And so we begin in Earnest

On Friday we retained the service of an architect a guy named Terry Smith out of Federal Way. Terry has a real affinity for arts and crafts houses and he is going to get us all the way to the permit phase. Hopefully in 4 to 5 weeks. I think he is going to come up with some really good ideas to help us turn our home into something that fits our eclectic life style

It was an interesting weekend. Vivian and I took out the speakeasy. Special thanks go out to Stan Dyck for dropping by Saturday and helping move a ton of trash. We have moved to the dump in 5 separate trips a little over 5000 lbs of garbage and debris mostly from the removal of the speakeasy.

Sunday after finishing our dump runs we added some temporary posts in the basement to hold up some of the beams. I am impressed with how well this house was constructed. The lines are tight and after all these years there is very little sag in the floors. The foundation looks especially solid.

We have learned that when you do a renovation job of an almost 100 year old house, the walls and the ceilings often hold surprises. This house if proving quite interesting as you can see from the pictures. Both items were found stashed in the ceiling of the speakeasy near the chimney. Near the chimney is where the mice nest and we took out a number of old nests with quite a bit of mice poop.

I wonder what Wesley’s story is. Wesley was the name printed on the box that contained to gold dental bridge made up of 6 teeth. The teeth are pretty heavy so we expect to get a good price when we sell the scrap.

We met our neighbor Pete who lived up the alley a few house. Pete has lived in his house 17 years and he said that the family who owned our place had been in the house for years and years. I hope to hear some more stories about the family from the neighbors as we get to know everyone.