Thursday, February 28, 2013

My Sister's Old House

My sister just bought an old house out in California. So now I have someone to commiserate with over stubborn wallpaper. Her house is younger than ours, built in 1966 (versus 1921 for ours), but that's pretty old for California. And since our effective year built is 1953, we are likely to encounter many similar problems.

So, to Ashley: I wish you fewer layers of wallpaper, working appliances, and many happy days in your new old house.

Thursday, February 21, 2013

Inherited Plants

When I was a kid we always lived in new houses that had formerly been uninhabited area, so this is the first house I've lived in where I inherited plants. This is good in some ways. I have big, established trees and shrubs that I could never have if I was planting everything myself, but I also have things I do not want. Overgrown roses, invasive weeds, a hedge along the driveway that seems to be asking to be crashed into occasionally. And grass. An old, weedy lawn that hasn't really been tended to besides occasional mowing for a long time. Probably decades.

The worst thing inherited was the parts of the garden that were badly tended. I showed pictures before of the tree that was being suffocated by ivy. Hopefully I managed to save it. My dad thinks its a dogwood tree and I would love to have it survive. Dogwood trees in bloom are gorgeous.

Even some of the big, established trees are not entirely welcome. I have this gigantic crepe myrtle on the side of the house. I'm not really planning on getting rid of it, but it's somewhat tempting. It's such a messy tree. In the late spring/early summer it drops it's plentiful flower petals, in summer it drops bark, and in the fall it dumps huge drifts of leaves. We have a drain at the foot of the stairs down to the basement that is constantly being filled up by crepe myrtle debris and we already had to have our gutter cleaned out once. But it really is an impressive crepe myrtle. I've never seen one that big before. 

Other inherited plants include a bunch of azaleas, some rose bushes (mostly terribly overgrown, but I'll attempt to remedy that), a Japanese maple, a dogwood tree, an evergreen that I believe is a Norway Spruce (arborday.org has a nice tree identifier), and a white willow. My dad identified the dogwood tree and white willow when he was here. I also have a couple of shrubs that were clearly added to the landscape when the house was put on the market. I am not sure what all of these are, but need to identify them. I plan on moving them and need to know when the best time to transplant each of them is and whether or not they are shade tolerant. I also seem to have some bulbs popping up here and there. My guess is daffodils, but I guess I'll find out in a couple weeks when they bloom.

Tuesday, February 19, 2013

History of Our House

District of Columbia Recorder of Deeds
Our house was sold by Michael J. Colbert to Anthony J. Casale on November 29th, 1921. The ownership of the house was then transferred to Ralph W. Howard Jr. in the form of a trustee's deed on October 5th, 1930. It was then sold to Elizabeth E. Lanahan on January 16th, 1931. It was sold to the family we bought it from on December 2nd, 1988 and it was sold to us on May 8th, 2012.


DC Property Information Verification System
No permits have been issued for this property that have been recorded in the electronic building permit database. The "effective year built" is 1953. It seems that the house had a gut remodel. The walls are all drywall, which didn't exist when the house was originally built. Based on the EYB, 1953 is a good guess of when that remodel was done. The addition at the back of the house was likely done at this time as well.


Census 1940

In 1940 John and Elizabeth Lanahan lived in the house with their 3 adult children and daughter in law. John and his two sons were plumbers, his daughter worked as a salesgirl at a department store. 

Elizabeth and Helen Marie, the daughter-in-law, didn't work and had a 8th and 10th grade education respectively. John and the married son (John Jr.) had 2 years of college education, the other son (James) and daughter (Alice) finished high school. 

The Lanahan family had been living in their current house for the last 5 years, but Helen Marie was living in Greensboro, North Carolina. All of the Lanahans were born in DC or Virginia.

John worked 40 hours a week, but did not report his income, probably because he was self-employed (a common reason to not report income in the 1940 census). John Jr. made $1840 ($28000 in today's dollars) that year, James made $1000 ($15,000), and Alice made $850 ($13,000).

Census 1950 (Update 2022)
In 1950 Elizabeth Lanahan and her daughter Alice were still living in the house. Elizabeth was widowed and had apparently taken over her husband's plumbing business. Her occupation was listed as Proprietor of a Plumbing company. Alice was 35 years old, never married, and worked as a typist for a retail clothing company. 

This Weekend's Activity: Archaeology

So, apparently we had enough separation from the last de-wallpapering task, and decided to tackle the guest bedroom this weekend. This was a joint decision this time, not one made unilaterally by one or the other of us. We didn't expect it to necessarily be an easy task, but as with all of the other rooms, it will be more work than we had optimistically hoped for. I'll show why in pictures.
Uh oh. First sign of trouble:


There were multiple layers of wallpaper. Not all that surprising. But there were more than two or three. We finally found the wall and tried to figure out how many layers there were (thus the archaeology). I got pictures of them. The top layer is one. Then we have
Two:


Three:

Four:

Five:

Six:

Seven:



The progress on the room so far has been mostly limited to making it into a total disaster (but we are making progress and finding areas of drywall). We have a deadline of the last week in March to finish it, since my in-laws are coming to stay. Hopefully that won't be too pressing a deadline.







Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Update

I know I have not posted in a while. Between travelling and visitors and simply being busy this blog has fallen by the wayside. And this post isn't going to consist of much, because I still am busy. But some things that have happened with the house and yard that I have not yet reported:


  • I dug up the front lawn (with my husband's help). Will be turning it into an herb garden this spring
  • Both of our bathrooms seem to have leaks. I seem to have stopped the dripping from the attic bathroom by caulking it all over the place (including places that need new grout), but now the one on the second story seems to be leaving water stains on our first floor ceiling
  • I got a chipper-shredder for Christmas, because my husband is awesome, and just got it going last weekend. Turning all of our old twigs, and our Christmas tree, into mulch
  • We desperately need to insulate our house better. When it gets cold, air streams in around the windows and doors. And the floor of the kitchen where there is no basement underneath gets ridiculously cold, making the whole kitchen cold.
  • The radiators work very well. In the summer we thought we would get rid of the radiators and use forced air for both air conditioning and heat, since the radiators are ugly. Now you couldn't convince us to get rid of them if you tried.
  • The pizza oven is pretty awesome, even though my husband is still getting the trick of cooking in it. We have some ribs cooking in it as we speak.
That's what I can think of right now. I'll probably add to the list throughout the next couple days as I think of more things.