#672 Ozarks Bungalow Research

Research continues on the history of our Ozarks Bungalow.

Research is fun - no matter where you do it.  I especially love research at the library.  And I've been known to spend a lot of time searching online sources from home.  This time, though, our successful research started at the Hair Shed. 

Through my hair stylist, we are lucky to meet Margaret, a descendant of the family who owned the lot before our house was built.  Sadly, this grand Victorian house burned around 1910, four years before the 1914 construction of our bungalow.  Here's how it stood proudly on our corner lot in 1907.  

Hinchey, R. E., & Berninghaus, O. E. (1907). Aurora: Lawrence County Missouri. St. Louis, MO: Buxton & Skinner, Printers and Publishers.

Through Margaret and her friend Carol Ann, we are introduced to Betty, who lived in the Ozarks Bungalow in the 1930s.  Betty's grandparents, the second owners, purchased the house in 1930 and lived in it for 50 years.  Here's what the house looked like in 1937 while Betty was living here. 

Lawrence County Historical Society (Mo.). (1900). Lawrence County in pictures, 1937. Mt. Vernon, Mo.: Lawrence County Historical Society.

Betty stopped by last week to help us figure out the alterations made by her grandparents in their big 1958 renovation. We still haven't discovered the original floor plan, so we're thrilled to hear Betty's stories about the now nonexistent back door, the pocket door that may or may not be still inside the wall, and the back porch that was re-used for the expanded kitchen.  

Yours in researching our house and meeting our neighbors,
Mary

#671 Ozarks Bungalow featured in American Bungalow

After years of subscribing to American Bungalow, we now receive our copies in the mailbox at our very own Ozarks Bungalow.

The latest issue is of particular appeal.  For one thing, we love the wisteria on the cover.

And inside (on page 8 to be exact), we find our Ozarks Bungalow included in the family album:

We're excited to be included and we look forward to continuing our renovation documentation here in our blog.  To see only our posts about bungalow renovation, just click on the the bungalow label at the right.

Yours in being part of the bungalow family,
Mary

#670 Overhead Garage Door Returns Home

They just don't make them like this anymore.

Our Overhead Door opener Model H is is 60 years old, has been in constant use since the 1950s, and still works well.  

We decide to replace it in order to take advantage of the modern-day safety stops and remote controls. But what to do with our classic?   

We offer to donate it back to the installer, Overhead Door of Springfield, and they snap up our offer.  Soon our Model H will be getting the rest it deserves, in an exhibit at the Overhead Door district office in Kansas City. 

Yours in recycling,

Kelly

#669 Thanksgiving donation to Habitat

Shortly before Thanksgiving, we empty our house of unneeded items and make a donation to Habitat for Humanity.  It's a win win.

Steve and Glen from the Springfield store pull up out front right on schedule.

And soon, they're carrying out two built-in cabinets.

The fireplace mantel goes too including all that lovely pink marble.

There are lots of other building materials to donate too, so that gives us time to get to know each other as we fill up the back of the truck.

Springfield's Habitat for Humanity is doing good work and we're happy to be a part of it. Our items went straight to the sales floor at Habitat ReStore where anyone can shop for architectural artifacts.  The proceeds help with local housing needs. And we've moved our own Ozarks Bungalow restore project several steps forward. 

Yours in recycling,
Kelly

#668 Halloween Bungalow

To put us in the spirit of the season and to let the neighborhood know we're here, we decide to decorate more for Halloween than we ever have before.

We replaced 3 white light bulbs with orange bulbs on our front porch.  Whew!

But then we see this cool bungalow on the The Craftsman Bungalow web page and we start to think we should go bigger. 

Yours in preparing for the season,
Mary

#667 Our Gypsum Lath Surprise

Our Ozarks bungalow was built in 1914, the heyday of finishing interior walls with lath (thin wooden strips nailed to the framing) covered with several coats of smoothed wet plaster. The wet plaster oozed between the lath to form 'keys' which hardened as they dried, locking the plaster to the wall. You can imagine this was not something 1914 homeowners took on as a weekend do-it-yourself project.  It took a lot of time and skilled labor to install lath and plaster.  Here's a behind-the-scenes peek at one of our lath and plaster walls where you can see the vertical wall studs, horizontal lath, and oozing plaster keys frozen in time since 1914. 

So I was both surprised and puzzled when I opened up one of our interior walls and found no lath, no plaster, no oozing, no keys, but instead this:

What's up here?  From the back, this wall looks to be covered with modern drywall, clearly not from 1914.  But it's odd that each drywall strip is only 16" wide. My first thought was the wall had been remodeled and I had found where a drywall crew used up their scrap.  But upon closer inspection, I saw the drywall strips have two factory-finished edges.  So they were not field-cut scraps.  They were created as 16"-wide strips at the drywall factory.  Hmmm.

Take a close look at the photo for more clues.  The wall shows ghosts of a previous lath-and-plaster wall.  See the gray horizontal lines on the framing boards spaced at the same width as lath?  That's where the wet plaster originally oozed between the now-missing lath. The vertical studs show a pattern of two nail holes where each lath was attached.  So at one time, this wall too was covered in authentic 1914 lath and oozing plaster.  But then what happened?  Why remove the lath and plaster?  Once removed, why would a builder use 16"-wide drywall strips rather than full 4'-wide sheets to rebuild the wall?  Hmmm.

About the time we were sleuthing our walls, I was pleasure reading Norm Abram's book Norm Abram's New House and came across a paragraph Norm wrote just for me:

By the time my father built his house, the system had evolved into fastening panels of rock lath (a rigid gypsum core with a paper covering) that were sixteen by forty-eight by three-eighths of an inch thick to the studs and then applying about three-eighths of an inch of plaster: a base coat of brown plaster and then a finish coat of white plaster or plaster tinted to the desired color of the room.

Of course I fact-checked Norm with a specimen sliced from our own wall.  In the photo below, there's our 3/8" thick gypsum lath at the top layered with multiple coats of seamless plaster to form nearly an inch-thick wall surface just as Norm described.

Combining this revelation with other more visible clues, we've concluded our house underwent an extensive remodeling in the 1950's when builders were in an extended period of transition converting over from the old-school labor-intensive lath-and-plaster approach to the speedy modern drywall. As part of that 1950's remodeling, most of our original 1914 lath and plaster was ripped out and replaced with then-popular hybrid gypsum lath. 

Surprise. Ours is a 1914 Ozarks bungalow with mid-century gypsum lath walls.

Yours in wall sleuthing,
Kelly

#666 Steam-O-Rama

On a fabulous fall Friday, we head to Steam-O-Rama, the Ozarks Steam Engine Show held annually near Republic, MO for the last 53 years.

The last time we attended was in 1996 when our nephew was not quite 2 years old and when photos were still taken in black and white.   Back then, we spent a lot of time near the steam-powered bubble-making machine. 

Our interests change as we grow older and this year, we arrive in time for the parade of equipment.  Sometimes - just for fun - we call it the cavalcade of power! We sit in the grandstand as the announcer describes the steam engines during their slow (2 mph at top speed) march across the field. Each steam engine has a unique whistle used for communication and today used for our entertainment. 
The parade also includes gas engines and other antique tractors such as this orchard tractor, designed to pass easily under tree branches.

My favorite entry is the orange tractor with the engine in the back.  I especially appreciate the color coordination.

 Kelly's favorite tractor at the show is this Ford 4000.

And from the Johnston archives, here's the Ford 4000 Kelly used back in his farming days.

Yours in looking forward to the 54th Steam-O-Rama,
Mary