Help With This Old House

For decades this old house was a print shop. Towards the beginning of the 1900s this old house was the home of the Marietta Times. My neighbors had their wedding invitations printed here in the 1960s.

Since I've been in printing and publishing for most of my life, the appeal of the building's history was immediate to me.

The oldest part of the house has a random plank Pine wood floor. It is one of the highlights of this home.

Presses require water. To run plumbing and electricity to the presses through the years holes were drilled into this great floor to run water and electricity from the basement.

All of the holes are pretty disguisable, with the exception of one, the biggest one, a few steps from the front door.

I always thought that I could find an old floor grate somewhere and drop it into that hole and make it look like it was always meant to be there. That was years ago - procrastinating, procrastinating, procrastinating.

Now, with the help of Barb's Dad, Bill, it's finally happened.

There is a very neat architectural salvage warehouse in York. I love this place. I love the idea of recycling, reusing. I've always thought that this is something we'll have to learn from Europe, rather than our constant cycle of rip down and rebuild.

I found a rusty, old, and very heavy, iron grate with a working lever to open and close the grate. I grabbed it. I think it was like five bucks.

Bill took it and kindly had it "bead blasted" for us. It took all of the rust off and made it shine like almost-new. If it looked completely new it wouldn't have gone with the rest of the house.

He brought the grate over on Saturday. It was beautiful. I looked down into the grate and there was a production date inside - June 26, 1894.

There was some talk about spray painting the grate. But, Bill and I agreed it looked best just the way it was. Bill quickly measured and sawed just a little hunk of floor off and the grate dropped right into place, a perfect fit.

They also had an ancient urinal at the architectural warehouse, but Barb wouldn't let me buy that.

A big thank you though to Bill and Susan for coming over on Saturday. Bill brought the work ethic and knowledge, and Susan brought the sugar cookies to keep us working. And thanks to Debbie and Ellis for surprising us with a visit also. That Ellis is a treat. I think Freckles has finally recovered emotionally from his visit.

Bill also tweaked our rain barrel outside. BIG THANKS! And he continued by helping us handtruck the window air conditioning units back to the basement. THANK YOU!

Hopefully by next Spring this old house will have central air, and we can just concentrate on the sugar cookies.