February Update

So there isn't much finished product to update about.  In fact, the house looks disastrous! Most of what is happening now is continued demo and framing.  Here are some new photos:

This is my closet addition being added, and the roof being slopped to stop the leaking issues:

Here's the closet addition from the inside:

And the upstairs bathroom is fully gutted:

Here's the much smaller downstairs bathroom.  I'm promised my claw foot tub will fit. I'm not as confident . . .

This is the reason the bathroom is much smaller.  This is going to be a closed in washer/dryer room and coat closet:

This is the demoed mud room:

The garage is roofless at the moment.  Tomorrow the framers will start framing one single roof (as opposed to the two separate pitches that were there before):

This is the back of the house right now.  The closet and roof are not yet finished so it is all covered to prevent moisture:

The painters discovered after painting that they did not scrape enough of the old paint off.  So the texture was not smooth.  They have now added some spackle to help give the siding a smooth texture.  As you can see, they now need to go back and re-paint because there are shiny and dull spots.  They also have not finished the trim, nor removed and replaced the few areas of rotten siding:

The painters have also test painted the eve navy blue.  We chose this to offset the gray house from the new silver roof that will be installed:

And I could not resist posting a picture of this cutie!!

January Progress

So much is going on at the house! It's been hard to update because its pretty much all destruction...  Right now the painters are about half-way finished with scraping and have primed portions to protect the wood. Just the primer made a huge difference!  I don't have a more recent picture, but here's one from about two weeks ago:

 The construction team has gutted both bathrooms and the mud room. I only have pictures of the downstairs bathroom (I'm really bad at remembering to take pictures):

This week the construction crew is working on framing the closet upstairs and raising the roof on the garage.  I'll post pictures when they are finished.  Next week they will be working on raising the foundation.  They are really starting to move fast!

So what have we been doing?  We power-washed the front walk and worked on the front lawn to give it a little temporary street appeal.

We have been also been working in the kitchen.  Dan removed the back-splash and my mom visited to help clean all the years of sticky off of the cabinets so we could sand them.  Then my sister Hannah came to help us wood fill the holes in the cabinets and start striping the swinging door which no longer swung do to too much paint.

So striping or sanding? SANDING.  Just striping the one door was sooo much work that it is DEFINITELY NOT happening in any other room.  But striping did reveal a funny detail about the house.  The original kitchen was lime green, trim, walls, everything.  We got a little stipper on the walls and that's how we discovered everything was the same color.  And the dining room was pepto pink, trim and all.  And the swinging door was the line.  Literally, there is a line right down the middle of the door frame, one side green and the other pink.  Even the door  was pink on one side and green on the other.  "Yikes" is all I have to say!

We have nearly finished sanding the entire kitchen.  Just a few windows, baseboards, cabinet doors, and a door left...

Progress Update

Due to all the rain, and us being limited to weekend work, not much progress has been made to date. However, here are a few updates:

Dan has determined that lounging in the tub is much more preferable to peeling wallpaper:

This wallpaper is clinging to the wall for good reason; it's hiding a shade of pink so bright it would make a Disney princess feel disoriented.  I mean, the need to paint the walls with primer prior to wallpapering says it all:

The painters have been at the house in-between all the rain and have begun removing the 100 years of paint layers:

And finally, the stinky Bradford pear tree has been removed! Now we can walk up and down the back deck stairs with ease and happy noses:

The Rumley Family

Since we hired a crew to do most of the work on the house, I decided to take some time and do a little research on the house and its history.  My research began at the Brown Library in Washington.  The library has kept a folder for each of the families that have contributed to the city.  The Rumley family folder included quite a few newspaper clippings dealing with the Rumley family, and a copy of the family tree.  Here's a part of the family tree (the entire tree is too large to fit in one photo):

This is what I have put together from all of the newspaper clippings and the family tree:  

Gilbert Rumley was born in 1855 and married Annie Parsons Rumley in 1886. In January 1893 Gilbert and Annie purchased 622 West 2nd Street from Gilbert's parents, William Rumley and Henrietta Blount Rumley. William and Henrietta owned quite a bit of property in town, and this lot was their "garden lot."  Gilbert and Annie built the home located at 622 West 2nd Street, which was completed in 1893. 

When the home was built, it had heart of pine wood floors and very simple mantles.  Later, the floors were upgraded to the current oak floors and "fancy mantles" were added.  The plate rail in the dining room was added by Annie because she was "a collector of pretty plates."  Plate rails were not common in homes like ours, being reserved only for "more fashionable homes of the day."  The home has one feature that did make us curious. The stairs point towards the back door instead of the front door.  In my research, I found an article interviewing one of the daughters of Gilbert and Annie.  Mildred Rumley Mayo lived to be a centenarian, and was interviewed for the local paper in 1997.  Let me just tell you, Mildred was a hoot!  Mildred was interviewed several times, and she had very funny stories. Anyways, Mildred cleared up our curiosity about the stairs. "Mama wanted the formal approach, stairs leading up from the front door, but Papa won out with his more practical approach" - stairs that lead toward the rear of the hallway because that was "the shortest route to the backyard with the slop pots."  Now I'm never going to be able to walk in the front door without smiling! 

If you are interested in what Mildred had to say, here is a photo of the article:

Gilbert Rumley was the Register of Deeds for Beaufort county.  Thirteen children were born to him and Annie, including one set of twins and one set of triplets.  Our centenarian Mildred stated that she would come home "every so often to find another new baby in the house."  Sadly, only five of the thirteen children survived. The set of twins and triplets both passed away.  I went down to the Register of Deeds to see if I could locate the death certificates hoping to find out causes of death.  Unfortunately, the death certificates only reach back to 1914, which is well after the deaths of the Rumley children. 

I then took a trip to the Oakdale Cemetery in Washington to visit the family burial plot.  There are six small graves with a lamb atop the tomb stone.  Unfortunately, time has not been friendly to these small stones, and they are no longer legible.  I took tracing paper and a pencil, but the stones are even beyond tracing.  Here is a photo of the family plot:

Well, that's all the history I have for now.  Next post will be about the architectural details of the house.  Am I boring you yet? 

Take a Tour of the Rumley House

So the Zillow link is slightly deceiving: http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/622-W-2nd-St-Washington-NC-27889/2142999499_zpid/.

The Rumley house needs a bit more love than that website would lead you to believe (in fact, even my pictures make it look better).  I took some new photos today, so here's what we are really working with:

Street View:

Entry:

Office (to the left of the front door):

Living Room (to the right of the front door):

Dining Room:

Kitchen:

Downstairs Bathroom:

Laundry Room:

Back Bedroom:

Front Bedroom:

Master Bedroom:

Upstairs Bathroom:

Backyard and Garage: