Right.  That is why I was surprised when I saw the value wasn't the purchase price.  When it sold higher they spared no time in jacking that valuation all the way up.

I believe I forgot to mention a part of the PVA visit.  When talking to the PVA he said "My dad is 90 years old and when he was a child he was in that house and told use stories about it".  So the house itself has had people talking about it for a very long time.  

Plumbing update.  

I fixed to more leaky pipes tonight.  One was compression fitting that had a constant drip and the other was ruptured pipe under the kitchen sink.  I removed the compression fittings and put a valve there while making the repairs as that line feeds half the house.  After doing both repairs I turned the water on and I could hear it rushing full speed into the crawl space.  Most likely another compression fitting that blew apart when the lines froze.  This time it is far back in a crawl space and I'm not sure that I will even fit.  There is an air handling system in the crawl space.  From the looks of it they put in the air handler and then built the floor over top of it.

I turned off the valve I added and made sure everything else was off.  The water meter was still slowly ticking away.  The former owner said there used to be a water faucet in the yard but someone ran over it and then patched the pipe.  So most likely I have a water leak somewhere on the main supply line under the yard.  

Let me start by saying I don't paint(to anal). I am a carpenter if you need help on a big project hit me up. However, I can't guarantee I won't be busy.

The pitched roof isn't that bad I would use foam on it but if you aren't comfortable there are always roof jacks.

The house sits on one of the main roads through town.  So it is already a thoroughfare.  The guy across the street is a real estate agent that moved here from Minnesota. If he had his way he would have all the property seized along the road, torn down, and then zoned commercial...as long as he was agent getting all the commissions.  He will probably oppose anything that I do as I didn't support him when was trying to get a permanent 3x3 foot commercial sign put in the front yard of his residential house.  He would probably sell the house out from under his mom if he could make a buck doing.  At least that is my impression of his.

Getting zoning changed would then open up the door for the crazy neighbor, the one venting massive amounts of chemicals in my back yard to have even more leeway to do so.  So he is the first problem that I need to take care.   Lots of options, such as offering to show the house to key city people at a time I know he is venting chemicals.  He is also a guy who admitted to stealing an mint condition Victorian walnut mantel out of the house when it was vacant.  Just ripped it right out of the wall.  He also stole some custom made original doors from the house and then started in on the interior shutters.  Then he told me I wasn't a good person and refused to give them back.

There are at least 4 trap doors that go up into attic spaces and there are at 4 trap doors that go through the floors into the crawl spaces.

The crew doing the 14/12 roof on part of my Victorian used a rope and foam.  This house doesn't have a steep roof but that coordination of moving around on it while working isn't a skill I have and I have no intention of trying to learn 25 feet above ground.  I might try the side that would drop my on the first story roof. That is actually the side the needs immediate work.

I plan on having a cook out first.  Once I get running water everywhere and the lights on everywhere.  

Rumors of him receiving bales of marijuana and bags of cocaine have been heard but I no insight into that.  The guy is running by his own claims "the largest antique stripping facility" in Kentucky, open 6 days a week out of a residential zoned lot, with no business license or permit, and venting all the fumes straight into my back yard.  I've contacted every department of the city and they tell me "they are aware of him" but do nothing.  He lies and tells them he is not a business so they leave him alone, even though I provided them copies of his website where he brags about being the largest.

In a thread in GD about asking an emergency dispatcher a question, I posted a question as I called the non-emergency number to report the fumes.  The response was 3 fire trucks to his door and then no one wanting to talk to me.  I was told the fire marshal could help.  He didn't, he told me it was an OSHA issue not a fire department issue, even though a bunch of people in the dispatcher thread "of course it is a fire department issue".  How does OSHA regulate a non-business entity?  So I'm not expecting anything to be done through the formal channels.  So I'm working on alternative ways to get things done. 

This is the room and fireplace where the mantle was stolen from.  I haven't really looked to find a replacement yet.

Yes, to all three.  The room is the parlor on 2 story Victorian side.  Craig had the initial 2 room house built in 1789.  It is a simple style, probably more basic than your federal style.  That was added on to at least 5 times.  In 1812 the 2 story Victorian was built as a separate house.  In 1860 someone busted out a wall on the 2 story and added on, towards the street, built the entry way connecting the 1789 house to the 1820 house, added the Victorian stair case, removed the exterior trim from above the the windows outside, and then put the Georgian style look on it.  In the picture below the window right in the middle of the picture, used to be the front door for the 2 story Victorian. 

It is pretty confusing.  Once you start closing doors the spaces become more defined and the different aspects of each house/addition become more visible.

This is the only picture that I have at the moment with the mantle in it.  The picture came from the previous owner.  He has the place staged like a museum.  You really can't tell much about it other than the general shape.  It was an original finish walnut Victorian mantle is all I know.

You would think that but not in this case.  On previous visits the former owner kept talking about how the house was Victorianized in 1860, the 2 story house was actually built before the Victorian era started and then modernized when they merged the houses.  It seems odd to say a house was modernized to the Victorian era but that is indeed what they did.  The staircase is the most ornate part of the house and it is still rather plain.  I never understood why the former owner kept referring to the Victorian part of the house because it is much more plain than my 1903 Victorian cottage.  Everything about the house is simple and plain, which is rather disappointing.  Still a great and interesting house, just nothing like a high end Queen Ann or Italianate style house.

Here are the original two rooms of the house that Craig built.

Main room


Bedroom




Here is another picture of the Victorianized parlor.  Not the best picture as I haven't gotten around to taking my own internal pictures yet.  Generally the most ornate pieces would be in there.  Other than the stairs that is as ornate as the house gets.  Every room has similar molding and shutters.

I will have to measure the space for the mantle.  Just an FYI on the mantle though.  The former owner would be considered a historic preservationist.  He replaced several of the mantles in the house because the mantle architecture was not 100% historically accurate for the period that the rooms were built.  So he found proper mantles that fit the style of the rooms and were built during the right years.  He is not a fan of anything that is a reproduction.

The guy is still in the area and has been a great resource for me in helping with my 1903 house and also insight for this house.  He said he would try to locate a proper replacement mantle and hates that the neighbor stole it.  He filed a report with the police about it being stolen and gave the officer pictures but the officer never bothered to do anything.  The officer just showed the picture to the guy and asked if he had it.  Of course the guy said no, even though the guy openly admitted to me that he stole it and did have it.  The bad neighbor pays local people under the table to do work for him and those people also know and talk to the former owner.  The workers told the former owner that the mantle was in the guy's shop.  That whole circle of people won't snitch on each other, so unless they get caught for something else and can give up details of other crimes to get a lighter sentence they won't talk.  I have zero hopes or desire to get the original mantle back.

I will try to get a better picture of the mantle so that you can keep an eye out for something similar.  The older mantles are still out there but getting harder to find.  I rather replace the mantle with something more ornate.  In my 1903 one of the fireplaces was filled in, covered over, chimney taken down below the roof line, and no mantle.  I pulled all of that out and restored it.  Around the same time someone was "renovating" a 1905 Victorian, same style as mine but larger.  They pulled a double height bird's eye maple mantle with columns and a large mirror built in.  They had taken out the fireplace and were going to sell it.  I was able to purchase that for $500 and put in in front of the fireplace that I had just opened back up.  Something like that would be too ornate for the Craig house though.  The great room addition of the Craig house has a huge mantle like that though.

FINALLY got around to reading this whole thing. 

Awesome find OP, and good luck with the work ahead!

As far as the spirits thing, do be careful with stuff like that. Sounds like some of the "investigators" could have done more harm than any kind of good. Unfortunately, most "investigators" are goth type kids (at least mentally) that are trying to get a good scare because American Horror Story isn't doing it anymore. You want to get interesting stuff, just set out a digital recorder when nobody is home, or you are outside. You may be surprised with what you get. We got Indian war drums once on the digital recorder (used to be a large Indian camp by our house).

Never, EVER, EVER use those particular board "games" EVER, nor ever ask anything to use you in any way. That gets into serious shit that you don't want to get into. I really can't stress this enough.

Generally, if the spirits are prior residents (and are intelligent), they will eventually pickup that you are restoring the place and calm down.

Very nice.  I can see why you say that this is a long term project

You laugh, I've seen plenty of shit.

The stories I could tell.......

The more time I spend in the house the more I appreciate it and it is growing on me.  Since it was pieced together the ceilings and floors in many rooms are different heights.  Also people were shorter back then and built shorter doors.  I do like the 10 foot or higher ceilings that many older houses have.  In this one only the entry way, the parlor, and library have them.  The great room has a 12.5' ceiling with recessed lighting but I prefer the Victorian rooms over it.  

I would have to ask the former owner about the cupboard in the bedroom to be sure.  I doubt they are original to 1789.  That room has gone under slight modifications.  At one point a wall was put up in that room to create sort of a hallway and allow the room to be closed off.  Right now from the entry door you take a left through the front of that room to get to the dinning room and other bedroom.  The room could be closed off now as there is a middle passage through the house but that came many years later.  

I've told him that I plan on having him over to the house to give me a completely history of the building process so that I can take detailed notes.  Working in the attics and crawlspaces I'm starting to figure out things as well. Half the foundation is limestone rocks.  Not huge cut limestone blocks like the 1903 I have but large rocks in a stone fence size.  The foundation will often give clues of what really happened.  

Sounds like you two should start a thread and I'll chime in.

Since we are talking about odd things, any wives tales or paranormal theories on what it would mean for a 4 foot long black snake to just appear inside the house?  

You live down south, isn't crap like that common?

Maybe Louisiana and Florida with all the swamps.  Kentucky, not so much.  I need to get my plumbing update posted so I can post a picture and tell the story.  It just happened and was maybe 2 hours after I knocked a huge hole in a wall.  See Kitties post about the ghosts getting worked up at renovation work.  The following night I was hearing voices inside the house even though I was the only one there.  That sound startled me enough that the hair on my neck stood up.

You will get used to it 

Apparently I have a rodent of some type in the attic of my 1903 place.  I just moved one of my security cameras to part of the attic to watch a box that has pieces tore out of it.  That just gave me an idea.  Instead of putting a digital recorder in the Craig house, I should just setup multiple security cameras with audio and live steam them.  Watching a crew dig up my lawn seemed interesting enough to some people.  Maybe they will want to watch a for movement or audio during the witching hour.

Mice

There hasn't been any food in that house for over a year.  So I doubt mice.  No signs of them.  Birds however do end up inside the house.  I'm thinking the snake tried to gain a position to snatch a bird.

But back to the paranormal.  On all the witch type tv shows what is one common thing the super natural characters do?  They either shape shift into an animal or they take control of the animal to see through its eyes.  I busted a huge hole in the wall, the next night within an hour of me being there working on the plumbing a snake just happens to show up?  Then the other night a bird flies through the house and gets injured.  I took pity on it, took it to the 1903 and have been trying to help it recover.  The thing stares at me all day long.  

I really need to contact the medium and get her over to both houses to see what she senses.  When I brought the bird from the Craig house to the 1903 house odd things started happening, such as the smoke alarm going off for no reason, voices, and noises.  It is probably all in my head but it does make one wonder.

As for the rodent in the attic, I have a security camera setup and a trap.  So far no signs of anything.

Do yourself a favor: watch those witch shows if you wish, but take them as entertainment and nothing more.

It's very possible something followed you home from the Craig house, the smoke alarm thing has happened to us too. 

Don't worry about it.

IM me if you like, I can say more privately.

I managed to informally get mentioned in the paper today.  I previously mentioned the two week review period just opened for property taxs.  The PVA has an article where he says he has received 50 calls a day from people not happy with the increased assessed value of their property.  I am in the fastest growing county in Kentucky and our property values have gone up 10% in the last 2 years.  Of the 200 complaints that he fielded he said "only one has filed for an appeal".  That was me, which I posted about back on Tuesday.  It seems even doing the minor work required to save money on taxes is too much work for pretty much everyone.  I don't understand why people call and complain if they aren't willing to do anything about it. 

That is all I due any way.  However, like most wives tales and superstitions there is usually some grain of reality in them.  My view on the matter is "life is for the living".  I see it as I'm living, I'm here, and this is my time and everything else just needs to deal with it.  

Plumbing Update
The update is plumbing will not be done anytime soon.  I patched 3 more leaks and installed a valve so that I could run water to the part of the house that I patched.  With the valve open it sounds like a garden hose is spraying somewhere in the my crawl space.  That is the same issue I had 3 repairs ago just on a different part of the line.  Also even with the valve and everything else off the meter is clicking away at over 70 gallons an hour, most likely a leak in the supply line in the yard.  I don't want to see the bill for using 1,700 gallons a day, going straight into the ground, so the water is staying off at the meter unless I'm using it.  Kind of a pain right now but I really don't feel like getting into a project where I tear up my entire front yard.  Too bad the fiber optic crew at the 1903 house couldn't run a line through this yard.  Thread for reference to that.  http://www.ar15.com/forums/t_1_5/1973272_Crew-lost-their--40-000-directional-boring-bit---Update-4-28-Settling-Issue.html&page=1

The crawlspace for that repair was too shallow for me, at least to feel comfortable crawling through it.  So I decided I would dig it out some.

First thing you have to do is find the secret trap door to get into that crawl space.  I had no idea it was there until the former owner pointed it out.  I will need to get a picture of it closed, which I do not have right now.




When you look in that crawsplace you can see some of the terrible plubling work.  You have a 1/2 inch supply line which feeds a full bath, laundry room, half bath, another half bath, two water heaters, sink, the kitchen sink, dishwasher, and refrigerator.  On top of that they used compression fittings.  Half those items were never finished but still a 1/2" line is not the right line.




So how shallow was the crawlspace?  This is after I dug it out.  You can see the area on the left, that was the level.  Maybe 4 to 5 inches of bucket are now above that level.  The area on the right still has stones going down into the dirt even though it looks like dirt.  So I didn't do anything to weaken the foundation.




A different perspective on the crawlspace.  Still just over a 5 gallon bucket deep but feels huge compared to how it was before.




Once I got past the sewer pipe the crawlspace opened up and I was able to shimmy all the way.  I had to use the camera to take pictures of the pipe because I couldn't fit under the last joist.  There's the problem, they used a PVC splice to connect galvanized to copper.  It works but when the pipes froze due to the management company not winterizing it properly the fitting was pushed off the pipe.  The second galvanized pipe is supposed to be capped somewhere because there are no lines that it would go to.  All of this needs to be dug out and redone.




After I got that pipe put back together I turned the water on see where it leaked next.  In the great room of the addition of course.  I had to bust out the wall to find it. The leak was unexpected and I was dirty, so the first night I busted out the wall, located the problem, and counted the parts I needed but didn't have time to get them from the store.






The next day I got the parts and came back to do the work. The sun was starting to set so I put a work light on the area and didn't bother with the room lights.  I had the fan blowing to dry the floor but angled it up to the ceiling when I started to work.  I did half the repairs and then noticed someone had thrown a 90 degree street fitting in with the regular ones so I couldn't finish the whole project.  It was dark but with lights around me I could still see outlines of things in the room.  I grabbed the top of the fan to angle it back down to the floor and the fan was soft and MOVED!!!!  WTF, then I noticed something which made me jump.  After the contact the visitor started to get down.  

Do you see him?




How about now?




In case you missed him.




During the hour or so I was working on the pipes, some how a 4 foot long black rat snake made its way into the house and decided to craw up on top of the vibrating fan where it would sit until I reached out and grabbed it in the dark!  


It took a few second to figure out what was going on, then I snapped the pictures.  Still not sure what to do or what type of snake it was I threw on some leather gloves, grabbed him, and put him in a bucket.  Once he was in the bucket it still took about 5 minutes for my heart rate to calm down.




So back to the paranormal thing.  I destroy part of the house, the next night a huge black snake decides to pay me a visit, watch over me, and scare the crap out of me.  The fan is a loud vibrating fan, the motor is in the middle, and it blows a ton of air so I don't see how the snake would ever think that is a good spot to sit.  The following night as I tried to finish the repairs I heard a banging noise and voices but I was the only one in the locked house.  That could just be my nerves from the previous night but it also felt as if something was messing with me.  

Once I identified it as a rat snake it down closer to the stream and let him go.

Taggity

How is the foundation on this old place?
Most the neat old places I see have some serious settling.

The foundations are pretty good.  The two story part had problems but it was reinforced years ago.  The foundation now is probably 3 feet thick of stone and concrete.  However, there is a middle foundation wall made out of limestone stones which is bowing. 

Garden update.  I got more of it put in.  

Another 20 tomato plants, 32 pepper plants, 14 watermelon, 5 sun flower plants, drip line irrigation run to all the tomatoes (55 total) and everything watered in.  Working with clay soil sucks.  The ground was already tore up with a backhoe, and rototilled but to dig the holes I have to use a pick axe.  To start combating the clay I put down about 500 pounds of compost in the holes.   Total required work, 10 hours of back breaking work to get those things done.  If I had decent garden soil that time could have been cut down by half to maybe 2/3's.  It took 45 minutes to dig the pepper holes and get them filled with compost.  Then about 15 minutes to plant 32 of them.   I also sprayed about 1/4 acre of poison ivy.  The old pond bottom is/was a lush poison ivy patch.

 I put landscape fabric down for the strawberries and the tomatoes.  That was planned well before I started digging and before I found a cheap source of compost ($15 for a cubic yard).  Now I wish I didn't have the fabric down and I would just use the compost as mulch everywhere and just keep layering it all summer.  

Last year I threw a few extra plants that I had in the ground at this house.  It turned out to be a pathetic garden.  Now I know why.  If I continue to do a garden here it will take some major reworking.  I might be better off completely digging out the soil and brining in all new dirt.  The place that has the compost sells a 50/50 blend of their topsoil and compost for $15 a cubic yard as well.  

I have pictures cropping and resizing them is going to have to wait as I am far too sore and tired to work on them.  BTW, I also post in the Keto thread as I've been on that type of diet since mid-January.  I haven't eaten anything in over 24 hours and still managed to knock all that work out.  I'm still not hungry.  Not having food cravings is a good thing.  

Here is the pathetic garden from 2016.  The plants initially grew ok but then quickly turned into a spindly mess and produced nothing.  Bad soil, no additional watering, and there area gets a lot of shade due to all the trees.  

It is the Craig house.  I will cut down, dig up, and replace the soil around every black walnut tree if I can't grow tomatoes.  That is a deal breaker for me.    That is why I said, if I bother with a garden again.  I have a Costco about 25 minutes away and buy everything I could want food wise, a farmers market is 2 block away from the Craig house, and we have several orchard/farms that sell produce.  I went way over board with seeds/plants this year, mainly because I didn't know if anything would turn out.  The primary purpose is to see what the land will do, as the previous owner constantly complained about things dying during the summer.  Clay soil and no water, plus 7-10 days of sun will do that.  That is why I put the drip line irrigation in.  If I'm watering the plants and they have plenty of compost with the clay and still end up looking like the pathetic garden then there is something majorly wrong there.

The tomatoes were planted by digging about a 1 foot diameter hole and digging it a foot deep.  The hole was filled with claybreaker (looks like mulch with gypsum) and compost.  So 80 of the soil the roots will initially be growing in will be free from juglone.  I just hope the compost is broken down enough to be useful.  

The garden is away from the majority of the walnut trees.  There is one near by that has a smaller branch that reaches towards the direction of the garden.  It will be removed when I have time.  From what I've read, as long as you are outside of the dripline of the walnut the effects of the juglone us minimal.  

Back on page one, the satellite view of the property with the red outline.  There is a circular garden in the middle of the property near the bottom.  I've actually pushed that garden towards the center of the property a bit more.  On the red line are two walnut trees.  In the picture with the blue outline, on the blue line right below that garden you can make out the main trunks of two trees.  Those are the walnut trees.  The strawberries are closer and they are not showing any signs of juglone affecting them. 

Very cool undertaking! Your sig line really means something.

My wife frequently tells me how much she'd love to have an old house and work on it. I am going to show her your pictures the solve that problem.

I think you're going in the correct order - fix the roof and the plumbing to prevent more water damage, then repair the other stuff. I do some restoration work as an engineer and I learn a bit about historic methods of construction. If you want a little more background, you might want to check out Donald Friedman's Historical Building Construction, George Nash's Renovating Old Houses and Eric Sloane's A Reverence for Wood. I've used all three of these to help determine methods of construction and materials for some of my projects. The Historic American Buildings Survey may have more pictures of the structure for you. I use this for bridges and "security-sensitive" structures when the local authorities refuse to allow me to take pictures, but it has a lot of stuff.

I was talking with an exterminator about the damn mice in the house despite the presence of a sociopathic murdering cat. He says that mice will nest inside just for the shelter even without a food source, so that might be why you have snakes.

Thanks for documenting this as you go. I know you're just expending energy with little in return, but I enjoy it.