Happy Holidays

We took a break from living through our personal episodes of This Old House over Christmas to enjoy some time with our herd of cats and dogs (which recently expanded to a total of 2 dogs and 2 cats). The cats enjoyed Christmas morning by spending much of it in present boxes. The dogs, not content to be lazy like the cats, helped with the dishes after Christmas dinner.



We are spending a good portion of New Year's weekend back at the money pit. Despite having used about 20 gallons of joint compound in the past couple of months, we still have plenty of cracks left to repair.

Stained Glass Update No. 481

The repaired stained glass window has made its way back to Lexington. For the time being, it will live in our garage in Lexington. There's no sense in putting it back in the money pit and taking the risk that it will be damaged while we finish renovations.

The repaired window is absolutely beautiful, and Joe and Mitsy were able to reuse the majority of the antique glass. The pictures below do not do it justice.

Stained Glass Window Update #2

Here are several pictures of the completed stained glass window. It will be installed later in the restoration project when the rest of the window work is being done.




Thanks to Joe & Mitsy Yager for doing such a great job on it.

Rear bedroom

This is the rear guest bedroom. This first two photos show the room as it looked before we closed on the house. The third photo (of the fireplace) shows the room after it was cleaned out and we began removing wallpaper and the wall (not original) that divided the room. The last picture shows the room in its present state....awaiting more joint compound, sanding, primer, etc.

Stairwell

The marathon of applying joint compound to the cracked plaster at the money pit continued this weekend. We finally started on the stairwell. The first picture above shows the stairwell as it looked when the tenant was still in the house. The middle picture shows the wall with the paper removed and drywall screws installed to secure loose plaster to the lath. The last picture shows the wall after the initial application of joint compound. We have a lot of work to do to finish the wall, but it already looks so much better after the first layer!!

Brrrrrrr!!!!

Brrrrrr!!! The temperature has dropped from the sixties (very pleasant) to the thirties (not so pleasant). This means a couple of things for the money pit project....
1. It's too cold for Wife to apply joint compound.
2. It's too cold to apply joint compound since it will not set/dry properly.
3. Scout's designation as "barn cat" changes to "house cat". (We don't want her to freeze!!!). And, she seems to be enjoying naps in our spare bedroom.

We have made a great deal of progress repairing cracks at the money pit. We've used a lot of joint compound so far...probably 15 gallons....and have just about finished 2 rooms and the upstairs foyer (see below). The upstairs looks so much better with the wall repairs. Fortunately, the ghastly odor lingering from tender love and care provided the former tenants has also vastly improved.

Scout

We have a new cat hanging out in our old barn. We've named her Scout and she's doing a fine job of watching over the comings and goings of the backyard.

Weekend Work

This past weekend was spent working on the walls and the plaster cracks and holes. We're slowly making progress on the upstairs rooms.







We also did some much needed leaf raking and yard work.

Stained Glass Window Update

Here are several pictures of the stained glass window. The repair work is almost complete.

Plaster Repair

Today was the first day of many to come. Today we started to repair all of the holes and cracks in the plaster walls. We started in the master bedroom and will work our way through the entire house.



For anyone wanting to help, the following link is a quick tutorial on how to repair plaster: Plaster Repair Link

Kitchen Ceiling

Both Saturday and Sunday were spent removing the old plaster and lath from the kitchen ceiling. The old plaster was rough and in bad shape. It'll also make it easier to wire the kitchen lighting.



We also continued to work on the removal of the old plumbing and gas pipes. The main thing left to remove is the main cast iron drain and roof vent.

Miscellaneous Work

This past weekend we did several miscellaneous jobs at the house.

On Saturday we removed the wall framing that divided the small back bedroom. The room is now restored to it's original size. We also took down the remaining part of the drop ceiling in the kitchen.

On Sunday we started to remove all of the old plumbing. The hot and cold water pipes have been removed from the entire house but the drain pipes still remain. We hope to remove them this week.

Electrical Wiring

This past weekend we removed all of the old electrical wiring, outlets, and switches from the house. There was a lot of knob-and-tube wiring dating back to the early part of the 20th century and some wiring from the later half of the century. It all has to be replaced.

Pit Stop

We're temporarily at a pit stop along the renovation road. Wife has been very busy at work, and then we took a vacation at the beach. We should be heading down the on-ramp again this weekend. More wallpaper scraping and paint removal await. Our other contractor bid is also ready. Hopefully it won't be astronomical like the first one!!

Stained Glass Window Repair

The latest project at the house was the removal of the large stained glass window that was in the front living room. It was almost eight feet across and a little over two feet tall.



Some friends of ours, Joe and Mitzi, came to town for the weekend a couple of weeks ago to play some golf and look at the stained glass window. They just happen to work on stained glass windows as a side hobby/business. After looking at it they decided it was something they thought they could help repair. We applied a lot of duct tape to both sides of the window to help stabilize it and then carefully removed it from it's frame. Parts of it were so loose it took little effort to get it out.



This past weekend I worked to get the frame out of the upper window and replace it with a piece of fiber board. I just need to go back and do some caulking around the edges to seal out the weather.



Hopefully in a few months we'll have a beautifully repaired window to put back in place.

Sledgehammer

It didn't take a crane or a bomb to get the coal burning furnace out of the cellar. But almost. A friend of mine told me to use a sledgehammer to try to break apart the cast iron inner section. Using the neighbors' 6# sledgehammer I started hitting the furnace as hard as I could. After about five minutes I realized that it just wasn't going to work. The sledgehammer wasn't heavy enough to get the job done. So off to Lowe's I went in search of the ultimate sledgehammer. I ended up buying a 10# contractors grade sledgehammer, the heaviest model they had. Back at the house I once again tried to break apart the furnace. This time it worked. After several hours of work and a lot of sweat I had the furnace broken down into pieces light enough to carry or roll out of the cellar. I now have close to a thousand pounds (guesstimate) of cast iron ready to be sold to the local scrap metal yard.

Here are some before, during, and after pictures:

Weekend Update: Dumpster Edition

The dumpster was delivered on Friday. It took them two attempts. The first truck they sent couldn't make the sharp turn required to get to the back of of house. They sent a second truck that was able to make the turn.



Saturday was spent loading the dumpster with the plaster, wood, junk from the yard, and all of the demolition waste that has been piling up since the beginning of June.

Sunday was spent clearing out the majority of the duct work and other junk from the cellar and crawl space. The only things left are an old water heater and part of an automated coal burning furnace that probably weighs fifty tons. The outside sheet metal has been removed but the cast iron inner part still remains. Hopefully it won't take a crane or a bomb to get it out.

Comments

The comments for the last several months' postings have been deleted. Someone posted a short anonymous comment along with a link to a gambling, mortgage, or other SPAM website on each individual posting. The only way to get rid of them was to delete the comments section for those postings.

From now on all comments will have to be approved before they're posted to the Blog. We'll only deny or block comments that have unwanted links or other trash. Comments about me never working, using a hand trowel instead of a shovel, or other jabs at us will be allowed.

I hope you enjoy reading the Blog and keep your comments coming.

Hot & Humid

It was very hot and humid this past weekend. The heat index was well over 100 degrees. So...what did I do? I decided to dig up a fence post. It needed to be removed to widen the entrance to our back lot to allow a dumpster to be dropped off. The pile of scrap wood, plaster, and other demolition junk has gotten pretty large and needs to be removed. The ancient duct work and other heating system stuff in the crawl space also needs to be removed. It took me over an hour using a pick axe and shovel to get the post out of the ground. I sweat so much my clothes were dripping wet. I spent another hour or so clearing some tree limbs out of the way. I'm so glad I don't have to earn a living doing manual labor.

Things We Have Learned About Paint Stripping

1. Paint stripping, quite frankly, completely sucks.
2. Wallpaper removal is unpleasant, but not nearly as bad as paint removal.
3. Tree chipping is hard, but not as hard as paint removal.
4. The former tenants created foul odors, but nothing as noxious as chemical strippers.
5. Poo left from a squatting (literally and figuratively) raccoon is gross, but paint stripping is worse.
6. The "sky is falling" warnings about lead and asbestos are scary, but not nearly as frightening as the "you could have brain damage or go blind if you use this product" warnings on the chemical stripper labels.
7. Old houses have more paint on them than the Glidden store has in stock.
8. The infrared stripper gets pretty hot, so it hurts if you happen to accidentally touch it to bare skin.
9. Old paint is tenacious. It's even more difficult to remove than tenants.
10. The end result will make it worthwhile.


Other than "enjoying" paint removal, we have been working on some demolition in the kitchen. The plaster isn't in the best shape and has a lot of peeling paint. Since one wall will be torn up to install plumbing for one of the upstairs bathrooms and other walls will hold cabinets, we are going to just take down the plaster and use drywall.

If you think our house looks bad.....

If you think our house looks bad.....take a look at this couple's project in New Jersey. We particularly like their "Open Letter to Rich People".

Independence Day

Its been a busy week. As you probably expected, we celebrated the 4th of July by working on our little piece of history. We got to enjoy some fireworks thanks to the new shopping center just up the road from us. They put on a pretty nice show. Of course, a few local morons and idiots felt the need to set off illegal fireworks in the middle of our neighborhood and risk loss of their digits, eyesight, etc.

One of our favorite sporting events has also begun...the Tour de France. We'll spend most evenings over the next couple of weeks watching it on OLN and listening to their genius commentator call it the Two ur deeeee Frantz.

The infrared paint stripper arrived last week and has been put to use on several occasions. This contraption works wonders on paint. If the paint is newer and holds enough moisture, it will scrape off like icing from a cake. The older, drier paint puts up more of a fight, but still comes off fairly easily (as compared to using a chemical stripper). Its hard to strip paint from crevices and rounded trim with the infrared device. We'll probably have to use a chemical stripper on these. Either way, it's a slow and tedious process.


The wall in the pictures above is bead board in the kitchen. The exposed wood isn't particularly attractive, so the board will have to be repainted. There was too much old paint on the wood to paint over. The removal of the old paint should also help with the stench reduction process.

Shave anyone?

We've had to do quite a bit of demolition work in the upstairs bathroom. When we were removing the lathe a couple of nights ago, we found a big pile of razor blades. This bizarre mystery was quickly solved by Wife's mom. The razors were probably dropped through the razor disposal slit in an old medicine cabinet and piled up over the years. It sounds like this isn't the first time this has been discovered during renovation.

Lydia E. Pinkham's Vegetable Compound

Remember our previous post about the newspapers on the kitchen floor? Well, one of them has a interesting little advertisement for Lydia E. Pinkham's Vegetable Compound. The newspaper is dated 1918. Here's the ad, and since the text is hard to read in the picture, we've typed the text too.



OVERDOING - How American Women Break Down

Owing to the modern manner of living and the nervous haste of every woman to accomplish just so much every day, they overdo and as a consequence develop ailments peculiar to their sex, as indicated by backache, headache, nervousness, the blues, displacements and weakness.

Women who find themselves in this condition should slow down, and depend upon that good old-fashioned herb and root remedy, Lydia E. Pinkham's Vegetable Compound, to restore them to health and strength, for there is no other remedy known that quickly restores a healthy, normal condition.

Slow News Day

There isn't much to report in renovation news. The wallpaper removal saga continues, but should culminate in the foreseeable future. We removed beaded board from one of the kitchen walls and all of the board in the upstairs bathroom today. The board from the kitchen will probably be re-used elsewhere in the house.....of course, not until it has been through a thorough cleaning and disinfecting session and repainting.

In other news, the cat hid under the bed in one of the bedrooms and ended up getting shut in all day.

Cartoon

Salad Shooter

Once again, we have been to the local rent-all. Not having been satisfied with erecting what was quite possibly the heaviest extension ladder on earth, we had to get something even more exciting....a wood chipper. These dandy little items are basically industrial strength Salad Shooters that can make quick work of vines, branches, small stumps, and limbs. Fortunately, we only chipped backyard flora, not fauna (aka Husband and Wife) or fauna's limbs. The result is a lovely mulch pile that we can use in landscaping....if we ever get to that point.







Since we have a cooking theme, well sort of, we should update everyone on our kitchen design progess. We met with a kitchen design/custom cabinet company last week to design a layout, pick cabinets, etc. We are waiting on the initial design and estimated cost. Hopefully the cost will not be at a stroke-inducing level.

Wondering how we plan to celebrate Independence Day? Well, we hope to have a grand ole time removing lots of paint from trim, etc. at the house. What a treat this will be. We plan to rent an infrared stripper. If its any good, we'll buy one. If not, we'll have to use caustic chemicals to strip paint. Cross your fingers on the infrared gadget.