Enjoying Spring in the Japanese Garden

When we bought our old stone house the gardens were thicketed, dried-up, overgrown messes. The front yard was plastered with untrimmed shrubs and the back yard, wow ... what a mess. I awaited spring when we first moved in to see if I could salvage any of the plants. Except for a couple of azaleas, fully-grown Magnolia and Dogwood trees, and one tilted sad looking huge Japanese maple, there was nothing worth saving. That sad old lilac spent her life sharing root and air space with the more successful maple. Her last batch of sumptuous flowers graced the parlor that first spring.

Since I had to essentially start over, and with my passion for Japanese, I sprung for a rugged, Wabi Sabi Japanese inner tea garden. There are 3 parts to a classical tea garden, the outer, middle and inner gardens. The distinction of the innermost garden is that it is the most natural. No clipped shrubs, very little color, and it looks and feels its best sopping wet.

I sketched out a rough layout incorporating the three large trees, added in a dry creek, and created undulating surface from what was a dead-flat yard filled with bricks (2-bricks-deep edging, all over) and landscape fabric (3 layers of it with an inch of soil between each.)

The garden will take years, maybe decades, to get to the point I envision, but here are some spring photos of the textures and color I have introduced. Hope you enjoy.

This tiny fern was one my neighbor didn't want any longer.

I add moss every chance I get.

Japanese Maple Shishigashira

Prized Japanese Maple Shirisawarum Aurum

Sensitive Ferns

Japanese Maple Koto No Ito. This is a Linearlobum type, whose leaves are little more than threads.

Service Berry, a native tree that blooms sparkling white in spring, gets violet berries in summer, copper foliage in autumn, and silver grey bark in winter. Its the perfect small tree.

Lungwort, the perfect plant for shade.

Huge Blue Hosta

Geum

This is not moss ... I am looking for what this tiny volunteer plant is. its lovely and always looks waxy and wet.

The trunk of the Japanese Maple that I inherited. Its growing into a good tree, albeit, with a ton of work.

Ruby Azaleas from a neighbor.

Dawn Redwood

Japanese Maple Ryu Sen

Japanese Maple Viridis in bloom. Those intense crimson flowers are about 2 millimeters across.

Japanese White Pine

Viridis

WE ALL LOVE BEFORE AND AFTER PICTURES

The Parlor

Both photos show the same wall. There were evident plans to add a fireplace (from the huge stone hearth int eh basement ceiling) but it never materialized ... so I got my own.

The Exterior

 Bathroom (sometimes you need more than one before photo to show the horror)

That tile originally was aqua green plastic, painted a few coats of white (with a brush), then some of dreariest colors added.

Window and door trim still needed.

Wake the baby, we're turning the old nursery into a library

We have a lot of books—too many books. So, over the past 2 years we have been, with mostly no real movement, making what was an old nursery into our library. There were layers and layers of wall paper (Harry Potter, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, other, non-specific childhood frightening characters) that we yanked off. We were lucky to discover, under a sconce, the original wall paper in pink and blue, which lead me to believe this was always a child's room.

We had some issues with the chimney above the room. Got that patched just last month.

Our plan for the room was always to "panel" it to look more studious and library-ish. We figured that we'll look smarter if the room is paneled. That took some time to design since I didn't wan to disturb the existing wood trim. decided on a plan of lattice strips to mimic board and batten style tall craftsman panelling. Were painting it—the room has always had painted trim— so no worries about matching any wood species.

Here are some during photos. The room needs to be completed in 3 weeks for an event in June so we're gangbusters on it, now. Will follow up with part 2 when we move in the rug and computers.

Original Wall paper scraps discovered behind the base plate of an old sconce. Interestingly, in other locations where we saw the same paper, the gold had turned black.

We have a bunch of stuff, it's all jammed together, it's covered in plastic and taped closed, and Yup, I work here.

The plastic is covering a 6x3 foot chunk of new plaster board I installed on the ceiling  after cutting out damaged plaster. Behind the wall is a chimney (no fireplace in this room) that was improperly capped and funneled water into the ceiling.

Test colors for the room. The "paneling" and all wood trim will be the deep grey, and I chose a darker green than shown for the ceiling. Oh, stop fretting, the room gets tons of brilliant light all day and is in no need of being "lightened up"' It's a library for goodness sake and should be sombre.

Bath Remodel (Part 4 of 4)

Finally the last bits of stuff are in place in the first floor bathroom redo.

See previous entries: Part 1; Part 2; and Part 3

The upper part of the walls was covered in a textured wall covering that needs to be painted. I tried a wash technique to emphasize the texture but it just looked dirty. I ended up painting it a tint of the lower wall color. The lighting in the room is strong enough to let the texture show clearly.

The first floor bath primarily is used by guests so we gave it a slightly more formal, and age-appropriate, style. To that end, I found a great ebonized hanging cabinet to repeat the other ebonized furniture in the house. All it needed was a good waxing and it looks great. Now to find some goodies to show off on the shelves and in the glass cabinet. 

The antique cast iron oil lamp sconces on either side of the medicine cabinet/mirror were wired for electric. They originally burned oil/kerosene. The milk glass shades are antique, too. 

We weren't able to afford a new floor (rip out the old tile, put in new) so we kept the not too threatening white and maroon tile floor we inherited. I'm not a fan of the particular shade of maroon—very 1980s, so to decrease its appearance I added a good bit of dark walnut wood items and am using only deep amber (brown) glass for storing toiletries (soap, mouthwash, cough drops, etc.). This has a net affect of making the maroon of the floor appear to be purposeful, more of a dark brown and less offensive/dated.

The huge walnut mirror was hung to add some dark walnut coloring as well as some formality—the gilt Liberty head at the top really is pretty grand and helps to carry around some of the gold and brass that shows up here and there in the room (new plumbing fixtures are all brushed nickel). There's also a walnut toilet seat to carry around that dark walnut color.

The medicine cabinet is still to be completed. When the wainscot was added it shortened the hole in the wall that was sized for a standard, off the shelf, medicine cabinet. I couldn't just buy one from Lowes in a correct size. There is also electric in the wall that I want to maintain access to so I built my own medicine cabinet to suit the space available. It's smaller in height and width than others, but its more than twice as deep as usual. The rear panel can removes to access the electrical connections. Finally, I'll add a door/mirror made up from one of my (many) antique walnut frames (more walnut, of course).  

All in all were pretty pleased, even if it was a LONG and sometimes rough road. Obviously, I still have work to do to get it completed, but some things just take a whole lot of time.

Parlor Photo Album 1

English Rosewood Settee, 1874

Moorish Side Chair, 1885; English Ebonized Mahogany stand, 1870

Seth Thomas Adamantine Clock, 1889; Chenille Embroidered Silk Velvet Mantle Scarf, 1890

French Bristol Glass Oil Lamp, 1880s

English Ebonized Mahogany stand, 1870; Ceramic Umbrella Stand, 1900

American Walnut Settee, 1875

Ebonized Faux Bamboo Folding Chair, 1875; English Ebonized Corner Cabinet with Marquetry, 1875

Aesthetic Movement Picture Frame, 1880s

American Walnut Parlor Chair, 1875

Under Porch Lattice

Like most old house porches, ours is build on piers that raise the floor about two feet off the ground. Unlike most, ours is made of brick and stone piers, steel structural beams and poured concrete with terra cotta tiles on top.

100% original to the house, the porch is suspended 26 inches above grade on brick and stone piers. The piers support decorative steel beams which in turn support the eight-inch thick concrete and tile floor. In the open spaces between the piers sit three original, wooden lattice panels which block the space beneath the porch from intruders (such as raccoons, cats and errand neighborhood children) but permit airflow to prevent damp, rot and mold build up.

Interestingly, the panels were not intended to be removable, as other panels are. Most others are screwed in place to a second wood frame or other supports. The ones on our house sit within masonry slots: brick on one side, stone on the other, cement floor on top and earth below. Additionally, there were wedges driven in behind the panels to prevent movement back and forth within the slot. the only way these could have been placed within the confines of the porch piers was to slot them in before et floor was constructed.

The Challenge

When we started work on the porch, scraping and repainting the panels was, of course, on my list. I didn't realize at that time that the bottom rail of the framed panels was fully covered with soil and almost fully rotted away. We dug out about 8 inches of soil, reestablishing the original soil level of the yard around the porch, and exposed the full lattice panel. Getting them out of the brick and stone slots was far more troublesome.

I want the panels to be removable in the future, since electric and water lines run under the porch. To maintain the proportions of the panels, and ensure they look as original as possible, I ended up carefully detaching the tenoned frames and lattice strips along the joints so I could rebuild them  to be a little shorter and be able to remove them in the future.

Boy is the Space Under the Porch a Mess

After the panels were removed we had an opportunity to clean up under the porch. Thankfully, the yard drains well so the porch was (cough) super (cough cough) dry (cough) and soooo dusty. Crazy dry in fact. We found a lot of leaves that blew through the lattice openings over the years, along with rocks that must have been thrown there during the building of the house. One was a cut stone that must not have been needed form building the house. Dust and tree and vine roots were everywhere and needed to be cleared out as much as possible. We also made a few "discoveries" of an old 13 foot ladder, a bunch of original window screens, some old gasoline and oil tins, and a strange contraption the size of a coffee table with folding legs that looks home-made. I think it was supposed to give the workers building the house a small platform to reach higher things. These treasures are now in the garage awaiting clean up and reuse somewhere.

Cleaning, Scraping, Priming and Painting

Once the opening and space behind the panels was cleaned up we turned to upgrading the panels. I set up a workstation in the driveway and started vacuuming thousands of spider egg sacks and cob webs off the panels (yuk). Next came scraping and sanding - no need for details on that. and finally rebuilding. This was a little more difficult that I anticipated since I had to maintain the space between the lattice strips as well as the thickness of the wood frame, while reducing the size by just a couple of inches. I hesitated to disassemble and rebuild the frames, but in the end that was the smartest and fastest way to re do them. I adjusted the openings by a fraction of an inch, sliding the lattice strips a bit to one side till I accumulated the 2 inches of space I needed. Then I was able to reattach the end frame timber. 

In all cases, the bottom framing member needed to be replaced in full. The frames originally were mortice and tenoned together, something I just don't have tools for, so I opted to use metal brackets to attach the new bottom to the sides. Im ok with that since they appear and are nearly as durable as the originals.

Right before I installed them I stapled screen fabric to the backside so no more leaves or other small stuff would blow behind them. This also better hides the remaining rocks and dirt under the porch, but still lets in plenty of air to keep it dry.

Finally

In the end I am really pleased with the cleaned and reinstalled panels. They are removable, look great and no longer do I have to worry about rotten wood.