DeJoux House

When we arrived at the house we found a package delivered by Lee Reich from across the road.  Michael Clinton the painter had mentioned to Russell Gilmore one of the previous owners that he was working on the house and I think this prompted Russell to hand them on to us...For which we are eternally grateful. The package contained a file of documents relating to the house.  Most of these were the deeds we had already identified as existing but had never seen.   These deeds have the signatures of many of the people we have written about in the history pages this blog but I have never felt this close to them. These documents clarify how the house passed from David Deyo, who was the son of Christoffel, to his wife Rachel and then to Abraham Relyea who is named as the owner in a number of maps in 1800's.   There is also a document that is described as a "Release of Dower" from Abraham's second wife Maria Relyea to Jesse Elting who owned the house from 1862 and ...

The AGA in all it's glory The AGA is in the house!!!  We have waited for 12 weeks to get it and we thought we would be nearly finished before it arrived.   Obviously we are still a long way from finishing the house but the centre-piece of the kitchen is in place. We also had to get the plasterers in early to plaster the wall behind the AGA.  They did an amazing job and now the "Beehive" oven and the wall look fantastic.   I was not there for the plastering but Daniel supervised and sent a few pictures as they did the work. Brian had done some terrible 'blocking' in the kitchen, for the kitchen shelves.  He had initially  stuck a plywood board on top of the old plaster which had no chance of holding a shelf.  We had to make him do it again, this time taking the old plaster off and building some real, solid furring.  Second time he did a decent job and then our plasterers (The Manchione brothers) set to work. Brian's blocking (second a...