Penn Marshall Stone House.

[kybishop]

Update; Since starting this thread I have created a blog of the ongoing work on this old home. I thought it a better place to keep up with it and keep a record of the work done than this thread. Thanks for all the encouraging words and comments. They are appreciated and at times much needed. A link to the blog; The Penn Marshall Stone House The original thread and posting below.

Renovating the home I grew up in. The stone part is a couple hundred years old, plus or minus a decade or so. Closest guess I have personally heard is from an ancestor of the man that built the house and put it about 1812.

The redwood addition was designed by my father. He built it with the help of my grandfather, my mom (his wife), my brother and some help from me. I was just 3 when we moved from town out to this place. Some considered it too remote, just about 8 miles out of town. Certainly feels remote but about 15 minutes to town.

My mother passed away when I was 15 in 1983 and a lot of things changed. Construction pretty much stopped. My father remarried and they lived here for a while. They recently built a cottage on the farm and have moved in to it.

I hope to finish the dream that they had for this place. Not changing too many things but a bit here and there. Few shots of the place and I will update as I go. With full time work and a limited budget, we will see how we progress.

I will mostly be using salvage products that we have and I run across. Also wood will be milled from the farm. Trees that have recently fallen and other already milled. Lots of materials just waiting to be used so that will save a ton in costs.

Already cleaned out the crawl and posted pictures in another thread here; Old homes and structures. . Focusing on the Kitchen first. Some termite damage in the exterior wall. This wall will come out and kitchen will be bumped out about 7 feet.

First few of a bit of the exterior. Stone is the original house. The redwood siding is the addition we started in the 1970's.

 

[kybishop]

First priorities are the roof and getting the addition ready so we can move in and live in it. Then sell in town and finish the old stone part.

Focusing on roof and kitchen. Working on roof materials at the moment. Started with some removal of existing cabinets and wall boards in kitchen. It is a small gally style kitchen and since the exterior wall has termite damage, it is going to be removed and the kitchen expanded out.

1st is the kitchen before removal of cabinets and wall boards. Cabinets with appliances along the left of pictures are the exterior wall.

2nd is after cabinets are out and wall boards coming down.

3rd is salvaged wall boards.

 

[kybishop]

This is the front side of the house where the kitchen is. This is the driveway side. It will be bumped out the full height of the side of the house down to the front addition door. The kitchen goes from this door to the stone part. The one first floor window to the right of the door is the kitchen window. My brother is a dry stone mason and he built the stone fence in the foreground. The plan is to curve it around to the stone part of the house and have a gate. Another gate where the lamp is and continue fence to the garage/corn crib/firewood storage off the photo to the left.

You can see from a quick sketch what I have in mind. Half the kitchen will stay the same with ceiling and walls. The new have will be vaulted up to the roof. The roof line will continue down to the exterior walls, same pitch. The sketch is just a sketch and I improved it a bit. I had the roof pitch wrong and changed that. Again, just a quick sketch from memory to get a quick visual.

The last is a quick plan sketch of how it will be bumped out with a central island. I will draw up the plans before to long editing copies of the ones my dad drew up.

 

[kybishop]

The addition is open from the first floor to the roof. It has a second and third floor loft.

First picture is looking up after you come in the front addition door.

Second is looking down from the third floor loft to part of the second floor and the first floor on down below. The kitchen is below the little bit of the second floor you see.

Third is looking down to the first floor from the third floor loft. We always called this the family room.

Again, this renovation is probably going to be slow and my updates as well. Time and money, kids, both my wife and I work full time for the state of Kentucky. But, my son is 15 and he and his teenage friends have been helping. So, maybe it will go quicker once I get going a bit more.

 

[kybishop]

And I will clear up that the only part of the exterior wall being removed is the part expanding the kitchen out. This is a section about 18 feet long, as long as the kitchen is. Up to the second floor joists. Then a salvaged beam will be run the length of the kitchen to support the exterior wall.

Hard to explain and not sure how to do it clearly. Will do my best. The original part of the kitchen will keep the same lights and ceiling and interior walls cabinets for the most part. The new walls will have the same diagonal pine covering. The new part of the kitchen will carry on up open to the roof. The second floor windows will then look down into the kitchen.

1st is of the cabinets staying on the interior kitchen wall.

2nd, other kitchen interior walls. We are trying to decide whether to leave these as is or open to the family room a bit. Opening requires more time and moving a small amount of electric. Not much, have to think about it.

Third is some of the termite damage. Termites taken care of years ago. But they had already been working hard in this one area. Most of the ends of all the floor just in the kitchen are soft along the outside wall. The band and plate have some damage here too and some of the studs.

It is balloon framing. 2X6 studs that go from the foundation to the roof, 18 feet for the sides I believe and 24 or so to the ridge.

If you are ever in Kentucky and will work for beer, a glass of bourbon or a cigar, please stop by. I will try to find something for you to do.

 

[kybishop]

Some pictures of the old.

1st, one of the pegs in the attic roof rafters at the ridge.

2nd, attic interior end wall and one of the windows. This is at the stairs to the attic.

3rd, attic stairs.

 

[kybishop]

Two sets of stairs to the second floor.

1st is coming up off the central hallway.

2nd is coming up off the driveway side end room. This room was a separate room on the second floor, walled off from the rest of the second floor. This is the reason for the two sets of stairs. Several theories of why they did this sort of thing.

To separate the women from the men as the Shakers did or due to religion or other reasons. The house has a heavy Shaker influence. The man that built the stone part, Charles Penn, came in from PA.

For protection. Times were still pretty unpredictable in Kentucky in the late 1700's and early 1800's.

Overnight guests, like a tavern would have. This house was a stop along the Kentucky river which is about 700 feet from the house. Steam boats used to pick up and drop off supplies. The original settler had about 500 acres he farmed here.

To separate the slaves was another. Others came up too, just have not heard anything definitive and we have been with this house for 41 years.

 

[RHINO]

thats a cool project, kinda wish my family had something like that for me to take over.

 

[kybishop]

A couple more.

The back "yard", field between the house and the river. The tree line is the bank to the Kentucky River.

The end of the part that was added in the 70's.

 

[DanielTaylor]

Wonderful project..You need to do an extra effort to renovate this home. Home is already in a bad condition and if you do even a small mistake then you have to pay lot. i hope it may not happen. All the best for the project.

 

[stonemasoncruiser]

That's a great house! Major potential with a lot of elbow grease and patience .
I actually just finished some stone repair work on an old house about 180 years old.
Well worth your efforts to have a home with real character .
Good luck and enjoy!

 

[kybishop]

Finally,

Able to get back to work on the house. Hope to get hard at this renovation now and get moved in by next winter. We'll see.

One of the first things I needed to do was clean up a chlordane spill in the old part. Really dreaded working on this as I would have to cut out some of the 200+ year old floor. They were contaminated with a spill of Chlordane, a chemical that was used for termite control up until the 80's when it was banned.

I got the contaminated flooring removed. Really thick tongue and groove flooring so took some creativity to remove without damaging the clean floor boards. The joists are about 3x12 and no telling how long. Stout old growth timber in this place.

You can see the chlordane soaked into the tops of some of these floor joists. I will be sealing this down with a product from AFM called Safecoat Dyno Seal. A green company with low VOC products. They have been very helpful and the only company that would give me some hope in sealing this stuff down. Nobody else I spoke to had much faith in anything they had. I have to wait for it to warm up before I can start sealing.

 

[kybishop]

Floor boards.

For comparison, a standard 2x4 is on the left and a floor board from this old house on the right.

 

[kybishop]

Doorway.

Here is a shot of one of the interior doorways, the one that was next to the chlordane spill. I had to remove one board into this doorway. The walls are about 2 and half feet thick, stone and rubble.

 

[kybishop]

Monday, Martin Luther King Day.

I finished this work up this past Monday, it was a very nice day. I was hoping to get the joists sealed but it did not get warm enough. Just got up to about 45 degrees in the house and I need warmer temps for using this product. The house has heat but we keep it at about 40 just to keep things from freezing and to keep the bills down.

Some shots from Monday, the day before some crazy cold and snow blew in the next morning.

 

[kybishop]

Samples.

I had to get some air samples and I had to have them back in route to the consultant by Tuesday, the day after Martin Luther King Day. This is for testing chlordane levels within the house. He needed his air samplers back so I had to run the samples. This was the drive out on Tuesday morning, the day after the sunny and close to 50 degree weather.

 

[kybishop]

Dry stone.

Some shots of the dry stone fence my brother was working on out in front of the house.

 

[kybishop]

Next...

I will be anxiously waiting on the results of the samples, see what the levels are in the house. What we are dealing with. The risks from chlordane come from higher levels of long term exposure. Opening the house up and working should be safe. We all know how hard it is to tell what is the actual risks, depends on who you talk to and what you read. I will err on the side of caution here.

Anyway, the next step is to get some work done on the kitchen. Need to get it prepared for a small bump out addition to enlarge the small galley style kitchen. It has some termite damage in the floor joists and exterior wall here. I will be removing the flooring and supporting the exterior wall and house with jacks from the ground to the second floor joists.

Once I get all this stable I can remove the exterior termite damaged wall and this will open it up for the addition. The addition will be about 7 feet out and 18 feet long. Doubling the kitchen width and equal to it in length with the new part vaulted up to the roof. Cleanest looking way to add on without it looking like a stuck on shed.

I will be reusing as many materials and products I can with this renovation. All the pine cabinets will be reused and some of the flooring. The pine wall boards will be reused. Also, the exterior siding will be carefully removed from the damaged wall and reused on the addition.

 

[kybishop]

Opening kitchen to family room.

The kitchen also feels a bit closed off from the family room next to it. There is a door and a pass through but my wife and I would like it to be more open here. This corner will be opened up from the right of the door to the left of the pass through.

This was a bit of a bottle neck when we had guests in the past. This will open up flow in this area. I will need to move electric a bit once I can access it better when the floor is opened up to the crawl space. I will reuse these 2x4's and pine wall boards as well.

 

[se2000]

Glad to see you are still plugging away at this. Many would have given up awhile ago. I think I would have built a whole new structure enveloping the original stone