No new updates, It's still winter & freezing.

I did manage to snap a photo of the original front doors:

I went up to the house to check on it this past weekend.  One of the neighbors had told me that the French door that I had recently replaced was not the original, but rather had been installed by the previous owner. She went on to say: "He put that on there some time ago."  I think the original front door was a pair of beautiful arched  doors."    Then she tells me that the original doors were down in the garage for the the longest time.  "They may still be there , you should take a look."

So, I head down to the garage, and look through the window. Sure enough, there leaning against the back wall of the garage are a pair of white arched doors.  I ran back up to the house and look at the front door frame:  sure enough you can see the outline of the original arched door frame.  It had been boxed in with some filler boards and a rectangular jamb had been installed to accommodate the 36" X 80" french door that I had just replaced last month.

edit:  I blew up the photo of the front door which was installed last month, and you can see the outline of the original arched door frame.

Of course I didn't have my camera with me to take a photo of the actual doors, but they look very similar to this:

It kinda matches the arch above the 3rd floor window :

I'm up in the air about what to do.  Stick with the nice solid rectangular door or try to return it to original.

Looking through the photos of the house I realized I had a before and after  of the small upstairs bedroom, with a very similar camera viewpoint.

What a job it was doing the clean-out on this house back in July! With the heat we began just throwing the trash out the 2nd floor windows rather than going up and down the stairs.

Our reward was discovering how good the hardwood floors were up there.

Here's the before & after:

It snowed this week. Only about 3" inches, but I took a trip up to the house just to check on it.
The plywood and tarp are holding up just fine on the roof, she's nice and dry inside still.

I took a pair of photos of the house in the snow:

 

It's going to be a long winter waiting to get back to work on this house!

  While I was out in the yard making mulch, Rob was busy replacing the front door to the house.
I don't have a good photo of the original front door, but it was a french door that had been painted blue and had four of its panes broken out.  It was cracked vertically spanning its entire length on the side opposite the hinges, and had a piece of OSB board screwed and nailed to it to keep it in one piece and keep intruders out.

    I scored a free door from my friend Dennis. It came off of a 1905 house in Newburgh, NY .
It is solid wood, with a nice thick window and it weighs a ton.  Rob had to shorten it a bit and plane it to fit my jamb, but when he was done, it fit and functioned beautifully! I can close it with one finger.

Here's what it looks like installed:

   

     Cold weather is making for little to no progress on the house as there is no boiler therefore no heat. Last weekend however I managed to rent a wood chipper and clean up the badly overgrown front yard.  I got rid of all the saplings, thorn bushes, brush, and dead and fallen trees.

     This photo of the front of the house from August shows some of the thorn bushes on the left:

After I cut everything down and chipped it up, there is actually a nice front yard:

Now I can see the house from the road, and I can see the Delaware River from the front porch!

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     It's quite cold and rainy today and I was thinking about(dreading actually) the upcoming winter. This led to thinking about the springtime and what my big plan is for fixing the roof issue.  It is very clear to me that this house had an addition built onto the back above the kitchen and living room.

      It was the flat roof on this addition that failed and caused all the water damage in the home. Since the entire roof sheathing & rafters have to come off of the addition,  I think I would rather just lose the addition altogether and build a sloped roof over the kitchen like I believe it had originally.

The addition only contains two very small rooms, a bedroom and a library.  I believe both rooms are only 12' X 10' .  They are just not worth keeping in my opinion.

  In this photo of the south side of the house you can clearly see where the addition is on the second floor:

I propose to remove it and build a roof over the kitchen like this:  (yeah, I know. I suck at photoshop)