drilling pier holes for porch beams
concrete guys working on the carport
Rick and Eric working on roof and windows
Jack and Riley loved watching the concrete truck! (Tim, too)
Okay, I know you're wondering about the elevator. Anyone who has known us for long, knows that we don't stay in one house for more than 5 years before we sell. (such is the life of a home builder)
The elevator is how you'll know that we plan to stay here until we can't even get up and down the stairs any more!
This is the elevator shaft. It's inside the pantry, but will be entered from the hallway by the downstairs bathroom. Speaking of the pantry.... John and Ella's bedroom was on the southwest corner downstairs. We've been told that the only furniture in the room was a bed and a chifferobe. That's all the room they had, but the bedrooms upstairs are very spacious. I probably would have rather had this tiny room downstairs away from my NINE children, too! Anyway, their bedroom is now our pantry and elevator shaft.
Riley "helps" the guys pour the concrete pad for the elevator. |
| Elevators are great for moving 500 pound claw foot tubs to the second floor! Rick (and several other stout men) turned the tub up on it's end in the elevator and sent it up! I'm sure that tub had never had an elevator ride before-even though it's a hundred years old! Jack calls the elevator "the elligator". |
I'm sure people wondered why we were pouring concrete through the back window!
new framing for the fireplace in the parlor
new roof
Amazingly enough, the house only had one bad leak in an upstairs bedroom. We're glad to get the roof done before winter weather sets in!
...and I can't wait to see these lightning rods back on top! There are four in the picture below, but we have five. In a picture we have from the seventies, you can see the ball on one of them, but I guess they were all broken by the time we got the house. Another picture sent to us by Carolyn Abbott, daughter of Bill Cummens and granddaughter of Leita Knight Cummens, doesn't show any lightning rods, but I know they are original, because they are dated 1898!
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| Same wall-not quite so ugly. |
Whenever I see these lightning rods I always think about the Knight's first house that burned. The story goes that when Leita was a young girl she had a fox stole that she liked to dress up in. She was twirling it around when it got too close to the fireplace and caught on fire. The house burned to the ground. Wouldn't you hate to have to live with that for the rest of your life!! That first house was built around 1904 as you can read in the following newspaper article. Our house, which is said to be a smaller version of the first house, was completed in 1914 (see article). Incredibly, I can't find a newspaper article about the fire. I say "incredibly" because they wrote about every little thing that happened back in those days. If someone went to visit a relative, it was in the newspaper. If someone visited you, it was in the newspaper. If you had a party, it was in the newspaper. If you were sick, it was in the newspaper. You could really keep up with Joneses, if you wanted to. The Knights were in the newspaper every week for decades, since the late 1800's. That's another reason why I can't believe there was no article about the fire. I love reading those articles, though. They really were quite eloquent back then. Just read the following article that the Knight's wrote after their house burned, and you'll see what I mean.
As you can read in the last article about our house, J. L. Greer was the builder. When we tore off the baseboard in the dining room, his name was written on the back along with Commerce, Texas.
hard to see, but cool, nonetheless
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