Planning!

I seem to have this weekend free, so i'm trying to do some planning now for what I want to get done with it.
• First, my Dad was able to cut down a chimney clean out door for me, so hopefully it fits, and I can get that wrapped up! Super handy that he has big tools - I would have been at it forever trying to hack away at it with my Dremel.
• Two - I have some plants that are in desperate need of re-potting. Really, not even re-potting, they just need new dirt. I over watered my jades this winter, and now they are super sad, and the Christmas and Easter Cactus look like they could use it too.
• Three - Saturday and Sunday both look mild enough where I won't mind opening and closing the bulkhead. I might take a crack at cleaning out the sketchy back of the basement. It will make me feel better about it. There's going to be a whole lot of lifting the shop vac out to empty it if that's the case. I may also see about some LED lights for over there. More light will make it feel better.
• Four - Brush? Maybe some burning? I have to figure out the burn permitting process here in Grafton. (If it isn't too windy.)
• Five - apply oil to the stubborn areas of the mantle and finish stripping that.

I'll see how much I can get through,, and how much more I'll add!

Things in the Walls

While breaking open the faux-fireplace, stuff started falling out of the wall. Mostly plaster and nails, but an interesting assortment of stuff.

An interesting assortment of cut nails - two distinct sizes, after I sorted them out. The ones that look even sorter than the sort ones are actually broken off. That long piece of wire to the left is a wire nail, installed using a gun. Many of them still had plastic clinging to them from the carrier that feeds the nails into the gun.

Close ups!

Wallpaper fragments. I haven't seen this wallpaper anywhere else in the house (still hanging). I think these are two different wallpapers, but the bit on the left could just be water stained. It seems to have a pretty distinct blue cast though.

Newspaper bits - To the left - want ads for "a young man", spinners, and bicycle repair men. The right has a bit of an illustration on it, but I can't make out anything really.

Plaster colors - At some point, the plaster was dark green, blackish, reddish brown, and then the light green.

There were also strips of fabric - linen I think, but I could get a decent picture of the texture. There was also a bit of clear glass bottle bottom, with no distinct features save for a few little pips on the outside edge which indicate a machine made bottle for production-line sort of use.
I don't have much desire to rip out any more horsehair if I don't have to. It's excellent in regard to sound deadening, and it supplying me what little R value my walls currently have. But it is always interesting to see what shakes out when you do open them up.

Curiousity killed the ...wall? (part 1)

Well. Sort of.
Last week I started stripping the mantle in the living room. I'd borrowed Ian's SpeedHeater (a fantastic device, highly recommend for paint removal.)
A few things I learned about SpeedHeatering:
1) it's better left to open-window season.
2) it's easy to singe the wood if you linger too long, or overlap areas you're treating. Count to 20, no more, no less.
3) The cat would snuggle with it if I left it where she could cozy up to it. Which would be bad, because she's flammable.
There's a ton of layers, most of them alligatoring. Mostly versions of whites, tans, browns, and the possibility of light green, but I have reason to believe that was actually wall color that was brushed over from the wall - I only found it along the wall edge.

White, white, tan, green!, brown, different tan, more white.

Over the weekend, I continued stripping it while passively watching mindless Marvel movies. Which brought us to this point:

A little singed on the right side, nothing a little sanding and a coat of Kilz won't fix.

The irony is that there some folks out there who'd pay good cash money for the mantle in just this condition. Rustic. Farmhouse. That's not really where I want to take this room, so it'll get a nice coat of paint later. I'm thinking cozy in this room.
Sunday Ian came over, and while discussing the mantle, we got curious about what exactly was under that faux brick board. One thing led to another... well. I'll tell the story in pictures.

Where we start.

The faux brick was both glued and wire nailed to this curious sheet of black metal.
Here we see Ian trying to extract the 3" wire nails. They were very thorough with the nails.

Under the metal, more metal! A tiny metal patch made out of the same pebbled textured metal as lining of the pantry closet,
over this delightful green painted crumbling plaster.

Under the metal patch was this pipe, a remnant of the original heat source for this room. Chances are very likely that a parlor stove once sat right in front of this mantel. Which makes sense, considering the molding all looks quite original, including where typically a fire box could have been, but there's nothing to indicate there ever was one.
At the back of the pipe, you can see where the cement block chimney now runs. This pipe never tire into this new chimney. It's the exhaust for the furnace now.
It's also hard to tell, but there's brick behind the plaster! That's very exciting! I would love to have an exposed brick face if I can't have a fireplace.

Sure, I get bricks. 6 of them. Just enough to create a fire-resistant ring around the stove exhaust pipe.
Which, sadly, makes sense.
Other than the bricks, there is cut lath, cut nails, horsehair plaster (that leads me to believe someone owned a red chestnut horse), and some interesting rough-cut, live edge wood bracing.

Where we ended that day, all cleaned up, plaster and lath bagged for garbage, braces and brick exposed.

Now, to decided what I want to do with the space. I have some ideas. It will incorporate tile and brick, I believe. I've investigated shallow bioethanol fireplaces, but they aren't quite shallow enough for this application. (They also look terribly modern.) Too bad.
Until then, I've propped the faux brick over the hole so that the cat doesn't get any wise ideas about exploring.
Until next time...

A quick project that was.

Come to find out, neither Home Depot nor the local fireplace supply place carries chimney clean out doors. I have to go to a masonry supply place (of course) to get one. The fireplace guy said it would be likely easier to trim the flange on the door than to trim the cinder block, so at least I got that much out of the day.
I did set about fixing the crack in the chimney though.

vertical crack.

I got out my Dremel and grinder attachment and widened it a bit to receive the patch material. Made sure to wear eye protection and a face mask!

Hard to tell, but now it's a wider vertical crack!

As luck would have it, I ran into the Quickcrete supplier guy at Home Depot the other day and asked him what product he had that would be easy enough for me to handle to do this job. He pointed me to a mid-cost tube material. We'll see how well it works. It was super stiff to apply, but it looks like it did the trick. Time will tell how well it holds up.

Filled!

One thing, done.

"A Simple Project"

More exciting holes!
I decided one thing I'm going to do this weekend is deal with the chimney clean out door. That's the little door at the bottom of your chimney that you open to clean out all the junk that gets swept down when it's cleaned. Mine is on the chimney that serves as the furnace exhaust, so it doesn't see heavy use, but still. It should be better. Usually these doors are cast iron, though now I see some on the market that are stainless steel.
This is how the door looked:

Yup. More tape. Electrical this time!

I was hoping to reuse the door that was there - just clean it up/reset it.
After prying it out of the hole (with only the force of my pointer finger) it became apparent that that was not going to work. A big part of the frame of the door is no longer there.

The back of the door (flopped over vertically).
Notice how the frame is gone at the top (would have been the bottom) and along the right (opening) side.

I'm going to need a new door. Not a big deal, they are between $30-$50. I  just need to know what size to get. I'll measure the hole. Terrific. Progress!

The hole! An 8" x 8" hole!

Ok! Now we're moving! I'll just get on the internet and figure out where to get one!
Oh. But they are all actually bigger than 8"x8". That's the door opening size.
They all have frames that extend about an inch beyond the hole.
Which would be fine, except this hole is right above that little cement platform.
Which would interfere with the frame.
Which is why someone cut the bottom of the frame off.
Because otherwise it won't fit.

SIGH.

Until then!

Gaff Tape fixes everything.
The spirit of Ms Mary adheres.

Putter, putter.

I'm still in the prep phase with a lot of things. This past weekend I finished scrubbing the dining room - The easiest room to do this to, now that the house contains stuff. This had been the holding room as I moved, and is now empty. The ceiling, walls, and floor has now been scrubbed. I removed the external phone box from the baseboard molding, and lifted the rug for an extra deep clean.

No further floor damage discovered.

I'm debating what to do with this room. It's going to get a coat of paint, likely a new light fixture/rug/window treatment. This was the wall I'd considered putting a wood or pellet stove on. There's a chimney that runs in the wall about a foot to the right from that door frame to the kitchen.
I'm kind of in a state of brain freeze about this room though, in a "chicken or egg" sort of way. I'm not particularly fond of the current light/curtains, but they are functional. Paint should complement what ever's going in the room, and I'm not quite sure what that would be yet. The ceiling will be white, the trim will probably be gloss white. (Though that will be determined by what the speed heater reveals on the trim. If there's varnish under there, I'll have to see how damaged it is.)
I have a meeting with a colleague here at work to pick her brain about interior design. Maybe talking it out will help shake this room's funk.

I spent the rest of Saturday in a full assault on the bush mound right outside my back door, carefully separating bittersweet from ivy from everything else. The mound is now a third of what is was, but all the bittersweet is out. I still need to find my saw and take care of the maple suckers that are growing in the middle of it all though.

I was going to continue washing surfaces yesterday, but wound up running a lot of errands instead. My thought being that if I do wash and repair the walls and ceilings, if I get guys banging around up in the crawl space, they are going to shake loose a lot of debris, and I will probably wind up having to do the whole process over again. I don't like a lot of redo, so I'm at a stalemate up there.

Salvage Places

I'm making a list of local architectural salvage places to check out. I've got a handle on local antiques places, but stuff like flooring and fixtures are a different beast.

Out in New York:

• I've been to Zaborski's a number of times. I've picked up a few things there. If you're looking for replacement glass light globes, or door hardware (among LOTS of other things) this is a great place. It's just a little far for me to pop around to.

• I'd love to get out to Historic Albany's Warehouse 45. I follow them on Facebook. They look like a good resource, just a bit far for me to get to.

Here in MA:

• There's Castle, out in Northampton. I could hit this on my way out to visit the folks at some point. They are open 10-6 on Saturdays. They look a little more "stuff" than "materials", but I won't know until I go.

• I hadn't heard of Old Wood Workshop until I googled it. Considering my recent discovery with the floor, I think I'm going to have to see what they are all about shortly. (Update - looked through the site. While they probably would have what I need, I don't think I could afford them.)

• Old House and Landscape might be worth a side trip. Limited info on their site. I've seen them solicit for stuff/selling stuff on Craig's List. (Or someone is stealing their pictures.)

• Down near Boston is Restoration Resources.

Working my way up the coast:

• Old House Salvage in New Hampshire looks promising, based on their website.

• Nor'East in South Hampton, NH.

• Old House Parts Co, in Kennebunk, ME. but one of my favorite areas to visit, so that's a win.

 • Portland Salvage gives me an excuse to keep going up the coast and eventually visit friends in Bangor! Likely pricey, (their website is a bit... slick...)

I'll post updates as I'm able to nose around these places.

Well, bugger.

This past weekend I went home to the farm for a few days - I had some errands to run, and it was my sister's birthday. Who am I to miss out on cake?
I'm also suffering from project paralysis. Not knowing where to start, and not wanting to spend the money doing it until work settles down.
While I was home talking to my mom, she asked about the state of the floors. Seemed like a good thing to mull over.
At this point, the first floor is comprised of tile (bathroom), linoleum (kitchen), carpet over sub-floor (porch and mudroom), wall-to-wall carpet over narrow board hardwood (living room), and area rugs over narrow board hardwood (dining room, office and hallway.)
The narrow board hardwood dates to the Victorian Renovation period. It's also found upstairs in 3 out of the 4 bedrooms and in the hallway. The only room with the original pine floor exposed is the front bedroom, where it's been refinished sometime in the near past. The pine board is evident in the eve closets off the front of the house, where they've been painted green. The other front "bedroom" (really about the size of a generous walk-in closet) has narrow board over the pine, I believe. There's a slight height difference between the hall and the room that makes me think this.
At this point, I've seen 95% of the floors that can be easily uncovered (I'm not ripping up the living room yet, so that can remain a mystery.) All the floors I've seen (95%!) are in good, used condition, and I told my mom as such. Eventually I'd like to get them refinished, but that's a ways down the line.

I had yesterday off. I had all sorts of plans, but couldn't get a good start anywhere. Finally I settled on washing the dining room, since it's the last room on the first floor that hasn't seen a bucket of TSP substitute. While I was at it, I decided to pull the heat register out of the floor and give it a good scrub.

Rather than wall to wall in the dining room, they made
a patchwork of area rugs, and cut out a hole for the heat.

I've done this to many of the other registers, sticking my vacuum down into the sharp holes while deflecting the very curious cat at the same time. It's a... production.
First things first! Pull up the rug!

What is this nefariousness?

More tape. I'm not at all surprised. Ms Mary taped down anything that moved. I appreciate her dedication to modern adhesives.
But there was white... goo, too. Caulk?
Nope! Some flavor of plaster with a decorative wax coating!

WHO DOES THIS?

At some point in the far past, there was moisture infiltration, which led to insect damage. (There is no active insect damage. I have the receipt that this property was very thoroughly treated for all manner of pests before I bought it, and what the treatment was.) I'm not sure how you don't notice insects causing this, but maybe there was a buffet over this area or something.
One thing's for sure, I can't go refinishing a floor with gobs of plaster sticking out of it. So, let's remove that plaster and see what we've got.

Whelp.

It looks like I can replace the first three planks from the wall and fix it all. This is also the area that needs some sill work, so in hindsight I can't be too surprised.

So Mom - I didn't have any areas that needed fixing until yesterday.
But I got the dining room all washed except the ceiling!

Knock Knock

It seems last night I had a visitor come calling.

Hello? Do you have a moment to talk about landscaping?
Have we got a plan to help you with your grubs!

He wandered right up to my back door. Snuffled around the edge of the house, up to the bird feeders, down to the shed, paid super special attention to the garbage can (but didn't attempt to climb it.) Then the tracks go under the shed.
For all I know he's still there.
I didn't get down to check.

Funny little hand prints in the snow.

At first I thought they were raccoon tracks (which I really don't need taking up any sort of residence. Adorable, but a pain in the neck.) On further examination I saw the funny thumbs, which leads me to think it's an opossum. If so, it's the biggest stinkin' opossum I've ever seen. But 'possums eat a ton of bugs, and aren't generally hugely pesky, so he can stay for now. They are kind of so ugly they're cute. I'm looking forward to seeing what comes from the trail camera.

This has led me to think about jacking up the shed and putting a solid block foundation under it, so nothing can set up permanent residence there, though.
I'm the only one who should be receiving mail at 107 Brigham Hill.

Quiet time

My apologies to those who swing through here regularly looking for updates. It's been kind of difficult to work up enthusiasm for house projects when I'm wading through a ton of quotes for work I didn't anticipate having to address just yet. The dollar signs are starting to stack up. While I'll be very happy when it's done, and I likely won't have to deal with most of this ever again (for this property) it's a bit demoralizing. My friend Chip sent me this book though, which looks super helpful. I'm sure I'm going to get good use out of it.

Thanks, Chip!

On top of the flood of contractor quotes, I received notification that my employer is going to be going through "divisional headcount reduction" - a fancy phrase for layoffs. I really don't know what to think of my situation, so I'm taking the tack of hoping for the best and preparing for the worst. I've got my work backed up, a bunch of boxes packed, and I'm trying to tidy up so that if I'm made to walk away I can with minimal fallout to who ever is left behind to pick up the pieces.

I did do a bit more brush clearing last evening. With it relatively clear of snow, now's a good time to pull bittersweet, and man is there a lot of bittersweet to be pulled. It's providing great cover for the local rodent population. I'm going to borrow a trail camera from my sister and try to see what's been wandering through my yard - something large-ish comes right up the front and then crosses in front of the shed to go up into the woods. The snow was too powdery to get good tracks last time.

The Roof, the roof, the roof is ...

...not on fire.

(Props to the Bloodhound Gang, who get referenced every time I have to deal with a roof. What can I say? I was impressionable in 2009.)

I met with John the Roofer this morning. He confirmed a few things - that no ridge vent will work because of the ridge beam, that there are no soffit vents because the construction method means it's solid there and unvent-able, that some sort of powered solution is going to be my best bet, and that the roof is nearing it's end of useful life.
He's going to work up a quote (itemized) that will include:
• installing two powered box fans, one in each crawl space. (He'll run the wires down, but the electrician will have to connect. Which is good, because I like Wayne the Electrician, but he's not as young and nimble as John the Roofer.)
• new roof (asphalt on top, and either rolled or metal on the lower)
• leveling out the roof over the bathroom
• run of gutter on the north and east side (he's up there anyway.)
• repointing the chimney (again, he's up there anyway. Just have to get some sacks of lime for him to use, and make sure he doesn't hit it with portland (unless that's what's up there.))

We talked about radon, electrical, and how the fewer holes in the roof the better. He suggested removing the un-used chimney, but I'm not ready to do that just yet. I will hold onto my hope of being able to reuse it somehow.

What the heck

The neighbors were setting off fireworks after the end of the game last night, so I dealt with the 2 roller shades and the curtain rod at about 10:30.
Something to note! In the kitchen, I'd replaced one roller shade (black out weight) with one from Lowe's. Then last night, I installed a new one over the kitchen sink that I got from Home Depot. At night, there's no difference. When it's light out, the Lowe's brand shade has a blueish tone while the Home Depot shade has a reddish tone. I work in print production. I know vinyl can carry different temperatures. I just didn't expect it in window shades for some reason, but I'm not surprised.
I'm going to see if I can move one of the kitchen shades to the stand-alone window in the upstairs hallway so that at least all the tones in a given room match. The whole house doesn't have to be match-y, but at least all in the same room should. My preference is for the cool tones from Lowes.

This morning I was hit with a wild hair - I wanted to know what was behind the mirror left behind by the Fords, screwed to the wall in the dining room.
I was hoping for something interesting.
A hole to access long-forgotten plumbing or electrical?
A gap to see the framing?
Buried treasure?
I got out my trusty screw gun, (let's not kid, I hadn't actually put it away), and got that sucker off the wall.

Pooh.

Nothing. Nada.
Just 4 little drywall screw holes (now).
Oh well.
I might just put it back up for now. It's an appropriate piece for the house.
But I was pretty disappointed in the lack of... anything.

A long weekend

It's been a couple of days. A lot of typical housework - cleaning the bathroom and vacuuming, etc.
There's been some seasonal work - shoveling the rest of the driveway, filling the bird feeders. Then some monthly upkeep - change the filter on the cat fountain, filter on the fish tank, putting a pack of enzymes down the drain for the septic, checked the furnace filters (it's fine), checked the water filter (it's fine).
I confirmed that the floors are only finished around the edges. (Not uncommon - The same was true of my Grandparent's house.) I found where Ms Mary had been using newspapers to pad under the carpet. Interesting, but nothing older than 2004.

She cut out the carpet pad so the basement door would clear the carpet,
but didn't want the carpet to damage the unfinished floor.

Saturday I decided to make two fakey storms for the kitchen. I sort of got sidetracked by scraping the flaking paint off the mantle, and then (since the flakes fell down the heat register) I disassembled the heat register, vacuumed the heck out of it and scrubbed the metal register housing. Then I remembered I had to deal with a crock of saurkraut that's been needing tending since November.

I eventually got to the storms.

Still not perfect, but functional

This time I found some 1x2" firring strips at Home Depot. They were more robust than the molding I'd been using, and cheaper. The width allowed me to use two screws in each corner, so that negated a lot of the rolling. Only issue is, where the molding was decently square, these firring strips are glorified wooden noodles. Doing this with hand tools, on the dining room floor, with stock that is fighting back, is proving to be a challenge.

I love that little Disston dovetail saw.

The nice thing is, by the 4th window (the second in the kitchen) I sort of worked out a system. It looks like this:

It might be hard to tell, but this shows the top and bottom, then the three uprights, then the two cross pieces next to each other. Setting it out this way made visual sense to me.

Another view - three uprights, the top and bottom, the two cross pieces.

I hammered out two more Sunday morning, so now the kitchen, dining room, and office that I'm using as my bedroom are done. Next up - the 5 windows in the living room. Then there's one window in the bathroom and the first floor will be done. The bedroom is already less drafty.
I've figured out that these cost roughly $12 to make - 3 firring strips at $2 per, 2 rolls of foam weatherstripping at $2 per, and the window plastic which comes in a kit of three for $6, so $2 ea. Then 12 screws and a nail (with the head cut off).
They aren't super pretty, but they seem to help. The bed room is already less drafty.

For some reason, when I embed links, they aren't showing up as live unless you hover, so here's the link to the place that I'm cobbing my design from.
http://www.islandinstitute.org/sites/default/files/Interior%20Storm%20Window%20Directions_0%202.pdf

Island Institute uses two layers of plastic. I'm just using one for now so I can use the supports as handles to get them in and out.

Getting better.

I picked up roller shades for the dining room and kitchen. Tomorrow I'll see about putting them up.