You know I love finding old things. Here are just a few things we found in the old 120 Main house walls during demolition!

This tiny 1″x1″ photo had fallen into a wall crack. I love the finger waves in the hair!

This Amazing Grace hymnal page and this little tin with a lucky penny was tucked up behind the ceiling rafters in the old kitchen area:

This old letter was folded up and tucked into a ceiling board:

The letter was in really bad shape so I tried to decipher as much as I could. I left out the recipient name and the senders name just because it’s such a small town….but it would have been written back in the 1920s. 

Mrs. Calhoun,

You might like to know why Harly send for those precious things, so precious that you can’t part with them when you have asked to return them.

Inez had been bragging about how much Harley had spent on her and Verial made the remark to a girl friend of mine when I stopped Harly from taking a part in the play.

Inez rings the matter is gone so far as for your mother to send for my husband to come over there I have a few words to say. I didn’t think I would have anything whatever to say but since your mother has had the nerve to ring for Harly.

The very idea of her sending for Harly, Well I want to inform you now that Harly will not come or at least I don’t think he will and I want to tell you that you all are through telling Harly just what to do and what not to do if you don’t want to send those things keep and wear them as you have been doing and have every body in town making remarks about it.

I haven’t had reason to be jealous of anybody so far because Harly has been too good to me. So it will bring the whole set of you to keep quiet unless you want to get something real amusing started.

A woman said to me yesterday (What on earth does Mrs. Calhoun mean by letting Inez wear a married man’s stuff while others say she didn’t know any better. Don’t think for a minute that I want the stuff for he has given me as much or more. So Inez wear but I intend for the town to know that he asked for it and didn’t get it. And that isn’t all Mrs. Calhoun if you want to see my husband you know exactly where he lives.

Mrs. H. R. B.

I’m not 100% sure I follow this letter but I hope the writer got her precious things back. 

We have found so many other cool things but I’m trying to group them into smaller stories. We found a few shoes. Here is one: 

I did read somewhere that hiding old shoes in the walls was to bring good luck. And to ward off evil spirits. I need a time machine!

 
I’ve started to index all posts on our big renovation projects into history, found objects, renovation and DIY categories so they are easy to find:

Sixty-One Park Farmhouse Project

One Twenty Main Farmhouse and Store Project

The Old Depot Project

 

I have a lot to share on the house too but you can also follow along on Instagram as I post almost daily @onetwentymain and @lilblueboo.

I loved the old brick on the One Twenty Main building but when we started cleaning the mortar it became apparent that it was in really bad shape and needed to be entirely repointed. 

We decided to do a German Smear finish to fix all the problems at once. German Smear is a just a light coat of mortar applied to the exterior of stone or brick to create a distressed old world look:

Before the finish was started though we had to fix missing and loose brick pieces on the top walls of the building, especially at the corners:

We weren’t sure we were going to be able to match the brick but coincidentally the same day we were thinking about brick replacement my friend Gianna was tearing down her old bakery to make way for a new one. And guess what?! She just happened to have exactly the brick we needed and let us take as much as we wanted. 

The brickwork was fixed and we could move on to fixing the exterior. (I love this photo of Main Street with the old courthouse in the background and the horse trailer going by.)

Here are the main tools used for the finish:

Finishing Trowel

Sponge Float

Stucco Dash Brush or Masonry Brush

Garden Sprayer 

We used Quikrete Stucco Finish Coat (White Base). It took about 12 bags to cover the entire building. 

I love Jaime’s technique for halving the bag quickly. First he scores the bag:

And then folds it in half:

Half the bag goes into the wheelbarrow and water is added:

The mortar is mixed until it’s a thick cake batter consistency:

Jaime did a test wall in the back of the building to see what technique looked the best. First the stucco is applied in a thin layer across the brick using a large finishing trowel:

Then he removed some of the finish before it dried with a sponge and a brush:

The test wall turned out great! 

Tackling the largest wall a few days later:

I caught a pic of some of the guys working on dismantling the old chimneys:

The brick from the chimneys could not be saved…it was crumbling just from touch. It’s 48 years older than the building brick:
 

This side of the building went pretty fast. That’s Russ with the sprayer and he used the large sprayer to wet the brick before the stucco was applied:

The first finished wall:

A few days later the other side and the front were finished. The technique was perfected as Jaime worked and it got faster and faster. He ended up mostly using his gloves to distress the brick and then brushing some of it off:

Here’s a time lapse of the front of the building:

 

 

 

 

 

 

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A post shared by Ashley Hackshaw (@lilblueboo) on May 2, 2019 at 8:40am PDT

The funny thing about applying stucco or mortar is that no two people will do it exactly the same. Jaime and Brett both tried to do it but their technique was too different so to keep it consistent Jaime had to complete the entire building. Brett helped speed up the process by keeping the mortar ready.

I just realized I don’t have a photo of the entire building finished but you can at least see the desired effect. It’s since rained and washed off some of the loose mortar and the building looks perfect now. The roof can be finished now and new windows can be installed. Moving right along! 

 
I’ve started to index all posts on our big renovation projects into history, found objects, renovation and DIY categories so they are easy to find:

Sixty-One Park Farmhouse Project

One Twenty Main Farmhouse and Store Project

The Old Depot Project

 

I have a lot to share on the house too but you can also follow along on Instagram as I post almost daily @onetwentymain and @lilblueboo.

It’s going to be a shock when you see how many layers of farmhouse we’ve had to remove to get to the original structure…but it’s also so, so awesome to see 117 years of additions and textiles and change. That’s my favorite part…the revealing of history. I posted a bunch of before photos and I am going to try to post these by room in order to see the demo progress. I’ll start with the main living room which is to the left of the front door when you walk in:

The living room corner at the front of the house. That brick building you see out the building is the old theater next door. The ceilings were once all tongue and groove:

This is looking toward the back of the house:

This back section was obviously added on at some point:

And looking at all the old plumbing I think this room addition was once a bathroom.  When the bathroom was moved (you’ll see in photos further down the post) this once exterior wall was opened up to make this room larger:

Torn down to the studs you can see that there was no insulation except for the ceiling of the room addition:

When the floor finally was removed we were tell that the old bathroom had once been a shallower porch. All of this dirt is now being excavated down and carried out bucket by bucket so that there is room to pour some new concrete footers. 

I can’t wait to show you what has been found in the dirt! 

The other side of the living room shows the “later” bathroom entrance: 

A beautiful fireplace grate we uncovered:

In order to show you how the “later” bathroom was added I’ll start with a photo at the front door looking up the stairs. There’s a closet to the left of the stairs right next to the mirror you can see my reflection in:

We thought it was such an odd skinny stairway until we opened up the walls and could see that it had once been open! You can see the middle piece that was added as a landing upstairs. Then the bathroom was added underneath the stairs:

Here’s a view from the living room to the bathroom:

A closer look at how they boxed off under the stairway to make a bathroom:

There’s even an old doorway behind the tub!

Looking through the bathroom back towards the living room:

There was a matching fireplace on the other side of the entryway but it had long since been bricked up:

Some remnants of tongue and groove on the ceiling above the fireplace. I can’t figure out why that hole was there though…probably from an old coal or oil stove vent but the bricks would have been there before too, unless they made the fireplace larger over the years for support:

Unfortunately the brick and mortar in both fireplaces was crumbling and we had to take them out:

Here’s the enormous base of river rock that supported one of the fireplaces:

I love this light in the foyer:

On the other side of the house from the back master bedroom (that brown door in the back is to the store):

This room is what I call the den area and its to the right of the front door as you walk in. The window used to be a single but was changed to a double. My guess is it was added in 1950 when the store was built because they would have lost a front window:

The other corner of the den. That wall was obviously added at a later date:

Looking toward the back of the house from the den. The room in the middle was the kitchen, you can see the plumbing in the floor still:

We found some pretty cool layers of linoleum when doing demo in the kitchen and there was a newspaper left underneath indicating that it was installed in Jun 1954:

This is the master bedroom looking toward the pantry and exterior porch door. Look at all the layers of old colors:

The pantry was once a porch:

The wall between the master bedroom and the kitchen had also been added at some point and when all the layers were removed we ended up with this huge room:

And looking closely we found a lot of old plumbing under the floor that looked like the location of the original kitchen. There also used to be a door but it was converted to a window:

There was a lot of wear and tear on the floor and combined with the location of the old pipes this was definitely where a kitchen sink and table used to be: 

At the far end of the room we noticed a hole in the ceiling that used to be where a third chimney stood:

I was able to find an old photo of the farmhouse and there was definitely a door and a chimney:

When the floors were all removed we found all the electrical wires just laying on the ground underneath:

Most of the floor joists weren’t even attached and you can see the stacked rock foundation:

I know it looks like a mess but this stage is a relief to us…it means we can start putting it back together:

Here are a few photos of the pantry before demolition:

Look at those two “once exterior” windows:

Here’s the back corner of the house that shows the old bathroom and pantry added on:

The remainder of the porch and the old electrical panel: 

Okay almost done…but first back to the entryway so I can show you the upstairs! See the how the chimney used to be half it’s size and then brick was added for support?

The railing to the upstairs:

The added landing in the middle:

The upstairs was very simple…just two large rooms off the center landing:

Ceiling panels revealed headboard in some places:

The reveal of the the attic space:

Just one big open room now!

We’ve made some more progress on the store and I’ll share that soon.

 

 

 
I’ve started to index all posts on our big renovation projects into history, found objects, renovation and DIY categories so they are easy to find:

Sixty-One Park Farmhouse Project

One Twenty Main Farmhouse and Store Project

The Old Depot Project

 

I have a lot to share on the house too but you can also follow along on Instagram as I post almost daily @onetwentymain and @lilblueboo.