Detail: Front Half of the House

As promised, I’ll use this opportunity to give greater detail to the work progressing in the front half of the house: wiring, insulation, structural changes, and drywall.

Given the fact that we have since decided to remove much of the plaster and lathe in the house, the time we spent peeling wallpaper seems a bit wasted.. But, hindsight is 20-20. The original intent was to hang sheetrock over the wooden slats in the ceiling that the acoustical tiles had hung from. I went around with a screw gun and a ladder reinforcing the slats so they actually stay put once the drywall was fastened in place – after all, none of this is really any good if it falls in your mashed potatoes during dinner. Again, much of this has been for nothing because almost EVERYTHING came out anyway!

We started the gut job in the ‘front porch’ area of the house. When the house was built it was an open porch, a short time later it was screened in, and eventually enclosed with windows all around. The sellers referred to it – at that point – as the solarium.

They would sit there and drink tea with their grandparents and watch the activity on the street below. From that point, there have been windows taken out and changes to the roofline.

While I do plan to rebuild the latticework around the front door, I think it’s going to be too expensive to bring back the old windows and upper railing right now. Someday, though!

Anyway, in the entryway, we found the insulation and electrical work to be pretty spotty – both were replaced. I’m no electrician, but when your stereo turns on and off mysteriously, that’s an issue! Also, the large opening between the entry and the living room was sagging a bit, so we knew something would have to be done. What we didn’t know before the plaster came down was that it was severely under structured given the span it crossed and that it bore much of the weight of the gable above it.

With new headers and jack studs in place, we were squared up and ready for action!

The dining room was fairly straightforward. We’re adding three-way switches on either end so I can control the lights easier. Previously, there weren’t light switches in the front half of the house – only pull chains.

Partial chimney in the dining room.

Dining room facing the Kitchen/New Garage.

Dad and I removed the old partial chimney from the west wall of the dining room. This was originally the kitchen, and this chimney would have served the cooking aparatus at the time. I toyed with the idea of saving it, exposing and sealing the bricks, and building some cool bracket to support it. Once the plaster came down, we found large holes in two sides and failing mortar throughout. All for the best, though – this visually opens the space and leaves lots of room for hanging things on the wall.

There was a door between the dining room and the entryway – I assume – from the days when the entry was a porch and before the large opening existed between the entry and the living room. With the other openings present, it didn’t make sense from a traffic or visual standpoint to have this opening in place anymore. Studs + drywall = no more door!

The second bedroom/office room proved to be the biggest mental challenge of all the rooms thus far. Because we wanted to maintain the circular flow through the house, it was important that we find a way to accommodate that while also including storage options for the bedroom/office and adjacent bathroom while also providing privacy for those who might use it as a true bedroom someday.
Our solution – after much debating, head-scratching, and hand gesturing – was essentially to leave the space as is. We did make a few tweaks: we removed the cluster of tiny doors in the closet area and added another pocket door to the bedroom side of the bedroom/bathroom pass-through. We are also batting around the idea of hanging a larger barn-type door over the archway leading from the bedroom to the living room. This way, there will be privacy when needed and a wicked cool architectural feature when not in use.

My dad, the saint.

The reason we'll all probably have Mesothelioma.



Notice the partial chimney - as seen from the second bedroom/office. Also notice the Perfect 10 dismount off the ladder. 



As seen from INSIDE the bookshelf :)

Bedroom/Bathroom pass-through with bookshelf above.

Perhaps the coolest part – and by far the piece I’m most excited about – is the built-in bookcase over the closet. We’ve framed this in to accommodate books up to 15” tall, so it will be a nice space for stacks of books, artwork, and other fun stuff.

The COOLEST part of the coolest part: a library ladder that I'll have to track down and install later. (My friend Melanie asks excitedly, “Like in ‘Beauty and the Beast!?”  Not *exactly* my inspiration, but yes! J )

The living room is another room that will be left fairly untouched. Because of my concerns about keeping the bay window area and fireplace surround intact, we’ll be leaving the plaster in place. The west wall of the living room, however, is a fix that needs fixing. At one point there was another window on this wall and – like many places throughout the house – when they were done with the window it was covered up. In this case with wallboard of some kind. So, we’ll take that board down while we're at it.

The only other major update in the living room has been the wiring. Like everywhere else in the house, the wiring was a mix of new and old: knob and tube meets something else, spliced in with something else, blah blah blah. We’ve removed all of that and replaced it with modern, grounded wiring including wiring for a speaker system to be mounted around the room and TV above the fireplace. Nevermind that I don't OWN a TV that will fit on the fireplace..

With all of these changes taking place, it’s getting easier and easier to see the light at the end of the tunnel. While we’re still QUITE a way from completion, the new shape of the house is coming through and I feel great about knowing we’re leaving a positive, lasting impression on something that has meant so much to so many people.

That’s all for now – thanks again for stopping by!

It's getting hot in here..

With a heat wave sweeping the Midwest and much of the East coast, I think today might be a good time to concentrate on the blog! “Fun” fact: Knoxville, Iowa was noted as the hottest part of the country yesterday – yay?

Anyway, the house continues to buzz with activity. We’ve nearly finished drywalling the front half of the house, which means all the new electrical lines have been run, new insulation hung, and structural issues dealt with – I’ll show more detail on these items soon. I have the pictures, but not the TIME!
The next phase will include work on the back half of the house. We’ll be demo-ing down to the studs to deal with electrical concerns here as well, but the truer reason for the gut job is because the roofline will be undergoing some pretty drastic changes. Part of said changes will include a new ATTACHED two-car garage!

As we’ve talked about in previous posts, the original garage was in a bad way…crooked, cock-eyed, lop-sided, and Wizard-of-Oz-esque would all be equally fitting descriptors.

The original intent was always to tear down the garage and rebuild a new, squarer version on the property. Well, one beer lead to another and before you knew it we started thinking “If we’re going to the trouble of pouring footings and building a whole new structure, why not put it where I might actually want it as opposed to where they put it 80 years ago?” The initial rationale included saying things like, “It really won’t cost that much more,” and, “Well, while we’re at it…”

Dangerous.

A couple hours and one truck later.

While the total cost of the garage project will probably be slightly higher in the end, it’s going to be infinitely better to be able to walk to and from my truck without getting drenched in a rainstorm, my pants soaked up to my knee in a snowstorm, or just generally inconvenienced by the outdoors.

After all, a gentleman can't be bothered with the out of doors, Lovey.

Not to mention, I really don’t know how long I’ll live here: it could be five years, it could be 30 years. Bottom line, I want it this way as will most potential buyers somewhere down the road.

I did have to go through the proper channels in order to rebuild in a new location. Upon applying for a building permit with the City, I was notified that I would also need to be granted a variance because the new structure would sit too close to the alleyway and the neighboring property. I walked around, meeting my neighbors and asking for their support. I found that many of them will be building new garages soon, so it helps to have empathy on your side! After that, I had to wait for the Board of Adjustment to hand down their verdict before I could begin any work in earnest.

Once that was completed…

To meet with City code, the footings must be dug to a certain depth and poured a certain width. Once these dimensions are inspected, the cement contractor can back his truck up and begin the pour. In my (very positive) experience, the cement contractor started digging around 9:45am and was driving on the hardened concrete by 5 o’clock the next day. Small town service at its finest J

Once the footings had ample time to cure without totally drying, my contractor returned to set a few rows of concrete block on top. This way, he can fill that area with gravel, steel, and cement and we’ll have a slab in no time! The other benefit is that there will be a small gap between the floor of the garage and any wall material I may want to hang in the future, cutting down on moisture issues.

But now we’re back to the heat wave. It’s too hot to make the final pour, so we’ll wait it out. Once the slab has been finished, we’ll start framing the walls of the garage and relocate the electrical meter to be closer to the pole in the alley – loves me some buried power lines!

See the neighbors house?

One cool thing to note: since we've been busy at my place, the neighbors have decided to spruce up their house with new insulation and siding - it's contagious! (You can see their house, sans siding, in the second to last picture)

There are literally hundreds more pictures to come, so stay tuned! J  

Progress!

It’s official! I have a new key on my key ring and a dumpster in my driveway – all the issues pertaining to the easement have been cleared up, and demolition has begun. Hardcore.

The first order of business was showing the place off. In my excitement, I didn’t actually take interior pictures of the house before we started…duh. In my defense, we started tearing wallpaper off the wall during a tour (enthusiastic participants) – it left very little time to grab my phone and start recording.

Dining Room

Master Bedroom

Since removing all the wallpaper (From all the walls. In all the rooms.), the next most pressing interior issue was the bathroom. The walls were covered in a minty green paneling fastened to the wall with metal nail strips. I’ve never really seen anything like it..so I knew it had to go. Along with the paneling were an older vanity, and a tub/shower unit that had been custom-made into a handicap accessible shower stall. I really should have taken pictures of that – they did a great job on the retrofit. Alas, it’s all gone and the smell of new lumber now permeates the space.

New lumber, you say? Why yes! Because the bathroom – like the rest of the house – is small, the fact that there were two doors to the space left very little room for traffic flow of any other kind. My solution: pocket doors. We removed the existing door jambs, beefed up the wall structure as needed, and installed two pocket door kits. Not including the doors, the kits cost $55 each. Considering the space these new door systems will buy me, I consider that time and money well spent.

Ta-da!

The real story in the bathroom was the floor. Not only were there two layers of linoleum and a layer of  small hexagonal green tile, there was also a 5 inch layer of solid concrete.  …sorry, what?

After the main portion of the house was built in the late 1860’s, there were several smaller additions: the kitchen first, bathroom second, what is now the master bedroom, and the laundry area which was originally a porch. It is thought that the bathroom space was originally used as a porch as well – then possibly a pantry for the adjoining kitchen. Which would partially explain the concrete. They may have also done it to thumb their nose at future owners of the house..who knows?

In any event, we removed the layers of flooring, broke up the concrete, and decided that it would actually be way easier to re-plumb and wire the room if the entire floor system was gone. Because the “new additions” are all over a crawl space and I don’t get along with spiders, the subfloor was removed and most all of the work was done from above rather than in the dark, scary recesses of the unknown. Once the subfloor had been removed, we were able to cut out the old copper pipes for scrap and replace them with PEX tubing.

Concrete taken from the bathroom floor. Newspaper: Des Moines Register - May 4, 1930

Results of the bathroom demolition.

For those of you not familiar with PEX, it is glorious. Think PVC, but flexible. It takes a lot of the time, effort, and frustration out of plumbing. While the material itself may be more expensive, people love it because it takes no time at all to install. We had my old pipes cut out and replaced in an afternoon. Throughout the entire house. Crawlspace be damned. You will have to buy a couple special tools: one to cut the pipe and another to crimp the little rings that seal any joints you have in your lines. Otherwise, with a couple dollars worth of T’s, elbows, couplings and the like, you’ve got yourself some fancy new plumbing without burrowing through a crawlspace with a torch.

OK, I guess sometimes you still have to burrow through a crawlspace. No torch necessary, though!

Once the major work below the floor was done, we sistered new boards to the existing floor joists to bring them up to grade with where the adjoining floors will be once tiled/refinished. Had the floor joists been in poor shape, this would have been impossible, so that was a lucky break! With the new joist system in place, we laid a sturdy layer of ¾” plywood down to stiffen things up, followed by a half inch layer of Durock cement board which will eventually receive the travertine tile I picked up on sale.

There are other projects in the works, but to list them all here would be overwhelming. We’re finding –as everyone does – that once we tear into one thing it leads to tearing into something else, and something else, and round and round we go. I’ll update again very soon as there are a lot of exciting changes happening!

Have a great weekend!

Etch-a-Sketch

I feel like I should take this opportunity to apologize for the quality of my photos. At this point, I don't have a digital camera aside from my phone..

I've got a Samsung Mesmerize, and it usually takes amazing pictures. But by the time I send them to my e-mail, save them to my computer, and upload them to my blog..something gets lost in translation.

Does anyone know of a way to simplify the process and, ultimately, improve the quality of my pictures? I hate to admit it, but I'm not the most tech-savvy person I know..