Fruitful Weekend

It's amazing what can happen in the garden in one day. From Saturday to Sunday, my aubergine irises burst into bloom...
...and my Lily of the Valley also started to open up. Boy, it's amazing how one whiff of this takes me back to a 5-year-old kid at my grandmother's house.

I spent most of the day in garden so I could "bump into" my neighbors and talk to them about my front porch plans. I didn't want to just leave notes in mailboxes, I wanted to talk to everyone in person. I also made up packages for everyone so they can see exactly what I plan to do with the house.

I gave everyone a copy of the street elevation from the blueprints. It's kind of tough to see all details so I also showed them this diagram from a book put out by the Cambridge Historical Commission on taking care of your old Cambridge house.

The book, which is actually really informative, shows in detail what kinds of doors and windows each house style should have, styles of fences, how to build stairs, how the apron around a porch should look...

...and this diagram shows all the components of the top of a Greek Revival pediment.

Here's a photo of my house from that same straight-on view seen in the diagrams. You can almost see what it's supposed to be. It's hard to get this photo because there's almost always someone parked in front.

I also gave everyone a copy of this 1876 drawing of my house so they could see that, indeed, a porch once stood at the front of the house. This was fun for everyone to see because many of their houses are also on the page and no one had seen it before.

But, I'll admit, it's kind of hard to see what it will look like from the diagrams. Everyone responded most to this photograph. This is a house (that I've posted before) in the neighborhood but it's acutally a mirror image of mine and very close in scale. So I flipped the photo with my photo editor so the door is on the same side as mine.

I let everyone walk away with a copy of these images and asked if they like my plan, to please write a letter of support when they get a letter from the City about my hearing. Everyone seemed not only supportive but excited about the plan. My application is done and I should be filing it within the next two days. Having an opponent can make things difficult so it's nice knowing that everyone around me seems so supportive.

Now I can refocus my efforts on finding a contractor.