The Saga Continues

Work continues to progress on the front part of the Laura Hawkins house, and we will let these photos speak for themselves…

As we continue from our last episode...

Remnants of an old planter are getting ready for a haul.


The front door, especially, gets the treatment.

Well Hello Laura. It's so good to see that turret back
where to it was - after being covered for over 70 years.

In the middle of our job, community service calls. Hannibal was fortunate and smart enough to create a new position of "Executive Director of Downtown Hannibal Development". Our new director Wesley Knapp hails from Galveston where he was immensely involved in that town's restoration efforts. Wesley made a call for volunteers to help on a nearby house being rehabbed.

This particular project is part of the HeRo program, a "Dream Initiative project in Hannibal. Backing up here, the "Dream Initiative" is a statewide program that provides selected communities technical & finanancial assistance needed to revitalize their downtowns.

The HeRo program (funded by the Missouri Housing Development Commission) provides funds for an assortment of renovation work for qualified homeowners. For 2008, $119,000 in state dollars were received locally through the HeRo program and allowed work to be undertaken at five homes within Hannibal’s DREAM area. This is one of the houses, which is located a block east of the Laura Hawkins house, on 4th Street.

The crew. That's Wesley in the light green shirt.

The house had already gone through nearly $20K of lead abatement and now volunteers were needed to remove the very dilapidated porch. The porch would be stored as reclaimed wood.

Ron, our guy, examines the porch
for the best way to bring it down.


We'll do this one board at a time.


And thar she goes.

There's no shortage of projects like this needed throughout Hannibal. The town needs so much of this and volunteers who can help make it happen. Back at the ranch...

The priming of the old girl commences.
Remember that burned out part of the turret?
This will receive the board and shingle treatment.


The primer job goes very quickly.


The finishing crew.

It's looking more and more like the original Laura all the time.


Before the shingle restoration & priming,
Laura's home looked like a haunted house.

INTEGRITY

Forgive us if this post comes across as a sermon. This is Sunday after all, and it is also our way of venting on a particular issue. So, here goes with one of our first commandments of historic property restoration…

When one restores a historical piece of property, one adopts the role of “keeper of culture”. Wittingly or not, this role automatically implants itself in those who step up and subsequently, INTEGRITY becomes the moral dilemma that confronts each task and each phase of a restoration project.

Integrity - NOT! This was an unfortunate eBay purchase.

Bad packing aside, the method of casting iron did not preserve

the build integrity of this stove.

Merriam-Webster defines integrity as the “firm adherence to a code of especially moral or artistic values”; Wikipedia expands on this definition as “a consistency of actions, values, methods, measures, principles, expectations and outcome.

Throughout our work on the Laura Hawkins house, we’ve weeded through much misguided advice and agendas and have become sufficiently schooled on the value of integrity. At the very least, we’ve learned some of what it constitutes and what it does not...

THIS IS INTEGRITY	THIS IS NOT INTEGRITY
Putting the construction of the property back to its initial and intended state. This means the Laura Hawkins house should be removed of later addition asbestos-cement shingles, casted slurry, or aluminum siding. It also should have its dentils or other original features replaced if they were removed to accommodate the above added facades.	Masking or destroying parts of the property to make it something it is not.
Taking the time to understand the methods used in constructing the property and then, empathizing with this during restoration.	Ignoring the time-honored methods used in constructing the property. This means removing an original porch and replacing it with a flimsier, newer one. [There’s a reason why many older homes have lasted as long as they have.]
Reveering interior features and doing everything in your power to retain them.	Converting interior features to accommodate certain lifestyles and in the process obliterate or destroy those things that make the house what it is. This means sawing into door jamb moldings to accommodate glass shelves. This also means tearing out fireplace mantels to sell them to the local second-hand store down the road - Yes, these things actually happened and we will discuss them in a later post. Meanwhile, here are photos of the dastardly fireplace mantel thefts...

Parlor Fireplace.

Fireplace in the adjacent "Green Room".

With that out of the way, we will now proceed to our next adventure in the Laura Hawkins project – the daunting task of restoring the original shingles on the front of the house. First, here is some bad advice we decided to ignore:

-Cover the exterior with aluminum siding. This is not worth commenting on except to advise you to run, not walk, from a contractor who would advise this for a historic home.

-Pressure wash the exterior and then paint it. Bad, bad, bad advice. Pressure washing would deeply embed moisture into the wood and take a very long time to dry. Meanwhile, painting over this treatment would severely reduce the life of a paint treatment.

-Leave the upper shingles alone and paint over this. From ground level, I can see the crackling and flaking of the original paint on the very top shingle on the third floor. Can you imagine what this would look like painted-over?

From our perspective, there’s no “Easy Button” to press when it comes to restoring the shingles. Each shingle must be individually removed of paint and then sanded to accept a new coat of paint. Badly deteriorated or missing shingles need to be replaced with high-quality exterior shingles constructed of the same material – in this case, cedar.

So with a crew of four, we delved into our weeks-long project…

One shingle at a time...

To restore each one of them.

A heat gun and scraper certainly expedites things.

Good 'ol wood putty patches up the holes.

Most of the shingles remained amazingly intact.

Even the window moldings get the treatment.

Wonderful, is it not?

Those 1947 planters on the ends of the porch have to go.
I enjoyed doing this!

The turret area on the north side needed a complete overhaul...

First comes the new braces...

Ron, our man, is up to the task.

And things go uphill from there.
New, high-grade luan is used for replacement shingles.

Voila! Now aren't you glad we got rid of that
obliterating, &@*# planter?

Scaffolding is set up for the upper areas.

Getting out to the top of the scaffolding was easier once
we removed these boards from the Palladium windows...

And then crawled through. Here's me at the top.

The secret to staying up is to not look down.

So far, so good.

Stay tuned to our next post showing our final work on the front of Laura’s house.

The Full Monty

In this post, I think these photos will speak for themselves...

The Lift Truck is here.


John standing next to his truck.


This is tough to get off.
Our new city comptroller does the honors.


Realtors Talley and Ravenscraft get jiggy with it.


Candace, husband John, Mia and Carrie too.


Isn't this fun?


Me, shoveling the endless debris.


This fellow didn't know he'd be stuck in that lift for awhile.


George: "This has got to give..."


Is that really you, Laura?



Off with that porch!


Laura, unveiled.

All in a day's work.


Bob Yapp conducts a paint removal class afterwards.


This is how you do it right.


The wrecking crew.

Strip Tease

Ya-ha-ha! I'll bet some of you out there thought I'd dropped off the edge of the earth.

With the workload I wrestled with the past several weeks, I wonder if that wouldn't have been preferable. After many candle-burning nights, the hiring of four new employees, and several impossible deadlines, I'm finally back to posting -- however brief this hiatus will be.

So, I'm going to tease you with mere glimpses of the strip-down the Laura Hawkins house took. Stay tuned, and I'll treat you to the full monty in my next post...

Glimpses of Laura's petticoat...

OMIGOD. Are those palladium windows?
Bob Yapp is doing the honors.



No area went untouched.
Smart, mask-covered volunteers work this side of the house.



That petticoat looks better and better.


And better...


Hmmm... Not so better.
I wonder how close this fire came to doing Laura in.


Easy does it.
This curved glass window is irreplaceable.



Just another day in this sooo ripe-for restoration neighborhood.

Well readers, I've given away too much already. Stay tuned next week for pics on the porch removal and the full monty.

A Modern Barn-Raising – The Plan and A Community

The concept of barn-raising has all but vanished in our modern society. This event brought together an entire community to assemble a barn for one or more households, particularly in 18th- and 19th-century rural North American. The tradition continues in some Amish and Old Order Mennonite communities.

A barn-raising in a rural area of Ohio, circa 1899.

Our friends, the Talleys, brought up the issue of removing our exterior house tiles at a meeting of the Marion County Historical Society- this in an effort to solicit contractors who could do the work. Almost right away, their newest member, Bob Yapp piped up, “Handle it like a barn-raising. Make it an event, give it lots of press and invite the community in a shared effort!”

Now why hadn’t we thought of this? We’d been so busy looking into contractors (with some hits and some misses) that this concept alluded us altogether. I mean, this is Hannibal – America’s Home Town. The concept of folks helping each other to improve their community is very much alive in Hannibal, with some of the more popular activities being:

- The Loaves and Fishes program which serves hot meals to anyone dropping by a designated church in town.

- A very active Habitat for Humanity program which employs volunteers into building house for those who can't normally afford one, much less rent for one.

- A townwide "Clean Up Hannibal" event where volunteers do just that. Scour Hannibal in search of debris, dumpings and anything else that would hamper the image and beauty of the town.

Apparently, our big-city lives had blinded-sided us to remotely consider the possibility of a community-involved effort. Though similar programs are designed to help those in need, apparently little is done to further neighbor relations in the big city.

You see, back in Seattle we barely knew or spoke to our neighbors even though our neighborhood was fairly dense. Most people were either too busy or too migratory. When neighbors did come forward to greet their neighbors, it was often met with suspicion. In our Seattle neighborhood, neighbors didn’t approach each other unless it is was to request the cutting down of trees, to learn of house-addition plans, or any other thing that might impact their property values.

That’s what it’s all about in Seattle - increasing your property values based on views of a body of water or some other desirable scene. The most valuable homes are located nearly at the water’s edge. Construction of the home is not as important as the view and location in the Emerald City.

This is what we woke up to in Seattle.
City neighborhoods are lush with greenery
which often obscures a lake view.

Yapp, being the go-getter he was, called us right away with plans for a media release and a plan. Obviously, he had been involved in similar pursuits so we were only too happy to let him orchestrate the event.

We were now very excited about the project. We lunched with Robert and Pat at the Brick Oven to go over the anticipated event - and to feel each other out.

BTW, the Brick Oven is one of Hannibal’s newest restaurants. The owners, locals in this town, bought a building in the downtown area that housed a then-defunct art gallery and a salon. The concept consisted of making brick-oven baked, thin crusted, hand-kneaded pizza onsite. The restaurant serves other Italian specialties, and was a much-needed and applauded arrival in the downtown area. Here's the restaurant’s link:

http://www.classicwfl.com/customers/hannibalbrickoven/

We left the restaurant with such goodwill and hope with the Yapps. We are always happy to meet other expatriates like us in Hannibal. And with one of us having attended high school in Hannibal, we also had our old-time friends and acquaintances. Together, this adds so much to our Hannibal living experience. Not surprisingly, our friends and counterparts are mostly located in Hannibal (not Seattle) even though we lived in Seattle for over 20 years.

Bob dispersed a flyer to the media in Hannibal, Quincy and even NPR. Here's the artwork used for the flyer.

The line drawing was done by an artist for an article
on the death of Laura Hawkins in the
Hannibal Courier-Post, December 26, 1928.

So in the tradition of an Amish barn raising or in this case an Unveiling, Hannibalians (particularly those interested in progressing the historical restoration interests in town) were to come out to the party.

Here's the writeup in the Courier-Post the day before:

http://www.hannibal.net/archive/x635410955/Volunteers-to-peel-back-history-on-Laura-Hawkins-House

Next post, the Barn-Raising is accomplished in One Day.