schoolhouse update

As usual, let's just skip the acknowledgment of how long it's been and just get right back into it...

We've been really busy, just not busy taking pictures since we've been finishing up after dark.  With the spectacular weather we've finally hit our stride with the schoolhouse (only 3 years into the project).  After all the hair-pulling about how best to use the original materials it's wonderous that things are actually going exactly to plan, and the siding is about 80% up.  I had intended to take some pictures this morning, but naturally everything's covered in snow again.  The most exciting development however is that we'll be laying the brick floor next week.

Laying the floor requires excavating some of the gravel we put down as a temporary floor, then laying and leveling the layers of stone and sand.  Given that neither of us are back in shape after babies and surgeries, we'll be happily paying our neighbor who did the foundation to do the heavy lifting for us.  We'll save money buying the stone by the truckload, which means our driveway will get a much needed refresh as well.  

As usual, one of the most satisfying parts of getting this done will be getting materials out of the way for good.  In this case, the bricks are the quintessential hard yellow brick Pittsburgh is known for - they and the sandstone came from a demolished mansion that used to stand behind us.  Previous owners dragged everything to the property line, where they proceeded to sink deep into the soil and get covered with decades of leaves.  Some of the piles are now sunk two feet down, and even with the warm days the most we can get out is the topmost layer that's melted, and then we need to wait another warm day or two for the next layer to melt....  We're hopeful that this project will use the majority of the brick (we'll still have a considerable amount of red brick and sandstone to contend with however) so that clean up and landscaping can begin this year.  

Another highlight of this project?  It'll mean that as soon as the floor is in, the huge yellow carport can go, although I dread the mudpit it will leave behind (and the malamute that will find the mud utterly delightful).  

And as an aside, I'm finding it easier to post real-time updates on instagram, so if anyone would like to follow along there you can head to  https://www.instagram.com/mayfairmistress/.

plain jane firebox

We're remarkably lucky that many of our beautiful firebacks and inserts have survived the years intact, especially given the abuse that so much of the house has gone through.  We have a few that are plain brick though, and it's unclear if they have missing elements, or were plain to begin with.  One of these plain ones is in the nursery.  There had been significant water infiltration from the degraded chimneys, and this led to the flaking paint and efflorescence in the firebox.

The brown is masonite covering the flue,
I wasn't brave enough to take it off...

It was a surprisingly straightforward task (albeit filthy) to clean up the mess of paint, brick and mortar dust, and soot (so much soot in this house, every task, soot).  Everything got a thorough scrub with a nylon brush, and a good vacuum.  Then a few coats of rustoleum high heat black paint.  The paint went on thin, and seemed to penetrate and seal the questionable sections quite well.  This was always a gas burning fireplace, and we reran a gas line to the area (although not back into the firebox) when we ran the gas line to the dryer.  Someday we hope to install a modern gas insert, and the paint should hold up just fine to occasional use.

You may be wondering what the writing on the brick is...  

It says Reese Hammond and Co. Bolivar PA.  While the company was incorporated in 1898, initially causing me great confusion, it existed with Reese and Hammond as partners in the 1870's.

a Reese and Hammond firebrick, not mine...

the Reese Hammond brickworks

 The room is creeping towards completion, with paint touchups, quarter round and such waiting to get done, as well as stove black on the rusty iron surround (unless someone has a more exciting suggestion).  The tile is a long term project. I keep hoping to find matching tiles, and while I've seen the flower border before, I've never seen it in the odd olive color.  Maybe at some point I'll get desperate enough to integrate another pattern, but it's only been 5 years, I have more patience than that left in me...

amber waves of pine

The floors in the nursery/future master bath have been done for a month or so now, and they managed to become the longest single project in working on the space.  Longer than running the plumbing.  Longer than building (and unbuilding and rebuilding) walls.  Longer than stripping the woodwork.  Longer even than restoring the windows.

Yikes.

The story of the floors began when we bought the house.  Despite the absence of working roofs, plumbing or electrical, the bank decided that they also required us to finish the floors on the second floor under the terms of the 203k.  In this room, the floor was a mix of layers including vinyl sheet flooring, cat piss, 9 inch asbestos checkerboard tile, cat piss, two layers of marble contact paper, cat piss, black linoleum adhesive, cat piss, and the original faux grained painted border.  The cat piss issue is important since it almost caused us to walk away from the deal.  While the whole house was fairly saturated with urine, this room was by far the worst since it had the most exposed bare wood.  The first few inspections the weather was quite cold and wet and the smell/moisture wasn't obvious.  However, on the final walk through it was warm and dry and we could immediately see the wet pervading the floors - we thought we must have another leak from a mystery source until I put my nose to it....

So, we stripped the floor, did a quick sand and many soaks with the various urine destroying solutions and three coats of waterlox (not sufficient on pine, just enough to make them look doneish for the bank).  Now the intention was to be able to come back later, scuff sand the floor and put of a few more coats of waterlox.  The reality is that my roofer decided I was not capable of sanding the floors on my own and did me the enormous favor of coming in with his edger and sanding the edges - gauging them so badly that fixing them to be level with the rest of the floor would take off half the sandable wood.  So that's how they sat for 3 years.

At 8 months pregnant the room was done enough for me to revisit the floor, so I conned my friends into carrying the big ez sand  machine up the stairs for me and joyously got to work.  Only to stop 10 minutes later after realizing the machine had a metal burr on one of the sanding pad bases that etched curlicues deep into my pine.  I may have cried.  I swear it wasn't the hormones.

The manager at Home Depot did what he could to help the crazy pregnant woman, and ended up giving me over $100 dollars worth of sanding disks for my handheld Dewalt because I decided I was going to do the floors BY HAND.  I almost finished them too, and then Toren arrived two weeks early.  

After a month and a half of recovery I was ready to revisit the floors.  The room had been locked up, covered in sawdust, with our closet tarped off (yes, we had no access to our closet for two months when we had planned on a week).  Finished the 80, did the 120, spent two days dental picking the gaps between the boards and vacuuming and was finally ready for Waterlox 2.0.

It went down beautifully.  And there is much evidence of the whole menagerie memorialized in the floor... The first two coats are Minwax red oak and dark walnut (8 oz each in a gallon of waterlox), with three more coats of straight waterlox.  And given I was doing this with windows open in early December I think I owe global warming a big thank you!

all hail technology

I know I just expressed my relative disinterest in technology, but then I came across this.

https://glowforge.com/

I will be buying one, just not the first version.  It can etch glass for stained glass panels.  It can engrave leather to replace my one of a kind lincrusta.  I can carve wood for moldings.  I don't have words for how giddy this makes me.  Especially since Lincrusta in England estimated it would be 20,000 pounds just to carve a new roller (if they were even willing to do it).

So yeah, technology is pretty cool after all....

Maybe they'll send me one because I'm a blogger.  I bet I could beta test the shit out of it.

december updates

Truly I meant to start up again before now, but then my computer started smoking...

Luckily, it had the good sense to die on cyber Monday, so a replacement was easy to come by.  I'm well past the point of being excited by electronics though, so the expenditure was nothing but aggravating.  It's hard not to calculate the things I won't be able to work on around here so that I'm able to keep typing...

Since last we spoke we've:

a.  planted many of the bulbs bought for us in the Netherlands - some of which have already emerged given this crazy weather

b.   cured the hatch to the widow's walk of an obnoxious little leak.  This allowed us to weatherstrip the attic hatch (compressible gasket on top of the quarter round the hatch rests on) and reinstall it, finishing up the attic work at last.  I had intended to paint the hatch before putting it back up, but some chips revealed that it was originally shellacked, and the beadboard looks worth restoring.  That'll wait till spring, but I did put on some nice reproduction Eastlake hardware to make handling it much easier (it's remarkably heavy).

c.  hosted Thanksgiving and HAMukkah 2.0 with great success, while managing to forget the 5 year anniversary of owning the house.

d.  restored and rewired another chandelier better suited to the scale of the dining room (the vintage fixture that was there will grace another room).

as close to the correct glow as I could photograph

e.  have read more books in just the past 2 months than in the previous year, best among them?  High Fidelity, which is impossible to read and not envision John Cusack narrating and The Time Traveler's Wife, with shockingly excellent music and Arts and Crafts references.

f.  put up a bit more siding on the schoolhouse.

g.  finally finished the floors in the nursery/future master bath, full details will be forthcoming...

h.  got rid of 2 1/2 trees worth of logs to a friend for his woodburner.  We're seeing some evidence of ground termites, which is forcing us to start rounding up our stray woodpiles.  In return for the free wood they helped us move the last salvaged radiator to the basement, and there's a chance for free BBQ if the restaurant wants the sassafras for smoking...

i.  managed to keep an infant alive for two whole months!