FAILSAFE

SO,  IF YOU ARE MARRIED, YOU UNDERSTAND THAT YOU DO WHATEVER YOUR WIFE WANTS DESPITE HOW IRRATIONAL AND IMPOSSIBLE IT MAY BE...

In this case,  it's a laundry room on the second floor by the bedroom...in an old house, with plaster walls, and not designed for plumbing. Here's the laundry closet being framed in the upstairs hallway...last year.  Now,  we have to install FAILSAFES...and there are three:

1.  A Shut off valve for the water behind and above the washing machine...every home should have one.

   2. A drain underneath the washing machine in the floor...to the outside...just in case. There's a lot of debate about this but we decided to be conservative!

3.  After doing 1. and 2.,  don't put the Picasso in the dining room underneath the laundry. (OK, we don't have a Picasso...but we do have several Hardgroves' which is another story).

 Chiseling out the drain hole....

 Oooops....stud under the first hole!

 I stick a sheetrock knife under the bottom of the inside dryer vent hole

 Outside,  I draw around the traced sheetrock hole, and cut carefully with the Sawzall...

 Then measure fourteen inches under the dryer vent for the drain hole and cut a two inch hole!  The pipe fits!

 Here's the drain fitted in...but not glued yet, until the membrane is installed.

 Meanwhile,  the vinyl floor has been installed in the study...

 And the finished Dryer Vent and Drain on the outside wall...doesn't look too intrusive...

and IT's Spring...and transplanted daffodils look happy at the old house!

SPRING ALWAYS COMES AGAIN...REMEMBER THAT IN YOUR NEXT WINTER!

TimeTable

The conductor checks his pocket watch above the newly-painted bookcase in the parlor...and we wonder with him how much longer the Old House will take to finish...

Not too much longer...I insist,  as I sand the "swamp pine" floor in the bedroom...leaving enough of the old dings and imperfections to show through...after all, they're part of the house' history too!

Here's the finished floor...after two coats of Amber Shellac....an old fashioned (judging by the lack of supply at Lowe's) but effective floor finish which needs to be renewed periodically:

Meanwhile, in the upstairs bathroom,  we're learning to install shower doors.  The 70" doors we bought at Home Depot are well made and with detailed instructions obviously written by an engineer who never actually installed any!  It took bud Jim and I several hours (yes, hours) to drill three small holes in the ceramic tile...which required a series of carbide/tungsten bits and a great deal of lubrication.

Here's the finished product (and the plank floor).  Looks good and worth the trouble! Now for a good medicine chest above the vanity.

Meanwhile,  downstairs the convection oven which we purchased on Craig's List is finallllly  installed:

  
The blower motor actually is bolted to the floor and the stove pushed over it...weird!!!

Above on a shelf rescued from a neighbor's garbage a hand built train entertains...

 ................But to answer the conductor's question,  we've set June 1st. as total move-in date.............................................

But it looks like Fred is ready to move sooner!

Things Past...A little different Diary Entry

We haven't done anything "dramatic" to the new old house in a few weeks  ( I mean,  we did have insulation blown in the attic and we're painting here and there...but unless you want to look at mounds of fiber insulation...there's not much to see!)  SO,  I thought that you might want to peruse some of the OTHER old house projects that I have undertaken in the murky past:

 Click on Link for clearer photo!
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This is my first house, purchased in 1984 and sold in 1999 in Montville Township, New Jersey.  When I bought it, the house was a wreck;  leaks everywhere,  broken plaster, even a dead rat in the toilet.  It looked good when I left after working on it for ten for fifteen years...even BETTER since the new owner added the handsome fence around the property!  I've learned so much since then...like not using a metal "power stripper" on nineteenth century clapboard!  The house originally had a veranda on the driveway side. 

Now, the next two house projects in the Village of Arlington Heights (we still own both of them) are all the dogs' fault since they chose to do their business in front of the deteriorating structures as I walked them down the street.

#1   Here's our Elliott Avenue house,  which appears in the 1880's maps of Hamilton County.  When I purchased it,  there was a large tree leaning on the back of the house.

The house has three bedrooms upstairs with an oversized claw foot bathtub,  a "mother in law" room in back of the kitchen and incorporates this handsome staircase...one of the spindles has been replicated...can you tell which one? 

Two years ago...we had a freak windstorm "Hurricane Ike," that tore off several of the old asbestos roofing tiles.  Except for a deductible...Ike gave us a brand new $10,000 roof!

We have been fortunate to have the same good tenants in this house since buying it in 2006 for $50,000 and it certainly has not required the labor and money that our other houses have demanded.  

#2  Our Glen Rose Avenue house;  though our smallest house,  it has a unique architectural style (half a dozen in Arlington Heights...I've not seen any like them elsewhere) and a colorful history.  A salesmen named Menuez purchased the house ca. 1890 and left a tin full of letters in the attic.  The house remained in his family for eighty years  (local legend:  a young great grandaughter died in the back bedroom during the 1950's...her father locked the door and it remained locked until his death in the late 1970's.)

Before:

After:

                                                                                              

                     
We've also had trees removed, the driveway paved and found a root had replaced a drainage pipe...under the basement concrete! I think I should paint the bricks on the front porch...what do you think?

Neglected as this house was...THERE WAS NO TERMITE DAMAGE!!!!  Sadly,  the house is vacant and we are currently looking for good tenants (we're two and two on tenants so far:  two good; two bad).

I hope that in some way we've improved the communities in which we have lived but I'm also reminded of the temporary nature of "things" in this world and the need to hold them with a loose grip!

Our goal for the next couple of weeks...painting upstairs,  finish laundry room, put up ceiling tiles, get appliances working...then to move just in time for Spring!



                         

 

Building An Arch...a Step by Step Guide!

OOOPS...the pantry door I built in the kitchen of the old house is too short...my wife cannot access the top of the pantry (and she's NOT happy)!!

 

An "elegant" solution:  build an Arch on top!

I started by drilling a sheetrock screw in the center over the lintel...and attaching a string and pencil

Then,  I drew an round arc and cut along the line with a sharp blade

Followed by a handsaw...

I removed the wallboard...but it broke in pieces!

One side done!

It would be easier just to place the removed sheetrock on the opposite wall and trace...but since it broke in small pieces, I had to lean my carpenter's pencil against the cut wall and traced around the inside wall...the hard way!

Finally,  both sides of my arch are exposed...

To remove the studs,  I used a reciprocating saw to cut a pilot line horizontally...

and then down following the edge of the sheetrock.

Here's the arch cut out on both sides!

You can get a kit to finish your arch...but the local home improvment warehouse didn't have one...so I used a thin piece of plywood cut against the grain instead...

And secured with sheetrock screws at each of the three studs.

Finally,  I took fiberglass sheetrock tape and cut little triangles so it would fold around the edges...

and impregnated it with joint compound, just like cast material used in a hospital

 

Here's the almost finished arch with the first coat of "mud,"  ready for more sanding and compounding.

My wife now has access for two more shelves in the eighteen or so inches above the arch and it adds a little more character to the kitchen in our old house!

The Secret Room...

I was putting an outlet box in the Hallway ceiling upstairs and noticed a large empty space above the

 sheetrock.  Upon further "investigation" (with a hammer); I discovered this:

 

A Four foot attic extends the entire length of the house...and this mysterious cedar-shake room is in the middle, under the actual roof!  Was it from an older house?

Ooops...I accidentally put my foot through the fragile sheetrock on the ceiling!

And my hands, with multiple cuts and permanently attached black 100 year old dust,  have had enough for one day!

(But I did put up an attic stairway from the Habitat Restore...anyway...now for insulation and planks!)

And in other news, the upstairs vanity now works...despite a Rube Goldbergesque PVC trap due to the fact that the plumber put the wall drain too low!!

And finally, a winter scene for you!  Happy January...

Spring comes soon!