Strap Wrenches and Other Tools

If there's one thing that can be said about today's society, it's that everyone has an opinion. Luckily, this great nation leaves everyone free to express that opinion, and others - and everyone else is equally as fortunate to be able to express their discontent with those opinions. However, Newton's third law applies to a lot more than just physic - it applies to social situations as well. For every action there's an equal and opposite reaction, and I find it strange that people will expect others to simply take it when they go out on a limb to be negative and downright hateful. It's simply not in our nature as a species to do so, and I'm certainly no exception to that rule. I'm no angel, never claimed to be and, as such, I didn't turn the other cheek when someone made a snide remark about the Mansion. And yes... I capitalize the word mansion, why? Because the house has her own personality and has earned the right to be considered her own entity.

A "gentleman" found it pertinent to inform me that, in his opinion (which he considered to be fact), the Mansion is the town's biggest eyesore, problem, looks abandoned and needs to be torn down. That's great. I'm of the opinion that he should be torn down. Now... Before you go off saying that I'm inciting violence, simmer down. I'm saying that people like him, with his opinions, should be shut down and kept at arm's length from projects of grandeur like the one pioneered to restore the Greensfelder. These are the caliber of people who have no vision and no respect for the history of this nation... Or this world. Chances are they'd see a French chateau in disrepair and abandonment and say that it needs to be torn down as well... That it's an eyesore. Doesn't matter that it may have been King Louis XIV's private hunting escape or the fact that, like the Greensfelder, it's structurally stable and simply rough from the outside. Unlike the majority of those abandoned chateaus, the Greensfelder is sound inside as well.

I'll digress, however, she's rough from the outside. She has horrendous asphalt shingling as siding, peeling paint, and some areas of rotting wood from where the downspouts came off. We've already addressed that the back porch is a gross addition that was obviously never finished... Or if it was, someone was restoring it and they failed... Miserably. Read the update below and you'll see that we've already taken measures to begin work on the entire rear elevation of the home. We're also well aware that the front porch DOES need to be replaced and updated. We're already taking rails down to eyeball their construction, strip them, and bringing them to wood workers to see if missing and badly damaged ones can be replaced and their less damaged sisters duplicated to fill that void. Why? Because history, nostalgia, and accuracy. That's why. It's a tireless and thankless job that takes people with vision and a deep love of history to perform. It's not for everyone, and certainly not for those who would rather bulldoze 116 years worth of history simply because the current exterior is an "eyesore". If we did that, than 90% of all old homes would be gone, including properties of far greater historical significance than the Greensfelder.

That said, this wonderful fellow must not drive past when there's dozens of packages on the porch, or the mail lady is stuffing our mailbox full of letters of support and catalogs and contracts from various architectural suppliers. Of course, unless he's hiding the secret that he graduated from Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters and happens to have x-ray vision, he's not seeing the hours spent toiling away on stripping, painting, cleaning, relaying floors and tirelessly working to fix that which was neglected and broken. He doesn't see my husband and I standing in the foyer and figuring out correct lighting and how to best preserve and repair the wedding cake details on the ceilings. He's not there to pick the crown moldings that will be going up or paint schemes or which runner will adorn the stairs.... Or will there be a runner?

My point to all this rambling? Unless you're going to be useful and offer useful critique and suggestion, please sit down. We need all the tools we can acquire, but a strap wrench (the most useless tool in the entire box) isn't one of them. Don't be the strap wrench.

As always, I'm going to plug our GoFundMe account so that people far and wide can reach out and assist the preservation of history. You can find it by clicking right here.

the "Eyesore"