Termite Hall Featured Content

It's Copper, Who Knew?!

Angela Trigg angela@angietrigg.com — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 20:09:40 PST

In the last 5% of things left to do before I can paint (which always takes 95% of the time), I'm prepping the trim in Grandy's Room. Yesterday I started washing them down, including the doors and windows, baseboards, etc. Today I continued that upper-arm-toning exercise and had reached the door that opens into the main hall which contains a transom window. Since this house has no CH/A, I want to utilize all the old methods of keeping a house cool in the South and so wanted to get my transom window working again.

Of course layers of paint had caked the hinges to the non-budging stage, and there was an accumulation of paint drippings around the rod mechanism that opens it, so off to Universal Hardware (Mobile's independent hardware store that has been in business since 1949!) to get some Strip-Eze stuff. My desire was simply to get it free of enough paint that it would open again, and also be smooth enough to re-paint.

Imagine my surprise (actually I think my exact quote was "Oh my f*&^%^% God!) when after I had dabbed a little on the rod mechanism where the paint was thickest and had started to scrape it off and spied copper gleaming through!! Why in the world did my ancestors paint copper???! Of course I immediately hopped off the ladder and ran over to The Wing (where my aunt lives) to tell her the exciting news (It's the little things, you know). Naturally, the washing-down-the-trim job was abandoned for the afternoon and on went dabs of goo onto the rod mechanism, plus any other door hardware in the room. It's proving hard to really get it nice and clean, so I may have to get enough off around the screws of the rod and remove it to really get it clean. Or maybe I'll hunt around for a wire brush; there's bound to be one around here somewhere...

I just can't believe it's copper and am so excited by this accidental find. It will look really nice, especially with the green I plan to paint the walls. I'm now also dying to know if the rest of them in the house are copper!

Beating Back the Jungle

Angela Trigg angela@angietrigg.com — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 21:31:06 PST

Before

After

This past Saturday after attending the Chili Cook-Off in Bienville Square I came back and took a stab at clearing up some of the beds in the front of the house. This section was full of volunteer Cherry Laurels and a few Japenese Plums (which I saved to plant elsewhere). Hopefully the monkey grass where I dug the saplings out will grow back soon. There's so much yard maintenance to do, that I think I'm going to work on the yard during the weekends and not Grandy's Room. Sunday I wore myself out trying to clear an overgown bed in the sideyard: first I weed-whacked it, then turned the dirt using The Claw, and then trowel-sifted to get out the pernicious weeds.

Oh Plaster Where Art Thou?

Angela Trigg angela@angietrigg.com — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 19:03:54 PST

I've now moved on to the western wall of Grandy's Room and have removed all the paneling off of it and discovered several interesting things. One - there's some stenciling on a portion of the wall, and Two - about half of the wall is covered in a rough kind of surface that doesn't feel like plaster! And the stenciling is on part of it, and beneath the wallpaper. The rough part actually feels like cement, and seems a lot stronger than the plaster.

Could the rough part just be where the plaster has had its top coat come off to expose the scratch coat? Or is it some kind of early 20th century repair?

Since the paneling was put in about 40 years ago, that makes the wallpaper below it probably about 50 years old, and then below that is the stencil, which is on both the finished plaster and the rough part. That seems to indicate that the stenciling was done to try and disguise the rough areas? Pictured above is a section that shows the stenciling on both the rough and smooth areas. It also shows where the rough and smooth areas meet and some of the rough part seems to "spill" over onto the smooth area, which makes me think it's a repair job. Does anyone know what plaster repair was like back about 60+ years ago?

Some other interesting things I detected. The lower picture railing was there before the wallpaper, as there is a ghost outline on the plaster, and I discovered nail holes for it underneath the wallpaper. There's a ghost outline at the higher height on the plaster too, but I can't tell if it was also on top of the wallpaper. Hopefully the last wall will reveal that part of the story.

Grandy's Room: An Update

Angela Trigg angela@angietrigg.com — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 20:02:55 PST

Been back in Mobile since Feb 2, and have been working on the room in the afternoons. Basically it's a lot of caulking, scraping, and mudding! I'm really struggling with not getting distracted, or discouraged. One trick I've been using for that is just focusing on one wall at a time and just getting really into it and doing whatever needs to be done to get that wall paint-ready.

Each wall has decorative paneling on top, a layer of wallpaper, and then the original plaster. So far the worst plaster was the first area I tackled; the walls on either side of the fireplace. The rest so far has just been bad cracks with some occasional holes. Hopefully the trend will continue as I remove more paneling around the room. Yesterday I discovered the ghost marks of where picture railing was attached that was lower than the latest height for it in the room. I think I might go with this line when I re-attach the molding (which I saved).

To remove the wallpaper, I'd read a handy tip in the Family Handyman magazine that white vinegar will help. So, where it was no longer loose (some patches peeled away easily), I soaked it with vinegar, and sure enough, off it came! Where the plaster is pulling away from the lathe, I'm anchoring it back with some washers screwed in:

At this point, I now have two walls in pretty good shape, though some areas still need more layers of 'mud' and some caulking. That leaves two more walls! But before I can tackle that, I'll need to move the furniture out of the way; no small feat with the four-poster bed, as it weighs a ton!

See more photos

Biggest Damn Democrat in Mobile

Angela Trigg angela@angietrigg.com — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 23:37:00 PST

There's a lot of family history here, and one of my fondest memories as a kid was listening to the stories my great-grandmother, known as "Grandy", told us! She lived to the venerable age of 94, sharp as a tack. It was her mother that had bought Termite Hall back in 1919, and Grandy was a suffragette when she was young, and according to my grandmother, she never missed an election. My family has always been Democratic, but unlike many Southerners, they never went the Dixiecrat route-- they were FDR fans, and then huge JFK fans. My aunts remember volunteering for Johnson. Progressive politics is always the main topic of conversation at the dinner table, and I loved hearing my grandmother (Ma-Ma) rant about what a "damn fool" W was. I thought it only fitting to recount here a transcription of a story Grandy used to tell. I've told it since to friends, but this is an actual transcription from a tape recording made by my cousin Pascal Rapier in 1973.

Pascal: Uh, Aunt Gina, could you tell us again about the little boy, uh, the Demouy boy that was lost and that all he knew was that he was a Democrat?
Grandy: uh huh. Said tell you again?
Pascal: Yeah.
Grandy: Why?
Pascal: Uh, for the tape recorder.
Grandy: Oh, you want to hear on the...
Pascal: Yeah, I want to get it on tape.
Grandy: Well, there was this boy and his name was Demouy
Female voice: Who was it? Who was it that was lost?
Grandy: It was Mama's brother
Ma-Ma: Augustus Demouy?
Grandy: His name was Gus, Uncle Gus. And he was, uh, have you got the thing on? [the tape recorder]
Pascal: Yeah. It's on.
Grandy: And he was playin' out in the yard. He was jus' 'bout two years old, well, maybe not, well he was two. And somebody came through an' left the gate open. And he walked out of it and walked on down the street. And then after he'd walked some distance, he wanted to go back home, an' he didn't know how to get home. So he started cryin'. And a policeman heard and came up there and says "What's the matter little boy?" An' he says, "Lost." And the policeman says, "Well, that's nothin' to cry about, I'll take ya home. You tell me where you live." He says, "What's your name?" An' Uncle Gus says, "Democrat". He said, "I didn't ask you what you ... uh, [laughter] what you were, I asked you what your name was." An' he says, "Democrat". And so the policeman says, "Well, where do ya live?" An' Uncle Gus says, "Democrat". An' so that's all the policeman could get out of him. An' so he took him down to the guard house where there were other policemen thinking that maybe some of them could get somethin' out of the boy. Well, the same thing happened, they asked him all sorts of questions an' everythin' they asked him, he said, "Democrat". [Laughter] So then they, one of 'em said, "Well, I bet he's old man Demouy's son because he's the biggest damn Democrat in Mobile!" And so, uh, on the chance, they took him down to Grandfather's store an' Grandfather asked the policeman, "What's all this? What's happenin'?" So the policeman told him the whole story.