You Dig 9 Tons and What Do You Get?

It’s time to check in again, ‘cause we’ve been busy. Over 4 weekends we toiled to remove plaster and lath from all the walls of our old house. After many hours of dusty, dirty, grimy work and assistance from many helping hands, the walls are down to the studs.

Bob shoveling plaster out the living room window and onto the chute. 

At the end of the day he looked like he had came out of a coal mine. 

A hundred years of dirt and soot, I guess.

We took down the plaster first then the lath with the exception of the first floor ceilings--there the plaster and lath was pulled down together and then separated. The tools of choice: hammers, pry bars, crow bars, digging bars, sledge hammers and long handled scrapers. Flat shovels and 5 gallon buckets were used to pick up and carry the downed plaster to the chutes.

Bob made two chutes--one for the first floor and one for the second 

so we could send the downed plaster to the trailer.

We took 9 tons of plaster (4 loads) to the landfill and 4 loads of lath to be burned!

Many thanks to friends who volunteered their help: Cheri S, Monica C, Gary S, Wayne R, Dana P, John, and Bill W. We especially want to thank Bill who showed up just about every weekend! Thank you to Baur Construction for the fans and truck and trailer.

Gary taking down plaster. For now we are leaving the plaster on the chimney masonry.

Dana models the mandatory dusk mask while shoveling the downed plaster. 

The lath still on the walls came down later.

 

Cheri demonstrates the use of those nifty chutes.

Down to the studs--the family room looking into the dining room.

Looking toward the hall from the guest bedroom. 

The studio is beyond the hall on the left and the master bedroom is to the right.

This is all that is left of the stairway and it will have to be replaced. 

The stairs run along the chimney in the living room.

The contractor has sent his team to begin work on the exterior—they started on November 9, our anniversary. First the sun porch was removed. There is plenty of indication that there was a roofed porch on this side of the house prior to be enlarged and enclosed one. We think there were doors in the location of the windows. They also uncovered an open well under the floor. This was probably topped with a hand pump which gives support to the idea that the room on the east side was originally the kitchen. We’re not sure what we will do with the well—whether we’re allowed to operate a well in town, but it would be great for watering the lawn and garden.

Awe, lovely insulbrick—further indication that things will look worse before they look better. 

The original siding under the insulbrick is german lap board.

Drop a pebble down, wait a few seconds and you can hear 

the splash of water at the bottom.

We are glad to have the demolition completed—our sore bodies especially! Now the workers are taking off the slate roof and putting on new shingles. We are sorry to have to let the slate go, but after 100 years, it's beginning to deteriorate. Also, since the original box gutters had been removed there was no satisfactory way to address the bottom two feet of roof surface.

Other balls that Bob and I are keeping in the air include designing the layouts of the kitchen and the addition which will house the master bath, laundry and entry.

We’ll be back with more photos soon as the excavator should be arriving any day to dig the  foundation for the addition.

Hope you are enjoying the updates! 

Later,

ChrisAnn 

Delicate Demo

We spent several weeks gently removing trim around the windows and doors as well as pulling baseboard. Finding a 10” wide board 15’ long is a real pleasure. Improvements that have happened over time included placing big registers and outlets in the baseboard. We’ll be doing some patching, another reason this clear white pine will end up being stripped clean and then painted. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves for we’ve some fun discoveries to share.

In removing the baseboards in the family and dining rooms we had a challenge as at some time a second layer of wood floor, nice 2” wide clear oak was added on top of the original 3” pine. This meant gently prying out the top and then using the electric crow bar, a.k.a. sawzall, to clip the nails and out it popped. Bill Williams was a great help with this, as was his father Cam who at 94 years young was happily pulling nails.

Bill and Cam lent a hand with taking down the trim and 

removing anything not in the final plans. We wondered what we 

would find behind the brick patterned masonite board!--crumbling plaster? 

No, just wall paper. The dark boarder around the window is not trim--

it’s soot on the plaster where the trim has been removed. They must have 

burned coal to heat this house.

Cam employed impressive skills to remove nails from reusable boards.

 

One of the early things we noticed was that it appeared the central stairs had been turned around 180°. It seems that the front door was originally in the corner of the L where a bathroom was added. We’re guessing that as the town grew out to the house it made sense to move the front door to the west side of the house where a porch was added. Another hint that the front door was in the corner can be found in the flooring and in a closet door that had the only transom window trim in the house.

We’ve gently removed closets and walls that were added when the house was made into a two unit (upstairs, downstairs) rental. Were were able to pull out a wall that created a shotgun bathroom. We really don’t know what we are gong to do with the fireplace, which seems to have been most recently used with a coal and/or gas insert before being sealed off. We’re thinking gas logs and have begun looking for an old mantle.

Bill helped remove the closet in the corner of what will be our living room.

Here is an after shot with the closet removed. You can see the layers of 

paint and wall paper and the opening to the chimney. When we removed 

the wall-to-wall carpet in this room, it revealed the original pine 

floor boards which had been stained around the edges of the room--

no need to stain where the area rug would cover!

Under the wall-to-wall carpet in the attic over the kitchen, we found 

this linoleum type flooring. Thankfully it was not glued to the pine floor boards 

beneath and could be easily removed. The same is true for the upstairs 

apartment kitchen which had vinyl adhesive squares instead of 

carpeting over the very old floating linoleum.

We removed the wall that was added to make the upstairs 

galley bathroom. This will allow for a larger bedroom 

which will be Chris’ studio.

This bathroom will loose the bath tub and be redesigned 

as a half bath—sink and toilet.

Thanks for reading,

Bob

NEXT TIME: Photos of plaster and lath demolition! If you care to join us, we’re having parties on Saturdays October 6 and 13. Bring a hammer and perhaps goggles. We’ll provide dust masks and lunch.

What Was

As promised here are a few “before” photos. Some were taken just in time, as we have carefully removed all the original interior window, door and baseboard trim. Inside most of all the wall-to-wall carpeting is gone, too, as well as the closets that had been added after the original construction of our old house. But I’ll let Bob tell you more about that in the next entry. For now this post will document the original layout of the house with some simple drawings and “before” photos. The exterior photos were taken back in May. 

This is the southwest side of the house as seen from the driveway.

The sunroom actually gets a lot of sun as this is the south side of the house. 

Cute as it is the sunroom will removed to make way for a two story addition.

Notice the only side-by-side double hung windows in the house on this the north side. 

Perhaps they were aware of the need for more light. We will enjoy that natural light as well as 

the great view from the second floor. The addition on the first floor is a full bath which served 

the first floor apartment when the house was divided into two units.

This First Floor Drawing shows the floor plan as it was at the time of our purchase. 

The room labels indicate how we will repurpose the rooms.

Bob and Barry the builder meet in the kitchen which we’re pretty sure was a later addition. 

Photo was taken at A on the above drawing.

We believe the stairs (behind the wall) were once open to this room, which will be the dining room, 

before they were closed off from the second floor apartment. Notice the two doors to the front porch. 

Photo was taken at B on the above drawing.

The previous owner was using this room as a bedroom. We think it was the 

original living room or parlor of the house. Notice the added closet. 

The fireplace is behind the dry wall to the left of it. 

Photo was taken at C on the above drawing.

The living room doorway shows the hall and the family room beyond with the 

wall-to-wall carpeting still in place though out. 

Photo was taken at D on the above drawing.

A view of the central stairs from below. 

Photo was taken at E on the above drawing.

This Second Floor Drawing shows the floor plan as it was at the time of our purchase. 

Again, the room labels indicate how we will repurpose the rooms, except my studio

will be in the bedroom on the left.

Most folks laugh when they see this room for the first time—

not the best solution for adding an upstairs bath. 

Photo was taken at F on the above drawing.

This is the interesting room above the kitchen. We plan to use it for storage, 

though it has quite a bit of character with it’s low square windows and beaded board walls. 

The wall-to-wall carpeting has already been removed in this photo. 

Beyond the door you can see cabinets that served that room as the kitchen of the second floor 

apartment and that the door trim in the old kitchen has already been removed. 

Photo was taken at G on the above drawing.

We are redesigning the floor plan of our old house here and there. If you are wondering what will be changed, stayed tuned! 

Thanks for reading,

ChrisAnn

First Things First

Things are moving along with our old house, so time to report in. We spent three hours last Thursday walking through the house with our contractor. That all went well and he seems to be in agreement with what needs to be done and more or less how we’ll go about achieving it. We’ll be signing a contract with him once he puts together the estimate.

Since we have determined that the plaster walls are too cracked and have been covered in layers of wallpaper in some rooms and skim coated in others, it all has to go. Yes, its the old horse hair plaster over lathe boards. It’s going to be a dusty, messy job, but one that Bob and I will add to our list of responsibilities. 

But before we start that project, all the interior trim boards need to be removed. We want to save this part of the original house. At some point all of the trim was painted, but a bit of detective work reveals that it was originally stained and varnished. The wood is something like poplar, not oak, so there is no rich and interesting wood grain to be revealed. Instead there is indication that the trim was given a faux finish--a treatment that mimics the look of wood grain like in oak. Our plan currently is to strip it and sand it and then repaint it one color throughout the house.

Trim around the tops of doors and windows.

Bob begins to remove the trim.

We’re curious about the use of poplar. It stands to reason that poplar was a less expensive option when the house was built. I offer that possibly poplar was preferred because of its lack of grain, knots and other variations. Maybe it was just easier to mill. Perhaps folks really liked that faux grain look. I don’t know. What do you think?

We're referring to the corner pieces as bull's eyes.

 

At the bottom of the door trim are plinth blocks with their own profile. 

The baseboards are constructed in two horizontal pieces--

the top trim and the taller bottom piece. 

Notice the piece where the baseboards meet in the corner? 

We think they are called corner posts.

We’ve come up with a system for numbering and labeling each piece of trim. Some windows and doors are being eliminated for the final layout of the house, (We’re adding a modest addition—more about that later.) so we’re hoping that we will have enough trim to go around. We have to account for pieces that have been damaged or may not survive being removed. In the end we may need to have some trim made to match. Thankfully there is a business close-by that specializes in that kind of work.

Next time we’ll show you some inside “before” photos and give you an idea of the layout of the rooms.

Thanks for reading,

ChrisAnn