Front of House

We spent the weekend scraping the old paint from the door and windows. The paint was in bad shape and a lot had peeled off. We're trying to weather-proof the woodwork outdoors before the weather gets bad to prevent any more water damage and moisture. The lower level windows in the front now have their first coat of primer. The doorway will get a coat later this week and we're working on getting the new portion above the door built.

Fixing the Front Door

Lately we've turned our attention to weather-proofing the outside of the house and fixing the giant mess that has been made out of the front entrance. In the painting below you can see the original entryway, complete with beams above the door.

This is more or less what the door looks like now-

And here is a pic of the house in the 1980s, when it was looking a little better-

The previous owners removed the upper portion of the entry and replaced the 3 windows around the door with stained glass. This showed off the windows more but the house really looks like it's missing a piece and we'd like to restore it as close as possible to the original architecture. Unfortunately we still can't find any photographs from before the remodel so we're having to go off the water color and other photos from Greek Revival style homes of the same period.

Another problem with the upper beams having been removed is that it opened up the facing column details to a lot of moisture and has caused them to rot a good deal.