Captain Hardy Smith House

The Captain Hardy Smith House is located in Dublin, Georgia. It is the oldest home in Dublin on its original location. Built in 1873 it is located at 307 West Gaines Street in Downtown Dublin.

The restoration of the home included searching for mature pine suitable for cutting the large barge boards with no knots. The ones used came from the Altamaha Swamp around Hindsville, Georgia.

Sunday, December 5, 2010

Master Bedroom Closet

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The Master Bedroom closet needed a little expanding. So here it is after taking down the ceiling of the closet. Sure enough bat crap came raining down......on the right evidence piled up.


So had to clean it up and take a spray hose to get er done.....




Took all the tongue and grove boards out and had to clean them up.


The way you redo an old house is use as much of the original materials. Then mark how they were originally put together. Here they all are primed and ready to put back up.



Like putting a puzzle together....up they go..



Next you hire some good help.....lol



One of the finest closets in Dublin all redone with Lizzy's clothes hanging.





Sunday, August 8, 2010

Stairway


Top of the stairs the day of purchase. Busted boards and plenty of bat droppings.



Front door way downstairs



Stairwell



Front door and top of stairs. Several boards had to be removed to get the bat droppings out from behind the walls.



Sanded and repaired




Priming the stairwell.




Priming done upstairs



Originally the interior paint was yellow....So we did the same for the 21st century.



Yellow first coat downstairs





Putting on the final coats of yellow and white.




All painting done on the walls, ceiling and stairway.



Now for the floor.



Finished the floor and the upstairs!



The Stairs........tried to get away with light sanding and stain since the stairs were in pretty good shape. Learned a lesson in historic home restoration. Just because they look pretty good does not mean that they need light work. Once the first coat of polyurethane went down it did not take two hours for half of the stairs to cloud up. Yikes!....seems the old polyurethane and stain reacted to the new stuff!!!



So had to take all the stairs down to bare wood....another two weeks of work...lesson learned! Now the stairs and Hallway are done.....




Here is the Hallway now!




Floor Done



Friday, January 8, 2010

Interesting Discoveries While Restoring the HSH



While restoring the home several items have been discovered. The above is part of the collection of items found.

Searching under the back dining room there is a root cellar underneath. Many of these items where found with a medal detector and by site when digging.

Quite a few river rocks have been dug up in this area. These rocks were used as the foundation for the house. Many left over for the original building of the home were placed on the dirt floor in this area due to flooding.




Display of unique items found in a shadow box. Some items were found in the house behind the fireplace mantels.



 While digging a garden in the back yard these plates, tea cup and a doll baby's arm were discovered.



 This is a Coca Cola button found while digging up the garden.
 

The strange looking item with the flare shooting up is part of a lightening rod found in the root cellar.



Solid Brass Fire Extinguisher all cleaned up. Was in the house when purchased.




Old Cooking Kettle restored




Things keep showing up in the driveway from the gravel brought up from the basement. This was found 03/12/11. It is a top to a medicine bottle. You can see a hand holding a vile with the letters S& D which must be the company that made it.



In addition inside the house recently a whole bunch of stuff was found behind several mantles in the house....

11/10


Mother of Pearl button.




While tearing out the walls to rebuild the master bedroom closet my work light just happened to shine on the bricks of the fireplace. Right there was a signature on one of the bricks. If you look carefully you will see the last name is Smith. First name...Claudia...this was one of Hardy Smith's daughters. I have been told that this was a popular thing to do.



someone put three Christmas seals on this board in the master closet...the dates are 1933, 1942 and 1944.



Above is a coupon from a local merchant. Below is a ticket stubb from the Bertha Theater in Dulblin. It burned down in 1918.




A real treasure....1896 Indian Head penny! This penny was put into a beautiful 14k necklace.




Gold filled chain.



Chewing Tobacco Ad. PH Hanes sold this tobacco company and then started what became Haynes Underwear!



Couple of playing cards from the 1920's



Envelope and receipt for Order of Eastern Star. A group associated with the Masons.....dues in 1927...$1.50.




Unkown hotel in the 1920s on a post card. Critters eat paper.




During the 1920's ...This was one of the finest Department stores.



Top is a tag for a Dublin merchant selling hay, grain and provisions. Second is tag for a Packard. Bottom is a post card of the Lagrange Cotton Mill.


11/9/10

While working on the Master Bedroom closet this button was found. At first it did not look very impressive.



However after a little cleaning it turns out to be a solid brass button. On the back it says Extra Fein. This was a German company that made buttons.


5/25/10

A Large Cent dated  1827. Hard to see but did some research on the design. This coin was found while sifting dirt from the basement.


05/23/10

A very small belt buckle....most likely for a doll.


5/10

A Marlboro lighter made out of brass was dug up during the preparation of seeding the yard. The flint still works and lit upon firing up.



041510

On the left is a hair tonic bottle that says Wild Root on it.......The white jar is a pond's jar and the green top was found also...It says Ponds on it......On the right is a bottle that has Carbona on the bottom.....This was a cleaning product..



Hardy Smith Yellow Pine Shingles, Dublin, Georgia.....Good for $1 in Merchandise Token Coin. Found in the mud of the basement on 03/25/10.

More Finds 0310


Starting on the left is an olive oil bottle...the brown bottle is a medicine bottle with medicine still in it. The blue bottle is a vick's medicine bottle and the white one is a Watkins cold cream jar.


Beer bottles and a coke bottle.....The coke bottle dates from 1926 and on the bottom is the Dublin, Ga. Coke bottling plant inprint!


More Finds...0210Various bottles and pieces of coal

Today's finds .....020410

Old Coke bottle dates from 1957. Bottled in Atlanta. States minimum contents 6 fluid ounces.

How bout some listerine? Note how small the bottle is with the nickel besides it.


Today's finds 012610

A little bit of coal....they heated with coal originally. A marble and a very interesting bottle with a unique glass. No medal detector...searched in the basement where a window had been sealed up. Dug around and found an area with a brick border...Dug down about 6 inches...it is deeper...stay tuned!




This picture shows a nickle plated 38 special bullet, a sterling silver item and a printing plate. As you can see the date on the plate is Thursday, July 20th, 1911.



Here is the sterling silver item. Don't know what it is yet. However, it could be a ladies hat pin or scarf holder. The front has an engraved initial.


The back has sterling written on it. You can see the clasps.




Found a lot of junk medal underneath the dining room. This item looked like a bullet casing. A few days after this item was found took some steel wool to it. The words kissproof shown through. It was then that it was obvious it might be some kind of lipstick holder. Sure enough got on google and there it was on E-Bay.

It is a 1920's lipstick holder. One of Hardy Smith's 10 children must have taken it in the basement and was playing with it. Momma must have always wondered where her lipstick was!

Note the intricate design on the lipstick holder. It is solid brass.


In this shot the words kissproof can be seen.



Below is a bottle and a spoon. Both were found when a base board was removed in the dinning room. They were found side by side. It appears that the bottle must have been a medicine bottle because of the spoon.

Based on research the spoon dates from 1928 and it is a silver plated Legacy pattern from a company called Rogers Brothers.




In removing baseboards in the upstairs hallway the following items were found. First is a can of Tetlow's baby powder. The date on the can is 1906. There is still some baby powder in the can.

The next item is a piece of glass with flowers on it. Next to that are a couple of old sewing thread holders.




Discovered while removing water from basement in the back part of the house is this old bottle. It appears to be a honey jar. Based on research with the patent number on the bottom of the bottle this bottle dates around 1935.



A envelope dated 1930 was found behind a wall in a closet upstairs. The inside of the evenvelope has interesting designs.



Several old mason jars were at the home


While working on the underside of the house this old Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer Bottle was found. It has a date of 1967 on the bottom of the bottle. It was empty...darn....of course there were obsticles to getting this bottle up to the surface :) The Black widow spider I met let me take it.