Before and After

Every once and a while it's important to take stock of your seemingly endless project and highlight achievements through a series of satisfying "Before and After" photos!

Before, Apple Tree (see previous post on subject for more info) 

After

Before, Front Porch 

After (also see previous post for more info, and this one too)

Before, Skirting (more info)

After, almost done

Before, Front Parlor

Later, but not quite done

Before, The Second Parlor (see flooring post)

Later, not quite done on this one either, but it looks better!

Before, Stairs

In progress, stairs

Before, Stairs 

In progress, Stairs

While clearly there is work to do, a lot has been accomplished! And I didn't even mention the Mystery Door, or Mystery Well! 

The Front Door Saga Comes to a Close

The front door story -- We searched Eureka and beyond thinking we could find a replacement door similar to all the lovely Victorian doors we see around town.   In the end, short of a custom made door, we decided to work with a local door supplier and come up with a new door from Simpson Door Company.  


The people over at Forbusco Lumber in Fortuna - and Eric Negrete put to door together and did the installation.  It's always a challenge working around an old door sill.

While it's not a traditional Eureka styled door we were able to order one that matched many of the 5 panel doors that are inside the house. We have a half glass with the nine panels of varying sizes combines with the bottom half matching the 5 panel look. The door was outfitted with new hardware from Nostalgic Warehouse; here is the Victorian Plate with Victorian Knob.

We ordered the door primed and we now needed to pick some colors for paint. 

To recap, we started with the porch and door, as always happens, once the porch was replaced then to front door looked especially bad.  Once we ordered a new door it was primed at the factory and installed with a new frame to replace a hundred years of paint and abuse.  

Our next job was pick some Victorian door colors and paint it up.   Thee coats of paint latter the door is now done (we still have the masking on the windows, waiting for a curtain).

Taxes, Disasters and A Victorian Restoration

I know that house blogs are supposed to be about how much fun it is to scrap paint and find missing treasures, but since this year has been a year of fire, flood, and tornadoes it seemed like a good time to talk about bad things.  I thought it might be useful to talk about our experiences with some the tax issues we have faced in our Eureka Victorian Restoration.

There are no pictures at tax time so I added a picture of out house jacked-up getting ready for a new foundation.

After the 2010 earthquake we clearly had some damage and there was no State or Federal largess that offered to pay our cost  even though it was a declared State Emergency.  There was no direct aid, so we where left with the working with the regular tax code.

One thing about old houses is that they are disasters waiting to happen.  Maybe it's an earthquake, fire, tornado or  a flood, but it's always something. 

While local governments may have some form of property tax help for restoration including historic preservation or historic easement, Eureka has no such help for single family houses.  You should  check with the local assessor, city and county offices to be sure. 

Property Tax Relief.   In our case after the earthquake we pushed the city to re-asses our house, thereby immediately lowering our property tax.  The City was happy to do this because they get reimbursed by the State of California due to the disaster declaration (kudos to local Assemblyman W.C. Chesbro).   This was easy to do, we just provided the contractor's cost estimate.  This also protects you from being re-assessed after the repairs have been completed.   In the end your property value stays at the pre-earthquake level and we have a nice new foundation.

Income Tax Help.  Earthquake insurance is pretty worthless in California - high rates and even higher deductibles.    So you're on your own - until tax time.   Keep your records you can deduct a portion of the uncompensated or uninsured loss - it doesn't matter if its a declared disaster or just bad luck.  There is a formula that calculate the uncompensated loss as a percentage of your income and a portion is then a deduction from income.   We had something like $30K in damages and were able to deduce $12K from our federal income.    In the end the cash tax savings is only a small portion of the loss, but in those cases where your house has taken a real beating in can be a substantial deduction come income tax time.

That's all there is.

Porch and Skirting - Redwood Salvage

April 2011 -- Eel River at Fernbridge

After the earthquake in 2010 we had a foundation put in to replace the old post and pier that was knocked over by the quake.   We salvaged about half of the redwood skirting – we cut off the rot, cleaned and sanded some of the old paint off.    Now its going back up – primed and fresh painted.  

The reclaimed skirting was also used on the new porch. All the redwood needed oil based primer, which we love putting on, only drawback is we were painting inside in the winter and we had to shut the heater off to avoid the huge fiery conflagration.

The end of the rains.   We have had months of regular rainfall on the North Coast.  The rivers were all running high, as you can see the Eel River is big and muddy.  Now that the rain has let up we were able to get out and put some paint on the porch and install more of the skirting around the foundation.

Original redwood skirting cleaned and trimmed - ready to put up on new porch

Here's a warning.  As we cleaned and trimmed the old siding I thought it would be easier to nail the skirting up and then sand them in place --- bad idea --- the belt sander is heavy and designed to be used on a flat surface --- not in a vertical position where the weight just pulls you down.   I also got a face full of paint dust and chips.  

 

Looking for a Victorian Front Door

Eureka's Victorian houses have a unique front door style that probably grew out of the isolated nature of the area, the ready supply of redwood and the craftsmen of the area.  As you look around Eureka you see great original doors everywhere.    I walked around my street with my camera to record of few of the doors.   They are mostly half glass single doors with added details like the sun-burst pattern.  not all door are in great shape, but even the shabby one show the original styles.

Our Front Door with George's Ramp

My job is to now find something for our house that will match the new porch - our current door is brutally ugly (see on the right)  and must go!  I'm looking for ideas about a new door.   I've searched the thousands of used doors at Urban Ore in Berkeley but found nothing in the right size that works.  Despite the wealth of doors in Eureka we have not had any luck with craiglist or salvage in Humboldt County.   If you've got any ideas, or a nice 34' door let me know.

Apple Pruning Season in Humboldt and the Tsunami

Friday's Japanese Tsunami hit hard north of Eureka up in Del Norte County.  There were evacuations in the low lying areas of Humboldt County but no damage here.  This does remind us of the January 2010 earthquake and the similarities between the coast of Japan and our fault laden coast.



It's mid-march and the north coast rain is relentless.   We tried to sneak a little painting between the squalls but gave up early.   Instead it was time to look at the old apple tree in the back yard.   The tree looked pretty bad, it has produced a small crop of small spotty apples of an unknown variety.

pruning the mystery apple tree

Restoring an old house is always about more than just the four walls, it's also about the garden and the people who have lived there over the past 100 years.   If we can bring back the apple tree then that's part of the restoration too.


Julia has used her recently acquired knowledge of apple tree trimming and proceeded to give the tree a long overdue and much needed winter trimming.

The tree needs a trim

"Yes, that's where I threw my hat"

New Victorian-Style Porch

We've added a new porch recently, and to our surprise, a charming dog came with it!

So far we've painted the railing, but there's still more to go.

We tore the original porch off as part of our foundation work.   We had a Victorian reproduction made of redwood designed and built for us by Dane Cowen from Ferndale.  He handcrafted the pieces, we painted them, and he put the whole thing together!

(Before)