When I was building the porch I had some wire run for future lighting options. Between the shade from the nearby trees, the roof of the porch, and the porch's location on the eastern side of the house, that area just doesn't get much light.

That said, when I drew up the plans and submitted them for permitting, I didn't give the lighting much thought -- at the time I figured I'd drop a few small can lights (the soffit lights are a whole other story) in the ceiling and be done with it. Since I hadn't yet built the porch, I didn't have a big structure to eyeball and think through what would look good and what wouldn't. 

If you follow my Instagram stories, you may have seen the one I posted recently showing the catastrophe that is the house's parapet "cap" -- nothing but spray foam and liquid flashing slopped all over the top of the wall. As part of the wall rebuild, I'm going to address that, at least in the little section of wall I've currently got torn apart.

​Typically and/or historically, those walls get capped with clay wall coping (like the garage has, or had before a recent storm dropped a big tree limb on some of them):

or they get capped with some kind of precast stone like this:

I've been wrestling with which route to go. The clay coping is the less expensive option, faster to install, and historically correct. But the house has a double brick cornice with lots of detail, and I think the clay coping - it's shape and protruding overlap section - would look weird, like there'd be too much going on visually. 

The precast option is pricey and while still historically correct, not a fast installation.

So I've been mentally wrestling with that throughout this current wall project because I need to make a decision soon on which product to buy. 

I'm kind of partial to the surface mount option - material finish still TBD - with the big globe, I think it'd look better in the center of the porch ceiling than a pendant style light. But I don't hate the pendant option, and it'd get some light a little closer to the porch floor, which is about 10'6' away from the ceiling.  

Either way, I've got a handful of days before I have to make a choice...

Grandpa was a number of things: a salesmen, a magician, a comedian, an athlete (in his younger days), and an artist. He was also a collector, which may have stemmed from an undoubtedly meager upbringing at the Christian Orphans' Home on North Euclid in St. Louis.    

Grandpa's collection didn't focus on any single theme or niche. He had a variety of transportation-related items, like a wooden airplane propeller and a pair of oil-burning headlights from the early days of the auto industry. He had wall clocks, like the kind that hung in school rooms 100 years ago, and bit keys. He had old tools. He also had lots of old advertising, packaging, and promotional items. 

When grandpa moved into the assisted living place he couldn't take much with him. I'm not sure how his collection was prioritized, but some of his stuff went with him and the rest got estate-saled. Before the sale I got to grab a few items; I kinda stuck to the old tools and oddball stuff I thought was kinda cool. I felt pretty uncomfortable taking his belongings so I didn't take much. 

After grandpa passed away, the stuff he had at the assisted living facility had to be dealt with. My dad sent me a bunch of pics and I laid claim to a few more items. I'm not much of a collector per se, but if it's old, especially if it's old AND connected to St. Louis somehow...I'm in. One of the items I snagged was a giant wall thermometer that at one time belonged to or advertised a business known as "Math. Hermann & Son". 

If you look closely, you can see the Mississippi River in the bottom righthand corner of the above image. Back then, St. Louis was a rapidly growing city and Hermann's business was located in a densely populated neighborhood very near the river-driven commercial action. 

It's hard to say for sure which particular building was 3521, but it's one of the buildings in the center of the yellow oval. 

Here's a look at the area in 1909; it's tough to make out but if you squint just right you can see the word "undertaker" on a building across Broadway from the "coal & wood shed", that was Mathias Hermann's business. That area of St. Louis has been almost entirely demo'd and replaced with largely nondescript low-rise industrial buildings, surface parking lots, and blight, although the Mallinckrodt facility is still very much there and in operation. 

During his lifetime, Mathias Hermann belonged to a number of societies, lodges, and clubs, as well as being a member of the Catholic church and lifelong Republican (which means he'd be a Democrat today). He died in 1908, although the business was carried on by the Hermann family for almost another 100 years. 

And then there's the thermometer. I have no idea where it came from or how my grandpa wound up with it, but it's pretty interesting. 

I didn't notice it at first but after looking through the pics I took of the thermometer, I'm pretty sure the bottom section -- the "Mo." part -- is grandpa's work. Looks to me like he grabbed a black marker and filled in a couple letters, and drew in a few lines where he thought there should be some. Grandpa collected stuff he liked, not because something may or may not have had monetary value; if he thought an item was missing something, he'd find a way to make the thing complete.  

Anyhow...the thermometer was made by Taylor, which first began making thermometers in Rochester, New York in 1851. Taylor eventually expanded and had offices all over the place, including in the Frisco Building at 9th and Olive in downtown St. Louis. The St. Louis office didn't exist until 1914, so I suspect the thermometer isn't any older than that. 

From there, it's hard to say how old the thing is but from the looks of the paint, it's probably fairly old. And it's hard to say whether the thermometer was hung on a wall in Hermann's business, or of it was a promotional/advertising item that hung on the wall of somebody else's business. Taylor is still in business today, but they've been around for so long and produced so many varieties of thermometers that finding a record of this exact model is very needle-and-haystack.

Regardless, it doesn't make any difference. It's old, it's connected to St. Louis, and for it to have been one of grandpa's last remaining possessions, he must have really liked it.

​That's good enough for me.  

I recently completed repointing the last section of the wall that I could get to without removing the fence, which meant it was time to remove some fence.

I got out the big ladder and removed the downspout, cut out the section of fence nearest the house, and pulled the fence post out of the ground. This allowed me to repoint the last little section of the lower rear wall of the house. 

At first, the repointing work went about as I expected. Some of the mortar was rotten, some of it wasn't, but the wall wasn't in horrible shape and mortar removal wasn't too difficult. Eventually I ran into some cracked bricks, and loose bricks, and crumbling bricks.

That's when things got interesting. I discovered a giant metal shaft of some sort in the wall, presumably driven from the interior side. That had caused one of the exterior bricks to crack into about a dozen different pieces, and I have no idea what purpose that steel rod served. 

I also discovered - if hiding in plain sight counts as "discovered" - some big ol' nails that I assume held a downspout to the wall at one point. After looking, the nails continue off and on all the way up the wall where the current downspout is.   

I went on about my business for a little while and then when I stood at just the right angle, I could see something else in the wall, in one of the removed brick cavities. I got on my tippy-toes and looked closer...it was a wad of newspaper. 

It looked to be pretty shredded and my first thought was...mouse nest. But then it occurred to me that the super tiny print meant the newspaper was really old and it had probably been used as backing for some interior plaster repair. I carefully removed the newspaper, which absolutely crumbles with just the lightest of touches, and put it in a bucket for further investigation. 

After work that evening I set out to see if I could determine what date the newspaper was from. Of the entire wad of newspaper, I was only able to successfully salvage maybe 10% and after a quick first glance, I didn't see any dates...but I did get a few clues that made figuring things out pretty easy. 

I spotted a few mentions, fragments of mentions anyhow, of "St. Louis Globe-Democrat", which was one of the city's big papers for many, many years. 

I also spotted a little clip that referenced October 12, with what I assumed was the word "tomorrow" above it, which meant I was probably looking at a newspaper from October 11...but what year?  

I grabbed a few more of the larger newspaper crumbs and looked for unique words or images that I could easily reference on newspapers.com. At first, I didn't have a lot of luck; I was getting thousands and thousands of search results, way too many to read through. But I kept trying, and eventually I came across this little fragment:

The word combination of "Sportsman's Park", which was home to a number of professional baseball teams going back as far as 1867, and "Buffalo Bill's" were unique enough when thrown into newspaper.com's search engine together that I only got a handful of results, all from 1885.

See the little flag on top of the building? It says "Barr's". People local to St. Louis, and of a certain age, might recognize that as the Barr from Famous-Barr, except back in 1885 Barr's was known as the William Barr Dry Goods Co. and hadn't yet been merged with Famous Clothing Store (that happened in 1911). 

I'm getting off track. The point is, I had seen that same advertisement image in one of newspaper.com's search results. The date? Sunday, October 11, 1885. 

After a few more comparisons of my newspaper pieces and the October 11, 1885 edition of the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, it was confirmed...the newspaper stuffed into the wall of my house is from October 11, 1885, which is kind of mind boggling. 

Here are the full newspaper pages the scraps were once a part of:

1885 was a looooong time ago, and even in the ridiculously fragile state the little newspaper crumbs are in, I really can't believe - given how much water had gotten into the wall and rotted out the mortar - some of the newspaper wad survived all these years. 

I was able to salvage a few more newspaper pieces than what I displayed here, but the Photoshop work involved in digitally laying my scraps over the full page takes forever so I stopped at four of 'em. I don't know what I'll do with the newspaper scraps or if it's possible to do anything to preserve them, but I'll definitely hang on the them. 

Now I'm kinda wondering if, when I get into some of the interior walls, I'll find any more...   

With the garden complete and everything growing, I turned my attention back towards the cistern area of the yard. Some brick repointing was part of the overall plan for that space and I figured I might as well knock that out - it's messy work - before I got the cistern fully demo'd and buttoned up. 

The brick that REALLY needed to be repointed was under the 2 bedroom windows, primarily due to water infiltration around the window sills and subsequent moisture in the wall. The area under the left window, which I redid a couple weeks ago, was mossy and the mortar was rotten, but the wall was otherwise still fairly solid. 

The arched section bowed out of the plane of the rest of the wall by about 1/2" and I knew that once I started raking out mortar, the bricks would be pretty easy to pull right out of the wall. 

Those areas where the mortar looks a little smoother and flatter than the rest of the mortar, that's where somebody repointed previously. Given the shallow depth of the repointing and incorrect mortar (way too hard), it wasn't a real surprise that the wall cracked and delaminated regardless.

As I suspected would happen, it didn't take long to pull the arch apart.Those arches are super strong when fully assembled and working as a unit, but once a single brick gets loose, the whole thing becomes a house of cards. Also, as suspected, the inner wythe's mortar was garbage as well. 

I was surprised to discover that the wall is 3 bricks (wythes) thick; every other wall I've gotten into so far is only 2 bricks thick. Once I got about as many bricks pulled out of the wall as I could before things got sketchy, I started repointing the exposed part of the interior wythe and then resetting the exterior bricks. 

Before I started resetting the arch bricks, I ran a little self-adhesive flashing over the top of the basement window. The bricks sit on that, and I'll replace the whole window before too long so it was kinda moot, but you really don't want bricks and mortar sitting right on top of the wood; the masonry has a way of wicking moisture and if it's in contact with wood, the wood will rot eventually. The flashing provides an impervious separation between the wood and the masonry.

I also used a little house wrap to do the same thing where I didn't have enough space to finagle the sticky flashing.

Once the arch was reset, the work went quick. Unfortunately, I kept finding bricks that came out of the wall way too easily and I wound up having to reset about a dozen bricks above the arch.

I eventually removed mortar from every joint in this little section of wall. Mortar removal is a lot like using a nail gun...fun to pull the trigger, but pretty easy to shoot 17 nails when only 3 or 4 are needed. Sometimes I get a little carried away with the mortar removal but...if I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna do it. 

The repointing effort turned out pretty well. No more vibrating wall, no more cracked joints, no more delamination. I still need to reattach the coaxial internet cable, but that can wait for a minute. ​ 

The mortar is different colors due to one side having been curing several weeks longer than the other, but it'll even out in a few days. And the best part? Aside from this section of wall being super solid, I'll NEVER have to repoint it ever ever ever again.  

Now I can get back to the cistern, finish 'er up, and then replace a little section of fence...

A couple weekends ago I started building a raised bed garden. The goals for it were to 1, be squirrel-proof, 2, be big enough to reasonably contain all the seedlings I'd already planted indoors, and 3, be not so large that it would eat up a dumb amount of the yard. This was the design I came up with (a modified version of something I saw on the internet): 

As usual, I had my trusty helper supervising the work every step of the way.

Getting the hardware cloth installed was easily the worst part of the job, and my first plan of attack didn't go real well. Long story short, I ended up adding 2x4s on top of the 2x8s to both raise the bed elevation a bid and give myself a little more surface area to staple the hardware cloth to. Unfortunately, the change in installation plans meant I didn't have enough hardware cloth so I called it quits for the weekend.

Since I had the bulk of the job under control, I decided to start the following weekend by taking the dogs out so Roscoe could try out his new wagon. He was my hikin' sidekick for about 12 years, and now that his back two legs are essentially paralyzed he's stayed home when I take Freckles on outdoor excursions (his choice, not mine). I hate that he can't walk, but the truth of the matter is that over his 14+ years of life he's gotten every last mile outta his legs that he possibly could, and not too many dogs - or people - can say that. 

But I got to thinkin', which is always a dangerous endeavor...he can't NOT go on the hikes, he just can't WALK during them. Hence, the wagon. I wasn't sure if he'd be chill in it or if he'd be all squirmy and scared, but he handled it like a champ.   

We went out to Glencoe, MO, to a trail we've hiked several dozen times over the years. It's pretty flat and relatively smooth, which I figured would make the wagon-pulling halfway easy. It was a good 4-mile adventure, complete with me wiping out in slimy river mud while trying to carry Roscoe down to the Meramec. I even let Freckles, the 75-pound tank of a little girl, pull Roscoe for a minute; she didn't hesitate nor did she have any problems. 

After the hike I picked up more hardware cloth and got back to work on the garden. 

Getting all the little seedlings planted took a minute, but it all kinda came together eventually. 

So that's the garden. Peas, bell peppers, broccoli, carrots, basil, and 1 cantaloupe plant just to add a little chaos to the mix. All organic, all heirloom. We had some insane wind for 2 straight days after I got everything planted and I'm not sure the peas survived, but that's how this farming stuff goes...🤣