Treasure Hunt, Part 2

Here is a quick round up of some of the more interesting finds that we have had in the house.  All of these were found in the main bathroom in various spaces.  Some were in the ceiling, some were in the wall, and others were clearly specifically placed to be found by someone like us, as they were wrapped around the back of the porcelain soap dish.

This first news paper was found in the ceiling and was from 1916.  This was the year that the addition was done with the kitchen and bedrooms.   We didn't have a large piece, but we were able to date it from the obituaries.  It is a Philadelphia newspaper, though I am not sure which one.

Young man wanted for various positions.  I love the one where the job requirement is "must be sober!"

Then there was another newspaper from February 1, 1950 that was in various spots in the bathroom.  This was the New York Herald Tribune.  This first picture is my favorite section about the making of a "Super-Bomb."  Oh, boy.

There were large pieces of the theater section.  Here are a few of the shows that were playing on Broadway.

     ADAM'S RIB (Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn)

 ON THE TOWN (Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra, Ann Miller, Betty Garrett)

YOUNG MAN WITH A HORN (Kirk Douglas, Lauren Bacall, Doris Day, Hoagy Carmichael)

Do more doctors really smoke Camels?

Prices for groceries in 1950

Electrical supply label from a local supplier

Lucky Strike label.  "It's Toasted"

A woman's plastic pin from the bathroom

The Walls are Closing In

Did you move back home after college?  Did you stay in your childhood bedroom for a few months until you locked up that dream job?  Then you probably moved out and got your first real place maybe with one roommate instead of the 4 you had in college.  Well, I have 4 roommates as if I am in college.  But mine don't throw wild parties, and the only person crawling into bed with me at 2 A.M. is my 10 month old.  My roommates are my parents, my husband, and Amelia.  And BJ, Amelia, and I are in my childhood bedroom. And those walls are most definitely closing in.

The good news is that the walls of our house are actually almost ready to be closed in with drywall.  We are going to have an inspection this week.  What this means is that we are putting humpty dumpty back together again.  After tearing apart this entire house we are getting so close to putting it back together.  Amelia's birthday is right after Christmas.  I told our contractor that if the house was not ready by the time of her party, that he was invited and he was going to watch all of the children that I invite by himself.  I think he heard me loud and clear.  Cabinets are being ordered, tile is being re-evaluated (cost seems to be driving this), electrical is almost done, insulation is going in, and BJ has been doing massive amounts of work at the house to get things de-wallpapered, sanded, and primed.  I see progress, and that is what I like.

The pantry and the powder room in the kitchen are totally framed and almost totally wired.  All plumbing is done.  They will be ready for the inspection shortly and then insulation and drywall can go up.

The plumbing for the bathrooms including the leaking sewage pipe have all been replaced.  What a relief to know that all plumbing is brand new in this house.  They said they could barely see through the drain pipes they took out because they were no clogged.  Ew.  

The floor have all been leveled and made so that no one falls through them.  I like that my family and loved ones can go to the bathroom without falling through the floor.  

Without going back to my previous posts I cannot remember if I mentioned that I modified the size of my closet.  Originally it was only supposed to go to the left of the small window on the side wall.  I said that wasn't going to work and asked that it be moved to the other side.  Now that is a closet fit for me!

Here is a view of the whole room.

And last but certainly not least...the mantle of the main fireplace.  BJ has been stripping the years of paint off of it to reveal the beautiful wood.  I cannot wait to see what this will eventually look like.  He has been very hard at work and I think that this will be a project that takes a lot longer then originally planned.

Electric Shock Therapy

A lot of the work that has been going on recently was a backlog of work that was held up by the electrician. One freaking guy with way too much power.  No pun intended.  Let's just say that our contractor had a Come to Jesus meeting with him over his attitude towards being paid in full before he was done the work. He also stated after he really looked at the house that the price would be increasing by about 20%.  Wrong.  It would not be increasing, and you will not be paid in full, especially since this is a project on a draw schedule rather then an invoice type project.  After that meeting he still decided it was okay to come and go as he pleased.  A final warning was issued and other electricians were called to be on standby.  I guess that was the final warning that he needed.  Work is progressing nicely now.

Here is a look at what our electrical panel looked like before.  You are looking as fuses on a 40 amp service (I am pretty sure it was only 40 amps, which is so not sufficient for a house of this size!) for a 3 story house and 2 car garage.  The white box on the right are the original breakers from when the addition was built in 1916.  We are keeping this disconnected panel because it is such a cool feature.  I will try to get a picture of the inside soon.  I think the funniest part of this is the meter location.  Notice it was located above the left most fuse panel inside the house.  It was a new smart meter hung right over top of an antiquated fuse box.  All this junk is being moved in the great electrical upgrade of 2012.

The meter box is being relocated to the exterior corner of the kitchen out of the way from anything.  We also converted our aerial electrical service to underground.  That is that big black cable coming up from the meter pan.  It wasn't hooked up in the first picture.  When the power company came out to disconnect the service they said it is an absolute miracle that our house had not burned to the ground.  Where the service entered the house, the wires were totally stripped bare.  If it had touched the inside of the metal conduit that ran down the side of the house...poof.  No more house for us.  But that is all disconnected now, so we have removed that one risk.   We also converted everything to gas so that we are not burning through 1000 gallons of heating oil each winter.  That meter will be below the electric meter pan.

Once everything gets run into the house from the meter pan, it goes under the kitchen floor, through the crawl space and into the basement to the new circuit breaker box.  Look at the timber beams in the basement.  Those are actual trees with bark from the 1600's.  How cool is that!

The panel that they put in is large enough to accommodate additional circuits in the house.  We went for a 40 circuit panel.  Oh yeah!

So now, everything that has been run out of that panel above has to weave it way through walls, floors, closets, plaster and lathe.  Right now there are spaghetti strings of wires hanging all over the place while we wait for the work to be completed.  

Notice the nonexistent floor in the kitchen.  Still no floor!  I am pretty sure we will not be in the house for Amelia's first Christmas and birthday :(

Hot and Cold

One of the must haves for the house for me was air conditioning.  I know that BJ really didn't think it was a must, but let's get real.  This summer had more 90 degree days then not.  The humidity in this part of the country is out of control.  We have a baby who sweats like her daddy, which means that I know she would have a lot of trouble sleeping because her natural core body temperature seems to hover around 200 degrees.

The other issue that we did not realize until it was pointed out by my father was that this house was heated by oil.  Now, most homes with oil heat have a 500 gallon tank out back or in the basement.  We had two.  That means that is takes 1,000 gallons of heating oil to heat this house at some point throughout the fall and winter.      Multiply that by the going rate for gas and we were in the $3,000-$5,000 range for heating our home.  We decided we also needed to go with a more affordable option.  While solar panels don't really do with the look of a traditional colonial built in the 1600's, a nice underground gas line would suit us just fine.

The logistics of these upgrades in a house made of plaster is easier said than done.  How do you run duct lines throughout an all plaster home?  Well, you don't.  The proposed system for the air conditioning would have to be able to go through these walls while still maintaining the integrity of the house.  We could go with what was called a high velocity system which is extremely costly.  It requires small tubing to be run in the walls and often a condenser is mounted somewhere in the house.  We did not have a space to really put the condenser.  As an alternative, our HVAC guy recommended a split hybrid system which would allow traditional ducting on the first floor and wall mounted units on the second and third floors.  I was not a fan of the idea of wall mounted units, but it seems that they are highly efficient due to the fact you can shut off the units when the rooms are not in use. The units also serve as the heating units for the rooms.

We settled on the Mitsubishi system that allows multiple wall units to be hooked to one outdoor unit.  I have to say that the pieces that have been put into my house scare me so far.  There are tubes running all over the place and lots of things sticking out of my walls.  There is also this crazy box of tubes in what is supposed to be my laundry closet.  Here is what I saw when I went to the house recently.


This is a revision to the original plan.  They were able to run duct work down from the third floor and into the ceiling of one part of the second floor.  This is the big silver worm growing in my eaves.

This is actually the location of a wall in the 3rd floor family room.  The wiring sticking out of the imaginary wall is where the heating/cooling unit will go.  Look at all that old knob and tube wiring that is going to be ripped out!

Another example of where a unit will be mounted in one of the bedrooms.

The ceiling in the 2nd floor hallway now has all kinds of tubing running through it.  

This pretty feature now resides where I hope my washer and dryer will also fit tucker away in a closet.

The piping as it was run outside.  Eventually this will be hooked to the outdoor portion of the system.

As for the heating portion, we got Delmarva Power to run our new gas line so that we can heat with natural gas now and avoid the gigantic oil bill this year.  At the same time then took our electric service underground and ran other conduit for phone and cable so no one else needs to tear up our yard again.  I have a whole different post for the electrical portion of this project.

Treasure Hunt, Part 1

I have not posted in a while because there is just a flurry of work going on.  For a while things were quite slow.  Then all of a sudden thing took off.  They finished up the structural work, they started the HVAC, and they finally got the electrical started.  There are lots of surprises and changes going on. But before we dive into those pieces, I thought that I would share some of the cool finds so far from the house.

First thing that we discovered was a well.  This isn't just some little wishing well where you drop and penny in and see the bottom.  This is a 30ft + deep well with water still in it.  The walls of the well are fully lined with brick.  It is quite the structural feat.  But is is really really scary for a mother of a curious nine month old.  I know that she is not strong enough to lift the steel plate that covers it over, but as a child of the 80's, visions of Baby Jessica flashed through my head when this well was discovered.  Then to make matters worse my husband brings up a reference to the movie, The Ring.  Great.

The well itself was on the architectural drawings that we got from the previous owner.  But since the above ground piece is really not there anymore we did not pay attention.  Our HVAC guy, who also digs for glass bottles as a hobby pointed it out to us.  Today the guys on site lifted the heavy metal plate so I could see inside.  Whoa momma!  Can you see the bottom?  Because I sure can't!  I am not sure what we will be doing with this find yet.

The next find wasn't so scary at all.  As I mentioned, our HVAC guy digs for bottles as a hobby.  He asked to dig on our property and look for a privy, which usually turns up the best finds.  He never found the privy, since more than likely our garage was built on top of it,  but he did find a Coca Cola bottle from the 50's or 60's in our crawl space.  The thing that makes this find cool is that it was made in the Wilmington, DE where our home is.  It is in great condition.  

I have a few more treasures that were recently discovered that I will share shortly.  

An Apple a Day

This post isn't really about the renovations so much as the yard that we are going to have to get in order and then eventually maintain ourselves.  Our yard is huge.  Well, huge to us former city dwellers.  Neither BJ nor I have ever been super excited to do yard work.  In fact, when we figured out how much 1.1 acres really is, we called the guy who used to mow the lawn for the previous owners and told him to keep it coming.  During settlement we had negotiated to keep the contents of the garage thinking that the lawn and garden items would be sufficient for lawn maintenance.  HA!  There are two push mowers, status unknown on both, and one decrepit Gravely walk behind mower that had gas left in the tank for the past 30 years.  We negotiated for duds. 

When we figured it out, BJ was so excited to buy his own lawn equipment that we went right out to Home Depot and I let him go wild.  I did not interject.  I did not protest.  I let him tell me what he thought we would need to maintain the lawn.  We came home with a pick ax and a machete.  Nice. 

BJ has spent many weekends knocking down vines, trees, weeds.  When you go into the yard it looks no different then when he started.  Not because he didn't do anything, but because there is just so much dense brush bordering the yard.  But there is one thing that I love about our yard.  We have apple trees.  3 really really old apple trees.  Not crab apples, but real, majorly large apple producing trees.  Lets just say the Amelia has a freezer full of organic homemade applesauce to last her until she turns 5. 

The discovery of the apple trees has me so excited to see what else this mysterious yard can produce.  We know there used to me a kitchen garden on one side, a herb garden out front, and a huge vegetable garden about half way down the hill.  Hopefully we can bring the yard back to its glory days.  We just need to move into this house first. 

Thank You for Your Support

When we started scoping out the work on the kitchen, we knew there was a little bit of degradation of the support structure in the crawl space.  We did not realize that since 1916, when that section was built, much of the support under the kitchen was gettin' low down and dirty.  There was no foundation even built under that section of the house so over time the kitchen sank further and further down into the ground.  So far that you could see a really deep slope towards the front corner of the house.  In other words, the kitchen and everything above it were leaning forward, threatening to detach from the house.  The upstairs showed signs of support issues where the floors slanted and the windows are no longer square.  The issues goes as high as the third floor.  The dormer on the third floor was even angled. 

Notice the dormer on the third floor behind the chimney. Instead of going straight across it angles down to the left.

In the picture above, the area of the house with the three windows on the second floor and the two windows on the first floor that face out is the area where the structural updates were being made. 

THE PLAN:  Tear out all rotted floor joists, sloped flooring on the first floor, plaster, and exterior wall on the first floor below the kitchen windows so that the house could be raised about 6 inches or so that it has sunken, level the kitchen, poor a concrete foundation wall under the exterior wall, replace the wall, replace the joists, lay new sub floor, and build a new kitchen. 

  

They started by gutting the kitchen.  Out came the plaster and the floor joists.  These were original and we noticed that some of these were cut by hand and had hand forged nails in them.  They were beautiful.  But they were causing my house to sink under their weight so they had to go.

The original floor joists from the kitchen

When all was finally demolished, we  left with nothing except the walls and a big ol' pit of dirt.  I like this idea.  Start from scratch.  Literally from the ground up.



Who tracked mud into our kitchen?

  

Next came the prep for the lifting of the house.  They weren't exactly sure how many inches it was going to be lifted until they leveled it all off of a point in the house.  In order to do the lift they needed to cut open the walls and cut down the studs so that they could actually lift the exterior.  So there was lots more cutting and lots more wood piles.

These dudes actually dumped the heap of wood on my peony bush!  We are not off to a good start.  I had just driven past our old house that we are renting out and saw that the tenants took my liberal policy of "feel free to do what you want with the landscaping" a little too seriously by letting all vegetation, including my peony bush, die.  After I get over the shock I see that the wood heap is impressive.  There are large clumps of horse hair insulation.  Now that is old school.  Nonetheless, it wasn't impressive enough for me to forget the peony bush that they crushed.  I used one of the pieces of wire in the heap to prop up the peony.  Wishful thinking that it will come back to life.

My peony is under there somewhere. RIP peony bush.

But I quickly refocused my attention to the area of my house that was missing.  Like totally missing.  A huge wall of my house was literally cut in half and peeled away.  By the time I got to the house to take pictures this week they had already lifted the house so I don't have "before" pictures.  I only have the "in the process" pictures after the foundation was poured.  How cool is this?!

The poured foundation footer and temporary support wall.



The exterior wall cut in half.

The supports on the exterior of the wall while the foundation is curing.



Close up of the new support structure.



And now we have support.  Under this side of the house, that is.  So next up is setting the new electric meter, running the aerial electric service underground, installing gas line, and then running all new electrical. Oh boy! We are rolling now!





Let the Demolition Begin!

We have lift off!  After a few week delay getting work started work has begun.  They started demolition on the 3rd floor and the roofers came in to fix the may-jah roof leak that had been active for over 2 years. 

Standing on the stairs looking up at the 3rd floor ceiling.

Our HVAC guy, who happens to be a family friend, called me and said, "Breezy, have you seen your house lately?"  I said that I hadn't.  He then said, "Don't go there.  Don't go in the house.  It looks like it was bombed."  He wasn't kidding.  As I went further up the stairs I was amazed.  The walls were all gone on the 3rd floor.  There was no more stained, cracked, or wall papered plaster.  We had just bare studs and knob and tube wiring left.  And soon there would not even be that.  Here are the pictures that I took before and after the demo in the rooms on the 3rd floor.

Family Room Before and After

 

Family Room window facing the front of the house.  Before & After

 

Family Room window facing back of the house.  Before & After

 

Attic space in BJ's office.  Before & After

 

 Window in BJ's office looking towards the back of the house.  Before & After

 Corner area with windows looking towards the front of the house in BJ's office.  Before & After.

Next post will be all about the whole in the earth that used to be our kitchen.  I promise to include more about the rebuilding process of the kitchen.