Old House Paints -

Old house painting object

In a 100 year old house, painting projects are not just painting projects. In our case, painting involves stripping, washing, patching gaping holes and floor to ceiling cracks, priming, patching again and then finally painting. Good quality paint seems to make a huge difference, too. It provides better coverage and fills in some of the imperfections as opposed to highlighting them.

This past weekend was devoted to getting the walls ready for painting process. This is the former strange brown pre- wall board wall (you can see it to the left). There is some sort of plaster powder between the paper. Maybe this is early dry wall? Maybe this was some sort of crazy creation of past owners? It has certainly complicated the process.

I troweled on compound to create a smooth and paintable surface (you can see it to the left). Mr. Ham House sanded it smooth before the troweling because it was covered with textured brown paper. The visual improvement to the stairway is amazing. The dark brown paper made you feel like you were entering a cave. I’m thinking it should take one or two more sandings and coats and we should be ready to prime and paint. Wow!

The other big project was washing walls and finishing off the never ending wallpaper stripping. Washing paste is thankless, but so important. I wanted to avoid the mess paint makes when it softens wallpaper paste that I thought was fossilized on the wall in other rooms….

A few walls unearthed between seven and eight layers of wallpaper! It was like tracking the history of the house! Ham House Mom was unfortunate and lucky enough to have this messy job. She was the resident archaeologist for the weekend, which meant strange mess of disintegrating wallpaper and the amazing patterns below. We were able to catch a glimpse of what the bottom layer looked like.

Wall painting ceiling cracks, house painting, paper, process, quality paint, sort, wallpaper paste

German Old House

There is a prim 1853 Italianate villa hidden somewhere in here, rather like “Where’s Waldo?” What you see instead is a sprawling Queen Anne villa dating from an ambitious 1888 renovation. Arnout Cannon, principal in the Poughkeepsie architectural firm of Cannon and Lloyd, designed it for Robert Bowne Suckley, a typical son of the Hudson River gentry. Ten years after finishing the job, Cannon pointed a gun at his chest and shot himself in the heart. According to a note left behind, he thought he was going insane – a logical sequence when you think about it. It would be cold-hearted, I must say, to connect Cannon’s suicide with the design of this house.

The name of the place is Wilderstein, “wild stone” in German. Somebody in the nineteenth century unearthed a petroglyph – being a stone with in this case Native American markings – in the vicinity of the site, hence the name “wild stone.” Not really my choice for a house name, but having lived in places called Paxhurst and Daheim, I am in no position to throw… stones. The pretty woman on the left, wearing the polka dot dress, is Margaret “Daisy” Suckley. She lived at Wilderstein for practically all of her one hundred years. This 1943 news photo shows her, her cousin Laura Franklin Delano, and their mutual cousin, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, on a railroad tour of military bases. The president’s dog Fala is nearby but out of sight. As was often the case during the war years, Daisy was Roosevelt’s frequent companion.

Daisy Suckley was born in 1891 and died at Wilderstein a hundred years later. Her grandfather, Thomas Holy Suckley, built the first house on the site in 1853. Her father, Thomas Bowne Suckley, commissioned Arnout Cannon to renovate it, before moving here from Orange, New Jersey in 1888. As is often the case with inheritors, Suckley was more of a gentleman than an earner. By 1897 Wilderstein, with its twenty-seven estate employees, was already too big a nut for him to cover. Europe being cheaper, Suckley moved the family temporarily to Switzerland. As years passed and his fortune continued to shrink, he undoubtedly endured a string of lifestyle cutbacks. Eventually his unmarried daughter, Daisy, literally ran out of money. Here she is in her nineties, posed in front of the eloquent symbol of her family’s fall from economic grace – Wilderstein. Local preservationists, as concerned about her as the house, suggested she donate it to a non-profit group called Wilderstein Preservation, which she did in 1984, subject to a lifetime tenancy.

My house in Millbrook is a stylistic cousin to Wilderstein, except Wilderstein is the cousin who went to boarding school and had the trust fund. Its 1888 interiors are really rather grand, designed by one Joseph Burr Tiffany, cousin to the more famous Louis Comfort Tiffany. Rather like my house being a cousin to Daisy’s.

These photos show Wilderstein’s interiors as they were when Daisy Suckley lived there. For almost ten years after the house was opened to the public, not much changed. For seven of those years Miss Suckley was herself a part of the furnishings, making smiling appearances and greeting guests.

I have a love-hate relationship with the shredded damask look. I once had a friend who told me her house in London was the definition of shabby chic. She then leaned forward and in a low voice added, “But there is a line between shabby and sordid.”

There’s a stove hooked into a fireplace in my house too.

It’s hard to tell from the photo, but this library has been pressed into service as an old lady’s bedroom. The reason: because it’s on the first floor. (May heaven preserve me).

Even ladies of distinguished descent, who have spent years in high circles and live in fine houses, can fall into a sort of poverty that is no less shocking for its gentility.

Miss Suckley used to joke that her house hadn’t been painted in seventy years. Except it wasn’t a joke. During the last years of her life Wilderstein Preservation limited itself to a “hold and roll” operation. Restoration didn’t begin in earnest until 1994.

It took sixteen years to do it, but the exterior envelope has now been essentially rebuilt.

The river families knew a thing or two about views. This contemplative prospect is as good a backdrop as any to mention Daisy’s close relationship with her cousin, Franklin Roosevelt. No one knows for sure whether or not she was his mistress; one rather hopes that she was. Daisy was more than just an archivist and close personal friend. She was a confidante and companion, close enough to give the president a dog, the famous Fala. Daisy was with FDR in Washington as often as they were together in Dutchess County. She was with him in Warm Springs, Georgia, when he died. When she herself passed away forty-six years later, a trunk-full of personal letters between them was discovered under her bed. Some certainly sound like love letters. I have not read Geoffrey Ward’s book, “Closest Companion: the Unknown Story of the Intimate Relationship Between Franklin Roosevelt and Margaret Suckley,” but the title suggests a lot of dish.

The glazed porch looked like this at the time of my first visit twenty-five years ago. Terrifying vintage wiring – little ceramic posts, anchored just below the ceiling, on which exposed wires were strung – had been happily disconnected.

Wilderstein Preservation tackled the big tower in 1994, the main roof in 1999, and the west elevation, south elevation and porte cochere in 2000, 2001 and 2002 respectively. The north porch and east elevation came next, in 2003 and 2004, after which they did the main porch and servants’ wing. The glazed section of the main porch was finished in 2010. The interiors are next.

See that line of five windows to the right of the porte cochere? That was Daisy’s library/bedroom.

Big job, right?

When Daisy’s father enlarged the house, he had this remarkable stable built nearby.

It looked more romantic before Wilderstein Preservation hacked away the encroaching jungle.

R. B. S. – Robert Bowne Suckley.

I don’t think the main house had degenerated to quite this point, although I understand windows were missing at the top of the tower and the roof was a disaster.

The main stable door, before and after.

It’s a wreck, but hugely worthy of preservation.

Until money is raised to restore it, Wilderstein Preservation must just prop it up.

“KEEP OUT” – you betcha.

Located close to the village of Rhinebeck, N.Y., Wilderstein is a National Historic Landmark and one of the contributing properties in the Hudson River Historic District. The house is closed to the public during the depth of winter, but the grounds are open all year long.

Wall painting franklin delano roosevelt, frequent companion, one hundred years, polka dot dress

Wonderfull Old Houses

It felt something like a dream walking into our house with our bags and baby, knowing that we were coming home for the first time. But after that, it was surprisingly normal. It was our house – the house we fell in love with almost 4 years ago; the house of which we know every square inch. No ghosts popped out at us. No fretful memories of the years of grime disturbed us. Everything seemed the same as it had always been, except much, much better. And that’s when I realized that we had done it. Even though we restored the house from top to bottom, we managed to keep house’s original character perfectly intact, while eliminating the creepiness.

This was a major goal of ours from the very beginning. During our house-search, we saw many beautiful old places with horrible modern “improvements.” Plastic window frames, glass-enclosed terraces, exposed stone where there should have been paint, eye-watering paint jobs where there should have been stone. We decided that we wanted a house that would look almost exactly as it might have in whatever era it was built. Of course, we modernized it with things like double-glazed windows and insulation, but we tried hard to impress upon the workers that we did not want anything that would change the house’s inherent character. (And believe me, it was a struggle. You wouldn’t believe some of the things that they wanted to do in the name of modernity and convenience.)

So, walking into the house, it felt great to realize that even with all its shiny new doors, windows and walls, it still was a Really Old House.

That said, it was also a Really Dusty House. We hadn’t been in the door five minutes before Lil’Dawg was covered from head to toe in dust. Seriously. Just like we’d rolled him in it. I didn’t even bother to take off my coat (though I could have! The house was warm!) before picked up a broom and got to work. All that day, we swept, mopped and scrubbed, but when we left the house the next day it was still dusty. I guess it will take a couple of months of repeated scrubbings for the house to realize that it is, finally, clean.

When we weren’t cleaning, we were shopping. We didn’t have any chairs and after a full day of cleaning, the idea of flopping on the hard floor didn’t seem appealing. So we went to a store to find a table and chair set. We were envisioning buying a lovely wrought-iron set; one we could put in the garden when the weather turned nice, and upon which a simple white table cloth and wine glasses would look appropriate. What we ended up with was a ungodly plastic set in dark green. We threw a colorful tablecloth over it, but it didn’t help much. The contrast between our beautiful handmade wood floors and the unnaturally-colored, mass-produced, green plastic chairs was just too striking. They will have a short tenure.

That night, we dined on the same meal we have eaten in our little village for the past 3+years: avocado, tomato and Boursin cheese on baguettes. (If you’ve never had Boursin cheese, you must, as it is more addictive than crack. It is ridiculous that with all the wonderful cheeses that exist in France we always turn to Boursin in times of need, but we do. I don’t know what they put in it…it’s possible it’s not even cheese. But man, it’s tasty!) We had wanted to have something more memorable, seeing as it was the first time we’d eaten inside the house, but in the end it was appropriate: our fabulous Lacanche stove will arrive in early December so we won’t be needing to eat cold sandwiches any more. Bring on the boeuf bourguignon!

Sleeping there that night was… interesting. We were on an air mattress that was not too comfortable and reeked of plastic. But the thing that took us most aback about sleeping there was the noise. Not from passing motorcycles or drunken revelers, which we’re accustomed to from living in Paris, but from the village church . Church bells! Church bells! Every hour on the hour! We go from dead silence…silence so heavy it weighs on your ears…to bong! bong! bong! bong!

Now, I specifically recall asking someone about this before we bought the house. Maybe it was the agent. Maybe it was our neighbor, Red. And we were told that the bonging stops around 10pm, starting again around 7 am. But no, it does not! Why doesn’t anyone stop this?? I can understand how one might need the clock to ring in times gone past, before clocks stopped being luxury items, but come on! Even the oldest, gnarliest farmer must have a ditigal clock now! That the bell keeps ringing, even though there’s no need for it, seems very French to me. The bell rings all night because it has always rang all night, and even if no one likes it, no one can – or should – stop it either. Dawg now wants to be a member of our village’s council to campaign against the all-night ringing of the bell.

To be honest, though, the bell didn’t wake Lil’Dawg, and the only reason I noticed it was because: 1) I was tossing and turning on the uncomfortable air mattress and so was awake anyway, and 2) I was annoyed that we had been Lied To!

Okay – enough chitchat. I know you want to see pix. But first, I want to shout out to architects #1 and #2 , who are getting married this Friday. Herzlichen Gluckwunsch zur Hochzeit, my dear friends! And thank you for helping to make our house such a pleasurable place to be!

And on to the pictures…. (These are just a taste; I’m putting together a full set on shutterfly).

Living Room