wallyfarmhouse

After some searching through various King County websites, we were able to pull up this historical photo of our home. Not sure of the year this was taken, but other sources suggest that the county started getting its property records in order around 1937. Check out the parked car in the lower right corner! Also, notice that the curly molding in the upper left corner of the porch was broken in the same way that it is today.

From another source, we found this accounting of the previous owners, which is pretty great to have: “This structure may have been built earlier than 1900, the date of construction indicated in The King County Assessor Property Characteristics Report. The King County Property Record Card prepared in 1937 indicates that the house was erected in 1890. Nyberg and Steinbrueck assign the structure a date of c. 1890. The permit for construction of the original house has not yet been located. As a result, the original owner, designer and builder are not yet known. The property appears to have been owned by the estate of A. G. Wooster when it was surveyed by the Assessor’s office in 1937. Wooster had apparently acquired the property prior to 1925; by that date the resident of the house is listed as Kate D. Wooster,the widow Alfred G. Wooster in Polk’s Seattle Directory. The King County Property Record Card indicates that the structure had already been remodeled once by 1937. In that year, the house was clad with drop siding and fancy shingles. John N. Boge acquired the house in 1957. Boge made some modifications to the electrical system in 1972; these included increasing the electrical service to 200 amps. Boge sold the property to Genevieve C. Vayda in 1992. Although it appears the south end of the house may have been remodeled since that time, the City of Seattle has no record of this work. The structure is described by Nyberg and Steinbrueck as a building significant to the entire City of Seattle. Although the house appears to have been remodeled at least twice, the house is still significant as a surviving structure from the first decade of the Wallingford neighborhood’s development. The east, north and west elevations appear to be fairly intact and are able to convey the significance of the structure despite the modifications to the south end. This is a 1-1/2 story frame residence built over a full basement on a concrete foundation. The steep gabled roof with enclosed soffits, the hip roofed, wrap-around entry porch with slender wood supporting posts, the tall narrow wood windows, the corner casing boards and the mixed shingle and clapboard siding are all characteristics of the structure associated with late Queen Anne cottage design. The back end (south elevation) of the structure has been remodeled relatively recently and features a small but modern addition to the original building.”

We felt a little guilty pulling up the porch flooring which appeared to be fir tongue and groove plank flooring. Based on the fact they were nailed down with the very old style square head nails, we think it was probably the original boards. At first, for some reason we can’t quite wrap our heads around now we were originally going to use Trex or some other kind of composite deck flooring to withstand the weather. But it’s ridiculously expensive and still looks like plastic. Then we thought, well this wood floor has held up just fine (the rotting and sagging was mostly in the joists underneath), that we decided to recreate the old style with tongue and groove hardwoods. Where as the Trex would have cost nearly $1000, we got the perfect amount of reused Maple flooring for $80, thanks the credit at the ReStore we had from bringing in the old patch of fir floors when we remodeled the main floor. Isn’t it beautiful? To make the stuff last even longer than the boards we took up, we put a sealer used on wooden boats to coat the groove and underside before we installed them. 

Porch-acation!

We were going to go camping in the Olympics or maybe Glacier National Park, but instead decided to take off from work the last week in August to tear down our sagging, rotting porch and rebuild it. Simple right? Well we got it done, but the project’s size and scope ebbed and flowed along the way. We forgot to take photos early on, so by now you’ve missed the demolition of the original scraped together porch (it did last over 100 years though!). You’re also missing how we used five hydraulic jacks to hold up the porch roof while we took away the supports and shoveled eight holes and then filled them in with gravel and concrete to place new pillars and posts. By this photo we’re already framing in the new porch flour with treated 8x10’s (we might have overbuilt it, but hey at least we won’t worry about it falling down.

We’re starting to wrap up the major work on our house. A fresh coat of paint on the outside certainly helps!

Our living room is complete thanks to a last minute find on craigslist just before our party a couple of weekend’s back. The leather coaches nearly flew out of our truck on the interstate (yes, one caught some air on a turn that Marshall took just a little too fast), but they sit very still in our living room.

The last two weeks in June were a moulding marathon with numerous bevel cuts, cove cuts, measuring, remeasuring, and then glue, nails, paint and caulk to hold it all together. We never appreciated how much work went into the moulding that we all take for granted in houses. Now we can’t help but notice every moulding style we come across… The thing that kept us going was our recent purchase of a nail gun and air compressor. We never knew how quickly you could nail things to walls! It turned hours of hand nailing into a few minutes…until we used that nail gun to so quickly nail a board into the wrong place.

The kitchen and rest of main floor is now basically done! Thanks to Judy and Pem for giving us the old butcher block from their school that we refinished and built into the island for our kitchen.

The arbor that Kendra gave us as a wedding present and formed the backdrop for our wedding, is now installed in our yard!