brick by brick by brick

This won't be exciting to you at all . . . But for me, a glorious day indeed . . . The last of the bricks from the stair bump-out demo have been moved to the back yard to await future projects. Our house is looking less and less like a salvage yard every day. Lets start at the beginning (a year and a half ago)!

shortly after we bought her

that caution tape was our only Halloween decor

no longer an illegal three family!

this is after we started the clean up

last cart!

I'm still working on staining the new shingle work on the reconstructed stair cantilever, next post will be full frontal, and you'll get to see just how much more work we have ahead of us . . .

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!

a demo a day

So what if we're getting house guests tomorrow, lets tear stuff up!

when we bought the house

as we got started

And by stuff I mean floor. And by floor I mean the cheap oak that was slapped on top of the existing quartersawn oak and faux grained pine.

quarter sawnish grained pine

This top layer was poorly installed (splitting, cracking, buckling) around the same time that the house was split into a multi-family in the 20's to hide the changes to the floor plan.

good on the bottom (quartered oak with
mahogany border), junk on the top

We started from the living room, and an hour later the boards were gone (don't worry, we're keeping them and hopefully will reuse it upstairs in a herringbone pattern, we have two full rooms of it to remove downstairs) . . .

The purpose of this, in addition to general removal of travesties, was to get an idea of what changes had been done to the house. We were hoping the pine underneath (the original finished floor) would give us some clues, as it has done elsewhere in the house. Specifically, we know this hallway was once part of the dining room, and that it was seceded when the bathroom was added (we've seen the remains of the cove ceiling and original stenciling above the drop ceiling in the bathroom, and the door trim in the hallway only matches that in the dining room). I was holding out for an outline on the floor of either a built-in, or the correct door location from the front parlor to the dining room, sadly, all I got was a bobby pin and some cut floorboards whose significance is yet to be determined . . .

now it just needs scrubbing

a cure for boardom

Now that it's warmed up our main task is sorting through all the piles that we've accumulated in the past two years. Most of these are marginally useful building materials, things like fir porch boards and true 2x4's, that we keep around for patching. The problem in the case of the wood is that the longer it sits outside, the less and less useful it becomes (in addition to attracting things like carpenter ants and termites, which have already claimed a set of corbels), not to mention how heinous it all looks. We knew it was time to begin cleaning it up when a current aerial of the house was worse than it was before we bought it (when there were piles of trash, a collapsed garage, trees taking over the fire escapes and junk cars). We'll hopefully finish moving all the bricks next week when reinforcements arrive, until then, we took on a project that will hopefully prove that hording these things serves a purpose.

The purpose in this case is a table top for an antique industrial drafting table base. The plan is for a long, console type table to sit behind our main office desk, with our filing cabinet underneath and printer and such on top. We're using the beautiful straight-grained fir porch boards we removed from the stair addition. We had hoped to use the full 10 foot lengths, but doubted the edges would support the weight of the printer (the drafting table supports are only 28 inches apart). We cleaned up the usable boards with 80 grit, and then nailed them to 1x6's.

yes, we build stuff at night, we wouldn't
want our neighbors getting sleep or anything!

We couldn't nail them properly because most of them were missing their tongues, which means ugly, impossible to hide nail holes - but it will be covered in office supplies most of the time, so I doubt anyone will notice. We then used 1x2 on the edges, both to hide the end grain and the nailers, and to stiffen the table top (which worked much better than expected - there is no flex).

We couldn't resist writing on the inside of one of the 1x2's, if you can't read it, it says something like "this was made on my birthday, 4/23/13, from floor boards removed from the stair addition." Yes, it is indeed my birthday, if you need proof, here it is . . .

Those are for me. Because I'm awesome. And my mother-in-law loves me.

Here's the first coat of stain (just dark oak gel stain), it needs another coat of stain, then some poly. In a day or two we should have our 1/6th of a bowling alley to put our printer on. Hopefully it keeps behaving itself.

the great garden saga continues . . .

Honestly, there's not much to report, but my muscles are so sore that there has to be SOMETHING to show for it. So, how about one more garden update till I move back to indoor work (last one for a while, I promise).

We strung up some galvanized cable onto tapcons for the wisteria. The wisteria deserved the attention - I bought it for a dollar at the end of the season a year ago not even knowing if it was alive. I dropped it in the ground, forgot it was there, stacked the pieces of two slate mantles on top of it, neglected it through the drought last summer, and yet, it's still alive and growing. I had thought someone would be selling more of them last year, so I could buy two more for the other brick porch columns, but none showed up for a reasonable price. Does anyone know if wisteria is easy to propagate?

I also got a bunch of plants in the ground in the front yard, including some cosmos, ferns and hostas. Our neighbors up the hill took out a lot of the previous owners overgrown landscaping and are putting in grass - I retaliated by putting in some crimson barberry along the lot line. This way they can mow without my worrying about them veering into my plants. They're nice people, but it took every ounce of self control not to go into a replacement window rant when they talked about getting quotes to replace their original 3 over 1 windows (literally the last original thing on what could be a very cool Prairie style house). I thought about offering to let them borrow a couple of my books on prairie architecture, but I don't think they'd go for it. Luckily their quotes started at $40,000, so I don't think their windows are going anywhere anytime soon!

I had dragged some terracotta chimney liners home from a house that came down, I dug them into the ground, and I think I'll fill them with some potting mix and plant some trailing annuals in them. These are surrounded by the hostas and ferns that haven't made an appearance yet.

I also planted some pots with my red cannas and some annuals (red and purple pansies) - frankly, I'm amazed the cannas have any life left. I dug them well into winter, brought them into the kitchen to clean up before storing, forgot about them, and left them in a plastic bag next to the radiator all winter. Shame on me... The planters that were right at home at our Miami house seem a bit out of place here, I probably should have left them with the in-laws.

Since I had the pickaxe out the trained monkey did some research into how much of a fight the last of the concrete in the old driveway would put up. The answer - not much...

scale-wise these chunks are about 3 x 3

The supervisor was not impressed...

think our other critters are jealous
that only this one gets the cameos?