We had some folks from the State Preservation office out to the house last week to help us figure it out. To give due credit- they are the ones that discovered the evidence of the previous fire. Harris and I had been looking at the walls going, damn, it's odd for a slumlord to paint the wallpaper black, but hey, we've seen weirder things.
Yeah...that was soot.
They did point us to the Sanborn maps for Durham. In 1913 the house appears on the maps in a different form than what is there now. The preservation folks were also able to point out that the room we were in with the dropped ceiling- yeah, that was an addition- couldn't we see the wallboards behind the drywall?
And the drywall, they can look at the wall and in under five seconds tell if it's plaster or wallboard. I thought I was good; they are amazing.
Nothing really new this weekend. We had a fun guest in town and hung out with her instead of working on the house.
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