CARPORTS AND ELEVATORS

The carport and porches are ready to frame!  We poured the carport, porch beams, and elevator pad last week.  I can't wait to see the house with the porches back in place.  People around Commerce have probably forgotten that there were porches, because they were torn off when we moved the house to fix the foundation last year.  The gable that was on the front porch was saved and has been under plastic at the back of the property.  It was in good enough shape to keep, so it will be back in place before long.         
                                          

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!

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

DEMOLITION DERBY...

You're probably gonna say, "What were ya'll thinking?!", when you look at the condition this old house is in.  It looks like a dream to me.   A dream come true!

The house has 4 fireplaces.  This one is in the dining room.  Sadly, through the years, the beautiful original wooden mantels were replaced with brick surrounds.  We have antique mantels that will go back on each fireplace.  We'll use original brick for the hearths.

Same room-the boarded over window is on the right side.

Love, love, love discovering things that are original to the house!  Found this window in the "every day" living room after removing the sheetrock.

The pattern in the handrails is the same pattern from the original house.

The front porch must be completely rebuilt.  It was all wooden except for the square concrete you see on the left side.  This section of porch was not under roof, so we think the Knights poured the concrete here because it was exposed to the weather.

Don't miss that falling down wallpaper one bit!

upstairs hallway

Loved finding all the layers of wallpaper under the sheetrock.  Every layer tells a story.  The following picture is the oldest wallpaper in the house.  Almost 100 years old and still good color!

This wallpaper is in the everyday living room around the fireplace.  Can't believe the house didn't burn down when this happened!  Lucky for me and whoever lived there at the time!

I kept every sample of wallpaper that we found in the house and made a collage.  This hangs in the music room.  We found the frame in the attic.   I think it was a salesman's sample.

UGH!  This is the downstairs bath after the nasty fixtures were removed.  Still looks nasty! :o/

This was a bathroom when the Knights built the house, too.  They had a clawfoot tub in it.  We'll use this as a half bath.

Not so nasty anymore!

What house isn't complete without a little graffiti?

This upstairs bedroom belonged to Ella Knight, John's sister. (yes, his wife was also Ella)  Later, Joe and Lona Knight had this room.  I've been told that Ella was a very large lady who had a hard time getting up and down the stairs, so the family would go upstairs to visit her.  Sometimes, several of the Knight boys would carry her downstairs for a visit.

This is one half of the sleeping porch.  The other half is my closet.

One of the upstairs sleeping porches was turned into a closet.  Guess they didn't mind how out of level it was?  This was the boy's sleeping porch on the southeast corner of the house.  The girl's sleeping porch was on the southwest corner.

This will be a second upstairs bathroom and closet.

Howard Knight's room was called the little red room because of the red wallpaper.  We found that wallpaper when we gutted this bathroom.  This will be the master bath.

This is the tub that took the elevator ride.  It came from Rick's childhood home.  The tub has made several moves with us.  I think it gained weight with every move!

The stairway is between the parlor and the dining room.  We wanted to be able to see the balusters and handrails that we'll put in, so part of the parlor wall was removed.

The original handrails are too low to pass code, so we'll have to build new ones.  I'm keeping a section of the rails to use as some kind of decoration.

It was nice to see the original siding after removing the asbestos kind.  You can tell where the original kitchen window was before the remodel.

Talk about a boy's dream coming true.  My grandson, Riley, got to chunk these bricks out of a second story window!!  The bricks are from a fireplace that ran from the dining room through the upstairs bedroom and sleeping porch.  All the fireplaces had to be torn down when we moved the house to put a foundation under it, because the bricks went under the house to the ground.

As you can imagine, there are hundreds of pictures which aren't posted!  We don't even know how many loads of debris we hauled from the interior.  Work began in earnest this week, so future pix will be of the new work that's being done.

To all the Knight descendants who might follow the progress...

Rick and I are honored to be able to restore this piece of history!

We hope all of you will be able to attend the historical marker ceremony that will take place next year!



WELL..NOW THAT'S A DEEP SUBJECT!

The main floor of the house had a covered back porch that served as the main eating area for the Knight family for every day meals.  Betty Knight Wallace told about the huge table that was on this porch and how she was a little scared to eat there because a cistern was right behind the table.  She was afraid she would fall in.  Obviously the cat you see in the bottom of this cistern (right side) knew nothing about this story!
The cat story... Two different fraternities lived in our house at one time and had converted this back porch into a second kitchen.  After years of leaking plumbing, the floor was rotten.  We discovered the cistern after tearing out the floor.  Unfortunately, the cat discovered it the hard way.  After borrowing a 20' ladder from the hardware store (the cistern was that deep and at least 10' in diameter!), much chasing, and a little hand biting, we finally got the cat out.  Haven't seen him since.

The cistern was capped with a concrete cover at first.

More pix of the back porch/kitchen/mess...

Rick is working on our breakfast nook table.  He's making it from one of the original doors in the house.

The porch will be our breakfast area in about 9 months!

 And so it is!



WERE YOU RAISED IN A BARN?

We were spending so much time in Commerce working on the property that we decided to buy the lot and barn next door to live in while we restored the house.  The Knights built the barn in 1924 after their first one burned. They reused some of the lumber, and some of the floor boards in the loft still have charred places on them.  Once again, we found ourselves doing major clean-up on the grounds before we could start repairing the barn, but the end result was well worth the trouble.

 Chad and Rick

This was after much clean-up had already been done.  As you can see we inherited a bus and an old car that had to be removed.

The barn had sunk down into the ground so much in some areas that it had to be jacked up about 2 feet!

Bois d' arc blocks are awesome!  Even though they had sunk into the ground, they weren't rotten!

Good-bye bois d' arc, hello concrete!

Our living area and a bedroom are in the loft.  We covered some "foot-sized" holes with license plates, so our grandkids wouldn't break a leg.  Our 2 year old grandson was a little leery about walking around in the loft.  He would step over every crack.

Obviously, there is good soil around a barn for growing things!  Must be the 100 year old manure.

Home, sweet home...for now.

...in the loft

  main floor bedroom

Our kids can really say yes to that proverbial question!

Were you raised in a barn?

CLEANING... A LOT...

We've estimated that we hauled off at least 60 dump trailers full of debris from the property.  That doesn't even include the stuff from the demolition of the interior of the house!  Here are just a few pix from the outside clean-up.

 

just one of the outbuildings

   we tore down

 

got really tired of hauling

        these away

This was Lorene Gray's house, located directly behind the big house.  She took care of the Knights for many years.