Wow, been kind of late writing a new post about our old house.

First, I brought over the dog the other day and she pooped on the floor; so I put her outside and she ran away...two hours later a lady brought her back and said she had been run over by a truck...not injured, but the truck ran over her between the wheels and kept going. I felt terrible, course, the fence will be put in next month!



There was issue with the primer I bought at Lowes,' I asked for a "beige" color and they tinted the Kilz primer...Lavender! It looked kind of nice but we don't have anything that would match it, so the beige topcoat is being applied to the left and right parlors...hopefully tomorrow.

We still do not have the water on...the reason is that I have just finished sweat soldering the seventh burst copper pipe in our HUD "winterized" home. I will never trust the government again. Both toilets are cracked also...and consider this:

Below, I'm in the crawl space under the front bathroom (used to be part of the porch). Termites must have had a grand time dining because several beams are just...gone...the end of this one fell down and took the copper pipe connecting the toilet with it! I removed the remaining beam with the sawzall and sweat soldered the joint...it appears to be fine but the toilet is cracked from freezing and must be replaced...I have no idea how I will replace the beams.

Now, when trying to sweat solder, remember: make your joints shine, sand 'em down and use lots of flux. Mine look pretty amateurish but they are holding as far as I can tell.

The walls in the front of the house should be done this week and I will put down the hardwood flooring...then start on the kitchen at the back of the house...which is just a sea of random cabinets and holes in the sheetrock at this point.

I'm planning to put an eight foot fence at the back of the property by the railroad just because kids keep using our yard for a shortcut when they walk along the tracks...there is a three foot high masonry wall...the remnant of a garage...that I have thought of building up to ten feet and using to show "neighborhood" movies. It would be reminiscent of a drive-in movie, like the one in the O. Winston Link photo on our bedroom wall...the train in the background behind the movie. Well, it's a dream anyway...



In two weeks, the Ringling Brothers Circus Train wil be parked at the Lunken Field yard and Spring will have come to Cincinnati...at least, that gives me a warm feeling when I see the silver cars off of Beechmont Avenue....I've had enough of winter!

Later!



Deano

Everything you've always wanted to know about Termites

We knew that there was some termite damage here and there...but when you deal with old houses, things are always worse then they seem and when you start addressing one problem, you find another and another and so on.

The Parlor Right floor was a little "bouncy" near the fireplace but no damage was visible except in the far right corner of the photo below. Because the furnace with its octopus of ducts was directly below, I had to fix the problem from the top which meant removing floorboards.

Termites are attracted by moisture and I suspect that the moisture came from bad sheathing on the fireplace chimney...around the hearth, all of the beams were damaged or destroyed.



Now this is a piece from one of those beams...the termites had gone right through the grain and eaten the best part. We'll have this framed and call it "Termite Art."


I tried to pull up about one third of the "swamp pine" floorboards with a crowbar but since they were tongue and groove, it required that a circular saw be run along the groove to cut off the tongue. The saw is old and the depth kept changing...making matters more difficult.

I removed all the damaged splinters and framed around the hearth with 2x8 pressure treated lumber... using a bottle jack, by the way, below the hearth, just in case that the concrete might want to crack.

Each damage beam was "sistered" with the same 2x8 lumber and bolted in place with large bolts, washers and nuts.
The floorboards were replaced, best that I could...some had split but these will be covered with new flooring anyway. The bad news is that I have found damage even on the second floor but everything seems solid up there. I suspect that the front porch deck is a goner too.

The place is sure a mess...the lesson to be learned is to do one task at a time...not three or four but us ADD guys just don't know any better.

More next time....

D

MELTDOWN!

Okay, we're freaking out...just too much work to do and too much old age.

Joyce finished spackling three walls in the left parlor on Sunday and gave up...she's been sore ever since...five walls and two ceilings to go and that's just the ones that have been stripped of wallpaper so far.

I've replaced four burst pieces of copper pipe in our "HUD Winterized" house and keep finding more when the water is turned on...and promptly off again.

Meanwhile, the biggest mistake I have made so far was to buy the hardwood flooring when we are just not ready for it yet...it is sitting in a pile in dining room waiting for the walls to be finished in the two parlors...against the manufacturer's advice.

I've given up my priorities...and built a work bench in the cellar (my mother hated that term...not sure why, but it's a CELLAR and not a basement).


Then, after punching several unnecessary holes in the walls of the downstairs bathroom...I finally found the copper vent pipe that we need to tie into...looks like the entire room will have to be gutted...just like the one upstairs. Some of those holes look strangely like a fist. :-(

By the way, ever get one of those "Handyman Awards" emails...with photos of things put together with duct tape or something...I think this one takes the cake!


Yes, folks...that's a regular old non-GFI electrical outlet between the toilet and the bathtub. I believe you may find this as an entry in the classic book "101 creative ways to kill your spouse."

I hope Joyce's father didn't do the wiring...he did most of the neighborhood during the 1960's.



So, I gave up for the day and decided to start the taxes instead...turns out we made too much money...due to the unprecedented fact that we now have tenants that actually pay the rent! ...and found out that our wonderful government is now charging a penalty if you made more than you thought you would...so much for hard work!

More next time....Don't worry...be happy!

Deano

Diary Entry No. 3: Priorities

It's Winter: I HATE Winter and wonder why we aren't moving somewhere warm instead of down the street.

We have no deadline to meet or anything but still, the cold is throwing a monkey wrench into our priorities for restoring the Old House.

The number one priority has to wait until Spring and until a real-live mason (i.e., a bricklayer not the guys who have secret rites in a temple) is available. The house has a large bedroom half of which sits on the front porch, supported by four brick columns. Two of the columns, if you look closely, are bowing out...and the room above has dropped about an inch. The room needs to be jacked up (very slowly) over a period of weeks and new brick columns built....a scary job and with consequences including cracked plaster and who knows what else. I have two potential contractors...neither of which appear on Angie's List but both seem to know what they're doing....even though one comes with a disclaimer that would allow him to drive a tank through the house. But I certainly don't want to stand under a room being jacked up over my head all by my lonesome!

Priority Number Two is to repair the termite damage in the "right" parlor...several beams are eaten away and floor is "bouncy." I'll describe this repair in some detail next time.

Priority Number 3 is a fence because good fences make good neighbors. Alas, that has to wait until Spring also but I have applied for a building permit with the town as the rear fence needs to be eight feet due to the elevation of the railroad track behind our house.

Ah, the railroad; the house was built facing the railroad tracks, not the road, the only one like it in our town. We like the trains, and plan on a railroad theme for most of the house, except one room which is to remind Joyce of her time living in Florida.

Priority Number 4 is the kitchen...which is just slightly to small for every scenario we have tried. After several quotes for new cabinets to the tune of $10,000; we settled on $800 worth of cabinets from Craig's List (slightly damaging one cabinet door which flew off into the road during transit). The cabinets will fit with one compromise: the refrigerator has to go in the pantry but I will replace the pantry door with a larger archway.

<==== Old kitchen Cabinets

Priority Number 5 is the new laundry closet in the hallway upstairs and the new shower stall in the adjacent bathroom which involves displacing a nest of squirrels and dismantling old tube and loop wiring...which looks vaguely like electric barbed wire fencing from Stalag 13.

More tomorrow!!

Diary Entry No. 2: The House and the Plan

Without a good plan, things go awry...which is a quaint term for "Get's Screwed Up."














The only problem is: there's MY plan...and then there's HER plan...and then there's the house' own plan...and finally, there's God's plan. I have no idea what the latter three of those plans are, but I figure that it will all work out okay in the end. In the meantime, we'll do it my way until I'm forced to do otherwise...which probably won't be very far down the road.

Above are the first photos I took the first time I entered the old house....me, in the mantelpiece mirror; Then the "Left Parlor" and finally, the "Right Parlor." These are the first rooms one sees when entering the house. The rooms are large, bright and...well, a great party place.

What you DON'T see is the three layers of wallpaper under that all that white paint...for starters...and what you don't feel is the bouncy floor near the fireplace in the room on the right...which means termite damage. You may, however notice the tacky 1950's bathroom in the second photo...where another entrance door used to be. That's because the "right parlor" used to be used as a bedroom. However, the plumbing job was good...and gives us something to tie our upstairs laundry room into...more about that to come.

Here's the Floor plan for the first floor:

Well, we've already changed the plan...the kitchen isn't large enough for the washer/dryer so the refrigerator goes in the pantry and the laundry upstairs...but more about that later too.

So far, we've removed the closet in the middle of the diagram and have a walk through hallway...

but it's cold and generally disgusting in Ohio here in February so I'm not removing the kitchen door until things become warm and balmy!


The big danger is doing too many different things at once...which is what us guys with ADD tend to do...and the second big danger is finding helpers that may prove not to be too helpful...

Later!

Deano....New Jersey Boy sojourning in Cincinnati

I invite comments...dherbert53@aol.com

Diary Entry No. 1: We buy our first HUD Home

My wife's friend, Becky Candler. lived in the white house at the end of the street in the 1950's and 1960's but the neighborhood was far older than that; the John Olden subdivision, laid out in the 1880's; one of the first planned suburbs in the country.

I didn't know much about Cincinnati, Ohio when I moved here in 1999 from New Jersey, 'cept that people there tended to be provincial and perennially resistant to change... but I was an admirer of old houses...and especially of the white house at the end of the street.

Alas, Becky told us that the house had been yellow and had arched windows until Mrs. Candler hired a cheap vinyl siding contractor in the seventies who messed up everything. There goes the neighborhood...but those windows will return someday, I secretly vow.

About two years ago, the previous homeowner walked out on their very expensive mortgage, and eventually, HUD, the good old Secretary of Housing and Urban Development acquired the property. It took over a year for a "for sale" sign to appear.

I've never purchased a HUD property before...and probably would not again. The listing and the contract was a bureaucratic nightmare...somebody lost a LOT of money on this house and I suspect that it was the taxpayers...you and me.

For instance, HUD had hired a contractor to go through the house and document every spot of missing or chipped paint. I didn't bother reading his voluminous report; old houses have lead paint; we know this, everyone knows this and they didn't have to waste taxpayer's money reminding us when a simple disclaimer would suffice!

"HOUSE MAY HAVE LEAD PAINT." There, now was that so difficult?

Anyway...at $55,000 the house, sitting on a double lot, was a steal (It had been sold for $105,000 previously) and I signed an offer for $48,000.

Just after we signed the contract...someone kicked the back door in and removed copper pipe from the house...and HUD's local service company didn't bother to show up for three days to secure the property. HUD...through (yet another) company representing them refused to repair the damage. $800 of damage for about $20 worth of copper...hmmmm. We backed out of the contract...and HUD graciously kept our $500 deposit.

We then spent the next three months...count 'em, three months...making a new offer of $35,000 every week until enough time had passed for HUD's software to finally figure out that no one was going to purchase the house but little old me.

So, that's the HUD story. We purchased the house officially in December and have a list of things to do that's about three miles long....

The REST of this blog will describe our experiences restoring the old house...to it's original glory and for our modern convenience....(and I promise, more photos and hopefully funny dialog).

Deano (New Jersey Boy sojourning in Cincinnati)

And I invite comments....dherbert53@aol.com