After a long interruption we are finally getting some things done. The sump pump we hooked up to temporary wiring has kept the basement dry, at least. Now I am getting the metal junk ready to haul to a scrap yard. The last occupants left a lot of stuff down there, and some of it is heavy. From what I've been told, the scrap dealers will pay more if the heavy metal (cast iron, pipe) is separated from the lightweight stuff like sheet metal. So I took the boiler apart the other day. It looked like a good-sized metal box before. Now the "box" is on the sheet metal pile; the castings of the gas burner are on the "heavy" pile; and there is still the heat exchanger, a set of cast iron tubes that feels like it still weighs two hundred pounds or more. I may have to use a sledge hammer on it to break it into pieces that I can get up the stairs..
Another thing we've learned about the house: it does have some insulation. I had looked around at first, trying to find out if the walls were insulated; I found some holes from toggle bolts that must have held some kind of drapery rods above two windows that looked like there was no insulation in the side walls. Not much in the attic either; inspection in some of the storage spaces behind the knee walls showed there was about 2" of fiberglass between the rafters. (In the days of cheap energy before 1973, insulation was not used much. I once worked on a house built in 1968 that only had 2" of insulation in the walls.) But in repairing an outside trim board that had fallen off the eave, I got high enough up the extension ladder to see the plugs in the siding on the shed dormer, and figured out it had been insulated from the outside with blown in cellulose.
After finding that, I put a 1/2" carbide bit in my cordless drill and started checking the walls (by the way, the first floor walls are plaster on gypsum lath, the second floor drywall). It turns out someone did try to do a partial insulation job with cellulose. There were areas they skipped (above and below windows); there are some spots where the loose cellulose has settled, leaving a gap at the top of the stud bay; and there are some areas that look like the person doing it did not know how the older framing was done--at the time the house was built, use of "fire blocking" was a lot more common. The theory was that an empty space between studs could act like a chimney in a fire, so the framers would put blocking in between the studs, usually about halfway up, sometimes dividing a space into thirds. So there were places where the upper half of a stud space had insulation, and the lower half did not. There are a few places upstairs where the top and bottom of the wall have insulation, with a gap in the middle. These can be corrected, but it will be tedious. I think I have most of the problem areas marked.
Another issue has been windows. This house has a lot of them, six upstairs and eleven downstairs. These are wood double-hung (with the old-fashioned ropes and sash weights), single-glazed original units with wood storm windows. It is possible to recondition these and put in good weatherstripping to make them tighter; there are even spring balances to raise and lower them without having to keep a 2" section of wall beside each window with no insulation for the sash weights. But on the other hand...these windows are not in very good shape. The paint has not been maintained, even going back before it was abandoned in 2008. Some of the storms sashes are missing the glass, and even some of the wood. The glazing compound is mostly lying between the main sashes and the storm windows.
The tradeoff here is between time and money. It will cost a lot to buy that many new windows; it will take a lot of time to recondition that many old wood windows. It might be worth it in a "historic" house, although I don't know how the energy use works out. The best article I have seen on saving old wood windows was written by a contractor in New Orleans, who was dealing with a different climate than we have here in central Indiana.
Anyway, the choice ends up for new windows. Recently the local Lowe's stores have started marking down their stock of vinyl replacement windows. The company is changing window suppliers, and wants to get the old stock gone. And one store had a few windows that were an exact match for most of the upstairs windows in our house. The rest are wider than anything in stock these days, and will have to be ordered. But we have five of the windows we need, and I'll be getting them in soon.
For those who are interested, I will try to make up a post detailing how to replace these old wood windows. And I have another bit of news that will have to wait for another post.
Wednesday, May 23, 2012
Sunday, November 6, 2011
Opening some doors
I've been busy with paying work for the last couple of months. We have been plugging away at cleaning out the debris left by the previous owners. At times it felt like an archeological investigation. We found some Cadillac hubcaps in the garage, some motorcycle parts (and a set of new spark plugs that will fit my truck).
But this weekend we took on a needed project: the doors for the house. They were left unlocked when the house was abandoned, and had not been maintained well over the years. The front entry door was a wood 6-panel, painted white, with veneer coming off at the bottom and the substrate under the veneer disintegrating. The back door was wood with fifteen glass panes. It had swelled from the moisture coming up the basement steps and could not be closed; I had put a hasp and padlock on it to keep it almost closed. In addition, since this back door faces west (the direction our weather comes from) the wood sill at the bottom was rotting away, and the lower door trim with it.
For reasons of energy efficiency and security, this is one area where we did buy new stuff. I bought insulated steel pre-hung doors from Lowe's. They are bored for both doorknob and deadbolt, and have a steel plate on the wall side of the door frame to reinforce that area; the deadbolt goes through a hole in the steel plate, besides the strike plate supplied with the lock on the door side of the frame. If someone tries to kick in the door, the plate is the full width of the frame, and can hold the door even if the wood of the frame splits.
On a house this age, I was not sure how much I would have to do to replace the doors. On some older houses, I have seen rough openings that were made tight to the door frame, rather than oversized and shimmed to fit. I have seen some where the opening was half an inch or so too short for a modern door unit, and had to cut the space I needed out of the header (the crosspiece at the top of the opening, usually a pair of two-by-fours set in upright between the studs). I've even had one where I had to take the pre-hung door apart, cut a few inches off the bottom, then take the threshhold off the frame, cut the frame down and put it back together.
This time was not as bad as it could have been. These door openings had been framed both wide and high. I ended up adding some wood on each side to fill in the space so that I could shim the doors plumb, then used 3-1/2" screws, countersunk, to hold the door to the framing; a pair of screws at each hinge, then pairs on the opposite side to match. Once the doors were in, I installed new doorknobs and deadbolts, then re-worked the outside trim between the door frame and the brick exterior. Inside trim will wait until we are done with the interior wall finish.
Copperhead's turn...
It is really heart breaking to have to replace beautiful old doors with cold, hard, ugly, white steel doors. Redneck worries about someone breaking in, bad weather causing even more damage to the floors and one day the door just falling off it's hinges - rightly so. Someone stole the storm door off the front - probably got a little from the salvage yard to keep up his habits, so the door was unprotected for a long time. I had visions of making something out of it. Maybe cut the top off and do something one day but it fell apart and Redneck had to pick up little pieces from the yard once he took it out. The back door is in a little better shape - kind of cool with 15 glass panes. I bet it would be fun to put pictures behind the glass. Redneck, it is nice to actually have a key to open those doors - beats having to unscrew them every time.
We've been sorting out trash, electronics, house hold chemicals, stuff Goodwill might like and stuff to re-purpose or reuse later on. I have no idea what to make out of a set of old Caddy hub caps... Maybe CL? There were brake shoes and spark plugs and all sorts of automotive chemicals all mixed together in piles in the garage. We've hauled some stuff to the recycle place and other stuff has gone in the homeless shelter (aka: a big garbage rationing can supplied by the city) We are so privileged - we get to put out one full garbage can of stuff every week. Supposedly tomorrow we can put out extra stuff - we'll see if they actually take it or leave it to be picked up and put in the can next week - I really don't get it - all of it goes to the same place sooner or later.
But this weekend we took on a needed project: the doors for the house. They were left unlocked when the house was abandoned, and had not been maintained well over the years. The front entry door was a wood 6-panel, painted white, with veneer coming off at the bottom and the substrate under the veneer disintegrating. The back door was wood with fifteen glass panes. It had swelled from the moisture coming up the basement steps and could not be closed; I had put a hasp and padlock on it to keep it almost closed. In addition, since this back door faces west (the direction our weather comes from) the wood sill at the bottom was rotting away, and the lower door trim with it.
For reasons of energy efficiency and security, this is one area where we did buy new stuff. I bought insulated steel pre-hung doors from Lowe's. They are bored for both doorknob and deadbolt, and have a steel plate on the wall side of the door frame to reinforce that area; the deadbolt goes through a hole in the steel plate, besides the strike plate supplied with the lock on the door side of the frame. If someone tries to kick in the door, the plate is the full width of the frame, and can hold the door even if the wood of the frame splits.
On a house this age, I was not sure how much I would have to do to replace the doors. On some older houses, I have seen rough openings that were made tight to the door frame, rather than oversized and shimmed to fit. I have seen some where the opening was half an inch or so too short for a modern door unit, and had to cut the space I needed out of the header (the crosspiece at the top of the opening, usually a pair of two-by-fours set in upright between the studs). I've even had one where I had to take the pre-hung door apart, cut a few inches off the bottom, then take the threshhold off the frame, cut the frame down and put it back together.
This time was not as bad as it could have been. These door openings had been framed both wide and high. I ended up adding some wood on each side to fill in the space so that I could shim the doors plumb, then used 3-1/2" screws, countersunk, to hold the door to the framing; a pair of screws at each hinge, then pairs on the opposite side to match. Once the doors were in, I installed new doorknobs and deadbolts, then re-worked the outside trim between the door frame and the brick exterior. Inside trim will wait until we are done with the interior wall finish.
Copperhead's turn...
It is really heart breaking to have to replace beautiful old doors with cold, hard, ugly, white steel doors. Redneck worries about someone breaking in, bad weather causing even more damage to the floors and one day the door just falling off it's hinges - rightly so. Someone stole the storm door off the front - probably got a little from the salvage yard to keep up his habits, so the door was unprotected for a long time. I had visions of making something out of it. Maybe cut the top off and do something one day but it fell apart and Redneck had to pick up little pieces from the yard once he took it out. The back door is in a little better shape - kind of cool with 15 glass panes. I bet it would be fun to put pictures behind the glass. Redneck, it is nice to actually have a key to open those doors - beats having to unscrew them every time.
We've been sorting out trash, electronics, house hold chemicals, stuff Goodwill might like and stuff to re-purpose or reuse later on. I have no idea what to make out of a set of old Caddy hub caps... Maybe CL? There were brake shoes and spark plugs and all sorts of automotive chemicals all mixed together in piles in the garage. We've hauled some stuff to the recycle place and other stuff has gone in the homeless shelter (aka: a big garbage rationing can supplied by the city) We are so privileged - we get to put out one full garbage can of stuff every week. Supposedly tomorrow we can put out extra stuff - we'll see if they actually take it or leave it to be picked up and put in the can next week - I really don't get it - all of it goes to the same place sooner or later.
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
THE Bucket List?
This house has been on hold for a while and the hold will continue awhile. The Redneck has been doing some paying work. The guys both got jobs. I had poison ivy or maybe Virginia Creeper rash all summer. Lately we have been clearing out some more trash. We took several loads to the dump. We put out trash every week in our Indianapolis trash ration can (We get one can a week) We have taken water logged electronics to a recycle place. Saturday we took a big load of house and garage chemicals and dead florescent tubes to the recycle place & put out more trash. I think we have spent about 4 days burning trash from the basement. There is STILL trash. The attic rooms have been pretty much cleared out. There are 2 boxes of coat hangers still there. I haven't cleaned up there yet. The shoes and clothes went to Goodwill. The local junk man came and got the refrigerators - he even hauled off the one that had been in the flooded basement. We still have a huge over growth of weeds. We cut them all down in July - got PI rash (or what ever) and the weeds grew back before we got the rashes gone. There are trees growing in the basement window wells. We cut them down to 1 ft in July - they are over 6 ft tall again. Mulberry. Someone was a gardener. There are lots of peony plants, other bulbs, azalea, butter fly weeds, day lilies, and naked ladies among others. I am wanting to post pictures when we get the place cleaned out more. We have also been making a bucket list. So far the short list is clean out junk... get rid of weeds... anything beyond that is dreams at this point. When we get some more clean up done I'll make some more pictures.
Friday, August 5, 2011
Things We Learned About the House
We are beginning to find out some things about the history of the house. We could not spend time looking around the place--legally we could not even enter it until our deed came through--this is definitely not like buying a house through a Realtor.
One thing we already knew was that the neighborhood was originally built somewhere around the late 1940s to early 1950s, and was unincorporated area at the time. These houses were built with septic systems and cisterns at the start; sometime in the 1960s the city annexed the area and extended water and sewer lines. So this house has a spot in the back of the basement where the old drain and water pipes came through the wall and are now cut off, and later drain and water lines going out to the front.
After the water and sewer lines the house got some more remodeling. The half bath on the first floor is unusual in a house of this age; it was likely added when the drains were reworked to tie into the sewer. And it seems likely that the garage was built after the sewer came in. There is a small room, at one time used for laundry, between the house and the garage, with a door to the front yard and a concrete area between the front of the house and the front of the garage. That concrete is over the place where house drain goes into the wall on its way to the sewer, so it was likely made later. Two-car garages were not common in 1950, either; a 1960s date fits that better as well.
The house has had at least three heating systems in its past, as well. One corner of the basement, in the front at the garage end, was walled off with concrete block to make a coal cellar. There is an opening high on the wall where the coal chute was, now bricked over. This area was later outfitted with shelves for storage, but when we tore out the door and its 2x8 framing, we found bits of coal (2 to 3 cups worth) between the frame and the blocks. Now that the floor is cleaned up, the spot where the old coal furnace sat is visible; the concrete is rougher at that place. There are also places where the sheet metal is still in place from old air-return ductwork, and some of the grilles in the floor are still there under the carpets. This was most likely a gravity-type furnace without any blower.
The second heating system was hot water. The old gas boiler is still there, and the rooms upstairs have the baseboard radiators that came into use around the '60s, not the cast-iron radiators of older houses. These baseboard radiators were connected with copper pipe. (The original house plumbing is galvanized pipe, the earlier system--copper pipe began displacing galvanized around the late '50s and early '60s, from what I have learned.) My guess is that the gas pipes came into the neighborhood with the water and sewer lines.
The last heating system, sitting next to the old boiler, is a gas furnace/air conditioning unit. It is not a high-efficiency model because it vents into the old chimney, not through plastic pipe out the wall. The outdoor AC coils and even the indoor coil were stolen while the house sat empty over the last few years. The ductwork for this furnace was the newer insulated fiberglass and plastic that has been around since the late 1980s. (This did not look that old, however). I did pull all of that ducting out, because some of it picked up moisture from the flooding, and it was in the way for cleaning out the mold.
This is some of what we have learned so far. We may find other things out as the work progresses.
One thing we already knew was that the neighborhood was originally built somewhere around the late 1940s to early 1950s, and was unincorporated area at the time. These houses were built with septic systems and cisterns at the start; sometime in the 1960s the city annexed the area and extended water and sewer lines. So this house has a spot in the back of the basement where the old drain and water pipes came through the wall and are now cut off, and later drain and water lines going out to the front.
After the water and sewer lines the house got some more remodeling. The half bath on the first floor is unusual in a house of this age; it was likely added when the drains were reworked to tie into the sewer. And it seems likely that the garage was built after the sewer came in. There is a small room, at one time used for laundry, between the house and the garage, with a door to the front yard and a concrete area between the front of the house and the front of the garage. That concrete is over the place where house drain goes into the wall on its way to the sewer, so it was likely made later. Two-car garages were not common in 1950, either; a 1960s date fits that better as well.
The house has had at least three heating systems in its past, as well. One corner of the basement, in the front at the garage end, was walled off with concrete block to make a coal cellar. There is an opening high on the wall where the coal chute was, now bricked over. This area was later outfitted with shelves for storage, but when we tore out the door and its 2x8 framing, we found bits of coal (2 to 3 cups worth) between the frame and the blocks. Now that the floor is cleaned up, the spot where the old coal furnace sat is visible; the concrete is rougher at that place. There are also places where the sheet metal is still in place from old air-return ductwork, and some of the grilles in the floor are still there under the carpets. This was most likely a gravity-type furnace without any blower.
The second heating system was hot water. The old gas boiler is still there, and the rooms upstairs have the baseboard radiators that came into use around the '60s, not the cast-iron radiators of older houses. These baseboard radiators were connected with copper pipe. (The original house plumbing is galvanized pipe, the earlier system--copper pipe began displacing galvanized around the late '50s and early '60s, from what I have learned.) My guess is that the gas pipes came into the neighborhood with the water and sewer lines.
The last heating system, sitting next to the old boiler, is a gas furnace/air conditioning unit. It is not a high-efficiency model because it vents into the old chimney, not through plastic pipe out the wall. The outdoor AC coils and even the indoor coil were stolen while the house sat empty over the last few years. The ductwork for this furnace was the newer insulated fiberglass and plastic that has been around since the late 1980s. (This did not look that old, however). I did pull all of that ducting out, because some of it picked up moisture from the flooding, and it was in the way for cleaning out the mold.
This is some of what we have learned so far. We may find other things out as the work progresses.
One Milestone Reached
Well, we're done working on the basement for a while. The water is pumped out, a new sump pump is installed and working. The junk left in the basement is hauled out to the dump, and the drywall and paneling on the living room side are removed, down to the block walls. And now I have finished the mold cleanup. This was a big issue; after three years of water in the basement, there was mold on a lot of the floor joists and some of the subfloor for the floor above.
Searching the Internet, I found this site--http://www.mold-control-on-a-budget.com/documents/43.html. I had seen a reference on a mold remediation contractor's site about using a borax solution. But Mold Control on a Budget actually gives the formula, and how to follow up. The site owner is not a contractor, but an inspector specializing in mold work.
Anyway, I vacuumed the heavy mold, mostly yellow, some cottony white stuff off with a HEPA wet/dry vac, then scrubbed with the borax solution. In corners, around ductwork and electrical boxes and other hard-to-get-at places I sprayed the surface down with borax solution in a trigger spray bottle.
Why borax and not bleach? The story is that bleach only works on some molds, and works best on hard, non-porous surfaces like ceramic or laminate. The chlorine evaporates before it can soak into unfinished wood. The borax (and for the record, this is the old 20 Mule Team powder from the laundry soap section at Wal-Mart) soaks in better, and any borax residue left will keep mold from returning. I have used most of three boxes so far and have a little left for touchup.
There is one more mold strategy that we may consider for the long run, called "encapsulation." This involves sealing moldy areas in a paint-like coating. And while there are such coatings available, the "Budget" site says old-fashioned whitewash will work--the lime in whitewash is also used in some of the commercial coatings, because it kills mold. So at some point, after the new dehumidifier has dried things out, I may be doing a Tom Sawyer job on the floor joists.
Searching the Internet, I found this site--http://www.mold-control-on-a-budget.com/documents/43.html. I had seen a reference on a mold remediation contractor's site about using a borax solution. But Mold Control on a Budget actually gives the formula, and how to follow up. The site owner is not a contractor, but an inspector specializing in mold work.
Anyway, I vacuumed the heavy mold, mostly yellow, some cottony white stuff off with a HEPA wet/dry vac, then scrubbed with the borax solution. In corners, around ductwork and electrical boxes and other hard-to-get-at places I sprayed the surface down with borax solution in a trigger spray bottle.
Why borax and not bleach? The story is that bleach only works on some molds, and works best on hard, non-porous surfaces like ceramic or laminate. The chlorine evaporates before it can soak into unfinished wood. The borax (and for the record, this is the old 20 Mule Team powder from the laundry soap section at Wal-Mart) soaks in better, and any borax residue left will keep mold from returning. I have used most of three boxes so far and have a little left for touchup.
There is one more mold strategy that we may consider for the long run, called "encapsulation." This involves sealing moldy areas in a paint-like coating. And while there are such coatings available, the "Budget" site says old-fashioned whitewash will work--the lime in whitewash is also used in some of the commercial coatings, because it kills mold. So at some point, after the new dehumidifier has dried things out, I may be doing a Tom Sawyer job on the floor joists.
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