We’ve discussed floors, walls, and now it’s time to discuss the Carriage House gym ceiling. You wouldn’t think a ceiling would be very interesting, but the Carriage House has a gorgeous ceiling. Trust me when I say, when you are laying on your back staring straight up while trying to bench press your body weight and the only thing you have to distract you from the strain of your questionable choices is the ceiling above you, you’ll be glad you took the time to make it look gorgeous. When I say gorgeous, I mean that in a rustic sort of way that’s appropriate for this building’s age and style. We’re…

I’m too excited to bury the lead. We hid a time capsule in our stone Carriage House! *In my best Oprah voice, “You get a time capsule, and YOU get a time capsule, but only if you find it!* It is not a secret that I am unabashedly on the hunt for buried treasure on our 250-year-old property. Surely, surely, there must be some cash, gold coins, or Prohibition-era liquor hidden somewhere, right? Unless someone already found it. Hmmm…nope! I refuse to believe it. Hope springs eternal around here. Plus, my treasure hunt is just good, silly fun. Renovating and restoring a property as old as ours is no easy…

The adventure continues on our stone Carriage House gym project. Today, we’re talking about the concrete floor problem. Or shall we call it an opportunity? Hmm. I’m not feeling that generous yet. It really was an issue. The worst part is we should have seen it coming. Here’s how we got in this predicament. We took down a non load-bearing stone wall in a very old building. I’m not casually or disrespectfully throwing out the old adjective. This building was originally a garage for a horse-drawn carriage and dates back to the late 1700s. Old is a compliment. We use it for a home gym now. I’m sure our forefathers…

How do you remove a stone wall? The same way you build one. One stone at a time. That was not intended to be a glib response. That’s the short answer. If you want to know the specifics of taking down a stone wall, including how fun the process is, you came to the right place. The fun part is easy to answer. It’s not. I’m sure there are worse tasks though. It’s best not to think about it or wonder how long it will take. Find that happy place in your mind and get to work. As to the specifics of how we took down a stone wall, I…

Welcome back to the series on our Stone Carriage House Gym expansion. Today, I’m going to show you how we added a window to a stone wall. My speciality is very niche topics that less than 1% of you will ever need to know. Below is the stone wall in question. As you can see, aside from the window headers, the entire window opening is fieldstone and brick. The bricks will be removed partly for aesthetic reasons and partly because we need to remove that window grate. We don’t know why there is an iron grate instead of a glass-paned window in this wall, but it made the building drafty.…

One thing that will wreck lime mortar on a fieldstone wall are ice melt products, specifically salt. Learn from our mistake this winter. We have a concrete porch wrapped on two sides in fieldstone. The fieldstone is adhered with lime mortar. Not a classic application of fieldstone and lime mortar, I know. Everything was fine until that concrete porch got icy during a winter storm. It was so treacherous. We didn’t even think about it and scattered some deicing salt on the concrete. I know, I know. You don’t have to tell me that stuff is not great for the environment. I’ve vowed to do better, especially after this debacle. …

Our stone Carriage House was built in the late 1700s before indoor electricity and plumbing existed. Just think about that for a minute. If you had to do your business outside, that building is old. If you want to do your business inside this old building, some retrofitting is going to have to happen. Today, we are going to talk about the pipes in our Carriage House and how they clogged up the flow of our restoration progress as we’ve been repointing this building’s stone foundation. To plumb an all stone building, you’re going to have to bust through the 18-inch thick stone foundation or walls in order to insert…

Work on our stone Carriage House gym continues and today we’re going to discuss old windows. It is hard to explain the window situation on this half of the building. I think the short answer is someone thought windows were overrated. Natural light? Who needs it? Glass panes? Metal grates are stronger. The longer answer is that on the end of the building we are currently restoring, there are two small window openings with cast iron grates instead of glass panes. Were glass panes ever there? Maybe. There is no longer evidence of them if they were there. Poof. History erased. One of the grates on the west facing side…