Shop Local, Shop Unique

In our area of Southwest Virginia, we have been hit hard by losses to manufacturing and population, an unhealthy obsession with chain stores, and minimal appreciation of historic buildings. All of that has combined to kill off downtown areas that were once thriving, leaving many empty storefronts. Many of our communities are beginning work to reverse that trend with the help of federal and state programs like transportation funding for downtown revitalization, CDBG funds, historic tax credits for building restoration, and tourism initiatives like 'Round the Mountain and the Crooked Road that highlight our local heritage artisans and musicians.  Many of our communities are still a long way from being destinations for tourists, but there are some specialty shops and restaurants that are drawing visitors for an afternoon.  

We're trying this holiday season to shop locally where possible to help encourage more local businesses in our area and put more money back into our local economy.  It might cost a little more, but the gifts we're buying are unique and better quality than those we find at the big boxes and the atmosphere is much more jolly, which is definitely worth the extra investment to us.  Here's our shopping plan:

1.  Shop Locally-Owned.  Shop the unique shops.  We visited an alpaca farm, an Amish store, and an old and newly restored mercantile this weekend.  We met the owners of each of those businesses who were more than happy to chat with us, find out where we were from, and answer any questions we had.  We know exactly where (and to whom) our money went.  Can't really say that about the big box store, can you?
   
2. Shop Hand-Made.  How about a gift with a little imagination?  Go hand-made!  In our area, 'Round the Mountain provides lots of options to find beautiful, unique, and well-made gifts from local artisans.  Don't feel like leaving home to shop?  Look around on the Etsy website to find all kinds of hand-made items that you've never even thought of, but that might be the perfect gift for that hard-to-buy-for friend.  And while you may purchase something at Etsy from an artist or crafter in California or France, it's still the same principle: you're shopping a small, locally-owned business so you know exactly where your money is going.
   
3. Shop Made In USA.  And when we find ourselves at the big box store with just a day left until Christmas?  We'll look for the "Made in USA" label.  And vow to shop earlier next year.

So That's How the Birds Got In

We've started removing ceilings in the project house.  The floor to ceiling height is pretty low in most rooms (less than 8 feet), so we want to maximize that where possible.  There's some places with strapping that apparently once held, or was going to hold, sheetrock over the cracked plaster that we're taking down, some saggy ceilings where we need to figure out what's going on underneath, and some with water damage.  

We also moved the trim pile around on the third floor so we could tackle the one remaining section of ceiling that we had been putting off for months.  We had found in these ceilings, which are essentially in the finished attic space, that some critters had moved in and made a very significant nest.  They'd been gone for a long time, but they had left some less than desirable remnants of their previous home.  We never were quite sure what was there.  I think birds because there was a lot of straw involved in the nest, but there may have been some bats around the chimney too.

Removing that last part of the ceiling wasn't as bad as we'd expected.  Apparently, they'd lived in the center part that we'd already taken down.  What we did find though, was that there was a gaping hole all along the gable line of that end of the space!  It's a wonder we didn't have a new crop of creatures in there this summer, but I guess we'd made it rather inhospitable in there.  

Someone had taken down the outside trim around the gable, in preparation for what?  Who knows.  The roofer had warned us about it, but we didn't realize what he was talking about and that there was an actual HOLE there.  Since we don't have a ladder tall enough to reach the end, we fixed the hole from the inside using 1"x6"s, our trusty reciprocating saw, and a few nails.  Figures that it wasn't as easy as it might seem.  Nothing is straight and there's a vent pipe going through the roof there, but we got the boards in.  We went out side and started looking at the other ends and it looks like we've got a couple of other holes to find and fix too where the trim was removed.  More fun with the Sawsall and foam sealant to come! 

Measuring To Create New Plans

We hit a milestone of sorts last weekend.  We finally finished the major part of the demolition of our project house.  There are still a few saggy ceilings left to go and some other odds and ends like removing the siding from the interior of the kitchen(!), but the walls are finished.  We spent some time this weekend remeasuring all of the spaces so we can draw out the plans to get our building permit.  We'll be adjusting the existing floor plan to make it work better for the way people live today and to correct some changes that were badly made in the past (e.g., closing up a window to create a bathroom in an awkward place).  

The house will probably have 4-5 bedrooms and 3.5 baths when we're done.  None of the rooms currently have closets, so we'll have to make space for them, preferably without making the bedrooms any smaller.  The laundry room will be moved from the unheated back porch to the second floor where it is close to the bedrooms.  We'll open up the kitchen so that it flows into the rest of the house rather than being closed off as it is now.  The 2 front rooms will likely become one large livingroom.   And we'll have to figure out how to handle a couple of oddly shaped spaces.  

Drawing the plans will help us make some of those decisions as well as determining where the electrical, plumbing, and HVAC should go.  The house was obviously cobbled together and expanded over the years and really had no character-defining features on the interior, but it has good bones.  We can definitely create a warm, livable home for the 21st century while maintaining the house's street presence and improving the neighborhood.

The Purgatory of Demolition

We have been in demolition phase of our newest project for far too long. We've been busy (this blog has suffered too) and have had just a couple of hours a weekend to spend on the project for most of the summer.  You'd think we'd be more motivated since we're paying monthly dumpster rental fees, but we're just not getting it done.  Between jobs that often require evening events, lawn mowing, too hot summer weather, and just life in general, we've gotten ourselves stuck in demolition purgatory. 

Hopefully this weekend we can finish the last wall and start removing the necessary ceilings.  It's high time to start putting things back together.  Two dumpster loads have left the premises already which included the old roof, plaster and lath, ceiling tiles, old insulation, and sheetrock among other undesirable trash.  We have been recycling as we can, but there's still a lot of debris.  We've got piles for reusable lumber, trim to be stripped and reused, wiring and other metal, aluminum storm windows, fixtures, hardware, chimney bricks, the old cabinets...We've still got a lot of nail pulling and paint stripping ahead of us, but we can do that without a dumpster so, at least symbolically, we'll be headed out of purgatory!

The Economy of Preservation

We spent a nice day in Lewisburg, West Virginia last weekend.  One reason for choosing Lewisburg for a day trip was that it is close to our home in Southwest Virginia, but beyond that, even though we didn't consciously make the decision based on historic preservation, all of the reasons are inextricably tied to it:

• Lewisburg has a sense of place.  The minute you enter town, you know you are somewhere special and not in Anytown, USA.  History is evident from the old buildings and the tree-lined streets.  The business district has character and draws you in.  This is a place you want to stop.
  
• Lewisburg is pedestrian friendly.  Though several main roads connect in town, all of the roads are 2 lanes with parallel parking.  The parked cars and street trees help to provide a barrier between pedestrians and traffic while also slowing the cars driving through.  Why are the roads narrow?  Because the buildings are historic and were built at a time when pedestrians and horses were the norm or few people owned those new-fangled automobile things.
  
• Lewisburg is compact, yet expansive.  What do I mean by that?  The area that comprises downtown Lewisburg is just a few blocks, creating a compact area to walk around.  No sprawl here.  But it is expansive enough that you can spend an entire afternoon here eating lunch (and maybe dinner too) at a local restaurant; browsing the galleries of locally-made and high-quality arts and crafts, antique stores, and specialty shops; and taking the historic walking tour.  You can expand your trip to the evening too by taking in a show at Carnegie Hall and spend the night at a local B&B.
  
• Money spent in Lewisburg stays local.  The majority of businesses are locally owned and not owned by a faceless conglomerate in another state who doesn't really even know where Lewisburg is.  That means that money you spend in Lewisburg most likely returns to business owners and employees who live locally.  If they, in turn, spend the money they earned from you locally, then the returns to the local economy snowball.

I don't know the logistics of how Lewisburg became the community it is today, but I do know that many small towns have used federal and state historic preservation funding and tax credits to help them revitalize and reinvent themselves after experiencing extended economic downturns due to lost industries and changes in the way people shop.  What does federal and state preservation funding accomplish for these towns?  It creates jobs.  It creates jobs for the people who restore and rehabilitate the historic buildings to be used by restaurants, galleries, specialty shops, grocery and hardware stores, office space, apartments, and a myriad of other uses.  It creates jobs for the business owners and their staff that occupy the historic buildings.  It creates jobs for tourism-related businesses such as restaurants, lodging, and gas that are needed so visitors can spend the day, spend the night, spend the week.  These may not be the large-scale industrial park-type industries our politicians are thinking of when they chant the "more jobs" mantra, but these small local businesses are important for rural economies, small town residents, and the American way of life.  And funding to help with these preservation projects is vital to our economy.  That might not be so obvious if you live in Anytown, USA.

Forces of Nature

We were very fortunate last week.  We live in Virginia, but weren't effected by either the earthquake or the hurricane.  We felt a little shaking, we had a little breeze, but nary a drop of rain.  Many owners of historic houses in Virginia were not so lucky with reports of collapsed chimneys and facades, cracks in brick and stone, uprooted historic trees, long power outages.  Things could certainly have been worse, but they are certainly not easy for those who received damage and must now make the tough decisions about repairing, demolishing, and rebuilding.  Preservation Virginia, the Virginia Department of Historic Resources, and the National Trust for Historic Preservation can all help historic property owners in Virginia with resources to make those tough decisions.  An article in the Alexandria Times talks about the importance of earthquake or hurricane bolts in the historic brick buildings of Alexandria in keeping damage to a minimum and mentions Virginia's last major earthquake which was centered in our county.

Our thoughts also go out to those New England and New York where flooding from Irene has caused unfathomable damage to historic buildings and structures.  It's just heartbreaking to see covered bridges washed into swollen rivers and water flowing through buildings.  I grew up in a New Hampshire town with a covered bridge connecting it to the next town.  Fortunately, the water levels weren't so high there as to put the bridge in danger, but I can certainly empathize with the pain people are feeling for lost bridges.

In our current economic situation, it's hard to believe that any of the bridges will be rebuilt, at least not as iconic covered bridges.  I don't think that it is nostalgia that necessarily drives our emotions when we lose historic bridges and buildings.  The loss of a sense of character is powerful.  The covered bridges and quintessential New England villages draw people because they are different.  They have a very strong sense of place.  You can tell one bridge or one town from another.  You know you are somewhere special the minute you enter town.  Much of our construction today evokes "Anywhere, USA".  From bridge to buildings, you can't tell where you are.  You could be in Connecticut or you could be in Texas, the styles of newer structures and chains tend to be similar.  We're losing our regional architecture and, with it, our sense of place.  That's why it is so painful to see catastrophic damage to the historic structures that define the uniqueness of our communities.  That's why we should make an effort to repair or reconstruct rather than demolish and replace.

 

Vinyl's Final

Well, not really.  Vinyl really isn't final, no matter what the salesmen will have you think.  You might not have to paint it, but you'll have to replace it when it cracks or otherwise starts to look shabby.  If you have vinyl siding near the ground on your house and you have a penchant for weed whacking, it's likely you'll crack the siding yourself the first time your power tool throws a rock into it.  

So, no, vinyl isn't final.  In fact, as a preservationist, vinyl is the enemy.  It is a covering that removes the architectural character from trim, windows, and gables of historic homes.  It holds moisture on the siding it covers, causing the original siding to deteriorate.  It lasts 20 - 30 years before replacement if you're lucky, but the wood siding that was covered will last many, many more years than that if properly maintained.  From an environmental standpoint, the chemicals and amount of energy used to make vinyl siding are certainly not green.  Vinyl siding cannot be recycled when it is replaced and so it goes directly to the landfill where it probably doesn't break down or is incinerated, releasing it's toxic chemicals into the air.

So why am I talking about vinyl.  It's because I have a confession to make.  We used vinyl on our project house.  <Gasp!>  Here's our reasoning:  The house had badly curled cedar shingles cover the attic dormer and ends (you can see them here). The shingles needed to be replaced.  The house is a bit of a hodge podge of vernacular construction, from the simple, non-matching windows to the asbestos siding.  We're going to flip the house and, frankly, we live in a rather depressed area, so we're looking to keep costs low and the house comfortable while still maintaining the house's character.  We wanted to keep the feel of the shingles on the third floor.  We priced out cedar shingles and vinyl siding that looked like shingles.  The vinyl was much cheaper.  We figured that since the siding will be so far off the ground, it won't be obvious that it is vinyl, it won't be damaged by rocks thrown up by the mower, and it's not detracting from the house's character by covering any existing details.  

So we did it.  We used vinyl.  We'll turn in our preservationist membership card if need be, but we stand by our decision.