Week 3 of the Restoration
Jul
19
Written by:
7/19/2007 11:00 PM
Wallpaper is removed (2 layers on top of 3 layers of paint) – we find the word “HELP” scrawled in what appears to be the glue backing of the older wallpaper. This freaks out the workers a little – but I just see it as the house’s cry for help to come back to life – and we’ve come to the rescue! To counter the plea for help – we also find the word “LOVE” on another wall. The home has some mysteries to solve.
Along with the words found on the walls – we find a 1920s newspaper, marbles, old metal file, bottles, animal jaw bone (we made sure it was not human) and other small trinkets. The workers know we want to keep anything we find for the new owners – so it has been like a mini treasure hunt for all the folks involved in the restoration.
The demolition started on specific areas of the house –we removed all the old appliances from the rental apartments and removed low ceilings/acoustic ceiling tile on the second floor of the carriage house (above the kitchen) and in the third floor bedrooms. We had close to 6 feet additional head space to now work with! I brought in my son Joseph and a couple of his friends to do some of the clean up. We are now on our 3rd Allied Waste dumpster.
We wanted to use the best paint available on the market and decided to go with C2 Paint from Babel’s Paint & Decorating. The colors are long lasting (up to 10+ years of durability) and have some of the most complex color pigmentation processes to create eye-popping and historically rich colors. As part of Will Hayward’s color recommendations, we end up going with C2 colors: Main body: Buffed C2-2358; Trim: Malachite C2-4423; Accents: Tamarind C2-005; Gold Digger C2-374; Misty Morn C2-4395; Porch Ceilings: Whitewater C2-269; and solid Black for storm window trim and Gold for small trim/button accents around the house.
Some weeks before we started work on the Mount Hope Street home, a story was written in the Sharon Advocate by Brian Cooke, a neighbor of ours on Pleasant Street, about what we did to our home in Sharon. As a result, The Sun Chronicle that serves N Attleboro and 8 other surrounding towns picked up the story and made it their own that appeared on the front page of the Business Section on Sunday. A local, long-time N Attleboro resident, Dorothy Forbes, saw the article and knew of a relative who actually lived in the home in the distant past. She called me to let me know she had an original photo postcard of the home, probably from the late 1800s. What a find! She gave me the postcard, which I will now frame for the new future owners.
In addition to the photo postcard, I also was able to find on Ebay, an original B.S. Freeman jewelry ad that was from taken from a magazine. The ad is also now framed for the future owners.