Front Window(s)

All the pictures I took of the inside front wall have been marred by the two blocks at the bottom of the old windows. (Sorry, I'm too lazy to link it to an old post right now - you can find it if you look, or let me know you're interested and I'll find it. It probably took me as long to write this as it would have to go find it and link it...)
On July 4th, the blocks were removed and the window was installed. Actually, it's windows, plural, as it made more sense cost-wise and headache-wise (trying to find that large of a window that opened the way we wanted, etc.) to install two smaller windows.

Here's the hole in the wall:

Notice the wet tile. I was just finishing up with the grout.

Here's another view (with the tile again):



Outside, on the sidewalk:


And check this out:

See the thin layer of face brick? That's the new stuff that was applied to the blockwork to make the outside look good. I'm not sure when that was done, but mid-80s is a good guess. What a difference in building technique from the three-bricks-thick-interlocking method of the 1890s!








I can't resist another shot of the tile (it looks pretty good, huh?):

Concrete (How many posts about concrete does this make now?)

These pictures are from a couple of weekends ago when we poured the slab right in front of the main door, underneath the overhang, so that I could tile the entryway right up to it (the outermost tile being underneath the threshold of the door -if the door ever makes it here).






See the 2x4 in this picture? We used that to drag along the top of the form boards to get the right amount of concrete and to begin to smooth it off:



The "Energy Shield" in this picture is really a 'Concrete Shield' to keep the concrete from splashing back onto the tile that was already laid inside:


This is the next step to smoothing out:



And this long handled, huge tool is called a 'bull float.' Because it's big? And floaty on wet concrete? I guess so (that would be the scientific explanation):




And we poured a run down the side of the building, too. It's looking pretty mucky in this picture:



But it's starting to shape up here:


Most All of this concrete pouring has to do with water control. Old buildings stay in good shape when you take care of them; that's what we want.

Entryway - Wooden Wedges, Tough Bricks and Mortar

Check out this more-than-a-century-old wedge of wood:

We can't tell what kind of wood it is, but its very dry and, therefore, lightweight.



Here's where they came from:

Can you see that thin line of wood? These wedges were used to even out the courses of brick; they became a part of the wall.
There were none of these showing on the outside, only on the inside where the lathe-and-plaster interior finish would cover them up.



These wedges were here, in the last three courses of brick, the only barrier remaining in the new door opening:


It took four hours of hard work and heavy tools to chip these bottom rows out of here!



It's good to know the old building is so tough.

Entryway Construction - Part 3

PC, PR, & Curtis opened up the doorway last weekend.
Here's PR:






This has been the plan all along, but it's one thing to visualize an idea and something else to actually see it become reality. I was excited when I went down Saturday morning and walked through the wall for the first time.
Look at that! A doorway!


I'm still fascinated with the brick work from more than a century ago.
Here's the cross section of the cut in the wall:

If you look closely, you can see wooden wedges in some of these brick courses (more on this later...).

And inside looking out:

The line of sight looking down Main Street is amazing! This is exactly what we wanted to see even before the very first inspection hole PC cut in the brick.
[See the red caboose?]

Exciting!

Busy, busy, busy...

Just because I haven't been keeping up with the blog doesn't mean there's nothing going on. As a matter of fact, there's so much going on, I haven't had time to blog.

There is now a door-shaped hole in the wall.
The entryway roof is tar papered.
The interior floor is scraped down to bare concrete and the tiling has begun.

I'll be posting pictures soon....

Entryway Construction - Part 2

This brick is at least 118 years old:

These bricks are solid and heavy and now they're in a pile in the parking lot.

See?


It's the first layer of bricks in what will be the doorway.




Looking up:


There are rafters since the last time I posted!






I wanted to get a view from the caboose park so you can see our front entry way from there:


Next time I think I'll go even further down the street and snap a few pictures, too.

I'm getting ready to write a post over at the Taylor County West Virginia Blog about the Caboose Park and I'll add a link that hooks in over here (*link added), too. The caboose is a part of the Civil War Discovery Trail.
Here's a link to West Virginia Tourism's Civil War Discovery Trail page. It doesn't even list this as a stop. It does list the Grafton National Cemetery, though.

Miscellaneous Front Door Pictures

A couple more pictures with that evening sun:


Same evening light, but I'm standing up on the hillside where we plan to build a deck for outdoor seating:



On Monday during the Memorial Day Parade:

Entryway Construction

The trees from the caboose park (I'll come back and add a link for the caboose park here* edited to add link) cast long shadows that climb up the western side of The 123 in the early evening calm. From this distance, if you're looking, you can see the timber framed skeleton of the new entryway's gable:


The sky is a beautiful, brilliant blue against the emerald green of the hills (yep, those are the real, vivid colors - I didn't photo-shop anything).

Here's the close-up with the temporary bracing:




After the main timbers were set, PC drills into the fresh, clean poplar wood in preparation for tightening everything down with lag bolts:




This is a wider view that shows just the two main timbers. The other fellow in the picture is Curtis, who has been helping with the entire exterior construction process (Thank you, Curtis!):




The timbers are supported not only by the columns, but will also become a permanent extension of the old building's brick construction. The first layer of brick was pulled away to allow the butt-end of the timber into the wall:


The older-than-a-century brick and mortar is tenacious; it is painstaking work to chip out a small hole like this, a tribute to the construction techniques of stone masons of the past (last year, September, probably, I did a post on the three-bricks-thick interlocking building method of the 1800s).

Four Columns

Here are the pictures with all four columns:



My trusty old mini-van sits quietly in the parking lot.
I haven't been driving it a whole lot because it only gets about 18 miles (20 highway) to the gallon. At $4/gallon, that doesn't get me very far.
I'm fortunate to have a little-bitty car that gets almost 35miles/gallon, so my van only gets used when I need a truck because, although it only get 18mpg, PC's truck gets even less.








I can't wait to get the roof on this!

Granny Sue & The 123

I posted this same picture last fall, only the trees were bright red. I thought I'd capture the same scene this spring. The white blooms are just beginning to be replaced by young leaves.

I see this everyday when I'm down there working, but imagine my surprise when I saw this caboose over at Granny Sue's blog! And not only the caboose, but Granny Sue stopped by and took pictures of The 123! (Go to Granny Sue's post "Tale of a Tired Storyteller: Grafton")

I wasn't even there to meet her. She was on her way to Rowlesburg and it looks like, from the ladders against the side of the building in her picture, that PC had run off to the hardware store for something. I was at the high school for a baseball game. I hope to catch her in June when she visits again for a telling at Tygart Lake State Park.

The ladders were there for this:

Our temporary sign, just to let people know they can surf over here and see what all the activity is about; with all the outside work, it's obvious that something is going on.

Pitching In - Part 2

The 123 is the perfect size -and shape- for a small Coffee House. The layout is just about perfect. The main thing we weren't happy with was the front entrance. While the narrow Main Street face of the building with the single window and slight door were perfect for a small dentist's office, we felt we needed to open things up and create a welcoming entrance. If you've been following along you'll know that we intend to move the main entrance around to the west side facing the parking lot (see this post about brick cutting). And now that we have the inside well under way, it's time to start outside and get ready to open up the building.

One of the main things that needs to be done outside is to construct the gabled overhang that will protect the front entrance from the weather. There are several steps involved in this, but since we're talking about everyone pitching in to help, this post is about Screech and her contribution this past weekend.

See the squares that have been removed from the surface of the parking lot? These had to be removed to enable us to dig down until we hit bedrock. These will be the foundation points for the posts that will support the roof.

Here's Screech prying the last of the asphalt up:

See the yellow handled chisel right behind her? She used that and the hammer to chip a small corner out to give her a place to start to get in under the asphalt. . Then she used that pry bar (a pipe with a flattened end) in her hand to get in underneath and pry it up. When the whole square popped up, she stuffed one of those 2x4 pieces under it and then used a sledgehammer to whack until it cracked into pieces. She then pried up the pieces and set them into the wheelbarrow.

In this picture you can see the squares in relation to the building:

I'll get to what PC is doing in a later post. I do have a couple more pics I want to post that relate to the squares, but I have run to the end of my patience with formatting pics and text. I will have to start another post to add them....