rustic detached garage workshop to do

[Scott Douglas]

AND it has another barn for you to expand into as well!

[masraum]

Originally Posted by Scott Douglas

AND it has another barn for you to expand into as well!

Yes. Dirt floor in that one, so it may take some work before that was ready for much.

[masraum]

As far as we can tell, the downstairs is original wood floors, and much/most of the downstairs is shiplap (walls and ceiling). There is some siding in one room downstairs that we assume was added during a renovation at some point (guessing 80s-90s).

It's got central HVAC with a full Trane system that was installed 1991, so I think that's when it was renovated. It's also modern copper romex and PVC for plumbing. Downstairs has a full bath with semi-private toilet, clawfoot tub and separate small shower. Upstairs has a half bath that looks like it was squeezed in above the downstairs bathroom.

The ceiling downstairs is probably 10' or maybe a bit more. The ceiling upstairs is only about 7'. We are hoping that there's a way that we can expand that up a bit, maybe remove the drywall and open up to the rafters, but that's not going to be any time soon.

I peeled back a corner of the carpet upstairs last Sat and it looks like that's original wood flooring too. We are hoping the entire upstairs has the same flooring.

The upstairs is roughly T-shaped and is all drywall. I got into the attic space and it seems to have some rough old planking with drywall over the top of it. We may at some point (depending upon what happens with the ceiling, change the upstairs to shiplap to match the downstairs. It's just an idea at this point.

The siding is all cement board, hardie board or something like that. Things like casing around windows, fascia, etc... are wood, and some of that has some spots of rot. We are probably going to replace any wood with something like hardie so we don't have to worry about rot.

I'll start another thread on the house itself. The son is getting married in March and wants to do it at the house (outside assuming the weather supports it), so we aren't going to do anything big/major that may not be finished in March or would ruin the atmosphere for the wedding. That gives us a chance to think.

In the stairs in the house, there are 3 photos. One of the photos is of an old couple, and the other two photos are before/after of the renovation. I'll get better photos of those now that we (nearly) own the place. I am hoping that there may be text or a note of some sort on the back of the photos to provide more info about when they were taken or who the people are.

Before


After

[billybek]

Very nice!

[masraum]

Since the house is old (for around here) I was curious to see if I could discover any of the history of the house. I found an owner from the 90s and reached out via email. The gentleman called back last night. They bought the house in the early 90s and renovated it because it had been boarded up for a long time and was run down. That's why the HVAC all shows as having been installed in 1991.

He advised that when they moved in, the upstairs was an unfinished attic, and they finished it out so their kids would have rooms and more space. He said it was using old tree stumps for piers so they had the foundation dealt with. Downstairs was shiplap with large sheets of a cardboard like material over the shiplap. When they pulled that off, they found something that said (this guy had an amazing memory to remember this from 30 years ago), "his house built by W E Ermis Oct 1924"

I thought I'd try to search for any "Ermis" family in the area, and found a fair amount with the best stuff being on findagrave.com. That lead me to a William J Ermis who would have been about 18 in Oct of 1924, but his father was William F Ermis who would have been about 43 at that time which seemed to me to be about the right age to be building a house. On the findagrave website, someone had taken a picture of the gravestone for William and his wife. And the gravestone has a photo at the top.



The house has 3 photos in it, two are before and after the renovation in the 90s and the third is of an old couple.


I'm pretty sure that I've found the original builder and his family. I'll look them up and reach out at some point to see if they have any more info.

I also found out that someone since the renovation has taken a wall down between two rooms downstairs. We had no thoughts or plans to put that back in place, but after talking to the missus, she's considering putting a wall back. The room is long and narrow, and having 2 rooms would give me a place to work, an "office" of sorts.

And I think it may be possible to get and use a 5G connection for work if I can't find any wired high-speed Internet.