The Cross House

              Tomorrow I will run all through the house tracing the original locations of all these errant bits. I anticipate having a highly enjoyable time.    

The dining room of the Cross House has a lot of DARK brown trim. Experience however has taught me that what I am looking at is mostly old shellac, which turns brown over time. So, I have long wondered: WHAT was the original finish to the dining room?     The original faux-wood finish is…

The kitchen of the Cross House has two windows. There is a HUGE double window facing south. And a large single window facing east. Unlike almost all the other window sashes in house, the kitchen sashes are glopped with paint on the inside. Layers upon layers upon layers of paint. Ugh.       The…

When the Cross House was built in 1894 it would have had a coal-fed boiler for the radiator system, and a coal room. There were also eight coal-fed fireplaces. I just assumed that the boiler and coal room were in the basement, but over time I began to notice that the physical and historical evidence…

  In my previous post I offered a lot of conjecture about the history of heating the Cross House. In 1999, Bob Rodak removed an ancient boiler:       Looking at the boiler I would date it circa-1950. Are there boiler experts out there? If so, how old do you think the boiler was?…

      Huh? Why would anybody cut a large hole right at the foot of the stair???????? The hole was not original. And there is no trace of the hole today while standing on the first floor (the oak flooring on the first floor is circa-1950). Justin and I stood in the basement staring…

          The column was utterly devastated by a leaking gutter above. Many decades of water just ran down the column. I have repaired the gutter issue. At the moment I have no idea of how to recreate the column in its entirety but am confident that if people can be sent…

        But where was it from? Luckily, Bob Rodak came by the house today. Bob sold the house to me in 2014. So, I asked Bob about the short rail. “Do you remember where this was from?” Bob pondered a moment and replied: “I think…think…maybe the south exterior entrance?” After Bob left,…

Circa-1950, the Cross House was converted by Scott Mouse, Jr., into the Palace Motel. There were two motel rooms on the first floor, five on the second, and six in the basement. In the hot summers, in an age before air-conditioning was common, the latter rooms would have been sought after. There were also accommodations, dorm-style,…

This morning I was delighted to find more dinner pictures in my email inbox from Jamaica! Thanks, Jamaica! All names are given left to right.                      

I only took a few images of the day-after Thanksgiving dinner because I knew Scott would be taking images and video. I received these yesterday. Sadly, there is no overall images of all of us sitting down to dinner! If you attended, and took images, please send them to me! After spending 40 minutes trying…

In every old house I have ever owned, or restored for others, I have taken a special pride in creating beautiful basement windows. Such windows are normally overlooked, even in otherwise restored homes. But I love being in a basement and looking through clean, restored windows. It is an unexpected…pleasure. In the 1894 Cross House…

  Tomorrow I will do a post about today. But for now enjoy Lindy and her band of merry young revelers.