They Don’t Make ‘Em Like This Anymore

This is what I would love to have in my bathroom. Both of these items are on Ebay right now. One is in New Jersey, and is pick-up only – kind of a long drive for a toilet – although, as of this writing the high bidder is “californiajensens”. Sounds like it could be a long drive for them as well.

The second one has a current bid of $575 and the reserve has not been met. A little rich for my blood. It’ll be interesting to see what it goes for.

Click on the image to go to the listing

Bathroom Tile: Round Two

I dreamt of tile last night. That should give you some indication of how much I’m obsessing about it. I’ve contacted a few other places, and some friends of mine say they have some leftover subway tile they want to get rid of. The selections are many and the prices are all over the place

The tile, of course, is for wainscoting in the bathroom. I’m basically looking at 3 different tiles to complete the project. There is the field tile. This is a 3X6 white “subway” tile. There is the cap. This is the piece that hides the transition from the tile and the wall above. They are roughly 2.5-inches high X 6 inches wide. Finally, there is the base that makes the transition from the field tile to the floor. This can either be a simple cove that is maybe an inch and a half high, or it can be a fancier 6X6 inch tile with a fluted profile. The fancier base is much like a wooden baseboard in other parts of the house.

There are two big differences between all the tiles. The field tile really only has a few distinctions between the different manufactures, and then there are differences in an individual manufactures product line. The really high-end field tile has perfectly squared edges and is an exact match for antique subway tile. After that, some manufactures offer either a matte or gloss line. Some also offer other colors besides white to chose from, but I will be doing white.

The real differences are in the selections of Cap & Base. I’m mean, let’s fact it, a 3X6 white tile is a 3X6 white tile. It’s hard to do a lot with that. The subtlety between a square edge or a slightly round edge will be lost on most people. So the real issue is picking the cap and base I want, and then buying all the field tile I need. The issue here is, I can’t mix and match from different manufacturers. I can’t buy the field tile for $5.00 a sq ft from one manufacturer, and then buy the cap and base from another manufacturer because the color white is not a universal constant. I have to buy everything from one supplier to ensure the color is consistent throughout the different tiles – field, cap, and base.

So, here are my choices so far.

Subwaytile.com: This was the first place I looked, and I really liked their tile, especially the base.

Field Tile = $10.95 sq ft
Cap = $23.00 lineal foot
Base = $28.00 lineal foot

Designs In Tile: Someone left a comment on my blog about Designs In Tile and I was very excited about these tiles. They are within a days drive so I could pick them up and save on shipping. They do a historically accurate tile. Problem number one: Their web site says they are booked with orders until 2008. They won’t even send out a catalog! I kind of want to finish the project before 2008. However, they do list over-runs and odd lots that are available now.

I had high-hopes for the over-run stuff because I have a pretty small space to tile. I emailed them on Friday with my needs and they got back to me yesterday. Not bad. The woman who contacted me said the over-runs were no longer available, but they were about to start a new run for a customer, and because mine was a small order, they could add it on. I was very excited until I found out about Problem Number Two: The prices.

Field Tile = $25.00 sq ft
Cap = No price given
Base = No price given

Next I went to The Tile Center here in town. They had two lines of tile to chose from. I walked in and saw a display of field, base, and cap selections in about 6 different colors. It was off in the corner with another display shoved up against it. They had one of each tile from each color selection in vertical columns on the wall. A separate column for each color. The only color peaking out from behind the display in front of it was the white. The manufacturer was called something like Art Work Tile in Boston. I don't remember now. The different caps were at the top, followed by a selection of boarders (dental work, swirls, pyramidal shapes, etc), then the field tiles, and finally, the base tile. Very nice stuff.

As I was looking at it a saleswoman walked up holding a 2X3 foot display board of another selection of subway tiles. I looked at it as she approached and nothing jumped out at me. I asked her about the prices of the stuff from Boston and instead of answering my question she held up the display board she was holding and started to tell me about that tile instead. It was the selection from Daltile, and it was nice, but as I said, nothing really grabbed me. The Boston tile was nicer.

We went back to her sales desk and I listened politely as she told me about the Daltile. They had a matte and a gloss. These prices are for gloss. Matte was a little cheaper.

Field = $5.60
Cap = $7.00 lineal foot
Base = I did not write this down. It was just a simple 1-inch cove piece. Probably $2 to $3 a foot.

After I let her give me her sales pitch on Daltile I asked again about the stuff from Boston. When I asked about the base I had to explain to her the difference between the cove piece, which could be used as a base, or a real 6X6 inch base tile. I actually had to take her back over to the display and point it out to her and explain how it was used.

Boston Tile
Field = $13.99 sq ft
Cap = $18.50 lineal foot
Base = $22.00 lineal foot

Finally, I was at dinner with fiends last night and I got to talking about tile. Surprise, surprise, right? They mentioned that they had “a lot” of tile left over form their bathroom project they did 6 yeas ago. They said it was “very inexpensive” and they wanted to get rid of it. It sounds good, but I’m not sure how much there is, and I’m not sure if there is base and cap. They got it at a tile center in Berkeley, so if I needed more, which I’m sure I would, I would need to get it from there, or find another distributor that carries the same tile. I’m not sure if this will work out.

From a purely aesthetics point of view, I’m still leaning towards Subwaytil.com. The simple fact is, I like the base. The cap of Subwaytile.com is almost identical to the cap of the Boston tile. The base, however, is much nicer. As far as cost, the Boston tile seems in the same ballpark as the Subwaytile.com tile. The field is a little more, but the base and cap are a little less. The real difference comes when you factor in shipping and taxes. I wouldn’t have to pay shipping for the Boston stuff or the Dal Tile, but I would pay tax.

Just playing with rough numbers, to give you some idea of the difference, these figures take in to account shipping and taxes.

Subwaytile.com = $4,200
Boston = $3,900
Daltile = $1,350

As you can see, there is only about $300 difference between what I really, really want and what I’d be happy with. The Daltile, of course, is significantly less expensive. The other option is to go with a wooden cap instead of tile. For about $50 I could put the same fluted, wooden, Victorian wainscot cap in the bathroom that I used in the kitchen. That would cut about $1000 off the cost of the Subwaytile.com tile, and I would still get the base I like. This is something I’m considering, and it is something that was done 100 years ago, so it’s not like I’m cheating

There are still other options to consider, so we’ll see what happens. I have plenty of time to decide. I’ve made a few recent bathroom purchases, and there are a few more big-ticket items I have to buy. The biggest big-ticket item will be the tile, so I’ll leave that for last and see if I can afford what I really, really want. Who knows, maybe the lottery ticket in my wallet is a big winner and I can go back to Designs in Tile and order the really nice stuff.

The Grate Roundup

I soaked the two antique heater grates in a stiff solution of water and TSP for about a week. When I took them out most of the paint had already fallen off. What little remained was then blasted off by the house. A little residue remained in some of the tight corners, but it wasn’t too big of a deal to scrape out by hand.

Last night I spray painted them with the same green paint I used on my stools. They really came out great. Today I put them on the house as my new foundation vents. I don’t have any shots of them on the house, but here is a before and after stripping.

Also, I switched to Blogger Beta, or is it the New Blogger. I’m not sure, but I do know that I can’t seem to access many of the comments that were posted the past few days, but thanks to all for the kind words.

Dotting “I”s

Well, I washed my last brush today. I painted the two window sashes on the back porch, and with that I have now officially finished painting the house for the season. I say “for the season” because there is still more to paint.

I still have to paint the little wall I wrote about last week. I’ll need to repair some siding after I go from the current two windows down to one. I will definitely be replacing the window this fall or winter, but I’m not sure if I will have the weather to paint.

I also need to paint all the skirting on the house. It doesn’t look too bad, but I want to get the dirt off at least, and put a fresh coat on. That will be next year. I also need to, or rather, want to paint the turned columns on the back porch. The porch itself needs some repairs, so I’ll probably strip and paint the columns at the same time I make the repairs. I can’t say I’ll get to that next year.

The whole thing seems a little anticlimactic. It was such a long project, filled with a lot of adventure. Well, at least it was adventurous from a house project standpoint. After all of the work on the tall ladder, and climbing on to the roof, and hanging out attic gable windows, it ended with me standing on a chair painting 2 window sashes with a 2-inch sash brush. I’m glad I’m done with it, but I’m actually feeling a little melancholy about it. I’m not sure where that’s coming from.

Anyway, next year I’ll finish up and Cross the “T” on the house painting project. For now I’ll Dot the “I” with one last after picture. Oddly enough, I couldn't find a decent before picture that showed the whole back porch.

Meet The New Toilet – HAJOCA

I went over the Gary’s house today before he got off work to pick up the toilet. I knew he wouldn’t want to take the $50 for it, so I gave it to his wife instead. I also picked up a few sacks of garbage as per our agreement.

His wife and I went out in to the backyard to get the toilet and there were two of them sitting under a tree. One was a newer, complete toilet sitting upright. The one I wanted was the 100 year old one, laying over on it’s side in the mud. It’s just the bowl and has no tank, also the seat was broken.

His wife looked at me like I was crazy as I pulled it out of the dirt. She pointed to the cracked seat, and said, “That one’s broken”. I took a few minutes to explain to her I was not worried about the seat. I told here how I was going to be using it for an old high-tank toilet. Her eyes widened as the story progressed. I'm not sure if she was impressed or thought I was even crazier then she first suspected.

Here’s a few shots of the toilet sans mud, spiders, and an army of ants.







I had never heard of the Haines, Jones, Cadbury Co before, but a quick search on the internet told me that they started in Philadelphia around 1860 and are still in business today under the name Gorman. The “HAJOCA” comes from the first two letters of each of the partners names “HA” “JO” “CA”. It seems that they got their start in brass pipe fittings for steam systems and expanded in to other plumbing supplies. The gentleman in the center of the logo is William Penn. I found an early advertisement stating they had done all the plumbing for the Princeton University Graduate School.

The toilet looks surprisingly like the 1922 American Standard “Pacific” that is in my upstairs bathroom. It makes me wonder if maybe it was made by Standard for HAJOCA, and they just added the HAJOCA label. From what I read, HAJOCA was first and foremost a brass foundry.

The real difference between the 2 toilets is that the HAJOCA has an inch and a half spud on the back, so it was designed to be a high tank bowl. The Standard Pacific has a 2 inch spud on the back. I know for a fact that it was originally a low tank toilet. I had to buy a reducing spud when I turned it in to a high tank.

The best thing about these old toilets is the enclosed trap. Notice how smooth and slender the sides are below the bowl. I don’t know why they have the exposed trap on most new toilets. It makes them so hard to clean.

Two Heart Beats Away

Congratulations Nancy Pelosi – 8th District San Francisco

THE NEXT SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTITIVES!!!

Obama-Oh-Eight!

Painting In The Rain

Just painting in the rain.
What a horrible feeling.
I’m miserable again.



It took me more than 4 hours today to sand it all down and primer it. The bottom two thirds of the walls had to be stripped to bare wood. The paint was in good enough shape that I couldn’t scrape it, but it was bad enough that it had to come off. I spent about 6 hours over the weekend stripping it with a heat gun. Ugh! It had an orange peel texture to it.

I knew I had to sand and prime today and I was absolutely dreading it. It was all I could think about at work today. I knew if I started anything else I would never get out there, so I walked in the door, changed my clothes immediately, and got to work. It’s done, that’s the important thing.

The weather was thick and muggy and it felt like rain all day. It started coming down after I sanded, and just as I started painting. It came down pretty good but there was no wind so it stayed off the porch and off the walls.

Tomorrow I’ll put on the first top coat and then finish up Thursday. It would be nice if I could say that was the last of it but there is one little section remaining.



I’m going to remove those two windows on the right and put in a stand glass window like the one on the wall to the left. I bought two identical sashes a few years back and that has always been the plan. That wall with the 2 big windows is the downstairs bathroom I’m going to be working on next. The windows are just too big for the room. I think they are original to the house, but that is definitely not their original spot on the house.

So before I can paint I need to build a window for the sash, and then install it. After that I can fix the siding and then paint that last little section. It just never seems to end. Next year I will paint the columns you see in the first picture, and get rid of the 2X4 railing. The columns need to be stripped and that ain't going to happen this year. I'm ignoring the rotted porch decking for the moment....and for several more moments after that.

On Going Negotiations

Two weeks ago I talked about my collection of antique plumbing parts that I want to transmogrify in to even older plumbing parts for the downstairs bathroom. The stuff I have is the wrong vintage, and also, it’s just the wrong type in many cases.

I have 3 complete toilets that pre-date WWII, and then 3 toilet tanks. The toilets are nice, but they don’t look right. I’ve decided to lean Victorian in the bathroom and the 1931 Standard Moderns toilet, for instance, would look out of place with it’s art deco lines.

So I contacted a place called DEA Bath to see if they would want to buy or trade my plumbing parts for some things I am going to need from them. It’s been a few days shy of two weeks, and I contacted them by snail mail, so it’s not time to panic because I haven’t heard of them. At the time I contacted them there was really nothing I needed in the meager selection of local salvage places, so I didn’t offer the items to anyone locally. Well, this past week that changed.

One of the 3 or so places in town that would deal with this sort of thing has decided to go out of business after more than 2 decades because the owners are retiring. Another place in town, actually owned by some friends of mine, negotiated to take some bulky items off their hands. They got some display cases, and things like that. Also as part of this deal they got 2 Victorian marble vanities, a per WWI Crane toilet, an two oak tanks. Any of these items would be perfect for my bathroom.

I won’t go in to why those items weren’t available to me when I went in to the store that is now closing. It is a troubling question as to why I can go in to a salvage place and ask about toilets and marble vanities and the owners tell me there is nothing available, and yet they magically appear a few weeks later. I won’t go in to this because it speaks volumes about the owners of this place that is now closing down. I’ve been in their shop many times in the last 4 years and the only time I ever bought anything was when I purchased it from their assistant. I could write several blog entries about my odd experiences with the owners, but I’ll just leave the whole thing there.

So now I have two vanities, a complete Crane toilet, and 2 oak high tanks without the bowls to chose from. I already have an oak high tank, but I need a rear spud bowl, and I also need a marble vanity. My friends called me on Saturday and told me the items were now in their possession and I should come down to the shop. I dropped everything and ran.

It turns out the only thing I can use is one of the marble vanities. I don’t need the two oak tanks and they don’t want to brake up the Crane tank and bowl set. That’s fine. They then came over to my house on Sunday to view my selection. To be honest, a lot of the stuff I have is not too spectacular. The 1931 Standard Modernus is pretty cool, and then I have 2 very, very nice tanks with matching lids from the early 1920s. Those three items together would go for about $1,600 on the DEA Bath web site. Throw in the other tanks, toilets, and sink I have and they retail for more than $2,500 on-line. I’m not going to get retail for them, I know.

The real interesting thing was one of the tanks I have. It is a 1922 Standard tank and it is an exact match for a tank they have in their one and only bathroom at their house. They’re nuts about antique plumbing and plan on putting in two more bathrooms in their house. They really would love to have this tank. Advantage Greg.

We haven’t talked money yet, and I’m not even sure what they are asking for the marble vanity with sink. They showed me a very nice 1902 Trenton Pottery china bowl that they have at home that they said they could make available to me. What I would really like to have is the 1897 toilet bowl they recently acquired. They plan to put it in their downstairs bath. There house is a 1910 Colonial Revival Four Square and I joked when I saw it about how that 1897 bowl would be much more fitting in my house. {It was no joke}

Then this morning as I was leaving for work my neighbor Gary, the now famous plumber who helped me in more ways than I can remember when I was re-plumbing my house, was also leaving. We both leave for work at roughly the same time and frequently see each other in the mornings. I was pulling away from the curb as he was coming out the front door so I backed up to his truck and we chatted for a few minutes.

I recalled that he had an old rear spud toilet tank sitting in the mud in his backyard. I was helping him pull out some bamboo or something one day and I saw it there half buried. I pulled it out of the mud and asked him about it. He said he has several toilets here and there and he installs them here and there when he’s doing work on the side. He held on to that one incase someone might want a high tank installed some day. This was 6 months ago so I wasn’t really thinking about toilets and bathrooms at the time.

Well, this morning I asked him if it was still in the mud in his backyard. He said it was, and I said I’d give him $50 for it. He said I could have it. He didn’t say it casually like, “Sure, you can have it if you want it”. It was more like, “You can have it! Please take it and get it out of my yard!” He then said his wife would love it if some of the toilets left the property. He went on to tell me he has all the pipes for it was well.

I insisted I would give him $50 and he insisted he didn’t want the money. I TOLD him I was giving him the money and then I mentioned I was going to the dump on Thursday and asked if he had anything that needed to go. He said, “The toilets yours but you have to make dump runs for a month.” I said, “Fine, and you get $50.” And then I drove off. I’m going to the dump on Thursday so I’ll go and get the toilet and a few bags of garbage while Gary’s at work. I’ll collect the toilet and leave $50 with his wife.

Now I’m thinking what I really want is the marble vanity and the 1897 toilet. You should see this thing. Even if I don’t get it, which I almost assuredly won’t, I’ll have to take pictures of it. The thing is a work of art. Regardless of what I end up with, I have quite a bit to offer. The pièce de résistance is the matching 1922 tank to the toilet my friends already own. Even though they won’t admit how much they really want it, I now they really, really want it.

So what I’m thinking about doing is offering them everything I have for the marble vanity and the 1897 toilet. They will never go for it. The 1897 toilet is too much of a treasure. Regardless, it’s worth a shot. I will essentially be offering 4 complete vintage toilets, 2 vintage tanks, and a vintage sink. I’d take the deal if I were them. Wouldn’t you?

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Tile Costs: Gulp!

So, I’m still in bathroom planning mode, and it’s not pretty. I’ll be the first to admit that I’m a bit of a tight-wad. I’ll walk a mile to save a buck, and I actually do stoop down in parking lots to pick up pennies. I’m obsessed with getting a good deal, and I will almost always sacrifice my wants and desires if I can get almost what I want at a substantial savings.

I’m trying not to be this way with the downstairs bathroom. I’ve only completed two rooms in the house so far, the upstairs bathroom and the kitchen. The house supplied me with a lot of what I needed for those rooms so even though I spent thousands of dollars, I was able to do those rooms for a lot less than I normally would have, given the amount of work that went in to them.

I want to try not to be so cheap when it comes to the downstairs bathroom, but it goes against my nature, so it’s going to be tough. This room is a blank slate so I won’t be solely driven by restoration. With the other bathroom I still had most of it, so I put it back the way it was the best I could. Honestly, the whole bathroom was done for about a $1000 and it’s still my favorite room in the house.

I did improvise some with the kitchen, but again, I had a lot the “parts” already. Granted, everything was beat-up, covered in paint, or laying in piles waiting to be nailed together, but it didn’t cost anything. Even given everything I had to work with, if you include every last piece of wire, sheet of sandpaper, appliances, lighting, etc, etc, etc., I still spent less than $10,000 on the kitchen. Considering the room was an empty shell, that is dirt cheap for a ground-up remodel of a kitchen. Hell, a quarter of the money was spent on the antique cast iron kitchen stove.

Now I come to the bathroom. I want to do something really nice, but it’s going to be tough to pry open the wallet. Case in point: The Tile. Oy! Tile ain’t cheap. I spoke about the floor tile the other day. If you don’t include shipping, mortar, grout, or backer board, it’s around $600 for the floor tile. I figure $1000 when all is said and done.

Today I was looking at wall tile. Crack! {That was the sound of my head splitting open}. What I want to do is subway tile 3 feet up on most walls, and then floor to ceiling subway tile around the bath tub. Here’s what I’m looking at. This all came from the one and only source I’ve look at, Subwaytile.com. Again, this is just the cost of the tile. Maybe add 20% to include other costs for things like mortar, grout, and backer board. That’s a guess, and even the costs listed below are rough estimates.

3X6 Field Tile = $1600


2.5X6 Cap = $380


5X6 Base Molding = $730


Total = $2710
Plus 20% = $3252

The room has 9-foot ceilings so I was considering doing the field tile 48-inches up the wall. I think that would look nicer. The cost above is for 36-inches up. If I went 48-inches up that would add roughly another $200 to the cost. So basically, if you include the cost of the floor tile, and if I went 48-inches up, I’m looking at about $4500 in tile and supplies. That is just for the floor and half the walls in the room. I still have to add all the costs of wiring, plumbing, lighting, cabinets, walls above the tile, ceiling, and a zillion other little things that I can’t think of right now.

In some respects it is a question of money, but in other respects – at least in my warped mind – it is a question of the cost of this room relative to the costs of the other two rooms I’ve done. The cost to do this room alone could easily balloon to nearly the cost of the kitchen if I’m not careful. Can I justify that? Will my tight-wad tendencies impose themselves on my wants and desires for the downstairs bathroom? Will my head explode if I continue to think about this? I can’t say at this point.

Stay tuned.

Tile Samples Ordered

I ordered some tile samples for the bathroom. They’re not so much samples as just 1 square foot sheets of two kinds of tile. They were out of one that I wanted so I went with something else. I got a square foot of the polka dot 1-inch hex, and a square foot of the spiral pattern.

Polka Dot - $625 sq ft


Spiral - $7.95 sq ft


The tiles is coming from Mosaic Tile Supplies, and at this point I’m not really sure where they are, other than they exist is cyberspace some place. The one thing I liked about them was the comment on the page showing the tiles. It says:

These tiles have completely squared edges rather than a beveled edge, making them perfect for period homes and architectural or historical restoration projects.

The also have 1-inch square tiles in solid colors. The squares come in about 40 different colors. I wanted to get a sheet of white (Chalk) and a sheet of black (Raven) squares to play around with for a boarder but the black are out of stock. I ordered the spiral instead and I’m considering it for a boarder. Originally the idea was to do some kind of design with the black and white squares for the boarder, and use the hex as the field.

Once I get these, and if I like them, I’ll check again to see in the black squares are in stock. The local home center has 1.5 sq ft sheets of black or white squares or hexes. They are also unglazed mosaic tiles but the edges aren’t “completely squared”. They do have a very subtle bevel to them. It will be interesting to see how they differ from the ones form Mosaic Tile Supplies. The local tiles are $5.99 a sq ft.

Section 7b Finished

And not a moment too soon. We got our first real rain of the season today. This was the kind of rain that has people running across parking lots and jumping over puddles. Over the past month we’ve had a few days of precipitation, and maybe even some drizzle, but I wouldn’t have called it rain.

Although they are becoming a bit pointless at this stage of the project, here is a before and after of Section 7b.





I did the wall not under the porch on Monday and Tuesday, and the adjoining wall that is under the porch yesterday and today. Tomorrow I’ll need to touch up the panel on the door a bit. On all of the sunbursts around windows and on brackets I did the burst in Livable Green with the background in Basil. It worked fine in those situations because the surrounding bracket or trim was Clarey Sage. With the rest of the door being done in Basil it didn’t look so good. The panel lost some dimension being that it was the same color as the door. After I painted it I went back and change the background of the panel to the Clarey Sage. It looks much better, but it needs another coat.

Downstairs Bath: First Look

Well, actually, it’s a first look at the floor plan of what the bath may look like. I have about 2 weeks to go on the exterior house painting, but after that it’s all-bathroom-all-the-time. The space is not huge so I have to maximize it. Also, the room has never been a bathroom before, so there is a lot of work to be done.

I have only one priority for the room and that is a shower. The original 1895 bathroom upstairs has no shower, and really, that’s fine with me. I don’t think I’ve taken a shower in about 5 years now, and I don’t really miss it. I love soaking in my canoe of a claw foot tub, and as Churchill said, “Why stand when you can sit”. Still, some freaks out there can’t live with out a shower, so I’m caving to popular demand and putting in a shower. Incidentally, the first showers sold at the end of the last century were for men only. It was felt that a woman’s delicate skin could not stand the harsh blast of a shower spray.

The issue is, I want to use the claw foot tub as the shower, but I’m not a fan of the 360 degree shower curtain. It’s not bad, it just seems there should be a better way. The room is 10X6, roughly, and there really isn’t room for a tub, sink, toilet, and shower. I realize they make small neo-angle showers, but I’m not a big fan of those either. And even if I was, I couldn't fit it in.

So this leaves me with a bit of a dilemma. How to I use a claw foot tub as a shower with out the surround shower curtain. Well, here’s what I’m thinking. The picture below is a second draft of the bathroom.



What I’m thinking about doing is getting rid of the window behind the tub and making the walls on either side of the tub, and the wall behind, floor to ceiling tile. The floor would be tile as well. The plan all along has been to do subway tile 36 or maybe 48 inches up the wall in the entire room. In the tub area it would just extend the remaining 5 or 6 feet to the ceiling.

The space is 68 inches wide and the tub is 60 inches, so I could (I think) mount a shower curtain across the front of the tub and use the area as a shower stall. The tub would collect most of the water and what misses would go in to the floor drain under the tub.

It’s just a thought at this point. The tub will go in that spot regardless, because there is no other place for it to go. If it’s doesn’t work, or if I don’t like how it looks, I can always put in a shower curtain ring.

Like I said, this is a first look.

Grate, Juuuust Grate!

If you’ve read my blog long enough you’re probably thinking that the title is a typo, and most of the time you’d probably be right. However, in this case I’m talking about antique heater grates. I purchased a pair on Ebay to use as foundation vents for the outside of the house, and they came today.



There were 3 of them available at the same time, in 3 separate auctions, from the same seller. I didn’t notice until I unpacked the 2 I won that they aren’t really an exact match. Now that I think about it, maybe 2 did match and there was a third one that was a close match. They’re close enough that I don’t think anyone will notice.

All of the auctions ended about 2 minutes apart and the bidding was fast and furious at the end. I only need 2 for the north side of the house that faces the street, but the plan was to try and get all three. I won the first one, lost the second one, and then won the last one. It was thrilling, but now I'm thinking the second one must have a been the exact match for one of the ones I got. Oh well.

Next I’ll soak them in TSP and water for a few days to strip the paint off. They’re too big to boil. After that, some spray paint and then slap them on the house.

Get The Biggest Fork You Can Find….

And stick it in the second story of my house, because that baby’s done! No, don’t just stick it in there, jab it in repeatedly with a sinister look on your face while you make those violin noises from Hitchcock’s movie Psycho. Weeee, Weeee, Weeee, Weeee.

No more 32 foot ladders. No more bone chilling winds. No more slippery porch roofs. It’s done. It’s finished. I can move on. But before I move on, let’s update the chart.

It’s a beautiful thing, isn’t it folks?


I’ve added a Section 7b. These are the two little walls I built a year or two ago to re-enclose a small section of the porch. This also has the Queen Anne Door I made. Part of this section is not under the porch, so I want to do it next. We’re supposed to get rain Wednesday, so I’ll see if I can pound it out Monday and Tuesday. Fingers crossed.

Wooo-Hooo


Section 7b

A Bit of a Problem

So, yesterday I pounded out the north portion of the house above the wrap around back porch. We’ve had two days of cloudless, fogless skies, with little or no wind. This seemed to be perfect painting weather, especially on this north side above the porch that sees almost no sun even on sunny days. The shingles on the porch roof seem to be always damp, and frankly, it’s must be just about the worst place imaginable on the house to work. The west side of the porch was a Cake Walk compared to this.

I wanted to take advantage of the weather so I put in a few marathon days and just got it done. Everything is painted except the trim around the two windows. That is an hours worth of work, at best. Last night I worked until shortly after 6 in the evening putting on the top-coat on the octagon shingles. Around 5:30 or so the dew settled on the porch roof shingles. In just ten or fifteen minutes time they went from grayish black to dark black and everything got a little clammy.

I hate working up there when it’s like that. I start to envision myself sliding off the porch. I rationalize the potential fall by convincing myself that the ground is soft, and if I land right, I may not hurt myself too bad. Besides, even if I do hurt myself, I have good insurance, so it won’t be too bad. I just have to survive the fall. This does little to calm me. The palms of my hands and the bottoms of my feet sweat profusely.

By the time I finished the dew had settled on the fresh paint. Not good. Fortunately, like said, there is no fog. I checked it repeatedly through out the night and never dried. It’s now almost 11:00 AM the next day and the paint still hasn’t dried. There was some minor running near the bottom, in the last area that I finished up, but it’s not too bad.

I’m not sure how this will affect the paint job. I mean, it can’t be good for it, so the question is, how bad is it. I can’t say, because this is new territory for me. I was hoping to finish this up today and be done with it, but I can’t paint the window trim until the siding dries.

It’s another beautiful, cloudless day....except on the north side above the porch.

I’ve got it, but it’s wrong…

It dawned on me, as I was looking at the pricey antique toilets and vanities at DEA Bath, that I have a plethora of antique bathroom items, they’re just the wrong style. I wouldn’t call these trash by any stretch of the imagination, but you know the saying, One Man’s Trash is Another Man’s Treasure.

I own three complete toilets from the 20s, 30s, and 40s, plus another tank and lid from the 20s. All are very desirable and fetch a commanding price when they are cleaned up. I also own a 1920s bathroom sink and a very early brass toilet flapper out of an old high tank toilet. This is all in addition to the clawfoot tub and oak high tank that I already plan to use in the downstairs bathroom.

Getting rid of all these items locally would take a while. It’s a small town and people won’t snap these things up immediately. I could sell them on-line, but it's kind of a pain to ship these types of items. They are very heavy and would require a lot of packing. It’s odd that I did check out Ebay just to see what old toilets would sell for and there was only one listed. It was a fancy English painted and embossed Victorian toilet bowl starting at $650. My aren’t quite in the same category as that, but you would think there would have been at least on antique toilet like mine listed. Odd. Anyway, I got to thinking that one place that might be interested in them is DEA Bath. I’ve contacted them to see if they’re interested in buying them from me. I told them I would take store credit.

If it goes well, this could give me a lot of store credit. DEA Bath is a little south of Sacramento. I could load up the car with all the supplies and make it a one day round trip. I haven’t heard back from them yet, so, fingers crossed. Click this link here to see crude pictures of my inventory.

The California Cooler Problem

The California Cooler was an invention that popped up around 1910 or so and was in wide spread use around here until about 1930. The only time I’ve seen them on a house built in the 19th Century they seem to be retro fitted. That’s my problem. I’ve got two of them that are on the north side of the house over the porch. The bedroom that is on the other side of this exterior wall was turned in to a kitchen when the house was cut-up in to apartments in the 20s.

The California Cooler was always built on an exterior wall of the kitchen. There was a louvered vent on the outside that lead to a cabinet in the kitchen. The cabinet wall that faced the vent had wire mesh instead of wood, this was to keep the bugs out, and the shelves were either wood slats or wire mesh. The idea was that the cool costal air would flow through the vent and then circulate around the wire shelves and keep perishable food stuffs cool. Maybe this was a cheap alternative to ice. Maybe there wasn’t an ice plant in the city. I’m not sure. Even in the dog days of summer the temperatures stay somewhat cool in the day, and noticeably cool at night. In the winter, of course, it’s much colder, but it rarely freezes. It was a clever idea.

Here’s what one looks like. This was the 1920s addition I removed from my house. I was able to salvage some of the kitchen cabinets, but the cooler cabinet was already in rough shape, and the door was now plywood, so I moved it out to the garage and I now store tools in it.

Anyway, the first picture is the outside shot of the cooler, and then there are 2 shots of the cooler cabinet that was just on the other side of the vent, with it’s wire mesh wall and wire shelves.

You can see the vent just to the right of the upstairs door.


The open side with wire mesh is on the right. This faced the vent above.


Another shot of the shelves.


So, if you have a 1917 Craftsman with California Coolers, you celebrate them and restore them. If you have an 1895 Victorian with two of them cut in to the upstairs bedroom wall, you get rid of them. That’s what I have. Also on this same wall are some plumbing vents that are no longer used. These are also left over from the apartment days.



In the picture above, you can see one of the cooler vents on the far left just past the downspout. It’s much smaller than the one shown above. There is a second one out of view, below the rectangular window. The plumbing vents also need to go, but I’ve decided to paint first and then go back and fix these items. My concern is that I’ll waste a day or two fixing all this and run out of nice weather for painting.

There is also the fact that the plumbing vents are nice to hold on to while working on the porch. This north side porch is cold, windy, and slanty. The roof seems more narrow, and it seems to slant more than the south side. I’m sure that’s just my imagination. Also, because the porch roof sees very little sunshine, it has small growths of slippery fungi in places.

I just can’t wait to finish this section. Working up there is really no fun at all.

Speaking of Bathrooms....

Kristin over at 1902 Victorian showed some eye-popping Victorian bathroom vanities the other day. They had eye-popping prices to boot. In fact, one of the bathroom vanities on the site was listed as “expensive (let’s talk)”. Another one was priced at $7600! Needless to say, those vanities aren’t for mere mortals like myself. Besides, I think I'd be afraid to use a $7600 bathroom vanity.

I’ve been thinking about bathroom vanities myself because I started thinking about the bathroom & mudroom floor tile last week. I only need to tile the mud room now, but the rooms will share a common floor, so I thought I might buy all the tile for both rooms at once, but only tile the mudroom at this point. The more I think about that, the less I like that idea. The smart thing would be to just tile both rooms and get it over with. It’s not that big of a space.

The problem with this plan is that I haven’t roughed in plumbing yet. You can see the snow-ball effect this is having. This all started because I wanted to put up a door to close off the bathroom from the kitchen so I could control dust. I could have just slapped up plywood and be done with it, but I have to deal with this space eventually, so why not now.

Anyway, I had this sink (see below) already. It’s from the 20s, and in pretty good shape. It came out of the addition I removed. I also have a 1930s toilet and tub from the addition as well. The plan was to do a 1920s bathroom, but the more I think about that, the less I like it. Now I’m thinking a Victorian marble vanity like the one I have in the upstairs bathroom would be better. Here’s the direction I’m leaning.

1920s sink. It looks better in person – and when it’s clean. Most of that discoloration is dirt.


Here’s how I’m leaning. This stuff is all from DEA Bath.

Antique marble corner vanity - $150


Reproduction under mount bowl with hardware - $170


Reproduction nickel plated rope brass legs - $295


Faucets and drain $200 (estimated)

Total - $1000 once I get it shipped to me.

Still kind of pricey, but it’s better than the $3500 to the “expensive (let’s talk)” prices of the other, super high-end vanities. I could buy it in installments, you know, one piece at a time over several months. It would seem less expensive that way. I could also go with fancy sink brackets, instead of the legs and probably save $200 or more. Really, all I need now is the vanity and I can do the rough-in of the drain and supply lines. And if you think about it, $1000 is not all that much for a nice vanity. I would pay half that for a crappy press-board vanity with a molded sink and cheap faucets down at the home center.

And before anyone says it, yes, I know about Ebay. Ebay and I go way, way back. Vanities like this do come up from time to time. As a matter of fact, there are 2 marble vanities without sinks, legs, or faucets on there right now. They are about $150 with shipping. My big concern with purchasing something like this off Ebay is getting it in one piece. I know DEA Bath will pack it and ship it correctly, and they won’t haggle if there’s a problem once I get it. That piece of mind is worth the extra 20% I might pay retail for something like this. Smaller, less breakable things, yes, I’ll take my time and wait for the deal-of-the-century on Ebay.

If I bought an 80 pound marble vanity off Ebay it would have to be a good enough price that I wouldn’t be as worried about it showing up in 5 pieces. Some people just have no idea how to pack things. Almost every single cast iron thing I've bought off Ebay has arrived broken. Newspaper and thin cardboard will not support very heavy objects. It's not rocket science! Very frustrating.

I’m still in the formulating stages on this project….We’ll see.

Altitude Sickness

Some of my misspent youth was spent traipsing through the Sierra Nevada mountains with 30 pounds strapped to my back. For those of you not familiar with them, the Sierra Nevadas are the range of mountains that run up the east side of California. These are the same mountains that contain Yosemite National Park and Mt Whitney, which at 14,494 feet, is the tallest mountain in the continental US.

I lived in the LA area at the time and my buddies and I made many trips up Hywy 395, which runs through the Owens Valley up the east side of the Sierras. The Owens Valley used to contain the giant Owens lake until LA watered it’s many orchards and flushed it’s many toilets and now Owens Lake is gone. ~sniff~

Anyway, we’d drive up Owens Valley past little towns with names like Lone Pine & Lee Vining until we found a trail head. Then we’d backpack up in to the mountains for 4 or 5 days. It is just unbelievably beautiful country. There are year round glaciers, and ice cold streams dotted with tiny alpine lakes.

Sometimes we would go on long, grueling hikes over several mountain passes and other times we would make base-camp at one of the lakes, which we almost always had to ourselves for the week, and then take day hikes to other areas and higher elevations. The highest I ever hiked was to 12,100 feet. At that elevation you are above the tree-line and nothing really grows there except lichen and moss, and there is very little of that. It’s sort of looks like a boulder filled moonscape.

Being that we came from what was essentially sea level, it would take a day or so to get acclimated to the thin air. The first day was always the worst. I can remember getting to camp after the first days hike in and just feeling like crap. My body would be in a state of shock from the strenuous hiking and the thin air. That’s sort of what I felt like this morning. Either the porch roof is higher than I thought and I got altitude sickness, or I just worked too hard on Sunday.

I didn’t sleep well last night either because my shoulder and wrist hurt from all the scraping and painting. I woke up this morning feeling very sluggish and groggy. Sort of like I was hung over. It was one more reminder that I’m not 20 years old anymore.

By the time I got off work I was feeling a little better. The first half hour on the roof was kind of unsteady, but after a while I started feeling better. The best part is I finished painting the west side of the second story. Tomorrow I’ll do a little touch-up here and there, and reinstall the gutter, and that baby will be done!



What a difference 3 days makes.

Holy Crap!

I worked myself in to a stupor today. I was up on the roof at 9:45 this morning and worked until 5:30 this evening, with only one break for lunch of about a half hour. This is the first time I’ve gotten a blister from the paint scraper, and the first time I’ve every used an entire gallon of primer in one day. Those old west facing shingles just drank up the primer. I also have a blister on my foot from working on the slanted roof.

It wasn’t as hot today as it was yesterday. It was still warm, but there was a very gentle breeze coming off the bay. It was just perfect painting weather. I got the whole west side above the porch stripped to bare wood, puttied, sanded, and primed. It was an incredible amount of work, but it really feels good to have it done. Tomorrow I’ll put on the first top coat, and I should have no problems finishing this side up on Tuesday. Then it’s on to the north side.

Man, I am in the home stretch!

Almost Too Good

It’s said that Eskimos have more than a dozen words for snow. Around here I think we could use about half that many for fog. Most of last week we had this incredibly thick fog. When I left for work in the morning it looked like it had rained, but it was just that the fog had covered everything with moisture.

This was the type of fog that carried a lot of moisture, sat right down on the ground, and didn’t move at all. It just enveloped everything. The good thing about this type of fog is there is nothing above it so it burns off quickly. There is no “deep marine layer” sitting on top of it. By 9:30 the sun starts to poke through, and by 10:30 it’s completely gone with not a cloud in the sky. Other fogs will just sort of lift off the ground to a few 100 feet and still block the sun all day.

This was OK for painting in the afternoons, but I had to be careful not to let bare wood sit uncovered all night or it would get soaked. Fortunately, Section 5b was small, so this wasn’t an issue. I was wondering how I would deal with this fog once I got on top of the wrap-around porch and started to work on Sections 7 & 8. I thought I might have to work on very small sections at a time and make sure what ever wood was stripped and sanded got primed before the fog rolled in around 6 in the evening. As it turned out, I awoke to brilliant sunshine this morning, and the fog is no longer an issue. Now the problem is the sun.

I was sick of working in the cold of the north side of the house, so I decided that once I got up on the porch I would do the west side first. The porch wraps around both the west and north sides of the house. Also, the west side is smaller, and does not have issues like the north side (more on that later), so it seemed like a good place to start.

Normally on the weekends I don’t start working on projects until after noon. Big mistake. I was absolutely broiling in the sun up there on the roof. The afternoon sun just beats down on me, and with the black shingles, it must been in the high 80s. Yes, I know, high 80s isn’t hot hot, but it’s hot enough and I’m pretty well spent at this point in the project. That, and I’ve pretty much become a weather wimp after living on the coast of No. California for 15 years.

Anyway, I got a lot less done than I had hoped. I was able to putty all the holes on both the north and west sides, and I got about 40% of the shingles scraped on the west side. I was hoping I would get it all scraped, sanded, and primed, so I’m a little disappointed. Tomorrow I’ll get an early start. The best news is, though, the weather is supposed to be like this for 8 days straight. If I don’t screw around, I might be able to get both sides painted before the next scheduled rain comes next Sunday. I’ll have to watch the weather predictions closely, because things could change.

I’m going to putz around the house a bit and see if I can get some more done when the sun falls behind the garage.

Greg, meet wall. Wall, Greg.

Smack!

That pretty much sums it up. Section 5b complete. Tomorrow I start Section 7, or is it 8. I forget now. Why won’t it rain?

More Tongue Less Face

The sun came out today, which means I get to go out and start painting again. I just feel every so lucky for this. I can’t tell you how overjoyed I am at the fact that I get to scrape more paint. I’m just the luckiest man in the world. Yes, life just can’t get any better. Before I could paint though, I had to deal with the rot and siding issues with the little bump-out part of Section 5b. Here it is n the picture below.



All of those short little runs of siding needed to be replaced because water had drained in to the wall from the gutter above and rotted everything from the inside out. The good news is, I seemed to have fixed the problem. We had rain the past few days and the wall inside was dry as a bone and there was no more debris. Four years ago when I opened the wall there was about 2-feet of debris stacked up in the wall cavity.

Because we’ve had nasty weather on and off for the past week I did some preliminary work to prepare for the siding replacement. I went out to the wood shed and cut 16 pieces of salvaged siding in to 12-inch lengths. I then scraped all the paint off them and puttied all the holes. I then sanded a second time to clean up the putty, all the while feeling very smart and proud of myself for accomplishing this little task.

But I forgot something.

The siding in the wood shed is a mix of 1895 siding and 1920s siding. To the naked eye they look identical. But they’re not identical and they can’t be used together on the same wall. Go back up and look at the picture. Notice how the little short pieces on the left match up perfectly with the longer pieces on the right. Now imagine that you have a type of siding that looks identical to that, but the face (the part you see) is a ¼ in taller. After every 4 runs you would gain an inch, and those rows would quickly stop matching up. This is what I forgot about the different siding.



In the picture above, the 1895 siding is on the left and the 1920s siding is on the right. The overall height of the boards is the same. Now look at the tongue at the bottom. The 1895 siding has a longer tongue at the bottom and a deeper notch at the top. The longer tongue and deeper notch means less face. When I preped my 16 pieces of siding I used 4, 1895 pieces and TWELVE 1920s PIECES. Grrrrr! It was almost a complete waste of time.

So after I got all the old siding off, and did a little prep in side the wall, I started putting on my beautifully preped pieces of siding and after 3 rows they stopped matching the other rows on the house. So it was back to the wood shed for me. I now feel like a professional wood siding tongue inspector. I can spot that 1895 shit a mile away.

Still Thinking Tile

Yesterday I wrote about how I might need to tile the mud room sooner than I thought. Anna from 1620 Timber Frame left a link about a Spanish Tile Co. called Moasaic del Sur. They have a distributor here in California. They have some very cool tiles and I’ve sent for a catalog. I’m sure they’re crazy expensive, but check out this sample. These are concrete tiles. This patteren is made up of tiles that look to be either 4X4 or 6X6. I'm sure it's probably a metric size. Regardless, I really like them.



I haven’t made any decisions yet, and hopefully the sun will come out soon so I can get back to painting. If that happens, I’m a month or more away from tile work. Plenty of time to make and change a zillion decisions about tiles. On the affordability scale, the 1-inch unglazed hex tiles are about as cheap as it gets. I can get them locally for $6 a sq. ft.

I Googled up a mess of images of 1-inch hex tiles and found some nice ideas. One pattern I like is below. It’s simple but I like it, and this is a simple space. In addition to this I’m thinking about a boarder of square black & white tiles with a Greek key design.



Of course, with the tile idea taking center stage now, the cresting idea has been moved to the back burner. That’s not really a winter time project anyway.

A Wall Is Reborn

It’s raining again. This does not bode well for me finishing the exterior house paint this year. I haven’t given up all hope, but I am trying to except the fact that it may not happen. It’s not the end of the world because there’s plenty to do around here.

Sometimes a really big project requires that you complete several small projects to get ready for it. That is the case with me and my next big project. A few weeks back I spoke about finishing the rest of the downstairs as the next big project. In order to do that I need to relocate the Living Area to another part of the house, and I need to isolate the kitchen from the rest of the downstairs to try and keep dust and dirt at bay. For the most part the kitchen is isolated except for the door leading from the mud room (unfinished) to the downstairs bathroom (also unfinished).

Both of these areas, the mud room the downstairs bathroom, need gobs and gobs of work. They are basically empty shells at this time. The bathroom doesn’t even have rough-in plumbing yet. Hell, it doesn’t even have a door at this point. The idea is to just get a door up so I can close it off from the kitchen.

The mud room is a small little space roughly 4X6 feet that sits at the confluence off the bathroom, kitchen, and back door. The one wall that has no door has a window on it. It should be a quick and simple room to pound out and finish up. If I sheetrocked the room I could almost to the whole thing with just 2 corner seams because in most places the door casing goes all the way to the corners. It should be simple, but it isn’t. Below is a map of the space.



Both rooms share the porch roof so they only have 9.5-foot ceilings. Originally this was one long room that was about 16-feet long. The outside wall with the double window on it was pushed out a foot or so and a door was added to make 2 rooms. Then the mud room part was opened to the porch. The color coding for the walls goes like this.

Green = Floor to ceiling bead board
Red = 60-inch bead board below plaster
Pink = Exterior siding
Black = New walls I built to re-enclose that area of the porch. Framing only.

The plan is to take all the floor to ceiling bead board out of the bathroom and use it in the mud room. There is just enough to do those walls. Both rooms already have a bead board ceiling. In the bathroom I’ll get rid of the 60-inch bead board and use it to augment the supply I have for the butler’s pantry and laundry room. Eventually the bathroom walls will be subway tile and plaster. Both rooms will share a tile floor that will be something like 1-inch hex or penny rounds. You know, with a nice boarder and the field.

This is sort of where I ran in to problems with the quick and dirty mud room make over. The tile needs to go down before the floor to ceiling bead board goes up. The other problem I discovered was with the wall and doorway that separates the mudroom and bathroom. The door was only 28-inches wide and the wall wasn’t built very well. For some reason they built it with 2X4s turned sideways. It was a very thin wall.

So yesterday and today I tore down and rebuilt the wall. I also removed all the exertior siding from the mud room walls. If I had a tile floor in there right now I could hang a door and start to put up bead board. It’d be nice to get this mud room finished because the entry way from the kitchen to the mud room has no door and I’m kind of sick of looking at the open framing on the walls I built a few years back. So I’m thinking I need to tile the room.

If I bought enough tile for the mud room and bathroom I’m looking at about 100 sq ft. I ran down to the home center in town to look at pricing. They have some black and white, unglazed, 1-inch hex tiles for $6 a sq. ft. A monochromatic floor seems kind of boring, but it might be nice. I’m not sure about unglazed. Seems like it might be tough to keep clean. I’m not sure.

They also had some glazed penny rounds and glazed 1-inch squares that were $9 a sq. ft. Both came in a myriad of colors. One thought, just off the top of my head, was the penny rounds with a pale green boarder and then a white field with rosettes of the green in the field. The mud room, because it has no door from the kitchen, is sort of an extension of the kitchen. The kitchen has green walls with the honied white bead board. If I did the bead board walls of the mud room in the same honied white it could look nice. Or maybe I should do something completely different in the way of color in the mud room. Much thought will be given to this over the next few weeks.

No matter what I do, I’m looking at maybe $1000 worth of tile and supplies for the floor. I wasn’t really planning on that right now, but it needs to be done. It would be nice to just buy all the tile now even though I’m only going to do the mud room at this point. Bathrooms are expensive and it will be nice to have that cost out of the way when I get around to doing it in a year or so.

Some on-line tiles places I'm looking at American Universal Corp.(AUC) and American Restoration Tile (ART). AUC is close, so shipping might be doable if the price is better than I can get locally. ART is not close by, but I'm sure they are out of my budget even if they were a block away. Still, the pictures are pretty to look at for ideas.

Considering Cresting

I’m not sure why I started thinking about this yesterday, but now I can’t stop. I want to put cresting around the perimeter of the front porch roof. If I was really ambitious, and really wealthy, I would put it along the tops of all the roof gables as well.

For those not familiar with it, cresting is decorative iron work that was very popular in the second half of the 19th century on Victorian homes. A quick Google search found Capital Crestings. Your one-stop-shopping source for all your cresting and decorative iron works needs.

If you recall, the front porch roof has two open sides that total about 20 feet. If you don’t recall, there is a picture of the front porch at the bottom. The cresting comes in roughly 4 foot lengths, plus I would need one Finial for the outside corner. The prices shown are for 5 sections plus a finial. Shipping would be extra. Here are a few I’m looking at. It’s no coincidence that these are some of the least expensive offered by Capital Cresting.


The Windsor – 11-inches high - $500


The Windsor Finial – 22-inches high

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The Chelsea – 19-inches high - $600


The Chelsea Finial - 35-inches high

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The Gramercy – 18-inches high - $700


The Gramercy Final – 35-inches high

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The Cortez – 21-inches high - $760


The Cortez Final – 35-inches high





So far, I like The Chelsea the best. Of course, I really need to finish painting the house first. The weather is gloomy and cold today, so that's why I'm here dreaming of cresting instead of out scraping paint off Section 5b.

Must....summon.....ambition...

Edit
Just out of curiosity I went up in the attic and measured the 5 main gables. To do the whole house, including the porch, would run me a little under $3000 for The Chelsea. The money is an issue, of course. I think the worst part would be the installation, though.

Source of Funding

So, the last Poll Question was either difficult to answer or it was a poorly written question. Most likely it was a little of both. With 54 votes it was the lowest turn-out by far of any of the questions. Of those who responded, the majority of us are planning a very busy and stressful year, with 12 of us planning on being maxed out.



Lots of things can cause stress, but I think most of us can agree that worrying about money is way up on the list. When working on projects around the house everything seems to cost more than you think it will. So this weeks questions is about Where The Money Comes From. Most of use probably use more than one source, so the question is really about the main source for the big projects?

Where Does The Money Come From?
	Savings
	Pay-As-You-Go
	Credit Card
	Equity Loan
	Family
	Lottery
	Ins. Settlement
	Alimony
	Drug Dealing
	Knocking over liquor stores
	Money tree in backyard
	Other
Free polls from Pollhost.com

What’s The Deal With Section 5b?

Yesterday I alluded to some problems with Section 5b. This is the last little area of the North side of the house that has not been painted, and is not under the porch. This is the next project. If there were no issues with it I could probably strip it, putty the holes, and prime it in one day, and then paint the next. It needs a little more work than that, though. There is (insert dramatic pause with evil music here) Rot!

Gasp!

I feel extremely fortunate because up until this point the only rot I’ve encountered on the house has been on the porches, and porches always rot, so that doesn’t really count. I’ve known about this problem for a few years because I discovered it when I removed the asbestos siding. Here’s a picture of Section 5b. It’s the small wall with the little window just to the right of the freshly painted green wall of Section 5.



There were two problems here. First, where the porch roof meets the house, just above this wall, there was no flashing. This did not cause the problems with the wall, but it was a problem. The flare out of the second story helped to divert some of the water, but not all of it. The second problem was the location of the downspout for the porch gutters. They located it several feet from the end and that section to the left drooped away from the downspout.

Normally that might not be a problem except there is a major downspout for the second story roof that drains down in to that part of the gutter. The gutter would over-flow and spill back behind the asbestos siding. Water also got back behind the redwood siding and in to the wall. Not a good thing.

When I removed the asbestos siding a few years ago it was obvious there where problems. I flashed the porch, changed the way the second story downspout drains, and I raised the left side of the porch gutter so it sloped towards the downspout (See the little wooden triangles under the gutter). This solved all the problems but some damage had already been done.

When I removed the asbestos siding some of those short little runs of horizontal siding had become completely disconnected from the house due to rotted nails and were drooping. The only thing holding them on was the corner trim, which also showed some signs of rot as the bottom, but nothing too bad.

I removed the corner trim, and all the siding, to find that that little section of wall that creates the Section 5 bump-out was filled with debris about 2 feet up the wall. Water had been pouring through that wall for a while and was leaving behind little things as it did. I’m not sure how long it took to get the wall that full. Because the interior walls of the house are solid wood behind the plaster, and there was the asbestos siding on the outside, no one noticed.

I cleaned out all the debris and discovered very little damage in the wall. Some of the studs showed some rot, but the sill was in great shape, and so were the back sides of the interior wall boards. Thank God the house is built entirely out of old-growth redwood or this could have been much worse.

I cut away any rot on the studs but didn’t bother sistering any new wood in. Because this bump-out is so shallow there is a lot of wood in there to create the outside and inside corner of the bump-out. I think this also helped to prevent further damage to surrounding areas. Normally a stud bay (the area in-between 2 studs) would be 16-inches minimum. There are 4 or 5 stud bays right in this area but they are all less than 8-inches wide. It’s like a ship with small ballast tanks. When one stud rotted out to the point that water and debris could get in to the next stud bay, the next stud bay was only 6-inches wide.

The little pieces of siding were in bad shape as well. It’s funny that from the front side they look fine, but when I took them off some of them were little more than a shell of a piece of wood. The rot started from the back side and was working it’s way out. Some were in worse shape than others. The bottom few rows where all the debris was were in the worst shape. None of them were bad enough that I couldn't nail them back up at the time.

I’ve decided to replace them now, though. My fear is that the soft wood on the back side will collect moister and the wood won't be able to hold paint. Any that are marginal I’ll spray with wood hardener. I also want to fix the small bit of rot at the bottom of the corner trim where the water exited the wall. Somehow, the water table suffered no damage at all.

So that’s the next project. I still have plenty of the salvage siding from the addition I removed. Finding new wood for the corner trim will be a little more of a challenge. The wood is 7/8th inch thick, and a full 6-inches wide, and because of the bull-nose corners I have to replace it with the same. I may end up shimming new wood if I don’t have any salvage left.

I’m Always Writing Something

Well, I finished Section 5 and that means it’s time to update the chart. Updating The Chart is kind of like releasing endorphins in to the blood stream. There is a slight sense of euphoria that comes with seeing that I am one step closer to finishing what has been one of the toughest projects so far at the old Petch House.

Oh baby, that's the stuff


You may notice that I’ve added a new section. There is a small, single story wall that is sort of part of the porch. For some reason there is a little bump-out on in the kitchen that creates this wall. For what ever reason the builders put it there, it’s the last section of first story siding on the north side that is not under the porch roof. I probably should have preped and painted it when I did the rest of Section 5, but I didn’t, so I’m going to do it next. I’m calling it Section 5b.

At this point, being that it’s so small, you might think that this would be like taking a break. I’m mean, there’s almost nothing to it. Hell, it’s so little work, it’ll probably paint it’s self…..you might think. Nothing is ever what it seems. More on that later.

Hide & Seek

I toss the cats outside every morning before I leave for work. I do this for two reasons. First, I don’t want them tripping the motion detectors and setting off the alarm system, and also, if they stay inside and sleep all day then they’re bouncing off the walls all night.

Most of the time this is not a big deal. They both enjoy being outside and it’s not uncommon for them to be standing by the door when I leave. When the weather turns cold and wet though, they are a little more reluctant. Last winter, Mortimer, the big black one, started hiding in the house on rainy mornings when it was time to leave.

The house is big, but I could almost always find him. The times I couldn’t find him I was sure he was in the attic. The attic has a stair well leading up to it with no door. Once up in the attic there are a zillion places to hide. The poor lighting and numerous gables make searching difficult. He learned quickly to keep quiet while I stumbled around through the dimly lit space.

Mortimer sleeps on the bed every night and the way it usually works is I get up with the alarm and head in to the bathroom to shave and brush my teeth. Five minutes later I’m back in the bedroom getting dressed. When I’m finished I gather him off the bed, carry him downstairs, and toss him out the front door.

This week we had are first rain of the season. On Wednesday and Thursday Mort was already off the bed when I got back from the bathroom. After I got dressed I headed for the attic and after a few minuets I would find him. The first morning he was crouching behind an old door leaning against the wall, and the next morning he was laying down in the top drawer of a stack of old dresser drawers. Both times I scooped him up and out the door he went.

On Friday though, he tried something different. Friday morning I was awoken to the sound of a thud hitting the floor. It was Mortimer jumping off the bed. I rolled over and looked at the clock and it was 4 minutes before the alarm went off. I’m not sure if he has impeccable timing or if he’s learned to tell time. Regardless, seconds later I hear him softly climbing the attic stairs.

Four minutes later the alarm goes off and I get up and do my usually routine. The routine now includes a trip to the attic to get Mort. I’m up there looking and looking and I can’t find him any where. I head downstairs and check all the rooms and eventually make my way back up to the attic. I’m sure he’s in there some where.

There are two lights mounted on the ceiling but I also have one of those mechanics lights with the hook on the end. I plug it in and start shining it in every little nook and cranny of the attic. I’m kicking boxes and moving things around. He’s just no where to be found. I figure he has found a new hiding place and I decide I’d better get going before I’m even later to work than I already am.

I start to head down the stairs and I have to stop to unplug the mechanics light. The plug is close to the floor and near the stairs so I walk down three or four steps and then reach over and unplug the light. I then stop for a few seconds and take one last look around. I just know he’s up there some where. I can feel it. Then, just as I turn to head down I hear a rustling sound. There’s a small box laying on it’s side about 6-feet from the top of the stairs. The box has some bubble wrap sticking out of the front of it. I had kicked this box a few times.

I climb back up the stairs and get down on all fours to look inside the box. Sure enough, behind the bubble wrap, there’s a big black cat holding his breath. I figured I should get a shot of this before I scoop him out of there and toss him out the front door.