A Thrilling Discovery!
See the nice, beefy wood trim under the lap siding and above the stone? That is the water table. It thrusts water away from the foundation, and is distinctive to the Cross House.
There’s a lot of information about this in a previous post.
When I purchased the Cross House in 2014, a lot of the water table trim was missing. In order to replicate this, “knifes” had to be custom cut at great expense.
When the work was completed, the knifes were given to me, encased in red wax to protect the sharp knifes and protect people from being cut by the knifes.
While all the water table for the Cross House was milled and installed, the knives were still vital for the carriage house water table, which is almost entirely lost.
About a year ago though I realized that the knives were missing.
Eek!
Eek!
Eek!
No matter how much I searched and searched and searched the wax-covered knives could not be found.
It seemed impossible that I tossed them into a garbage as I knew their great value (like $800) but where were they? Every few months I commenced with another search.
Resulting in zip.
ARGH!!!!!!!!
ARGH!!!!!!!!
ARGH!!!!!!!!
A few days ago, needing a container to mix the mortar for the north chimney with the colorant, I thought: Don’t I have a big black bus pan in the basement?
I did!
It was under the huge work table, and filled with old Christmas lights. Hauling the lights out, Santa offered me a gift…
…the “lost” knives, in their protective wax casings.
I have zero memory of why the knives were in the bus pan under Christmas lights. This is soooooooo not like me.
I do know however that my joy was great in discovering them.
Very great.
12 Comments
Leave a Reply Cancel Reply
Your email address will NEVER be made public or shared, and you may use a screen name if you wish.
Hi Ross,
What a perfect early Christmas present. Serendipity such as this always comes just at the right time.
All the latest developments at the house look wonderful. I hope the upcoming Season treats you well.
Colin
Santa wanted you to get going on that mortar…and he gifted you once the work commenced!!! Win!!
OK, now tell us where you put them. So if you can’t find them again, you can search your blog and find the hiding place!
Ross, if you were Catholic you would have asked St. Anthony to help you find them. I understand he’ll even help non-Catholics. You could’ve saved yourself many months of angst.
Elves, or aliens? Hmm…probably elves, the aliens would have taken them with them. They have taken several items from my house over the past year and I am not sure who to complain to about the situation but I am not happy. What possible use could they have for 135 year old brass screws from a pantry door hinge? If they show up in your basement, let me know.
I’d put them in a labeled box with a printed out copy of this post to explain what they are in case someone else decided to help you by cleaning up if you have ever pass the house on.
Don’t you just hate when you put something away for ‘safe keeping’… and it’s so safe, you can never find it again? Been there, done that.
“I put it in a safe place” is a byword in my family. We know to be kind and keep our eyes open when we hear it. And often the gremlins will unhide things once they hear us ask if anyone has seen the fill-in-the-blank. I agree with Barb. I’m sure putting the question in the blog counts as asking out loud and will encourage the gremlins to become helpful.
well around here when something turns up in a completely different room for no apparent reason, we blame the ghosts. And it happens a lot.
Brita, I have lived with ghosts in several homes. In my ca.1900 late Victorian house, I felt like I was being invaded by someone trying to get my attention. Yes, myself and several others have seen different apparitions/ghosts here. A lot of things happened here, but thankfully, one day I had enough and ordered it to leave my house and not return, and thank God, it left. I have continued to have paranormal experiences every now and then, but no one has decided to take up residence.
Ours get a talking to now and then too. One annoying little poltergeist (a young boy) was banished, but we choose to live with the other two. One of the remaining two seems to be the last owner and he was a friend. We can usually predict the circumstances when he will make himself known. We’ll say – “boy Fran is going to be upset about this”. Sometimes it is actually amusing, and it gives the house a timeless, homey feeling. Other times he has managed to alert us to a potential problem – like missing shingles.
We had ghosts in our first house, though we never actually saw them. We heard them every once in a while, moving around in the attic. (Would have thought it was mice or just creaking wood, but the dog would NOT go up the attic stairs when we were hearing those noises… and she normally LOVED the attic.) We felt like they checked us out when we first moved in, and kept an eye on what we restored over the subsequent years. We must have met with their approval, since they never made us feel unwelcome – but they never helped us find things. I guess our ghosts were slackers!