I was hoping for some more photos, but we left our digital camera up at the Queen. Spent a couple hours Saturday finishing off the subflooring for the hall bath. Spent the rest of the weekend working on the pantry/laundry room's wood floor. It went well but took a lot longer than we'd anticipated.
All the "new" wood flooring we are using in the master bath and the pantry/laundry room were salvaged from an older home, The Davis House, in Atkins. It is pine, tongue-and-groove flooring. It is about 3 1/2 inches wide and up to 16 feet long.
The Davis House is with us no more. The owners, three brothers, bought it as an investment property. They had it zoned commercial which wasn't hard. The new Bank of Dardanelle is next to it, and you can see the Dollar General, two gas stations, and Sonic from where the house was. They tried selling it as is, but no one was interested. So, in the end, they bull-dozed it and set it on fire. A few months later the lot sold.
On the one hand, my wife and I felt bad for tearing up an old house. How can you be for saving historic buildings while you're tearing one down? On the other hand, it would be demolished with or without us. We decided it would be better to save some of it than to just let it get knocked down and burned.
We hauled off all the pine flooring, about a third of the wood siding, a couple of double hung windows, and all of the bead-board ceilings. We also found a family tree (Davis family) on two typed sheets of paper, 8 solid wood doors with original hardware and jambs, a box of 50 year old mason jars, some old copies of the Atkins Chronicle (the local paper, dating to the 1950's), and a couple of light fixtures. Since we are insane, we actually thought that we could get more out of the house while working on the Devil Queen. I really wanted to strip the Davis House down far enough to haul off the 2 x 4's for an art studio. We didn't make it in time though. I can't even begin to explain how disheartening that was.
All the "new" wood flooring we are using in the master bath and the pantry/laundry room were salvaged from an older home, The Davis House, in Atkins. It is pine, tongue-and-groove flooring. It is about 3 1/2 inches wide and up to 16 feet long.
The Davis House is with us no more. The owners, three brothers, bought it as an investment property. They had it zoned commercial which wasn't hard. The new Bank of Dardanelle is next to it, and you can see the Dollar General, two gas stations, and Sonic from where the house was. They tried selling it as is, but no one was interested. So, in the end, they bull-dozed it and set it on fire. A few months later the lot sold.
On the one hand, my wife and I felt bad for tearing up an old house. How can you be for saving historic buildings while you're tearing one down? On the other hand, it would be demolished with or without us. We decided it would be better to save some of it than to just let it get knocked down and burned.
We hauled off all the pine flooring, about a third of the wood siding, a couple of double hung windows, and all of the bead-board ceilings. We also found a family tree (Davis family) on two typed sheets of paper, 8 solid wood doors with original hardware and jambs, a box of 50 year old mason jars, some old copies of the Atkins Chronicle (the local paper, dating to the 1950's), and a couple of light fixtures. Since we are insane, we actually thought that we could get more out of the house while working on the Devil Queen. I really wanted to strip the Davis House down far enough to haul off the 2 x 4's for an art studio. We didn't make it in time though. I can't even begin to explain how disheartening that was.
posted by John | 7:30 PM
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