More framing, a little demo

On Monday I met with Chris from ITLandis to talk about a geothermal heat pump. He's drawing up a plan and will have it ready for us shortly. Once we have an actual proposal to look at, we should be able to come to a conclusion about the heating and cooling systems.

One idea is to use two different systems, a gas-fired furnace to feed the radiators in the old house and tubing for radiant floor heat in the addition, plus an electric heat pump to feed air conditioning ducts in the addition and some yet-to-be-determined source of cooling in the old house.

It's largely the cooling part of that equation that concerns me. We're in PECO territory (read: high rates) and with deregulation coming, electricity is going to become very expensive. Even though geothermal will undoubtedly have higher up-front costs, it's those ongoing monthly utility bills that I'm eyeing.

Dan and Garrett worked most of Monday through Wednesday in the entryway. They started framing the opening for the window that's going to replace the door in what will be the powder room. Then they framed the closure of the window that is smack in the middle of the stairwell and the hole in the stone wall into the living room (this is where the powder room sink will go). They also completed what may be the final bit of demolition by removing not one, but two layers of linoleum along with their subflooring. A third layer of linoleum, which is actually pretty cool looking, will remain, and they will start from there with new subflooring.


There were some remnants of wall paper, of which this was the bottom-most layer.


It was under about 4 layers, not including the blue floral one that I pulled off a couple months ago. I think it, too, is kind of funky. That must have been one happening kitchen back in the day!

While the guys were at it, they also took out the bathroom floor. By the end of Monday, they had constructed the first couple of stairs up to the landing.


Much head-scratching is occurring over the design of the stairs. Both John and Charlie have been quite concerned about fitting a stairway into that space from the inception of the plan. It'll be ingenious if it works--and I believe in the end it will. But getting there is going to prove challenging to everyone involved.

John will pick up the trim pieces for the fascia and soffit this week and needs to paint them in his shop because it's so cold. (Also, I think it's quicker and easier to paint them when they're laying flat at ground level than after they're nailed up at the eaves.) As soon as the trim is on, the roofers can come. With the pressure on to choose a trim color, I've decided on Harmonic Tan, one of the last colors that Charlie suggested, and that Fabian helped me paint last week. I went to Home Depot and picked up 2 gallons of it on Monday.

Now that the demo is finished, one of my big goals this week is to get the rugs out of the house. They are hopelessly infused with plaster dust, and a dirty cloud rises with each footfall. On Monday I started to free up the edges of the carpeting in the living room, but I was definitely in the way of the people doing the real work. So I went up to the attic and swept it again, then I vacuumed all the crevices and down the stairs. Later, after the workers left and a new dumpster arrived, Keith came down and we got more trash out the bedroom window, plus the carpet in that room and some from the living room, and all of the wood that was piled in the barn a couple months ago from all the closet demolition. Right off, we almost half filled another 20-yard dumpster.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, Dan and Garrett continued framing the entryway spaces. They built the upper landing, the powder room (the sink alcove is in the old window opening), the openings for the skylights, and the coat closet.



Some of the larger openings are now being closed off. First they are framed, then insulated if they are in exteriors walls, and covered with sheetrock. Roger finishes them off with a thin coating of structolite.


This week I removed the tackless strips on the second floor and whatever was accessible on the first floor, which frankly wasn't much. I can't get to most of the perimeter because the builders have pretty much turned the entire living room into a workshop. There are more tools, equipment and supplies piled in there than you can imagine. I'll have to post a picture of it later this week. It's fascinating (at least it is to me!). I also pulled out the staples in about a third of the linoleum in the entryway.

I guess I should never say silly things like, "Now that the demo is finished" because, honestly, I don't think the demo will ever be finished! On Tuesday I began by stripping wall paper (I can't believe there was more wall paper!) in the bathroom under where the tile was. I ended up doing this to the wall:

This area is really damaged from the nails that held up the studs for the tile wall, but we're going to repair it so we can preserve the curved profile at the window. The ceiling is totally destroyed, so it will be dry walled when they come in to do the newly-framed walls.

When I took out the window sill there was literally a village. . .oh, never mind. Why don't we just make a deal right now? No more pictures of mouse housing, no more mention of it. From now on, when I say plaster or wood was pulled off, you can automatically assume mice nests were uncovered and removed.

Keith continued with the masonry in the attic and living room. This is the first layer with etching to receive the next coat.

We understand that it's not the same as if Roger did it, but to us it looks pretty good, and there is a limit to what we can contract out. Besides, we like doing it and we like taking ownership in the renovation as much as possible. We're developing great respect for this enduring edifice, and even falling in love with it as we poke and prod into the underlying structure and all its systems.

Weekend update

Yesterday we cut out the metal straps from the stone walls and floor in the attic. The metal was hardened steel--it dulled 2 sawzall blades! It was under some tension, and gapped about a half inch after being cut. We left the cut ends in the stone and lifted the floor boards to remove the other ends, which were fastened to the beam with gigantic old nails. A small portion of the floor needs to be repaired where the boards were cut to accommodate the metal bars.

Next we bricked in the stovepipe holes and mortared the first coat on the side walls. After researching online about how to remediate creosote stains, we've decided to use a shellac-based primer to cover them, so we only removed the loose plaster instead of chipping out half the wall to remove the stained areas.

We also finished the insulation in the corners of the attic. John showed me how to use his foam gun last week, but there are several things you can do that would destroy the gun, and I didn't want to take the chance of that happening, so I paid John to do that job. Then yesterday I got a few cans of spray foam to fill in the remaining gaps.

I broom-swept the entire attic (again!) and we hauled a bunch of buckets of trash out to the dumpster.

Oh, and we caught another mouse. It may have been there for a while, as it was pretty dried up, but we just noticed it yesterday. Last week we put all the set traps on a windowsill to get them out of the way, and one unfortunate hungry guy found them!

Today we finished the demolition of the bathroom. I started taking the tiles off the ceiling one-by-one, but when Keith saw my plodding progress he stepped in. As usual, he's better and faster at almost everything than I am. He used a rusted old ice chopper from the barn and finished the job in about 30 minutes, whereas it would have taken me hours to do the same thing. Alas, once again I was most useful filling buckets with rubble.

The ceiling and interior wall are a mess from the tile cement, so they will have to be drywalled. But the exterior wall was framed out before the tile was applied, so the curving contours at the window have been preserved, and we will attempt to repair the plaster from the gouges caused by the huge nails that held the framing in place. The window sill was cut to fit under the framing and was just sitting loosely in place. It needs to be replaced, and of course when we took it out, what was revealed? Mouse nests!

I took down the pipe chase in the living room (more mouse nests) while Keith worked on the masonry in the attic. He ran out of the mortar mix we bought so he didn't get to the living room walls yet.

We didn't even consider burning scrap wood this weekend as it was too windy. The air is almost never still here--I think we should put up some windmills and take advantage of it.

Even though we put in two full days of work, there are still a lot of unfinished jobs on our current to-do list. I'll continue working on those things this week.

Attic framing

Dan and Garrett did some framing in the attic yesterday.




The pace of the work felt much more relaxed this week, and now the builders are taking a three-day weekend. But they couldn't possibly keep going at the rate they did before Christmas when they framed the whole addition in only 4 days. Actually, there's probably much more happening behind the scenes than I realize. It's just not as obvious as when a whole building suddenly materializes in a few days. But when they're converting old spaces into new uses, it takes much longer than rough framing brand new construction.

We met with Glen from Reading Foundry today, and guess what? After all the talk about toilets, tubs, showers and sinks, he offered to give us an old pedestal sink he has at his house that's in great condition! We can use it in Mother's bathroom. Now we have 3 old sinks to use in our bathrooms. What a nice gift.

Keith and I have a list of goals for the weekend. I'll post a report of our progress on Sunday night, but for the record, here's what we'd like to accomplish:
--burn the scrap wood in the garage (wind conditions permitting)
--demo the remainder of the bathroom tile and the pipe chase in the living room
--mortar the holes and exposed stone in the attic gables, the attic side walls, and the living room walls
--finish the last little bit of insulation in the attic
--caulk the baseboard in the attic behind the new framing (to keep mice out)
--cut the metal straps in the attic walls
--etch out and patch the cracks in the attic walls
--finish wire brushing the beams in the attic
--remove the tackless strips around all the carpeting
--sweep and vacuum the attic, second floor and stairs

Setting the Beam

Most of the action so far this week has been in the old house. Roger keeps plugging away at all the changes in the stone walls. Dan and Garrett are framing the second floor and attic. All this rough framing is the skeleton for 2 big new closets and Mother's bathroom.


And this will be the laundry room:


Fabian came over and helped me paint some more color samples on the windows out front. Meanwhile, it seems as if the cleaning faeries visited us last night--the whole house looks refreshed with all the dust, trash, lumber and stone gone.

But the main event was setting the beam in the entrance hall.


First they had to build a temporary support system before they cut away all the existing beams (logs, really) to create an opening for the staircase. These beams are chestnut, and they were very hard to cut through. The last two toward the new construction were made from ordinary framing lumber, and the last one had previously been cut away so it was too short. John removed those two beams and went out to the barn to scavenge two appropriate beams for this space.


Then John and Dan crafted a stunning support beam for us out of old cypress boards from mushroom houses that John bought on eBay.


They mitered the edges of boards which they used to encase a 4X8 liminated beam.


Next, they lag bolted the ends of the cut beams into the laminated beam so they can take down the temporary support structure. The cypress makes it fit right in with the rest of the exposed beams, and it looks like it's always been there. This beam will actually be the riser of the top step in the new staircase.

This space is so much more dramatic than I am able to capture in a photograph, but here's the best I could do:


There's a vaulted ceiling which will have 2 skylights, beautiful exposed beams, the stairs will be extra wide, and the second floor will be a library with a railing along the stairwell. I'm sorry words and my pictures don't do it justice. You just have to see it.

Refining the layout

Once the spaces in the addition became defined by the framing, we were able to tweak the details of the bathroom layout. Our approach to the bathroom took on a new perspective last week when John suggested getting an old claw foot tub and refinishing it. We looked on Craig's List and found a beautiful 1923 tub in great condition in West Lawn. On Saturday we picked it up, and Dustin let us take his old Kohler sink along for free. The sink is perfect for the attic bathroom, and doesn't even need to be refinished. I called PJ, the Iron Monger, today and he's preparing a bid for powder coating the tub.

Using a much smaller tub than in the original plan allows us play around with the bathroom space. Charlie came over to approve the changes, and once again I was impressed by how quickly he grasped my clumsy description of our concept. In just a few minutes he groomed it into a real plan with a vision. The structural changes are minor, but the whole aesthetic of the room really evolved to reflect our personalities. Instead of a vanity, we'll use an old piece of furniture and a vessel sink. I have 2 old upholstered benches from my childhood home which can be updated with slipcovers and used for seating, and we also have an old wash stand from the attic here at the farm. And instead of building in storage closets, Charlie suggested looking for 2 old narrow cabinets, each about 30 inches wide. He also totally understood my dislike for shower doors, so we're going to use a tub surround with a curtain instead of the shower stall. In the end, what I was afraid would require lots of extra work for the builders is a simple matter of moving one doorway in a wall that hasn't even been framed yet. So simple, yet so satisfying.

John performed a similar magical feat with the closets in the old house. I was awkwardly trying to enlarge the hall closet by stealing space from the bathroom. When I showed John what I was thinking, he saw it in a completely different way that makes much more sense. It leaves the bathroom plan intact, and simply shifts a little space from the bedroom closet and barely even changes the underlying framework. What a pleasure it is to work with such professional, skilled visionaries. So far they've made every little detail easy to execute.

Attic insulation

After John showed us how to install the insulation on Wednesday, Keith and I spent the next four days getting that job done. It took a while for us to hit our stride because of the complicated cuts required to fit the insulation around the collar beams. Thursday we were still feeling our way, and then Friday we only had a couple hours to work because we had New Years dinner at our house. On Saturday we got a late start after Megan and Johan left around 1:00.

Finally today we were able to get in a full day's work, and we established a system that really helped us pick up the pace. We're all but finished with the rigid insulation and ready to spray foam into the nooks and crannies. That will be the subject of our next lesson with John.

Happy 2010!

Tonight we had a bonfire to celebrate the New Year.

Earlier today after working on the attic insulation, Keith and I set up a pile of old lumber and cabinets from the demolition. Then we went home and prepared New Year's Day dinner for the whole family--all my sisters, a brother-in-law, the children and their spouses, our granddaughter, and both our mothers. Afterward, we headed down to the farm and offered a champagne toast in the warmth of the fire, wishing everyone good health and happiness.

Aaron's tending the fire as Keith and Megan watch:

I felt fairly safe about having the fire tonight. It snowed last night so everything was saturated, plus the air was completely still. In addition, we placed the wood in a wet area of the field with standing water. Nevertheless, we had a slew of buckets handy which we filled by dipping them into the water alongside the fire. We used them to keep the adjacent grasses wet.


The embers cast a comforting glow.


Then all of a sudden the wind whipped up from out of nowhere, and we quickly doused the flames. We wanted to hang around for a while to make sure nothing reignited, so we rode around the fields on the ATVs and the tractor under the full moon. What a fun beginning to the new year!

End-of-the-year push

John and Nate continued tearing down walls and making new openings. This picture isn't out of focus, that's dust!


If you look closely at the pile of rubble in front of the pile of lath, you can see the detritus from more mouse nests. I know, I seem to be fixated on mice and their habitats, but it's just where my life is at the moment. Soon enough I'll move on to other fascinating topics.

Keith set up the skid loader at the window so Nate could throw the rubble right in.


Here's the lovely new space after the debris was cleared and the dust settled. There are six windows on four exposures.


Another obsession of mine right now is how much light from how many different exposures I can bring into a room, and I'm sure the builders are tired of hearing about it. Again, I will move on from this topic at some point, but I just want to say, that whoever came up with the idea of taking out this wall was a genius (oh, that would be me!). Suffice it to say, I'm very pleased with the outcome.

The bathroom wall studs are down

and this is the new doorway into Mother's room.

Roger continued rebuilding the front doorway


and the wall between the old and the new.


Dan and Garrett started nailing the felt onto the sheathing


and framed the inside of the second floor.


John gave Keith and me a tutorial on installing the rigid foam insulation in the attic. He ordered the material for us and ADMoyer delivered it today. John's letting us use his table saw, so we didn't have to bring ours down, thank goodness.


And here's the spacious attic after removing one of the walls. Charlie's the genius who came up with this idea.


So to recap, the themes of the week were light, space and mouse poop! Lots and lots of work got accomplished, and we're happy and tired.

Breakthrough!

When the stone was removed from the section of wall which will become the new front door, Roger built a temporary support system for the ceiling beams. Then he created a structurally sound frame to receive the door. He used a 4X10 laminated beam for the lintel, and mortared brick and concrete block to fill in the gaps.


The beautiful log beams in the ceiling will remain exposed in the new entry. Keith will take out the rest of the knob and tube wiring.


From this picture, you can't appreciate just how bad the wiring is. There are numerous areas of worn insulation and joins that are merely taped together without junction boxes. Totally out of code. All of the wiring in the whole house will be new and in compliance when we're done.

If you look closely, you can detect another mouse nest where the wiring enters the beam on the right of the picture. As always, when plaster is removed, more rodent housing is exposed.

Nate continued taking out stone.


This will be the doorway to our bedroom in the addition from the top of the stairs that are being built in the oldest part of the house, what was most recently the kitchen. Since this window is offset from the peak, the opening is not as straightforward as the others. The new door will be centered, so the stone on the right-hand side has to be taken out from floor to ceiling, and the left-hand side will have a gaping hole that Roger has to fill in. Keith and I took out more piles of stone and rubble. John kept scolding us about lifting too much, and he enlisted Nate to help load some of the bigger rocks onto the hand truck.

Nate broke through the wall, and we can now walk right into the addition.

Inside you can see Dan on scaffolding as he and Garrett continue framing the interior walls on the second floor.

Charlie was here this morning, and John asked him about those diagonal metal straps in the attic. He concurred with John that they are not structural, so we took down the remaining studs from that wall. John's men also removed the rest of the studs in the bathroom. So demolition continues apace, and everything seems to be be progressing without too many surprises.

Tearing down walls

Yesterday when we left, the attic was completely free of dust and debris, but when we came in this morning, there was evidence of a mouse party overnight. Only one poor little guy fell for the bait. I don't know what they're eating because there's nothing in the house for them. But they obviously weren't interested in peanut butter and cat food.


Before construction in the old part of the house can proceed, first comes deconstruction. Today Roger came to break openings into the stone walls.


This is between the existing living room and kitchen where a china cabinet had been built into an old window opening, so he just had to take away the bottom half of this wall. Et voila, a doorway! (But to be accurate, this opening will actually be an alcove for the sink in the powder room under the new stairs) Three more openings are being created from existing windows, and they will become doorways.


Once again, after the skilled labor comes bull work. Keith and I hauled two piles of rocks like this out to the silo pads for future use.


As for the addition, Dan and Garrett nailed in all the 2nd floor ceiling joists, finished sheathing and temporarily covered the window openings with plywood.

Out, out damned mice

No pictures today--we were too busy working. We're bone tired, and the work today was so nasty I can barely talk about it. But it involves six 5-gallon buckets of mouse shit.

When we left yesterday, the whole room on the north end of the attic was clean, but when we got there this morning, it was full--I mean FULL--of mouse droppings. So we finished pulling nails and taking out the framing from the walls that are being removed, and then we dug deep into the bones of the house and got every bit of mouse nesting material that we could find. I swear there was a bale of straw embedded in the eaves and buried within walls, and it was all full of rodent excrement.

I don't know if the mouse population has gotten the word yet, but their neighborhood is being gentrified, and they are being evicted. In case they don't understand our terms, we left 12 mouse traps behind baited with peanut butter.

I often say that I don't know how we ever knew anything before there was the internet, and today I felt that way again. When I first saw the size of the nests behind the walls, I thought the invaders were squirrels. We wanted to know what extermination measures to take, so there we were on the phone with Aaron getting him to Google a comparative analysis of rodent droppings, and he's describing the various kinds of shit to us, leading us to conclude that our pests are mice.

Despite the yuck factor today, I would say that all in all we had a good four days of work while John's crew was off. We got done what we wanted to so they can dig in first thing tomorrow with the next round of demolition.

Attic Demo

After the dust settled from the removal of the ceiling, we went into the attic to continue clearing it out. More rodents' nests were lurking behind the plaster.


We pulled out hundreds of nails, then wire brushed the beams to clean off the dust and dirt that has settled in over the last century before we install new sheetrock. Now that we've had a chance to see the underlying structure of the roof, I think we need to reassess our plans for the attic. At first I thought it would look great to install the ceiling along the roof line up to the peak, but it turns out there are beams that would make that design very complicated to execute.


So, on second thought, I think we'll drop the ceiling as it was before. We'll insulate between the rafters, then run wire overhead before we drywall. A close look at the rafters made us wonder whether there had been a fire here. Or maybe they're black from accumulated soot after years of burning wood and coal in small stoves in all the rooms. The rafters range from 3 1/2 to 4 inches by 5 inches on 2-foot centers.

Every room in the house has a hole in the wall like this to access the chimneys on the north and south gables.


This is the worst looking one. The plaster is directly on the stone, and it's badly stained with creosote. I'm not sure how to repair it. John told me to begin by scraping off the loose plaster, but not much came off. I'm sure this will bleed right through a new coat of plaster and any paint we use, so we're wondering whether we should repair the loose mortar, then frame out a new wall and put sheet rock over the new studs. However, that would mess up the curved window openings, so it's probably not the way to proceed. It will be interesting to see how to solve this situation.

Also, we were going to remove a wall between 2 of the rooms, but these steel rods seem structural, so we will probably keep a partial wall up to the point where they disappear into the floor.


We were also wondering whether the south chimney could be removed above the roof. It's interior and no longer in use, so it serves no purpose except to provide a point of entry for critters. The hole could be patched and the new roof would go straight to the end of the gable. On the other hand, if we keep it in place could that opening be used for venting a fan in the attic and the dryer on the second floor?

More dirty work

Today we disconnected the plumbing and stuffed rags into the drains to keep dirt out of them. We got all the fixtures out and swept up the area. I put a piece of plywood over the hole in the floor where the tub was so no one steps into it by accident and falls through the living room ceiling. Now it's ready for the demo guys to take off the rest of the tile and studs.


We can set up the skid loader outside the window for them to move the trash more efficiently into the dumpster.

I didn't touch these studs because this is a structural wall that's supporting the attic floor joists.


It gets moved over a couple feet, but that's beyond my skill level. This is definitely a job for John. We really appreciate him giving us guidance so we can do the unskilled work and then he takes over when expertise is required.

Looking at this old framing lumber, I got to wondering whether it could be used to rebuild the wall. It's really cool. Each stud is different, but they run somewhere around 3 inches by a true 4 inches. It would especially be neat to use the door and its rough framing in the doorway we're creating into the bedroom. Then the next time someone renovates, they'll have the pleasure of discovering the original structural elements just as we did.

Keith continued identifying all the electrical wires coming out of the breaker box and disconnecting the remaining outlets, switches and ceiling fixtures. The only hot outlets are the one beside John's desk, the ones in the first and second floor stairwells, and one in the basement. Also some lights and the oil burner in the basement are still connected.

Some of the old wiring was downright scary:


I started working in the attic pulling nails from the lath out of the rafters. More on that tomorrow.

Shoveling rubble

The bathroom demolition began yesterday, and this is how it looked today when we got there:





There was a big pile of demo trash on the ground outside the window where the guys dumped bucket after bucket of plaster, lath strips, nails and tile. Keith went to work with the skid loader to clear away that pile before the rain comes. I started to pull tile off the ceiling and walls, but I was pretty slow at that, and thought my efforts might be more useful elsewhere, so I pulled out the rest of the lath and nails and started filling trash cans with the debris.

When Keith finished, he pulled the skid loader right up to the house with the bucket raised just outside the window, and we shoveled all of the rubble right into it. At the end of the day the bathroom was cleared out.