I said to a friend the other day that progress on the renovation was going so slow that sometimes I feel like I'm going backwards. Such is the plight of the weekend warrior. I've mentioned before how during the times I had at least a few hours every day to devote to the project, things moved quickly, but for a while now the daily work and responsibilities that come with home ownership have pushed the big improvement project to the sidelines.
Most recently I found myself cleaning up a large tree that blew down in one of the dramatic June thunderstorms that passed through. The tree in question was a large Box Elder (acer negundo) that had grown awkwardly out over the yard in search of the sun. I was lucky that it fell somewhat gradually as I had a chance to move the truck and the motorcycle that would otherwise have been crushed. The day after I first noticed it leaning low, it crashed to the ground but remained hung up, hinged on its trunk about 10 feet off the ground.
The big problem with cutting up a leaning tree is that it's under tension and the direction of its fall can be hard to predict. Either side of the cut can spring up or roll at you.
I read through the Chain Saw Operator Safety Manual a couple of times just to get my head in the right place and then went to work. Probably the rule I most wanted to break for convenience was lifting the saw to cut limbs above my shoulders. But it seems that this is an easy way to end up cutting your own limbs off your shoulders so I resisted the urge. I did cut a little working from a ladder but made sure I was in a stable position and wasn't reaching. Even so it was clearly risky so I put the chainsaw down and used the hand bucksaw to finish cutting the limb from where it broke off the trunk 10 feet up.
The bulk of the work is in cleaning up the limbs, cutting up the trunk, and removing it all from the yard. Unfortunately Box Elders are not good firewood but since I had to do the work of cutting it up, I'll probably throw it in stove to take the chill out of the mornings next spring.
And speaking of firewood, there's another chore that cuts into the work of renovating...
Ever since I was taller than a blade of grass, I've been mowing lawns. As a boy I used to supplement my paper route income with lawn mowing jobs in the neighborhood. To me, the smell of freshly mowed grass is the smell of victory.
My first lawn mowing gigs were performed using a Black & Decker electric mower that was attached to a mile-long extension cord. This machine placed the energy cost squarely in the lap of the homeowner whose lawn I was mowing but included the risk of running over the cord. Although rare, this vocational hazard did present itself in real and shocking ways. The memory of having to wrench my hands from the metal push handle that was carrying 120V after chopping the cord in half is deep seated. The extension cord displayed its wounds in the form of black electrical tape bandages along its entire length.
I happily moved on to gas-powered mowers as time went on, and even more happily moved on to other forms of employment as more time went on. But then after experiencing the vagaries of the corporate cubicle I ventured back out into the garden and worked trimming the lawns of the flora-starved inhabitants of New York City.
As I pushed a mower along the narrow strip of lawn that graced the edge of one of the myriad apartment complexes on the upper west side, I could sense the longing of the men in suits and ties as they passed clutching their briefcases. The intoxicating smell of cut grass mixed with small engine exhaust has a powerful allure. Who would be the next to fall for the romance of the rotary mower?
But making a living as a gardener is a tough row to hoe and it wasn't long before I was back in the saddle of the rolling desk chair with the multiple adjustment knobs that stick out of it like so many pins on a voodoo doll. The grass was growing high around me as I was stuffing greenbacks in my pockets.
I couldn't resist the call of the wild, however, and eventually packed up my tools and left the city. There was a lawn waiting for me somewhere and I was destined to mow it.
When we made the move to Chez Melendy (the endearing name we've given our humble abode/unending renovation project), I welcomed the new opportunity at lawn mowing. I went out in search of a machine and gladly found a $20 special from Bob's Lawn Mower Repair shop. It was, no doubt, a repair job that someone neglected to retrieve and Bob was looking to recover his costs. All I cared was that the "Eager-1" started on the third pull.
Over the next two years I ran the Eager-1 hard. (I hope the swifty who came up with the name 'Eager-1' got a hardy pat on the back and an upgrade in his/her roll around desk chair.) Having only paid $20 for the mower, I barely winced when the blade ground against a protruding rock or stump. I happily ventured into the edge of woods to clear the encroaching weeds without a care.
Oh, I knew the peril of errant mowing. A lawn mower could be destroyed in an instant by a misplaced pass over a protruding piece of New Hampshire granite. (As a boy I rendered one lawn mower useless when I hit a large piece of steel hidden in the grass of Mr. Cushing's yard. The drive shaft was bent to the point where the motor would not even turn.)
And then I pushed the Eager-1 too far. Carelessly venturing into the high weeds last week I sent the machine over a stump that stopped the old blade dead. I restarted the machine with trepidation. It ran but now the whole mower vibrated terribly. Either the blade or the drive shaft was bent and now the rotation included a viscious oscillation.
I forged ahead and finished mowing the yard, my arms shaking in response to the wild vibrations. When I wheeled the Eager-1 into the barn I knew I had a hard decision to make: should I try replacing the blade or should I shop anew...
This week I've been all over the map with getting-ready-for-summer projects like fixing the motorcycle, mowing the grass, hauling the A/C upstairs, mowing the grass, digging the fans out of the barn, mowing the grass. You get the picture. Little time for true house renovation projects.
However, the big project isn't quite on hold. I've been tooling around in the old Dodge pickup buying lumber for the siding project and delivering doors to be stripped by the Stripper.
The interior doors of our house are/were covered with innumerable coats of paint. The top coat was yellowed and stained and impregnated with the smell of tobacco smoke. My plan from the beginning was to strip them and I went about this the way I do most things, thinking: "how can I do this myself in an environmentally friendly way?"
Most the builders I talked to weren't very optimistic about environmentally-friendly paint stripping. It seems the products they'd tried or heard of were only moderately successful. I was undaunted though as I had talked to a few who had success.
The product I tried is called Soy-Gel from Franmar Chemical. This a soy-based paint stripper that you apply and let sit for a while and then scrape off. It worked pretty well at getting several layers of latex and lead-based oil paint off of the two doors on which I tried it, but the very first layer of paint was stubborn. This first layer of paint is milk paint and even after two applications of the Soy-Gel, much of it remained.
This was my first foray into wood stripping and I pretty quickly decided that it wasn't something I wanted to do a lot of. It's messy and no matter how environmentally friendly you want to be, the by-product is a nasty lead-based sludge. The stripper itself is expensive and the process is time consuming.
I have nine interior doors that need stripping along with door casings for four doorways. The door casings I'll do myself, but I decided to ship off the doors a few at a time to Tillotson Trading where they dip them into a vat of stripping solution and they come out entirely clean of the old paint. (A small amount remained in some deep crevices but only enough to add character and prove the age of door.)
The cost having one door stripped professionally at Tillotson Trading is equal to the cost of one gallon of the Soy-Gel stripper. I've already used half a gallon of the Soy-Gel and was only moderately successful at stripping one door. And the folks a Tillotson pay top dollar for proper disposal of the hazardous waste by-product of their work, which is probably better for the environment than what I would end of doing with sludgy by-product.
I like the look of doors that are partially stripped, and there may be a place in our house for a couple of doors like that but, for now (with a baby on the way) I'm most interested in getting rid of all the old lead paint as soon as possible.
Wet weather has forced me inside from the exterior tasks but given me a chance to take care of a small inside job I've been wanting to do.
Since re-configuring the upstairs bathroom I've always been aware of a small problem with the design. I really wanted an interior window that would bring light from the sunny bathroom into an otherwise dark hall and stairwell, but in order to place the large window where it would provide the most light to the interior space, I had to move the door to where one of its top corners would be cut at an angle to accommodate the roof line.
The top angled door is a familiar fixture in old Cape-style houses. Moving the bathroom door actually added to the symmetry of the upstairs hall as that door would now face the top angled bedroom door on the other end of the hall. The problem with top angled doors is that their hinges can only be placed along the tall edge of the door which limits the options for which direction they can open.
Generally speaking, doors should open into the room in which they provide entry. This had to be the case with the upstairs bath, otherwise the door would inhibit movement through the space at the top of the stairs. The problem with having the bathroom door open inwards was that it became an obstacle in the small space of the bathroom.
The problem wasn't big. Someone unfamiliar with the space might find it a bit awkward but we got used to it quickly and chalked it up to an old house idiosyncrasy.
But being the perfectionist/tinkerer I am, I felt I could improve the situation. I decided a door that swung both ways, like you see going in and out of a diner kitchen, would make passage in and out of the bathroom a little easier while adding a little novelty at the same time.
Finding the right hinge was the first task. The local hardware stores all carried double-acting hinges but only for very light doors (think saloon style). The bathroom door is one I picked up at a salvage center. It has a solid ash frame, a wood panel on the lower half with a translucent glass panel above. It's not a lightweight.
There were two hinge types I found that would accommodate a heavy door. One is a pivot type that was used in the kitchen doors of well-appointed homes of the 19th century. If you live in an urban brownstone or pre-war apartment building you might see the vestiges of one of these pivot hinges on the floor by the kitchen door casing or in the header casing. The pivot hinge requires a plate screwed into the floor and another in the header casing.
The other hinge I found is the double-acting barrel hinge. This is the one seen often in the swinging kitchen doors of restaurants. I went with this hinge because it required less modification to the door and casing then the old-style pivot hinge.
With the new hinge I had to make a mortise that is longer and deeper than the one for the standard hinge. Once the mortise was chiseled-out I installed the hinge on the door and then had to carefully hang the door in the center of the jamb so that it swings true.
So far we're pleased with the new door. It's easier going in and out of the bathroom and seven year old Ramon said, "Ah that's cool!" when he first tried it out. It changes the feel of the upstairs hallway though because now the bathroom door is always closed instead of open partway when the room is unoccupied. A small difference but noticeable.
As usual when posting pictures I'm struck by the unfinished look of everything. Clearly there's a lot of work to be done, but we've gotten used to living in this unfinished house and it's proved comfortable even without the finery.
Renovating an old house is often an exercise in figuring out when to stop. Before starting a renovation you need to have some idea of the results you want but you also have to accept that the best laid plans of renovators often go awry. Nothing has gone truly awry lately but every small project in this renovation seems to offer a case in point.
In setting out to re-side the south wall of the ell, I didn't expect to get into foundation work but once I had all the old siding off and was considering my next step, I realized that the time to take care of another back-burner task was now. The rule of not starting one task without completing another doesn't really help if by starting one task you've provided an opportunity to take care of another. They're all just one big task after all.
The foundation under the ell is made of two courses of 2x8 pressure-treated timbers that rest on top of loosely piled field stones. The pressure treated timbers replaced 3x8 hemlock timbers that had rotted over the 100 or so years since the ell was built. Back when I replaced the foundation timbers, I would have liked to replace the field stones with something more modern but time and money prevented it. I was confident that the field stones had served their purpose for a long time and would probably continue to do so.
 To help reduce air infiltration through the field stones and into the crawl space under the ell I placed a vapor-barrier on the ground and had foam insulation sprayed along the foundation wall. The foam created a seal between the vapor barrier and the interior floor.
On the exterior, the pressure-treated timbers and the field stones are exposed. This was fine except that the grade of the soil was only an inch or less below the wood. If I wanted those timbers to last a long time, it was important to keep soil and moisture away from them, and before I started residing the wall, I knew I should address the issue.
I put my carpenter's belt aside and grabbed a shovel. I dug a trench about a foot and half wide and four inches deep. Then I filled it with small stones from the pile I discovered a week or so ago. This was a quick and dirty method for keeping moisture away from the foundation timbers.
Now I could have gone even further to improve the foundation by mixing up some mortar to fill in between the field stones but that would take me further afield from my original task of re-siding the wall. I would have to turn back to carpentry and off the side road of excavation and stonework.
One of the lessons that renovators often speak to is not starting a new task without finishing the one you're working on. I've found this to be good advice but have trouble following it.
In a perfect world I could finish working on the bidet project and then move on to the bedroom trim as planned. But in that perfect world the doors I sent away to be stripped would have come back,and the trim job would be finished before the weekend that my wife and son planned to go out of town arrived so that they were absent while I took care of some nasty demolition work. For that matter, in a perfect world there wouldn't be any nasty demolition work to take care of and I would be enjoying spring afternoons sipping margaritas on the side porch.
The south side exterior of the house has been an eyesore for a while. Since installing a large double window over two years ago, the wall remained in disrepair as I concentrated on making the interior space livable. Of course the wall kept out the elements, but was a constant reminder of an unfinished project.
This past week I took my first stride towards beautifying the main entrance to our humble abode. The first task was removing the remaining cement-asbestos shingles/tiles that grace(?) the sides.
The ell section of the house was originally sided with cedar shakes and those shakes lay under the asbestos shingles. My plan is to leave the asbestos shingles on the main part of the house for the foreseeable future but remove them from the ell and re-shingle that part with cedar.
Cement-asbestos siding, although fallen out of favor aesthetically, is nonetheless a decent siding material. It's strong, fireproof, and has good insulating characteristics. It's safe if left alone but if you start breaking up the tiles, you can release the harmful asbestos particles into the air and risk breathing them in. The most dangerous aspect of cement-asbestos shingles were in their manufacture. The workers who fabricated these tiles were exposed to harmful levels of asbestos. In fact the company, Johns-Manville, that manufactured the shingles that are on my house was forced to file chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1982 as a result of class-action suits brought on by the health affects of their manufacturing process.
I thought it best to take on the job of removing the tiles when my wife and son were away. For my own safety I donned a tyvek suit and respirator while handling the stuff.
Once the asbestos was off and safely wrapped up in 6mil plastic packages for later disposal, I got to tearing off the old cedar shingles.
On home renovation shows, the demolition stage of a project is often portrayed as fun. "Here's a sledgehammer George, have a ball." For me, aside from the hard work involved, I find it depressing. After all, I'm tearing apart something that someone else spent time, energy, and money on building. I like old good things and having to destroy them brings me no pleasure. I'm also keenly aware of the time, energy, and money it's going to take to rebuild.
I suspect that as we learn more about the finite aspect of the earth's resources we'll look back on some of those gleeful demolition party scenes with a bit of shame. I would like to have been able to recycle the old cedar shakes by burning them come wintertime but they were covered with vestiges of paint (probably lead-based). Into the landfill they go.
Spring here in New Hampshire comes at the last minute but it comes on strong. The weather turns nice and before you have time to get the wood stacked and the yard cleaned up, the grass is 6 inches high and needs mowing, not to mention trying to get a jump on the weeds.
But back to wood.
When I gutted the inside of the house at the beginning of this project, I made a point of separating out all the unpainted wood debris with the intention of using it later for fuel. In a 19th century house, the amount of unpainted wood in the walls is impressive. Of course most of it remains in the house, making up the timber frame and the exterior sheathing, but the lathe that held the plaster was all removed along with the framing that made up a few interior walls which were demolished as part of reconfiguring the floor plan.
All this scrap wood went into a big pile out behind the barn, and over the past 3 years I've slowly chipped away at the pile, cutting up the longer pieces as needed and using the lathe for kindling. But the pile was enormous. It loomed in the backyard as unfinished business. This week I finally made some inroads at taming the beast.
I started cutting it and stacking it on a pallet and then decided that I had enough scraps to build a little shed to keep it dry. This of course prolonged the task of getting rid of the ugly pile but come next winter I'll be happy for having dry kindling.
Now this is one shabby little woodshed but remember it was hacked together in a few hours with nothing but recycled scrap wood and leftover roofing materials. I've spent so much money over the past few years on building supplies; I thoroughly enjoyed this little recycling project.
...and what about the tulips?
Remember back in November when I did a shotgun bulb planting post? Well, the results are in and I'm in the pink.
 I had just solved the problem of a frozen faucet valve by soaking the valve parts in a 50/50 solution of vinegar and water. My bargain bidet was going to work out OK after all. There was just one more thing to fix and this project of installing a bidet would be complete.
When I did the rough plumbing for the fixture some time back, I didn't pay close attention to which side I ran the hot and cold supply lines. I do remember struggling a bit working in the tight space where the supply lines needed to run, so I probably had my eye more on running the 1/2" copper pipe as directly as possible. At any rate, the pipes came up through the floor with the cold water on the left and the hot water on the right. It wasn't until I hooked the bidet up that I discovered this mistake.
I could have left it with the hot and cold reversed, but that would mean joining the world of reverse plumbing whenever entering the bidet closet, and who knows what other implications that would have. I decided I should do the job right, so I picked up a pair of flexible supply connectors at the hardware store and then proceeded to change out the ones I had just recently installed with the longer flexible ones that allowed me to cross the lines between the 1/2" copper and the faucet valve.
Then another setback.
I'm not sure how it happened, but in the course of changing out the supply connectors, the hot water shut off valve developed a leak. It's possible that I had over-tightened the compression nut for the connector and this cracked the valve, but whatever the cause, the leak meant I would now have to replace the shut-off valve too.
The shut-off valve was soldered in place so I had to break out the propane torch again, heat up the solder joint and remove the valve. The hardware store only had compression style fittings for the replacement and that was fine with me. Once I cleaned up the 1/2" hot water supply line, installing the compression fitting was easy.
Now with the valve replaced and the connector lines crossed to bring hot water to the left faucet valve and the cold water to the right, we were ready to try out the bidet.
Sometimes it feels as if I'm doing one renovation project inside of another, kind of like a set of Russian Dolls. The house is being renovated and many of the parts that are going towards the renovation need renovation themselves.
I described the rehab of an old sewing cabinet into a sink vanity so that I could make use of a salvaged sink. Now I'm in the midst of resurrecting a salvaged bidet.
Bidets are just uncommon enough that they fetch a pretty high price here in the U.S. Anybody who wants this special toilet fixture must be willing to pay about double the price of a standard toilet. I was lucky enough to come across one at a salvage dealer a couple of years ago for $50 and snapped it up.
My bargain bidet sat collecting dust in the barn for a while, and then it sat unplumbed in the little closet that would be its home for even longer until last week when I was finally able to devote attention to this minor plumbing project.
The first step to connecting the bidet to the rough plumbing was to solder (or 'sweat') shut off valves to the supply lines. This required turning off the main water supply and prepping the 1/2" copper using plumber's cloth and solder paste. Then, after placing the valves, I could heat the pipe using a Bernzomatic torch and apply the solder so that it flowed around the joint, quickly wiping the excess off with a damp rag.
With the shut off valves in place, I was ready to put the bidet in place by fitting the waste tail piece into the drain trap. Once the fixture was in place and the waste connection made, I installed the supply lines. These attach to the faucet and the shut off valves by compression fitting.
Now that all my connections were made, I turned on the main water supply and searched for leaks. Sure that I didn't have a leak, I opened the valves to try out the faucet.
Two things became immediately apparent: (1) the supply lines were crossed so that hot water was coming from the cold tap, and (2) the hot water tap valve was stuck.
As far as the crossed supply lines, this was something that I hadn't paid close enough attention to when doing the rough plumbing two years prior. It was no big deal really because with flexible supply lines between the shut-off valve and the taps, I could re-cross them. Unfortunately, I had used short rigid supply connectors so I would have to buy some new ones.
The problem with the frozen hot water valve was another story. My first instinct was to use brute force to try and free up the valve. This didn't work. I then decided that buying a salvaged bidet was a mistake and I should just take a sledge hammer to it. Before doing that, however, I thought it might be more reasonable to try to find a replacement valve.
A visit to the manufacturer's web site (Kohler) gave me the hint of soaking the valve in a 50/50 mixture of vinegar and water. This dissolved the calcium deposits that had encrusted the valve and freed it up. (And without spending a dime!) Now I was sorry I had resorted to brute force originally because the threads that hold the knob to the valve got stripped a little when I took a wrench to it. Luckily the threads weren't stripped beyond use.
Next: Reconnecting the supply lines introduces a leak...
The upstairs was completely re-framed in renovating the house, but the
basic configuration changed only a little. The re-framing took place
so that the master bedroom ceiling could be lifted, the bathroom
enlarged, and a loft constructed for my son's bedroom.
Formerly the closet between the master bedroom and the second bedroom was a walk-through affair. I closed off access from the second bedroom and moved the door slightly so that it was more symmetrical with the door on the other side of the room. I also framed-in a closet for the smaller bedroom.
I made the bathroom larger so that tub could be positioned away from the sloped ceiling. Originally, the bathtub was tucked in against the knee wall which prevented it from being used as a shower.
One small luxury we decided to add in the renovation of our modest home is a bidet. This is a handy toilet fixture that Americans have never quite gotten used to. Simply put, it allows you to wash your private parts without having to take a complete shower or bath. I might argue that it's a way of conserving water, but I don't have any real statistics to back that up.
The bidet will go in a little closet off the Master Bedroom. I roughed-in the plumbing for this feature two years ago when I plumbed for the laundry downstairs. The first order of business towards installing the bidet was finishing the floor.
We originally wanted to lay down a kind of rubberized industrial floor as a fun solution to this little bidet room but as we started to look into the cost, we backed away. The area is only 9 square feet but the cost of materials alone was going to be around $100. For a space that was going to be taken up mostly by the bidet itself, and in a time when the budget is tight, that was more than we wanted to spend.
Looking into cheaper solutions of vinyl tiles, we couldn't find a color or pattern we liked without having to order an entire box. We decided that a painted wood floor will be fine I had some scraps of luan in the barn, and decided that it would be sufficient to cover the uneven floorboards and provide a smooth surface for painting.
After placing the luan I installed baseboard and door casings around the inside of the door. I primed everything and then put two coats of semi-gloss latex on the baseboards and casing. On the floor, I put two coats of latex and two additional coats of clear high gloss urethane to make it easy to clean.
With the carpentry and painting done, I'm ready to hook up the bidet....
handyman
|
|
I said to a friend the other day that progress on the renovation was going so slow that sometimes I feel like I'm going backwards. Such is the plight of the weekend warrior. I've mentioned before how during the times I had at least a few hours every day to devote to the project, things moved quickly, but for a while now the daily work and responsibilities that come with home ownership have pushed the big improvement project to the sidelines.
The bulk of the work is in cleaning up the limbs, cutting up the trunk, and removing it all from the yard. Unfortunately Box Elders are not good firewood but since I had to do the work of cutting it up, I'll probably throw it in stove to take the chill out of the mornings next spring.
