Post-Op

I had no intention of blogging from the exam room at the ER, it just sort of happened. I had never been to an ER before, but have heard about 4 and 5 hour waits to get in, so I took my netbook with me. The plan was to just use it to play cards and other games while I waited, but when I got there I found that there was a WiFi hot-spot active, so I logged on.

As it turns out, I was in and out of the building in 50 minutes. Possibly a new land speed record for an ER visit. The ER I went to was at St. Joseph hospital, here in Eureka, and I must say, despite the fact that my leg was swollen and my knee filled with puss, it was a very positive experience.

Of course, I haven't gotten the bill yet.

This thing started on Tuesday with a small pimple on my knee that was surprisingly painful for its size. By Thursday it was the size of a silver dollar, but there was no real head on it. It was all under the skin and painful when I walked. On Friday my knee-cap looked like it had a half an orange shoved under it and my lower leg swelled by about 30%. Oddly though, it wasn't as painful as it looked. I mean it was sore, but looking at it I thought maybe I was going to loose my leg or something.

I iced it Friday night and the swelling on my leg went down some. On Saturday the swelling was back. I put more ice on the leg and I put a warm compress on the knee cap. I kept this up all day Saturday for hours on end hoping I could get the abscess to pop. I squeezed so hard my knee was now all kinds of weird shades of purple, red, and blue. I couldn't keep the swelling down and the whole the was looking really nasty. That is when I decided to go to the ER.

The RN who did the triage was a nice enough fellow, but seemed like he as at the end of a long day. He had an Asus netbook similar to mine, but a different model. I think he was jealous when I told him I have a 14 hour battery life. The doc was Dr. Cordova, I think. He was personable with a good bed side manor. To the point and professional, but I never felt like cattle. The RN who wrapped my knee and gave my discharge papers was Sarah, I think. She was very pretty, which was pleasant, given what I was going through. I just wished I hadn't almost passed out on front of her. It's a guy thing.

For those of you still guessing, this was a staph infection on my knee. I did fine when the doc put the needle in my knee cap to give me the local anesthetic. I did fine when he sliced open my knee and the blood started to pour. Unfortunately, He could not slice deep enough with the tool he had. The abscess was deeper than expected. He left the room to get something to pry it open more so he could slice deeper.

It was in-between all of these little steps when he would leave the room that I decided to blog about it. That is the reason the entry is so choppy. It was kind of interesting. Each time he or the RN walked in the room I would stop writing and shove the netbook behind me. No one ever asked what I was writing.

The doc came back with what ever he needed to slice deeper in to my knee and as he started in, that is when everything got tingly and I fell back on the bed. It wasn't the pain, because after the initial injection there really was no pain. It wasn't the site of my own blood either. I've seen my own blood lots of times. I think it was just the idea of something going deeply in to my body where it doesn't belong. I looked away as he was finishing the last step, but was too late. I couldn't keep the image out of my mind of that knife going in to my knee. It was a bit much.

Of course, as I'm lying there, white as a ghost, panting, and covered in sweat, all I can think is, “I wonder if the cute RN thinks I'm less of a man for almost passing out”. It's a guy thing.

When I regained composer, I reached for the netbook, clicked “Publish”, and headed for the door. The knee is already feeling better.

ER Bound

Well, the knee ended worse that I thought. Or I sh...doc just came in. He poked and proded and is going to see if he can drain the infection. My ...He just slkiced it open...Ouch! Didn't g....He sliced me good I almost passed out, but not quite.

Visit from the Blogosphere

On Thursday I got a surprise visit from some fellow house bloggers. Sadly, I was not home at the time. I won't say who it was, because I don't want to let the world know they are not home, or at least that part of the world that reads this blog. Well, OK, that is a very small part of the world, so there probably wouldn't be any harm.

Still, it is obvious they are traveling and away from home, because their home is no where near mine. There is a good chance they have been blogging longer than I have. Along with me, they were part of that first wave of brave souls who started posting on HouseBlogs.net. Even though I wasn't home at the time, it was still a nice surprise to find the note they left. I spent the next hour cleaning up just in case they made another surprise visit.

In other news, work on the foyer has ground to a halt. I have been side-lined with a nasty knee injury. For what it is worth, the injury is not house related. I was able to make it to the mill on Friday to order the missing parts for the stairwell. I should have the parts in week and a half, which would be great timing if I could get off the couch and work on the stairs.

Myth Busters

I have a little sanding to do around the plaster medallion and over the closet door in the foyer and then I’ll slap on a coat of primer before I move on to the stairs. The stairs are really going to be a lot of work.



Mostly it is a lot of stripping of old shellac so I can get back to a uniform surface. As you can see, there is a lot of surface to strip. Lots of cut outs and little reeded posts. In addition to that, I am missing a few pieces.



Above is a close up of one of the baluster sections from the upper part of the stairs. You’ll notice in the first picture the little finials in the circular cut outs are missing. Of the 21 originals only 5 remain. Who knows what happened to the others. At first I thought old tenants took them as souvenirs or something. Today I pried one off myself and it did not come off easy, so now I’m not so sure.



The reason I pried one off was so I could take it to the mill to get new ones made to replace the missing ones. They are inch and 7/8ths square and are 3.5 inches tall. I used a few scraps of 2X8 left over from the 2 story addition to make some blanks for the mill. I’m sure they can get wood, but I know this wood is really, really nice. Plus I get to use up more of my scrap wood and pay less for the new finals.

The other thing I’m going to have the mill do is either repair or replace the caps of the two newel posts at the bottom of the stairs. There are a total of 5 newel posts, and while they all have a certain amount of character to them (e.g. the occasional knick or scratch), the caps at the base are especially dinged up.



"Dinged up" is putting it mildly. There are deep gouges, initials carved in to them, and even a little swastika. My hope is that they can put them back on the lathe and just remove the top eighth of an inch or so. They don’t need to be perfect, because none of the others are, and the rest of the stairs has some character here and there. If they can’t fix these, then new ones wouldn’t be the end of the world. I would just need to make sure the quality of the wood meets the standard of the rest of the stairs. Second and 3rd growth redwood can some times seem like balsa wood compared to the old growth stuff.

For a long time after I bought this house, and even before I bought this one, with my last house, I spent a lot of time on several old house related on-line forums. There is just a great bunch of kindred spirits out there that could share knowledge and empathize with my plight. One of the stories that crops up from time to time is that the tradition at the end of the last century was that the builder would store the blue prints to the house in the newel post.

It was sort of a topping off event. As the story went, the placing of the newel post cap would be the last thing that would happen before all of the crews left the house. Before they put the cap on they would roll up the blue prints and shove them in the post. Of course, few are willing to pry off the cap to see in the blue prints are in the post.



Well, today I pried off the caps and guess what, nothing, zip, zilch, nada. My guess is that maybe one builder some place did this and the story grew. Or perhaps this was a real tradition and this is just one more Petch House mystery. Regardless, no blue prints for me.

Sigh!

The Plaster & I Are Both Finished!

The plaster is finished and I am beat. I said it the other day, and I'll say it again: Skim-coating plaster is the hardest job I do in this house. It is both physically demanding and technically challenging at the same time.

I have found that it is not too difficult to do a half way descent job at it, but to really be good and proficient takes a lot of practice. On an episode of This Old House years ago they were talking with a plasterer who does skim-coat over blue board. Blue board is like sheet rock, but made to accept finish plaster. He said that a new-hire will apprentice for 2 years before they will be good enough to earn a living at it. Collectively, all of the time I've spent doing plaster would probably add up to about 6 months. I have a ways to go.

So now the big challenge is the mess. Every room adjacent to the foyer has a fine coating of dust and the foyer itself has a very thick coating if dust. I put down a layer of cardboard and plastic on the floor in foyer, so that won't be too difficult to clean. The other floors, especially the stairs need to be wet mopped before I take up the cardboard and plastic. Then of course, there is just all of the tools and other crap that needs to be put away.

I may be finished with the plaster but it is far from over. Still, it is so nice to be done with that. I can start to think about the stairs.

E Unum Pluribus

I am primed, ready, willing, able, bound and determined to finish the plaster in the foyer this weekend. As The Universe as my witness, I will put my trowel away on Sunday!

I hope….

This really has dragged on long enough, wouldn’t you say. It was probably 6 weeks ago that I said I would be finished in 2 weeks. I swear, you would think I was a licensed contractor with the way I’m estimating this job.

Two weeks ago I tore down the scaffolding in the stairwell. I threw the small stuff and ratty plywood in the truck, ready for the next dump run. I then listed the longer 2X4s on Craig’s List and offered them up for $20. I got 2 calls early that morning. As I was about to call the first person back it dawned on me that I was far from finished. I still had to do the foyer and work on the woodwork.

The ceiling in the foyer could be done on a ladder, but when I have an ample supply of 2X4s and ratty plywood laying around, what’s the point. The woodwork is mostly low enough that I can work on it standing or sitting, but of course stairs always present unique challenges. So I de-listed the wood and built some more scaffolding.

This will help me get to those odd places on the stairs that I could normally only get to if I had 8-foot long arms. Boy, 8-foot long arms would really come in handy from time to time.




This will help me get the ceiling and high places on the wall, as well as the trim around the 2 sets of big double doors.

Blast From The Past, Part 3

Psych! It is not another old, old photo. I was browsing my old photos the other day, looking for something, and I stumbled on this photo from a few years ago when I was painting the house. I blogged about house painting everyday for about 7 months straight. Never has a house painting job been documented so completely. Anyway, of all of the photos I posted on the blog, this was my favorite. And it is not completely out of context to the current project. That second story window in the photo is the window in the stairwell that I'm working on now.

Of course, we must have the before and after, or this case after and in-between because the shot with the brown paint is post asbestos siding...

Practical Psychology

Doing the practical thing is not always good for the psyche. I suppose the inverse of that is true as well, but I'm not concerned with that at the moment. After weeks of work I desperately need a psychological victory. Something that looks done even if it isn't.

The practical thing would have been to finish the woodwork before I painted the walls, but that is weeks away. It is only the baseboards that are up against these walls, and either way, whether I painted now or later, I would have masked the first few feet of wall up from the baseboard.

Yesterday I skim-coated the lower part of the 3 walls in the stairwell. I did the upper walls a week or so ago when I had the scaffolding up. As I predicted then, making the transition from where I left off a few weeks back, to where I started today, was not as easy as if I had done one wall top to bottom.

The other issue was that I was also making the transition from the old plaster to the new plaster. I had to replace all of the plaster on the lower half of the walls before I skim-coat everything. The finish plaster used for skim-coating has about 15 to 20 minute working time on the old plaster, but only a 2 or 3 minute working time on the new plaster. I don't care how much water I spray on the new plaster, as soon as the finish plaster hits it it begins to set up. Working on parts of both types of plaster at once adds another level of difficulty for someone with my level of skill.

Given all of that, the results are good. Not great, but good. I need to work on my corners and edges and I should take more breaks in between walls, as well. For me, skim-coating plaster is the most physically demanding job I do on the house. Especially the new plaster. Twenty minutes in and sweat is just pouring off of me, but I can't stop. It is not like painting or wood work where I can stop at anytime and come back to it. The end results is that the first wall looks better than the last wall.

So next weekend I will skim-coat the foyer. It is a larger space, but really has a lot less plaster than the stairwell. There are 4 doors, including two sets of double doors, so I should have no problem getting it all done next weekend. I'm going to try and get to the mill this week to see about having a few pieces of the stairs reproduced. Some parts are damaged and others are missing. You never know how long that will take, so it is best to start now. If all goes well, in two weeks I will start working on woodwork.

Before






Not quite after, but as it sits

This shot probably best reflects the true color

Blast From The Past, Part 2

I got another old picture from the Great Granddaughter of Thomas and Phillias Petch. This is an earlier shot than the last. Sadly, it is a very low resolution scan, so there is only this one view. It becomes pixelated when I try to enlarge or zoom in. This was a post card created by a local photographer, so we get a back and front.

1895?




That is Phillias on the front porch. The back says, “This is Phil's home and his mother. She sent me this a few days ago with one of his love letters to her when he was 7 years old and it sure is a dear”

The Phil they are writing about is Phillip H. Petch, the youngest son of Thomas and Phillias. Phillip was born in 1887 so straight math says he would have written the letter in 1894, which was a year before this house was built. Really though, he could have written the letter in the house because he was born in November of 1887.

Items of note:

The house on the right in the photo is still there and looks pretty much as it did. They added some modern windows in the downstairs and an addition on the right, but other than that it is not too bad. I made an offer on that house 6 months before I bought the Petch House, but someone made an offer a few hours earlier and it was accepted. This is amazing because that house was on the market for almost 2 years. I'm glad I didn't get it.

When you compare this photo to the first photo it looks like one of the out buildings is still under construction on the left. This leads me to believe this is a very early shot of the house. Most likely the year it was built.

The paint is white with black (?) trim. I always suspected this. One of the first projects I ever did on the exterior was to repair the window sills that were damaged when the asbestos siding was put on in the 50s. Each time I stripped the paint off a sill I found black paint as a base. It could have been a very dark green. I also found this same color on the screen door I stripped. I found white paint any where else I stripped, and I found white octagon shingles inside the house used as shims for a 1920s Murphy Beds that were added. Of course, I was assured by some knowledgeable locals that the house would never have been painted white. "White!?!? Oh please!" Well, here's proof.

The gable decorations really make the house. Compare this photo to the one below of the house pretty much as it looks today. I really need to put those back. I wish this photo was scanned at a higher resolution so I could see them better. The railing over the porch doesn't do much for me. The cresting on the top would be nice to put back, but I wouldn't do it without completely stripping off the roof and putting on a new one. This house still has the original redwood shingles under the one layer of asphalt shingles.

A white - or at least non-black - dress for Mrs. Petch? Not very Victorian of her. Perhaps Thomas and Phillias were radical iconoclasts shunning the social norms of the day. Maybe it was just Phillias, and that is what lead to the divorce. Inquiring minds what to know!

I came close to getting the porch restored to original. It is hard to believe that I did more railing and trim than was originally there. Queen Annes of the 1890s were known for excess trim and over-the-top detail. I would have expected to see rails and newel posts down the steps.

This is one more piece of evidence that leads me to believe that this house was an economic stretch for the Petch Family. There is no evidence that there was carpet installed in the house. No fine wood floors, either. No picture rail upstairs. No stained glass window in the stairwell. No fence around the front. Don't get me wrong, this was and is a beautiful house with many fine amenities, but it did not come with all of the bells and whistles.

2006 - 111 years later

How I Spent The Forth

I received another generous offer from a friend to spend The Forth at a Bar B-Q on Indian Island. That is where I went last year and I really had a wonderful time. Indian Island is a mostly undeveloped island in Humboldt Bay. You are only a 2 minute boat ride from the shore, but it feels like you are miles away.

I bought a 6 pack and a bag of chips and had every intention of going out around 5:00. The priority this weekend was always the stairwell, though. I am bound and determined to get the scaffolding down. In order to do that I needed to finish a few large tasks and a lot of little tasks. Ultimately, it was the little tasks that ate up a lot of time. Because I won’t really be able to work on this area once the scaffolding is down, I had to do a lot of little things one would normally do at the end of a project. Sadly, I am far from the end of this project.

I needed to paint the walls and trim. I needed to make some minor repairs and finish painting the medallion. I needed to prep and paint the window. I needed to put on a sash lock and lift. I needed to mark the walls for picture rail. I needed to sand, oil, and shellac the picture rail. I needed to install the picture rail and hang the fixture. Finally, I needed to do touch up painting after the picture rail went on, put on a few more coats of shellac, and hang the fixture. Then I could take down the scaffolding. Oh, and I even washed the window. Eeeew!

The window proved to be interesting. Once I cleaned the thick layer of cob webs off of it I noticed that it looked like the sash were replacements. They were the correct style, but they were in too good of shape, considering they were facing south, and they lacked any hardware. This started to make sense because I always thought this should have been a stained glass window. A stained glass window in the stairwell was a staple of Queen Anne architecture of the day. There were 3 other stained glass windows in the house, why not one here. Then I remembered I had the old photo sent to me by relatives of the original owners.

Exterior shot of stairwell window circa 1915. Nothing stained about that.


Nope, no stained glass window. Another Petch House mystery.

For the medallion I needed to repair a broken corner and touch up the cherubs and foliage and maybe even hang some crystals. There are 8 little hooks on it that something once hung from. Two were missing and one had been hastily replaced with a cut off bobby pin. I fashioned some new ones out of wire, plastered them in, and headed to the craft store. I bought bronze and green paint for the touch-ups and was hoping to find some faceted crystals. I found them, but even though the selection was good there were not enough of any one type or even two types. They had two of this and one that. I then searched on-line and found what I needed, but over night shipping would have meant spending 50% more for crystals than I did for the medallion. Ain’t gunna happen.

The picture rail was pretty straight forward. I had milled it all on the router on Saturday and I just needed to do a little sanding and slap on some shellac. Then get the painting out of the way so I can install it.

Ah, the painting. My patented grab-n-go method of color selection failed me again. Oh, when will I learn! I hate choosing colors. I knew I wanted light colors and nothing too contrasting. There would be one color for the walls and then another color for the frieze and ceiling. This color scheme would be in the foyer and stairwell, and then eventually be continued in the upstairs hall.

I decided to go with Sherwin Williams Banana Cream for the walls. I had used it in the butler’s pantry and really liked it. It was not too garish, but still had some snap to it. At the last second I chose Cachet Cream for the frieze and ceiling. This decision was made solely because that is what I used to repaint the white parts of the plaster medallion.



Well, it didn’t work out. The Cachet Cream looks like an off-white in the small quantities used on the medallion, but once it was on the walls in larger quantities it took on an unpleasant orange tint. It was almost kind of a peach color. I really didn’t like it. All I needed was dusty rose trim and it would look like the inside of a cheap motel circa 1995.

Not only did I dislike the Cachet Cream on its own, but in contrast to the Banana Cream it was really unpleasant. The orange and yellow tints of the two colors did not work. Oddly enough, I was going to stick with it any way. I am that eager to keep this project moving forward and it was late Sunday and I wanted to go to Indian Island. I’m not vomiting at the site of it, so it is good enough. It successfully passed the no-vomit test. I also thought maybe once the walls were finished in the Banana Cream it would take the edge off the Cachet Cream. Any way, if I still didn’t like it I could use a different color in the foyer and when I do the upstairs hallway come up with some way to repaint the 20-foot high ceilings in the stairwell.

In the end I decided to sleep on it. By the time I finished every thing it was well after 6 o’clock. I was filthy and hungry. I’m sure what remained of the Bar B-Q by this time was crusty potato salad, gristly tri-tip remnants and stale potato chips. I took a bath and ate some dinner and made the fatal mistake of having 2 beers with dinner. By this time it is almost 7:30 and I am toast. There is no way I’m going any where. By quarter till 10 I was in bed. I vaguely remember hearing the fireworks go off.

Another holiday in The Petch House.

This morning I woke up and raced to the stairs hoping I would be seeing the Cachet Cream in a whole new light. No such luck. In fact, I think I disliked it even more and I had a few dry heaves. I decided it had to go. Fortunately, Sherwin Williams does not keep banker’s hours so within the hour I was standing in front of the wall of paint chips. I wanted something that leaned yellow and had a fair amount of white in it. I wanted color, but not too much. I settled on Lemon Chiffon and headed to the counter with my paint chip. The gal walked up to me and asked, “Can I help you”. I paused for a second or two and then in a monotone voice I replied slowly, “I’m still deciding”. I’m sure she was thinking, “Well, if you’re still deciding then why are you standing at my counter holding a paint chip”.

Something didn’t feel right, so I headed back to the color wall. I stared at the wall and mulled over a few more choices, eventually settling on Lemon Meringue. I don’t think I ever choose a color because I like it, so much as I pick the one that is the least objectionable. Picking colors for me is sort of like voting for Congress.

The picture rail will hit the 6 doors in the upstairs hall at the corner blocks.


Tomorrow the rest of the scaffolding comes down! Note that the Cachet Cream on the medallion is passing the no-vomit test. It has something to do with small quantities.

I Say Punt

The skim-coating is done on the upper stairwell. The walls came out beautifully. Just as smooth as glass. I think I finally really understand how to plaster. Unfortunately, this understanding came just after I did the ceiling.

Since I don't do this sort of thing everyday, I must re-learn the process each time. Ceilings have the added difficultly of being over head. I just didn't get it as smooth I should have. I'm not sure whether to try and go over it again or to try and sand it smooth. I'm leaning towards sanding because I want to put on primer tomorrow.

If I can prime tomorrow then I can paint and put on picture rail mid week. That means I can dismantle the scaffolding next weekend. That would be really nice. Today after skim coating I made a lumber run to Almquist Lumber. They have a wonderful selection of wood. Many species I've never even heard of. Of course, I'm there for the redwood.

Towards the back of the second shed they always have a selection of salvage and new cut salvage redwood. The salvage stuff is just that. It has the occasional nail and comes in all kinds of odd sizes. The new cut salvage is where someone salvages an old log that was felled in the last century and saws it up. It is sold as rough-sawn lumber in full dimension. Just as in the olden days.

They had a good selection of 1X4 so I grabbed roughly 50-feet of it and headed to the register. When I got there I told the young guy behind the counter I had 3 8-footers, 2 6-footers, 1 7-footer, and a 5-footer. He tried to bring it up on the computer and couldn't find it. I said once again that it is was rough-sawn redwood from the back shed. He still couldn't find it in the system. A guy from the back office called out a few things to search on and none of it matched. I told him it wasn't marked, but he eventually hoofed it back to the shed to try and find a price.

After he came back up another guy tried to help. He has a air of management about him. That is a relative term at this lumber yard because everyone that works there looks more like they should be standing behind a saw instead of a cash register.

The 3 of us went back and forth measuring and remeasuring to try and figure out what this might be listed under in the computer. Everything here is sold by board-foot. It turns out that even though all of the boards were in the same stack I had actually grabbed two different things. The 8-footers where nicer and a little thicker than the other boards. This only complicated matters.

Finally, the manager guy said, “I say punt”. He is talking to the younger guy and he means just make something up. He points to me and says, “This guy's got better things to do than to stand around while we try and figure out what to charge him for lumber”. With that I chimed in, “Just give me a fair price and I'll pay it”.

The manager guy walked away and the younger guy typed something in to the computer. Eventually he looked up at me, and as if almost asking me he said, “$87.59”. I said, “Sold!”.

After lunch I milled it all in to 1X2 picture rail.

Finally! It is up!

Why can’t I just go down to the home center and buy a light fixture like everyone else? There must be some genetic abnormality that prevents me from doing this. I can picture the obstetricians office 100 years from now…

“Mr. and Mrs. Smith I afraid your unborn child has the dreaded old house gene, also known as “The Petch House Gene”. We can treat it now in the uterus with gene therapy. If we don’t he will be forced to live a complicated life sweating over details that others could care less about. What is your decision?”

The nervous parents-to-be look at each other, not knowing what to do.



Would that then mean that the world would be deprived of this in the future? Only time will tell.

Of course, if it were simply a matter of hanging the fixture it wouldn’t be that big of a deal. But no, it is not that simple. It never is. With other fixtures and plaster medallions I was able to do test runs with making sure that the pipe the fixture hangs from does not stick out of the medallion too far. Because I couldn’t hang this one myself, and because of the whole scaffolding thing, I had to measure as best I could and hope for the best.

Well, “The Best” is not what happened this time. Long story long, the pipe stuck out an inch too far and the ceiling cup on the fixture wouldn’t cover it. If I unscrewed the pipe and tried to get a shorter pipe screwed in, the nut up in the ceiling might slip out of place and I’m screwed.

At lunch I went to the hardware store to get a new pipe cut that was 1-inch shorter than the one I bought on Saturday. The whole time I’m trying to come up with contingency plans if I can’t get the new pipe in. No plans came to mind, but plenty of excuses did.

“No, no! This is how they did it some times. They would just have a medallion with no fixture”

“The bulbs were too hard to change so I just took the fixture down”

“A light fixture up there!?! Of course, why didn’t I think of that!”

“No, I was planning on selling the house now anyway. The screw up on the medallion had nothing to do with it”

And wouldn’t you know I’m still not done screwing with it. The lower electrical box is 3.5 inches in diameter and the cup slides over it perfectly. The cross bar that the fixture screws in to is 4-inches wide and the cup won’t go completely over it. So I need to grind down a quarter inch on either side of the cross bar so it will completely hide the shims that sit in-between the metal box and the medallion. In the picture above the shims are covered in electrical tape to ensure they don't move. Trust me, it is noticeable the way it is now.

It never ends.

Blast From The Past

I’ve been meaning to post this picture for the longest time. The great granddaughter of Mr. & Mrs. Petch sent it to me last winter while I was deeply rooted in my non-blogging phase. I had also grown a goatee, smoked a pipe, wore a beret and read a lot of poetry during this phase, but that is another story.

Anyway, by the time I wanted to post it I couldn’t find it. I had a hard copy that I printed out, but the image file was lost on one of my hard drives and I could not find it until yesterday.

Click to enlarge


One can assume that the Petch family still lived here, otherwise why would an ancestor have the photo. It is definitely pre-1920s because that is when the house was cut up in to apartments and the 2-story addition is not there in this photo. It is also definitely pre-1926 because that is when the carriage house and other out-buildings were torn down to make way for the 2-story garage/apartment building.

I think it may even be before 1915 when Mrs. Petch started running a boarding house. That is when I think the second to last window towards the back was converted to a door to give access to a deck and bathroom addition.

The house to the right in the photo is still there, and looks pretty much as it does in the photo, but there is now a 1920s stucco bungalow on the corner between the 2 houses. I could probably narrow the date down further if I found out when the bungalow was built. The house on the left, behind the carriage house, is still there, but has been heavily butchered. If I could see it in this photo, I'm sure the current structure would not resemble it in the least.

Things of note:

1) The cresting is not the high Victorian metal work, but the more plain wooden (?) variety.

2) The chimney is not high Victorian either.

3) The gable decorations are not the fan, or sunburst type like I always suspected. It is more of an open fret work or lattice design.

4) The back window on the far left I assumed was a door in the pre-apartment days.

5) Also, that back wall has already been pushed out a foot. I assumed that was an apartment era modification.

6) The fire hydrant and electric pole on the corner and still there in the same place.

7) There doesn’t seem to be much of a fence. There is something there, but I’m not sure what it is.

8) The house has the brown and tan paint job. I know the house was white when built and I assumed this color scheme came along after the apartment conversion.

9) The window is open in the dining room and it looks like there are two different types of roller shades. The roller shades I installed look a lot like the type on the right side of the bay. No roller shades upstairs.

10) The book Eureka: An Architectural Review claims the large window on the front bay is a later addition. Well, In Your Face, Eureka: An Architectural Review! The window has been there from the beginning!

A short while after I received this photo I got another email saying that another photo had surfaced and she was going to send me a copy once it was scanned. I would kill for that other photo because some questions still remain. I would really like to know what the railing looked like on the front porch and the wrap around porch on the other side of the house.

Except for the cresting and gable decorations I have gotten this house back to looking pretty much as it did the day it was built. Well, the outside anyway. There is still a ways to go on the inside.

Hmmm, any interior photos lurking around, great granddaughter of Mr. & Mrs. Petch?

Ok, on 3, ready….

The medallion is up! I had to call a friend over to help get it on the ceiling. I got it upstairs and on to the scaffolding alright, but man-handling it on to the ceiling while I tried to secure it proved to be a bit much.



I started this morning by cleaning up the rest of the wallpaper. There were still a few remnants at one edge. These were painted remnants and did not come off with out a fight. It always seems to be the case with these things that 90% of it comes off in an hour and then the last 10% takes another hour. It is very frustrating.

I then rolled on a coat of the Weld-Crete. It is a kind of masonry adhesive that helps the skim-coat stick to the original plaster. This is made by the same company that makes Plasterweld. I then broke for lunch while the Weld-Crete dried. After lunch I skim-coated the ceiling. The skim-coating went well, but I always feel like it isn’t going well while I’m doing it.

When the plaster is wet it is hard to get smooth. Then as it sets up you go over it once or twice more to get it smooth as glass. It is really an issue of timing. You can’t wait too long for the last pass, but if you go too early it is frustrating because you can’t get it smooth. It is really is an art form. Electrical, plumbing, and framing can all be learned in a matter of hours. Plaster takes a lot of practice and patience.

After I got the medallion up stairs and on to the ceiling I made a few attempts to get it on myself. It is just too big for one person. I called my friend Chuck and got his wife. I explained that I had bought this salvage plaster medallion on Craig’s List and needed Chuck’s help getting it up. He wasn’t home but called back 10 minutes later. When I answered the phone the first words out of his mouth were, “You Son of a Bitch”. It turns out Chuck saw the medallion on Craig’s List and called just after I did. He also told me another friend of ours, Phil, was the 3rd person to call.

Oops!

Despite me snagging the treasure first, Chuck was over in a matter of minutes to help put it up. It was not without a few problems, but it is up and it ain’t going no where. I need to fill in around the edges and fix a broken corner, but for the most part the deed is done. It is hard to believe I just bought this thing 4 days ago. Even with my confidence that it is securely fashioned to the ceiling I’m walking around the house very gingerly tonight.

Next I will prep the walls for skim-coating, then there is a decision to make. Do I put picture rail in the stairwell. I’m leaning towards yes, but that would mean more delay until I can take the scaffolding down.

{Siiiiigh!}

Double Boxed For Your Protection

I have green-lighted the salvaged medallion. In fact, it may even go up tomorrow. Today I got the new box mounted for it.



This is now the 3rd time I’ve done this and it works very well. The standard 4-inch square electrical boxes have a center knock-out on the base. I mount one to the framing in the ceiling and then take a piece of ½-inch steel galvanized pipe and mount it in the hole with lock nut on both sides. I then mount a round fixture box on the other end of the pipe in the same manor. The length of pipe is determined by the depth of the medallion.

Tomorrow, fingers crossed, I will remove the lower box and then fit the medallion over the pipe. Once the medallion is in place I will put the lower box back on and shim in between the base of the box and the medallion. The ceiling fixture will be mounted to the lower box and the medallion will be sandwiched between the two boxes. The medallion will be essentially mounted to the framing, meaning, it ain’t goin’ no where.



I also got both fixtures reconfigured and rewired. The one that goes in the stairwell comes in at an impressive 58-inches tall. If it were hung in a modern home it would hang more than half way to the floor. I will still need a ladder to change light bulbs in the stairwell, but at least I won’t need scaffolding or some fancy light bulb changing gizmo.



Finally, I gussied up the medallion a bit. I was going to go with the basic white like I did in the dining room, but I felt the contrast with the cherubs and foliage would be too much. I went with a creamy off-white instead. I also want to touch up the cherubs, but I will wait until after it is hung. I noticed today that it is actually a 3 piece medallion. In the picture above, if you look at about 3:15 and 9:45 you can see the seams where the 2 part outer ring is attached to the center piece.

The Flip Side

The photos of the new old plaster medallion I showed yesterday were taken with the medallion sitting just 1-foot inside the front door. After carrying it from the car that is about as far as I could get. I’m referring to the antique plaster medallion I bought on Craig’s List yesterday.



It is hard to say how much it really weighs. It is not like a 50 pound sack of potatoes that you can really get your arms around and sling it over your shoulder. It may only weigh 50 or 60 pounds, but it is very hard to hold and move. You can only grab it with your hands and you must keep it away from your body, so getting the excess plaster off was a must. Fortunately, 1-foot inside the front door is already a bit of a disaster zone, so working on it there wasn’t an issue.



This is the back side of it. You can see it is filthy and you can also see the impressions of the lath from the ceiling it once hung from. If you look closely you can also see that there are 4 white sections of plaster near the center that have the same lath impressions as the surrounding lime and sand plaster. The white plaster is Plaster of Paris. This is what the medallion itself is made out of. Seeing this was an “Ah Ha” moment for me.



The picture above is from my front parlor. Ignore the brown dots. They are from circa 1970s ceiling tile adhesive from when they stuck ugly ceiling tiles up. You will notice though, that there are 4 circles of white plaster surrounded by lime and sand plaster. This is where a now missing medallion once was. I always assumed that they put 4 dollops of plaster on the back of the medallion and then stuck it on the ceiling, sticking it to the finished plaster ceiling. I now know this is wrong.

What they did was cut out 4 holes in the finished ceiling to expose the lath. They smeared the entire back of the medallion with plaster and put 4 large dollops of plaster on the back to match up with the holes where they exposed the lath. As the medallion was pressed on to the ceiling it formed it’s own keys on the lath. Also, what you can’t see in this picture is that they scored the surrounding lime and sand plaster to give it a better surface to adhere to. Remember the term “scratch coat of plaster”. They really did scratch the surface of the plaster to give the next layer something better to grab a hold of.



The excess plaster on the back was thick. Not only did the medallion have the extra coat of Plaster of Paris with its 4 dollops, it also had 3/8ths of an inch of lime/sand plaster. This easily doubled the weight of it. It is hard to tell from this picture, but that is the exposed surface of the original medallion, then the new coat of Plaster of Paris, and finally the lime plaster.

I first tried just a hand scraper and it worked alright with the remaining ridges of the keys. It had no effect on the Plaster of Paris, and was slow going on the main body of the lime plaster. I would have been there for weeks with the scrapper, so I went back to my trusty friend the Rotozip with the ¼-inch bur bit. I furrowed grooves in the plaster about and inch apart and then chiseled off the rest.



Yes, I said chiseled! Chiseled with a hammer and with butt cheeks tightly clinched through the whole process. I had the feeling the thing was going to crack in two with every swing of the hammer. In the end it came through in one piece, but it was a nail biter. Most of the white you see is the original surface of the medallion and you’ll notice on the right you see more scratch marks where they exposed fresh surface for better adhesion.

It is still heavy, but the weight is manageable now. I’ve also decided that this will go up sooner rather than later. I think it will be better to stick it to the original plaster in the stairwell now rather than wait until after I skim coat. It will make skim coating the ceiling a little more difficult, but there is no sense in having the 1/16th of an inch skim coat sit between the medallion and the original plaster that is structurally sound. Of course, I’m going to remove some of the original plaster to expose the lath so the medallion will have its own keys. It is the right way to do it.

Craig’s List Score! I think.

Well, it was either a score or a major headache. I haven’t decided yet. What I do know is that it is pretty damn cool and I love it and maybe a little prophetic.

Sean posted a comment a few weeks back asking if I was going to put a plaster medallion up in the stairwell where I installed the new box for the light fixture. At the time I thought it was a great idea, but really I knew it would never happen. I could never bring myself to put up a foam one and the reproductions, like the ones I bought at Ohmega Salvage a few years ago can not be shipped because of weight and size. If I wanted one I would need to make a pilgrimage to Oakland, CA, and I knew I didn’t want to do that in the next month or two.

Of course, the odds of a real, period plaster medallion being available here anytime soon was out of the question, or so I thought.

Yeah, I thought wrong




This bad boy came up on Craig’s List yesterday and I snagged it for $40. It is the real thing and has an inch of plaster with lath impressions on the back to prove it. It is 3.5 feet in diameter and weighs a freakin’ ton. The people I bought it from just bought the house and found it in the attic.

Some interesting things about it: One, that is the original paint on it. It is flaking in places and it is only one layer of paint. This re-confirms my belief that these were not always painted in a multitude of colors. From pictures I’ve seen, the painting a lot times was determined by the over-all style of the room. If you had a Rococo Revival room your plaster medallion would have been dolled up to match the rest of the room. This one is basically white (albeit a very dirty white now) with gold cherubs and green foliage. The gold cherubs might even be gold leaf. They have that look.

The other interesting thing is if you look at the close up of the cherub you can see a little button with something sticking out. There is one above all of the cherubs and above all of the offsetting fan/flower designs. Most still have a little wire hoop sticking out. Perhaps there were strands of cut glass crystals that looped around the medallion.

The potential major headache comes in to play because I can not put this up in the foyer as-is. The old plaster needs to come off the back so it will sit flush on the ceiling. Flaking paint needs to come off and it needs to be repainted. Both together are no small task.



These are the 2 reproductions I bought at Ohmega salvage for the front and back parlor. These are “shovel ready”, so the initial thought, as I was driving home, was that I could use one of these for the stairwell and use the new one in one of the parlors. The problem with that plan is that I think it would be obvious that I have one old and one new in the two parlors. The parlors are basically one large room and the two ceiling fixtures are only 15-feet apart.

No, this one is either going in the stairwell or will not be hung. I should finish the wallpaper stripping tonight. Next I was going to wash the walls in preparation for plastering this weekend. I think I may start working on this, though. This will push the whole project back a week, easy.

Sliced Bread Then Scaffolding

I would say I spent 4 to 6 hours building the scaffolding in the stair well. The cost of the material was about $50. As I wrote the other day, as I was building it I couldn't help but feel that it was a bit much. It just seemed to be overkill.

Now I'm convinced that this scaffolding really is the best thing since sliced bread. The first scaffolding I built was when I did the dining room. That was a 4X8 foot sheet of plywood mounted on a rolling 3.5 foot high frame. It was much easier to put together than the stair scaffolding and proved to be indispensable. The other large room I did was the kitchen and I spent weeks on a ladder. I got it done but it was no fun.

I am firmly in the scaffolding camp now for large rooms with high ceilings that need extensive work. Last night after work I was on the scaffolding in a matter of minutes after walking in the door. After diner I spent a little more time on it stripping wallpaper. It is just too easy and too safe to work on not to do it. Over the life of this project I will save a lot more time than the 4 to 6 hours it took to build the scaffolding. The same can be said for the dining room.

All for the love of Glorificus

Remember Glory on the 5th season Buffy the Vampire Slayer? She was the god from a hell dimension who was banished to Earth and was trying to get back to her dimension. She would suck the life force out of the brains of humans, which would turn them insane. Once they were insane they became pawns for her to use as she pleased.

Most effervescent one


She used them to build a crazy tower on which she would drain the blood of Dawn, Buffy’s little sister, who was really a key, in order to open all of the portals between the dimensions so that she could return to rule over hell once again.

Ahhh, good times.

Any way, the insane people built a crazy tower at a construction site, which ended up being the death of Buffy for the 2nd time on the show. All this weekend as I was working on my stair scaffolding I couldn’t help but be reminded of that tower. I’m not sure if I was reminded of the tower because mine ended up kind of crazy looking or if it was because I felt kind of insane for building it. It really did turn out to be a much bigger production than I had planned. If I get visited by a Queller Demon tonight I'll know there is something wrong with the scaffolding.

The Under Belly


When I ran out of new, store bought 2X4s I made many trips to the wood shed to get salvaged redwood lumber to finish up. So there is this mix of modern fir 2X4s and old full dimensional redwood boards. I also became less interested in the cosmetic appeal of the construction as the project grew, so boards are cut longer than they should be. It looks haphazard in places, but it is very stable.



The deck ended up being two layers of quarter inch plywood. It is a little springy in places, but very safe. This is the last of the plywood that came off the walls in the kitchen many years ago. The hole you see to the left is where the water heater vent fed in to the chimney. I have used and reused these pieces of plywood for so many things over the years. I think this may be their last tour of duty in the house, though. I’m pretty sure they will end up in the dump after this.



Here is that same space from a few weeks ago. The stairs make a U turn and end up in the foyer.



The height worked out very well. You can see the ceiling in the picture above. When I’m standing on the scaffolding The ceiling is about 6-inches over my head.



At it’s height, the deck is about 14-feet off the floor of the foyer. As I was building it I had the feeling like I should have waited to mount the box for the ceiling fixture after I built the scaffolding. Really though, it was partly due to being on the articulated ladder last week that made me want to do more scaffolding than I originally intended. I no longer feel like I might break my neck doing the stairwell.

An incentive to work faster

After tomorrow the front stairs will be out of commission for the foreseeable future. Today I built the framing of the scaffolding and tomorrow I will finish it up. This means I will no longer be able to traverse the stars until the scaffolding comes down.

I'm standing in the upstairs hall here. The scaffolding is 28-inches high at this end and about 11-feet high to the left where the stairs turn and go down in to the foyer. The deck will be 7-feet below the ceiling


This tuned out to be a more complete covering of the space than I had originally planned. Originally I was going to have an L shaped scaffold along the right side and under the window. It was going to be narrow enough that I could still get up and down the stairs. The idea was that I would first move it up against the right wall and plaster that, then the back wall, and then left wall. I would also be able to move it away from the walls so I could plaster a wall floor to ceiling at one time. For me, keeping the “wet edge” is important for a smooth skim-coat.

As I started building though, I realized it was better to just build scaffolding for the entire space. The issue that changed my mind was the section to the left. In that area the scaffolding is nearly 11-feet off the stairs. By having only the narrow part of the L over there I would not have been able to skim-coat the entire wall from right to left or top to bottom. I would have had to do something funky with a ladder. Doing something funky with a ladder will end you up either on America's Funniest Home Videos or in the hospital.

Then there was also the issue of the ceiling. I still need to strip some wallpaper up there before I start to skim-coat, so I really need to be able to work on the entire space at one time. Of course, it is also much safer. If I trip or loose my footing there is no where to fall except on to the deck of the scaffolding.

The bad part of this arrangement is that I will need to stop skim-coating all of the walls half way down. It doesn't sound like a big deal, but it is. When skim-coating I have always done an entire wall at one time. By stopping half way down I run the risk of having a noticeable transition where I stop while on the scaffolding, remove the scaffolding and then restart plastering. It should be interesting.

So tomorrow I will add some more cross-bracing and add a deck of quarter-inch plywood and old 1X6 redwood flooring. Then I will skim-coat everything above the scaffolding, paint the ceiling, and hang the light-fixture. Then I will dismantle the scaffolding and finish skim-coating the walls in the stairwell. Then move on to the foyer.