House History I

Searching old newspaper archives for our address, I found some 1946 ads for our house! 

The first one is from late July, the second from early August. The $16,000 sales price appears in this Open House ad, but ones printed in a different paper gave the sales price as $6,000. I'm not sure which is correct based upon the title records.

I'm not sure how they counted rooms back then, but I guess the six rooms are the three bedrooms, the living room, dining room, and kitchen. I'm assuming the ½ bath in the first ad means the basement bathroom is at least partially original. The lot size in the first ad is the correct one. Thanks to last summer's implementation of WMATA's Better Bus Network reorganization, we're no longer a ½ block from the bus. Back then we would have been about a mile to the 82 streetcar stop; now we're around the same distance from two Metrorail Green Line stations (as well as from the nanobrewery named after the old streetcar line).

The lot was originally platted as part of resubdivision of Johnson's and Wine's Third Addition to Hyattsville Hills, and sold in January 1940 to Mrs. Tanya Ritzenberg. Ritzenberg seems to have been involved in building houses in the area; a 1941 Evening Star item says she was erecting 13 two-storey brick and cinderblock houses in the 4600 block of Clay Street NE in D.C.

Our house may have been a similar project as she sold the property a year later, in January 1941, to the Kelley family. The Kelley's turned up in some newspaper searches too as their son was a World War II aviator who was lost over Germany in November 1944 and declared dead a year later. [The side yard lot was also originally bought by Ritzenberg in February 1941, but apparently abandoned it. In September 1943, the county seized the lot and in January 1945 sold it to the Kelleys for back taxes.]

The Kelleys moved out Spring 1946, selling to the Harold and Helen Distad. Harold was born in China, the son of Lutheran missionaries, and he and Helen had wed in DC in 1940. It's not clear if they were buying the house (and side lot) as an investment or something, but they only owned it from April to September 1946 (and clearly had put the house up for sale as late as July 1946).

The house and lot were purchased by the Bennett family in September 1946, and it stayed in that family for the next 32 years.

Again With Lights

Back when we did the whole kitchen remodel, it was at a point in time when CFLs were dominant, but LED bulbs were coming to market. I very much wanted to use LEDs when we could, but going with what the marketplace offered meant most of the fixtures were made for CFL or incandescent bulbs. For the most part that wasn't that big of a deal: I could either use LEDs in the fixture as it was or with a slight modification. The central light in the kitchen, however, was a bit different.

The Kichler fixture we chose was fluorescent with four-pin G24q bases. Eventually, I found LED bulbs that worked in it without having to rewire things and removing the fluorescent ballast, but apparently that technology was not long for the market. When one of the replacement LEDs went out, I had a hard time tracking down a bulb that would supposedly work, and after trying two that either didn't work or only worked sporadically, I was getting frustrated.

It didn't help that the way the fixture housing was designed was a bit of a pain to work with ... which is how I ended up dropping the (acrylic) diffusor, shattering part of it. Remaining frustrated, we lived with it like that for a while—a broken diffusor and one bulb that worked intermittently—but when the diffuser fell out and almost hit Evelin, it seemed the time to move from frustration to action was at hand.

I'd tried when it first broke to source a new diffusor from Kichler or one of its dealers, but no-one was willing to sell a replacement. The fluorescent version had been replaced by an LED version and while it looked identical online, I would only be able to see if it worked if I bought a whole new lighting fixture.

Searching around, I eventually landed on the Access Lighting Solero III, which was the same diameter as the original fixture. It didn't look as sleek, but it also cost a lot less. It's an LED fixture with the bulbs integrated, so when/if they start to die the whole thing will need to be replaced. I'm not wild about that, but it seems to be the trend these days.

Purple Door

For years now, Evelin has—on and off—mentioned wanting to do something with the front door. Ideally, we'd have one that let in a little more light, but she also has talked about painting it. Fast forward to this past weekend when Celeste and I went to a hardware store.

The intention was to just find some 2-inch machine screws that would fit the Ross door knocker (more on that shortly) that I brought home from a visit to my parents. The old eagle knocker that came with the house aways partially blocked the peep hole and was nothing particularly special, but it used smaller screws than this one needed.

While I went looking for screws, Celeste was on the phone with Evelin looking at paint chips. They ended up picking Pratt & Lambert PL320 "Tyrian Purple," which closely matched the color of the sweater Celeste was wearing. We had can of Valsapar semi-gloss cabinet door and trim deep base (82003) tinted with that shade and suddenly a project was born.

After taking the door off the hinges and then removing all the hardware, we set it up on the porch and primed it. I also plugged one of the holes from the old door knocker and drilled a new one to fit the Ross one.

Since we started late in the day (and it was getting cold after the sun went down), that was all we achieved the first day and the door went back up for the night.

The next day the door came off the hinges again and Celeste put two coats of Tyrian Purple on it, all the hardware was reattached, and it went back up. There are few places where some touch-ups are needed (it was still a little tacky when we hung it up—it was getting cold again), but overall it looks pretty good. We probably need to consider if we want/need to paint the door frame (either purple or at least touch up the white), but that can wait until later.

(It was also noted that the tone of the different bits of hardware—mail slot, knocker, deadblot, and handle—are different hues that noticeably don't work well with each other, something that didn't jump out as strongly when the door was a dirty white. We may be replacing handle and deadbolt in the nearish future too...)

The Ross door knocker originally came from the Pontchartrain Hotel on Saint Charles Avenue in New Orleans. My father's grandfather had an apartment there, and after he and my father's grandmother divorced, she took an apartment in the hotel. (I'm assuming he'd moved out by that point.) The family lore, as my father shared it, was that the apartment my great-grandmother got had been my great-grandfather's, but if she'd realized that, she would have demanded a different space. To disguise the room, the door knocker engraved with "Ross" was removed from the door and replaced with a plain one ... and that removed door knocker is the one now on our front door.

IoT Obsolesence

Two years ago, I was thinking about the various IoT devices we have in the house. Since then, we haven't added any new (hard-wired) items, but Google has decided to sunset support for all the Nest products we are currently using.

Back during the remodel that sparked the decision to start this blog, we installed a new Nest thermostat. That was in 2014, so it was a new second-generation unit. Last week, however, Google announced it was ending support for first- and second-generation units in October. The units will continue to work, but only as an old-school "dumb" thermostat.

Part of the whole appeal is being able to use the smart features — adaptive scheduling, adjusting things from miles away when travelling, alerts to the phone, etc. So while I still look of the second-gen Nest and it is doing its job well, knowing that it is going the way of our SmartDry and being forced into obsolescence, I went ahead and took Google up on the discounted price for a new fourth-generation Nest Learning Thermostat.

I briefly considered not rewarding Google with a purchase, choosing instead an Ecobee or some other option, but I'm already well connected with Google's ecosystem. Plus, I installed two fourth-gen Nests at my parents' house earlier this month, so I'm already using the Google Home app to provide remote tech support.

When reading up on the Nest thermostat announcement, I also found out that few weeks earlier Google announced an end to the Nest Protect line of smoke detectors. Since those have a ten-year lifecycle, Google is continuing to support them through their planned end-of-life (November 2027 to December 2028 for our three). At the moment, the company is partnering with First Alert on new smart smoke detectors that will integrate with Nest Protect units. But the new SC5 lacks a few of the nice touches of the Nest Protect — no path light, no presence sensing, etc. — so hopefully there will some improvements/other options before we have to start replacing the smoke detectors.

If a Tree Falls and No-One Realizes What They Heard...

Right around midnight on New Year's Eve, Celeste and Evelin heard a noise (not fireworks). They thought a limb had fallen on the deck or something, but looking around on the deck and around the side of the house didn't turn up anything unusual.

Flashforward six or seven hours, I'm headed out for a healthy walk to start the New Year and I looked in the sideyard and saw this ...

Apparently, the noise was the other hemlock falling over, just a few days over two years from the date the first one fell.

Unlike the 2022 hemlock-drop, this tree was looking pretty healthy. There had some signs of dropping needles, but nothing as bad as the other one. There was a front that came through that evening, dumping about a third of an inch in less than an hour (and during one heavy burst the rate of rainfall was over an inch per hour). There were some wind gusts, but it looks like it was pretty calm around midnight. I'm guessing there was some illness or something that weakened the shallow root system and the rain combined to stress things enough that it just tipped over.

Fortunately, it fell into a relatively empty part of the yard. The maple we had planted back in March did get hit, but not broken or uprooted, and one of the apples (and the neighbor's mulberry) both lost limb or two each.

Instead of a walk, I spent time in the morning with loppers and (after 8 a.m.) a chainsaw trimming off branches and bits to get the stuck trees free of the mess. Now we just need to get some out with a woodchipper to take care of the detritus ...

It's a bit sad. The hemlocks were great for privacy and noise screening, so now we're getting a lot more sun on the deck, but it's much more exposed. But it also eliminates one of the routes squirrels used to easily hop on to the roof. Random memory: There was one time when Evelin and I woke up in the middle of the night and looked out the window to see a possum in that tree at the level of our bedroom window. Not sure if she was raiding a bird's nest or looking to get on the roof or just chilling.

Blue Is Back!

And it's done! We still have to put things back in place (and make some decisions about whether or not to rearrange things), but the scratches and peeling are gone and it's all blue again. The job was done with Sherwin Williams "Gallery Series" (20 Gloss Satin) paint for cabinetry and millwork, which was custom colored to (mostly) match the old blue with a clear waterborn topcoat base (651307803). Since it's a custom color, here's the formula used (in case we do need to touch things up in the future):

CCE/Colorant	OZ	32	64	128
W1 – White	2	28	–	1
B1 – Black	2	46	–	–
L1 – Blue	4	12	–	1
R3 – Magenta	–	24	1	–

(Here's a website that helps explain how to read that formula.)

We're Not Cooking Anything

To the untrained eye, it looks like a scene from Breaking Bad in the kitchen these days. Plastic tarps everywhere and lots of chemical smells.

The truth is nothing so sorted. The cabinetry installed during the remodel was solid, but the blue paint fairly early on started chipping and wearing off. Not sure if it was something defective in the finish or just wear and tear, but it was annoying. Things finally reached the point where it could no longer be tolerated so we have painters cleaning them up and making it all look new.

Day one was mostly disassembly and priming, along with some small repairs. Today is all painting.

I'm not sure if a second day of painting is on the agenda or just reassembly of things tomorrow, but I'm guessing it will be takeout or just snacking again for dinner tonight.