Repairing and refinishing the floors

While I was in Maine for a week visiting my family, my beloved was sanding the hardwood floors. It is amazing how fresh and new the wood looks right now--and imagine--it survived 90 years of being walked on, moving furniture around, pets pawing and skidding, carpet installation, termites, and a fire. In the second and third
photos, we have close-ups
of the termite damage. The
sub floor will have to be fixed,
which means we go under the
house once again (grab
the kleenex)! We spoke to the
local hardwood guru and he
is in such high demand that
he cannot fix the floor in time
for our deadline, so we are
bracing ourselves for the
intimidating task of patching
the hardwood ourselves.
However, he did identify the
kind of wood we are dealing
with (white oak with a few
random strips of red oak)
and was so kind to bring us
enough of it to patch it (I
can't begin to think of where
we could have found it--it is
the most narrow hardwood
I have ever seen--I think
just 1.5" wide). Also, look at
the darker spots around
the nails in the hardwood
(third and fifth photos).
Anywhere there were staples
or nails in the wood there
is a black stain. We think
the fire heated the nails so
much that the wood burned
around it--it goes straight
down into the wood and
cannot be sanded out. Or
in the heat the nail released
something that stained the
wood. In the fourth photo
you can see the deeper
burned areas in dining room
floor. This was sanded
extensively, but it is charred pretty deep, so we stopped there and are going to go with a dark stain to help camouflage it. However, the fire is a part of the story of the house, and being kind-of a purist, I am not inclined to go to great lengths to hide that. I believe this is what people who live in old houses refer to as "character." The last photo is an area of the floor where we made a doorway wider to accommodate slightly larger French doors, so we will add some plywood, and patch the hardwood over it. So, in the coming weeks we will buff the twice sanded wood, wipe it down with mineral spirits, stain it, and top coat it with Polyurethane. Other things on the to-do list include stripping paint from all the door casing, continuing to strip the piles of trim in the garage, and painting and hanging two more exterior doors. I'm making this sound too easy. Rest assured, there will be cursing.

There's a Possom in the Attic

Yes, there is a possum in the attic. I had been hearing pretty loud noises and assumed it was just the squirrels lobbing acorns onto the roof. However, our unfortunate framer came in to do some work on the hallway and pulled the staircase down only to be greeted by two beady eyes and some enthusiastic hissing--he said it scared the crap out of him. Sorry Miguel! I didn't know we had a squatter. This is what I imagine he looked like. So we have set a friendly trap with a drumstick in it and are hoping to catch and release as soon as possible. We can't finish the insulating in the attic until our little friend is gone.

In other news, we have Sheetrock up and the guys are in the process of applying the mud. Stay tuned!

Blood, Sweat, Tears and Insulation

The first phase of insulation has been completed with the recycled newspaper having been blown into the exterior walls. Once Sheetrock is hung on the ceilings the last phase of insulation will happen with the cellulose being blown in between the rafters. In preparation for the Sheetrock we have covered the hardwood floors with plastic--our house is starting to look like one of the kill rooms from Dexter.

Because the insulation feels like a turning point (it helps so much to define the space) I have been reflecting on the work of the past five months,
and most of all I feel really lucky. There have been many low points, like the day the inspector uttered the phrase "widespread termite damage" right after we purchased the house--I remember feeling nauseous. Or the weeks Joe and I spent crawling around under the house cutting out old cast iron pipes wrapped in questionable material. It was 100 degrees and we were wearing hazmat suits and respirators, my knee caps looked like badly bruised apple skins from the rocks and pieces of brick in the dirt. There was more than one occasion when I sobbed under the house. I timed my breakdowns to coincide with the sound of the Sawzall Joe was using. There was plenty of cursing, there were urgent care visits and Tetanus shots, and in customary fashion my dear father-in-law shed some blood along with us for the cause. Before we bought the house we optimistically thought that the demo could be done in a weekend with a bunch of help from family and friends--we couldn't have been more wrong--it took FOUR MONTHS of heavy lifting and three 30-foot dumpsters. There were many days of the incredibly hot summer when we were alone and armed with the wrong tools. Those were the overwhelming moments when I thought we had made a bad decision, or wished I hadn't been an art major because I surely wouldn't be doing something like this had I any money at all. Surprisingly, those feelings have always passed. We might work like dogs, but we are so lucky. After our first house sold we were able to pay cash for this diamond in the rough, and all those years of art school spent learning how to make things have made us very capable people. Where we have the money we use sub-contractors for some of the specialty work like plumbing, electric and Sheetrock, and where we don't have the money, we fortify ourselves and move forward into the unknown. That is in part what is going to enable us to have a very small mortgage payment after this project. Living responsibly is important to us, and bringing a nice old house back from the brink to offer the historic downtown neighborhood one more finished project feels good. My mom has a great ability to see a house for what it can be, rather than what it is at the moment, and my dad at a much younger age (24 yrs old I think) moved his family to the Maine woods to a house built in 1820 with no electric and no plumbing and no elder family members close by to help like we have. He wired and plumbed it himself. That seems incredibly brave to me. At 24 I was not that mature and certainly not that brave. My father-in-law has been building houses for years and is able to fill in the large gaps in our knowledge. Joe's parents are incredibly supportive and have good ideas. It seems an appropriate time to reflect on our trials and tribulations and to give thanks for this incredible opportunity.

Refinishing doors and trim

Get a look at that pile of trim! It is between 1/3 and 1/2 of the trim I have to strip--I am trying not to get overwhelmed. I also have seven more doors to strip and prime. The Silent Paint Remover has been a life saver. In the second photo the door on the right has just been stripped and sanded and the door on the left has been freshly primed.
We are thinking black semi-gloss for the finish coat. Another simultaneous project is to refinish two stained glass windows we bought from Antique Warehouse of Arkansas. They have twelve warehouses, and if I remember correctly, 6 of them are loaded with old windows from Europe. The ones we picked were from England and are dated 1901, which only predates our house by 19 years. They are going to be installed in the Master Bathroom high up on the wall so we can get some extra light in there while maintaining privacy. I carefully removed the glass from the frames and sanded, cleaned and primed them. Today's projects are to glaze the windows, bring a sample of our clapboard to a mill to see if they can replicate it for us, and to pull the rest of the old nails out of the studs at the house in preparation for the insulator to come tomorrow. Oh, and to call the roofer--we have a leak.

Plumbing, Electric, and Heat & Air have passed Inspection

The rough-in work has been completed, so we are starting to see the systems of the house come together. Here is a look at the guest bathroom, now with a drop-in tub and Thinset to level out the floor. Hot and cold water pipes for the tub and sink are visible. The second photo shows the wires running here and there, and blue boxes for outlets and light switches. The third photo shows the foil covered
heat and air ducts running through the attic. We're really happy to see this progress. We have met with the framing inspector and she pointed out a couple of areas where the ceiling joists need straps. We are going to take care of that this weekend so we can insulate the house and get ready for Sheetrock in the coming week!

Third Gable

We now have the third gable over the front step. We will place large cedar posts under it and frame out a base at the bottom of each. Thanks to our framers Miguel, Enrique, Danny and Eddie for their work over the weekend. I have also included a photo of the house that Enrique's little boy Manuel built while all this was going on. And of course, a photo of Max, Enrique's puppy, who is a great retriever of the remnants of Wendy's meals left in the trash--I think that is why he's so thirsty here!

RCA Victor, 1963

The most difficult and uncomfortable tasks of this renovation have occurred in the crawl space. Cara and I have spent a good amount of time on our bellies and backs, crawling the length and breadth of our house in Tyvec suits and breathing through respirators. We have become intimately acquainted with the dirt and cobwebs (and skeletons of large mammals) that have been collecting for the past 90 or so years.

We have also found some fascinating objects that have been remarkably preserved by the dry and dusty climate under there. One of the most amazing is this flier for RCA Victor. It is dated September 29, 1963; just over 44 years from today. The colors are amazing despite the fact that it was used as a shim between the floor joists and a jack for decades.


The most amazing thing about this flier is the date. It represents an America in the midst of a defining moment. The Vietnam war was on the cusp of escalation and, in six weeks, the President would be assassinated. But the person who folded this thing up and stuck it under the house had no idea what was coming...and the flier itself is all optimism.



Especially awesome is this graphic on page 3. "Space age Sealed Circuitry" I'm not clear on the timeline, but this was shortly after Kennedy's speech launching the space program. That illustration of the pretty girl in B&W, nestled in the oak tv console, floating in space kind of blew my mind.


Scrooge McDuck as a "Built in Baby Sitter"? I can't wait for this to show up on Mad Men.

Progress on the gables

These photos show today's progress on the gables and the third photo shows the roofing material as it was being laid. The drawing was created after hours by a friend who is an architect (thank you!). We knew we wanted to replace the "eyebrow" at the peak with a gable, but he came up with the tiered concept to give the exterior
some depth and interest.
We love it. The area where the second gable meets the flat roof over the porch was a little tricky so we needed a well-thought-out drawing that the framers could go by. The third little gable that will be over the front door will be completed when the cedar for the brackets arrives at the lumber company on Friday.

There will be three gables . . .

I meant to post something earlier, but we were scraping paint all day. The framers came by and started demo and got the first two (of three) gables framed up. We wanted to give the house a bit of a face-lift--it was looking kind of lobbed off on the top. The third gable will be a small one over the front steps. I think it will maintain it's mission bungalow flare and be a bit more inviting. More images to come!

Butler's pantry

When we first walked through the charred insides of this house it was a pretty intimidating sight. The fire started in the dining room, and so that is the room with most of the damage--the door molding was for the most part not salvageable, and the three windows were completely burnt out. Almost every pane of glass in the house was broken due to the intense heat of the fire, but much of the trim work was only superficially affected. In one way the fire had actually been helpful in that it stripped layers of paint from most of the trim and solid wood interior doors without burning them. This is not to say we don't have A LOT of scraping to do to refinish the doors and trim. That arduous work is underway. More about that later. However, there has to be a moment when walking through a house that is in this condition that something clicks, and you are irreversibly charmed by it--or you run screaming. One of the things that charmed both Joe and I was the passageway between the dining room and the kitchen. A small butler's pantry: built-in upper and lower cabinets that we both envisioned as a bar almost immediately. A gem from a bygone era. Maybe you are not convinced or charmed by the photo of this burnt pantry, and okay, I had fantasized briefly that a real butler would come with it, but it is ours now for better or worse, so we have carefully extracted the cabinets and will be refinishing them very soon.

We might be crazy . . .

This blog is a diary of the renovation we are doing on a house built in 1920 that had a fire in it about 1 year ago. My husband and I are both artists. This project is a way for us to lower our expenses so we can continue our creative pursuits and have more money to travel. Friends of ours spotted this diamond in the rough on Oak Avenue and it was exactly the kind of fixer-upper we were looking for. After the sale of our house we were able to pay cash for this property and begin the monumental task of a complete renovation. We have a small construction loan and must stay within this budget to ensure a small mortgage payment when all is said and done. We are doing most of the work ourselves and are hiring sub contractors for plumbing, electric and Sheetrock. The people who owned the house were not occupying it at the time of the fire, but still had belongings to be moved out when the fire occurred. The photos on this post are images of the house as it looked when we first went inside and some are just after we removed the burnt belongings. I hope you will follow our progress!