Old Mission Home

Old Mission Home

  • A Concrete Surprise- How to Remove

    Hidden behind the walls on the second floor, a four foot cube with walls made of four inches of concrete. It seems like this was a water chamber that provided pressure for the rest of the house. Perhaps pumped up with a windmill. Deconstruction was really, really hard. The first couple of days with a…

  • Hornet Nest in the Walls

    This is the third or fourth big nest I’ve found in the walls. I think they were closed in when the siding was put on in the 20’s but it must have been noisy. There was one by the front door (dangerous), this one was near the bathroom. I don’t know what you could do…

  • Unexpected surprise- a cistern

    It’s hard to get a good picture- the cistern is about 10 feet deep and 6 feet across- and frankly it makes me really nervous to lean over it. It is round and made of stone with a smooth mortar finish. I suspect it was built with the house in 1902 and the woodshed addition…

  • Demolition Mess

    I’m not sure what the point of this post is except demolition is really a messy process. Be sure to wear your protective equipment. The cleanup is the worst part by far

  • Plaster Demolition- How Long?

    When we were planning this project I tried to figure out- can I do it? how long will it take? To be clear- there are many variables. It takes me about two hours to demo a 20×10 wall, keeping the lath separate. And it’s about another two hours to bag it all up and get…

  • Plaster and Lath Demolition-Crazy or Not? Why Did We Do This?

    Our house is a 120 year old farm house, our first thought was to preserve rather than replace. Why did we choose to go down this path? Each situation is different but this is what lead us to this point. The process is a mess- we’ll try to provide guidance to anyone else going down…

  • Forth of July on Old Mission Peninsula

    Lovely day, lovely people. This is the Old Mission “don’t call it a parade” walk, starting at the American Legion. The community here is so wonderful.

  • Pulling Up the Carpet and Linoleum

    I thought it made sense to start with the flooring. Uncovering the original floors was the only way to see what we had to work with. Upstairs was mostly linoleum which was stapled down (not glued) over roofing felt or, for most of the rooms, over several layers of newspaper. This meant there was very…

  • Backstory- Moving to a Beautiful Place

    How did we get here? We grew up in the Ypsilanti area and met in Ann Arbor. When we were first together we spent a lot of vacations (Spring break) in the Leelanau and Old Mission area. We’ve lived in NW Indiana at the base of Lake Michigan for about 30 years and in 2021…