When it comes to volume, the Beaumont House was the most cubic space we have ever enclosed in the main body of the house. It has the downstairs bedroom everyone always asks about being able to have but at 32 long, it had the space to do it. The sliding doors you see hidden in the back of the divider wall pull across to gain privacy or shut away the unmade bed for company. Across from there you have the living and dining areas with the bath at the far end. The giant storage spaces in the kitchen are still the largest we have created too. The bath wall behind the tub shows the discoloration after 19,800 gallons of water sprayed on the wall when the line to the tub separated in a freeze and sprayed water in the house for two days before being turned off. All of the wood floors were flooded from one end of the house to the other. When they called in a panic I had them get it fan dried with some heaters as it was still winter and we went in and buffed and oiled the floors after the house dried out. None of the insulation was degraded and the floor design I use let the water pass through the floor to the ground so that no water was retained to cause mold. The Long Leaf Pine floor will lay flat again on its own even though it was swelled from the experience, it came out beautiful after the loving care we gave it. This is an amazing example of what real Southern Pine vintage lumber can go through and still keep on trucking for a century afterwards. New materials like particle board and chip board would have cratered after soaking in water for three days. Furthermore the fiberglass insulation would have had to be removed as would the lower walls with sheetrock or paneling if it had any of that. This is a great example of why one should build with quality in mind up front. I hope you like my example and learn from the experience that they thought was a disaster and in the end cost them less than $2,000 to fix. They have lived in the house for the five years since without a consequence from the flood except the discoloration of the Swedish Linseed Oil paint that costs $42 a pint, yes, not a typo, but did the job no other paint I know have would do as these boards never buckled and the paint never peeled. Darby 2014
Posted on: Sun, 13 Jul 2014 15:40:31 +0000
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