Something Different with Landscaping

In years past we've done a bunch of landscaping on the first weekend in June.  That's usually the weekend of Deutsche Tage across the street at The Germanic-American Institute.  So I've usually spent all day digging holes while listening to polka music.  This year the plants didn't get delivered until after the festival, so I spent the weekend re-wiring the attic to polka music.

It was a long tough winter so we lost a few plants and shrubs.  We also had a serious rabbit explosion in the neighborhood and they've caused havoc all over the neighborhood.  The Little Man got a bow for Christmas and has been fighting back though...  ;-)  The dog has been doing her best, but with a torn ACL she's had less success.  :-(

So this year, landscaping has been a combination of replacing dead things as well as filling in the last few holes.  The overall plan isn't quite implemented yet, but it's really close.

Tuesday night, Little Man helped me get 95 perennials and half a dozen 5-gallon shrubs planted.  Offering him a dollar a plant kept his motivation up.  In years past he's gotten bored after the second or third hole...

I was on my own Thursday night and got three 7-gallon trees planted after work. This morning I finished the remaining nine before it started to get hot.

I'm ready to switch gears back some other type of work...

Leaded Glass

Way back, I mentioned that we had a problem with broken glass in the front door's side-lights.

You can see where the glass is supposed to be just to the right of the doorbell.

You can see where it actually is down by the object that broke it.

Sadly, this is a fact that had to be established by the court...

Nevertheless, we finally got a response from one of the two craftsman in town who do this sort of repair.

More accurately...  SWMBO got a response from his wife!

Back when the window was broken he stopped by to give an estimate so the responsible party knew what the cost would be.  Fast forward a couple of years (there's no need to re-live the painful, two-year process) and we're ready to have the repair done.  We leave messages but don't hear back.  We don't consider it a huge problem because there aren't any critical needs for this to be fixed.

Fast forward to this Spring.  We know we're going to be on the RHA  house tour in the fall.  Further, the Cass Gilbert Society has asked for a tour of the house later in the summer.  Having a broken window at the front door is clearly not acceptable...

SWMBO makes another call.  This time the craftsman's wife answers.  Within minutes he calls back.  Within hours he arrives to re-survey the situation.  The next week he comes back and removes the leaded glass sidelights.  And six weeks later... restored sidelights are re-installed.

Now the problem is the front door looks like cr*p and I have to restore it before the tours.  I guess I better quit typing and get the attic electrical finished...

The Old Master Bath - Part 3

There has been a lot of good progress since the last post.

Drywall has been installed and the first couple coats of mud are on.  The cabinets are installed along with the base and crown molding.  The rightmost one will receive an end panel that has raised-panel details matching the recycled cabinet across the room (next picture).  Near the window is a shallower and narrower cabinet with fixed shelves for folded items.  We also have some trick lighting planed for the two wardrobe cabinets.

On the other side of the room, close to the window, is a similar fixed-shelf cabinet.  Closest to the camera is the cabinet recycled from the back hall.  The old wavy glass in the upper doors is awesome.  Once other interesting find is that the drawers all have roller bearings let into the supports.  That's not something you see often.

At the edge of both pictures you can see that the door casings have been installed as well.

Won't be long and it will be ready for paint.

The Old Master Bath - Part 2

Slow progress continues.  "Real" demolition has been complete for a while.  I've been chipping away at removing what I can of the knob-and-tube wiring.

The rough framing is complete and the room's new purpose is starting to become evident.  This wall was where the toilet, pedestal sink, and tub used to be.  These large plywood boxes are the carcasses of new cabinetry.  Once the framing and electrical inspections are complete, the walls can be insulated and the drywall installed.  Then the carcasses can be permanently installed.

This picture shows the wall where the radiator used to be.  The short cabinet closer to the camera was salvaged from the back hall.  It has an upper section with glass doors that it will be re-united with as construction continues.  It was way too cool to dispose of.

If it's not obvious yet, this room is no longer going to be the master bath.

It's going to be the closet for SWMBO...

More photos can be found in this album.

Old World Construction Techniques

This house is absolutely incredible. And I'm not being sarcastic.  There are some really unique things about this house and we discover more all the time that continue to stun me.

I've only recently heard about this technique, but have never seen it.  Bill, our contractor, hasn't seen anything like it either, even in doing this type of work on these types of houses for 30 years.

The finished floor in "Katie's Room" has been removed.  Somewhere along the line the finished floor suffered some serious water damage and was not salvageable.  Under that is the sub-floor you see pictured.

One of the sub-floor boards has been removed to reveal a 4-inch layer of what appears to be a dry mix mortar made of of stones and hard packed sand with some sort of binder.  Then there's another sub-floor on top of the joists.

Apparently this was used as mass to attenuate sound between the floors of the building.  I've heard this was common in old European construction, but haven't heard of it being used here in the US.

If you look closely at the picture, to the left of the hammer and running horizontally under where the missing floor board used to be, you can see the old pipe for the gas lights that were original to the house.

More Laundry Room

Well, it's a good thing I never got around to repainting the laundry room.  As part of installing the new stack some new holes have appeared in the laundry room walls...

This is a good attic-to-basement chase for various mechanical items.  I'm sure it won't be the last time we need to run stuff vertically throughout the house so we'll fix the holes after the dust settles.  Then we can re-paint the room, install cabinets, etc.

It's all about priorities...

What's a Stack?

After the last post Marie asked, "What's a 'stack'?"

It's the big black pipe in the picture.  This one is cast iron, but they are often plastic in modern houses (see second photo).  From here it goes up into the attic and out through the roof to let the sewer gas escape.  That's why it is sometimes called a "stink pipe".

The toilet drain connects to it just below the floor level.  So from here the dirty toilet water goes down the pipe into the basement to the city sewer.

One of our new stacks is pictured in the second photo.  This one can't go straight up through the roof because that would place it too close to the attic bathroom window.  You don't want the "stink" getting back into the house...

At the very bottom of the picture feeding into the main pipe are the drains from the toilet and shower.moving upwards: on the right is the drain from the wet bar (long pipe running away from the camera on the right side of the picture) and the left is the drain from the bathroom sink.  At the top left is the bathroom sink vent which joins into the main vent running off the top right.

The third photo shows a similar arrangement from the old master bath.  The main vent stack from the first photo can be seen on the far left.  The rest of these pipes are old galvanized pipes: up from the kitchen at the left; sink's drain and vent in the center; tub's vent on the right.

Katie's Room

Yup, it's definitely her room.  It says so on the door. The stars on the door hint at a theme throughout the room.  There are small glow-in-the-dark stars on the window casings.

She probably was starry-eyed about her favorite guy as well.  The lipstick imprints, in a variety of colors, are a nice touch on the casing of the closet door.  Isn't there a better way to practice than on a door frame?  ;-)

I'm not sure why she had a restaurant booth in her bedroom.  We removed that (the light blue paint on the wall) shortly after we moved in.

For us, this room has served a number of purposes: a place to store stuff while we do other remodeling, a guest bedroom (see mattress and box spring against the wall), a donor for missing molding (note missing baseboard), and a game room (see air hockey table - duh!).  All of which have to occur in the dark because... the light fixture in this room doesn't work.  Hmmm...  Is there a pattern here?

And, once again, I should have done this post in the past tense because it looks different today.  Note the lovely, non-functioning light.

The exterior brick walls are awesome, though.

No brick veneer; these are the real deal.

And more photos are in this album.

The Old Master Bath

You might wonder why this post is not about progress on the attic.

However, it is about the attic.  Indirectly.

And here is how it goes...

The next step in the attic project is demolishing the old master bathroom and the back bedroom.  Why?  Because there's a plumbing stack that runs behind the knee wall in the attic guest bedroom, down through the wall between the master bath and the back bedroom, down through a weird broom closet in the kitchen, and into the basement.  This stack needs to be moved to prep for the future master bath and kitchen renovations.  It's hard to move the stack once the walls are closed in the attic, so we might as well do the demo from top-to-bottom now.

There are some interesting little "features" in the old master bath.  The walls are painted an off-white that has a very faint lavender hue to it.  That explains the color of the single sconce to the right of the medicine cabinet.  We have no clue what happened to its mate that should be on the left.  The plate covering the hole is attached directly to the plaster with drywall screws to provide dramatic effect and balance to the space.  The missing handle and broken stem on the hot side of the faucet allow for a refreshing start to my morning shaving routine.

The plan is to re-use this pedestal lav in the attic bath.  The cup holders, shelf and soap dish are way cool as well, though we don't have a plan for them, yet.

Another interesting feature is a cover plate in the ceiling that coordinates with the one to the left of the medicine cabinet.  There's a switch on the wall that does nothing.  I bet it's supposed to control the missing ceiling fixture.  Again attached to the plaster with drywall screws.

Another set of cool features can be found near the tub.  Look closely at the tub, six inches above the drain.  That's not a overflow drain, it's the faucet.  While it's cool, it's not terribly useful because the water just dribbles down the side of the tub.  In addition, all the water lines leading to the tub are still old galvanized pipe.  You get decent water pressure, all things considered, but once you open the faucet the first few minutes look like iced tea rather than water...

Also note the button near the light switch.  It rings the doorbell to summon my valet.  Apparently when I'm an Earl, I'll have someone to help me dry off after my soak.

I suppose I should have used the past tense in this post.  The room now looks a bit different because demolition started yesterday.

More before photos can be found in this album.

Attic Framing Is Done

The framing is done.The front of the house is framed as one large room (see plan at right).

The knee walls around the perimeter are 5-feet tall.  That still gives us plenty of floor space while not making the ceiling feel too low around the edges.  The two dormers at the top of the drawing face the street.  The double doors at the bottom of the drawing lead from the hall and are the connection point to the next drawing.

The double doors are at the top of this drawing.  They mark the transition from the guest "suite" hallway into the big room.  The bathroom isn't huge, but it is functional.  We spent some time at the tile store today figuring out what we want and think we have a plan.  The guest bedroom is quite large, but the closet is not.  If you don't have a lot of room for clothes, you can't out-stay your welcome...  ;-)

Next up will be mechanical infrastructure - electrical, plumbing, HVAC, and insulation.  Though we'll first have to do some demolition in the room below the guest bedroom to move the plumbing stack.