Casablanca Sunsets

June 13, 2017

 

May 30, 2017

We get by…

… with a TON of help from our friends (and family)!! We only got one good day of work in this weekend at Casablanca, but we got so much done – especially some little nit-picky things that needed attention. We did it because we had the A-Team on hand!

Mavinee got in there with the John Deere and has the lawn looking fab! We’re still working on getting more real grass than weeds – gonna be a process.

The future Dr. Nabity, Teagen, came up and was truly a blessing. We all huddled in the dog trot to TRY to get that room put to bed! Almost there. Teagen painted the door frame and scraped paint off the transom and sidelight glass. Halleluia!!

Mavinee went through the dining room and did touch-up work – then she continued to hone her metal polishing skills on some more door knobs!

Eric got the corners in the dog trot finished off.

Those are the highlights from Casablanca for this week! Eric and I will have all next week at the house, so let me know if you want to join the fun!  😉

Built on the rock!

Daniel Black, the original owner and builder of our Casablanca in Coaling, was a practical man. He brought his new bride, Margaret, and their first baby to this part of Tuscaloosa County and set about making a home. Daniel was a farmer and so the first order of business was to build a barn. When he started on this house, he needed a practical way to make the foundation. He found the resources he needed right on his own property – stones from the pasture. I wonder if he was familiar with these verses from Matthew 7:24-25. Jesus says,

“Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock.“

I bet Daniel Black was a wise man. He built the foundation of this house on rocks he stacked from the pasture. In the last 164 years, the rain has fallen and the winds have blown, but the house has not fallen. Over the decades, those stones have been shored up by mortar and supported with concrete, but the original stones are still there – still supporting this house which was founded on rock.

I don’t have a photo yet of our foundation rocks, but it looks something like this:

The front bedroom of our house was experiencing something my family calls the “down creep.” Back in the 70s, my dad was wearing some of those hip leisure pants – the kind that don’t require a belt. My uncle Bernie asked my dad, “Don’t those pants give you the down creep since you ain’t got a belt?” That was about 40 years ago and I haven’t stopped laughing.

So, our front room has the down creep – it’s sloping south. It’s a big room and the foundation rocks were in need of some help. Cue AFS – super guys! We highly recommend them if you have a house with some down creep!

These aren’t the prettiest pictures you’ll see on our blog, but we are using this thing for our own photographic record keeping, so here we go… The solution to down creep: four huge concrete supports, big fancy jacks, and four huge, load-bearing support beams!

These AFS angels even helped shore up one of the stacks of support rocks because it was looking a little fragile. I guess I would be fragile too if I’d been holding up a house for 164 years! So they put in some mortar to help it last a few more decades! Again, not pretty, just necessary.

We’ll be back to the pretty pictures next week!  Happy Memorial Day weekend to all – especially those with family members who gave the ultimate sacrifice in service to our great country. Our family will remember Eric’s uncle, Ottis A. “Slick” White, who was killed in action in France during WWII. (You get a fun nickname if you’re born in the Free State of Winston {Google it!} and your first name is Ottis).

We’re still trotting…

It was an extremely productive weekend at Casablanca… but the dog trot is still not finished.  Maybe my expectations were too high?  Still, we are plugging along and got lots of great work done!

Let’s start today with an example of how all-consuming this renovation project is for me.  One night last week, I’m just tooling through the channels and catch the last half of The Help.  I picked it up right where Hilly ate the Terrible Awful – the best part, of course.  This scene comes on the screen – and what do you think catches my immediate attention?

WE HAVE THOSE DOOR KNOBS!  And those oval knob plates – and that door!  Kudos to the movie people for getting even the little details right!

Even though I don’t have “almost-after” pictures of the dog trot, we still got a lot of work done in there this weekend.  Here’s my husband doing due diligence with the front door area – lots of scraping, sanding, caulking, priming and repairing.

This section is done.  The trim is Sherwin Williams Sticks & Stones, and the shiplap is painted in SW Shell White.  I love that you can still barely see the square-head nails in the trim boards.

These are the front doors that lead into the dog trot.  I hope someday soon this makes for a great “before” pic!  It’s our plan to refurbish and use them, but they need a lot of TLC!

Per the usual, I spent some of the weekend on door restoration.  Me and my handy B&D Mouse sander are now BFF.

The Mouse got an extra workout on this door – evidently someone had nailed trim around it at one point and there were a ton of little holes.  No problem for this door duo – we took care of that!

This door also needed a little encouragement (via a big hammer) to get it together.  It’s interesting to see how this solid wood door was constructed.  I don’t think they make them like this anymore!

I got to write some more house blessings on the trim boards for the dog trot.  I thought these were especially appropriate for what will be the entry-way for our home.

And we got a new light fixture for the dog trot.  I love how it makes a design on the ceiling and walls.

In other news… Dad’s tree is starting to really burst out in leaves!  I know this maple is going to be so gorgeous!  I love the classic shape of the leaves.

We got to experience our first rain storm on the front porch.  It was fantastic!  I can’t wait to sit out here during many a rain storm to come – especially after those azaleas are back under control!

So… the Dollar General in Coaling has real-sugar Cokes.  It’s a problem.

One of the highlights of the weekend was working on some more of our hardware.  I learned about a useful technique on Pinterest that has been working well for us.  We take our metal hardware from the doors and “cook” them in the crock-pot with 1/4 cup of laundry detergent for 6-8 hours.  The result is a big pot of sludge, but it’s amazing how much easier the grime comes off.

After cooking, we clean off the mess with wire brushes and the results are amazing.  Look at this surface door bolt Eric worked on…

We discovered, via the Truthernet, that these door bolts were constructed in the “Eastlake” design.  Charles Eastlake was a British architect and designer who ushered in a style of home design that was a little less over-the-top than the Victorian Era designs had been.  This hardware is stamped “1873” on the back, and we think it was produced by Russel & Erwin Mfg. Co. in Connecticut.  It’s been like an excavation at Casablanca, and it’s so much fun to discover new treasures almost every week!

 

Same…!

We had a very productive weekend, but I don’t have a ton of new things to share.  Truly, we did many of the same things you’ve already heard about from us – demo, clean, sand, shop-vac, prime, paint, clean some more, paint some more… and the beat goes on!

We are still working on the dog trot.  It looks like this now:

The exposed shiplap is just fantastic!  This will make for a great comparison shot when it’s finished!

I spent the weekend stripping, sanding, priming and painting doors… my specialty!

One fun new thing from the weekend… my dad’s maple tree sprouted its first leaves.  I can’t wait to see how gorgeous this tree is in the fall!

That’s it for now!  More news next weekend!

The Dogs are Trotting!

What a full and fun weekend!  You may be wondering about these dogs that are trotting… but I’m going to get to that a bit later!  There are just so many new things to report from Casablanca this week!

First, we graduated another fabulous class of MBAs out into the world!  Roll Tide!  Here are some of my favorite new business leaders: Rachel, Mariel, Brittany, Caroline and Mary Helen!

Post-graduation, the Frosts were kind enough to lend us a hand (and a van!) to help get some new goodies from the Vintage Cottage in Buhl, AL.  If you haven’t been… shame on you!  Google it, Facebook it – and then get on out there!  We got this new-to-us china cabinet for the dining room and I’m in love!

I also picked up this sweet goodie for half price!

This sunflower found a home with our new Garden Shed from Graceland Buildings!  I love the barn look.  Every farmhouse needs a barn, right??

Of course, any visit to the farmhouse has to include a climb up the Magnolia tree if you’re Lucas!  It’s the best climbing tree!

Other fun happenings from the weekend include getting to store our lawn mower in the new Garden Shed – and a free ride in the cart for Dad.

But on to the real work of the weekend… the dog trot!  For those who haven’t heard of this, a dog trot is a breezeway between two parts of a house, connected by a common roof.  This style of house was very common in the 19th century when our house was built.  Wikipedia says the dog trot was used for cooling the house.  The open windows in the house and the dog trot would pull the air through the spaces and keep the house cooler.  And it’s a great place for the dogs to get out of the rain or sun, hence the name.

Our dog trot is closed in now, as so many are from these old houses – it looks like a wide hallway.  We started the process of tearing out sheet rock and exposing the shiplap over the weekend.

Here’s a before pic of our dog trot from the front door:

And here are some pics from Demo Day on the dog trot:

God bless Mavinee!  She and Eric had to pull out about one million nails from the wall!

… and the ceiling!

But look how awesome it’s going to be!!

After all the nails were pulled, we had to fill them in – all one million of them! – with plaster-repair-sticky stuff.  I made Eric take this picture so y’all would know I was really there!

I know you can’t tell it from this cell phone pic, but the moon is prettier over the farmhouse!

That’s it for this week!  I hope we have some pics from the finished dog trot next time!  Blessings!

Rain, Rain, Go Away!

Usually on a Monday morning I have lots of updates from a productive weekend in Coaling.  Unfortunately, this past weekend wasn’t the greatest.  Eric worked a ton of overtime at UAB’s graduation ceremonies and then it rained cats and dogs on Sunday!

I did get to cut a little grass on Friday night.  I’ve totally got a system now.  And my green John Deere is just awesomeness…

I also got to start work on a set of doors in the dog trot.  They weigh one million pounds!  We are thinking about leaving these a bit distressed, but not totally sure yet.  Hopefully, next weekend I’ll have some pics of these doors as a finished product!

That’s it for now!  Please pray that we get lots of productive time at the house in the coming weeks.  Today marks exactly 15 weeks until MBA Launch starts for me in August.  That sounds like a good, long Summer, doesn’t it?  I’m expecting it to go by in a flash and we have SO much work to do.  Pray for good weather, health, and lots of productivity over the next 15 weeks!  Thank you, Friends!