Long time no see

… at least here on the website. Those of you who follow Hayslope on Facebook have seen the occasional post there, but I have been remiss at keeping you up to date here. That’s because I generally use posts here to update after I’ve been on site, and I haven’t been since last September.

There’s a good reason for that. I had a nasty little fall and badly injured a leg right after returning from my last visit. It’s healing, albeit quite slowly, but it’s my driving leg and that makes it tough to drive for the length of time it takes to get up there.

But that doesn’t mean nothing’s been happening. The good news is that we’ve passed the point where there’s much that little old us can do ourselves and well into the time when those who actually have the wherewithal to do the heavy work are on it.

Let’s recap

We started this journey cleaning out the house about a year ago, and that was quite the task. So.Much.Stuff. And then more stuff. For a while, I was pretty sure ole Theo Rogan was putting more junk in there every time we left for the night. Eventually, though, all that didn’t belong was out and gone.

And finally, we could actually see what we were working with. And what we were working with was a 238-year-old log cabin that had an addition, built on stick framing, about 15 to 20 years later. And the walls were covered in chestnut boards. The roofline had been altered probably three or four times during the old girl’s lifetime, and there was the infamous addition put on by my uncle Escoe in the late 1930s which included a modern (for then) kitchen and bathroom, and a room upstairs made entirely of cedar.

We had the two open fireplaces on the north side, one downstairs and one upstairs. And the bigger, original fireplace in the original cabin – which had been closed in with a Franklin stove venting out through the chimney. And after a little outside cleanup, it was on those chimneys that the real work commenced.

Fire it up

We brought in the masons to rebuild those fireplaces and chimneys as well as the mystery chimney we found in the “modern” kitchen. Most importantly to me was the original fireplace – I wanted it open again and redone so that it could be used as it originally was, as a cooking fireplace. This was absolutely gonna be the single most expensive thing we did to the house, but to me WORTH IT.

Taking the big chimney all the way to the ground was necessary to get to the inside of it, mostly because the original had been enclosed at some point, I’m guessing pretty early on, likely to match it with the chimney on the addition. That chimney was taken all the way down too, to make sure it was sound once done. Both chimneys were rebuilt with the original brick and lined with a new stainless steel flue – or in the case of the south side chimney, two flues because the upstairs and downstairs chimneys had separate flues. Then, new caps on the top with dampers installed.

Then there was the matter of the mystery chimney in Escoe’s kitchen. It did appear to be made with handmade brick, but we saw no sign of an actual fireplace on that wall (it would have been the back right corner of the original cabin. It stopped in the ceiling of the kitchen, however, and was clearly used to vent whatever cooking appliance was there originally. We had it taken out and rebuilt from the floor in the basement up. Most of it used the original brick that was in what was there, but our masons brought in some extra, period brick from elsewhere for the base, since there wasn’t enough to do that.

Now, to the original fireplace. It’s big, maybe not giant, but pretty big. Dakota and Megan had been certain they saw an arch when peering down behind the mantel. I couldn’t see it, but it sure was there, and uncovering it was something else. We first saw it from outside as the chimney came down. There were the massive log mantel beams, lots of original chinking, and that arch.

And, once we were down that low, it was time to take out the brick and concrete that had enclosed the fireplace from the inside. Once we were at this point, I could get the measurements for the fireplace and order the cooking crane we wanted to use so that the masons could mortar it in when they rebuilt the firebox itself.

That’s when something amazing happened. The guys took the concrete and brick off – it wasn’t as all-pervasive as we feared – and there, still mortared in place, was an iron rod, a pre-crane, iron lug pole used to hang pots over the fire for cooking.

A lug pole was typically a piece of green wood secured high up in a chimney so it wouldn’t burn, with a system of hooks and trammels used to hang pots (and raise or lower them as needed) . The lug pole gave way to the crane, which could be swung out and therefore not be quite as dangerous for the cooks. But this, apparently, was a step in between – an iron lug pole that could be put much lower and closer to the fire and not have to be periodically replaced as the wood lug pole would be.

Needless to say, I quickly cancelled the crane order. We wouldn’t be needing it and would use Roddye’s original iron lug pole for cooking.

Further discoveries included the original iron and clay firebacks, which are also back in place in our fireplace. The masons did have to take down the arch in order to rebuild it, using a curved piece of wood to place the bricks back into their arched shape and keep them in place until the mortar dried.

We’re also keeping the mantelpiece. It would have been far more work than we wanted to do to take it off, because of how it was attached to the brickwork, but it’s early 19th or late 18th century, and so original to Mr Roddye.

Onto the land

I never finished my post about my last trip up, in September, onaccounta the aforementioned accident, but the big deal of that trip (aside from seeing the chimney work for myself) was walking the land.

Friends and board members Rhonda and Leslie, joined on that Saturday by Dakota (and all weekend by dog Nori) walked the land, seeing what native plants abound in the hills, and also a quick look at what invasive species we’ll need to dig or pull out.

And that’s because Hayslope wants to cultivate and propagate these native species, along with heirloom varieties of fruits and vegetables we’re all familiar with. It doesn’t look like James Roddye’s orchards have survived the years in any useful format, so we’ll recreate those, and there was plenty else out there to find.

I haven’t talked much about our plans beyond the house, and there’s that whole 28 acres out there. We have no intention of ignoring that treasure! And, oh my, what a treasure it is.

Leslie’s botanical survey, which she said was “a very small beginning,” found passionflower, Dutch white and red clover, sassafras, blue vervain, boneset, goldenrod, poke, sweet violet, lance leaf plantain, mullein, staghorn sumac, great burdock, black stem peppermint and oh so much more. Up in the woods we found some pretty old growth hickory, including shag bark hickory, beech, chestnut, white, and red oak, Eastern red cedar, black walnut, black cherry, and more. Fall Creek was lined with sycamore trees, and tulip poplars (the state tree of Tennessee) popped up in several locations.

The idea here is to create a nursery of native species, another way for Hayslope to present its history and bring that into the present – for the future of us all.

While wandering around out in the fields – including the “swamp” between the spring and the creek (which wasn’t a swamp when I was a kid!) – we did see a few spots on the creek that could do with some clearing. There’s a small lake forming back under the Warrensburg Road bridge and beyond, so we’ll be looking to getting the creek flowing free again. As for the swamp, it’s likely caused, in part, by the creek blockages and in another part by blockages at the spring, which does appear to be bubbling up out of the ground just fine, if not flowing freely to the creek as it should.

What’s next?

Well, next I’ve GOT to get back up there. Soon, I promise …

Meanwhile, we begin work on the interior. Thomas Fraser, our contractor extraordaire, has taken the ceilings off upstairs, exposing the rafters and showing us, for the first time, how the roof really has changed over the years. Escoe’s multi-window dormers, which are prominent on the front and back now, were once just two single-window dormers on the front. One of those is completely gone and the other remains as a weird little closet above the stairs in what we call the Rogan Room.

Thomas has also begun work dismantling Escoe’s addition. That included a careful tear-down of the cedar room, and those boards have been carefully bundled up and put in storage for future use, just as we did the chestnut boards downstairs.

He’s also working to preserve a discovery the masons made when they were taking down the mystery chimney. Thomas opened it up further, but what we found back there were original walnut shingles on the original roof line, preserved beneath the modern roof instead of being torn off.

Annie Kendrick Walker, in her discussion of the Rogans’ 1904 50th wedding anniversary, mentioned the walnut shingles. I never expected to see them, and was planning to find someone who could build a display of what they would have looked like, but now we have the real thing.

So next is shoring up the foundation so that when the addition is removed, the back wall doesn’t come crashing down, and so that our new roof can be safely secured. We’ve had the engineer outline what we need to do (pretty much what we knew we needed to do) and are preparing to do that. Most of what needs to happen is beneath the back right side of the house, where Escoe dug a cellar for his wife Etta Mae’s canning. That’s where the worst of the termite damage is (yes, we had some, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as my mom told me it was!), so some beam replacement will be necessary.

That’s the way it is

And now, you’re up to date. The house is standing strong and is visited almost daily by the neighborhood cats, so I’m thinking there won’t be any rodent problems. Just now, as I’m finishing up this post, a new cat wandered by the big chimney. Handsome ginger fluff. At night, the cameras see raccoons and opossums and the occasional dog, and of course, the cats come by at all hours.

I’ve watched windstorms, rain, and snow through my cameras since I’ve been up last, and gosh I really do miss sitting outside and listening the birds, watching those buzzards and hawks soar overhead.

Typing all this up has just made me want to be there even more.