Handyman Special
Renovating that old house on Market Street

Introduction

Well, here it is. This is the house that James and Cybele bought. We purchased it from an elderly woman named Betty Melendy who lived here since 1957. Cybele called it 'Chez Melendy' one day and the name has stuck. The Melendys were a family of seven. Three boys, two girls, and their parents. It seems incredible that they could all have lived in this little house but as John, the youngest son, said to me, "It didn't seem so small to us back then."

The house was built around 1850 using some method of post and beam construction. Unlike modern homes, where studded walls, sheathed with plywood are what keeps them from falling down, post and beam (or timber frame) structures use large, usually rough cut timbers to form a free standing frame that is then sheathed and sided. Think old-fashioned barn raising.

With the way the house stands straight and square, I was pretty confident that the basic structure of it was sound. Post and beam houses can sometimes start leaning slightly one way because of weak foundations, soft joints, prevailing winds, or all of the above. I hired an engineer to check it out and he agreed that basic structure was in good shape. There are, however, many "issues" that need to be taken care of before we can call it home, and that's what this site is about, taking care of issues.

The left side of the house (or south side) has a little covered porch which should nicely accomodate a rocking chair for summer afternoon guitar strumming. And you can see there's a one story "ell" (old house terminology for addition) that extends off the back. The ell houses the kitchen and connects to the barn.

Ah the barn. That little piece of antiquity has major issues, you might say "character." Hopefully its character will hold together long enough for me to get around to giving it all the attention it deserves.

You can see by the pink building permit in the window and the blue styrofoam insulation that skirts the outside that I've already got started on the project. Insulating the foundation perimeter is a stopgap measure to help cut down on drafts through the fieldstone foundation. Next summer I hope to find a more permanent solution, but for now, anything to cut down on the amount it costs to keep the place heated. Heating oil is $2.15/gal. I don't know yet what kind of "mileage" the house gets but I'm thinking gas guzzler until I get it insulated and tightened up.

On the inside I've started to demolish the upstairs interior walls. The plan is to gut the interior so that I can insulate (there is currently no insulation anywhere in the house), add more electrical service (there are at the most two electrical outlets per room right now and none of the overhead lighting is controlled by wall switches), and cover the walls with either sheetrock or veneer plaster. Currently some walls are covered with old sheetrock while most of the downstairs is covered with crumbling plaster and wall paper. There is certainly lead paint in the house and the kitchen floor tiles are a kind of vinyl asbestos. All this stuff has to go as far as I'm concerned.

In the image on the left, you can see the chimney that goes up through the center of the house. There's a hole where at a woodstove used to heat the upstairs at one time was connected.

You can also see from these pictures the large framing members. 4x4 studs spaced 24-33 inches apart for the knee wall and 4x6 rafters spaced at 33 inches.

The contractor strength garbage bags are starting to pile up. I'm still working on getting a vehicle for carting debris. That's a story for next time.

So welcome to Chez Melendy. In the next installment we'll take a look at more "before" pictures of the inside and its 50 years of tobacco road patina. Thanks for stopping by, and keep in touch.

jamesg@blue-bottle.com

p.s. WARNING: The subject matter on this site may diverge occasionally from house renovation to the daily slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. (Click here for the next episode.)