Thursday 31 August 2017

The Porch

The LBH had a tiny front porch at one time, which must have been added when the buildings were dragged 7 km from the then-ghost town of Discovery. The house was made up of 2 of those Gold Rush era cabins, which were joined together in the middle. We think that this was done in 1917, as the linoleum floor has an underlay of Vancouver Daily Sun newspapers dated 1917 - full coverage of WWI... Interesting stuff!

We have one old photo of the LBH, from the BC Archives. In the picture, a man, woman and baby are sitting on the front steps - of the porch - in black and white, with quite a tree-less landscape in the background. (Atlin had recently burned down, the last of 3 major fires that devastated the town in the early 1900s. Discovery, abandoned, provided many buildings for Atlin - the ultimate feat of recycling.)

When we bought the house 5 years ago, there was an even smaller porch than the one pictured in the old photo, and it was leaning in towards the house, rotting. It wasn't difficult to pull it off. During our renovations, we've schemed and wondered about what we should do about a porch. We wanted to honour the history of the house, but we also did not want front stairs that end up directly in the street.

Here are some photos to show what has been going on. The porch is nearly complete! Our trusty carpenter just has to install the stairs and the access door to the crawl space, along with the remaining skirting on the exterior foundation. It's coming along nicely. Because much of the lumber is pressure-treated, we must wait at least a year before painting the porch. Luckily, our recycled cedar spindles were previously painted red, which is handy because it makes the porch look great in the meantime.

LBH circa 2012, when we bought it!
Spring 2015, after foundation re-done
August 2017, deck in progress
Aug 2017, stairs to be added on the right
Our youngest child resting her head on new railing!

Tuesday 22 August 2017

Hello? Are you still there?

Hello... First, please accept my apologies for not blogging... We've been just enjoying our Little Blue House, in all of its unfinished glory. Since last summer, when we painted the exterior, we really haven't done too much with the wee Gold Rush house.

Well, except kill about 4 mice (that we know of)... We were rodent-free for 2 years or so, and somehow, the pesky little vermin have been sneaking into the house, probably through the addition, which is about 25 years old. When we picked up the front (old) part of the house up and then placed it on a new foundation, the seam where it joined the addition was most definitely subject to some wrenching. Someone told me once that a mouse only needs a space the size of a nickel to squeeze into an area.

Now we have several mouse traps, and my husband spray-foamed the hell out of a few cracks in our floor (that accessed the crawl space). He also crawled around in the dark and spidery crawl space, on all fours, to inspect everything down there... He emerged with a case of the heebie-jeebies. Then it was beer o'clock for sure.

In other news, I recently finished the last bit o' painting - the bay window, which is undoubtedly our favourite feature of the house. I will attempt now to include a photo (and I sound like I'm making excuses when I say that is one of the reasons I haven't blogged in recent months... my Blogger app stopped working on my iPhone, and that is how I have been speaking to you for a long time now)! So I am actually logged into a big computer - an actual computer! - and I am writing.

Thanks, Tom, for gently nudging me back to writing here... Don't forget about me! This story isn't over yet, people!