Heirloom Peas

My peas are now at the top of the fence and flowering. This is my first crop here at Foxcroft and is a big deal to me. The peas I grow were my introduction gardening nearly 20 years ago. My great-aunt Marion gave me a small jar of peas after I had bought my first home. (Foxcroft is the second) These peas had been handed down in our family from her grandmother who had brought them to America from Luxembourg in the 1870's. In true Iowa laconic fashion there was a small slip of paper in the jar which read:

EAT PODS
TALL

I do, and they are. The top of my fence is just over 7 feet tall. I planted them the first week of April. Here they are:


I had these peas for four years before I finally planted them, I planted the whole jar thinking I'd be lucky if any came up. Every one did, I have since come to the conclusion that you could throw these things in gravel and walk away and they would grow. The first year I saved everything I grew, and now have a full peanut butter jar of peas for seed in my refrigerator. I have given some to my brother in North Carolina, and also to other friends. I traded a botanist here in town last year, peas for heirloom tomatoes, but wasn't able to get enough to save those seeds.

These peas are the one food everyone here agrees is good. We rarely get them into the house, we usually just pick and eat outdoors. I think that is why these have been bred to be tall!

I think these peas are just beautiful. Here is a close up of the flowers:


How about the Future Farmer's of America sign in the background? That came from the house in Belle Plaine that Friends of Historic Preservation salvaged in March.

The rest of the garden is OK. We don't have full sun anywhere and with four very large walnut trees, that limits our options even more. Here is our spinach (which is already beginning to bolt) some lettuce and carrots.


We have been eating quite a bit of lettuce already. I put in two tomato plants last week that I got from one of the Amish farmers at the Iowa City farmer's market:


In our other garden area we have: beans, squash, cucumbers, a bunch of cherry tomatoes, cantelope and watermelon. Lisa also discovered a few potato plants from ones I must have missed digging last year, which is good because I didn't get any in this year.

I also picked up creeping thyme and wooly thyme today and we planted that along the backyard path:




We hope it fills in quickly.

Following the Beaten Path

Sunday was too nice a day to work inside on stripping varnish so I started to move my salvaged limestone around. I had brought a fair amount of 3 inch limestone edging from our old house to Foxcroft last year. I moved this to the back yard to begin to edge along some beds and create a boundary for a path. We are adding to the stepping stones we uncovered last year. Lisa thought the llimestone would look good on the front edge of the beds along the back of the yard, and I said let's use our smaller rocks collected from her Dad's hunting farm in Missouri (mostly geodes and chert) to outline the "island" of flowers between two paths. Here is a picture of how it looked after working Sunday, taken from the upstairs gable window:



We will plant something (creeping thyme?) between the new flagstone paths eventually.

Tomorrow I start hard and heavy with summer work. First up will be:

• finish stripping and re-varnishing door trim
• Stain cedar shakes
• Paint storm windows
• Install one storm in each bedroom so I can pull a double hung set
• Clean, reglaze and stain/varnish double hungs

The week of June 19 will be F&L builder reunion week as Pete, Taryl and John come over to trim out the new gable and install the cedar shake siding, Yee Ha!

Would You Be My Neighbor?

It seems as though our moving in has prompted a mass exodus from the neighborhood, but I'm sure the two events are not related. The house right behind us, when we moved in was occupied by a nice older couple who had built their home in 1950. It's a cozy little place, they raised their two boys there. The husband passed away last summer, and the wife then passed in September. For the past year, a granddaughter, who is a student at the university has lived there. Neither son is local. They have been spending lots of time cleaning out this year, and the house hit the market last weekend.

As I said the house is cozy, 2 bedrooms on first floor and a finished office area in the half story upstairs. I'm a shade under 5'8" and love knee walls, but it feels small even to me. There is a a finished family room with a fireplace in the basement. There is a huge garage and workshop out the back, which once we cut down our 35 years of scrub overgrowth is the most prominent item in our backyard view. There is a carport with upstairs deck on it, and two storage sheds.

There is a large side yard, which once was part of our property, sold after Bess died in the early 70's. It was where she had her garden (according to her journals, and photos, she planted 40 tomatoes each year, as well as a full compliment of everything else. This space is occupied by a very large very immoble camper. It will be interesting to see what it will look like with that moved out. Here is a pic from the county assessor's site:


Here's the layout also from the assessor:


The real estate listing says that is has 1200 sq ft above grade plus 500 in the basement. The assessor says 996 above grade plus basement. I think the assessor is more accurate. The asking price is $250K, which seemed steep to me until I looked up the assessed value and found it was $222K. It will be interesting to see what happens.

Also our neighbors across the street are moving into a luxury retirement center that will be opening this fall. They asked if we knew of anyone who might be interested in their home, we sent friends their way, who loved the place, but the couple wasn't sure what to ask yet. After consulting with a realtor they decided on $395K which was too high for our friends. I hadn't realized how big their place is, its a mid century modern, also built in 1950. I've been in the living room and it is lovely. Turns out that place is 2200+ square feet above grade with another 1200 below! It has 5 bedrooms. This couple bought it 4 years ago, their son and his family had lived in the basement but have since moved. Sadly, health issues are forcing this decision. I was shocked at the price until I looked to see that it is assessed at $405K! Assessments really jumped here two years ago, that place went up $80K that year.


So, if you want to move to great neighborhood that will someday have a view of a nice looking bungalow check us out. Just don't expect us to get the bungalow finished too soon. Here is our neighborhood map. We are the hot pink, small house is orange, big MCM is gold:

Mr. Adaptive Re-Use

I am currently serving as president of our local historic preservation group. In the aftermath of the April 13 tornado we have been quite busy assisting those whose homes were damaged to get quality assistance, apply for grant money, navigate permit process in historic neighborhoods, etc.

One of our saddest jobs was to salvage the Italianate house we were working to have moved to save it from demolition. The tornado tore off it's roof and a good deal of the second floor. It is no longer fit to move, so it will be leveled.

Here is what the house looked like before the tornado, courtesy of the Iowa City Assessor's Website:


We removed original doors, windows, trim, railings, a mantle, and many other items. On our last day, a week ago Sunday we were finishing when the salvage manager said it was a shame to leave all the cut limestone that made up the porch. It had original soft mortar that has been returning to it's original ingredients: sand, water, and lime. The top cap was 24 inches wide and four inches thick. The was a single 10 foot straight piece, three six foot curved pieces, and another 12 foot straight piece. We pried the top cap off the straight section with a long bare and then literally lifted out the cut stones of the wall. Between 5:00 PM and 10:15 PM I took 6 station wagon loads and 6 pick up loads off the site. I have enough to line both sides of my entire driveway and around the flower beds that flank our turn around. The stone will keep the gravel from migrating into the flower beds and the wood chips from the driveway.




I also have enough to run completely across the front hill to keep wood chips out of the lower yard




But I think my best idea came when I broke some of the curved top caps into smaller pieces to use as steps up the side of the hill from the driveway to the front walk area:


No go back to the picture pre-tornado you can see the limestone was painted red on the left side of the picture, too bad the bushes cover most of the porch.

I have to go back and set all these properly. All we did on Sunday was drop as fast as possible to go and get more. I paid Friends of Historic Preservation $50 ton (the going price to pick off the Stone City Rip Rap pile) and got a bargain.

After coming back the next day to remove the front door and nail a board to seal off the house, our salvage manager asked if I had taken the entire porch after he left. I said "Yes," and his single word response was "Impressive."

Just In Time To Shut Them!

I realized that if I want to start stripping floors upstairs I need to be able to have the windows open without allowing bugs/birds/bats all get in too. I've had the new upstairs screens and storms sitting since October, but I needed to paint them. I started on that on Thursday night, so that on Saturday I installed the two in the front gable. Here they are:


They are nice, I was able to get Pete to help me put up the screens in Rowan's room on Monday. I needed help to hold the ladder. In the front I could just stand on the roof.


Laurel's screens are dry and can go up as soon as I move scaffolding and the ladder around the house. The screens for the new gable in back are ready too, but can't go on until we build the trim around the window so that they can be hung.

As soon as I get a start on the floor I'll also need to be painting storms too. The double hung windows are in serious need of work before next winter. With one storm up in the summer I can take out the upper and lower windows and reglaze, stain and varnish them before cold weather.

Also, since I now have screens the temp has hit 90+ degrees so I closed all the windows and turned on the air!

Something Underfoot

The plumber came on Friday and stubbed in the supplies and drain for the new sink. He also moved the toilet supply so that the toilet will be able to sit closer to the wall.


On Saturday I ripped out the rotten subfloor and was thankful the joists look fine. Just to be safe I saturated them and all the subfloor around the opening with Minwax wood hardener.

So on Sunday while Lisa and the girls were gone I put in the new subfloor down. I had some scrap 1 x 8 left so I soaked it with wood hardener too and cut it to fit in place. Since I butted them tight and the difference in true dimensional and modern lumber there was a gap of an inch and a half at the back of the opening, so of course what did I fill that space with? Leftover Oak Flooring!


The plumber will come back today to cut an opening for the toilet in the floor. My next steps will be to put down cement board and get ready to tile the floor.

Mushrooms Galore

Today is a continuation of Tuesday's of "The Mushroom Factor." Quick recap: toilet leak leads to pulling all the vinyl and plywood subfloor to reveal the original pine floor. That went out too. The plan is to put in a tile floor. But since all of this is going on, why not do what else we want in the bathroom too, and just move it ahead of finishing the upstairs?

The bathroom is the only poorly designed space in the entire house. I don't know what Bess was thinking. For as much as she obsessed over every detail, (and we know she did from her letters and journals) she really made major mistakes in the bathroom. Here is the original blueprint:



The only change is that the tub is now a walk in shower, but otherwise the corner sink was in place as was the stool. Here's what I think was bad design: why would you have a corner sink when you had plenty of room underneath your medicine cabinet? To make matters worse there were two sconces on either side of the SINK. I have had a horrible time shaving there. When he was here last summer I had the electrician move one sconce so they are now on either side of the medicine cabinet.



So if the plumber was coming anyway to cut the soil pipe so we could redo the floor, why not have him put new supplies in for a pedestal sink (we have a salvaged one waiting in the basement) at the same time? Plumber says "good idea." While the plumber and I were measuring he mentioned we'd need to move the toilet supply a bit so the the new toilet with a smaller tank would sit closer to the wall. I broke out the plaster (fake tile) wall to expose the current plumbing and to make room for new:



So in a typical mushroom factor scenario, what started out as pulling a toilet to put down a new beeswax ring resulted in demolishing half a bathroom wall, capping supply lines and pulling out the sink.

The Mushroom Factor

The mushroom factor is a well documented old house phenomena in which the home owner starts on project A only to discover that in order to complete it project B must first be addressed, which leads to project C, etc. on to N (which is a VERY big number)

We at Foxcroft had been extremely lucky in avoiding the mushroom factor for over a year, since our fabled 5 Deadmen in the Basement episode. I was quite worried when Lisa said three weeks ago, “The toilet in the first floor bathroom seems to be leaking!” I decided to pull the toilet and prayed that all we needed to do was put down a new beeswax seal and call it good. Pete came over and we pulled the toilet to find that there were already 2 seals there, and that the vinyl under the toilet was extremely wet. We pulled back the floor a bit to discover equally saturated quarter inch plywood under the vinyl.




We then worked at getting all the vinyl off to see what was going on down there.


I knew from the orginal house contract that Bess wanted some sort of poured “Imperial” flooring that no one was able to get for her so the original floor was 2 and a quarter inch yellow pine, painted black. I wondered if it was still there.



Yep, black painted floor except where a chunk had already been sawed out around the stool, so obviously water had been a problem for a while. I checked the joists from below and was grateful to see that the joists were not affected but some of the subfloor had.


I pulled out the flooring, and took off the flooring paper to expose the subfloor


So the subfloor is open now and you can see how wet the subfloor was. Our plan will be to saw out the subfloor where it is bad around the stool and replace it. I have contacted the plumber to cut the pipe so we can floor over it. Then we will put down durarock and tile over the floor.


More mushroom factor information to come, we have a lot more steps to go through in the bathroom.

Tornado Tales

Let me start off by saying that we're all OK as is the rest of my family in Iowa City, and that our neighborhood had no damage. Other places were not so lucky. As a Friends of Historic Preservation Board Member I set off this morning to document damage. We had three local historic districts suffer significant damage: College Hill, College Street, and Woodlawn. Additionally St. Patrick's church built in 1872 lost its roof, steeple and rosette window from its front facade.

Adding insult to injury, Friends has been working to save an 1880's italianate home from demolition by helping the owner and prospective buyer get together, and worked to help ensure city permits would be attained in a timely matter. There was a public hearing scheduled on this last night and right about the time the meeting ended the tornado took off the porch, roof and a good chunk of the second floor. Now we will work to unhappily salvage from there for other's future use.

Here are photos I took this morning: Other than St. Pat's and the Italianate all the pictures are from a one block area on Iowa Ave.

St. Pat's


Italianate on Clinton St.


Iowa Avenue

"...And all the Trimmmings!" (Well Almost)

Pete and I have trimmed all the upstairs windows, except for the backband which I need to strip stain and varnish to complete. Here’s what we did:

We started by measuring the stools (the piece that lays horizontally at the bottom of the window and provides the “lip” that the window closes down behind) for the cut outs needed to fit into each window:







After these were fit I stained and varnished them along with all the 1 x4 stock that we would use as trim. When this was all ready we first placed the stool and nailed it in, and then fit the apron below it



Then we fit the trim on the sides and nailed in place, and then we placed the top piece. The final piece was the trim to go between the two windows





After finishing the window in the sitting room we did each of the bedroom windows:





When it warms up I'll get the storms and screens done and put one storm on a window and pull out the double hungs to clean and stain/varnish them. That should take all summer!

Lumber Brand Loyalty

One of things I’m most proud of in our work on second floor is that I’m using salvaged materials wherever possible. When I haven’t been able to get salvaged material for trim I’ve gone to Hawkeye Lumber here in Iowa City which has great wood. The spindles for our stairs are from there. Unfortunately they will be going out of business next month after 90+ years in the same location. When we had to pull some of our subfloor last summer to run plumbing etc. Many of the board were signed by Hawkeye. Therefore I was quite happy happy when stripping boards for our window trim to find another signed by Hawkeye among my salvaged wood:



This piece ended up as the apron for window in the sitting room. An apron is the piece of trim that goes at the bottom of the window. Here is that same board from above




Other pieces of my salvaged trim came from a school in Tipton, Iowa, which is about 30 miles east of Iowa City. Some of those boards are signed too:



This one is harder to read but it says “Fanning Const. Co. Tipton Ia”

I will have to get some 1x6 this week from Hawkeye to finish my baseboard, I plan to have the guys at Hawkeye sign it on the back.

We Could Build It From Flooring!

I am still working even though there has been a lag between posts. Since the floors are all laid a major issue has been what to do with the left over flooring. I put most of it down into the basement for future uses, but we have been using it for a few other projects as well. The first was to make better doors that go from the walk in closets to the “Deep Storage” areas under the eaves. The sliding doors we built weren’t all that great, so I had Pete cover the plywood doors with flooring and we hung them. Pete commented that given the weight of the doors if we put an inside bolt on them the space could serve as our “panic room.” Given that anyone could punch right through the dry wall, I think not.




I did strip and finish the floor in the master bedroom closet, I wasn’t quite as particular as I’ll be when doing the bedrooms, hallways and sun room. But I still think it looks quite good.


We’ve also been scratching our heads about what to do in trimming out the old windows and doorways. The windows were built for a plaster and lathe thickness wall (standard 1920’s) and I hadn’t thought of that when drywalling last summer. The result is that the trim protrudes half an inch beyond the finished wall when it should be flush. Or solution will be to put a block of flooring behind the edge of the 1 x 4 trim board and a length along the backband to give us something to nail to and to cover the gap that would be there otherwise. The same will be true for our doors, they were salvaged from a plaster wall house and are thicker than my sheetrock walls. I didn’t want to cut the jambs down (we did on the bathroom however) so I will also have to use flooring to build around the doorways.

We put the storm on the bathroom window and will need to make a casement style window for the inside, our first idea from what to make it from? Of course! Flooring.