House Rehabilitation on Market St.

Market St. House, Summer 2009

It has been a while since we have focused on the Market St. house. Giving a house over to your children--not without some significant rules, mind you--means that you stop with renovations. We brought the house to a point that, with the exception of the attic and the upstairs bathroom, was pretty close to where I wanted it to be. It is a house with an arts and crafts feel on the inside that is really very pretty when you peel away the layer of clutter that somehow continues to occur no matter how much it upsets me when it happens. So I have taken a big break from this house, because it is too hard to keep being upset about how it is treated.

Market St. House, Summer 2012

My husband, however, is another story. He built a small shed in the back yard, and this summer he gave the house what it really needed on the outside--a scraping down, and a quality paint job. The excellent news is that the boards were largely in very good condition. The rotten ones were replaced, but there weren't that many of them. The lead paint is gone, the nail heads have been resealed, and it has been painted in a manner in keeping with the era it was built in. The trim highlights some of the architectural details, and it just looks much more elegant with a new paint job.
Our community is replete with century old houses.  Many of them have not had a loving hand to care for them in a very long time, but there are people who are trying to bring older homes back to their former beauty, with all the conveniences that the 21st century affords.  I am very pleased with what we have been able to do with this house, and now that I have a much more complicated project on my hands, I appreciate how relatively smoothly this project has gone.