are pencil lines that were added to the original after it was apparently crinkled, then unfolded. Mine is a copy. The chimney has a korbel mine doesn't have; it was rebuilt sometime in the past twenty years.
1938
2015
Looking at this makes me realize it's time to take down the old temporary gate and fence near the door and replace them with something more appropriate and less hillbilly. That'll happen when the snow goes away. Possibly spring.
Recent Note:
This was done, and despite the late summer verdure, mostly chest-high Johnson grass, the property looks much more civilized now that when I was pretty much camping out.
Recent Note:
This was done, and despite the late summer verdure, mostly chest-high Johnson grass, the property looks much more civilized now that when I was pretty much camping out.
I kinda like that old porch.
ReplyDeleteHaving grown up in the South, the Ultimate Porch Country, I agree with you on my own personal note. Many fine evenings have I spent on my porches in Arkansas or South Carolina, watching the squirrels and enjoying the birds at my feeders. The porch at the Cason Farm in Hodges, South Carolina, was a place of many laughs, a few odd tipples, a seduction or two, and some thousand hours listening to fine public radio.
ReplyDeleteBu this is not only a historic 325 year old farmhouse, it is located in New England. Historic Cape Cods have no porches other than the small interior entryway beyond their front doors (mine measures four by four feet). These are 'not hardly even close to' porches by southern standards. But there are reasons for this.
Though southerners may glance with suspicion at our non-porch unfriendliness (not exactly undeserved; northerners are a bit less gregarious than our southern cousins), we have madness that reflects our methods. Our summers are notoriously short, and our winters, the polar (sorry) opposite. Winters with a vengeance. It's been two weeks since the temps have been over freezing up here, and it's barely the second week of January. Okay, we had a day with thirty-four degree temps, but it rained all day and a cold front came through. Six degrees that night, we are skating from place to place as I write this. Seriously; One must be careful where one parks, or One must have Triple-A come and drag us the three feet to asphalt, which is embarrassing. Porch life would be an impossibility here, yet I spent MANY a January night on my South Carolina porch.
Add to this something that might surprise many southerners; we have much worse bugs up here than you Rebs. Now, now. I lived in Texas, Arkansas, and South Carolina for most of my life, and I'll admit that chiggers, scorpions, and foot-long centipedes found in those climes still make me cringe. But the mild summers up here in Southeastern Connecticut keep the bugs going and going and going from the spring thaw into the cold months. My favorite outside time is in late November and early December, when the mosquitoes, biting flies, and mayflies have died and gone away and the freezes haven't yet started. Not to mention the white-faced hornets, yellowjackets, and, to a lesser extent, the deer ticks that carry Lyme disease. Thesse are either absent or available to a much lesser extent
So yes, I think it would be cool to have a porch; I miss all of mine. But this house is different in many ways. I will be building an outdoor kitchen and possibly a screened porch in my backyard this or next year. I do not wave my flag for my neighbors; I've left the south and its 'I-welcome-all' attitudes, and that's my choice. My friends and neighbors know when to call, and I would never turn a needy stranger away. But a front porch? Mine is inside my front door for historic as well as personal reasons.
Strange thing about Connecticut Capes. We all have front doors. It's the most central and prominentt piece of outward architecture of a Cape's façade. Mine is totally original, with a hand-forged sliding bar as a lock (no knob) and hand-blown Crown glass windows, one on each side of the door at chest to forehead height, four inches wide.
Yet I never use it. No one does. No one has ever knocked upon it. They know better; no one has ever knocked upon theirs, either.
Everyone with a Cape Cod style home, whether new or ancient, uses their side door for a main entry, and that has been the practice for hundreds of years. That the predecessors of the Izbickis, who had just bought the house as the picture was taken, made the side door their main entry, is likely, judging by the wear of that entry. Granted, I can't see the front door in that picture, but Yankees are a hard breed to which change can be introduced. The Izbickis did build an enclosure around the side door, though, making their contact with the outside world just that more remote.
But, I think as I feel the chill on my lower extremities, maybe it was just the cold that did it.