Foxcroft

Greatest Hits of 2011 INSIDE

2012-01-11T19:53:00.000-06:00

Since I was very remiss in not posting about projects as I worked on them last year, I'll just have to cover them now in a "Best of" fashion. Here is one project that gave me great satisfaction in completing: The final door in our upstairs.

A brief recap: in 2005 we started converting the 1200 sq. ft. attic at our home into a liveable second floor. My goal was to make it look like it had always been finished, and I matched the trim, etc. from the 1928 first floor by using our original blueprint profiles. I bought 8 matching doors in jambs on ebay to use upstairs and wrote about getting them here: Ever Lose a Ball Hitch at 60 MPH?

Eventually I put those doors in, as detailed here: A Major Hang Up

The only problem was that we had NINE door openings upstairs. Older daughter has gone 5 years without a closet door until she went away to camp last July.

Unlike the other doors, I had to build the jamb for this one. I got Pete to come over and re-live old times. The photo above shows Pete at the start of the project.

We constructed the jamb first and then built up blocks to hold it into the opening. Thank God for 1 x 4 door trim to make up for a lot of extra area:

We set the door in place and marked for where we would need to mortise the jamb to inset the hinges:

I used Pete's "Toolwerks" reciprocating saw that I also borrowed from him when I worked on this: An "Outside Mushroom Factor" Tale. With it I cut a lot of bits into the wood and then went at them from the side. Eventually I smoothed it out with a wood chisel:

And here is how it looks with the hinge in place:

I used a similar process to mortise in the door strike plate:

After cutting all the casing to fit I stained and varnished it as well as the jamb and put it in place. I love the grain in the wood above the door, I call it the "Sunrise" pattern:

And finally with all that together I could cut the baseboard to fit and attach it to the wall:

By this time, oldest daughter's week at camp was up so I still have to wait to install the quarter round and trim the inside of the closet...

Merry Christmas 1953

2011-12-24T13:12:00.004-06:00

I haven't posted for quite a while due to other facets of my life taking up lots of time, and that actually plays into today's post.

When we were emptying the contents of Foxcroft in 2005 and getting ready to renovate, I put some items in the upstairs storage space at my office and promptly forgot about them. We moved to new offices this fall, and as I was going through things I found several boxes of memorabelia stored away. One box contained a stereo viewer and 2 boxes of stereo slides, the viewer didn't work so I'd never looked at any of the slides.

I brought it home and took it apart and replaced the 2 D batteries and lo and behold it was functional. Then I started to look at the slides.

Apparently Helen and Mick bought a stereo realist camera some time in the late 1940's and began to take and make their own stereo slides. The two boxes have scenes from Foxcroft (when they would have been visiting Helen's mother, Bess prior to their moving in with her in 1955) and from vacations in the South Dakota badlands and Yellowstone National Park.

Here are a few scans from Christmas Day, 1953. They don't begin to do justice to how good the images look in stereo in the viewer, but it is a start. I passed the viewer and slides around to my family on Thanksgiving and we spent a very enjoyable two hours discussing the images!

Here's the companion to the above pic of Helen at the Christmas tree in the living room:

And the stereo view of Christmas dinner, which appears to be two whole chickens for 4 people!

STILL Painting

2011-07-18T05:10:00.002-05:00

Yes it is year 5 and I am STILL painting the house. I picked up where I left off last summer near the front of the southeast side. Here was the scaffolding in place in late June:

By this point I had already heat gunned off all the paint on the chimney window, under the eaves, the side of the porch opening, and off the lookout boxes supporting the barge board. Here is a closer shot of the lookout and porch side:

And here they are completed:

The good news is that after I hung the wren box back up the wren came back.

Where next? No where to go but up:

3rd Annual Bungalow Blog Tour

2011-05-13T11:44:00.008-05:00

For the past 6 years I have written about our adventures as the second family to live in our 1928 bungalow. A good deal of that has been about Bess and Helen, the mother and daughter who built Foxcroft in 1928.

However for the bungalow blog tour rather than focus on their now well documented story, I am going to tell a bit about my own family members who were contemporaries of the builders.

I went to Remsen, in northwest Iowa with my dad last weekend. The purpose of the trip ostensibly was for me to collect some cuttings of climbing roses and also some hops that all came from the oldest farmstead in my family. We traveled about 6 and half hours north while simultaneous going back about 50 years in time.

We pulled into my Aunt Martha's apartment about 1:00 on Friday afternoon. Martha is one of my dad's older twin sisters, she is 80. When I was a young boy she would have been referred to as a spinster. Martha never married and lived with my grandparents until they both passed away in their 90's. Her place is two blocks from my grandparent's old home, but in a town of 1,000 nothing is too far apart. Aunt Helen, my dad's younger sister, was at the apartment too with her new 6 month old grandchild. At 71, Helen is the baby of the family. Helen is at the left, Martha in the middle

After we had been there about 15 minutes Helen said to Martha, "Should we give Mike his coffee pot?" and Martha hurried away into the back room. She came back with an old enamel coffee pot, and said, "Look inside." Both she and Helen were looking like the cat who ate the canary.

After taking off the lid, I found a note inside a plastic bag. It read:

My Mom always kept her seeds inside this coffee pot. It hung in the store room over the kitchen on the farm. It was still there when we moved on in 1953. Glad John left it there for us. Mom put seeds in the little sacks.

Also inside the bag were two small cloth bags. One faintly said "onion seed" the other said "lady slippers."

Under that was a paper bag with onions, and two glass jars of white beans and two more jars of peas.

"It's from Aunt Florence." said Helen.

Aunt Florence is my great aunt. She is my grandmother's youngest sister. Being only 6 years older than Martha, and 16 years younger than her oldest sister, my grandmother, she was more like a cousin than an aunt to her nieces and nephews.

Florence and her husband had moved onto the family farm she had grown up on in '53 after her older brother, John, had bought a farm in South Dakota. This apparently caused some friction among the eight siblings. I was told this as my dad, Helen and Martha explained the contents of the coffee pot. The "my Mom" referred to in the note was my great grandmother Mary Marx Colling. That is her picture at the top of this post. It is was taken in roughly 1900, eight years before she married and nine before my grandmother was born. That picture is part of a group shot of Mary and her nine brothers and sisters. Mary died in 1965, I just barely remember her. Mary was born in 1885 (Bess Fox was born in 1882 and died in 1970) She married Fred Colling in 1908 and they moved on to a farm that Mary's grandparents had lived on in 1913.

After looking through everything in the coffee pot Martha called Florence. Martha told Florence said we were coming to visit. We then drove to Granville, and even smaller, more remote town than Remsen. Florence is preparing to move into a nursing home near her son in Omaha in August. Her husband passed nearly ten years ago. They moved in to town 20 years ago.

This is the first year since 1953 that Florence had not used the seeds in the coffee pot because that is where she stored the seeds that she saved. Since she will move before the growing season is over she "wasn't going to bother" (an exact quote) to plant this year. Florence told me the beans and peas in the coffee pot were the same ones her mother grew. I asked if it was possible that Mary's parents or grandparents had grown them and passed them on to her. "Yes." was the answer.

I already had some peas from my Great Aunt Marion (Florence and my grandmother's sister) but these are different. We also dug from her back yard a red climbing rose and white climber too. She moved these and the hops from the farm when they came to town. What I am most interested in however are the hops. Florence said these were strictly grown for ornamental purposes, but when I consider that she was born during prohibition, I'm sure that's what she was always told...

Here are the hops are on my fence. I'll be optimistic.

I have already given away peas, beans and onions for planting to Sue and Jean at work and my neighbor, Mike. But the best part is that when I came home on Saturday I immediately went to our garden. My youngest has decided to have her own portion of the garden this year so I watched her plant peas and beans just like 7 generations of her family before her...

Next Tour Stop: At Home Alterations

Previous Tour Stop: 1916 Bungalow

April 24, 1932

2011-04-23T21:21:00.004-05:00

Bess’ Diary

April 24th, 1932
Sun. 45 Rain
H to WAA breakfast at 8. Daylight Savings time starts
at 2 a.m. today. Furnace fire after 2 days without, H
to supper with Prof. Bush to meet Stephen Vincent
Benet. Covered violets and azaleas

Comments: Helen was a junior at the University of Iowa at this time. She was a member of the Tri Delt sorority and many other groups. The WAA appears to have been the "Women's Athletic Association." Here is info from the UI Women's archives:

"The Women’s Athletic Association (WAA), an intramural organization with both an athletic and social focus, was organized in 1911 to “promote a spirit of fair play and sportsmanship among girls.” The WAA offered a variety of clubs, including Orchesis (dance), Seals (swimming), outing, hockey, canoeing, archery, badminton, tennis, basketball, and handicrafts. The group sponsored tournaments, play days, intramurals, sport club activities, classes in social dancing, and all-freshmen parties."

Helen was a member of the rifle team, Bess often mentions Helen practicing shooting.

Daylight Saving Time started nationally during WWI but was suspended in 1919. Apparently Iowa must have gone back to it sometime after that, and before it was nationally adopted in 1966.

Earlier in the week Bess' diary mentions she had bought an additional half ton of coal. The furnace fires would have been fueled with that.

Prof. Bush was French professor Stephen Bush. Helen was a French major, and had made her first trip to France, with Professor Bush, in the summer of 1929. She returned to France in 1931, also with Prof. Bush. He remained her mentor and I have read letters well into the 1950's where Bess updates Helen on Prof. Bush's health. I have also found a 1902 book citation that thanks Prof. Bush for his help in translating a work, his career at UI certainly seemed to have spanned half a century.

Stephen Vincent Benet (pictured above) was an American Poet best known for John Brown's Body , which won him the Pulitzer Prize in 1929. Another well known work is the short story The Devil and Daniel Webster . Benet undoubtedly was speaking on the UI campus. This appearance would have pre-dated the formal establishment of the now internationally renowned UI Writer's Workshop, which continues to attract well know poets and authors to Iowa City.

With a high of 45 that day, it was likely below freezing that night. Covering the violets and azaleas would be to protect them from a killing frost. In last 40 years Iowa City has a 50% chance of frost on or After April 15th.

Happy 100th Helen!

2011-03-20T22:12:00.001-05:00

Today, March 20, 2011, would have been Helen's 100th birthday. She was 17 when her mother built Foxcroft in 1928, and she started as a freshman at the University of Iowa. Here they are in 1929:

To celebrate we invited Ann, Helen's cousin, over for dinner. It had been far too long since she had been here, she didn't come at Thanksgiving because due to my Dad being hospitalized we didn't have a celebration. At Christmas time Ann was not feeling well so she wasn't here for that get together either.

We had our "Irish" dinner of corned beef and cabbage. After eating the girls excused themselves and Lisa, Ann and I visited for quite a while.

Ann said it still felt like home here at Foxcroft, and it should, considering that not only had she visited here her entire life, but had lived her for two and half years as Helen's caretaker before her passing in December of 2004. Ann had many reminisces about Helen and Bess.

We made a special cake for tonight, from one of Helen's cookbooks: Walnut cake with caramel icing.

The walnuts we used were from the black walnut tree in the backyard. Here is a picture of Helen posing with the tree in 1932, above the recipe:

Goodbye Princess Pink...

2011-03-15T08:34:00.004-05:00

...Hello Hootenanny!

Younger daughter has been begging for two years to re-paint her bedroom. Her most persistent line of reasoning is that she chose her room color when she was 4, and that now she has reached the ripe old age of 9 a change is in order.

We relented and decided that spring break was a good time to do this, so we started clearing her room out Friday night and on Saturday I set to work. "Hootenanny" is the color of green she chose. She painted the smiley face herself.

Here we are conferring after finishing the test wall and starting to turn the corner. Since the original paint was relatively new I merely cleaned the walls and re-coated rather than clean, prime then re-coat.

This photo gives a chance to show off her cast. Due to a buckle fracture in her left radius she gets to wear that for a month.

And here she is sleeping this morning with the cat standing guard.

Other major spring break projects to follow!

Washington's Birthday in the Atomic Age

2011-02-21T19:01:00.003-06:00

February 22nd 1950-1954 at Foxcroft, from Bess' diary:

1950
Wed. 30
Walter gone 31 years today. Helen hemmed skirts and I crocheted on bedspread – basted hems in her cream tablecloth + cut her 9 napkins. Betty here in PM to bring coffee bread + Mrs. K brought cookies. “Winned” the canasta games by beating Helen – Walked to grocery store for carrots, oranges and (unreadable) 99¢

1951
Thur. 35
Made a cherry pie with whipped cream + hatchet crust top which took all a.m. Wrote cards to Blanche + John Dornnan. Dottie looked over so here 3 – 5:30 We had tea + pie – she took 2 pieces home – Bob dashed over to borrow some whiskey for an unexpected guest. Bed 6:30

1952
Fri 36
Baked cherry pie – Started to take a couple pieces to Rays when they drove in around 6 but Bob said “I’d rather eat them in your house.” So they did. Worked in basement again in a.m. got several seed orders into the flats - Telephone visit with Mrs. Whipple who called to see if I was OK. Slept a while mid afternoon Bed at 7

1953
Sun. 34
Cold wind – Watered plants – Put cherry pie together took 2 pieces to Dottie and 3 to Wilsons when I went down to dinner at noon. Saw lovely pictures of Rickey’s baby + (unreadable) Home at 1:30 – Wrote Jean - Blanche – Wil + Book of Month - grate fire - Grace phoned - Bed at 6.

1954
Mon. 50
Washed – Helen + Mickey hung up clothes Micky took teacher stuff to Bigelows. He + Helen dyed his army shirts. I finished the knit baby blankets (unreadable) at last. Went to council meeting in evening and found out about paving assessments. Same as Mr. Knowher had given me. Heard last half of Iowa 83 Ill. 65 or thereabouts a big upset. Mrs. Baxter gave me a ride home

Comments:

1950
Walter was Bess' husband, he died in Serbia in 1919 while still under his enlistment during WWI. He was a doctor and was sent to help deal with a typhus epidemic, he contracted pneumonia and died. He was 37 years old, Bess was 36 at the time. She never re-married.

1951 & 52
The pie with the hatchet crust must have been very similar to the one pictured, which I photographed from my copyright 1950 Betty Crocker Picture Cookbook (first edition) I'm certain Bess got the idea from this cookbook. It remains one of my favorite cookbooks too. Bob and Dottie were dear neighbors who moved next door in 1950. As a young faculty member I'm guessing Bob needed to do a fair bit of last minute entertaining!

1953
Wilson's were other neighbors down the street. Blanche was Bess' sister who lived in northern California. Wil was former neighbor
Wilbur Schramm

1954
Bigelows were yet another neighor. They built their house behind Foxcroft's fishpond in 1949. The old couple were still living there when we moved in, summer of 2005. As always Bess loved her sports, especially the Hawkeyes and Chicago Cubs.

Descent into the Maelstrom

2011-02-16T16:14:00.002-06:00

Besides being the name of a short story in volume II of the collected works of Edgar Allan Poe that I read over vacation between Christmas and New Year's, Descent into the Maelstrom,
is an appropriate description of painting the basement stairway, which I also did between Christmas and New Year's. The number of "untouched" spaces at Foxcroft keeps dwindling, and this was a good one to get out of the way.

For all the time Bess took in planning so much of Foxcroft before it was built, I cannot for the life of me understand why she did not have an entrance from outdoors straight into the basement. Cellar doors or anything would have been crucial in my mind, but apparently not in her's. So any time you had to go from outdoors to the basement you had to go through the kitchen. Lots of very dirty hands went down the stairway over the years, lots! To make matters worse, I'm pretty sure that the stairway was wearing its original 1928 paint until this project.

Here is the way down. I removed the door before starting (Stuccohouse will be so happy to see I did that)

And here is the other side. I took off the light switch covers and taped over the light switches to prevent paint splatters. I also removed the hand railings, which had been added at some later time, as the original handrails don't start until descending below the plaster:

As you can see from this pic and the two above, I primed the corners with a brush before rolling the rest:

We had a lot of "Hubbard Squash" left over from the living room, so that is what I used:

The light switch plate was pretty grungy, Here it is before clean up:

And after boiling in water and baking soda plus some 0000 steel wool:

And here it is back on the wall:

Don't ask about the second switch, it is a long story...

On Heating Oil and Gov't. Checks

2011-02-05T08:00:00.004-06:00

After posting Bess' diary entry for Monday Jan. 31. 1951 I did a little looking around. Currently the national average price for home heating oil in $3.478 per gallon. That is roughly an increase of 25 times Bess' 1951 price of 13.8 cents per gallon. Her 310 gallons today would have cost $1078.18 plus 6% sales tax of $64.69, for a total of $1142.87. The cost difference between 1951 and 2011 would be $1099.24.

An interesting aside is that I have no idea what she would have stored the heating oil in, or where in the basement a tank would have been located. The original heating source for the 1928 boiler would have been coal. The coal room is marked on the blueprints as being located in the basement at the driveway turnaround on the northwest wall. This was likely so that a truck could back in and unload through the coal door. That coal door has been replaced by a small basement window. The coal room is currently my workshop which means I store paint and tools in there. I'm guessing that is where the tank would have been?

The boiler was originally supposed to be in the middle of the basement, so that it was near the coal room. But was instead built near the chimney on the southeast wall toward the front of the house. This put it on the opposite wall from the coal room. When we moved in, the house had a 1979 boiler that ran on natural gas. So that is at least two different boilers with three different fuels to power them. We replaced the boiler with a geothermal system in 2005. Because of that, the only things running on natural gas are our oven, the clothes dryer, and the fireplace. Our monthly gas charge is always $16, which must be the minimum. The geothermal runs on electricity.

The 1979 boiler is still sitting in our basement. My brother, Tom, said it is my duty to hold onto it for him, as someday the 1905 boiler in his house will fail completely. He likes the idea of having a backup readily at hand.

A final thought: If I used the same multiplier effect from above for the price of oil, Bess' still mysterious $75.00 gov't. check would be worth $1875.00 today. That would be a very nice chunk of change!

60 Years ago Today at Foxcroft

2011-01-31T14:45:00.002-06:00

January 31, 1951

Wed. -5

Nuts – baked bread – cards to Judy Smith and musical chats. Dottie here for tea sent her home with bowl of spaghetti + 3 pieces cake. Wrote check for 310 gal oil @ .138 = 43.63. Gov’t check for 75.00 came –

Comments:

"-5" Would have been the high temperature that day. Bess recorded the high each day. The day before (1-30-51) was -17, the day after (2-1-51) was -20. It was certainly a cold week. Below zero temps are forecast again for us on Thursday, but usually the high makes it upwards from there!

“Nuts” probably meant she cracked nuts. Despite the black walnut trees not being listed in her 1956 yard map cracking nuts was a regular winter pastime. Bess had three other entries earlier this week that tell of cracking nuts. (I spent nearly 2 hours cracking black walnuts myself yesterday.)

“Judy Smith and musical chats” I have no idea what this means. I haven’t seen this person’s name mentioned before.

“Dottie” was the next door neighbor, who is a regular reader of this blog. In several other entries during this time period Bess mentions being alone all day, so these visits certainly meant a great deal to her.

“310 gal oil” This would be a reference to heating oil to run the furnace. The price must have been 13.8 cents per gallon. Multiplying that price times the amount comes to $42.78. The additional 85 cents must have been sales tax? Bess’ Jan. 31, 1950 entry says “Fuel oil smell in house as tank overflowed.” Given the cold temps it must have been a comfort to have the tank filled.

“Gov’t check” I’m not sure what this would have been. Bess was a WWI widow, but I don’t think this would have been a pension. I know that in the mid 1920’s the yearly support check for Helen as the minor child of a WWI soldier who died in active duty was $27.00 annually and that Bess had to send a detailed report to the Veteran’s Administration detailing how she spent the whole thing!

Marion's Prairie Prayers

2011-01-03T11:49:00.003-06:00

My first post of 2011 is only tangentially related to Foxcroft but it is related. I've actually referred to Marion before, specifically here:

Heirloom peas

Aunt Marion was my father's aunt. She was my grandmother's closest sister, three years her junior. We always saw Marion and her husband, Bill when visiting at grandma's in the summer. They would come and play 6 handed pinochle with my grandparents and parents. Marion's home in Marcus, Iowa had a very large garden. Aunt Marion had a loom in her basement and wove rag rugs. After Bill died Marion always came to Thanksgiving at our house with Grandma and Grandpa. Marion was a favorite of mine.

Apparently Marion was a lot like both Bess and Helen, in even more ways than I have already related. (gardening, handwork). Marion and Helen were contemporaries, Helen was born in 1911, Marion in 1912. Both married later in life and apparently both were dedicated diarists. I had no idea Marion kept a journal. The article listed below is written by one of my dad's first cousins, whom I've never met.

Marion's Prairie Prayers

Considerably less educated than Helen, Marion, like my grandmother, was sent to live as a "cook girl" with a farm family at age 14 after the completion of 8th grade. Marion's journal seems to be far more insightful than anything I've read in either Helen's or Bess' journals. Of course I need to remember that I still have over 1,000 letters yet to read as well as what is at the UI main library from Bess and Helen.

As my brother commented to me "Wow...so interesting to get a glimpse of the backstory I'd always wondered about..."

I'd love to get a transcript of Marion's writings and line them up with Bess and Helen's.

Bess' Diary Dec. 8th 1941

2010-12-08T10:51:00.002-06:00

40 Mon. Windy Washed Heard Pres Roosevelt message to Congress. War declared on Japan. Took car over town for boxes + a little shopping. Ordered 80 Christmas cards from Mr. Kent.

Gretchen here for tea. Made 125(? can't tell what the word is)cookies - Fran phoned about seeing University play this week.

Guttersnipe*

2010-12-02T12:30:00.003-06:00

*noun
a child of the slums who spends most of his or her time in the streets: contemptuous term applied to anyone regarded as having the manners, morals, etc. of the gutter

Origin: orig. (Brit dial.), the common snipe, which picks food out of gutters

Yes in the five years we have been at Foxcroft I have been a guttersnipe about our front gutter. Since the first winter I have known that there was a problem with the gutter in that it leaked over the front porch steps and created a gigantic ice hazard that made it nearly impossible to use the front door.

I'd had several people offer advice on what to do, but got nowhere. Finally I mentioned it last summer to Tim, a fellow member of Friends of Historic Preservation, who is a highly regarded handyman. He came over this fall and said, no problem, if I got him some copper to patch with, (our gutters are made of copper and are original to the house) he'd drop the gutter at the end where the downspout was (Which over time had become the HIGH spot) and patch in the bracket. Well he came and discovered that unlike most gutter systems this one has a continuous flap that must run a foot under the entire roof. There was no way to do what he had originally planned. I asked what our options were, he said really the only thing that could be done is to move the downspout to the low spot on the gutter which is over the steps. Tim came last weekend and we did just that.

First I carefully removed the downspout and set it aside:

Then we sweated out the downspout from its place on the North end of the house.

Then we cut a patch for the hole and cleaned it:

And hammered it to make sure it would lay flat:

Then after fluxing everything it was soldered into place:

Then we cut a hole at the low spot just north of the porch steps post:

And soldered the downspout into the new location:

At this point Tim was ready to call it an afternoon. I set the downspout back in and realized I would need some elbows to push the bottom of the downspout back out so it would clear the post steps pillar. I went to the hardware store Monday during my lunch hour and then set that all up. As I drove back to work it started to rain. When I came home Monday night I got out the ladder and went up to look, and there was nearly no water left in the gutter. I am hoping for a much safer winter!

I really don't like the way the gutter looks, having lost the symmetry, but in this case safety is much more important.

Slowly winding down

2010-09-15T06:55:00.002-05:00

Just like the days getting shorter, my time working on the south side continues to diminish. With school starting I have slowed to nearly a stop, but I'm not yet ready to admit defeat and put the scaffolding away yet.

Most recently I painted the new screens from Adams Architectural and hung them on the kitchen windows:

These are the "little" windows above the sink and are quite a bit smaller than the dining room windows or even the second floor bedroom windows:

The other piece I'm still working on is to repair the rot at the end of the barge board toward the front of the house. When I removed the aluminum that had been tacked over the barge board I found that quite a bit of the original board had rotted away. At some point a big chunk was chiseled out and a piece of replacement wood had been added. Of course just covering that with siding gave a great place for moisture to gather. I chipped away at the worst rot and hit everything with wood hardener. I then have been slowly building up the voids with bondo. I'm pretty close to having it all filled in.

With any luck (and no Iowa home football this weekend) I may get the rest of the barge board sanded and ready to paint.

Rope a Dope

2010-07-26T08:27:00.005-05:00

I continue to plug away at painting this summer, even if I haven't said anything about it. I'm working on the Southeast side of the house. This is the side that shows the most damage from weather. It is also where the triple dining room window is. Here is the window in the midst of being heat gunned/scraped:

The far left side hadn't been done yet

Here is one of the center sections

After heat gunning the paint off the boards in the center sections were in bad shape. I knew I'd need to sand down to bright wood in order to get any new paint to stick. Since they were so loose anyway I decided to take them off, which of course exposed the window sash weights and cords.

It was then that I realized how much easier it would be to replace the old sash cord FROM THE OUTSIDE. I wouldn't have to knock open the channel pocket and reach in and up or spend nearly as much time threading the cord through the pulley. I went and bought new cord, since I was nearly out and I found a thicker cord than I'd ever seen before. It was so thick I could barely get it through the holes in the weights. but it sits very nicely in the pulleys.

So the center window is completely re-roped and the two outside windows have their inside ropes replaced. In other words of the 12 ropes in the window section 8 have been replaced. I'll do the outer ropes on the outer windows when I'm ready to reglaze those windows in the future.

After getting the outside boards clean I put them back into place. I used bondo to fill in the cracks in the board to get a smooth surface again, and sealed them up at all the edges. I did the same to the chimney window next to the fireplace. Here is that one ready for priming.

So how does it all look now? Here are the dining room windows completely painted and with my new screens from
Adams Architectural in place. (Storms will go up this winter)

Here is the chimney window.

I have been back up working in the eaves and repairing the lookouts that hold the barge board in place. I'll post on that next.

(Way) Better Than Nothing Post

2010-07-03T08:38:00.003-05:00

I have photos of housing scraping and painting and stories in my head, but just haven't gotten them down yet.

In the meantime, last week Sunday was the University Heights Garden Club tour, and we were one of the stops. The University of Iowa's student paper, The Daily Iowan, sent photographers. Here is one of their shots:

David Scrivner/The Daily Iowan
Guests view the backyard of Mike and Lisa Haverkamp’s home during the 2010 Garden Tour hosted by the University Heights Garden Club on Sunday. Around 150 people toured the nine locations in University Heights.

Photo can be found here, scroll to the very bottom:

Today's Photos, June 28, 2010

Here is the full story. The slideshow has lots of photos of our yard. (Photos 1, 3, 6, 9, 11 & 12) The other photos are all from the two other gardens on our street. The video clip also has me babbling about Foxcroft, while wearing my goofy Mountie hat:

Back to the garden in University Heights

We had a great time hosting the tour. Then last Wednesday everyone whose garden's were on the tour walked and had our own tour. That was was even better.

Happy 99th Birthday, Pergola

2010-06-13T12:44:00.003-05:00

I finished painting the pergola last week. The final part was painting the cement columns, which I did in "Lambswool" the same color as our window trim and back porch columns. Here is a column taped off at the capital:

And taped off at the base:

So now that it's all complete here is a view from the south:

A view from the east:

A view from the north:

And a view from the west:

So if we put this in last summer and just finished painting it now why celebrate its 99th birthday? Because I found a forgotten piece last week, that I had stashed away in my carpenter's box when we were salvaging the columns from their original location. You may remember that the columns were originally here:

I wrote about it here:
Going Vertical

When we were knocking apart the cement blocks on the porch I found this inside one of them:

In case you can't read it:

Built by
Bart Easlon
June 14, 1911
For Mr. M Wolbe

So I can say "Happy 99th Birthday, Pergola!"

The 5 W's at Foxcroft

2010-06-03T13:15:00.004-05:00

For the last several weeks I've been dealing with the 5 W's at Foxcroft they are:

1. WORK
Of course this is the first "W" it's all we know around here. I stained the boards in the pergola. I'm using the same old lumpy stain (Oxford Brown) that I've been putting on the house. I've also now painted the capitals above the columns in the same color as the bargeboards and rafter tails. Next will be painting the columns "Lambswool" same as the house window trim.

2. WISTERIA
For Mother's Day we bought Lisa two wisteria plants. 17 years ago we planted Hardy Chinese Wisteria at our previous house, but right when it got big enough to bloom, it became shaded by the corkscrew willow that we also planted. We put our "Kentucky Blue Wisteria" along the back two columns of the pergola. I hope it grows quickly.

3. WHIMSEY
We had a planting on the driveway blow down in big winds. As I started to cut it up I got thinking about using the branches to make a trellis along the back corner around the fish pool. First I did the part on the west side of the pool. I told Lisa what I was making was "whimsey."

Then I started on the south side. The neighbors behind us had a huge limb blow down out of a maple tree, so I sawed parts off it and used them too. Then I trimmed a little from our lilacs. Pretty soon I was going down into the ravine and getting scrub from down there:

Since this is a trellis we have fall clematis on it that we planted a year ago. I've also planted some fancy morning glories, and am training up the weed morning glories too. We also have some wild grape started on it as well.

When in the ravine I found some really nice virginia creeper. I cut a piece to wrap around and make a window:

This all lead to the next "W":

4. WEIRDNESS
I was confronted by another neighbor (not one who's property is adjacent to the trellis) that said I was building a fence in violation of the City's fence ordinance. And to top it off, what I was building was ugly and a fire hazard. I was quite taken aback by this but said I'd check with the owner next door and look at the fence ordinance. The house next door is currently for sale and has been empty now for over a year. The owners said they had no problem with what I was doing, and the city building inspector visited and said what I had was a trellis and not subject to the fence ordinance. The icing on the cake came several days ago when the leader of the City Garden Club visited to see if we'd be on their tour. She loved the trellis and said the current issue of "Horticulture" magazine had one just like it.

5. WILD TURKEY
Not the drinking kind, the actual large bird type. I saw what I thought were bags of garbage on the railroad tracks when going over the Melrose Bridge on my bike. When I went back to look I realized they were turkeys. There were two male toms in full display with about 6 hens feeding along the tracks. My guess is that they are getting all the spilled corn that falls off the railroad cars. Here is a pic I took of them.

Then Sunday I was walking my mower down the driveway to mow the bottom of the front yard. I saw something move in the hostas between our house and yet another neighbor's yard. (we share boundaries with 5 houses) When I looked back I realized it was a turkey that must have been sleeping/roosting under the hostas. It ambled back into Matt's yard for a snack under his bird feeder. I went and got a picture of this one too:

Bess' 1930-35 Diary

2010-05-12T13:28:00.002-05:00

I don't think I've done this before and posted a whole page of one of Bess' 5 year diaries, but today's are too good as a group:

May 12th

1930
Mon 60
Alone all day + got home at 11. Read “It’s a Great War” Hazel, D +N over.
Got 3 new tires + tubes (19.75 each)

1931
Tue 60
Dug 2 pail dandelions – sewed + heard A’s 4 White Sox 2 game – Harry mowed lawn – Mildred here in evening till 11.

1932
Thur 84
Lindburgh baby found dead.
Seeded new lawn, fixed wire on back porch, set out plants. H to Chi Omega house for dinner. Home at 8:30

1933
Fri 70
Hard rains off + on all day. No fires - Over town to Hands and for yeast. H made puzzle + cake for Hildegarde’s birthday. Isabelle came for her about 5:30 – She worked on tulip quilt + heard Coon Sanders as May Frolic - Robin

1934
Sat 50
Planted dahlias – Made Hildegarde’s cake + H and I delivered it in the rain, - H to Court of Awards. I heard ball game + read – furnace + grate fires. Steak fry here because of rain. Hilly – Jerry – Dr. Frankel + Herb Smith. H and I got Waucoma auxiliary flowers – a cat asleep in car

Notes:

1930: "It's a Great War" Mary Lee, Houghton Mifflin, 1929, 574 pages. According to the American Book Exchange: "The author of this novel, based on her own experiences, was a young American who spent two years in France as a civilian employee of the United States Army - first with a base hospital unit in Bordeaux, then with the Air Service in Paris, and finally as Y.M.C.A. canteen worker in the zone of advance and with the Army of Occupation in Germany."

Bess' husband, Walter, volunteered for WWI at age 39. Because he was a physician he was taken and worked in France as a surgeon. After the armistice, but before his enlistment was finished, he was sent to Serbia to fight a typhoid outbreak. He contracted pneumonia and died. Bess was 36 when he died in 1920, Helen was 7 years old. Bess never re-married.

1931: The "A's" would be the Philadelphia Athletics. That year Connie Mack's team went 102-52 winning the American League pennant. They defeated Gabby Street's St. Louis Cardinals 4-2 in the World Series. The Chicago White Sox finished 7th in the 8 team AL that year. Bess was a die hard Cubs fan, but listened to any game she could.

1932: Even though Charles A. Lindburgh Jr. had been kidnapped on March 1, 1932 the body wasn't discovered until May 12th. Eventually Bruno Hauptmann would be found guilty and executed. To this day controversy surrounds the case.

The "new lawn" would be in the extra half lot that Bess had just bought from her neighbor, realator Lee Koser. She paid $60.00 for the lot. In 1928 Bess had paid Koser $1,000.00 for the two lots on which Foxcroft had been built. (The house was built for $11,000.00) With no building occurring after the stock market crash and onset of the depression, I'm sure Koser was happy to sell land at any price. The majority of the extra land became Bess' sizable kitchen garden. Helen sold the lot to another neighbor in 1981.

1933: "No fires" would refer to the furnace and the fireplace meaning it was warm that day. "Hand's" is the name of a jewelry store in Iowa City, which is still in business in the same location as it was in 1933. "Hildegarde" was one of Helen's college best friends.

Apparently "Coon-Sanders" was the Coon-Sanders Original Nighthawks Jazz Orchestra founded by drummer Carlton Coon and pianist Joe Sanders. Their "Maytag Frolics" were popular hits. Bess probably heard them on her radio.

1934: Most of 1934's entries make sense after reading the previous years. A "grate fire" would be in the living room fireplace, Given the high being 50 degrees that day it was probably chilly in the morning. The "steak fry" seems to have been Hildegarde's birthday celebration. "Jerry" would become her future husband. Given the size of Foxcroft it was often the site of gatherings, especially of Helen's college classmates. "Waucoma" was the name of the small Iowa town where Helen was born and that she and Bess had moved from in 1928 after building Foxcroft. "Cat asleep in the car" was likely Buff, a cat that Helen still talked about prior to her death in 2004.

2nd Annual Bungalow Blog Tour

2010-05-08T06:56:00.008-05:00

Hello folks,

Welcome to Foxcroft, a late 1920's bungalow set in University Heights, Iowa. I'm Mike, your host. I live here with my family.

A little about us:

We are the second family to live in our home. We owned the house for a year before beginning to restore it. We had the incredible opportunity in that time to get to know the daughter of the builder during her final year she lived here as our life tenant. Helen passed away in December of 2004 at age 93. She was 18 when she moved in with her widowed mother in September of 1928.

Helen and her mother, Bess, 1929.

We started work to make it our home in 2005. We have had the privilege of keeping much of the historical documents that came with the house: daily journals of both Bess and Helen, and amazing photo albums, including pictures of the house under construction:

And original interior photos

The big project we embarked upon was taking the entirely unfinished second floor...

1929

2005 (before we started working on it)

...and putting in three bedrooms, a bathroom, laundry room and sitting room. We also added a gable to the rear of the house. Here is the interior of the new gable this morning.

We used salvage materials (the bookcases, door, picture rail and casing above) as well as the original blueprints to match trim, etc.

Perhaps the single best day of our renovation was here:

A Little Off the Top, Please

Lately my big projects have been outside. Bess and Helen by themselves built a cement fish pool in 1933.

More photos of their work are here: Digging the pool.

The pool was completely filled in some time in the 1960's. Over the past couple years We excavated and and now have it working again. We added a small waterfall:

Last summer we also built a pergola and patio of mostly salvaged materials. Here it is as used for our youngest daughter's birthday party in September:

A particularly interesting part was lifting up the very heavy cement columns. My partner in crime during this adventure is a fellow teacher and the lead builder of our upstairs. Our two families have been friends for over 25 years:

Here is a walkthrough of the entire pergola project:

We sincerely hope you've enjoyed your visit here, but sure to leave a comment or question if there's anything more you'd like to know. Feel free to poke around and snoop in the closets, etc.

If you wandered here not due to the online house tour, be sure to check out the other stops:

Next House on the Blog Tour: Stuccohouse
Previous House on the Blog Tour: 1916 Portland Bungalow

The Same... But Different

2010-04-19T08:06:00.002-05:00

Here is a photo of Bess vacuuming out the pond circa 1934:

Side note: we found that electolux vacuum when we cleaned out the attic in 2005.

Here is a picture of me, vacuuming out the pond last week:

Neither my shop vac nor my outfit is as stylish as the original!

I used some cement patch to go around the edge of the patch I put in last year, and then painted the whole pond over the weekend.

Pool paint comes in one color at the S-W store: ocean blue. Here is the same angle as the two pics above:

And another view:

Now I need six more dry days (they don't have to be consecutive) and we can fill it with water. Then we'll let it sit a while and put the fish back in.

Spring Arrives

2010-04-01T06:40:00.004-05:00

It was warm enough last night that we had band practice outdoors. The pergola is just big enough for the five of us:

We got a thumbs up from Jill across the street who was out walking her kids in the stroller, and another thumbs up from a car who came to pick up a flyer for the house behind us which is for sale, again.

Here is the near back yard with the cilla in full bloom:

And the side yard where the cilla has completely taken over:

Cilla or Siberian Squill is a wild flower that is a small bulb. It is a very early bloomer, right after the snowdrops and the crocuses. Cilla spreads naturally, and was here already when we came. After the blooms are gone (in about a week) the leaves look like very thick grass. When you walk in it after the blooms are spent it is very squishy. By May the leaves are gone too.

Five Years Later

2010-03-22T21:16:00.003-05:00

It's hard to believe that five years have passed since I started chronicling our journey of restoring and moving into our new home. The time has seemed to pass in a blink of the eye, and yet it seems also to have been a lifetime ago. The highs have been monumental and the lows have been thankfully few and far between.

So here's to at least five more, I didn't realize the legacy we received in Bess' and Helen's writings and photos, when we acquired Foxcroft, but we will strive to continue, and to keep digging through it!

With any luck our term as the stewards of this home will be long, and at some distant point in the future some other steward will come across these words much as we continue to learn from the past.

Edge of the World?

2010-03-17T10:38:00.002-05:00

In working on our town's 75th anniversary I came across a photo in the University of Iowa's digital library collection. It is from the Fred Kent collection and is entitled "Koser addition, Iowa City, Iowa, Nov. 15, 1929"

This photo would pre-date municipal incorporation by 6 years. The picture was taken by Mr. Kent climbing onto the top of the newly constructed Iowa football stadium's west grandstand and shooting to the west.

Foxcroft is visible in the right side of the photo along with the storybook house next door that is shown below:

Go here to see the photo in full 600 DPI glory to scroll around and look at details:

Frederick W. Kent Collection of Photographs, 1866-2000, at the University of Iowa Digital Library

(Be sure to click on the image itself when you get there to see the full image)

To give an idea of change since 1929 here is a google earth image of the same area, the letter "A" is our house, the red dot is the football stadium where the photo was taken.

In another kind of spooky "thinking about the past" conincidence, yesterday Lisa and I were enjoying our spring break by visiting an antique store in Kalona, about 15 miles south of Iowa City. As we were walking around we found a large (4" in diameter) photo button of Helen Fox, which I immediately recognized as her college graduation picture. We knew that many things had gone out of the house while Mick and Helen were still alive, but it was rather unsettling to find that!

Calling in "The Man"

2010-03-08T06:45:00.007-06:00

It had been quiet, too quiet on the home repair front. I was working in the basement two Saturdays ago and needed to use the facilities. (Normally this is WAY more disclosure than you'd get in a normal post here, but it is essential to the plot development.) We have a toilet in the basement that gets used MAYBE once a month, so I went in there and I suddenly realized there was water dripping on my head...

The first floor bathroom is right above the basement one, and youngest daughter was taking a shower. I went up and since she had finished I started looking around for the source of the leak. My first guess was that the pan and surround of the shower needed to be recaulked because it looked pretty bad. I spent time removing the old caulk and putting in new on Sunday, and figured we'd try it out on Tuesday. The shower was put in some time in the 1980's and replaced the sunken bathtub that was original to the house. Sadly all I have to show of the original is the blueprint:

Well, we turned on the water Tuesday and there was still a leak downstairs so I knew it must be the pipes up to the shower. Last Friday being my day off I emptied the shelves in the bathroom closet and removed them. I then took out the two panels that lead to the shower pipes:

I could see where the frame and wallboard had been wet in the past and could also see why there were such drips given the size of the hole in the floor:

I turned on the water and saw it was leaking way at the top where the filler tube for the shower head went into the copper pipe. I realized I could remove the filler tube and probably just put new teflon tape on it and stop the leaking. So I removed the shower head and flange so I could get at the filler:

I got out the pipe wrench and very gently applied pressure, I was surprised at how easily it turned and the next thing I knew it was in my hands. The only problem was all the threads were still in the copper elbow. The entire pipe had just crumbled away:

Now I was stuck. I had no way to get the threads out of the elbow. I was afraid I was going to have to call in a real plumber, since I am not competent at sweating in new copper. (I thought we'd have to saw off the old pipe and sweat on new.) As I considered, I wondered if it wouldn't be better to just do it all in PEX since that is what all the new plumbing on second floor is. Either way I saw this as getting much more pricy than I wanted.

Fortunately we had a family dinner Friday night and my younger brother Tom came over. He asked what was up in the bathroom after being in there and I told him of my mishap that morning with the pipe.

Now Tom is a tool salesman and much better at most home repair than I am. He said he'd come over with his extractor set and try to see if we couldn't get the threads out.

Saturday morning he showed up with tools and went to work, finding the right extractor and tapping it into place:

Here is a view from inside the panel:

We couldn't get the thread loose so a judicious application of his torch was in order to heat and expand the joint a little. After a minute of heating Tom went back to cranking it out:

And it came loose:

Right after we finished cleaning up, Pete came by for me to troubleshoot some of his school web pages. In exchange for my help he agreed to go to the hardware store (he was on his way there next) and pick up a new filler tube. When he brought it back I taped it up:

And put the shower head back on:

So I'm happy to say I got the "the man" to come out and I didn't have to pay for a plumber. And yes, the shower works just fine.

Diamond Jubilee

2010-02-23T06:36:00.002-06:00

One of the more entertaining aspects of maintaining our municipal website is that I've started a section celebrating town history. Since 2010 is our Diamond (75th) Jubilee, we're trying to celebrate in many ways. Of course everything I have put up so far is from Bess' photo albums. Here are a few shots:

My very favorite picture, Foxcroft totally eclipsed by the house next door, which was built by the real estate developer of University Heights. Both homes were completed in 1928. Mr. Koser, the storybook style home owner, was the first mayor after University Heights incorporated. Bess served on the first city council:

Back of Foxcroft under construction:

View from the front porch, 1928, University Hospitals and the Fieldhouse are in the distance:

View from the front porch, 1934, The UI football stadium was built in 1929:

I have lots more to share. Larger versions of all these pictures can be found here:

University Heights PLACES

Get Your Bess Fix Here

2010-02-16T20:24:00.003-06:00

I mentioned in my last post that my neighbor, Julie, was writing a great blog. She continues to weave an intriguing tale, and makes my posting easier too. Julie has managed to plow through January to June 1935-39 in Bess' diary. I have never been able to get through more than a couple pages at a time. I admire her perseverance! Use the links below to read what Bess had to say about the Wilsons.

All those entries made me realize that I don't think I've ever posted a picture of either Helen or Bess. Here is one of the two of them in front of Foxcroft, 1929, which would have been one year after they moved in.

This photo was taken after Helen had spent the summer in France on a UI study tour. She was 19 in this picture, Bess would have been about 47. The dress Helen is wearing is one she made with fabric she brought back from Paris.

I'm Not Even The Most Interesting Blog...

2010-02-07T07:34:00.004-06:00

...On Our Street Any More!

It was bound to happen. After nearly five years of writing Foxcroft, I knew the level of stories that I'd be able to turn out would start to slide, that the quality would diminish, and that perhaps this little project would fade away.

But what I wasn't prepared for was that I would be totally eclipsed by one of my neighbors!

Julie and her husband (referred to in her blog as the "Spousal Unit or 'SU' for short,") have lived two doors down the street from us for several years now. I had rarely run into her, more typically SU and I would be out shoveling snow at the same time. We never really did more than exchange pleasantries. I knocked on their door during the campaign, and Julie and I got talking. She told me about her mystery.

And at this point you need to hear her story in her own words...

Dear Mrs. Wilson

Before you go, let me just say that the connections between her place and ours are intricate and run deep. Once you read the above post click on the link at the top that says "how the mystery began" you'll be hooked too!

And Julie, in a little shocker, just for you: I realized last night, while walking the dog, that ECW Jr. and my stepmother were high school classmates...

So Much Literary History in So Few Words...

2010-02-01T09:51:00.003-06:00

From Bess' Diary Feb. 1, 1941

February 1, 1941
Sat. 48
Read “Always the Land” by Paul Engle* pretty good writing. Saw Iowa 46 Millikin** 27. Walked over + the Strothers (?) brought me home. BJ and 2 guests kept me awake until 2.

Paul Engle

NOTES:
*Paul Engle, Cedar Rapids, IA native is best known as a poet, but “Always the Land” is fiction. He was a Rhodes Scholar and winner of the “Yale Series of Younger Poets Award in 1932. He is also very well known as the second director of the world renowned Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

Foxcroft neighbor, Wilbur Schramm, was the first director of the workshop, and at the time of this diary entry Schramm was about to take a leave of absence in order to work in the U.S. Office of War Information. Engle was Schramm’s early star student, and Engle’s “Worn Earth,” which won the Yale prize mentioned above was Engle’s masters' thesis. The University of Iowa was the first American college to accept creative works as thesis and dissertation requirements. Engle became acting director during Schramm’s absence and subsequently permanent director until 1966. Under Engle such writers as Flanner O’Conner, Robert Bly, and Donald Justice were students. The many famous writers who served as visiting faculty under Engle included Nelson Algren, Philip Roth, and Kurt Vonnegut.

I kept the autographed copy of “Always the Land,” along with many other books and papers, at the urging of Bess’ neice who inherited the contents of Foxcroft. It is displayed prominently on the “Iowa shelf” in the living room bookcase.

**Millikin College (now University) is located in Decatur, Illinois. Their nickname is the "Big Blue".

I have no idea who the "Strothers" are (or if I've spelled their name right) I'm not sure who "BJ" is either, there are a few other references to her, including one about her going to a "freshman party." At this time Helen was teaching in Milwaukee, so perhaps Bess took in a boarder?

70 Years Ago at Foxcroft

2010-01-26T11:05:00.002-06:00

From Bess' Diary:

January 25, 1940, Thurs.
-2
Vacuum cleaned, sent Milky Way (? Unreadable?)
Didn’t go to Mrs. Harshbarger’s tea but did walk for mail.
Kept furnace and grate going, fed birds, worked on spread
Radio – read a lot. Eric Wilson married today

Notes:

"Mrs. Harshbarger is Gretchen Harshbarger one of Bess' best friends. In 1940 Gretchen and her mother published Flower Family Album .

She was also the garden editor for Household Magazine and American Homes and president of the Garden Writers' Association of America and the American Hemerocallis Society. Harshbarger received numerous national and local awards for her contributions to horticulture. In Iowa City she is remembered for her leadership in founding Project GREEN (Grow to Reach Environmental Excellence Now), a group devoted to beautifying public spaces.

In her Jan. 21, 1940 entry Bess reported "To Mrs. Harshbarger's 2-4 to see her unpack 600 bulbs, she gave me dozens of them, home and planted all I had earth for, dug more from hotbed and left it to warm till morning."

"Eric Wilson" was a neighbor two doors away to the east. An Iowa City native, Wilson was an outstanding track athlete at the University, winning Big 10 and NCAA titles in the 220 meter dash. Despite having broken the world record in the 400 meter dash in an Olympic qualifying meet prior to the 1924 Paris Olympics, he did not place in the event, having notably lost in the preliminary heats to Eric Liddell, who's achievement was documented in the movie Chariots of Fire.

By 1940 Mr. Wilson was working as the director of sports information for the University of Iowa.

Communication: 19th-21st Centuries

2010-01-20T13:35:00.004-06:00

I must say it is satisfying, in that ying/yang balance of life sort of way, to direct a University Heights citizen to the municipal website by talking to them on a candlestick telephone.

In my new life as a city councilor I am the chair of the "e-government" committee. I am also the complete staff of the e-government department. This means I am now in charge of our municipal website. The image below links to the site:

I have done some minimal re-arranging of the site, and created a method for citizens to subscribe to updates, but nothing too fancy. I am firmly in favor of boring but functional.

You may also notice a link to a public meeting next week to gather input for revisions to the comprehensive plan. Things should be very interesting for the forseeable future.

Post Holiday Update

2010-01-02T13:44:00.003-06:00

Greetings. it's time to update on what happened, house-wise, over vacation. The answer is "not much." We spent most of vacation visiting my dad who spent four weeks, Dec. 3rd through 31st, in UI hospitals. He was dismissed to rehabilitation in Cedar Rapids on New Year's Eve, and continues to make good progress.

I did manage to surprise Lisa with her Christmas gift. Some time probably in the 1940's Helen made a needlepoint picture of Foxcroft, which she promptly then attached to a folding camp stool. Wouldn't you do exactly the same? We bought the stool at the house sale, 5 years ago this coming March. I took it to our favorite framer, (and A&C maven) Kathleen Rash, at the Art Mission. Here is what she did with it:

Here is a close up of Helen's needlework:

The house also got a gift this year. The phone niche in the dining room once again has a candlestick phone in it:

I put the decorative grill back below the phone niche, I'd found it when we emptied out the attic, put it in the basement and forgot about it. The label on the top of the grill contains Foxcroft's original 4 digit number 4452. Anne, Helen's cousin who was her resident caretaker here, still has that phone number.

My much appreciated house related gift this year was a new pair of overalls, which I will probably wear out next summer as I continue to paint.

I Can't See a Thing!

2009-12-14T13:30:00.003-06:00

I just got this email from my internet service provider:

Dear Personal Web Space User,

Due to multiple server issues, your personal web space has been created anew on a new server. Due to the nature of this issue, your personal web space could not be restored from a backup. Unfortunately, you will have to reload your web pages so you can share them.

What this means is none of the images I put into my posts from 2005 until last summer are now visible. I guess I'll have to sort through all my multiple files of pictures to reload them and relink them through blogger.

I guess I needed another project?

Some Trim Cuts I CAN do successfully!

2009-12-01T11:44:00.002-06:00

In my last post I neglected to mention or display the trim cuts I can do successfully. Here is the new bump out before I started trimming it:

The baseboard was left over from when I did the upstairs 3 years ago, I had stashed two pieces away in the office closet. Here is the exterior miter:

The piece behind the room door to the right fit nicely, however on the closet door side, There was only 1/2 an inch between the wall and the backband, so I had to mark a line, saw down 1/4 of an inch, then chisel out so the baseboard would fit snugly to the wall:

And here it is in place:

The base shoe was saved from when we had to work on the dining room wall.

I hit the edge of the baseboard miter with a little stain and it looks great.

Coping With My Inability to Cope...

2009-11-18T16:12:00.005-06:00

... as in "cope cuts." I am very bad at using a coping saw. I was able to do passable copes when I had to cut new baseboards for the upstairs, but when it comes to coping the picture railing, forget it.

You may ask "How did you manage to successfully trim four rooms upstairs with picture rail if you can't cope?" The answer of course, is that I used salvaged rail and made sure to take advantage of the copes that were already cut by people FAR more skilled than I am. It became a challenge in itself to figure out how to take advantage of the copes already cut!

Which leads to trimming the new bump out in the office/spare bedroom. Way back in the 1950's a temporary closet had been built into that space. We ripped it out and put in our chase for the HVAC and electrical to go upstairs. However the picture rail in the corner had already been cut and removed long ago. I had barely enough salvage left to do this last little job, but it meant having to do a cope cut myself, so here it is:

The top fit pretty well, but the bottom has some real issues. You can see that when I put it up into place:

In my defense it doesn't look that bad when you're standing in the room, and that corner is very out of the way. If I slather enough wood filler up there, it will be invisible.

What you may also notice from that last picture is that the original rail was cut short of where the new bump out starts so I was forced to GLUE a tiny block of wood in place to fill that gap. Once I put a little touch up paint over the glue that bubbled out, it too should be invisible. (I hope!)

It's a DIFFERENT Shade, Really!

2009-11-10T22:36:00.003-06:00

So I've been working on the room that will be Lisa's office space and a guest bedroom. This room was originally Helen's bedroom. When she and her husband returned to Foxcroft in the mid 1950's it became their bedroom. I'm guessing the room was last painted about that time. We have already painted the ceiling (after stripping off the wallpaper on it) and stained and varnished the floors. Here are a few shots from painting.

Primer covering the 50 year old paint job, you can also see the cracks I filled in:

When I pulled the radiators 4 years ago we discovered the original rose color for the room, that was mentioned in the plan book Bess gave the builders. The room seems to have been painted a grand total of two times before our current project:

Here's the new paint, which looks a LOT like the old, except maybe not quite as "minty." The color is "Sweet Sage."

And some more:

To remove the ceiling paper I had removed the picture rail. We cleaned, stained and varnished it. With the painting done I could put it back up.

And here is the railing back where it belongs.

I HATE it When That Happens!

2009-11-09T12:53:00.003-06:00

Yes, I am almost finished working in the office/guest bedroom and when I went to move the light, the outlet plate and half of the outlet came with it.

Fortunately I have a few New Old Stock duplex plugs left from my Grandfather's electrician business. I managed to get it replaced pretty quickly.

My next post will be about finishing painting and trimming the space.

Channeling Bess

2009-11-05T06:27:00.003-06:00

So it's time to come clean here and admit that over the last 2 months I have been running for political office. At the end of August I filed for University Heights city council. Terms are two years long; we have 5 councilors and a mayor, who also serves a two year term. This means our town elections are like the U.S. House of Representatives, everyone is up every two years. Elections only fall in odd numbered years when NOTHING else in on the ballot.

Bess, who built Foxcroft, was on the original University Heights city council. The town incorporated in 1935, seven years after she built here. She was the only woman on the council, and apparently only served one term. University Heights will celebrate its Diamond Jubilee next summer, our 75th anniversary.

There were 10 candidates for 5 seats on council and 2 candidates for mayor. All the incumbents were running along with 6 challengers. We officially have 798 registered voters in town, which is falsely high. Given that we have many medical, and graduate students who live here for a short while, then graduate and move on, many names on the rolls are no longer here. I would guess our electorate is closer to 650.

When I decided to run I made a vow to walk around town at least once a week, knock on doors and talk to people. I did that and it was fascinating. I really had fun. Besides the conversations, stepping onto everyone's porch or stoop allowed me to notice details about houses that you don't pick up on even when you're on the sidewalk. We have so many 1920's-1940's homes that are in such good shape. The mid century modern homes are spectacular, and our "new" homes from the 1960's and 70's are also of very high quality. The only architectural beef I have is with our apartment complex that was build right after WWII. It is being converted to condominiums and I was saddened to see their original windows get replaced, the new ones don't fit the character of the building well.

We had one political event, a candidate forum that drew about 150 people. With so many candidates and a promise to keep the event to only 2 hours long, we were given three questions in advance. Each question, along with our opening and closing statements were to not exceed 2 minutes. Everyone held to it.

Typical voter turnout for municipal elections has been in the 200's. The record turnout was 350 in 2005 (the first year we voted here) due to a library levy being on the ballot. On Tuesday 413 people voted. That is a 51.8% turnout officially or about 64% using my adjusted numbers. Iowa City (the larger community that completely surrounds us) had a municipal turnout of 9.7%.

I was one of the winners. I'm happy and more than a little nervous. I take very seriously the public trust of my neighbors. Here are the official results. Scroll all the way to the bottom of the page to find us.

The editorial page editor of the Iowa City paper called yesterday and asked why did I think U-H should remain a separate entity. I replied it's pretty obvious that we participate in our community life to a degree unparalleled by our neighbors, individual voices certainly matter. Who wouldn't want to live in community like that? Who wouldn't want to work to ensure its future?

Lather, Rinse, REPEAT

2009-11-01T06:55:00.003-06:00

We have been working on an interior project lately. The office/guest bedroom/junkroom/dog's room is finally getting some attention.

This room was Helen's when the house was built. Here is an original photo:

Here's the same corner last winter:

We stripped off the old varnish using the same procedure we have before. I've written about it:
HERE
HERE
HERE
HERE
And of course who could forget this gem, from the days before "blog" was even a word! Here is a web page I created when we still lived at our old place!
HERE

You get the idea...
Anyway, here is that same corner again, with the floor buffer:

Here are the old radiator holes before I patched them:

Lisa staining:

And varnishing:

Now I'll get to start painting, once Lisa decides on a color.

More to come!

New Lid and the Old Place

2009-10-14T15:45:00.003-05:00

It's not like I'm stalking our previous house or anything, but even four years after moving I still look out at the old place whenever I'm on that side of town. I had been paying a little more attention this summer after Brian, one of the current owners, said they would be putting a new roof on. He mentioned it would be made of metal shingles. So last month when I went by and saw it was covered in a grid of lathe boards I knew I needed to get a picture. I drove around to the back alley and shot this view from the rear:

What makes me feel really old, is that we put the red roof on in 1996! I hired the job out and am glad I did. I know my limits and laying new shingles is beyond my abilities. It seemed like a bear of a job, since it included a tear off of three old layers of shingles. About 9 months after we re-roofed we got hit by a major hailstorm. Our insurance ended up paying us $4,000 which was nearly 2/3 of cost of the new one.

I went by the house this week and here is how it looks now:

I like the look. The sign out front says that they are stone covered metal shingles, to me it looks very much like Ludowici tiles. Maybe in 15 years we will do the same on Foxcroft but in a green similar to what we already have?

I am so comforted by the fact that our old place is in such capable hands. Brian and Sarah have done a wonderful job of making improvements, and the fact that it is still a single family home is icing on the cake. I must also say that those pictures of the back also show that my paint job, 1998 on the rear side and 1999 on the north still look darn good!

Road Trip 2009

2009-10-12T12:45:00.008-05:00

As mentioned before, I did finish my shingles and then took down the scaffolding for winter. Here are the new shingles above the window:

As soon as I took everything down I got a call that my new dining room storms and screens were ready. I had ordered these about a month ago from Adams Architectural. I had Adams build windows for the new gable we put in upstairs, and they also did the wooden storms and screen that we have on second floor. We then used them to build storms and screens for the back of the house. I really am impressed with their work. When I called to order three more, I was surprised to learn they had moved from near Davenport (an hour away) to Dubuque (an hour and 45 minutes away)

Friday I drove to Dubuque to get my three storms and three screens. Adams new location is in the warehouse district of Dubuque, and very picturesque area:

I went in to say "hello" and then got sent out to drive to the loading dock:

In five minutes I was loaded up:

But I wasn't ready to go home yet, because on the other side of the block where Adams is located is The Restoration Warehouse (formerly Mid-America Salvage) which is the place I got our flooring and bookcases.

I spent an hour looking around and am interested in what looked like a grill from an old service elevator that would make some nice fencing back by the fish pond. I hope they email me a price as the piece wasn't marked.

So added to my winter project list will be painting the storms and screens so they can be hung in the spring.

An OUTSIDE "Mushroom Factor" Tale

2009-09-29T15:24:00.003-05:00

It's been a while since I've had a "mushroom factor" experience. I wrote about the phenomena here: The Mushroom Factor. Basically the mushroom factor is what happens when what looks like a small project quickly "mushrooms" into a much bigger one when you realize all the sub projects that need to be completed.

I was hoping to scrape and paint the trim on the dining room and chimney windows before winter. I also thought I could probably stain the shingles around them too. That was before I noticed how rotten the drip cap was above the three dining room windows:

The drip cap was just as bad with chewed up shingles above the west chimney window too:

The shingles are two layers deep and are attached from the bottom of the wall up to the top. This means that to replace the drip cap I need to remove TWO layers of shingles whose ends are buried by those above them.

I decided to get a razor blade and cut away at the first layer carefully to see how hard it might be:

I quickly realized I needed a better tool for this and went to visit Pete. I told him what I needed and he sent me home with this:

That is his "toolwerks" tool. We put a head on it with teeth and the whole thing reciprocates like a tiny sawzall.

I went home and had the first layer out in no time at all. Here is what I removed:

And here is the second layer of shingles exposed and ready to cut. You can faintly see the lighter line behind the bottom of the upper row. That is the exposed new cedar against the older stained wood:

I had the second row out pretty quickly too. I cut at an upward angle, hopefully I can duplicate that angle on the new shingles I'll add later. Here is the same area with the second layer removed:

I then got out my "catspaw" and pried out the drip cap:

And here is the area with the old drip cap out:

I was able to cut some new drip cap to fit above both the dining room and chimney windows. I'm almost done painting it and will install it later this week.

I'm hoping over the weekend to cut new shingles to put back up in place...

So the upshot is I probably WON'T get the trim painted or the rest of the shingles stained, yet this fall. There are home Iowa football games the next two weekends, and the weekend after that I promised Lisa we would try to finish stripping the floor of the office so we can get it varnished before winter too.

I will probably take down my scaffolding after getting the new shingles in place and admit that the "mushroom factor" has once again gotten the better of my schedule!

Mystery Revealed

2009-09-22T07:06:00.003-05:00

With guesses of "shellac" and "pie," it is time to reveal the mystery picture. IT CAME FROM HERE:

So this

is actually what solidified at the top of a five gallon bucket of exterior shingle stain. The color is "Oxford Brown." The blob was 12" across and over two inches thick. I bought the stain in 2005 and last used it the summer of 2007. Even after taking that thing out the remainder was pretty lumpy. I bought a single gallon of new stain and dumped it into the old and used it anyway. The shingles on the house were last stained over 25 years ago, so anything is an improvement, right?

Here is how it looks on the house:

And to make sure that in the next year or two when I start on another side of the house, I bought another 5 gallon bucket now to start aging it now so it will be sufficiently lumpy when I need it...

My Other Full Time Home Job/Mystery Picture

2009-09-16T14:57:00.005-05:00

With all my posts about pergola building one would think that perhaps I didn't do anything else this summer, but that is certainly not the case. I have also been working at painting the south side of the house.

But before I talk about that, here is today's mystery picture. The first one to correctly identify what it is will win a FABULOUS Foxcroft prize!

Add a comment to this post if you think you know what this is!

I am perhaps the world's slowest painter. It took six years to paint our previous house, but in my defense I do a damned good job of it. What takes so long is that I only paint houses whose last coat of paint is at least 25 years old. This requires me to go down to bare wood and start over.

For the south side I started in the overhang at the peak of the gable so that I could build my scaffolding as tall as possible. I was on top of four 5 foot high sections. I use a heat gun and putty knife to scrape the beadboard. My routine is ingrained into my brain after nearly 10 summers of doing it:

Heat Gun/Scrape
Sand
Wash
Prime
Caulk
Top Coat
Move to the next spot

My process is how a single person can reasonably work over a long period of time. Here are some pics I took throughout the summer:

Above is what my paint job looks like next to what it was when I started. The beadboard is without a doubt the hardest part of the whole house, and there is a ton of it.

Similar view from a little farther away

A view of the lookout boxes at the peak of the south gable 25+ feet up

Side view of same also showing my high tech anti-bird's nest device

Speaking of birds' nests, remember this incident earlier in the summer? Yet Another Narrow Escape From Burning the House Down Well here is what I put over the outside of the dryer vent to prevent birds from building nests there. I bought a shower basket thingy at Lowe's and cut it apart and re-sized it to just fit over the vent. Below is my final product sitting next to an unaltered one:

I bought two because there is a bathroom fan vent in the North gable of the house.

I wish I had taken a picture of all the board and battens when I had stripped them, and before I painted! You can see the vent guard in this picture too.

Another similar shot

I finally got the last of the triangular gable area done a week ago. I just finished painting around the second floor windows too. My goal, before winter is to stain the shingles down from the chimney back to the other side of the dining room windows. I hope to scrape and paint the dining room window trim too.

Pergola in Action!

2009-09-09T14:09:00.004-05:00

To finish a great Labor Day/Hawkeye football weekend we had Laurel's birthday dinner outside under the pergola. Both sets of grandparents and Aunt Lori and Uncle Matt were there. We seated a table of six under the pergola, and another table of four in the patio between the pergola and the pond:

On Saturday the Hawkeye footbal team played my undergrad alma mater, the University of Northern Iowa.

My Panthers gave Iowa all they wanted and then some. Setting an NCAA record, Iowa won the game by blocking TWO field goal attempts on consecutive plays, to win 17-16.

We had guests for the game from Los Angeles, Portland, Oregon, and St. Louis as well as our usual visitors and friends. Here is one pic from before the game:

And one with three of my best childhood friends after the game:

And even though it wasn't from this past weekend, here is a special shot of the "Corn on the Cob" cupcakes that Rowan made after she took her cake decorating class, a great way to finish the "end of summer" post here on Foxcroft:

The "kernals" are jelly beans, the "butter" are starburst candies.

Beefier

2009-08-19T09:46:00.003-05:00

So the 2 X 2 boards just weren't enough for the top of the pergola. So I went and got 12' 2 X 4's. My problem was I didn't want to take the 2 X 2's off. So, I just cut off the ends that extended beyond the main beams. I butted the 2 X 4's to the other boards and had them up pretty quickly. It looks much better:

I also ordered solar powered lights to string over the top. It was my gift to Lisa for our anniversary. They looked good here:

But last night I noticed that they weren't working...

In the Catbird Seat

2009-08-18T09:46:00.003-05:00

After getting the main beams up it was time to put on the cross beams, I used all my salvaged lumber on the main beams so I bought treated 2 X 8 boards. The easiest way to put them up was to place them on top of the main beams and mark them where they would cross the main beams:

Then we used the jig saw to cut notches while we were on top of the pergola, rather than take each board up and down:

After we got the cross beams up we put on 2 X 2 boards over the top. As soon as we were finished both Pete and I said the 2 X 2's looked really stupid, because they weren't correctly scaled with the other boards:

As you can see above, they are barely noticeable. Next post will be how we corrected that situation.

Why We Needed a Scarf in August

2009-08-07T19:08:00.003-05:00

scarf 2 (skärf)
n. pl. scarfs (skärfs)
1. A joint made by cutting or notching the ends of two pieces correspondingly and strapping or bolting them together. Also called scarf joint.
2. Either of the correspondingly cut or notched ends that fit together to form such a joint.
tr.v. scarfed, scarf·ing, scarfs
1. To join by means of a scarf.
2. To cut a scarf in.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Middle English skarf, as in scarfnail, probably from Old Norse skarfr, end piece of a board cut off on the bias.]

--Free Online Dictionary

So one of the great joys of working with salvaged materials is making them fit. All our floor joists were roughly 142 inches long, which was what we used on the east-west pieces of the pergola cross bars. That gave us just short of a two foot overhang. To get boards with a corresponding overhang on the north-south pieces we needed to scarf pieces together.

To start we clamped the boards side by side to each other, without overlapping, for the scarf joint distance. Then cut a series of 1" deep passes over both the boards with the circle saw. Since the boards are 2" thick taking out half of each board will give us the correct depth for the scarf joint.

Then we took a hammer and knocked out what was left between the grooves.

Our next step was to then take a wood chisel and get rid of any obviously high parts. After that we hit them with the plane

We then put the boards together in a dry fit to see if we liked it. Here we did

To keep the joint together we used Gorilla Glue. You don't want to get that on your fingers or anything else you value. We used a little chunk of wood to spread it on the end of each joint.

Then we put glue on the scarf area of both boards

We put the two sides together and clamped them. Then we sent five stainless steel screws into the first side.

Then we flipped it over and did the same on the other side.

After letting it dry we put it up on the pergola and clamped it into place so we could drill it for the carriage bolts that hold it in place.

Of the four north-south boards three have a single scarf joint and one has two scarf joints. My guess is that in a few years with enough vegetation growing on top of it, none of them will be noticeable!

Hubris or "The Other 90% of the Time"

2009-08-03T21:00:00.003-05:00

As a famous person once said "The first 90% of a project takes 90% of the time, the last 10% takes the OTHER 90% of the time..."

When we left off on the pergola build, Pete and I had set two of our four columns and were confident that the other two would go quickly. On Sunday afternoon we set the third column in about 20 minutes and were feeling pretty proud of ourselves. We reset the hoist for the last column and went to move it. As we lifted it into place a small chunk broke off the bottom (in hindsight we should have recognized this as ominous foreshadowing) We thought, "No matter. we have a total of six columns, we'll use one of the extras." We went and got another one and wrestled it into place.

We started pumping the hydaulic and were over the second base, with only 6 inches of re-bar to clear, when we realized the hoist wasn't going any higher. We lowered the column, repositioned it, and tried again. Same result. We lowered it again and tried to take some links out of the chain thinking we hadn't hooked it up correctly. Still not enough lift. Then the serious head scratching began.

Being a Sunday the rental place was not open. We decided to take the hydraulic arm apart. Neither had ever done anything like that before. We really couldn't really figure how to get it apart. We went and got fluid to add to the resevoir but it was already nearly full and we could force the arm back down when it was pumped.

Pete then called a friend whose daughter plays volleyball with Pete's younger daughter. He is a farm implement dealer in a town about 30 miles away. Pete thought this would be right up his alley. Luckily he happened to be in Iowa City, and came over in half an hour. He took it apart and looked it over carefully. After nearly an hour of not getting it to work either he casually mentioned that he HAS A HYDRAULIC ENGINE HOIST AT HOME IN HIS WORKSHOP!

Pete and I went on Monday morning to get it from his place. It had never ever been used. We brought it back and set it up:

We found, like the other hoist, it was too short. We blocked it with cement and posts and started to lift. I had to sit on the back end to keep it grounded:

In short order we had it over the re-bar:

While we were waiting for the mortar to dry a little (we mixed it too wet) I pulled out a cross beam and laid it into place on the columns we had already set. The cross bars are also salvaged. They were floor joists from the house the columns came from. The joists were full dimension 2 x 10 and were DOVETAILED into a 14 inch square beam that ran through the center of the house. The left side in the picture below was the profile the boards had when in the beam. The right side is straight because we had to sawzall them out to get them lifted.

I liked the profile so much we decided to use it for the cross bars. Here are the first boards in place.

Next post I'll tell about how we re-worked the beams to make the cross bars.

Going Vertical

2009-07-31T06:15:00.002-05:00

After laying the pavers for the patio our next step was to build the bases for the pergola columns. The bases are three courses of cement blocks that have outer faces made to look like cut stone. These were salvaged, along with the columns we are placing above them, from a farmhouse torn down for a new elementary school, shown below:

The bases each had two concrete caps on them, that we ended up not using, here are some stacked up before we started working:

Pete had set re-bar into the footings for the columns that we had dug and poured before laying any of the pavers. He and I set the blocks with mortar, and string leveled the first course on all four columns, then we laid the second course and re-checked for level. We did the same for the third course too. We then put more cut re-bar into each base and filled them with concrete. I had bought limestone for the caps to replace the cement that we decided not to use. We drilled a hole into each large cap and set a rebar in the middle of each column, slipped the cap over it and mortared the top to the base. To get a smaller cap on top I had bought a very large capstone and with the grinder we scored it and broke it into four pieces. These were also drilled and then slipped over the re-bar and mortared to the first cap, checking for level as we went.

After this we knew we were in for the hardest part of the project: placing the columns on top of the bases. In removing the columns it was all Pete and I could do to carry and move them. Our guess was that they weigh somewhere in the neighborhood of 300-350 pounds each. To be honest we were very unsure how to lift them up and drop them carefully onto a bed of mortar and be able to set them plumb. In the end we decided to rent an engine hoist.

Last Saturday afternoon the rental place called and said the hoist was available. We used a dolly to move the columns up to the patio.

After setting the hoist up we discovered its maximum lift was a foot lower than we needed. So we blocked it up with concrete blocks and 6 x 6 posts. We put it in place and got the first column over to the base. We dropped the chain through the column (they were poured originally with a piece of galvanized downspout through the middle) and slid a piece of re-bar through the chain at the bottom and hooked it up to the hoist.

Once we had it over the top of the re-bar we positioned it and lowered it just enough to catch the re-bar.

Then we marked a diagonal from each corner of the top cap to the re-bar in the middle and measured 4 1/2 inches from the re-bar along the diagonal. The base of the columns are 9 inches in diameter, so this gave us a guide as to where to set the columns.

We had also cut wooden blocks one inch tall and one and a half inches long and marked them so we could set them on the diagonal marks we had made.

We had already mixed a fairly dry batch of mortar. We then laid it onto the cap, and then re-set the wooden blocks onto their marks.

We then lowered the column down into the mortar until it sat on the blocks. The re-bar at the bottom of the colums was one half inch, and the chain link was another quarter of an inch thick. By sitting on the blocks we had just enough clearance to wigggle the re-bar out and pull the chain up the top. We then gently tilted the column to one side and then the other to pull the blocks out of the way. We then slightly twisted the column to set it into the mortar. Climbing the step ladder to the top of the column we used a square and a level to check for plumb. After being satisfied with it. Pete tooled out the extra mortar.

After the post was set we mixed a fairly wet batch of concrete and using a cut off milk jug poured down and filled up the cavity in the column, securely tying it to the base.

When we had the top filled we placed the capital on the top. We had drilled them also and place a threaded bolt through. The bottom end of the bolt went into the wet cement to tie the entire structure together. The top end of bolt will have a drilled 6 x 6 piece set onto it. This will give us something to attach the rafters to.

We set the first two posts and stopped Saturday evening for dinner. We were very confident we could finish the next two on Sunday afternoon without any problems at all. How wrong we were!

(to be continued...)

Remembrances of Salvages Past

2009-07-28T22:07:00.003-05:00

For the last month Pete and I have been building a patio/pergola in the backyard. I’d been kicking around how to do this since I wrote about 4.5 Tons of Salvaged Goodness.

We decided to locate it near, but not right next to the pond. I decided on a roughly 10 X 16 size. My idea was to consider it two 8 X 10 squares. The one closer to the pond would be the conversation area, the one farther away would be a good place for a picnic table.

I don’t have detailed photos of the entire process, but here is the rough area after we rented a skid loader and leveled out the area and dug it out for the ag lime base. Of course it stared raining right after we finished so we quickly covered it with a tarp:

Here is a shot from the lower yard, we widened out one of the paths to accommodate the loader and to wheel barrow up the lime and later the sand:

Speaking of which, here is the sand pile, it was slightly smaller than the lime pile. We laid a level base of six inches of packed lime, then we laid packed sand on top of that.

We ordered pavers, in three sizes ( 3 X 6 inch, 6 X 6 inch, and 6 X 9 inch) from the local yard. I’d had four 30 X 56 inch pieces of soapstone that I bought from Friends of Historic Preservation’s salvage at 925 E. Washington St. in Iowa City. I wanted to center two pieces in the middle of each of the squares. So we measured and laid them first:

Then we started to lay the pavers:

I had a box of limestone pavers I found at the old UI law school salvage. I used those randomly throughout the field.

Next post I’ll talk about how we installed the concrete blocks and set the cement pillars on top of them.

Yet Another Narrow Escape From Burning the House Down

2009-07-08T09:59:00.002-05:00

When we first bought Foxcroft and discovered both A Lifetime Supply of Cardboard, and realized that the fireplace had nearly a foot of ashes in it, we shook our heads and wondered just how it was that the place hadn't ever burned down.

I've been scaping and painting at the peak of the the gable end on the south side of the house. Our second floor dryer vent is located up there. I noticed that there was grass sticking out of the vent door. I also removed an extensive sparrow nest from the top lookout box. I reached my hand in and pulled out quite a bit of grass. I then went down and told Lisa, who said, "THAT's why the clothes haven't been drying!" At that point I knew I'd need to take apart the vent.

I climbed into the attic, scuttled across the rafters and pulled apart the vent:

Then I pulled off the elbow:

Then after removing that pulled out from the straight portion:

And being the compulsive fatalist that I am, re-assembled the whole mess back outside on the ground. Yes the entire length is a little over two feet:

I am sleeping a little less soundly these days, but the dryer is working much better, thank you.

Always the Bridesmaid

2009-06-14T21:43:00.003-05:00

I had high hopes for my green tomato pie in today's University Heights Chautauqua Pie Contest. Regular readers may remember that in last year's inaugural contest I finished second with my mulberry pie.

I thought green tomato would be a winner. I made sure to put extra flour in the recipe so it wouldn't be runny like last year's mulberry pie was. The crust I made last night was the best I've ever done. Perhaps my downfall was that I forgot to put tin foil around the pie pan to keep the edge of the crust from getting too well done. Maybe using last year's tomatoes, in the basement freezer since last fall, wasn't a good idea, but anyway the result is once again I came in second out of two entries.

And I couldn't be happier for the second place finish, because first place went to youngest daughter. When driving to the store yesterday for baking supplies she asked if she could make a pie, I said "Sure, what kind?" She thought and answered "Cranberry." We bought a bag of frozen cranberries. When we came home I got out two bags of frozen apples, each one just enought for a pie. She read the directions for apple pie, and did all the mixing and measuring. She added half the cranberries to each set of apples and she made "CranApple" pie.

The winner is shown above with her first place ribbon and the wonderful facepainting done by Mary Richard. Mary won the cake contest with an incredible chocolate cake with a gardenia on the top!

When a Majority Isn't Enough...

2009-06-09T21:59:00.003-05:00

The zoning proposal presented to University Heights failed with three people voting in favor and two against. Due to Planning and Zoning voting down the proposal a super majority of four was required for passage. Just to make sure, the opponents turned in petitions making sure a super majority was required. There was an hour of public comment prior to the vote and I got up and gave my three minutes worth.

Counting myself 23 people commented. I was one of seven speaking for the proposal. Then the P&Z chair gave a majority report, then one of two commissioners voting to approve gave a minority report.

The councilors then put a motion on the floor and discussed. Three members spoke for it (we were pretty sure of two out of those three), one spoke against (again not a surprise). The councilor holding the deciding vote passed without discussing anything. He was also the last to vote when the question was called and voted "no." I think the opponents knew all along he would do that in spite of the fact that he seemed to shake his head "yes" whenever anyone speaking in favor was talking.

Today's local paper endorsed the proposal which I took as an ominous sign since many residents have a healthy disdain for Iowa City. My former English and drama teacher wrote a guest opinion opposing the project too. We are still good friends and tonight she asked if I'd be in a benefit variety show for the local homeless shelter. Of course I said "yes."

IF the developer doesn't have a meeting with the university scheduled tomorrow I'd be very surprised. If he announces next week he's dropping the contingencies and buying the property anyway I'll be able to say "told you so."

I promised my neighbor Carl tonight that, given he likely won't be around when we vote in 10 years to dissolve the municipality and become part of Iowa City, I'd personally remind everyone who was opposed to this project that is still alive that we could have avoided this. He was greatly cheered by that.

Not that anyone would want to read it but here is a link to all the correspondance council received on this issue:

University Heights City Council

Jurassic Bungalow

2009-06-07T16:30:00.002-05:00

With the cool spring and regular rainfall the yard is pretty lush this year:

The ferns are now 4 feet tall, the house is nearly as obscured as when we first bought the place. But ferns are much different that trees...

I worked out back this morning for a while and just quickly set, in approximate locations, the bases for the pergola columns:

I really like the salvaged cement block with the stone faces. I told Lisa it will give the pergola "instant age."

Cascading Beauty

2009-06-02T10:02:00.003-05:00

I told Lisa last week that I had decided to not try to remove the limestone from around the pond and cement it all back into place. I thinking about how much more time that would take, and realizing that I need to get going on exterior paint and stain, I'd just have to call the pond good and work on it next year.

So Friday afternoon I bought two pieces of flagstone for the waterfall and started building. All I did was pile up some rocks and hide the hose. I started to fill the pond too. On Saturday morning I finished. Here it is looking up the path from the back porch:

Closer:

Closer:

Too close!

Back a little:

Other than the flags the water is running off, all the rocks were either buried in the pool when I dug it out, were on the neighbor's slag heap (the old man was a rock collector, when he passed the adult son said I could take whatever I wanted) or were ones we brought back from the "farm" in Missouri. In picture three above at the top right is a geode from the farm, and top left is a huge chunk of pink quartz with mica right below it from the neighbors. The rock with the holes in it that the water is running under was buried in the pond.

Laurel is responsible for the artistic arrangement of rocks on the lower shelf. She also is patiently waiting with a vase full of tadpoles to add to the pond.

Opinionated

2009-05-29T06:14:00.003-05:00

As I mentioned in a comment to last week's post, Disappointed But Not Surprised, I wrote a guest opinion for the Iowa City Press Citizen.

Introducing myself to the developer after the meeting, and talking about my blog, is what crystalized my approach to what I wanted to say.

I made copies of my letter and the real estate brochure and hand delivered them to our five city council members (took about 25 minutes including visiting with three of them, there are some positives to a small town) on Tuesday evening. Then I then emailed it to the paper Tuesday night.

Wednesday morning I found three emails back from the paper. The first asked for a copy of the brochure that they could run with the piece, the second asked could I send a picture of myself and a one sentence biography, and the third said they would run it on Friday and would not have room for any image of the brochure. I had a hard time finding a decent picture of myself in a hurry, and to be honest, it wasn't the time element that made it difficult.

So here what I said:

I found a map the other day that the original owner of our house drew showing all the trees and plantings in her yard. Bess Fox built our house in 1928 in University Heights’ second addition. The map was drawn in 1956. On the map she listed 19 trees: 4 apple, 3 cherry, 3 peach, 3 plum, 2 pear, 1 pine, 1 elm, 1 redbud, and 1 magnolia. Today NONE of those trees are in our yard. What also fascinates me is that the 3 walnuts, each over 30 feet high that completely dominate our yard are not listed. There is also a very large oak tree between us and our neighbors, that visitors frequently comment must be over 150 years old, I smile, and being the polite type, don’t disagree. However I have a 1929 picture of our house and the neighbor’s that show no trees at all, not surprising since the land was a pasture before it was developed. Driving our shady woodland neighborhood today it’s only logical to assume it has always been this way.

I mention this because my town’s city council will face an extremely difficult decision on June 9th when they hear an application for the rezoning of the St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church parcel. The developer there has proposed a commercial center at the front of the site and a residential building toward the rear. In the three voluntary meetings he held prior to submission of his application, the developer presented ideas and asked for community feedback. When the official proposal was submitted to the U-H Planning and Zoning Commission the final project reflected input from the community that said it was too tall and too dense. The residential building was lowered from 9 stories in the middle with 7 story wings to 6 stories in the middle with a 3 story wing to the west and a 4 story wing to the east. The commercial building was moved back further from the street, also as a result of community input.

Not surprisingly even though these changes were made, there are many people still opposed to the project. Two frequent criticisms I heard, at both the voluntary meetings held by the developer and the two sessions of the formal Planning & Zoning Commission hearing, were that “University Heights is a town of single family residences” and “University Heights was deliberately created without any commercial district.” I think it would be fair to summarize those arguments as “The way it pretty much is now is the way it has always been.” I beg to differ.

Besides being a pretty fair cartographer, Bess was a documentarian and a saver. A prized artifact I have is an original advertising brochure for the sale of lots in University Heights Second Addition. This document dates to 1927. It touts, in red letters no less, University Heights as “The Coral Gables Sub-Division of Iowa City.” Koser Brothers, the developers of University Heights, predicted “A lot in University Heights is a safe investment because the $6,000,000 building program of the UNIVERSITY on the West Side will make a big demand for West Side property and will cause values to increase very rapidly.” Their next statement was, “In a few years we predict the West Side Campus of the University will be larger than the East Side, and this will develop a residence section on the West Side of the river as large as we now have on the East Side---a business district with hotels, stores, etc. Iowa City will grow and develop as the University develops… A future vision of Iowa City must be a vision of a New City on the West Side.” To be absolutely clear of their intention, at another portion of the brochure is the statement, “University Heights has ample building restriction sufficient to protect all parties. A business district has been planned.”

Maybe it’s unfair to say that University Heights was planned with a business district, since the advertising brochure predates municipal incorporation by at least 7 years. Perhaps the thinking changed during that time? In a Cedar Rapids Gazette article written shortly after the first municipal election, following incorporation in 1935, it notes as highly unusual that there are currently no businesses in town. But it should be mentioned that the first mayor of University Heights was Lee Koser, the real estate developer half of Koser Brothers, and presumed author of the quotes above.

With the stock market crash and subsequent depression, it seemed as though no businesses would ever locate within city limits, but the post World War II years brought commercial construction on the very east edge of town, and Iowa’s fairly restrictive alcohol sales laws brought commercial construction to the very west edge. For more about that I highly recommend David Belgum’s book “Memoirs of Iowa’s Only Socialist Mayor.”

So even though things seem to have always been the same, perhaps they weren’t. I have to think Bess found it highly amusing to live on Golfview Ave. My University-Heights real estate brochure extols the proximity of town to the “golf links” making it a country club like setting. Golfview Ave. was to be the most prestigious street in town. There was only one problem, the same year that Bess built her house, the University of Iowa, with no prior warning, announced that it was relocating the football field to the West Campus area occupied by Finkbine Golf Course, and moving the golfing even further west. And rest, as they say, is history.

I would urge University Heights City Council to approve the zoning change for the One University Place development.

To see my bio and picture (and read the snarky comments that will soon be posted, I'm sure) You'll need to go to the P-C's online article:

Approve One University Place

Edit at 10:00 AM: Due to requests, here is the complete photo that was edited down for my head shot:

Rowan took it a couple months ago. I'm sitting at the breakfast nook, maybe doing the crossword or suduko?

Beans Are Up!

2009-05-27T20:02:00.005-05:00

After a really big rain most of last night I visited the garden this evening to find that the beans are just poking through the ground. Many are still wearing their seed coats:

These are Kentucky Wonder Beans and will grow up my 8 foot tall fence vigorously. I saved these beans from last year's crop.

My heirloom peas, planted the first week of April are nearly 3 feet tall right now:

In my 20 years of growing them and saving seeds, I think I have influenced their height by saving those which grew especially tall.

I'm trying potatoes again after we ate our entire inaugural crop last year at Thanksgiving. Jean, who I work with, gave me seed potatoes from Seed Savers in Decorah (I gave her peas). Here are the German Browns:

Not nearly as tall but vigorous are the Peruvian Purples:

I have to be a polyglot to garden this year.

Other early success are my onions, I've been eating them for nearly 3 weeks:

And my red leaf lettuce, which I started to harvest on Saturday:

Right next to the lettuce above are this year's new experimental plants, collard greens.

I've also got tomatoes, peppers, basil, cucumbers, cabbage, cantelope, watermelon, Chinese cabbage, zucchini and cilantro planted. I still need to put in some acorn squash and pumpkins.

Meanwhile as I work on all this, Lisa continues to sculpt the yard on a much grander, perennial scale. The textures. color, and depth never cease to amaze me, as they did on my way back to the house tonight:

Disappointed But Not Surprised

2009-05-21T23:45:00.005-05:00

Wednesday night I went to the University Heights zoning comission hearing. After three more hours continued from two weeks ago, they voted 3-2 to defeat a motion to re-zone St. Andrew's church site to allow the propsed One University Place development. Mentioned previously here Controversy Rages, and here A Grocery Store.

Local media coverage is here Board Opposes Rezoning

If you're a REAL glutton for punishment you can read on the University Heights website the entire history of this development complete with citizen letters (including my own) sent to the P&Z Commissioners and City Council here Web Pages Concerning St. Andrew Church

The City Council Hearing will be on June 9th. Due to a petition of neighbors a supermajority of 4 out of 5 councilors will be needed for passage. Actually the supermajority would have been necessary due to the P&Z vote anyway.

Humorous Blog connection/irony: After the meeting I introduced myself to the developer and talked about about some of the historical artifacts I have including the original U-H development brochure here Coral Gables Subdivision of Iowa City, one of the other partners looks at me and says "I've seen that brochure it was on some guy's blog about his house!" He was quite surprised when I told him that was me. I really don't think there are more than 10 local people who know about the blog!

1956 Yard Map

2009-05-18T13:54:00.008-05:00

In going through "stuff" I found a letter that Bess wrote to her nieces in 1956 that came back to her somehow. The letter includes a lengthy description of her vegetable garden and a hand drawn map, complete with numbers and a list of items in the yard:

Our yard layout, the little red dots are flagstone walks to garden, garage, and shed

1. house
2. garage
3. tool shed
4. pool
5. driveway
6. turn around place
7. garden – mostly vegetables
8. raspberries – currants – goosberries
9. Sweet cherry tree
10. peach trees
11. peach trees
12. green gage plum tree
13. northern spy apple
14. apple tree
15. cherry tree
16. pine tree
17. apple tree
18. cherry tree
19. pear tree
20. apple tree
21. sweet pear tree
22. plum tree
23. plum tree
24. elm tree
25. red bud
26. magnolia
27. red leaf peach
28. golden rain
29. strawberries (150 plants)
30. strawberry pyramid

And how much is left today?

1. house YES
2. garage YES
3. tool shed NO (our garden is here)
4. pool YES
5. driveway YES
6. turn around place YES
7. garden – mostly vegetables NO (Sold in early 1980's)
8. raspberries – currants – goosberries NO (our garden is here)
9. Sweet cherry tree NO (our garden is here)
10. peach tree NO (swingset)
11. peach tree NO
12. green gage plum tree NO (tree house)
13. northern spy apple NO
14. apple tree NO
15. cherry tree NO
16. pine tree NO
17. apple tree NO
18. cherry tree NO (limestone patio)
19. pear tree NO
20. apple tree NO
21. sweet pear tree NO (crabapple)
22. plum tree NO (maple tree)
23. plum tree Sort Of (We cut down the original in 2005 it was growing sideways out of the hill, a sprout from the roots has come back)
24. elm tree NO
25. red bud NO
26. magnolia NO
27. red leaf peach NO
28. golden rain NO
29. strawberries (150 plants)NO
30. strawberry pyramid NO

Items of note:

Most of the path stones are around, we've moved them some. The line to the garage is now sidewalk, I know the flagstones are underneath the cement.
I'm very curious about what the red letters are.
None of the three enormous walnut trees that dominate our yard today are marked. They lie roughly between 13 and 2, between 6 and 23, and at 28. I would trade at least two of them for half the fruit trees listed...
None of the lilac bushes along the southwestern edge of the yard are listed.
Bess lists the front dimension of the lot as 125 feet. In the letter she says she has all but finalized the purchase of a 25 foot wide strip of land north of the driveway that ran along the northwest side of the lot. That must have never been purchased because last night I stepped off 125 feet from the eastern corner of the lot and ended up all the way down across the neighbor's driveway. The house north of ours was the last one built in the neighborhood in 1968.

Carved in Stone

2009-05-15T07:29:00.002-05:00

Lisa hit me with a moment of clarity on Sunday. She looked at the back corner where pond excavations continue. Last fall I finished digging out the 1933 cement pond that had been completely covered and hidden. This spring I have been digging back three feet around the pond so that I can control rainwater run off and divert it around the pond. I will use retaining wall blocks and try to build an integral bench into one side by reusing some of the cement blocks I recovered from the Front Street house that was torn down.

Anyway, as I've been digging I've hits lots of rocks in the dirt. I took a bunch of those rocks and washed them off. I told her my plan was to build a waterfall at the back of the pond and hide the retaining wall with the stones. I got a pump to place in the pond to take water up behind the rocks and recirculate it. She cocked her head and looked at me and said, "You want to build a grotto don't you?"

I hadn't really considered that, but I should have. Grottos have a mythical place in my memory. One of my grandfather's friends, Matty Hatz, spent years building grottos in his backyard and elsewhere. I vividly remember his waterfall when I was a child. In the town park in my grandparents small town is an enormous grotto statue that Matty built too. At my grandparents' church is a grotto that a local woman built after taking her ailing daughter to be miraculously cured in Lourdes, France.

In our neighborhood growing up was a sign in a house on Summit Street advertising the World's Smallest Church Grotto." Sadly I don't think it is still there.

But perhaps the most striking memory is looking at old photos of grandma's. Being farmers during the depression they hardly ever took time off, but if they did take a trip it was always to the same place, the West Bend Grotto. Officially known as the Grotto of the Redemption, it is pretty amazing. Started by Father Mathias Dobberstein (another "Matty") in 1912 he worked on it until his death in 1954. His assistant and also another priest continued work. The grotto today draws 100,000 visitors a year, not bad for small town Iowa. Lisa and I finally made it there in 1993 on RAGBRAI.

So on the small chance I run out of other projects here I can always keep expanding a grotto around the pond.

My brother, Jim, told me last year he wants to build a grotto in his backyard too.

Welcome Bungalow Tourists!

2009-05-08T15:58:00.002-05:00

Stuccohouse in the Twin Cities has organized a "virtual" tour since the TC Bungalow Club tour was cancelled. She graciously asked it we'd be a part, and we are delighted to do so.

A little about us:

We are the second family to live in our home. We owned the house for a year before beginning to restore it, and had the incredible opportunity to know the daughter of the builder in the final year she lived here as our life tenant. She passed away in December of 1994 at age 93. She was 18 when she moved in with her widowed mother in September of 1928. We started work to make it our home in 2005. We have had the privilege of keeping much of the historical documents that came with the house, including daily journals of mother and daughter.

Our biggest project was to take the unfinished 2nd floor of the house and make 3 bedrooms, a bath, laundry, and sitting area. The day we started in earnest is probably my favorite post in our blog:
A Little off the Top, Please

Look around, poke into dark corners, and generally have a good time!

When you're ready to move along,here are two other blogs I recommend highly:

House In Progress Jeanne and Aaron are the founders of Houseblogs.net the site that collects us all together. Their home blog traces a story very similar to Foxcroft's in that they too had a house full of stuff, but their work far exceeds ours. We traded tips back and forth about how to deal with large amounts of said "stuff." I was able to invite them to speak at Iowa City's Friends of Historic Preservation's annual meeting in 2008.

That's a Cute Little Farmhouse Becky has the honor of being the oldest houseblog in Iowa. Her writing is clear and interesting. She gives a great view of the challenges and rewards of small town living.

There are so many other great blogs I read, I feel bad only selecting two. But here are two upcoming REAL house tours you may want to check out as well

2009 Friends of Historic Preservation House Tour

Muscatine House Tour I know the owners of the featured home, click on the "image" link it is unbelievable. 5,000 square feet overlooking the Mississippi River.

49 Years Ago Today at Foxcroft

2009-05-05T07:01:00.003-05:00

From Bess' diary for May 5th, 1960:

Thursday
Usual lunch, puppy, and home jobs. Took onions over to Ray’s. Rain part of mid day – Heard Pitt beat Cubs + part of Mil-LA game. Ditto and I napped – Fran phoned about coffee for Mrs. Focht Sat. but I can’t go. Nice asparagus.
Amy Jo Ray is 6 today.

The Fish Letters #4

2009-05-01T06:46:00.002-05:00

December 5, 1933

My Dear Miss Fox:

Yesterday afternoon we shipped your entire order of remedies, accessories and three pair of Zebras. The weather is quite favorable for shipping tropical fish at the present time and we sincerely hope that they reached you in good condition. We included an extra pair of Zebras on the order as a replacement for the one which you lost on the previous order.

The small transparent creatures which you discovered in your aquarium are possibly Fresh Water Shrimp. They are not harmful to the fish or aquarium. Ordinarily fish will destroy them.

Bettas are usually very fond of live food and it is possible that they may attack the snails for that purpose. If they continue to bother the snails it might be advisable to transfer the latter to a small bowl with a couple of plants and a leaf of lettuce, temporarily.
The Edison Heater should not be immersed below the point where the rubber connects to the tubing, although it is water tight it is not advisable. You could, however, put it about a half inch above the rubber lining. The heat will be well distributed as the heating elements are clear down at the bottom, therefore by immersing it a half inch or so more it will not change the temperature very much. We sincerely hope that you enjoy the aquarium and collection of plants and fish thoroughly and it will be our pleasure to have the opportunity to serve you again.

We are sending Mrs., Schroder, of Iowa City a copy of our catalogue which we are sure will be of interest to her.

Yours very truly,

WILLIAM TRICKER INC.
J.T. Charleson (signature)
Manager
JTC :JB

Look At Someone Else's House 2009 Edition

2009-04-29T11:00:00.003-05:00

It's time for my annual appeal to attend Friends of Historic Preservation's 3rd annual Parade of Historic Homes on Sunday May 17th from 1-5 PM.

This year will again feature homes that have been restored using materials from FHP's salvage barn.

Here are a glimpses of the properties:

(1029 Bowery St.) an excellent example of adaptive re-use

(614 Clark St.) a residence that formerly was a church

(416 S. Summit St.) an example of a rental house returned to a family home

(519 S. Summit St.) shows off how an historic house can be updated

But probably most impressive:

(1208 Marcy) Plum Grove Inn, this house is a unique project combining the vision of architect Thomas McInerney with the passion and drive of Shelley Slaubaugh to have an historic Bed & Breakfast.

In the Spring of 2006, Friends of Historic Preservation had salvaged the interior of what was commonly called the “the old castle house” in Belle Plaine, Iowa. This was no ordinary house. Inside the dining room there was solid walnut wainscoting with a triple plate rail, sideboard, china cabinet, butler and pocket doors, as well as a coved press tin ceiling all in one room. Treasures like leaded glass windows, a walnut library, quarter sawn oak stairs, beveled glass doors, a skirted tub, pedestal sink and rooms of walnut and oak baseboards and molding were saved.

As Thomas McInerney recalled, “While going to the city landfill, one usually does not expect to find timeless treasures there. I noticed the Salvage Barn there and was curious if I could find inspiration to define the interior character of the house I was designing. I was not disappointed. Friends of Historic Preservation had recently salvaged a collection of stunning walnut cabinetry and trim from a demolished house in Belle Plaine, Iowa. Shelley is a fan of walnut furnishings and I thought she would enjoy seeing this incredible selection. After calling her, I figured we would chat about it later that night. To my complete surprise that night, she informed me that she agreed to buy the complete Belle Plaine house’s door, cabinetry and wood trim package. I knew she was serious about the Bed & Breakfast now!”

As an architect, Thomas McInerney understands how things are built and was able to envision and adapt the use of the salvaged materials for the interior of the new house he was building. As the house took shape, it was difficult to find contractors who shared this same vision. McInerney commented, “Incorporating this understanding onto construction documents for contractors is very time consuming and required an intimate knowledge of the millwork. It soon became evident that with the amount of millwork we had on hand, a contractor hired to reinstall the trim would greatly exceed our budget and schedule.” Consequently, McInerney and Slaubaugh invested their time and skills to complete the carpentry work on the house. As McInerney noted “With full-time careers grabbing our attention throughout it, we experienced work hours from sun-up to after sundown to the point of exhaustion.” The results are stunning and visitors to Plum Grove Inn may never realize that they have spent the night in a new old house.

I worked to salvage at Belle Plaine, and have seen the results, I was so happy to see such beautiful historic house parts go to such spectacular use!

4.5 Tons of Salvaged Goodness

2009-04-18T23:21:00.004-05:00

Pete and I moved 4.5 tons of salvaged material today. The house we worked on with other members of Friends of Historic Preservation, will be taken down for a new elmentary school.

Here is a photo of the house from the county assessor's site:

Pete and I took the six porch pillars and the blocks below them. The pillars are made of cement and with three courses of blocks, and a two piece cement cap below come to a toal of eight feet in height. My plan is to take these and make a pergola in our back yard.

I was really worried about how heavy the pillars would be. We had my brother's dump truck to haul them, and I had made 5 T- shaped support posts by screwing together 8 foot 2x4's to put in as we took the pillars out. We used a John's bottle jack and worked like we did last summer in taking down the pillars on the back porch.

First we used the jack to raise the porch roof next to a pillar. When there was a visible gap we would wiggle the pillar toward the inside until we could get it clear of the cap at the top of the pillar. Then we would tip in down and support the end on the bottom cap. After re-adjusting we would move the pillar to the porch floor. We would take the T support post and get it into place then lower the jack to take the porch roof down to the temporary post. The two piece cap was also cement, we would wiggle them off. The take out the cement blocks. These were made with a mold so that the outer face looks like cut stone.

We got the six pillars out in about an hour and a half. We then loaded them along with two of the base caps and 8 blocks into the truck. We stopped at the landfill to get a total weight. Truck and all came to 4.9 tons. I called my brother and left a message asking how much the truck weighed.

We unloaded all that and went back for the other blocks and caps. I'll need a total of 36 for the six pillars, but since they were built below the porch floor on the house I was able to get an additional 12 blocks. I have another idea for those. We loaded 40 blocks and 4 caps into the second load.

While unloading the second time, Pete asked how much I thought the blocks weighed, I guessed 30 pounds each. We were stacking three onto my dolly and wheeling them into the yard to pile up. My daughter came out with the bathroom scale and we discovered they were really 60 pounds each. That made our second load somewhere in the neighborhood of 2400 pounds for the blocks and probably 800 more for the caps. for a total of 1.5 tons.

When we talked to my brother he said the truck weighed 2 tons empty, so the first load was 2.9 tons. With 1.5 in the second we came in at 4.5 for a total.

I'm tired tonight!

Besides the porch pillars FHP salvaged: 2.25 inch wide pine flooring, 5.25 inch wide pine flooring, window and door headers, a pine collonade, newel posts, window and door casing, leaded glass windows, exterior doors with leaded glass, and five panel interior doors

The Fish Letters #3

2009-04-17T11:19:00.002-05:00

November 25, 1933

My dear Miss Fox:

Your aquarium and stand with all the other accessories, plants and heater were shipped on Wednesday November 22nd. We could have shipped the fish now but owing to the fact that they may have been stranded over the weekend we decided to postpone the shipment until Monday November 27th. We shall rush them to you in an insulated thermos jug.

We trust that the aquarium and other accessories reached you in good condition and also that you will have the aquarium set and planted, having the proper temperature so that the fish may be placed in the aquarium when they arrive.

If the temperature of the water in the jug should be low, increase it gradually to 75 degrees before the fish are placed in the aquarium prior to putting the fish in. We would also suggest that you add 2 or three tablespoonfuls of Turk’s Island Sea Salt.

Yours very truly,

WILLIAM TRICKER INC.
J T Charleson (signature)
Manager.

JTC:JB

Controversy Rages!

2009-04-11T06:44:00.002-05:00

According to the screaming headlines of our local paper:

Proposed University Heights Development Controversial

Here is a view of the proposed commercial building at the front of the site:

Here is the condominium tower to the back of the site:

Here is an arial view of the property with the adjustment made to Sunset Street:

I went to the third and final open meeting that the developer had scheduled to tell community residents about the plan and solicit feedback. I wrote about the first one here: A Grocery Store! This one had about the same number of people as the first, it sounds like the second one was similar.

Lots of people are dead set against this. They do not want the community to change. I guess as a relatively new resident of the community, and someone with young children, I view it a little differently. I think in general the proposal is a good one. I think the commercial development is very good, and understand that to make it profitable and viable the upscale condominium has to be there too.

Just a few quick ideas

* Shouting at a developer, and interrupting a presentation at a voluntary meeting to share information is just plain stupid and rude. I don't care if you are a doctor or lawyer (as two of the worst offenders were, I kept looking around for an Indian Chief to join in with them) The time to engage in those tactics will be at Planning and Zoning Comission and City Council.

*The inital proposal for the residential tower was 9 stories in the middle, stair-stepped down to 6 on the wings. Their presentation at the final meeting was 7 stories stair-stepped down to 5. People are going crazy over how this will stick out. But Kinnick Stadium's new pressbox on the eastern border of University Heights is taller than the 9 story tower. I haven't heard people complain about that.

*I suggest that if this gets approved the first thing the city council does with increased tax revenue is create a fund for the purchase of the woodland on the north edge of town to create a permanent green space there.

Cilla: Siberian Squill

2009-04-05T08:28:00.004-05:00

Our cilla is blooming all over the yard again. The crocuses and snowballs are all in full force too. The irises and tulips have begun to poke up out of the ground.

Today we're supposed to get up to 6" of snow...

I was able to work outside quite a bit yesterday. I have put up a new section of fence in the garden to accomodate more heirloom peas this summer. I kicked around some dirt and hope to plant potatoes and peas next Friday if all goes well.

Other recent yard work has included spreading a little over a ton (1500 lb load two weeks ago, 800 lbs last week) of wood chip mulch in the flower beds. The far back yard and near back yard are covered. We still need to do both sides of the house and the flower beds in front and on the hill. The first load was easiest. My brother and I took his dump truck out to the Iowa City landfill and they load you up FREE. Having the dump box meant we unloaded in about two minutes at home onto a tarp in the driveway. Last week I got more free wood chips from the landfill in Pete's pickup truck. That I have to shovel out of the bed and it takes quite a bit longer. In total we have dumped 75 wheelbarrow loads.

I got a load for myself and then went back to fill Pete's truck again to bring a load to him in exchange for the use of the truck. I put his cover on the back and left it at his place. His daughter, not knowing the back was full, took the truck back to college. I talked to Pete yesterday and he said his well travelled mulch came back home Friday night and he had unloaded it yesterday.

So in case we do get all that snow, I'll just look at this blog instead of my own yard. (His pictures and descriptions are way better anyway)

An Iowa Garden

The Fish Letters #2

2009-04-03T08:26:00.007-05:00

November 20, 1933
Miss Helen Fox
315 Golfview
Iowa City, Iowa

My dear Miss Fox:-
Your letter of November the 15th and valued order was received for which please accept our thanks.
We shall comply with your request by sending the aquarium, the stand, plants and the accessories a couple of days ahead of the fish. The fish you have ordered will live peaceably with one another. We have a nice supply of Black Hybrids this Fall and are including a pair with your order free of charge.

An aquarium, in which tropical fish are harbored, should be covered so we are sending you a glass cover to use on the top of your aquarium, the price of which is 65¢. We shall refund you the $2.35 as soon as the jug is returned.

On our heaters, we have changed from the original Watchman Model and are using a thermostat heater made by Edison Electric. We find it much more satisfactory and although this heater sells at $8.25, we are including this with your order. I am sure that you will like it very much and if you are well pleased with it, we wonder if you would wish to pay the difference. Our aim is to please you and we would appreciated the opportunity of hear from you at your earliest convenience.
Very truly yours,

WILLIAM TRICKER INC

JT Charleson (signature)
Manager

Jtc/ac

Sold To
Miss Helen Fox
315 Golfview
Iowa City, Iowa
INVOICE AND NOTICE OF SHIPMENT
Your Order Was Shipped Today By Express NOV 28 1933

1 #120 Eureka aquarium with Imperial stand 24.00
1 1 ½ gal. handy aquarium 1.25
1 Coll#34 E 3.15
1 Watchman Model heater 6.00
1 Four inch net (Tropical) .35
1 Spirit four inch floating bulb thermometer .35
1 Lb. dried shrimp .75
1 Tin Fish Vim .20
1 Tin Tonic .25
1 Tin dried Daphniae .20
1 Tin Hygiene .25
1 Pint Turk’s sea salt .35
1 Pint German fungus cure .35
1 Ounce bottle C.D.T. .40
1 Each of pink and blue chemical shells .20
1 Pair dwarf Gourami 2.00
1 Pair Angel fish 2.50
1 Pair Zebras 1.00
1 Pair Silver Barbs 1.25
1 Pair Mex. Swordtails 1.25
1 Pair Betta Trickeri 3.00
1 Pair B. Cambodia 2.50
1 Pair Betta Cyana 5.00
1 Pair Black Hybrids n/c
DEPOSIT ON INSULATED CAN 2.35
$59.55
1 Glass cover .65¢.

50 Years Ago Today at Foxcroft

2009-03-26T09:21:00.001-05:00

Bess' Diary:

Thursday March 26, 1959

34

Usual jobs- did ironing + baked 3 loaves of bread - rainy almost sleet - M to Cedar Rapids for nothing but the ride! as he and the carmel corn man couldn't agree

The Fish Letters #1

2009-03-20T07:20:00.005-05:00

In honor of what would have been Helen's 98th birthday today here is #1 in an occasional series I'll refer as the "Fish Letters." Helen and her mother dug a fishpond in their back yard in 1933. Last spring I found where it was and started to excavate it back out. It had been filled in for over 40 years.

Since the upstairs attic was their archive, (with 1200 sq ft of space nothing was ever thrown away) I found among all the papers a series of letters dealing with fish for the pond. Here is the first one:

October 21, 19933

My Dear Miss Fox,

We do not ordinarily advise that the goldfish or fancy goldfish be placed in the same aquarium with the tropicals. Goldfish require a cooler water temperature than tropical fish and also more water per fish.

Tropical fish, which have asterisks in front of their names, are not scrappy and will live peaceably with others, providing that the temperature of the water is maintained at 72 to 75 degrees. We therefore, do not recommend that you keep the two varieties together. Keep them separate.

At present, you could obtain an excellent pair of Calico Veiltails at $3.00 per pair, Japanese Veiltails at $3.00 per pair, Veiltail Moors, Medium at $3.00 per pair, Veiltail Moors, Large at $5.00 per pair and Lionheads at $2.00 and $5.00 per pair.

We trust that you will be in the market for some of these beautiful fish and may we have the opportunity to serve you.

Very truly yours,

WILLIAM TRICKER INC
J T Charleson (Signature)
Manager

jtc/ac

And like so many other companies I've looked for in the history of Foxcroft William Tricker, Inc. is still in business! The patch I put in the bottom of the pond last fall seems to be holding, maybe I'll order some plants from them. We did put in two goldfish from the local pet store, one survived the summer, but I haven't seen him lately in the tank in the basement...

A Grocery Store!

2009-03-13T12:30:00.008-05:00

Well that's what I heard when I went to a public meeting to listen to a development proposal being made for the St. Andrew's church site two blocks from us.

Here is the media's write up complete with snarky comments that so drearily seem to define our dialogues:

Residents discuss condo idea

A little backgrond: University Heights (our fair city) is 1000 souls surrounded by Iowa City. Immediately to our east outside city limits is the UI football stadium:

and the largest teaching hospital in the known universe:

(I am not exaggerating either)The picture above is a tiny bit of the original structure which is now nearly invisible due to building around it.

At our far western border was a private club named "The University Athletic Club" which was created 50 years ago, in an era of restricted alcohol sales, some would say as a way for wealthy alumni to have a stiff belt before/during/after football.

The "Athletic Club" has been University Heights ONLY major commercial entity since it's inception. Last fall the University of Iowa BOUGHT said private club in order to have a catering/banquet hall facility to replace the flooded Iowa Memorial Union. This will likely reduce our city budget by at least 10% due to the loss of commercial property tax revenue since the UI is tax exempt.

Connecting the hospital and the Athletic club to areas to the west and east is Melrose Ave, which is four lanes wide from I-380 up to the University Heights city limit where it narrows to two lanes, and then immediately after crossing the railroad bridge back into Iowa City again goes to four lanes. This road neatly splits our small community in two. It is a major arterial road for the greater metropolitan area.

Prior to UI's purchase of the athletic club quiet negotiations were underway for a developer to buy St. Andrew's Church which is adjacent to the Athletic Club. UI had a right of first refusal and passed, in 2007, on the property for 4.3 million, according to the developer. The congregation has now bought land for a new church and the developer has made preliminary plans for this project. Lots of things need to happen including changing Sunset/Melrose intersection by filling in a steep ravine and re-routing Sunset.

I give the developer credit for having public meetings, I am delighted at the thought of a walkable grocerty store, that is the thing we gave up in moving here that I miss the most. Here is our old grocery store, which was half a block away through the back alley from our previous house:

Go HERE: Dirty John's to read about this Iowa City institution

Here is the developer's proposal(a bad PDF)Of course what is driving many people crazy is that there will be 36 condo units above the commercial property to the front of the lot and the NINE STORY residential condo building to the rear. It must be said that this developer was part of a plan to build a similar residential structure on the Athletic Club property 3 years ago which was defeated by community opposition. So those folks were out again in full force last night. I'm not opposed to the project.

I think the project as a whole would be beneficial to the community, and I'm guessing that if developed to the scale proposed, it would likely double our city property tax revenue. My suggestion would be to take whatever increase we get in revenues and put it into a fund to buy the wooded ravine to the north of town and get us some protected green park space. If projects like this would stop further regional sprawl by building denser near the center of the greater metropolitan area I say more power to them.

The kicker in all this is that the congregation has yet to vote on moving, and at even the most optimistic scenario, phase I, moving the road, wouldn't begin until fall 2010, with construction perhaps not starting until 2012.

The Only Thing We Have to Fear...

2009-03-04T08:29:00.004-06:00

Bess' Diary March 4, 1933:

Sat
40

Heard Roosevelt Inaugural all day - Crochet - H got Muscatine warrant for $30.00 All banks in U.S. closed for a few days - Heard Iowa 16 Ill 44 - a terrible mess of a game.

Comments: 1932 was the first election in which Helen was eligible to vote. She told me her plan was to go and vote for William Z. Foster (communist party candidate) but at the last minute she chickened out and voted, as her mother Bess did, for former Iowan Herbert Hoover. Bess' diary for Nov. 8, 1932 says she was glad Roosevelt won.

I'm also amused by Bess being more upset about the University of Iowa Hawkeyes' basketball loss to the Fighin' Illini of U. of Illinois than she was about the bank holiday.

75 Years Ago at Foxcroft- March 2, 1934

2009-03-02T09:50:00.003-06:00

Bess' Diary:

March 2, 1934
40
"Lump Sum" came. Paul McN 38.00 - Bertha 70 - Helen 77 - 1/2 farm tax 106 - office tax 6.60 - 1/2 Iowa City tax 24.29 - got new battery for car 7.40. Paid OES, DAR + Shrine dues - Mrs. Eastman here for dinner- Helen took us both to see Laurel and Hardy in Fra Diavolo

Comments:

The "lump sum" may have been payment by her tenant of farm rent? I know from my own family history that farm leases typically began March 1. (Hence many February weddings among my ancestors) Bess still owned farm land back in Waucoma.

Bess' payments above totaled $329.29 plus dues to her clubs.

The "Iowa City tax" is interesting, at that time University Heights was still unicorporated Johnson County. It has never been a part of Iowa City, incorporating on July 10, 1935 as a municipality. Postal service has always been via Iowa City however.

Fra Diavolo from www.laurelandhardycentral.com

STORY: Laurel and Hardy's first period operetta. In the early 18th century, northern Italy is terrorized by a notorious gang of thieves led by Fra Diavolo, "The Devil's Brother." Wanderers Stanlio and Ollio are held up by a band of Diavolo's men, and lose their hard-earned life savings. They determine that they too will lead a life of crime, and proceed to bungle a series of robbery attempts with Ollio posing as the dreaded Diavolo. They make the mistake of holding up the real Diavolo; he in turn threatens their lives, but spares them and makes them his personal servants. Diavolo is enamored with the charms of the lovely Lady Rocberg and the 500,000 francs she has hidden in her petticoat. The Boys help to expose Diavolo, and all escape unharmed.

There's a Hole In the Bucket!

2009-02-28T06:24:00.005-06:00

I knew if I posted about the sink's cold water stem no longer leaking from the wall it would start again. So yesterday I took the entire assembly off AGAIN. I wrapped teflon tape around the cold stem AGAIN, I reassembled the whole faucet AGAIN. I was happy. Then as I was sitting at the breakfast nook table working on taxes, I noticed that the faucet was DRIPPING. Arrgh. I was right back to where I started a month ago. My thought was that sediment from the pipes had gotten into the stem and were keeping it from shutting tightly. So I spent the afternoon getting up and turning the water on and off every 20 minutes or so. When I got up this morning the sink was dry. But I'M NOT SAYING IT'S FIXED! For the record this is the 5th faucet I've installed in this sink in 4 years, but in my defense several were salvaged ones that I had to put on in a pinch...

The good news is that while I had the faucet off I was able to remove the plug for the third hole in the sink. The better news was that no water came spraying out of the pipe, but I was pretty confident since I knew that pipe ran down to the basement and was not connected to anything. Now I can jerry-rig something together for a soap dish.

So here's a little trip down memory lane of posts about the sink:

kitchen faucet

Holiday Plumbing

Still Do Any Work Around Here?

2009-02-22T08:06:00.002-06:00

To answer a persistent question, yes.

Here's an update on a project that actually has been completed. The issue that led to my recent rant regarding the kitchen faucet has been resolved. The not-repaired stem was inserted back into the faucet and failed completely a week later. I then paid a visit to my brother-in-law at the plumbing supply store to get a better quality faucet.

There was a Chicago brand faucet in stock, and after being satisfied that this would be the last faucet I installed for some time I bought it. My specific questions were:

Do the stems have rubber washers or ceramic?
Are the washers replacable?
Can I order new washers?
Can I get new stems?

Jim's answers were:

Both rubber and ceramic fit this model. If the rubber go bad quickly due to heavy use, replace with ceramic
Yes
Yes
Yes

This answers made me very happy. Here is the faucet installed:

One week after I installed it I noticed rust stains from a drip at the cold tap:

I was of course fearing the worst as the supplies barely come up to the openings in the sink. But thankfully it was the connection between the adapter that fit onto the supply and the faucet itself that was not tight so I DID NOT have to disassemble the entire unit. I cleaned up the rust and it seems OK. (knock wood)

My only regret with this model doesn't have a built in post to add a soap dish. However I think that perhaps I can kill two birds with one stone here. In noticing the THIRD hole in the sink, there was a pipe for a cistern line originally. I can state with complete confidence that there NEVER was a cistern, as it isn't mentioned in the original contract, blueprints, or show anywhere in pictures. I do have original kitchen photos with a third faucet but it was likely just a dummy. There is no pipe coming down the back of the sink, nor is there any hole in the original floor for a pipe to go to the basement. I think if I can work the plug off and there is some little bit of pipe there I might be able to fashion some adapter and mount the soap dish from the previous faucet...

Bess' Diary Feb 6-7, 1933

2009-02-06T12:21:00.002-06:00

Monday Feb. 6, 1933
40 down to 0

Ralph Wagner set up our jig saw. H over town for blades. Made freezer orange souffle, angel food, and salad. H cut out most of one puzzle + plugged.
Iowa 42 Chicago 12. Wind

Tuesday Feb,. 7, 1933
-5

Blizzard. Over town at 10 to mail Grandma's birthday present. drained Prestone
H worked on jigsaw puzzle- broke 3 blades- Cards Carroms

Stereo View Diaries Feb. 2, 1933

2009-02-02T12:27:00.002-06:00

I'm consolidating materials and now have both sets of diaries in the same room. Apparently Bess and Helen wanted to make jigsaw puzzles, hence the interest in a jig saw...

Bess' Diary Feb, 2, 1933

40 degrees Thursday
Assessor here. Fran phoned at 10 as we were getting up. Over town at 1:15 + looked at jig saws. H had lower twisted wisdom tooth out. I to Grace's for supper but H stayed home a tiny bit sick

Helen's Diary Feb. 2, 1933

Thursday
Up at 10. Went over town about noon, Looked at saws, had lower left wisdom tooth out- all screwy! M. went to Grace's for dinner. I stayed home + finished pillow cases.

This might get interesting as I coordinate!

On Presidents and Plumbing

2009-01-20T09:01:00.002-06:00

With Barack Obama’s inauguration today comes the intersection of 1928 and 2008 at Foxcroft. I have mentioned Obama here several times as he came into the sphere of our daily living, notably the first time I heard him speak. That was before he officially announced his candidacy, here:
Take A Look at This!

A slightly tongue in cheek rant about the pre-caucus attention Iowans were getting here:
I like Hillary Well Enough...

Our precinct caucus here:
Caucus Report

Perhaps the only political group I’ve been really excited about for quite some time (Banjos for Barack?) here:
And Now a Word From Ralph Stanley

Now for the 1928 part. That was the year Foxcroft was built. Undoubtedly Bess voted in that election, presumably for Herbert Hoover, a native Iowan and generally recognized hero at the time. If you’re not familiar with his legacy prior to the White House, he was regarded as the man who nearly single handedly saved our allies Belgium, France, and Russia, and later our enemy, Germany, from starving to death during and after World War I. Hoover’s life is really interesting.

The girls and I visited the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum in West Branch, ten miles away, last Friday. We went to see the “Rooster Flour Sack” an amazingly embroidered 100 lb. food relief sack that was part of the thank you gifts sent to Hoover from grateful, but still extremely poor, Belgians.

This sack has not been on exhibit for over 15 years. The photo does not even begin to do it justice.

The visit to the museum was my first in quite a while. I was NOT familiar with his time as secretary of commerce in the Harding/Coolidge administration. Hoover was the person who created the system of radio band frequency rights, was the subject of the first television broadcast in the U.S. and was tireless in his drive to improve the lives of common Americans, including the standardization of all industrial machinery parts.

Here’s where the plumbing comes in. On Saturday morning our kitchen hot water faucet gave out. This is in our original wall mount sink. I took out the stem and figured it was probably a washer. I completely stripped the set screw trying to remove it from the bottom of the stem to take the washer out. I bundled up and went to 3 hardware stores and our local plumbing supply store only to find that not only did none of them have a stem that would be a suitable replacement, no one even carried washers any more. I drove home dreaming of Hoover’s goal of standardized, interchangeable parts.

To add insult to injury when I looked up the online plumbing place I’d gotten the faucet from, they didn’t even carry that model any more.

Here's to greater regulation in the future! Mr. President, once the banking thing is straightened out, let's go for plumbing!

Central Calling

2009-01-17T07:20:00.002-06:00

A small thing accomplished over break was to hang a new phone in the upstairs sitting room. We've had an old princess style phone up there. Does anyone under 45 even know what a princess phone is? Boy that makes me feel old. This one had been Lisa's that she brought when we were married. I'd never seen a BROWN princess phone, but I digress.

While cleaning in the basement I found an old phone that had been in my childhood home. My parents had bought it in the early '70's or so and had a digital keypad added to it.

The phone's original bells still ring when the crank (not visible on the right side of the picture) is turned, but for incoming calls a second set of bells installed inside the box are what you actually hear.

When my folks moved in 1988 they took the phone with them, but never found a good place to install it. When they moved into their apartment in 2005 the phone came to Foxcroft, and since that was right when we were moving in, it went into a pile in the basement.

Wiring it back up wasn't too hard, but a little more complex than I had originally thought it would be, since apparently my father CUT the line out of the phone, so I had to splice it together. Perhaps I need to do a little more work on it, as it won't dial out, but will take incoming calls.

Here is a shot of it in the sitting room, next to my great-great grandfather's cupboard:

I really like sitting in the chair below the phone and talking. The heft of the receiver surprises the girls, but feels very comfortable to me.

My next great plan is to put a candlestick back into the phone niche in the dining room, then we'd really be set!

A Few Other Local Bloggers

2009-01-06T06:45:00.003-06:00

There are LOTS of blogs in Iowa City, most are started by students, and fizzle out pretty quickly. I don't search a great deal for other local bloggers, but here are three local blogs that I really do like. One has barely started, one is VERY prolific, and one falls in between.

Barely started is "The Old Mellicker Place", I happen to know the author, as is evidenced by the link to me, but I hadn't known he'd started bloggging. I really hope Mike continues with the project, His writing and insights will be excellent, and he's a nice guy to boot.

Prolific is "The Prairie Urbanist". Donald is a fellow University Heights resident, and writes his blog through our local Iowa City paper, The Iowa City Press Citizen Donald writes on politics, biking, and numerous local and national issues. His recent post, Does University Heights Have a Future echoes what I've been thinking about ever since the University of Iowa announced they would acquire our largest commerical property in town, thereby taking off our tax roles. If his predicition of our eventual annexation by Iowa City comes true, perhaps he can be an ally in the creation of local historic districts within town. If you run across this, Donald, you'd probably like to read my post on University Height history, and our original town slogan: The Coral Gables Subdivision of Iowa City.

In between is the blog I've been aware of the longest. Flossie was the first local person to contact me via Foxcroft. Here is her blog: "Flossie At Home" She and her husband also live in a wonderful older home, not far from the Mellecker place. A self described "graduate student, editor, and homebody" Her blog is a great reason why Iowa City was declared a City of Literature by UNESCO.

So here's a little waves a greeting to some special neighbors.

Weather Geek

2009-01-01T08:27:00.002-06:00

As an avid weather geek I was not surprised to read that the state climatologist reported 2008 was the fourth wettest year on record in Iowa.

I read the almanac section of the daily paper religiously. That section gives highs and lows for the previous day, notes record highs and lows for the current date, and gives total precipitation for the current month and current year compared to averages totals. There is also a listing of the inflow of the Iowa River to Coralville Resevoir, outflow from the dam spillway and river gauges at the stages of Iowa City, Lone Tree, Marengo, and Wapello. I love all that stuff.

For the Iowa City region we were just short of 20 inches over normal precipitation in 2008. Average mean is 37.90" we totaled 56.49".

With the recent warm weather melting all the snow river flow has been way up too. Inflow is 4,050 cubic feet per second, outflow is 4,375 cfs. Normally this time of year that runs somewhere around 1200 cfs. During the flood last summer flow in Iowa City reached 42,000 cfs. At that point we had a record flood gage height in Iowa City of 31.5 feet (flood stage is 22 ft)

Here's to a normal 2009

Christmas 2008

2008-12-26T07:43:00.002-06:00

It's time to catch up on our Christmas activities this year. I hadn't posted the tree yet, so here it is:

Christmas day broke our 5 day string of snow shoeing in the ravine behind our house. Here are some pics of Rowan and I from Christmas Eve:

In our backyard before we set out. The ravine is about 12 acres of woods between us and the University golf course. Four separate gulllies all come together back there. Winter is about the only time you can really get in, its too wet otherwise. We have seen deer and turkey there this winter.

At the bottom

Walking in the creek bed.

Christmas morning was just us. Laurel got a wren house. Here we are putting it together.

Lisa has quite a collection of pottery, and especially loves pitchers. Here is a small one I gave her this year.

Lisa's family from Rock Island, Illinois, came for dinner. Since my family had come already last Sunday and we had turkey then, we decided to do a roast. We had never cooked a roast, so thankfully my 1950 Betty Crocker cookbook explains everything. We got an 8 pound top round roast. There were 11 of us for dinner, slightly smaller than the 15 we had with my family, but both below our crowd of 22 we had at Thanksgiving 2005.

The butternut squash in the picture above (bright orange squares) was from our garden as were the potatoes. While we were getting dinner ready I read to Lisa "A Christmas Dinner Without a Maid" a reprint from The Ladies Home Journal, 1905, which I had found at the Arts and Crafts Society website. We were both laughing over things we remember our grandparents doing for holiday dinners that seemed to come right from this article! Lisa said her grandmother always wrapping up the celery to make it keep longer, I told her my grandmother always served nuts and mints with coffee after dessert.

It was a wonderful holiday of good memories.

SL eet + ICE =

2008-12-19T15:20:00.003-06:00

a SLICE of winter!

We went to bed listening to the sleet that had been hitting the house since 7 PM last night. I got up at 4:45 with it still falling. Not surprisingly school was cancelled, so our winter break begins a day early.

We had nearly an inch of ice on the ground this morning. We all worked at shovelling for nearly two hours and got all the sidewalks and steps cleared. I took the car in for an oil change and walked home.

This afternoon I took the cup of walnuts I have from our trees (I picked up a small percentage of our walnuts this fall, husked and dried them and then hung them in burlap bags in the basement.) So far I've cracked and gotten a grand total of three cups of nuts. I used two cups in Apple walnut cake and banana bread. The last cup went into Black Walnut divinity. Here is the recipe:

Ingredients:
2 cups sugar
1/2 cup white syrup
1/2 cup hot water
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 egg whites
1 teaspoon real vanilla extract
1 cup chopped black walnuts

Directions:
Cook and stir sugar, syrup, water and salt in sauce pan until boiling. Cook without stirring until hard ball stage on candy thermometer. Remove from heat.

Beat egg whites with mixer until stiff. Slowly pour hot mixture over egg whites while beating continuously.

Continue beating, scraping sides often until mixture begins to lose gloss. Add vanilla and beat until candy can be dropped by heaping teaspoonfuls on aluminum foil. Add chopped nuts.

I've never made divinity before, I'll get pics when it's done.

Helen's Diary Dec. 4, 1933

2008-12-04T11:33:00.004-06:00

Dec 4, 1933
Monday

Worked only 6 1/2 hrs. Just like Spring, skated with Hilly + Jimmy after work. Lots of baby snails. Listened to Alexander Wolcott on Helen Hayes' new play "Mary Stuart."

(Helen Hayes as Mary Stuart)

My comments:

I believe Helen was doing work study in the French department.
Even though I use this picture to show Kinnick football stadium, actally the two figures are Helen and Hilly roller skating here:
Baby snails would have been part of the aquarium set up that Bess and Helen ordered. Their plan was to raise fish etc. in the aquarium over the winter and transfer them to their new pond in the spring.
"The Man Who Came to Dinner" was based on Alexander Woolcott. I greatly enjoyed playing Dr. Bradley in that show in high school.
The name of play was "Mary of Scotland" Helen Hayes played Mary Stuart. The show ran at the Alvin Theater, on Broadway from Nov 27, 1933 - Jul 1934. The playwright was Maxwell Anderson.

Hello Noel, Good to See You Again!

2008-12-03T05:21:00.003-06:00

Our old buddy Noel showed up last night, like he does every year about this time. Noel's been around long before we came to Foxcroft, easily 20 years. Here he is:

Noel came in a box of other goodies I bought at an auction. I referred to some of them (the plastic stars) last Christmas in a post here:
Ghosts of Christmas Past Part 2

Noel is made of felt with sequins. I think he was a home project, my guess is maybe from the 1940's? To me has has that era's look. We are lucky to have a front door so similar to the one at our old place, so he fits as well here as he did there:

Merry Christmas

Goodbye Pepto Bismal Hall

2008-12-01T09:21:00.004-06:00

We inched yet another step closer to "completion" over Thanksgiving weekend. I painted the hallway that leads from the dining room to the back two rooms, stairway, and bathroom. The shade of pink this very dark and dingy hallway sported prior to painting is the title for today's entry. I also painted the walls leading up the stairs to second floor. I used "Inviting Ivory," the same color as the second floor hallway, for both places, and since they are all adjacent, it ties together nicely.

Here is an original picture of the archway leading to the hall from the dining room:

Here is roughly the same shot today:

Looking down the hall from the dining room:

The hall is a dogleg, here is a view from the back family room, which was originally Bess' bedroom:

And looking up the stairway. I still need to cut the base shoe that will cap the stairs to length and install the new railing:

This now brings to two the number of spaces that we still need to restore. The next to be completed will be the "office" which was the daughter's bedroom when the house was built, it was our bedroom when we first moved in, and is now "the dog's room."
Here is an original picture:

And the same corner today:

The last will be the kitchen.

City of Literature!

2008-11-23T21:32:00.003-06:00

It was announced this week that Iowa City has been named by the United Nations' Education Science and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) a "City of Literature." They are the third city so designated, joining Edinburgh, Scotland, and Melbourne, Australia, in receiving this title. Certainly Foxcroft seems to have had a small part to play in Iowa City's literary story, and if you believe the legends, it had a major role!

The FACTS:

The major impetus behind Iowa City being such a writer's haven is the University of Iowa's Writer's Workshop. The initial director of the workshop was Wilbur Schramm, who built his home across the street from Foxcroft in 1934, which was 5 years before the the official beginning of the workshop. He was an English professor, with an emphasis in writing. (Read the link on his name above to see what else he is famous for)

Schramm's wife, Betty, had been a sorority sister of Helen's. Helen's mother, Bess, had a degree in English from Upper Iowa University in the early 1900's and did graduate work in English at the University of Iowa while her husband Walter completed medical school and taught anatomy at UI roughly from 1905-1909. She was a highly educated woman, especially for the times, and a voracious reader. Given their mutual interests and the fact that they were living on the edge of town with few other neighbors it is no surprise that the Schramm's and Fox's all became close friends. This is evidenced by journal entries and letters I have read. It is not too much to surmise that most of Schramm's visitors and houseguests (Carl Sandburg, Wallace Stegner, William Carlos Williams, etc)also visited Foxcroft.

I found a great deal of Schramm memorabelia in the house while emptying it. Items included a copy of his biography of Francis Parkman with the inscription "For Mother Fox with the sincere hope that she reads no further in this volume." I found a brochure that describes the "Arts at Iowa" including the first use of the phrase "Writer's Workshop" from the summer of 1939, and numerous poems that were sent as Christmas Cards, the latest being from 1979.

The best find, however was from a photo scrapbook. It is a portrait of Wilbur and Betty Schramm. The picture below was taken in 1938, eight years after "American Gothic" became an immediate sensation by placing third in an art contest sponsored by the Chicago Art Institute:

This picture was taken, presumably by either Helen or Bess, on the front yard of Foxcroft. Schramm was Grant Wood's best friend while Wood was on the faculty of UI!

The LEGEND:

I have heard from several sources that the idea of a writer's workshop was born in the library at Foxcroft over conversations between Schramm and Bess about how to create a place that would encourage the creation of great literature. I have absolutely no proof that corroborates this in the slightest. But there are still quite a few boxes of things to look through!

We Interrupt this Political Blog...

2008-11-07T10:33:00.005-06:00

...to bring you a post about home restoration.

BACK PORCH
I was able to come to some completion on the back porch. Steps are installed, but I still need to finish the railings. Here is a close up of the steps:

And a long shot of the porch:

GARDEN
I cleaned up the garden last weekend. I dug up my potatoes (two meals total, tops), harvested acorn and butternut squash, and picked green tomatoes. Here's some of the last haul:

Fish Pond
I don't have a photo right now but we took the plants out and put them in a livestock tank in the basement along with our one surviving fish. I used the wet vacuum to take out the last 150 gallons of water. I excavated the hole that was punched into the bottom and after two days of drying, filled it with lime base and cemented it up. That was Wednesday morning. Of course it rained in yesterday. I vacuumed out water again and now have three 4x8 sheets of plywood covering it up.

LAST POLITICAL COMMENT (for a while)
Wednesday also marked the two year anniversary of my neighbors Mike, Pete and I going to downtown Iowa City the Sunday night before the 2006 mid term elections and listen to an electrifying (but widely unknown) young senator from Illinois stump for the democratic candidate for Iowa governor, Chet Culver. Of course the speaker was Barack Obama, and we were astonished at the idea of 2,000 people showing up for someone who wasn't Hillary Clinton.

Vote GARNER: For Verne...

2008-11-03T14:53:00.004-06:00

..For YOU

If anyone needs a good laugh before we start watching election returns, I suggest you go here:

http://www.votegarner.com/HOME.html

3 term Verne Mayor, Garner St. John is in the re-election battle of his life!

Be sure to watch each week's campaign video starting with week one. Then check out Garner's recipes and his work prior to politics when he was the host of "Travellin' Man." Read his blog too:

Garner's Musings

Some would claim that in an alternative universe, Garner St. John is an old high school friend of mine, and that Verne is merely his Los Angeles based comedy troupe's latest endeavor. Some would claim that that he was mentioned this Foxcroft blog post: Holiday Plumbing. Some would go so far as to say that I appear briefly in the crowd scene in the "Opponent Chooses Running Mate" episode on votegarner.com. But I wouldn't know about that. All I know is that the town's bar is called "Haverkamp's..."

All I can say is that this is the proud bumper sticker on my car:

And Now A Word From Ralph Stanley!

2008-10-24T09:04:00.003-05:00

As a banjo player I can't express how absolutely delighted I was by this:

I think it's great that "Rank Strangers," a song about coming home to find everything changed, is playing in the background. I think that pretty well sums up the realization of what the Republican Party has become for working class Americans. The "devoted husband" plug was a nice touch too.

Dr. Ralph Stanley is one of the great bluegrass legends. With a 60+ year performing career he is an American icon. Most of you not familiar with his story should recognize him as the person who sang "O Death" in the movie "Oh Brother Where Art Thou."

The very first and last promo shots has him holding a Gibson archtop banjo very similar to one I have.

Step By Step

2008-10-20T07:00:00.004-05:00

I'm continuing to work on the back steps. Pete dropped off the yellow pine that he joined together to make the side "boxes" that will cover and hide the end stringers. I spent yesterday cutting and shaping the boxes.

With some luck I can get them painted this week and maybe installed next weekend. Then I would be ready to install the steps.

So Much Work...

2008-10-15T10:00:00.003-05:00

...So little to show for it!

After working on steps all last weekend I was able to install TEMPORARY STEPS on Sunday night. While appreciative of the fact that, for the first time since June, they could walk up something resembling acutal stairs, the rest of the family was a little underwhelmed by what I had to show for all my work:

In my defense, since we made the concrete pad high enough to ensure drainage AWAY from the bottom of the stairs (a huge problem before I started this project, water used to pool at the bottom of the stairs , often to a depth of two inches) The distance from the top of the porch deck to the pad was a shade over 19.25 inches. Standard stairs have a 7 inch rise making the perfect height for two steps onto the porch 21 inches. I bought precut stringers and then proceeded to shave off the top and bottom of them to get an approximate 6.25 rise. Since the stringers are pitched slightly forward to ensure water drains off the steps I couldn't just set the fence on the table saw a rip away.

Another issue was how to attach the stringers to the porch. I know that over time the concrete pad will shift and heave. the porch sits on footings so it shouldn't move. I ended up running 2x6 boards from the stringers back under the porch and then drilling through the porch joists and attaching a carriage bolt assembly to tie them together. I only made the bolt finger tight so that over time if there is movement the steps *should* be able to float a bit??? We'll see how that works.

Anyway I got the two middle stringers set up and was able to use salvaged steps from the old basement stairs to serve temporarily. I did get the two outside stingers cut to correct rise and bought a bunch of really nice yellow pine to cover the rise, and to box in the sides of the outside stringers. When I have everything installed the stairs will be 6 feet wide. That means they will extend from one tall pillar to the other.

75 Years Ago at Foxcroft

2008-10-10T06:49:00.002-05:00

Helen's Diary

Oct 11, 1933
Wed.

Up late M and I put down wood. She put on N + W storm windows. I excavated pool about 6-9 inches + scraped sides, concrete fine.

Comments:

The photo above is labeled "Oct. 1993" but it must have been near the end of the month since Helen is more than "6-9 inches" down. She and Bess dug a trench for the sides of the pool and used the ground as a form when they poured cement for the side walls. After it dried Helen then excavated the middle.

Whenever Helen writes "M" she is referring to her mother, Bess, who was the original builder of Foxcroft.

I can only guess what "put down wood" means: The blueprint for the basement shows a "kindling room" maybe they were putting wood down there to burn in the fireplace that winter? Maybe they laid planks on the gravel driveway for traction in the mud?

I had wooden storms made for the west side of the house, but since it has been so nice I still have the screens on.

Concrete Shoes?

2008-10-08T10:21:00.004-05:00

When I got home from work yesterday I discovered Pete had already been by and taken off the 2x6 forms from the concrete pad we poured at the bottom of the back porch on Saturday. Despite the steady drizzle I put paver bricks around the perimeter of the pad and backfilled the places that needed it. I took the broken sidewalk and temporarily filled in the the square of sidewalk in each direction leading from the pad to the garage and the south side of the house.

When digging out the garage side I found that there are more stepping stones under the cement sidewalk, like the ones we found three years ago running out into the back yard. Since the original photos of the house show only a gravel path from the porch to the garage, the stepping stones must have been added when the others were done in the 1950's. Here was our photo of the other stepping stones taken in 2005:

So now I know when I replace the rest of the sidewalk I can recover more stepping stones.

Helen's Diary: Oct. 7, 1933

2008-10-06T13:21:00.003-05:00

Sat.

Worked 8-12 reading scores. M + I to Iowa (38) Bradley (0) game. Got much colder during the day. M canned 35 qts of wild grape juice from Grace Strubley.

Giants won World Series 4 games to 1 over Senators. Score 4-3 in 11 innings

Comments:

Helen had a work study job and UI in foreign language department.
Tickets to the Iowa-Bradley football game would have cost $1.00 each according to some quick research showing that UI cut prices in 1933 from $1.50 to $1.00 due to the depression. For the Florida International game this season I bought tickets at face value of $50.00 each.
I can't imagine how many grapes it would take to squeeze 35 quarts of juice
The New York Giants beat the Washington Senators at Griffith Stadium in Washington D.C. to clinch the series. According to Wikipedia:
Washington, D.C. has not hosted another World Series since 1933. Game 5 was the final Series game played in the nation's capital as of 2008. This Washington Senators franchise became the Minnesota Twins during the 1960-1961 offseason, and would not reach the World Series again until 1965. The second Senators team became the Texas Rangers. The transfer of the Montreal Expos to become the Washington Nationals opens the door to D.C. again potentially.

Iowa football player and Big Ten 1933 MVP Joe Laws. This photo was taken after the mayor of Iowa City offered Laws any honarary positon in the city after winning the MVP award. He chose to be the fire chief (photo from Des Moines Register)

Washington Senator's Player/Manager Joe Cronin (photo from Wikipedia)

Progress: Porch, Puddles, Pond

2008-10-01T06:00:00.004-05:00

I was gently reminded by my most faithful reader last week that it really had been a long time between posts. In spite of little reporting progress continues.

Since we expanded the back porch this summer I needed to make two small columns to place at the corners to attach the railings to. Using the same construction method as the original columns that support the porch roof, I created two boxes 30 inches tall. These will go over the 4x4 posts I attached at the corners of the frame. The railings that ran between the house and the tall columns will fit in there. I have also started to strip the paint off those railings and will get them ready to paint.

Last Sunday I broke up the concrete pad that was at the foot of the porch in order to pour new and be able to build steps back up to the porch. A major reason for all this porch work was that the pad had dipped in the middle and rain water collected into a giant puddle at the foot of the porch steps. With proper slope we should be able to get rid of that problem. Pete stopped by last night and our plan is to dig out and pour a new pad this weekend.

I was looking through Rowan's pictures from her digital camera and selected these to show the pond. These were taken when we had emptied the girls' swimming pool into it. The hole in the bottom still needs to be patched so water has slowly leaked out. I'll get that done this fall too.

Happy 80th Birthday, Foxcroft!

2008-09-02T08:08:00.002-05:00

Bess and Helen moved in to Foxcroft on Sept. 1-2, 1928. As we were sitting on the porch last night we wondered what the original elevation of the land was back then. Either a lot of dirt was brought in to raise the house since there are seven steps up to yard from the street, or else the street was dug out. Old photos lead us to believe the area near the houses were raised.

Here's to hoping that the next 80 are just as good.