Fulmer House

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2009-10-01T07:04:00.001-07:00

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New Pond Update

2008-09-02T06:01:00.000-07:00

With the close of Summer now behind me, I think that this pond will be the one outdoor project that I continue to work on until the snow sets in. I have about 4 tons of rocks to gather by then, so I need to start now. The problem with all outdoor ponds is this; as soon as you are done making them, you immediately try to think of ways to make them bigger. I am already on this idea and am warming up the shovel and the back-brace for early spring 2009.

New Pond Coming!

2008-08-21T08:48:00.001-07:00

Some new pics of the stairs and front yard

2008-08-21T08:43:00.000-07:00

Newer pics of the stairs

2008-08-11T06:00:00.001-07:00

Whoa, completely delinquent for the month of July!

2008-08-06T15:20:00.000-07:00

Ok, so things have been busy. My teaching schedule for July was totally insane and I am just coming into the end of summer coast before taking off in the Fall again. Nonetheless, I have been working on the house with Kat and we are making progress. I am going to post some better pics this weekend of the front porch renovation, but let me give a bit of an explanation before we get into that.

Our place is half of a double and it is clear from the way the yard and front porch divisions that there was not a strong sense of neighborly community. We are changing that. First of all, we completely lucked out with our neighbors and we love them. If you look at the two pictures below, notice the spindled rail down the middle of the porch. This was such an OBVIOUS boundary that we felt like getting rid of. The neighbors did not really use their half of the front porch when we moved in for the simple fact that the space was so small because of this divider. The stairs to the porch were also an issue. They were only built on our half, meaning that if we did open this porch up for sharing, we would have to rip them off and build new ones all the way across.

The following picture does not really show this too well, but I will add more this weekend. What you are seeing is the new stairs, the newly opened front porch and an extension of the blue stone patio extending the area by a huge amount. This is a much more intimate setting for sitting, chatting, reading, etc.

That is our neighbor putting white Christmas lights in the Japanese Maple for some patio ambiance. My wife Kat and Katie ( shown in pic ) were all about the lighting.......

More to come!

Sneak Peek at the Spare Bedroom before/after

2008-06-24T05:04:00.001-07:00

Before

Unfortunately there are no really detailed "before" photos of the walls and their condition. I can assure you that they looked like they had been imported from afghanistan. The patching and sanding on this room alone took me an eternity.... or so it seemed. The paint on the floor was also an issue. It too much longer to heat and scrape that off than I ever expected. Here are some after shots........

There is only one coat of finish on the floor in these shots and as you can see, it is still drying. I will hit it with 3 more this week and we should be moving the furniture in a week after that. The blue was hard to capture with the light coming in the windows, but it is somewhere between a robin's egg and a Tiffany's box.

Some images of the brick and what I am up against

2008-06-15T08:37:00.000-07:00

Here are some photos that I took of the immediate brick issues that I could see. I am sure that once I get up on a ladder and begin examining, the issues will increase in number.

You can see in the photo above the sloppy, concrete based mortar applied to the joints. It is on the surface of the brick and is generally awful looking.

The image above represents what a majority of the brick is starting to look like. This is why I am seriously concerned.

This is an example of the moisture getting into the porous brick and cracking off the surface when it freezes. Repointing will put an end to this.

Ok, so there are many projects afoot

2008-06-15T08:24:00.000-07:00

I am currently working on many different projects at once. Dining room, final punch list in the living room, the spare bedroom floors and walls, a contractor is coming to do the front steps, and the second tier of the rock wall terrace. WIth all of this on my plate, I am feeling much pressure to begin pointing the brick on the house. This pressure is mostly from sweeping up the newly dissolved mortar that has fallen onto the walkways week after week. I also seem to have a carpenter bee problem as I have seen them burrowing into the mortar on the front of the house. I have been taking pictures of the current state of the brick and doing some reading on how to properly do the work. I am going to do this little by little as I have with all the other projects. Here is a great link that I found to an article on This Old House's website on repointing brick. You may love it!

Click here for the article

Stone Wall #1 Before and After

2008-06-08T14:49:00.001-07:00

So one of the first jobs I started on when we moved in was to repair this collapsed wall. There was an earlier post of this, but these photos should give you an idea.

Here is the before:

and here is the after:

Trying to save the bedroom door

2008-06-05T05:10:00.000-07:00

We found this in the back corner of the basement. It has some pretty severe water damage and one of the tenons has pulled away slightly. It perfectly measures the opening in the bedroom doorway, so this means that we can use it if we can resurrect it. I am certain that it is original to the house. I will be working on this over the weekend. More then.

Some before and after flooring

2008-06-03T18:31:00.001-07:00

So I have been on the flooring kick lately and I don't think I posted any comparison photos. Here is the first one:

This is the division between the living room and the dining room. The living room is finished. It is the perfect shot to give you the before and after idea. Here are two more with the close up of each side:
This with the tung oil and resin...

This was what the floors looked like before.

Gonna Reupholster this baby in Mohair

2008-06-02T07:13:00.001-07:00

Found this lovely piece at a garage sale in Upper Black Eddy, PA. for the very reasonable price of $50! I am looking for some upholstery mohair in white to re-cover it in. I may dye the mohair a cool green so that it has some reference to the original.

Some notes about the pine floors...... again

2008-06-01T14:31:00.001-07:00

Sometimes, when you pull back the carpet on an old wood floor, there is evidence of where area rugs used to be. You can see this because there is a significantly large rectangle of bare wood in the center of the room, and the flooring around that rectangle has been painted. I had mentioned this in an earlier post, and I was optimistic about the fact that this would make refinish much easier. I was totally wrong and here is why.

First off, the bare patch in the middle had no protection whatsoever. As dirt filtered through the carpet, it was forced into the grain of the soft pine below. This fact coupled with there being no rug on that floor for many years has created a floor that is not so much patinated as it is grey. Grey with general dirt patina....... Now, when you also take into consideration that the floors were exposed and not treated with oil to maintain their flexibility, you have a situation where the grain is starting to delaminate. While sanding, the disc tends to slide under one of these lifted grain laminations and rips it free. This has become a whole new challenge. I am getting there in terms of having the floor ready for finish, but it has taken a far greater effort than the floor downstairs that had the polyurethane on it. Between the urethane coating and the exposed bare floor ( both being damaging treatments ) I would take the urethane over no protection in terms of a restoration project.

I will begin to apply the first finish coat next weekend. More on this when I have photos or news.

So it seems.....

2008-05-31T16:13:00.000-07:00

So it seems that there are a few of you out there who are reading the blog and I am surprised when I meet you and you tell me this. This is of course due to word of mouth but it still surprises me. So first off, I wanted to thank you all for checking in. It is reassuring to know that there are some people out there who are interested.

Now I have been thinking about these posts lately that have been about furnishings and what is actually going into the house. I have had a conflict with whether or not this is valid material for such a place. I go from thinking about this being a house blog and focusing on floors, re-glazing windows etc, to this aspect of the house which is more about decorating and less about restoring. I feel that the character of the house is enhanced by the decor, and that is a vote for keeping up with the design postings.... but my conflict continues. I am posting a poll to see what you think. Be my guest and vote!

Third floor spare bedroom renovation

2008-05-22T15:04:00.000-07:00

So the main spare bedroom is underway. The first task was to remove a very strange set of closets that had been haphazardly installed. There were four solid handmade pine doors across the outside wall. Behind each was a bay with a hanging bar and each bay was lined with cedar particle board. Now I am making this sound a lot better than it actually was. The cedar board was screwed in with dozens of drywall screws, the design was all wrong for the house, and it was unfinished. The good news is that when I took the unit out, most of the solid pine that was used was recyclable. I will use this wood for shelves in the attic studio. The closet was not too difficult....easy in fact compared to the floors.

The floor was painted around the carpet which was both good and bad in terms of sanding the floor. The painted area was a top layer of acrylic, a layer of glue which held the carpet, and two more layers of paint. The disc on the sander hits this and immediately gums up. I picked up a heat gun and tried to remove all that I could before sanding. This worked a bit better and I have made some progress. The area that was unfinished has had so much foot traffic without the protection of the carpet that the pine is more of a grey color than a patina. The area under the paint has a more of a patina to it and matching that to the grey dirty area has proven difficult. Eliminating the rectangle in the middle of the floor will be a challenge. Here are some pics.

Before:

Here is the sandpaper pad

New dining room chairs!

2008-05-22T14:49:00.000-07:00

So I went down to Mode Moderne and bought some Eames DCM chairs. Michael at the store was extremely patient as he took me to the warehouse and looked over what was available. I cannot say enough great things about them. This place is packed with great finds which are all in great shape. You can see the website here. Below are some pics of the chairs.

Furniture Progress

2008-05-13T17:59:00.002-07:00

So here is a dry fit of the table I am making for the dining room. The inspiration came from Jean Prouve's table. His work blends a severe simplicity with function. It is no surprise that he created one of the first prefabricated houses. I am also hand planing a massive piece of walnut for a coffee table. The piece is 18" wide by 8' long by 2 inches thick. I am going to use the whole slab for the piece. I will upload images as they come.

Ok, so this is a long time coming

2008-05-13T05:37:00.000-07:00

I have been out of the blogging groove for a bit and have finally completed my finals with my students. I can get back to working on the house. I have a month off and plan to do as much as funds will allow. Kat and I have been through the ideas and we have come up with the following: 1. We are desperate to get the furniture that we want into the house, so I am working on making that. Below is an early photo of my friend holding the legs to the new dining room table up for a look. I am also designing two side chairs that will be cushioned with white mohair and made of walnut. More on this as developments come. 2. I will be doing the refinish on the dining room floor. The living room floor looks fantastic and I am eager to continue this process of getting these pine floors restored. 3. The guest bedroom needs a slight overhaul. There are these makeshift closets that were built in there that look like a cross between phone booths and holding cells for death row inmates. I cannot stand them and they will be the first to go. Floors, painting and patching will be in order up there. 4. The kitchen gets put on the back burner until August when my summer teaching comes to an end. That will be a major project and will require lots of dough.

I will take pics this weekend to show off the finished rock wall, the living room floors and the new paint in the dining room. I will also include any finds we manage at the College Hill yard sale this weekend! It should be a good one.

Final coat on living room floor today!

2008-04-10T04:07:00.000-07:00

I will update the floor photos today just before the final coat goes down. I have been excited to see the first coat of satin on the floor in a dry state. Last coat today and then we can move on to other rooms in the house. More on this later. 70 degrees today!

Some updates on the wall today

2008-04-08T11:37:00.001-07:00

Todays plans

2008-04-08T04:29:00.000-07:00

I am out to the house today to put on the first coat of satin finish on the floor. This system calls for four coats of the original finish which has a medium sheen or semi gloss like look. If you want to to tone it down a bit and have a more subtle top coat, you can do two coats of original to seal and two coats of satin to create the final look. I am very interested to see what will happen here. The first two coats were sucked right up by the thirsty pine and I can not see much evidence of that semi-gloss like look. I am hoping that the first coat of satin today will begin to reveal what the floor will really look like.

All in all, the floor in the living room seems to be in the best shape. The dining room is going to be another challenge altogether. The previous owners were at the house when we were looking at it and they were filling the gaps in between the boards with durhams rock hard water putty. (In some areas bondo was used) I now have to go through the entire room and carefully chisel this stuff out. With the pine being so soft, this is a very delicate process to keep the boards from being damaged. I will upload some photos of this nightmare as soon as I am brave enough to face it.

I also added some new links to the right. One is a .pdf document on the house that I found online. I think it was prepared by the previous owner and it tells some of the history. The other is a site that details a walking tour of our town. It shows many of the houses that are in our area. Check them out.

Rebuilding the stone wall outside

2008-04-07T04:12:00.000-07:00

The stone wall outside had collapsed long before we purchased the house. One of my top priorities was to get this rebuilt as soon as possible. I am currently putting it back together and will have some progress photos to post soon. The stone is mostly dolomite and the edges are razor sharp. Typing this post has not been easy with hands that are covered in band aids. I need to buy some gloves.

Floors......

2008-04-03T16:34:00.000-07:00

Before

During

Gary Approves So Far

With one coat of Waterlox Original

So the floors in the living room are almost finished and I had some wavering confidence in how they would turn out. The floors are pine and were polyurethaned a long time ago. Pine and poly do not get along as the pine likes to breath. After a time, the poly will crack, chip and flake off leaving you with bare spots. (You can see this in the first photo above) This floor had some damage to it from the lack of proper care. There was a beautiful pumpkin orange patina though, and I was reluctant to sand it down to "new wood". Considering the damage, the thick poly that was there and the need to open the wood up for the new penetrating oil, I had to take it down some. It was the most responsible choice for the life of the wood. I used a high end dual action sander with a HEPA vac by Festool. This is a very high quality piece of machinery. There was literally no dust whatsoever while I was doing this work and I felt very lucky to have it. It gave me far more control than if I had a commercial sander which is much more aggressive.

I am using Waterlox Original Sealer and I will top coat with Waterlox Satin. These products are designed to penetrate the wood much like an oil, and at the same time seal the wood but with breathability. Here is a link to their site....I feel I can endorse them because I am having success with their product. I also think that the results so far are worth the $120 per gallon price tag. This is a very good product. I will post some final pictures when the top coats are completed. There are 4 coats in all; 2 Original and 2 Satin. More to come on this...........

Wood Flooring I

2008-03-18T19:04:00.000-07:00

All too often, we over-utilize the phrase "hardwood flooring" without really knowing whether or not we have actual hardwoods. Too simplify this, here are some simple rules to clarify these designations. Hardwoods come from deciduous trees, softwoods come from conifers. Within each of these two categories, there are of course varying degrees of hardness. We know that maple is harder than poplar even though both are considered to be hardwoods.

You also hear people boasting that they have "quarter sawn white oak", but what does this mean? Does this person with this fancy floor even know how that wood was produced? Most often they do not. There are three main methods for getting planks out of a log; flat or plain, quarter and rift sawn. The image below details the way in which flat or plain sawn, quarter sawn, and rift sawn boards are obtained.

We all know the image of a tree's cross section with the rings visible. We learned that by counting the rings, we can tell a tree's age. The rings towards the center of the circle are the oldest and sometimes appear darker than the younger rings towards the outside. The wood from the older rings is referred to as the heartwood, while the wood that is taken from the outer regions is called the sapwood.

Notice how the rings affect how the end grain looks. In flat sawn boards, if we look at the ends, we see the radiating crescents. This is the most common board that we see because it is the most economical way of producing planks. As you can see from the diagram, it yields the least amount of waste. The common problem with wood that is flat sawn is that it tends to "cup" which is when the boards edges curve upward. The wider the board, the more severe the potential cup can be. The reason for this is in the widest of flat sawn boards, you have the youngest wood on the two outside edges pulling against the oldest wood toward the center of the board.

In both rift and quarter sawn boards, the end grain is close to vertical in its relation to the surfaces. This increases the boards stability as well as alters the way the grain is seen on the surface. The boards can be far more beautiful like in the case of the oak mentioned above.

The two examples are both white oak. The upper-most example is quarter sawn. Notice the enhancement of the striations within the grain.

Living Room make over

2008-03-09T16:38:00.001-07:00

We almost completed the living room paint this weekend and I am uploading some before and after pics. One thing that I was particularly impressed with is the quality of the plaster work in the house. First of all, the plaster is original. It has very few cracks and is mostly in perfect condition. The joint where the walls meets the ceiling is also perfect and cutting in the deep eggplant ceiling to meet the lavender walls was not difficult at all.

The intimacy factor of a room is increased immensely when the right color choices are used. I so often hear people criticize that it will be too dark, or the dark ceiling will make it seem low. While I feel that these people all seem to love the aesthetics of hospital waiting rooms, I can understand their fear. When I was a teenager I painted my bedroom dark grey with a black ceiling. I think I was trying to simulate a late gothic isolation chamber deep in the catacombs of some massive cathedral.

One of the key color issues that I was thinking about when painting the room is that the house is situated in the woods. When spring comes, the views out the windows will be mostly green. Green and purple have a high hugh contrast and I was very much liking the idea of seeing the greenery framed by the crisp white window trim in this purple room.

I am totally against off-whites, beiges, and "safe" colors for several reasons. First of all because they de-saturate the color in everything that they are surrounding. Second being the fact that they release the owner/painter from making design decisions about what will work in a room. When the room is totally neutral, anything will go in it and usually does. Third reason is if you are going to use white, use the brightest most crisp white that you can. You don't see color photos being printed on beige paper do you?

The Living Room - Color Choices

2008-03-04T07:50:00.000-08:00

The living room is the space first entered in the house. It opens onto the front porch, and has a great view of the deck and patio. I hope we'll be using this space to entertain a lot - so the color choice is really important!

I love the color contrast used here:

but want something with two shades of violet - a lavender for the walls, and an aubergine for the ceiling (photo from TheNest.com).

I just found a great color palette program on Behr Paint's website, which allowed me to choose a few colors and then made recommendations for additional colors.
I think I really like these!

The First Project

2008-02-27T12:36:00.000-08:00

We realized that the bathroom was in really good shape when we looked closely at it. We spent our first weekend cleaning, patching, sanding and painting. We figured that not only would this project realize itself the quickest, but that we would also be able to take a shower once in a while. The bath is also home to our laundry station. There is a washer/dryer in the wall, with a great folding counter. Underneath the counter are drawers for linens and a pull out hamper.
Cleaning out all of the old caulk and re-caulking gives the tub's edge a new life. Between this step and cleaning the tile and grout, we could immediately see a whole new life in this room.
The cabinetry and built-ins that make up the bulk of the space were manufactured by the Stark family business (more on this in a later post) and remain in very good condition. The original lacquer on these cabinets has been affected by the moisture of the shower and we had to scrape and paint these. There are a few issues with the hardware on the drawers and the doors that hide the up/down washer/dryer combo. I will need to replace some of this to make things run smoothly.
The bath also contains the one odd window in the whole house. There is a vinyl double hung contemporary window in this space and is awkward in relation to the other originals. I will be contacting a New England company that specializes in crafting historically accurate window sashes and doors. I will blog more about this when the time comes.
With the bathroom almost complete, we are able to see the possibilities for the rest of the house. We are looking forward to completing this room and moving on to the living room soon!

About the Owners

2008-02-26T14:07:00.000-08:00

We were married in September of 2007 and immediately began searching for a home. We were looking for something that satisfied our artistic interests and had a sense of character that was out of the ordinary. Kathrin has a Bachelors degree from Drew University in Art History and is a native of Easton. She currently manages a recording studio in Manhattan full time. Her dedication to research is exemplified in her thesis on St. John the Divine Cathedral in New York City. Todd has a Masters degree from Rhode Island School of Design in Sculpture and grew up in nearby Califon, New Jersey. He currently teaches in the foundations department at Parsons School of Design in Manhattan and is a partner in a Design/Build company in Brooklyn, New York. He has worked on a number of restoration projects and also spent a summer working for a window sash and door maker in New England. We are hoping that with our combined interests and experience that we can put this property on the map as one of Easton's finest restorations.

A quick note on the builders

2008-02-26T07:26:00.000-08:00

The house was built between 1857 and 1859 by two brothers; Joseph and Daniel Fulmer. One was a blacksmith and the other was a whitesmith. It is unclear right now which brother was which. It is clear that the two of them had a family business which was run out of a small building two doors down the street. I will be posting more on the history of the house on a daily basis. I would like to give credit for my current resources to Tom Jones of Easton, Pa. He has written an extensive pamphlet on the history of the house and has done considerable research. I am referencing his writings for much of my initial posting. We would like to thank him for all of the hard work he did in acquiring this information.

Here she is!

2008-02-26T04:15:00.000-08:00

We are very excited to get to work on this historic beauty. Our budget is limited, so we intend to work on one room or project at a time. We want to post what we learn so that other restoration buffs can learn from our adventures. We will spend our time between our projects on the house and talking to others in Easton who are doing the same thing. We are also hoping to reach out to people who are looking for a great place to restore and show them that Easton Pennsylvania is a great place to move. Check in often as we hope to be updating you on our progress!