You can check out any time you like but you can never leave...

No shocker I did not make it for the One Room Challenge. I did however make it for the Holiday House Tour. Credit goes to the ladies of the committee they are all fabulous actors and friends. The day they came to visit every door was blocked for masonry work. The Mud Room stairs and walk, the Front Stoop, and Window Well were all crumbling.  

Mud Room Steps & Walk totally shot.

Front Stoop totally shot. Antique Planters totally fabulous.

Window well following its removal.



The top course of bricks on the side patio had been hacked in half to accommodate the shanty that had been removed earlier. Nothing says "Good Neighborhood" like a corrugated plastic roof.

Side Porch with hacked bricks removed.

Under normal circumstances the masonry work would have been straight forward. Rip it out replace it all. However, we did not want the new to look new. So every brick and piece of blue stone was  numbered, photographed, chipped out, cleaned and stacked for reuse.

The bricks are all marked S & F Co. or S & F B Co. The house appears to be build entirely of bricks from the Sayre & Fisher Brick Company formerly of Sayreville, New Jersey. Founded in 1850 by James Sayre of Newark, NJ and Peter Fisher of New York. By 1913 the S & F Brick Co. was the largest of the 8  Raritan River brickyards producing 178 million bricks annually making it the largest brick works in the world. The company closed it  doors in 1970.

Sayre & Fisher Brick Co.


The mortar was mixed  repeatedly dried and sampled to get as close to the original pink-ish mortar plus age it 80 years. Jose, with Curb Appeal, came in for one set of stairs. As is typical jobs here start as one thing then grow. "Can you ask if he has time to do more?",  "Can you make it bigger?",  "It just looks so good!".  Every day. Jose and his crew were here for weeks.

Typically the master of the house would survey the days  work in the dark with a flash light and beer. He being just home from work was properly clothed and because I eat and sleep like a 5 year old, I was in  pajamas. Woe is she who does not have all the answers for these moon lite strolls. Usually they erupted into shouting matches, in the front yard  beer in hand and sporting the pj's (what a pretty picture)  over my lack of concrete information in this case about concrete or not tacitly agreeing with his next great idea. If you don't want my opinion don't ask. During one of these walks he decided the stoop needed to be bigger. Thus requiring a back hoe, we can't do anything without a back hoe. The yard put up one last fight. A root system that would have prevented widening the front stoop nearly broke the back hoe. How much more stuff can possibly be dug out of this yard?

That is the root system it was huge.

Mr. Bentley's roofers were out to do preventative maintenance, add a few new snow angels and some copper flashing. A three day job turned into two weeks and once the copper flashing and snow angels started going up the master of the house wanted more. Every pitch was sheathed in copper and 118 snow angles were installed. Every day, I would send  pictures and every day I would get a call..."Can you ask Mr. Bentley if the flashing can be wider?",  "Can you ask if we can have another course of snow angels?",  "Can I have new gutters?",  "Can I? Can I?" Finally two weeks into a 3 day job Mr. Bentley said we were water tight and could keep adding in the Spring. We do like shiny things.

Yup. That is a hole. Found it. Fixed it. This hole had a few friends. Not any more.

Making the ascent to the tippy top to attached the copper at the peak.

Copper on the dormers.

Most people want the big equipment out. The master of the house likes to park it right out front. We needed the back hoe to move a Cut Leaf Maple tree for planting. Trying to plant the Maple we discovered the  foundation of  a collapsed Belgian block  grill that we thought we had taken down. 

We need the back hoe! Bring in the back hoe! 

How much more stuff can be in this yard?