The Cross House

I have been restoring houses for four decades. During these years, I have always infilled missing plaster with sheetrock. In the Cross House, I covered over the highly damaged plaster ceiling in the house with sheetrock. Then, I discovered something extraordinary. Something I had never heard or read about in all my decades of working…

So, I am gonna ask y’all for your help. Close your eyes, cross your fingers, and say: Ross is gonna move into the Cross House in 2021! Ross is gonna move into the Cross House in 2021! Ross is gonna move into the Cross House in 2021! For, I need all the powers of the…

          Of addition note: Y’all will recall how much work I did in the corner regarding the built-in gutter. Since doing all that work we have had almost no rain. But…on Tuesday it rained and rained and rained so when I arrived at the house I ran up and onto the…

In 2014, not long after I purchased the Cross House, I discovered that a stained-glass window had gone missing. I was shocked, as all the stained-glass seemed intact (although in perilous condition). I detailed the missing window in this post, and knew that I would eventually recreate the lost window and return it to its…

    The scale of the paper design surprised me. I had thought it MUCH larger. You can see how well it complements the stained-glass.     I am ridiculously excited about the wall paper. It will hang 20-inches below the ceiling, and a picture rail will separate it from the frieze above. The room…

2020? A friggin’ roller-coaster of a year. Geez. Geez. I purchased the Cross House in 2014, and each year has proved distinctive. The year 2017 was the most enjoyable, something wholly not anticipated. I, as with so many, was just crushed by November, 2016, and I dreaded 2017. Dreaded! HOW would I get through the…

  Your guesses: A piano from IKEA with instructions in Swedish Wild guess: a window Kitchen sink Curved glass for the tower window I will guess something that is really needed….a box of money It’s…it’s a man – I see him! How about the marble slabs for under the sink or toilet It’s your custom…

  I only needed four rolls! This should not have surprised me as there is really only one wall in the room, the temporary wall. Otherwise, the room largely consists of a 5-foot-wide pocket door, a mantel/overmantel, and three windows. Ross excited!    

    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,…

The Cross House has three towering brick chimneys, leaping out from the roof. But only the north chimney is visible below the roof.     An issue with the chimney, a huge issue, is that it sunk 2-1/2-inches over the last 126-years. This also dragged down the gutter, meaning that rather than water from the roof…

I have been thinking about 2020 all its intense shocks. And then I thought about Mary. I did a post on her passing in April. Ever since, when writing a post, I often think of Mary, and feel sadness that her humor, intelligence, and zest are now missing from the comments. I feel sadness that…

When the Cross House was built in 1894, it was common for higher-end homes to have a patterned wall paper, a 20-inch high patterned frieze, and a patterned ceiling paper. In the two-story stair hall, fragments of all three papers are extant. In some other rooms, wall paper fragments have also been found. It was…

  And, what a year it has been. Geez. I wish all of you a joyous holiday season, and a healthy holiday season! Much love to all of you! Ross  

In 2017, the fabulous Bo visited the Cross House and one of our many adventures was finding a wealth of wall papers behind a huge radiator. We manfully dragged the stupendously heavy radiator away from the wall, its weigh no match for two men fueled with…historical curiously. Could anything withstand such a force? I think…