the drip of despair

We've been on a roll getting stuff done around here, and the universe must have decided we had violated the two steps forward one step back rule.  Bam!  Roof leak!

When we redid the entire roof on the main house 4 years ago, there weren't many places it wasn't leaking (but because we started work in a very cold and snowy winter we had to do the electrical first, how's that for hilarious?).  Our roof was Buckingham (black and sparkly from it's quartz content) slate, which is perhaps the most desirable slate in North America. Instead of making repairs, the previous owners had been tarring the leaks for the past 60 years.  So we went from slates that should have been nearly 100% salvageable, to being able to save about 50%.

And why you ask are my black slates red?
Pollution from decades ago, this is Pittsburgh after all...

Your amateur slate lesson for the day:  A good slate like a Buckingham will last nearly indefinitely with proper care, and even a cheap slate that's installed well should last a century.  The steeper a roof, the longer the slates will last because water and dirt shed off well.  The materials that make up a slate roof will, in most cases, fail before the slates themselves do.  When that happens, the slates are carefully removed, gutters, valleys and flashing are repaired, and the slates relaid.  In this scenario, you may have to find a square or two to account for loss and rotted slates.  Doing this on a big house, even with copper everything, will cost about the same as a new shingle roof and last about a century.

  

But in our case, tar....  Tar is bad.  It is the destroyer of slates - it holds water and heats up, rotting the slate, and can't be removed.  And it doesn't even really stop leaks that well.  The slate was really the biggest hangup on us buying the house.  For what it would cost to properly restore the roof we could have finished the exterior.  That was an incredibly tough pill to swallow and we didn't feel we were up to the challenge.  If we didn't buy the house, not only would it not get a slate roof, it was facing demolition.  If someone else did save the house, they certainly weren't going to put slate back up.  The house had already lost so much, that losing it's slate would just be another nail in it's coffin.  And most of the other big homes had lost their slates - and it was an obvious loss.

We went with slate.  Or rather, mostly slate.

In every restoration there is room for compromise.  In this case, we did as much of the front of the roof in our original Buckingham slate as possible, putting enough aside to do just the front of the kitchen addition when that roof fails.  This is what passerbys see, and what we see coming home, so it was obviously the priority. 

everything that could be saved

I found some grey fishscale slates through salvage and we added a band detail to further stretch our original slates, while we used another cheap salvaged slate our slater had just taken off another house on the invisible roof angles. Lastly, there's ordinary shingles on the very back.   Why the non-matching slates you ask?  Well, our slate is the most expensive there is, and very little is still being mined (if at all, there's some debate over if what's being called Buckingham is the same stuff).  It was impossible to find anything that matched that wouldn't devour the rest of our make the house camp-able budget.  It's a big compromise, and actually something that still really bothers me.  I hope we're here long enough to re-slate the back of the roof - but realistically, it's the lowest priority on the list...

As usual though, I digress.  All that trouble, and there's a series of leaks on the back shingle section of the roof that appeared out of nowhere (not an ice dam which was my first thought).  Oddly enough, the only access to them from inside the house was supposed to get closed up this weekend, but our plasterer canceled.  So I guess that's a good thing?  Fixing whatever the problem is should happen on Wednesday, so details to follow I suppose...

schoolhouse odds and ends

I'm neck deep in stripping woodwork, and since I have nothing revolutionary to add as far as the process goes, I haven't felt much like blogging.  Luckily, as much as I feel like I've dropped the ball productivity wise, our carpenter had a few days to help us out.  On the agenda was installing the water table on the schoolhouse, slating the belltower, and modifying the sills and jambs on the schoolhouse windows.

The water table was made out of 10 x 1 1/2 Azek trim.  We chose the Azek since it will be resting on the concrete piers, pressed up against the 3x14 antique warehouse beams we used as our sill.  This way the sill won't be absorbing any water that could compromise the building.  To build the water table we cut three inches off at 10 degrees, then ran the other edge of the three inch piece through again at 10 degrees (then glued them up together). We went a few steps further, treating the sills and studs with tim-bor, a borate preservative that will protect against rot, carpenter ants and termites, and flashing both the top and bottom of the Azek.  The flashing was a bit of a wasted effort however, since it was only after the fact that I learned you can't use aluminum against concrete (or treated lumber), as it will corrode.  This is where it pays to do your research, as even our carpenter was unaware...

I can forgive the flashing snafu when this was all that was left of the Azek
Only available in very expensive 20 foot lengths, I didn't want to buy a fifth board

On a happier note, the slates on the cupola were almost entirely ones that had been culled from rebuilding our roof.  They had various issues including the beginnings of rot, chips and cracks - but the area is small and steep enough that the rotted slates should still have decades of life, and the chipped sections could be cut off.  This way I don't feel any guilt about using our good slates that we're saving for the front of the kitchen roof.  It looks great, although I can't tell you why I didn't take a picture of the finished roof.

slate, in all its forms

Despite the radio silence the past few days, we've been busy finishing off little projects around this old pile. Most notable is finishing the slate apron for our drainboard sink. We bought the sink before we even closed on the house, and luckily we were able to store it inside the house until we closed. It turned out we did well, as we've found evidence that a similar sink may have been installed under the small window next the the chimney (along with a beadboard backsplash). By evidence I'm referring to the stray mounting brackets found on the third floor, the plumbing holes in that section of floor, and outlines on that wall after I stripped the paint and wallpaper. We chose not to install the sink in this corner because it would have meant that there could be no cabinets on this, or the adjoining wall (not to mention a dishwasher), and the small window is too high to look out of.

Although these big porcelain drainboard sinks are common around here, this one was unique with its clipped corners and beaded detail. It also has the coveted large drain hole, meaning that at some point we can hook up a garbage disposal. What it didn't have was its wall brackets, and finding ones the right size proved impossible. It ended up not mattering since we were placing it in front of the window, but it forced us to come up with a way of installing it. I've seen these mounted on top of custom cabinets, but cost-wise that wasn't an option for us. Instead we built a deck - bolting a ledger board to the wall and building off of that using 2x6s and joist hangers (this thing is heavier than you can imagine). If any of you have driven through rural areas where you can identify the old homesteads by the chimneys that are still standing in the woods you can get an idea of how strong this sink is, come the apocalypse it'll just be our 5 chimneys and the sink still standing . . .

The framework is hidden on the sides by the only two cabinets we kept from the kitchen that was here when we bought the house. They're cheap 70's particle board, but they were in decent condition and saved us from buying new (if we bought new we'd have had to buy custom cabinets that matched either the built-in or salvaged cabinets we're using). We've set it up so we can remove and replace them if we change our minds at some point. The top is plywood covered with hardibacker and salvaged blackboard slate. We were concerned about cracking the slate when we put the sink on top, but it all went smoothly. The piece de resistance is the three pieces of slate across the front which are parts of two different slate mantles. We've had these materials ready to go for months now and were dreading the process, but zip boom bang and 15 minutes later we were done.

The sides are attached with heavy duty construction adhesive (you can see they're off the ground for height reasons, we haven't decided what we're filling in the gap with) and were clamped for 48 hours. The middle already had 8, half inch diameter holes, so we used bolts to attach it to the frame. I would have liked to put bolts in the side pieces as well, but despite having drilling through slate before, I just didn't have the guts to potentially ruin a piece for cosmetic reasons. If the construction adhesive fails I'll reconsider. We still need to grout the seams and clean and seal the slate, as well as caulk the gaps. We will eventually sew a curtain to hide the plumbing, but for now I'll just enjoy not having to move or trip over the slate ever again!

clean slate (and bricks,and leaves, and . . .)

In a token acknowledgement of the ritual of spring cleaning we've done a bit of purging this weekend, as well as some move pile A to pile B style "cleaning." I'm forever grateful to the scrappers who showed up 30 minutes after responding to my ad for scrap on craigslist to haul away some pretty worthless trash we dug out of the backyard, and to the Veterans of America (pickupplease.org) who will come by with a box truck to pick up donations, saving me a trip to Salvation Army. The scrappers turned out to be contractors who do demos, and with 5 old homes pending, they'll give me a call later this spring to see if I can use anything from the houses they're bringing down. They also threw out a number for bringing my piles of bricks and slate to the back of the house (left over from the first two rounds of massive construction). While the number was reasonable, it was motivation enough to put on work gloves and move the first of the piles today (400 bricks). We have about 1000 more bricks to go, as well as two huge pallets of broken slates.

5 bags and three trashcans full and waiting
for trash day, 2 piles of bricks left to move

the last two pallets of broken slates

Why did we keep broken slates you ask? We honestly didn't have a good reason at the time, they were just so pretty . . . Our slates are Buckingham slates, grey with quartz so they sparkle. It turns out that they're among the best slates in the world, and will be forever out of our budget to replace, so paying to throw away our broken ones seemed foolish. As an experiment, last fall we cleared a wild corner of our front yard, surrounded it with old foundation stone, and after putting down landscape fabric, filled it with broken slate (a mix of our buckingham and some old barn slates). It makes a surprisingly nice patio (although NOT barefoot friendly), was nearly free, and the pieces shouldn't migrate like pea gravel does. We're waiting to see how it ages, and may use the rest to make some paths through the garden (which doesn't actually exist yet, but anyway . . .).

in progress . . .

this looked better last fall with the rest of our
furniture and plants, but you get the idea . . .