timber!

Just a brief update between chopping up the tree that came down last week.  While I'm more than a bit disgruntled to be wasting the time when there are so many other things to be working on, I should be grateful.  What came down was directly in between the schoolhouse and the fire pit, and nearly on top of our stored roof slate.  Other than an impaled plastic chair and a cracked cinder block, nothing was harmed, not even the antique iron lantern that was still standing after the tree fell AROUND it.  Mind boggling....

                 

Another plus?  The new chainsaw we had bought and given up on as hopelessly broken three years ago (and forgotten to return) was able to be coaxed back to life now that we know considerably more about repairing tools.  It's nice to know the chainsaw is back in our arsenal.

As far as work on the house itself, we decided the now fully walled and insulated third floor can wait till cooler weather for floor finishing and painting.  Instead, we've turned our attention to the future master bath which adjoins our bedroom.  As I've mentioned before, it was the largest and most beautiful bedroom in the house when it was built.  When we bought the house it was saturated with cat urine (badly enough that we thought it was a mystery leak and almost walked away from the deal), chopped up with walls going across the fireplace tile and had a dropped ceiling -all this on top of the issues every room in the house had with water damage and abuse.

 For now it's just storage, and aside from partitioning the room with the laundry and walk-in closet, and a quick pass on the floors, nothing's been done.  We're many years from affording the bathroom, so for now the room needs some additional plaster repair, a temporary box built over the exposed laundry room plumping, trim and paint stripping.  All of these are in progress - finished is boxing in and blue boarding the plumbing (plastering will happen in the next couple of weeks.  Not exciting unless it's your house I suppose, but I guess that's the case with most things I do and write.  Boxing in the plumbing actually turned into a monumental task after a tiny leak was discovered coming from the washer plumbing.  We thought we were going to have to rerun the pipes, only to discover the leak was coming from the hook-up box in the wall.  Trying to repair that leak lead to the Watts Intelliflow emergency shut off malfunctioning, i.e. no laundry right before having house guests, and a few weeks of back and forth with them to figure out exactly which part was broken.  Thankfully, all fixed now.

As part of the work, we stuffed all the exposed cavities with Roxul Safe and Sound to mitigate the noise from the laundry and bathroom - the difference is amazing, even with the door to the bathroom open and the broken stained glass window on the laundry wall.  Well worth the $50 we spent on the bag, and I'm glad local stores have starting carrying it.

With all this rain we've been having, the yard isn't the only thing growing like a weed, Maugrim is 9 months old and around 90 pounds.  He finally met a dog bigger than him the other day, and wasn't quite sure what to make of him.  

master of the house, keeper of the zoo...

I was utterly sick of anything that might require wielding a brush yesterday, so I dug through my piles and unearthed a few antique light fixtures to figure out which one to restore for our laundry room. We have accumulated an extraordinary number of these gas and early electric fixtures, ranging in price from free to a few dollars. I had planned on soliciting some advice on which one to use, but that might have undermined the dictatorship I have going on around here. As it turns out, the gas fixture I had hoped to use will need to be professionally rewired (the gas valves need to be drilled out), and honestly, with a hundred fixtures in the basement (oh you think I'm joking?) it's not in the budget to deal with it now.

The budget concern is due in large part to our menagerie, which, epileptic dog aside, has been fairly low maintenance. This month we were hit with a newly diabetic cat with an ulcerated eye and ear infection, and a dog with a broken and infected canine. Everyone's been patched back together, but it'll take our bank account a while to recover.

the creatures in question

Grandma was concerned enough that the cat got a get well soon card - addressed to "Master Crom," I guess we know who the favorite grand-animal is . . . Our mail lady must have loved it, if Crom's not there to greet her she asks where he is, and we've caught her sitting on the porch taking pictures of herself with him!

The fixture we put back together required very little work, it had a fair amount of its original polychome paint and decent wiring, so it was cleaned, polished with 0000 steel wool and waxed. Most of the fixtures we have are basketcases, and are completely taken apart, stripped, painted, and rewired from scratch - which is far more fun than it might sound.

The trained monkey may
require a bit more
training in photography

singing the blues

Well, more like singing the praises of the blue-greens . . .

Obviously we're not done yet, although the list has grown considerably shorter (finishing the painting, cut the shelves for the built-in, install the gas line etc . . . ). But at least I can wash clothes again - those that have to be around us should appreciate that, although with the miserable weather they won't dry anytime soon.

As an aside, we thought long and hard about building the laundry room on the second floor. The vibration issue is one we hadn't thought of, although hopefully it'll be somewhat rectified by the addition of the reinforced floor and pedestal - however we did do what we could to minimize the chance of a catastrophic water leak.

Watts Intelliflow

This device takes the place of the standard laundry water supply - it has a floor sensor that detects tiny amounts of water and will turn off the water in case of a leak. It also only allows water through if the washer "requests" it. Obviously the braided supply lines are a must, and we also ran a bead of clear caulk around the baseboard to prevent water from flowing down the walls before the sensor can detect it. The only thing we gave up was the pan the washer previously sat in because the pedestal drawer wouldn't have opened.

and yet more trim . . .

Hopefully the snow the other day is the last we'll get for the year, but I'll say that the 8 inches combined with no wind made for a beautiful morning before it all started to melt.

 

We finished up the window trim in the laundry yesterday and it came out quite well, almost stain quality carpentry. We wanted to maximize the depth of the sill because I anticipate miscellaneous stuff accumulating there. So the window framing was taken into account when we built the wall, but we didn't take into account that we'd need to pack out the trim. We only needed to build it out 1/2 inch, which we didn't think would be difficult (our dining room uses this same technique so the trim stands proud of the paneling), but we forgot that 1/2 inch lumber isn't widely available. After much hand-wringing I got lucky and remembered we had a small amount that I kept after demoing some of the 1920's additions, it worked out brilliantly, and highlights just how badly the stained glass needed to be restored.

As for today, I wasn't feeling well, but my trained monkey seems to have sanded and installed the baseboards and caps. I knew I kept one around for something . . . It cracks me up that every house we've salvaged from, as well as our own house has the same sea green molding in at least one room (our nicest fireplace is still that color). We find the color inside our walls too - all the additions made when they split the house use "scrap" for framing, and nearly all of it is sea green beadboard or trim. I much prefer that color to the white paint of today . . .

It's actually feeling like it's close to done in there, but I know that the filling, sanding, priming and painting will eat up a chunk of time, not to mention finishing the built-in and figuring out the door situation. I still need to decide whether or not I'm wallpapering behind the built-in, and if we want to add shoe molding. All that just so we can re-install the washer - then we'll enlist the professionals for the gas line.

So, should I use my 25 cent wallpaper
in the built in, yay or nay?

white rabbit white rabbit

Well, more progress has been made on the laundry room.  It's not overly exciting, so I'll spare you the photos that look the same as all the others I've recently posted.

We also had tree trimmers show up at the apartment behind us to trim OUR trees.  These trees and our fence have been part of an ongoing saga with the a-hole behind us (a story for another time when I know you all better perhaps), so we were ready for a fight.  After speaking to the trimmer, who was understanding and totally professional we let him trim the trees.  We may have a tad less privacy this summer, but it wasn't worth the fuss - especially since he'll return to remove a sassafras in the way of our future rebuilt wrap around porch for an unheard of price.  It also made me happy that he immediately recognized it was a sassafras despite it's lack of leaves, and lamented the fact that it had to go because of how unusual they are around here.  We did save a seedling from it though which is happily growing in another spot in the yard.  He also promised not to break a single branch of the original foundation plantings (they were one of the initial clues that something was missing) - a tall order . . .

Perhaps more exciting, our last patient is on the operating table . . .

This is the last of our 1930 salvaged kitchen cabinets that are being cleaned and repainted. My dining room will be thrilled when this is over and done with.

And many thanks to the poor individual in Macedonia who googled "Queen Anne's Revenge Shipwreck" and found my site.  You made my day.  Thank you.

climbing up the walls

I thought the next few days would be a bust, as work was supposed to take us out of town, but that was canceled, and we found a few hours today to work.

What, not everyone uses their sleeping porch
as a wood shop at night in the sleet and rain?

The floor is done other than a final cleaning and sealing, and it's time to turn our attention back to the walls.  Filling the corner blocks is a slow process because of how much material we need to add to make them square again, but we got a fair amount of the wainscot up. Although we couldn't use any of our salvage (our thin stuff is being hoarded for a third floor room), we bought some new stuff (gasp!) to protect the walls from errant laundry baskets.  We were planning on using the beaded plywood, but when we did the math it was actually cheaper to use the pine panels.  Very unexpected, and we're very happy about it - even though these will be painted I sleep better at night knowing they could conceivably be refinished in the future.  They're surprisingly well milled (they're just the packs from the blue store) and we haven't had trouble with the tongues or grooves on any of them.  We didn't buy the common beadboard pattern they carry because every pack they had was beat to hell, but this pattern is nice and somewhat different.

I swear I don't buy Hitachi tools
just because they're pretty.

hey look, my nail gun matches
matches my floor and my walls! 

We don't own a router, and none of the local stores carry a rabbited chair rail type molding we like, so we're using a simple piece of lattice that the cap molding will sit on top of while overlapping the top of the paneling. I haven't done it this way before - but hopefully it will solve some problems.

holy aesthetic movement batman!

Dinner smells incredible, and tonight's about the only night there's anything good on tv, so I'll make this short.

First off, grouting's done. Yay.

Second though requires a back story. The first condemned house we had permission to plunder was an incredible Italianate duplex. It was in better condition than our house, and had the most incredible porch which would have provided us with all the columns we needed for our own restoration.

The porch was so rotted it disintegrated on impact, but in the 18 hours we had in the house we were able to save a smorgasbord of goodies. Among these were all the newels and spindles from both staircases. These were used when we rebuilt our back porches. We never thought much about them as they were slathered in paint, but when we had to trim a couple of spindles down to size we realized they were solid mahogany. I literally cried at the thought that we had used them on our porches where they'd be painted and unappreciated - at least mahogany does well outside.

rebuilding in progress

From that point on one of my rules is that anything I plan on painting doesn't get stripped. Sanded and cleaned, not stripped. Needless to say, I almost broke my rule today.
>

you can see some of the gilding

on the lower right of the white

The corner blocks we're using on the window came out of a brownstone style mansion that would have been at home on any of the best streets in NYC. It was going to be knocked down, but the contractor changed his mind. Although he gutted it, he was saving the best to reuse, but anything damaged he was throwing out. He let us have all the blocks we could pull out of the 2 story trash pile in the backyard, as well as some drawers and beadboard we took out of the kitchen. In cleaning up those corner blocks I stripped the outer layers of paint so the detail reappeared. All the blocks turned out to be more mahogany (figures). Not only that, they were ebonized and gilded

Visions of Whistler's Peacock room are dancing in my head. I mean, we already have the peacock blue washer and dryer right? RIGHT?

displeased . . .

So the tiling's done, sadly it ended with a fizzle rather than a bang. The last row of tiles against the threshold was installed yesterday, and they are less than spectacular. Specifically, they wanted to shatter, crumble, and do anything BUT cut straight. Other than pulling out the big grinder I tried anything I could think of; in the end it just wasn't important or obvious enough to beat myself up over. I have to say, I honestly prefer working with salvaged tiles - mentally I'm more prepared/willing to deal with the curve balls thrown at me by the 100+ year old tiles I drag home than new ones I paid for.

I had hoped the grout would obscure the color
difference in the tile. I hoped in vain.

Although I had planned on just sealing the tile today, I got antsy and managed to grout half the floor - I would have finished except I ran out of grout. Being that grouting is one of my most dreaded tasks, I was surprised this went so smoothly - the black tiles worked beautifully for telling me whether or not I had gotten all the haze off. At least having to go out and buy more grout will help get me to the grocery store tomorrow.
Next on the agenda is trimming out the stained glass windows and putting up the wainscoting. All in due time I guess.

The Crimson Permanent Assurance

So the tiling's done, sadly it ended with a fizzle rather than a bang. The last row of tiles against the threshold was installed yesterday, and they are less than spectacular. Specifically, they wanted to shatter, crumble, and do anything BUT cut straight. Other than pulling out the big grinder I tried anything I could think of; in the end it just wasn't important or obvious enough to beat myself up over. I have to say, I honestly prefer working with salvaged tiles - mentally I'm more prepared/willing to deal with the curve balls thrown at me by the 100+ year old tiles I drag home than new ones I paid for.

I had hoped the grout would obscure the color
difference in the tile. I hoped in vain.

Although I had planned on just sealing the tile today, I got antsy and managed to grout half the floor - I would have finished except I ran out of grout. Being that grouting is one of my most dreaded tasks, I was surprised this went so smoothly - the black tiles worked beautifully for telling me whether or not I had gotten all the haze off. At least having to go out and buy more grout will help get me to the grocery store tomorrow.

Next on the agenda is trimming out the stained glass windows and putting up the wainscoting. All in due time I guess.

It seems apropos that I post this the day I get hired for a new job, luckily I won't be facing any violent corporate takeovers (although I will be working for The Very Big Corporation of America).

A lot of people have asked the reason for the title of the blog, and it's probably clearer in my mind than I could ever explain on paper, but let's give it a shot. Google will tell you that the Queen Anne's Revenge was Blackbeard's ship, and while I wish I could say that the blog takes its name from the hoards of treasure found in the walls, it doesn't. Instead, I like to envision our old Queen Anne's second chance with us as a revenge on all the people who did her harm who are now dead and gone. The pillaging part rings true as well, being that most of the bits we're using to save her are coming from houses less fortunate. We also can't forget that the last owner built a pirate ship bar in the backyard, and that lumber has been used in repairs all over the house (I'd love to see the look on a future owner's face if they stumble across the stud labeled mainsail.

At the end of the day, I just really like the thought of my house spouting sails and sailing away. That and I like pirates. And rum, we can't forget the rum.

Oh, you don't know what I'm talking about? Don't worry about it, it happens all the time. This will help with that . . . http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YUiBBltOg4

tiles and tribulations

Not much to report, other than I now own duplicates of one too many tiling tools.  After buying another cement board cutter (only to find my original right where it was supposed to be when I got home) I thought my offering to the tool gods was taken care of.  Sadly, that wasn't the case, and I had to buy another tile nipper on the way home today (I sprung for the one that bragged about ergonomics and compound jaws - that'll teach my old one to hide when I need it).  The mesh backing the tiles were on was way too stretchy to get an accurate cut on my wet saw, not to mention the thought of getting my fingers that close to a very fast diamond blade was a bit disconcerting.  Other than the tiles that need to be cut for the threshold (only a few), I'm done except for sealing and grouting.

After staring at the mismatched tile sheets on the floor we did end up calling Home Depot.  Wonder of wonders customer service jumped right on it and refunded us 50%.  That, paired with being able to return extra materials (the first time in history we didn't need extras) and enormous discounts on both dryer pedestals means that we're actually UNDER budget.  I know, I should probably whisper that, I'm sure the house is already plotting how to make replacing the gas line as painful as possible . . .

Wait, you were only here for the pictures?  That'll show you . . .

it rubs the thinset on its skin

It's the only explanation for why I'm covered in it. Even better is that the washer is in the hallway for the duration. I'll preserve my dignity and NOT post the photographic evidence for all the internets to see . . .

Yesterday we got the hardibacker down. One of the many instances in which this is not a how-to guide. There's no way our pine floors meet the deflection guidelines, and there's no thinset that permits using tongue and groove as a base. Since there was no way I was ripping out our original floor and installing plywood to do this (or building up the floor), we went ahead and did the best we could. I've had success doing it this way before, so I'm confident it'll be fine. Things would be different if this were a high traffic or wet area, or if we weren't using hex tile that's small enough not to crack over the imperfect base.

In other news, TILE - despite how lovely it looked in the box, this tile is my new mortal enemy (because tiling was my secret superpower, along with loading uhauls and eyeballing center and level). Many of the tiles (Home Depot's Merola antique black and white hex flower in unglazed porcelain) were mislaid on the sheets, causing them to not line up right - which I didn't notice till after the first row was laid. Tearing that out, cleaning up the tiles and thinset, and figuring out the problem took up more of my energy than it should of, so the job didn't quite get done tonight. And I'm not even going to go into the fact that the sheets vary in color even though they're all the same batch number . . .

maybe someday the inlaid oak will
get some love too

those little brown specs are
pennies, 1/16 inch, perfect spacers

What you can't see in the photo are the green tiles that surround each of the dark flowers - that was just a separate sheet of tiles that was cut apart, and we popped the white tiles out and substituted the green. Initially we were going to do a more complex pattern - but there's more than enough color going into the room. Tiling will get finished tomorrow, and I may start grouting, not sure yet.

starlings in the slipstream

Saw the first flock of starlings today, they seem to have displaced the flock of geese I'm used to seeing. It seems far too early, but hey, maybe Punxsutawney Phil was on to something. Oh, and in case you were wondering, a flock of starlings is a murmuration, yeah, I didn't know either.



In other news, it turns
out a 5000 square foot house / full basement / half acre lot is an excellent place to lose tools. Especially little blue ones like my cement board cutter. It's always the little things that jam up the simplest projects. Instead, I notched out the jamb, and
cut off the tongue of the oak floor for the marble threshold. The marble was a pleasant surprise from the blue store - a nice beige, matches much better than the carrera they normally sell.

I also started painting, the colors are surprisingly great for dollar paint from the Habitat Restore - the upper paint is similar to the silvery green everyone gets from Restoration Hardware, and the lower/trim (not painted yet) will probably be a dark muddy teal - lovely. I've bought a lot of paint from the Restore, obviously open up the can if they'll let you, but more importantly, make sure you're familiar with the most current labels on the paint brands you're interested in so that you can tell the age/quality of the paint. I've saved hundreds doing this, and have never gotten a bad can.

these aren't in good enough shape to be
stained, so they'll work great for the
laundry trim which is being painted

Last but not least, I've started going through my stockpile of trim and hardware in the basement, but that's less like work than it is playing in a candy store with mom's credit card.

the weather man lied

it turns out I'm putting to much time
into this to be happy with the mismatch,
also, it's the first thing you see as you
come up the stairs

Today was supposed to be warmish and sunny, and since it wasn't, I lost all motivation to set up the tile saw. Mind you I could have found 42 other things to work on, instead I decided the mismatched pedestals weren't going to cut it for me. After our washer and dryer were discontinued the pedestals - which we had been undecided about buying - became tough to find. At first we weren't going to get them, too expensive, and of questionable utility. But since the vibration of the washer has me concerned about the plaster moldings and ceiling in the living room below, we decided they may be worth a try - also, rags, the drawers will be awesome for rags and dropcloths. A month ago there were no matching pedestals for a reasonable price, so we bought a different color that was on clearance. Although they look nice, it was going to bug me, so I arbitrarily did a search for matching ones today. Low and behold, the world came through for me. One in the area at Sears outlet, and one on Ebay. The Outlet one was pretty beat up for it's $150 price tag, so the manager sold it to me for $25. So points for Sears, Electrolux on the other hand tried to sell me a vial of touch up paint for $25 not including shipping. There was a time appliances came with touch up paint, I am less than pleased, and think I'll be living with the chips.

found in the awesome (not original) closet that
lost it's life in the staircase rebuild - it had
a trapdoor and secret room

Also, happy Valentine's day . . . .

More importantly, wish my dog a happy birthday.









More tomorrow, I promise . . . .