Thank You for Your Service

Thanks to a boatload of help, over 2 Saturdays in November the Community Service team of Bucks-Mont NARI (National Association of the Remodeling Industry) gave a personal "Thank you for your service" to Wounded Warrior USMC Sgt. Jessica Clymer of Plumsteadville.

On November 15th we built her a new deck...

and on the 22nd we installed new kitchen cabinets.

Odell Painting is proud to chair the Bucks-Mont NARI Community Service Committee, and we couldn't have done this project without: Joe Ryglicki of Wehrung's Specialty Lumber; Kyle Adamczyk and Mike Stanwick from K&M Home Enhancements; John Gray of Gray Contracting Services; Peter Mergen of Mergen Co. Remodelers; Rick Conrad, Brett Rudolph, Sean Peck and Will Kiersch, all from Archadeck of Bucks/Mont; Sean MacKowski of Keller Mack Insurance; James VanLoon, H2O Medic; Laura Hawley, Ambiance Design; Peter Cardwell of PGP Group; Jamey Weisberg of JWeisberg Custom Builders; and Joe Wright and Terry Greco of MasterCraft Kitchen & Bath; and our NARI "captain" Kate Meadows. Lunch was provided by Project Hope and much appreciated.

'Tis the season... Happy Holidays!

~Ken and Carla

The Haunting of Helen House

The Haunting of
Helen House
 

It looked like a regular old house when we pulled into this New Jersey driveway in late spring for a wallpaper-removal job. The owner, a woman named Helen, had been a widow for a few years and her children were long grown and on their own. But Helen was not alone in the house.
   We all felt a little different in that front room, as if the molecules were somehow different. And there was an unidentifiable something in the air. From the threshold, Helen's dog watched us work day after day, removing the old wallpaper, repairing the original plaster, then painting as she prepared to put the house up for sale. "None of the dogs we've had over 30 years have ever gone into that room," she said.

   So here's how the story goes: In the summer of 1978, Helen and her family moved into the 1912 arts-and-crafts house that sat on the edge of a large municipal park, after the former owner, an elderly surviving twin, had been moved into a nursing facility. The realtor told the family that the sisters, whom he described as diminutive and isolated, had no family, only each other. After one passed, the other sister's health declined rapidly. The realtor was uncertain whether she was still alive since the house had been listed by the sisters' attorney.
  Almost immediately, the happenings...happened. Paint cans were piled up to the ceiling while the family slept, doors and windows left open were shutting and locking...and then there was the scent of perfume and cigar outside the front bedroom. Maybe latches or springs were worn or one of the kids or a prankster neighbor was up to no good. Perfume and cigar? Maybe it was a scent carried on the wind...
  They'd been in the house two years when Helen, watching the park department mowers getting dangerously close to her just-seeded rose bushes, walked out the back door and down the steps to halt the advance.
  "Excuse me," she said, "but last year you mistakenly mowed our new roses. We planted again so please watch out."
  "I know," the park worker replied. "Last week the little lady told me to be careful."
  "What little lady?" Helen asked.
  "I don't know. She came down the back steps and told me to be careful and said, 'The people in this house love their roses.'"
  He then went on to describe a short elderly woman with white hair pulled back in a bun, wearing a house dress.
  So for the rest of their time in the house, the family always included "the little lady" during holiday blessings. They talked to her as if she was at the breakfast table. They bid her "good night" when they pulled their covers up to their chins. While the pranks stopped, the scents were always there. Especially upstairs. Year after year.
  Eventually, Helen brought someone in - a "house healer" -  to help the little lady leave and find her way across. And eventually there came a time when Helen, now in her 80s, decided the house was too much to care for and that it was time for her to leave and move to a senior community. The day finally came for the kids, after finishing the packing, knew it was time to say their good-byes to the family home and have their photo taken at the very spot where the only person - ironically an "outsider" - ever saw their former ghostly resident.

  How do I know this story so well? I took this picture above. See the three "kids" on the back stairs? The woman on the lowest step is my wife, Carla, and she's flanked by her brothers. Helen is my mother-in-law. And the tale of the "little lady," a gentle kind of ghost story, is now part of our family lore.

Happy Halloween,
Ken

TIP: For DIY wallpaper removal, do these three things: saturate, saturate, saturate. Use a garden sprayer (better than a sponge) to thoroughly and quickly cover the surface area. Don't forget a plastic drop cloth. What doesn't pull off with your hands can be removed with a PaperTiger®, which can be purchased at any paint or hardware store.

And Now for Something Completely Different...

I dream about houses. Really. Ask Carla. Sometimes I wake up and am able to tell her the tiniest details of a home I “visited” in my sleep. But I recently began work on a house that I couldn’t have created…in my wildest dreams. If you drive down the Doylestown street where the house “lives,” it’s easy to miss. Hidden behind tree cover, you don’t get a glimpse of the dark cedar structure until you’re well along the front path. …And then suddenly, there it is!

When owner Chris Grebey opened the exposed-nail shiplap door, I was sure this was a historic home. And when I say historic, I mean really old. Small rooms, low ceilings, multiple front entrances.

But it's not that old. The original section was built in the 1930s and the addition went on in the '50s. You can see here where the two meet.

Chris doesn’t know much of the house’s history except that the owner at the time of the addition did the building himself, and was pretty thorough at continuing the “antiquing” details the original builder, who was a designer, had begun two decades earlier. And when I say details, I mean even the hidden ones. Take a look at this cut nail, used since the dawn of the Metal Age, I pulled out of one of the clapboards.

Then there are the diamond windows throughout the house....and the latched "cupboard" storage in the hallway...

And get a load of this tiny door, about 5-feet tall, that leads from the living room to the garden…

But what really got me going were these... I took a picture and did a fair amount of googling. They looked like finials - and they are - but I had never seen them as “icicles” before, dropping instead of crowning a structure or piece of hardware. Three of them adorn the front of the original house. Interestingly Chris, who is a project manager, used to be an anthropologist. So when her realtor kept showing her one cookie-cutter house after another, Chris was eager to “unearth” a treasure. “I wanted a house that wasn’t like any other,” she says. It certainly isn’t.

I'll update you on the house as we complete the job, before "weather" comes. Happy Autumn!

The Story of a House (a Love Letter)

Like   in   MAY 31 COMMUNITY SERVICE FOLLOW UP "I am so grateful for my beautiful new roof. I stare at my roof in the sunshine, the rain, and from the Towpath too. I truly believe that [the NARI community service team] saved my house and have given me a chance to remain a resident of Bucks." ~Gloria Kosco, Point Pleasant Odell Painting is proud to chair the Community Service Committee of the NARI (National Association of the Remodeling Industry) Bucks-Mont chapter. For more on this project, click on Gloria's house. The Story of a House (a Love Letter) The first time I went to the house, in 1993, I nearly missed the driveway. But as I turned off of Route 413 in Buckingham and stepped out of my truck, I truly felt as if I’d crossed a threshold in time, my feet firmly planted in yesteryear before an imposing stone house standing like a sentinel to a property that yawned to the acres beyond. In the ensuing years, I worked on and off for the family – some large, some small jobs – growing quite fond of Judge Isaac Garb and his wife, Joan, as well as of their grown children, Maggie, Charlie and Emily – with whom I mourned the passing of, first, their mother in 2009 and then of their father three years later. One of the last jobs I did for them was putting in and painting a new handrail on the grand center stairway for Mrs. Garb as movement became more challenging. After that the Judge brought me in to do some small handyman work, ending the day by sharing a cup of tea before I departed. But as is often the case, as children have moved on and parents have passed on, there comes a time to sell the family house. It’s not hard to find the turn now; a Mazaheri Realty signs marks the drive. I want to tell you about this house, and its family. And why a particular spot on their property provides me with a warm and loving memory. First, the house. Maggie provided a bit of published history: The oldest part of the house dates back to about 1740. The newer rooms – the front hall, two living rooms and large bedroom – were completed around 1810. Its Federalist-style façade and elegant front door with Palladian window were typical of stone houses built in the first-quarter of the nineteenth century. The house’s large, gracious entry hall, however, is unusual, a sign of the prosperity—and perhaps social ambition—of its early owner [Joshua Anderson]. ...The house remained in the Anderson family...[and] changed hands just once in the mid-twentieth century before Judge Isaac and Joan Garb bought the property in 1966. “I was only four, but I remember coming into the house for the first time,” Maggie told me. “It was dark and scary and Mom took down the heavy dark curtains and brightened up the house. They particularly liked the location because my father was now a judge and he wanted be on a major road so he could get into town and never be stuck when there was bad weather.” So here’s where I tell you about the Judge. If you’ve lived in the county for a time, his name might be familiar. He presided over the infamous “Mainline Murder” case where William Bradfield was found guilty of murdering Upper Merion schoolteacher Susan Reinhert and her two children. He was also the judge who ruled in favor of the much-needed Point Pleasant pumping station – an issue over which environmental protestors, including Abby Hoffman, were jailed and over which the Judge received death threats. As it turned out the pump had no effect on the river. Last, I’ll tell you about why a particular spot on the property is so important to me. Early in my business, I worked with a very close friend. We called him – and you can see why in this photo – “Big Michael.” Here we are in front of the Garb barn in 1999, our last job together. A few weeks later he was diagnosed with a fast-growing cancer and gone a month after that. We loved spending our lunchtimes, sitting behind the barn and stone guesthouse, which I believe was the original kitchen house. We’d lean up against the cool stone of the old well... ...near the tree swing where long-ago children pumped their legs back and forth, and where I one day watched Michael, climbing higher into the summer air. Until the house is sold, Maggie is living there, and I’m helping with the little things the house needs as it waits for its next owners, families who will gather around the dining room table in what is the oldest section of the house to celebrate holidays together and perhaps throw a wedding or two, as the Judge and Mrs. Garb did for their daughters. “Of course we wanted to be married here,” Maggie says. “There’s a magical quality to the house; we could feel it as kids.” I feel that magic every time I return there. So early in July, I asked Emily if we could take some of the plantings the Garbs so lovingly tended all those years. Carla and I spent a morning, walking much of the property - which backs onto 50 acres of preserved open space - gently digging out and wrapping ferns, morning glories, and bleeding hearts, which have taken a liking to our soil, about 15 miles north. A little bit of what was there is now with us, growing and thriving. As Maggie remarked the last time I was there, “This house carries all the lives that were part of it. Now we’re all part of its story.” In one way or another, all things endure. Winner of the 2013 CotY for Residential Interior Specialty; Photo: Brian Krebs/Fred Forbes Photogroupe For more information about our services, visit www.odellpainting.com. HIC# PA044685 NJ13VH07954000    ©2014 Odell Painting | 11 Lookover Lane, Ottsville, PA 18942 Web Version   Forward   Unsubscribe   Powered by Mad Mimi ®

With a Little Help from Our Friends...

My wife, Carla, and I love to walk on the Delaware Canal Towpath, especially near Upper Black Eddy, close to where we live. For those of you not familiar with the walking/biking/jogging/occasional-horseback-riding stretch, this is the 60-mile terrain along which sure-footed mules once towed barges carrying goods between Easton and Bristol. For a long time, every time we walked under the iconic camelback bridge near us, we’d duck. Partly because our height perception was off and partly because we were nervous it would collapse on our heads (as if ducking could protect us.)

Okay, we weren't really worried. But the truth is the authentic camelbacks—dating back to the Canal’s heyday pictured above (circa 1920)—have been in much need of repair. Once there were more than 100 bridges spanning the Canal, most of them camelback; only six true camelbacks remain today, four of which have been restored thanks to the combined efforts of the FODC (Friends of the Delaware Canal) legislative initiative grants, the "Save America's Treasures" program, and the Heritage Conservancy. 

 
Anyway, two years ago Odell Painting became a Business Member of the FODC because we wanted to do what we could to preserve the integrity of the Canal (which in turn protects its flora and fauna) and to help perpetuate its folklore. And being in the building-and-remodeling industry, it just made sense for us to join the CAT (Canal Action Team). In May, thanks to contributions, structural repairs to the cross bracing system were completed and deteriorated materials were replaced on Upper Black Eddy's Hazzard’s Bridge, the fourth of the six remaining bridges, the one we were ducking under all the time--and whose "adolescence" is captured in the photo that opens this blog. Not being engineers, a Lancaster construction team, experts in camelback structures, did the big work. But in mid-June, CAT members Brian Dougherty, Josh Gradwohl, Gordon Heisler, Peter Sperry, and I finished the job: scraping, priming, and repainting the trusses its customary red.

This past weekend, Carla and I went for our walk--and beneath the bridge, held our heads high. But there are two more bridges waiting... If you’d like more information about the Canal's history and long-ago culture, what the Friends do, and possibly joining us, please visit www.fodc.org. 

…Happy Trails!

The top photo is reprinted Courtesy of FODC, and the middle one is by Brian Dougherty. The last one is ours; we used a timer.