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:

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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!



                         

 

Excuses and Philosophical Observations!

 Wow...has it been a month already? No excuses here...except for working some overtime and my carpenter having a tornado in his backyard and having to do my helper's sheetrock "mudding" over and I'll think of more if you give me a minute.

                                                                                     

We're getting there  Gary the Carpenter, Ron the Plumber and me...that's about all I can say. Here's some shots of the new laundry room in progress in the upstairs hallway...we cut the wall out of one end of the roof eaves and our "retired" plumber Ron did some complicated roughing in of the pipes.

 

In their spare time,  the boys hung the kitchen cabinets;

A LOT less cabinet space then we have right now!!. The indentation on the right of the second photo is for a spice rack...and Joyce wants Concrete Countertops!

Concrete countertops???????

Meanwhile,  I took on what I thought was) an easier task: turning the back door around so there is better access to the kitchen. What I didn't know was that the jam was cockeyed and the door had been cut to fit the cockeyedness....so in turning it around...it was now doubly cockeyed!  (but it works...big gap on both ends...but it works.)

 
OUCH! =>>>>      

We also added a coat closet to the downstairs "right" parlor (as opposed to the "left" parlor)...and found folding doors for it at the Habitat Restore;

BUT NOW I GET PHILOSOPHICAL.....   

The Mystery of the Dying Rhododendron

You will recall this plant from an earlier blog entry in April.  We planted it in the front yard,  under the big trees, with the appropriate acid-rich soil and treated it with the proper, expensive fertilizer...and it was fun in April and May but began to fade about July and by the end of August was dead and returned to the garden center.  Gary, the carpenter, suggested that trimming of the trees out front had changed the environment from shade to partial shade and had killed it.  Others said the summer was too dry, even though it was watered regularly.  A third suggestion was that misery loves company so we should have planted several of them at once.  The best suggestion of all:  shit happens. 

The thing that bothers me...about the dead plant...is that I prayed about it and over it;  stopping short of anointing it with holy water.  It was not a big prayer;  it was not for world peace or to find a cure for cancer or even for the Cincinnati Reds to win the pennant this year.  I guess it has something to do with natural law;  you violate it...even if you don't know what you did...and you receive the consequences.  SOMETIMES,  there is divine intervention when you pray, and sometimes, even if you don't.  Those times are called Miracles and they do happen but not in Arlington Heights,  not in our front yard, at least not this time.

Maybe the Reds will have better luck. 

The old house is shaping up...next week, I start the flooring in the kitchen and dining room and the boys pour a base for the shower upstairs and finish the downstairs bathroom.  I promise to be more responsible in reporting what is going on in the Old House.  

Tanks for your patience!   Deano

A Weekend to Remember

While I should have been inside working on the bathroom...I spent most of the Memorial Day weekend (while not drinking beer and grilling out) working outside to fill in the "gap" in the fence next to the railroad...fence guy gave me the cedar slats for free (and I have just as many left over). I've deferred to my train buddy John Derrenkamp who complained that he couldn't see the bottom of passing trains. So, I'll use the remaining slats to make a small platform and John and others now will be able to watch trains to their heart's content! In the foreground of the s t r e c h e d photo is the garden I am building with the sundial on one of the brick posts removed from the side of the driveway.

We did reach a milestone in that one room is just about complete and Joyce and I bought a used couch and loveseat to celebrate! OK...that was the easy room...no bathroom or kitchen yet but the floor in the downstairs bathroom should be in this coming week.

We are taking a BIG risk this week in listing one of our rental properties for sale but six months or longer is the norm right now for a sale. If the house sells early, we will have to move into the new old house sooner than expected. Well, at least there is one working toilet and a couch to sleep on!

This is our house on Elliot Avenue which is for sale...if you are interested (old "before" photo) :

Well, yikes! four property tax bills just came in the mail...it must almost be June! Thanks for tuning in this week...Deano

No, we're not burning heretics at the stake or anything...at least not lately...these are fence posts for the new fence. The weather turned nice after a rainy weekend, so Ray the fence guy showed (by himself) to start the job.

And while my back was turned, Mark helped him with something and Ray offered him a job as his helper hadn't shown up for several days. (Okay, I was expecting a CREW for the amount we paid for the fence!).



I spent the morning digging up weeds that had become bushes over the last few years, to get them out of the way of the fence. Some of these required that I get the Sears Craftsman Chainsaw working, after purchasing from one of me neighbor's drinking buddies last year.

I don't know anything about chainsaws...people from New Jersey don't do this. After a few swipes at a dead tree, and in view of Mark's new gainful employment, Ray, the neighbor's ex-brother in law, came to save the day!



The second tree proved hard to pull down...so Mark returned and it took all three of us to get it down!





That's Mark on the right, Ray on the Left


At least, I actually got an outside spigot working today...that's the first working water in the house

But we found yet more termite damage too...the whole downstairs bathroom will have to be gutted.


And then, there's this little number!! ======>

OK, let's play the "What do you think it is game?"

Huh? Ok, what is it?

No, the gutter is fine...there is some kind of underlayment falling out of the wall...but that's not the most serious issue here...look harder!

Yes, if you looked closely, there is a LIVE romex electric cable...in the gutter. This apparently was added by someone who desired an extra outlet in the upstairs bathroom...and the easiest way to do that, of course, is to run the electrical service outside of the house and up the wall.

And you thought you had seen everything!

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

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