RIP Anderson House

There's a house down the street from ours that I've had my eye on for as long as our house. It's a beautiful old 2 story with some really cool features. It was built in 1906 and as it turns out was the boyhood home of country singer Bill Anderson.


It's been empty for quite a while but it looked to me like someone was in preperations to renovate it so I didn't pursue it.

About 2 months ago I found out that a bank had bought the property and the lot behind it. The other lot is on the main street that runs through town. They intend to build their new branch on the lots. It just so happens that the bank is the same one that I have my construction loan through. I called the branch vice president and talked to him to see if it would be possible for them to give me the house and I would move it to another lot(taking out another construction loan through them of course). He wasn't part of the land deal but he said that he didn't see why it couldn't be worked out.

Well, I searched for a suitable lot and found one 2 lots down on the other side of the street. It's a 2 acre lot that appeared to have a very large old house on it at one time. It didn't pan out though, the owners were hoping to sell the lot as a commercial lot.

A house this big would be very hard to move, there are a ton of low hanging trees and power lines all over the place. the house would have to be split into 4 pieces for it to work. This would be extremely expensive. The property 2 lots down would have been perfect, level grade, no trees or power lines in the way, it could have been moved as one piece...damn.

So I had to resign myself to the fact that another beautiful old house would be destroyed. I did however hope to be able to salvage a lot of things from the house including the very cool old windows. You may remember that my windows are the crappy metal frame ones from the 50's. Here's a shot of one of the front windows, it's almost 4' wide and over 7' tall.


The bank vice president said that it shouldn't be a problem for me to take what I wanted but he had to draw up a release form first. I got a call from him a day later that there might be a problem. The contractor that will be handling the demolition has already filed with the EPA in regards to asbestos. now it looks like I wont be able to take ANYTHING. I'm so pissed right now I cant even begin to explain how mad I am.

The contractor is saying that there is asbestos in the windows. At first I thought he was crazy. How could asbestos be in a window, it's friggin wood and glass?!?! After doing a little research I found out that some old types of window caulking have asbestos in it. BUT, from what I gather it was mainly used for commercial applications. Also asbestos caulking is nonfriable so even if it did contain asbestos it's extremely unlikely that it could harm anyone. I highly doubt there is any asbestos in the windows, I think the contractor is just saying that there is asbestos in everything in the house as a blanket statement to cover his ass. It really sucks that I'm probably going to have to sit there and watch them destroy this beautiful house and I wont be able to salvage one thing because everyone is so afraid of the EPA.

Here are a few more pictures of what will soon cease to exist:

Front

Side

Rear

Bathroom with a fireplace!

Stairs

Parlor looking into Dining Room

Bedroom

RIP Anderson House 1906-2007

Fence is done... for now.

I completed the 5 fence panels today. That was just enough to tie in with the existing 6' chain-link fence. I'll finish the rest of the fence sometime in March hopefully.


I cant wait 'til spring when we can get out here and landscape the place, it looks like hell right now.

This next picture shows how little room I had when hanging the dogears. It was worth the trouble to get the fence as close to the existing one as possible.


I tied the new fence into the existing 6' fence with a few 2x4's and dogears as you can see in the pictures below. This is temporary and only to keep the "horse" from getting out.

Back to the fence...

I've had to go back to working on the fence for the past few days because our horse who just so happens to look like a dog has realized that the 4 foot chicken wire and barbwire fence at the back of the property is no obstacle for her.


I only have to build 5 sections to cover it but the new fence is less than a foot from the old one so it's real tight when putting up the dogears.

The large tree behind the fence is a pear tree, at least I think it is. It's mentioned as the property corner in the deed for the lot behind us for the last 100 years. The green leaves all over it is ivy.


I found a lot of pottery and china fragments in this corner when digging for the fence. I'm not sure if they are from the original kitchen from our house or if they are from the old kitchen from the Planters Inn. It seems a bit far back to have been our kitchen. I'm not sure where the kitchen for the old Planters Inn was but it could have been in this area, the old barn was.


I hope to finish this up today and get back to work on the upstairs hall.

Tackling the upstairs hall

My next disaster area to tackle is the upstairs hall. It's now the worst area upstairs now that the nursery is completed.

Here's a quick before shot to get everyone reaquainted:


One of the tasks I accomplished last week was to get the hall lights wired. there are two 3-way switches at the bottom of the stairs: one for the downstairs hall light(haven't wired it yet), the other for the chandelier that will hang upstairs:



Two 3-way switches at the top of the stairs: one for the previously mentioned chandelier, the other for the light at the other end of the upstairs hall(the plaster was so bad in this area that it fell apart when I tried to cut the hole).


And last the other 3-way switch next to the master bedroom door for the upstairs hall light.

Here's a closeup of the box at the top of the stairs. I always make sure to label where the wires come from so there aren't any crossed wires.


Here's the original light switch at the bottom of the stairs:


It was connected to a socket that stuck out of the wall near the top of the stairs and to another switch just like it at the top of the stairs. The knob & tube wiring connecting these had been disconnected long ago thankfully. However I do have two more of these switches in the foyer by the front door. One of them controls the porch light and still works! It has a patent date of 1906 on it.

As you may remember a while back I ripped out the horrible dropped ceiling at the end of the hall at the top of the stairs, I then framed it and started drywalling it. I redesigned it so that the ceiling sloped up to meet the original ceiling giving a lot more headroom. This is where I started back in on it. I finish installing the smaller drywall pieces and began the long task of mudding. For those of you who have not had the pleasure of mudding when sand is mixed in, let me tell you it's a pain in the ass!! The larger pieces of sand always end up catching on the trowel and gouging a huge line through an otherwise nice pass. It takes a lot of time to get it right. then of course sanding it is even worse. Just think sandpaper on sandpaper, that's essentially what it becomes when it drys. I go through a lot of sandpaper when sanding.

Anyways... To be able to finish the area above the stairs I had to build a platform to reach the ceiling.


This thing scares me to death. I'm always sure that my next move is going to send me plummeting down the stairs... fun fun.



This is as far as I've gotten. I'm hoping to finish the first skim coat tonight and start in on scraping all the loose paint off the other end of the hallway ceiling and walls.

Nursery walls are finished!

Another room down! At this rate I should be done some time in the early 22 century...

Anyways some of you may remember what the room looked like originally.



If you look closely in the first picture you may notice the original colors of the room, a light blue below the picture rail and a green above it. I'm pretty sure these are the original colors because the paint is in the skim coat of plaster and not painted on. We decided to try to match these colors. For numerous reasons we've decided to paint all the trim upstairs instead of refinishing it. One being that we dont have time to sand every bit of trim. We really need to hurry and get this done so we can get a conventional mortgage. Even so, it's very hard to paint over all that beautiful heartpine. We still plan on refinishing the downstairs trim though.

I've already posted earlier about all the work it took to scrape and sand the walls and ceilings in this room. Once all the loose paint was scraped and sanded off I patched everything with mud:


I then sanded the walls and ceiling again. Once all that was done I primered the walls, ceiling, and trim.



Next it was finally time to paint. I painted the trim first. It's much easier that way.


Then at last I painted the walls, blue first, then the green.




I cant wait until the floors are refinished! At the last minute I decided to refinish the mantle instead of painting it and I'm really glad I did.



It should look great once I finish stripping it. I still havent decided if I'm going to use poly or shellac on it though. I think poly should be fine, there's plenty of color in it already. Also, I didnt paint the doors because I'm going to refinish them too.

My next task will either be the upstairs hall or guest bedroom #2, I havent decided yet.

Researching the history of the Darnall House

Sorry for the lack of posting lately but after the last post on the timeline of the additions I decided to research the house some more. (what little work I have accomplished on the house is not really worthy of pictures, mostly rewiring the upstairs) I've found some more interesting information but still no old pictures or solid information on the beginnings of the house. I really wish I could find an old picture of the house but every old picture of the area I find has the house just out of view or just a tiny sliver of the house.

Here are a few old pictures of the area to illustrate what I mean (house is circled in red):



This is a picture of the Planters Inn. It was one of the first structures in the area having been built in the early 1800's. It was moved about 100' NE on log rollers sometime around 1885 to make way for the railroad. It used to be an inn for travelers along the indian trail, what is now Meriwether St. This picture was taken after it was moved, probably taken around 1909. Sadly it was destroyed in 1968. I'm pretty sure that's the roof of my house in the distance.


This next picture is taken from the top of the old water tower and looking down Meriwether St. It was taken sometime around 1920-25. As you can see there is my house right there behind that clump of trees.

This is the First Christian church, built in 1906. the picture was taken sometime in the 40's or 50's. There's my house on the right.

This picture and the next one aren't all that old - 1994 I think - but I wanted to show them for a few reasons. First, in the above picture you'll notice the lovely grey, bland building in front of you. It's a branch office of the Dept. of Children and Families. This building is what was built after the Planters Inn was torn down. There was another beautiful house - a Victorian - in the empty lot in front of it. Grrr.... Anyways, there's my house in the background, it still had it's chimneys then too.

This one is taken looking up New Orleans St. This is probably the best shot of my house. Too bad the pic is from 1994.

The other day I went to the courthouse to research the deeds. I found quite a bit of interesting information. One of the most interesting is that the deed for Thomas M Darnall purchasing the land from Lewis S. Salmons is dated DEC 21, 1858 (the filing date is at the end of the entry, this date is not the same as the date of the deed. The date of the actual transaction is always listed at the beginning). There are no other records of the Darnalls owning any other land besides a vacant lot behind this property. So where did they live for 12 years?? It appears that the Darnalls were fairly well off so I highly doubt they rented or squatted. He was a surgeon who was one of the co-founders of the Medical College in Griffin in 1859. That date fits with the date he bought the land. It seems that they moved to town around this time from Atlanta (the deed lists him as being from Fulton county). Here is the deed:


So was the house built in 1870 or 1858...? I still think it was 1870 for one main reason: the house was built with a lot of reclaimed lumber. Immediately after the war between the states in the south no one had any money to do anything. Even well off people didnt have any money. The Griffin history books list 1869-1870 as the first years of relative prosperity after the war. It lists numerous building and houses finally being built. Many of these house were most likely built with a lot of reclaimed lumber to save money. Still, I wonder where they lived for 12 years prior to this house...

I found a few other interesting deeds as well:



The above 2 pictures are of one of the very first deeds to the property. It's dated 1850. Griffin became a city in 1841 By General Lewis Griffin, he bought 800 acres because he found out that 2 railroads were planning on intersecting on the spot(he owned one of the railroads). He laid out a city and then auctioned off lots. I plan on going back soon to find the very first deed to the property but that may prove hard as the original tracts were much bigger than the 2 (later becoming 4) original acres.

Another very cool deed I found was for a charter to the Griffin & West Point Plank Road Company to creat a plank road from Griffin to West Point (West Point is near Lagrange, Ga in Troup county). From reading the deed it would seem that this was done without the land owners permission. The Plank road was built on the Indian Trail, it later became Meriwether St.



The deed pictured below is from 1890 4 years after the death of Thomas Darnall. Mattie Darnall was one of his daughters, this shows a triangle of land being sold off to the house next door. Notice the road in the plat, it was still called Plank Road at the time and not Meriwether St. You may also notice the writing "Kelly's Barn" at the back of the property. The Kelley's owned the Planters Inn at the time. This was the original location of their barn and of the plantation house, that would explain why I find a lot of old bricks at the back of the property.


Well that's all for now, Hopefully I'll have some new pictures of my progress soon.

House addition timeline

Since I dont have any pictures of progress to post I figured I'd post this picture that I created one day when I was bored. The different colors show the different additions to the house.


Dark Blue - Original portion of the house

Red - Kitchen - late 1800's?

Green - Bathroom addition - 1915?

Yellow - Laundry room - 20's or 30's

Light blue - laundry room extension, breakfast room - 1955


The kitchen addition may actually have been the original kitchen that was separate from the house and was just moved up to join it.

The bathroom addition is a full 2 story addition with a shed roof. The 1915 date is from the date on both the tubs that were in the house. Of course that doesn't mean that's when the addition was built, they could have bought both tubs used.

When the laundry room was built the space between it and the kitchen was probably a porch until 1955.

In 1955 the house was converted to apartments. The laundry room addition was so that the apartment on that side could have a back door. The porch in between it and the original kitchen was closed off to create a kitchen for the other apartment. The original kitchen then became a bedroom. I've since converted it back to a kitchen and the old porch will be a breakfast room/informal dining room.

This is definitely the strangest house I've ever seen. At first glance everything seems clear-cut and simple. But once you dig beneath the surface it becomes a crazy maze that I have yet to figure out. I think a large cause of this is the major renovation that the house underwent in the 30's. This "renovation" took away many original features of the house. Most of the door hardware was replaced with plain, art deco hardware (grrrrr!). The study was totally reworked and I have yet to figure out how it was originally. The beautiful heart pine was covered over with red oak in the study, foyer, parlor, and the formal dining room. It appears that the stairs were moved/rebuilt around this time also. I have no idea if they are the original stairs and just moved or if new ones were built. I do know for sure they were moved back by about 8'. I'll probably never figure out every detail of how the house was originally.

Well hopefully I'll have some pictures of progress up soon.

shifting gears

I know I said I was going to finish the Breakfast room in my last post but we've decided to change our strategy a bit. Our construction loan is getting pretty expensive, not to mention the fact that all we're paying every month is interest only. We need to get the house done so we can refinance and get a regular mortgage at a much lower rate.

Because of this we've decided to move our attentions upstairs and finish the hell called plaster/drywall/mud work. As you may remember we finished the master bedroom last month but we still have 3 other bedrooms, a long central hall, and 2 bathrooms that have hardly been touched. We need to finish these ASAP so the floor guys can get up here and do their thing.

I've been working in the Nursery for the past 4 days scraping and sanding off tons of old flaking paint from the walls and ceiling. For the past 2 days I've been bent over backwards sanding the stipling off the ceiling. Needless to say I find it hard to walk upright now.

For those of you who may not remember this was the condition of the upstairs bedrooms when we bought the place:


The upstairs was vacant long before the downstairs was. In addition to all the peeling paint, there were whole sections of the ceiling that were falling in. I patched those a few months back.

Here's the room after scraping paint and sanding stipling:




Looks like it snowed in here. I looked like that floor when I was done by the way. One thing you may notice is that the original skim coat of plaster above the picture rail and on the ceiling is green and below the rail it's a pale blue(the cream underneath the gold is paint that's on the blue plaster). I actually like that green color, not sure about the blue though...

After that I started in on skimming the ceiling with mud mixed with sand.


I didnt get much done because my back went out. Hopefully my back will be a little better by this afternoon. That way I can finish the mudding tonight, and sand and primer tomorrow.

I also wanted to post a picture of the doors upstairs:


I dont think I've ever seen 2 panel doors like this before. All of the doors upstairs are like this, they are all rim locks also. Downstairs we have the more common 4 panel doors like these:


Has anyone seen 2 panel doors like these before?