Palmyra Church, 1870

While out driving back roads for work this afternoon, I came across the Palmyra Church built in 1870. It's listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and is absolutely beautiful..even through the peeling paint :)

Love a good bracket :)

The windows were what initially caught my eye from the road - HUGE, and all down both sides (and across the rear) of the church.

This old church was built just two years after the original portion of my house.
I'd say both are pretty cool places :)

Tremendous Tuesday

Piggy-backing on the momentum we established Sunday, my dad, my neighbor, the Goddamn Genius, and I got to work on the remaining windows and the front door to complete the solarium project..for now.

An inside view after the progress we made Sunday.

Window wall!

Dad had the day off yesterday, so he spent the afternoon tearing things apart and getting ready for us to put it all back together. By the time Mark (Goddamn Genius) came over, we were in good shape to get things rolling. A couple hours later, we had both new windows and the new door framed, installed, and sealed in!

Mark: Taking Care of Business..in a flash!

Framing the windows and front door. The new door was about three inches wider than the old door, so we had to do a little cutting to get everything just right.

This room went from being more-or-less wasted space to now being really cool, historically accurate wasted space ;) All kidding aside, it’s going to be a really cool spot to read a book, or just hang out and watch the activity on the street..and grow plants!

Winding down for the afternoon.

Getting everything sealed up for the night. No bugs or bats allowed.

It's really going to look cool once all the trim has been hung...but it looks pretty cool now, too!

Now for a little drywall patching and wood trim inside, and exterior trim and siding outside! Stay tuned for the progress this weekend – the light at the end of this tunnel is getting brighter all the time! J

Solarium Sunday

I don’t know about you, but I had myself a busy little weekend!

Friday night I had to be responsible – I spent the night cleaning the house, doing laundry, and getting beds ready for company. Not terribly fun, but not bad either..and it needed done.

Saturday was the Brews & Muse street festival at the local brewery. I had a couple friends in town and we had a great time listening to a couple great bands, meeting new people, and eating and drinking way too much J

Sunday morning, my friends and I started talking about installing windows in the front porch/solarium/greenhouse and decided we’d give it a shot!

Remember what we started with?

The original plan changed because the new windows were shorter and narrower than the old windows – with that, we were able to squeeze five windows along the east wall of the solarium creating an entire wall of windows! It’s going to look great when it all gets trimmed out and painted J

A pretty good sized hole..

HUGE view! :)

The frame we built for the windows. I just KNEW this was the way to do it..turns out I was wrong :)
It all worked out, anyway!

Getting everything cleaned up - what a difference!

Once things have calmed down a bit, I'll order the decorative grilles for the windows to give everything a little more traditional look.

After cleaning up the large pile of window waste. Not looking half bad!

They even line up! It's like someone knew what they were doing! HA!

Two more windows and a new front door yet to come, but this was a big day for us – a HUGE thanks again to my amazing friends for hanging out with me Saturday and Sunday and being roped into slave labor!

Solarium windows making a comeback!

While I’ve pretty much done my own thing with this house, I am still trying to be sensitive to its history. Especially on the exterior and the larger, more expensive and/or hard-to-change areas of the house. I use the old family pictures as a reference more often than not, and I think they have been hugely helpful in giving my project(s) a direction. Especially when it comes to the front of the house.

While my landscaping may never look this good, I hope the house will!

As you can see, the front of the house used to be much more ornate than it currently is. However, over time, the roof over the enclosed porch/solarium proved to be too leaky and too big a headache to maintain anymore and the current sloped roof was put in place sometime in the 1970’s.

We'll be replacing the windows in the solarium/greenhouse and rebuilding the latticework around the front door to match the older pictures. I will also have the small window put back above the bay window and am trying to find a design for the gingerbread in the gable.

With all kinds of new roofing products out there, I would LOVE to be able to replace the pitched roof over the porch with a flat roof and rebuild the decorative rail. That will be a project for another..year.

The project we’ll be working on soon enough is residing the front of the house and replacing the windows in that area.

Our siding project last year lasted as long as the weather would allow – we hung siding (in sweatshirts and hats) until November 9^th when the snow started to fly. At that point, I was out of money and siding to hang so it seemed like a natural stopping point.

With the other big projects finished, and the inside of the house becoming more and more finished every day, we’re turning – once again – to siding.

Completely by chance, I was able to purchase seven new windows for the solarium at a deep discount. The windows are double hung, aluminum-clad Pella brand and are absolutely outside my price range if not for the restocking sale offered by the manufacturer (Pella Corporation’s headquarters happen to be 15 miles away..in Pella: http://www.pella.org/)

Playing in the big leagues now!
http://www.pella.com/home/default.aspx

So, I lucked out yet again J Now I’ll have all the windows back in their original placement – I’m even ordering muntins to match the pattern of the old style from my pictures so I can have the best of both worlds: the charm of the old style, with all the efficiency and convenience of new products!

Picture Update :)

Dining room, without carpet..but, oddly including a kitchen countertop?

The only bad spot I've found so far. Dining room, right in front of the basement door.

Entry without carpet. The floors were in really great shape here!



Office without carpet.

This is the PVC trim I picked for the exterior of the house. With this and the cement board siding, it should be relatively low maintenance!

Kitchen window and a snazzy new door!

New furnace and electric water heater..

..and air conditioner..

Means no need for a vent pipe! No vent pipe means no chimney!

As you can see, the chimney had issues anyway. I thought about re-pointing it, but it would have been more work, more time, more money..without much benefit. The new HVAC system operates without the need for the vertical ventilation: win-win!

Keep checking back for more – we’re making huge, noticeable progress every day!

Fast times..

What a weekend!

Not only do we have power restored to the house (LIGHTS!!), but we have more or less finished hanging sheetrock throughout the house, have trimmed out the exterior of the new windows, removed the remainder of the west chimney, had a new furnace/AC/water heater installed, restarted soffit work, and laid the groundwork for hanging siding. Oh! I also bought more cement board for the kitchen and laundry areas as well as decided on exterior lights and a bathroom sink and faucet.

As I said, the drywall is hung (with the exception of the living room ceiling), but we’re waiting on the contractor to come mud, tape, and texture. Timeline on that is another 2 - 2.5 weeks, so, in the meantime, we’re working on the outside before the weather turns nasty. On rainy days, we’ll rip up the carpet, sand the hardwood floors, and plop the carpet back down again to protect the floor from drywall splatters and stilts. I can refinish those later..I'm just hoping to get the dusty projects out of the way all once!

Also in the meantime, we can lay the cement board in the kitchen and laundry room – this acts as a sturdy base for the tile. We’ve already done this in the bathroom, but hadn’t done the rest because we weren’t totally sure what the footprint of the rooms would be. Now that the major demolition is done and we’re putting things back together, we can feel confident knowing where this stuff will go!

The exterior trim was pretty exciting for me.. it’s another reminder that I might actually get to live here one day! That, and the fact that I’m excited about the product itself: the trim around the windows and doors is a PVC product just like the pipes you might use when plumbing your house. This stuff comes in a variety of profiles and designs, and the real beauty of it is that there should be minimal maintenance going forward. Because it’s plastic, it can’t rot and it looks like the old trim might have – double win!

The west chimney has been coming down for the last two weeks or so. As we find the motivation, we go around back and smack at the bricks for a while. Well, over the weekend, dad and I took the sledge and a wheel barrow and finished her off J I have saved the old bricks because there is repair work to be done on the front steps, but I’d also like to use them in something else. Maybe next year..

I was able to pull the chimney down instead of tuck pointing it because the insulated pipe inside was no longer needed. My 1980’s furnace has been replaced with a new, high efficiency model and I’ve installed an electric water heater so there’s no need for a vent. Not to mention, I get more rebates now J

A side project I’ve been working on is the interior doors. When I bought the house, none of the doors matched each other. I don’t know if you know this about me, but I’m just obsessive-compulsive enough that this would bother me. Well, I was lucky enough to be able to sweet talk the neighbors into letting us salvage the old doors from their house before it gets demolished. Now every interior door in the house is the same..and my OCD remains fully intact.

After taking measurements and deciding which doors we could use, I set about sanding, priming, and painting them. I don’t know about you, but I’ve seen lots of magazines and blogs lately featuring people with these glossy black doors. I don’t know what it is about them, but I just think they look kind of…sexy? So, I thought I’d give it a try. If it works, I’ll have the sexiest doors in town..if it doesn’t, I’ll repaint them another color and life will go on. The only issue I anticipate would be the bathroom: it’s a smaller space without windows, and the dark doors might overwhelm it. Otherwise, everything else should be bright enough that they work just fine. Stay tuned!

http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/dc/inspiration-black-doors--089693?image_id=211671

I’ll post pictures of all of this very soon. At this point in time, I don’t even have any – pretty lame, right?

Happy Tuesday!

Windows: In Depth

When installing new or replacement windows, there are a number of factors to consider. For instance, when I bought my new windows, I wanted a model with an insulating quality – many window manufacturers include this as standard now. What this feature includes is essentially two panes of glass with a layer of gas between the two panes – this helps to ward off the extreme heat and cold we experience in Iowa. Some brands will even have a glaze-like property that filters out unwanted (UV) rays that can fade carpets or upholstery over time.

From what we could see, the older windows were replacement windows, anyway. The windows themselves were attached to the trim pieces around the edges, and the trim pieces were nailed to the house which is fairly common practice for this type of installation. Once we removed the trim from the exterior walls of the house, the windows came out fairly easily. We could then reframe as necessary.

In the dining room, the older windows weren’t very solid to begin with – this was because the ORIGINAL, original windows were so much bigger (about 80”!) and the newer framing would have been difficult to put in place given other constraints. Because we had no siding outside and no drywall inside, there were no obstacles to work around!

The kitchen window framing wasn’t in great shape – due to the flat roof over the kitchen, this area of the house had patches of rot here and there that we replaced as they were found.

The Kitchen windows, again.

The other windows we replaced were in the bedrooms. The new window in the master bedroom was taller and thinner than the window before it, so we ended up cutting out several studs and reframing quite a bit of the area around the window. This worked well because Aimee and I were rooting for more symmetry with the bedroom window anyway J Now it’s closer to the middle of the wall, and we installed a header to carry the weight of the roof above.

The Master Bedroom window, pre header installation.

As with doors or openings of any kind, it’s important to have the proper structure (ie. a header) installed above to carry the weight of the roof assuming the weight of the roof actually falls on the opening. In my house, one easy way to tell is to look at the roof…duh! On the gable ends, there isn’t really much downward pressure from the weight of the roof – the weight falls on the walls to either side of the gable.

A poorly drawn illustration showing the downward pressure on the walls supporting the "ends" of the roof. Think of laying an open book down on a table..it falls flat. Same with this..there really isn't downward pressure on the gable end of a structure - it's carried by the adjacent walls!

There are other factors to consider when removing and adding structure, but that will get you started!

When actually installing the windows, it's important to have the "hole" properly prepped. There is some debate about whether you should flash the sill before installing the window: one school of thought says yes; another says if the outside of the window is flashed properly, what you do to the sill shouldn't matter. We went with the latter. 

Windows will come stamped with measurements for the openings they will fit into. Assuming you've framed your raw opening to match these measurements, the next thing is to make sure the window unit rests 1/4" above the sill...in the event the flashing we discussed doesn't, in fact, work out, this will help to prevent moisture from hanging around in that opening. Once the unit it centered side-to-side in the opening and leveled up, you're ready to nail the strips to the wall.

Once this is done, take a weather/moisture barrier tape and run a strip across the bottom of the window, over the nail strip. Repeat on the sides, and then the top. This creates a watershed...if water gets behind the siding, it will roll over the tape on the top, down the sides, and over the bottom without getting into the structure of the window and causing rot.
 
Now, I’m off to hang more drywall…I got a ceiling last night!! J

Windows: IN!

Thought I’d take a moment to show you my new windows!

Once we’re a little closer to finishing, I’d like to see about adding muntins/divided lights to the upper panes so the windows will look more like the originals. That could be a ways down the road, though.

Anyway, we’ve installed the six windows in the back of the house – this is the area that will get sided this year. The remaining windows will be replaced next year (or the year after) when I get to siding the rest of the house. Since finishing the windows, we’ve started – and nearly finished – insulating the back of the house. Once that’s finished, it’s time for us to hang more drywall and for my mudder/taper man to come and work his magic.

Kitchen windows - right over my imaginary sink.

Speaking of siding, I got a phone call this morning (before I even got out of bed, thank you) saying that they’ll be delivering it tomorrow which is a few days earlier than anticipated. No problem: I’ll just have to make a run to the store to hunt down the window/door trim I want and pick up the corner pieces that work with fiber cement siding.

Big hole for a big bedroom window!

Big things happenin’!

Driveway, driveway, gettin' down on driveway

Silky smooth..

As you can see, my cement guy wasted no time in getting everything poured and smoothed out!

Per our conversations, he poured the cement so water would slope away from the garage door and stoop area. With the old concrete, some settling had taken place over the years and I noticed that water would pool up at the foot of the step on the days we had lots of rain. No more! Not only that, but – like I said in the previous post – we don’t have to walk around the mounds of gravel anymore. I’m so excited about this, it’s ridiculous.

Another new development: I’m installing windows?

When my siding guy came to check everything out, we talked about the best way to do everything. In that conversation he pointed out that the finished product would look better if the sheathing were smooth, or at least more consistent across the span of the wall from one addition to the next. While we had planned on that, he also pointed out that, I needed “new F$%#ing windows.”

He’s a pretty eloquent guy, but he’s also great at what he does J

I told him flat out that even though I would like to have new windows, it’s absolutely not in the budget and I will not do it right now. The windows I have are fine, my utility bills aren’t outrageous by any measure, and I can’t justify the costs for something that truly isn’t that wrong. Even as I said it, I knew getting the new windows now would be the right thing to do…it’s cheaper to get them now while we can easily change the size (considering I have a couple that are non-standard sizes)..it’s easier while the walls are open and the mess already exists..blah, blah, blah.   No, Siding Man, I will not buy new windows.

Enter, my Roommates.

Dad: “What if Mom and I bought you some new windows as a housewarming present?”

Me: “Pleasure doing business with you.”

Lesson for the day: Don’t ever walk away from a deal like that. Ever. J  

So, last night we set about taking the windows in the kitchen and the dining room out. This proved to take longer than anticipated because we didn’t have one of the tools we needed to work as quickly as we wanted. That said, we removed all four windows and built the new framing for the new kitchen windows.

It’s going to rock pretty hardcore.

Leaving my mark :)

This weekend

This weekend proved to be fairly productive..when you consider we only worked for a few hours one afternoon.

As I said in the last post, we’re hung up waiting on my electrical contractor at the moment. Until he comes back, we can’t have our City inspection which means we can’t insulate..or drywall, or sand the floors, or lay the tile, or bring in the bathroom fixtures..you get the idea. Though – as you can see – once we get that inspection out of the way, we’re really going to make noticeable progress. Like..start FINISHING stuff J

For now, though, we’re working on the outside. This weekend, we worked on wrapping the garage. This should keep the weather out, and further help with energy costs down the road. And because we used plastic cap nails, it should stay put longer than if we had just used staples – this is handy because it might be a while before we can really get moving on the siding.

As you can see, we tore off more siding under the new roofline outside the kitchen. We did this so we’ll have a solid spot to attach the F-channel to. F-channel – which receives the soffit – fastens to the wall in a straight line even with the bottom edge of the fascia board. From there, you can cut your soffit (vented in this case) to fit the gap between the F-channel and the fascia board. And because we’re not really all that professional, that’s as far as we got. The next step, in theory, is to snap the new fascia in place under the existing drip edge while overlapping the edge of the soffit underneath. Whew.

When I say “in theory” with regard to the next step, it’s because there’s a small complication. You see, when we ripped the steel siding off the side of the house, we found another issue: because the house had been added onto over time, the walls don’t line up exactly from one addition to another. When you’re working with steel, it’s not as big a deal because the material is more forgiving; however, now that I’ve (finally) decided on the cement board, we’ll have to do a little more preparation before we can start hanging. The cement board material isn’t as forgiving because it needs to be secured directly to the wall every few inches. Steel siding – or aluminum or vinyl – actually kind of floats in a channel.. that, and the physical makeup of the material make it easier to hide imperfections in the walls. There might be an easy fix for this – I’ll keep you posted.



See the difference in (old) siding colors around the windows?



Once we have our exterior walls squared away, we’ll be able to hang the rest of the new soffit and finish closing off the house to the outdoors. Once our electrical inspection gets a passing grade, we’ll be able to close the inside walls and it will start to look – and feel – like a home rather than an elaborate outbuilding.

Electrician: Tuesday. Celebration: Tuesday night? Too soon to call!

Burnout..

I don’t know if it’s waiting on my electrical contractor, haggling with my roofer, or arguing with my “roommates,” but I’m getting burnt out..

As for updates: As you could see in the last post, the garage is enclosed and being used pretty extensively. The dormers I wrote about didn’t pan out for a number of reasons, the most important being that I can’t stand it when some aspect of a house stands out in a bad way. You know that house you drive by and think, “Wow, that little window on that BIG wall?” Or, “That _______ looks really out of place with the style of the rest of the house.”

I still really think a couple dormers would look good with the house. The problems we ran into pertain more to the pitch of the new roof than to the dormers themselves. As we ‘mocked up’ our dormer project, we found that in order to make the “face” of the dormers as big as I wanted them, pretty much everything else would have to look really bad. One of my trusty volunteers described the effect you see sometimes where the dormers jut out so far that there ends up being mini-hallways protruding from the roofline. Not only that, but then I’d have to buy windows to go in the dormers, and that decision was not one I wanted to make in a hurry. The whole thing could have been smoother had I bought the steeper 7-pitch trusses vs. the 6-pitch that I bought. Price difference: $200 per truss x 21 trusses. No thanks.

Long story short: shingles went on the garage without dormers. I can always add them later, though it will take a little more effort.

Which brings me to the issue of the shingles. I’m happy with the actual shingle I picked – it’s a good mix of black, grey, brown, and blue (if that makes sense) so it will hopefully go with anything. It’s the work that I am not happy with.. in retrospect.

Initially, I was in what you could call a honeymoon period with my new roof. I was just so dang happy to have it! Once the rose-colored glasses came off, I started adding things up. Not only was the end cost noticeably higher than the bid (with extra charges for nails and other materials that one might assume would be included), but the yard was a mess as was the house itself. Then, to top it all off, I have to pay for the dumpster they filled with the scraps. Again, you might assume this would have been included..

This is another reason I feel like absolute crap for hiring people I don’t know from out of town – there’s no accountability.. I traded that for a big, fancy crew that could slap a roof on in a short amount of time for less money than a local. Both of which turned out to be untrue. I’m disgusted with them, and with myself for going against my gut instinct.

As for new updates, I had soffit and fascia delivered the other day. That will finally close the gap between the top of the walls and the edge of the roof. I’ve decided on a siding material – I’m going to spring for the slightly more expensive cement board in exchange for spreading the siding project out over this year and next. That way I’ll get the new construction and a good portion of the back of the house covered in new siding, and I’ll take care of the front half – which is more labor-intensive – next year when I have the money to do so.

Oh, joy!

Trespassing..

Seeing as I’ve got nothing but time while I wait for the legalities to be worked out, I thought "What better to do with that time than trespass?" J

OK, so technically it’s trespassing – but I’m going to own the house soon, anyway. If anyone can tip-toe through the yard, it’s me. Plus, I wanted to document the ‘before’ portion of the house. I can rationalize most things.

Anyway, as you can see, the house has good points and bad points. I will contend that everything looks worse at this point in the year. We’re not snow-covered and pretty, and we’re not springy and new…we’re just gray and brown. Which accents my peeling paint really nicely. These pictures should give you a better idea of what we’ll ultimately be dealing with. It is – as I said – a tiny, little, Victorian home.

Many of the original details – like the bay window, and the overall scale of the house – have been left intact. Same goes for the interior; there’s a fireplace and all kinds of original woodwork and moldings. Some aspects of the house may have to go for budgetary reasons. In making these changes, I’m also keeping an eye on future maintenance concerns. That said, I’m probably going to do some things that will ADD to future maintenance because they look good and satisfy my need to make this house my home.

Anyway – here are pictures for today. Don’t get discouraged…this is the beginning of a big, fun project. A lot of work…but a lot of fun!

Here's the view you're familiar with - from the contentious driveway:

The front steps could use some work – I plan to keep the bricks.

The massive amount of shingles. In my unqualified opinion: the weight of the roof is pushing the west chimney away from the house, resulting in cracks.

The side entrance – from the driveway.

The rear of the house – this is the master bedroom (right) and the mudroom/side entry (left).

And here’s my problem child: the garage. Sorry garage, but you’re going down.. But I'm keeping your door.