Blast from the past....

So last night when working on the window project, I had to move a stack of boxes from the service porch to access the sash cords from the dining room window. In the boxes, I found pictures from our first house, and a picture of the crystal fixture that now graces our front hall...Now you can see why I didn't realize it was crystal. Somebody had the bright idea to put the chandelier in the

kitchen, Now it would be considered chic, then, downright scary....I honestly thought it was cast iron, so I placed in a bucket of hot water, and out comes a brass and glass fixture...who knew???? So we went down to a vintage light fixture parts place and I replaced the missing parts and voila, the resurrected fixture!

So a few months ago, steve was inspired to replace the multitude broken sash cords in prepartion of summer - after 100 years, most had given up the ghost, but several were still intact. Well ,over the course of the summer weather, the remaining ones gave up the ghost, so I decided today to finish the job, and get a couple of windows that Steve had not had time to finish....
I am now convinced that this house was built by morons and "maintained" by idiots....

As a bit of a background, I have renovated a number of old houses, so I know what the inside of a sash pocket (where the weights live) look like, and what the weights are like.

In this house, no weight are remotely alike, and weren’t even the same size! They must have been in the discount bin in 1910….

So, I replaced the cords, and in the process discovered that the most of the window trim is rotted, and hacked from when they installed the new screens. I have known for awhile that no to windows in the house are the same size (they vary from ½ to an inch), but when they installed the aluminum screens, its clear they made the mistake of measuring one window… So, the screen installer took his reciprocating saw to the trim and hacked the trim so it would fit, and used a chisel for the rest..

The other discovery was the that when they built the house, they used scrap bits of sash cord as filler between the window trim and the siding – When you have clapboard siding, which is beveled, and you install a piece of flat trim on top, you have small triangular gaps between the siding and trim. In most other houses I worked on, they had wood filler pieces…here, they used cord. I am picturing some poor sot coiling bits or cord and stuffing them behind the trim….that must have been painful! When I repaint, I will probably apply liberal amounts of painters caulk…

So everything was going fine until I got to the big dining room window on the back of the house, this was tricky, because one of the houses craftsman brackets was “attached” to the top corner of the frame – at least in 1910 it was… In the years since the bracket had pulled away from the house, and had left a gap in the sash pocket, since the trim was cut around it – so the pocket was filled with pigeon poop, feathers, and stuff I really don’t want to know about… I retied the weights, and then set my sights on repairing the bracket so seal up the pocket – so I took my hammer, pounded the bracket back into position, and then watched the whole bracket crash into my rose bush…oops…. SO… I found a piece of scrap redwood, nailed it over the gap in the siding, dragged the bracket to backyard, and then poured a glass of whiskey… Isn’t the house supposed to look better after a day of repairs????? OIY?

Im not cheap, I am just recycling...

So, we have a get together planned for next weekend and want to use our Barbeque. Unfortunately, the backyard looks like a war zone and rock quarry rolled into one huge mess. so over that past couple of weekends we have been working on a patio made out of the cement slab from our tumbledown garage foundation that is ready to fall over - back in the days of yore, someone decided that it was a good ides to build a garage with a basement - put a wood floor over it and then a thick layer of cement over the wood - moisture + wood + 100 years = nightmare. Since we really need to tear down the thing, I thought why not reuse the cement broken into flagstone like sections and lay it out - at the same time, using the piles of dirt to level out the area at the base of the back steps. So we have been busy moving dirt and cement, and cutting up and throwing away the piles of tree limbs and other assorted piles of junk in 1/4 of the backyard nearest the house - Its actually looking half bad and there is a glimmer of hope -

Craziness...

So our marathon of house repairs were done, and the appraiser came by today and did a walk though. Of course, while he was outside at least 3 planes flew over the house (we are in the flight path, a fact that I did not realize till after escrow closed and I got the keys) and a fury of sirens went on for at least 5 minutes - Nice. Then, the finis was classic - He was all done except he needed a picture of the water heater, which is on the back of the house. We go to the back door, and the 100 year old mortise lock jammed and the door would not open AT ALL... We had to go outside and around the gate - after he left I had to pry the door open with a screwdriver and discovered that the latch BROKE - it could not have happened earlier in the day or after he left, but right then - .......

Of course, I have a collection of at least 8 mortise locks and so I went on a hunt to see if I could cannibalize another lock for the broken piece - I should no better - out of nine mortise locks, no two were even remotely similar - even the screws that hold the cover plate on are different - so I ended up replacing the lock with a different one and had to chisel the door because it was slightly different - after that fiasco was dealt with, I had to readjust the strike plate because the latch was in a slightly different place -

Needless to say, I am on my second Soju martini...

Progress Report

So, over the weekend I set out get a whole list of things done prior to the appraisal, and we got three checked off the list - The Porch has been repainted, the hallway wall has been realigned using a trusty car jack (no cracked plaster!!), and the hall floor has been replaced - I am very happy how it all turned out. I copied the hardwood floor pattern I had in my San Francisco apartment built in 1907 - it is a simple border using the regular flooring that creates a frame around the room. Its a nice little detail I think - I will also do it when I redo the dinning room floor.
The other items on the list should not be too big of a deal...

Weekend Plans

Unlike many people who will spend this Holiday weekend on trips or relaxing by the pool, we will have a full on house weekend - Its looks like we are going to be having the house apprised soon and so we need to take care of a few...ahem details to make things look presentable - after living so long with odd little unfurnished projects we have become a little blinded, so tonight is the non rose colored glasses night - So far, the list includes:

1. Fix the hallway wall so it aligns correctly ( will involve a jack and some wood)
2. Replacing the hardwood floor in the hallway ( have vintage oak flooring in the basement for this project)
3. Paint the front porch and column bases (The cement cap project will continue.....)
4. Replace the baseboard in the bathroom that is too short since we replaced the sink cabinet.
5. Install trim around the tub enclosure that has been on the to do list since we moved in...
6. Fix the hole in the wall I made when I decided to wiggle a loose pipe in the basement, which caused it to break through the wall, I suspect it was to the original 1910 wall mounted water heater)
7. Replace a few of the peel and stick floor tiles in the kitchen that have slipped (That's what happens when you stick them on top of the old linoleum... and I will admit that was my doing, since we are planning to replace the the whole thing with tile at some future date and I was not in the mood at the time to peel up the linoleum)

Hopefully that will do the trick for now - we will see what we can get done!

Stripping Again....

One of the main projects I did when we were redoing the Long Beach house was to strip all of the paint off the woodwork in the entire house - Luckily, the original concrete porch pillar bases were never painted so I didn't have to worry about those... here in San Diego, a number of @#$%^ painted the cement and brick bases...repeatedly. What happens when you paint cement not very well? It chips.... then it gets painted again, and chips in a different spot, so after 60+ years of this ugly cycle, you get a bumpy mess...
So how does one go about stripping paint off cement? A google search basically came up with what I suspected - do it the same way you do wood trim.. paint Remover and lots of elbow grease... I decided to experiment a bit and used my trusty heat gun to get some of the paint off, since I didn't know if the cement would absorb the heat and the paint wouldn't get hot enough to soften.. Low and behold, it actually worked and I got about 95% of the paint off, I am going to go over it with paint remover to get the other 5% off, which as experience has taught, will be most of the work. The nice part about this is that once the paint is off, it will again be a zero maintenance surface.... The next project has also come into focus, which is the wood columns, there is a bit of rot, the wood trim around the base of the columns are missing, and a section of the column cap was chopped out when the porch was enclosed... I have a feeling this little side project will keep me busy for awhile...