When Adam came downstairs with this, I felt it was validation for a bit of history I had just come across online.

He does look like something of a space alien here, adding to the time machine impression. But a full dinner for $1.50 and up? That does seem surreal today.

The sign was one of several he had uncovered while removing baseboard upstairs. The writing had faced the wall. Yankees are notorious for frugality of the sort that wastes nothing, if possible.

I had just started researching the history of our house, starting with the property deed transactions at the courthouse in Machias. One of our predecessors had owned and operated a well-known restaurant. Her obituary also described her as an exacting carpenter, so here was a piece of evidence.

I’ll save her full story and those of the others for later in this series, but let’s just say, the house was beginning to look a lot older than we’d suspected when we bid on it.

For example, hand-split oak lathing like this had gone out of use by 1830, or so we were told. This piece was extracted when carving out space for the toilet and bathtub.

The burn marks on the underside of the flooring also suggested another serious house fire.

Another detail is the molding on the side of our stairs. The same pattern is found on other houses in town from the 1830s and 1840s.

And, from a technical point of view, ours wasn’t a post-and-beam house but rather timber framed, meaning wooden pegs held the big pieces together – and the weight of the structure didn’t come down the inside walls.

The old wood was denser, too, than what you’d buy today.

Any expectation of having the back half of the upstairs finished before starting on the front slowly faded from reality. We definitely wouldn’t be moving goods from downstairs or storage into the new space anytime soon.

Just look at the ridgepole and it was obvious Adam would need to have elbow room to work freely up while attaching the new rafters before any wall could go in.

He did have to demolish the drywall and framing that had separated the front and back rooms, and with that came my realization that putting up new drywall any time before the entire upstairs was ready for that phase of work was premature. As would be painting the walls, ceilings, and floors. Duh!

Adam’s big shock came when he exposed the top of the existing dormer and found that there was nothing to speak of holding the descending rafter. What were they thinking?

It was one more impending disaster that had somehow kept ticking until being defused now.

~*~

The front half promised to be less complex than the previous section. There was no plumbing and only two rooms rather than four. On the other hand, the top of the stairs might add some complications.