Laundry Room? What Laundry Room?

Its done and I’ve already forgotten about it. Its in the past. Its time to move on and I have.

Next up: The Butler’s Pantry

That last room I worked on - what ever its called – was cut out of the butler’s pantry. Now its time to do the rest of the room. It is mostly demo’ed, but there is still a little bit to do. Yesterday and today I got every thing out of there and over the next week or two I will get the rest demo’ed and then start in on the paint stripping and get the walls plastered. It is going to be plaster above 60-inch beadboard, with a tin ceiling.

Below are some random shots taken showing the progress of the room over the past few years, and then a proposed new floorplan at the end of this entry. The room is small but not without its challenges. The two big ones are the built-in cabinets that will separate this room from the dining room, and the telecom/network hub that will be housed in here.

All of these shots are taken while I’m standing in the dining room. If all goes well, this view will be replaced with stunning built-in cabinets made of curly and burl redwood, with a marble counter and leaded glass cabinet doors. If all goes well….

This is what the floorplan was in 1895.


It was opened up all the way to the scullery


The two doors on the left (one behind plywood) lead to the rental kitchen and bath at one time. I had to make that cheap temporary plywood partition to separate the water heater from the "living space". This barely qualified as "living space" at the time, but what code says, Greg does.


You can see where the window used to be in 1895 (see diagram above). Now there is only 1 door and it leads to the side yard.


I partitioned the room to add the laundry room.


That sink was going to go there, but it just didn't work.


Below is what it looks like right now. Through the open door you can see that other room that I just finished. What's it called again?

As I said, I'm standing in the dining room right now. You can see the orange-ish mark on the floor where the original built-ins were. This is what I hope to put back. Well, I will put them back. The hope is that they come out well.


Here is what I hope to achieve. {Nervous grin}


Wish me luck. I'm going to need it.

Sick – AGAIN!!!!

Lets recap, shall we.

January: Strep Throat. Who the hell gets strep throat, aside from 10 year olds?

February: The flu. This wasn’t one of those, “Oh, I have the flu”, while you’re standing there talking to the person telling them you have the flu. Anyone who can stand erect and make a coherent sentence indicating that they have the flu, doesn’t really have The Flu. I really had The Flu.

This Week: A bad cold with a sore throat. It was enough to keep me in bed for a day and a half and make me miss a day and a half of work. As luck would have it, PG&E was able to coordinate the repair of a major gas line on my street while I was in bed trying to sleep. Thanks guys.

What this means for the house is that even though all I had to do was paint one side of a door and put the hardware back on, that hasn’t been done.

So the laundry room drags on.

The Rooster Has Flown The Coop

Roger that! {*crackle*}

As I write, government couriers are transporting highly sensitive documents and photos to a secret government compound in the State Capital. Once there, trained officials will begin the painstaking chore of pouring over these documents with a fine toothed comb. The revelations that will come to light in the weeks and months ahead will shake the very foundation of our civilization.

I sent in my application to have The Petch House listed on The National Register of Historic Places.

This is a process that started more than 3 years ago, and languished for months because, as I’ve said time and time again, I am basically a very lazy person. I finally got every thing together, and with the help of a distant associate, I was able to dot the final Ts and cross the final Is in what will be remembered as one of the finest, most eloquent documents to be crafted since the Declaration of Independence.

I don’t think I’m over stating this, folks. It is that big. And if they can look past the dotted Ts and crossed Is, The Petch House will finally be given the recognition it deserves. It will be given a place of honor along with the other great architectural treasures this country has.

God Bless America!

Visit From The Neighbor

The visit was welcomed, but unannounced. I was painting the door to the laundry room – this is the last thing I need to do until this room is officially finished. Anyway, I was painting the door and I had the backdoor open. He strolled in while I wasn’t looking and made himself at home in the front parlor.



He hung out for about an hour and checked out the entire house. Eventually made his way back outside.

Theirs and Mine

Theirs are better. No Question. I mentioned last week how I should have done one more pass with the router on my baseboard cap. Well, after I got the first two pieces on I decided I couldn’t stand the way it looked, so I ripped them off and went and bought another router bit that would let me do what I needed to do. This last bit was only a 3/8th inch, double flute, so it only ran me $15. Not too bad.





Mine are a little too…they’re not quite….they’re sort of….I’m not sure what it is. They are definitely in the spirit of the original baseboards, but the lack the finesse and gracefulness of the originals. They are too heavy.

As I mentioned, the first problem I had was that the shank on the stepped bead router bit I bought was not long enough. I couldn’t get the profile far enough down on the board to leave me room for the other parts. What I ended up doing was moving some of the profile on to the cap that should have been on the main part of the board. I’m sure they cut the main board with a shaper and not a router, back in the day.

My half inch bead should have been smaller, as well. I’m not sure if that is 3/8ths or ¼-inch on the original, but my half inch is too big. It makes the profile look thick and crowded. The cap is all wrong too. I must have looked at 20 or 30 bits and settled on that one. Looking at it now, it doesn't even seem close.

Its not the end of the world. I don’t have to meet up with any of the original boards, so it will do just fine.

Still…

Preservation Awards

Guess who won this years Residential Preservation award?

Give up?

Well, it was me! It was an honor just to be nominated. I’m usually not the type of person to get too excited about this sort of thing. Namely, because I’m not the type of person who usually wins this sort of thing. Aside from the blog, I really don’t put myself out there that much. Regardless, I did get excited and I am thrilled to win it.

At first I thought they were giving me The Plague, but then I read the notice again and realized it was a plaque. In retrospect, the plague would have been an odd thing to give someone for winning an award. I thought maybe they were trying to put the whole thing in to historical context. The plague has a kind of old-world feel to it, don’t you think.



Anyway, it was a plaque and the plaque is very nice. I’m not sure what I will do with it at this point. Knowing me, I’ll probably end up hiding it in a wall cavity for future homeowners to find. This place is going to be a field day for whomever does the next major remodle or restoration.

The awards are handed out by the Eureka Heritage Society. There are 6 categories and they handed out 8 awards. Two different residential awards and two different community building awards were handed out. Here are this year’s recipients.

Commercial Building Preservation Award
Binne/Becker Partnership

Community Building Preservation Award
The Arkley Center for the Performing Arts
The Federal Building

Adaptive Reuse Preservation Award
Niki Delson & Ron Kokish

Residential Preservation Award
James Madsen
Greg Petch

Preservationist of the Year Award
Leslie Heald

Special Award
June Beal (Posthumously)



The ceremony was held at The Eureka Woman’s Club on J Street. I’ve always liked the building, and I’ve never been in it before, so that was fun. I had a good time and it was very nice to be recognized like that. It is a bit of a renewal. I got a call from Kathy Dillion of The Times Standard (local newspaper). She writes the monthly Restore & Preserve insert. A few years ago my house was in Restore & Preserve. This was when I was in the middle of the kitchen remodel. The house was really in a rough state at that time, and now that I think about it, it was an odd choice for me to agree to it. At the time Kathy and I spoke about her coming back in a few years to do an “After” piece on the house. That is what her phone call was about. I called her back and left a voice mail and told her I wasn’t quite there yet. Maybe next year.

One For The Locals

Do you ever wonder if any of your neighbors read your blog. When I first started blogging I didn’t think about it at all. There is just so much stuff out on the web, the odds of somebody locally finding this blog where pretty remote, or so I thought. Now I know there are people in town that read it. It doesn’t bother me all that much, but I must admit, I liked it better when I was writing in anonymity.



Anyway, I found this photo on Shorpys.com. That is a coal gas tank. Thomas Petch ran the coal gas plant at the turn of the century here in Eureka. There would have been something like this at the foot of H Street, where Humboldt Towing now sits today. And just look at those lucky people who get to live right next door to that beautiful piece of architecture.

As the name suggests, coal gas was made from coal. We don’t mine coal locally, so I’ve often wondered where the coal came from. There must have been a steady supply of it because they not only made coal gas from it, but coal also heated most of the homes here in town in the 19th century.

It wasn’t until the 1920s that natural gas supplanted coal gas as the gas of choice. Even then, it wasn't an immediate change over. There were still some coal gas plants operating in the US in as late as the 1960s. I know that coal is mined in Utah and western Canada. We didn't get rail service to the outside world in Eureka until about 1914. So I would guess that our coal came by ship from Canada. That is just a guess.

If you go to the Library of Congress archive site you can find a 1902 Panoramic Map of Eureka. These bird’s eye maps were very popular at the time, and surprisingly accurate. If you zoom in on it, and look at the foot of H Street, you can see Eureka’s coal gas tank. And if you look really closely, you can see Thomas Petch leaning up against the building smoking a pipe. Lazy Irish. Get back to work Petch!

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