Bringing Back Sligo

27 December 2018:  Exciting Update!  Scroll to the bottom…

We are starting to make big decisions regarding Sligo and surprisingly murder isn’t one of them.  We have *drumroll please*…chosen the roof color!  The current roof is silver metal and we have decided to replace it with a dark bronze metal.  I took a picture of the roof sample but the color doesn’t really come through so just take my word for it:  It’s dark.  It’s bronze.  And it’s metal.

We have also made the decision to convert one of the small additions in the back of the house to it’s original state of a screened-in porch.  It currently seems to be an office space of sorts but from the beginning I never felt like that’s what it was.  It kind of felt like a room with walls that had been stapled up.  So, when we realized it had once been a screened-in porch (which is something we wanted anyway) we decided to take it back to such.  On either side of the screened-in porch will be open porches which will connect with a wrap-around.  Does that make sense?  I think it will also be more true to the original home which is something we are striving for.

The space I am referring to is the small addition to the right of the picture.

The door on the left leads to the kitchen.  We had planned for a porch off of the kitchen with hopes of a screened-in porch.

The two French doors to the right lead to what I will refer to as the family room.  We also plan to have a porch off this portion of the house and, I could be wrong because sometimes I don’t always understand what Marcus’s vision is, both the porch off the kitchen and the porch off the family room will connect.

A column remains from the original porch.  I had never noticed it before.  You can see it in the picture above, in the corner of the addition and house.

We met with Dovetail Cultural Group and Habalis to discuss some of the changes we plan to make and ensure that they would be allowable for tax credits and the National Historic Registry.  One of the more exciting finds just happened to be with the aforementioned porch.

Everyone agreed that at one point in time this portion of the house was a porch.  It was the Habalis representative who speculated that there was a door still in the wall…and sure enough!  The door was still there, behind the drywall.  So, was this area a portico?  A sort of second entrance?  I think it was more than just a screened-in porch.  Were sleeping porches a thing in Virginia?  I have no clue how this will work into our idea for a screened-in porch but I have faith in Habalis and that they know what they’re doing when it comes to preservation.

The door was behind the wall this entire time!