old wallpaper

we’ve been absolutely totally busy working on the new house all the time! Lots of details and stories over here: http://www.limingtonfarmhouse.org/blog/ among other delights, It’s been great discovering layered bits of old wallpaper around the house.

peeling back the layers of wallpaper on the old chimney in the kitchen

a tiny snippet of wallpaper in the attic

the old chimney in the kitchen was covered with wallboard; behind that we found many layers of wallpaper and horsehair plaster over the bricks!

old wallpaper in an upstairs closet

in an upstairs bedroom

more wallpaper from the kitchen

layers of wallpaper in an upstairs closet

We got a tour of our neighbor Mike’s place, also a historical house undergoing renovation. He had some great old wallpaper too!

at our neighbor Mike’s house

at Mike’s house

a tidbit of house history

we’ve gotten some confirmation from the realtor: tomorrow (Thursday) should indeed be the final closing date!! Hooray!!
meanwhile, we’ve gotten some historical documents from the State of Maine, it’s the official paperwork regarding the Limington Historic District, of which our house is a part. We read through and found the description of our house!

Moulton Family House, c. 1880-C,
Route 11
This two-story three-bay frame house is comprised of what appears to be an earlier side gable building to which have been added a pair of Queen Anne style corner towers and a wraparound porch. Presently, the dwelling is clad in asbestos siding. The original house has corner pilasters with round arched panels and gable end returns, whereas the alterations feature three-sided towers with two-over-one windows and turned porch posts with sawn brackets. A one-and-a-half-story ell extends to a small, much altered barn. To the northwest is a larger, free-standing barn.

According to local tradition, this house was erected in the 1870′s or early 1880′s by the Moulton family. Its materials are said to have come from two houses that had been dismantled in Hiram.

this is interesting – my parents had thought the house was older, I wonder if we’ll ever find more historical info about this! I know that my parents’ house in Gorham included several structures – including an original house and an ell, which had been taken from a location a few miles away and dragged off its foundation by oxen, in its entirety, and transported across the fields using rollers made from giant logs, a team of oxen pulling the whole structure to its current location, where it was just tacked on to the side of the original structure. So I wonder if our house was also transported from Hiram in the same manner? or was it dismantled and re-assembled on the current location? Anyway, it would also be fun to find old photos of the house someday…