Aycock-Morgan House

The Parlor

2012-01-18T08:43:00.002-05:00

We decided to paint over the wallpaper in the parlor. You may remember about a year and a half ago I was trying to scrub the wallpaper. It cleaned up ok but it was still discolored.

It doesnt look so bad in the picture but in person it wasn't good. So we decided to go ahead and paint over it. In the end I'm glad we decided to do it. You can still see the wallpaper pattern through the paint and the color is what the wallpaper would have looked like originally.

You cant see the wallpaper pattern in the pictures but you can see it in person.

You can see the one area I didn't paint behind the curtain. I still need to go back and paint that.

You may also notice that the fireplace mantle is different than what was originally here. We found this mantle in an antique shop and it turns out it came from an old victorian house in Fayetteville that I used to drive by every day. It was destroyed in a tornado about 6 years ago.

The mantle has many layers of paint on it, so many that much of the detail is obscured. I will eventually have the mantle dipped to remove it all but for now I put two coats of trim paint on it to clean it up.

I'm also going to be replacing the surround and hearth eventually. I had mentioned in a previous post about how the fake brick surround and hearth tiles were installed in the 40's, and that I had found the original hearth tiles underneath the brick tiles.

AUTGA5GMTKMU

Dining Room / Kitchen Doorway

2012-01-04T09:16:00.000-05:00

Another project I completed is the doorway between the dining room and the kitchen. This is what it looked like before:

The first thing I did was to make and install the threshold. The kitchen floor is about 2" higher than the dining room floor because of all the leveling I had to do in the kitchen.

I used a piece of 5 1/4" oak flooring for the threshold, I cut both ends of the board at angles because the threshold will lay at an angle.

Once it was cut I cut and installed a shim piece to go below the threshold:

Then I installed the threshold:

With that done I installed the door casing. I found some casing that is very similar to the original casing in the house.

The casing is about an inch smaller than the original, I didn't have any rosettes that matched so I cut some blocks out of the oak flooring.

Once I have new casing cut to match the originals I will re-frame this doorway.

Main Bathroom Update

2012-01-01T08:11:00.000-05:00

The main bathroom is another project that I have been working on. Last week I finished cutting in the primer on the walls, then I scraped all the trim.

One of the neat things I found here was the old exterior trim color, it's the brown/olive looking color on the door casing. This room used to be a side porch. I know this was an exterior color because when they closed the porch in and hung the interior door they just slapped the hinges up on the casing, you can see where they were on the casing on the right. That color was directly underneath.

Once the scraping was done I primered and painted all the trim, then painted the walls.

Sorry for the pics, it's very hard to get decent shots in this room.

Left to do still is install 1/4 round and baseboards, caulk, and paint the ceiling.

Finishing up the Side Hall

2011-12-31T08:21:00.000-05:00

I've spent the last few weeks working on the house. The side hall was the first project I worked on.

Back in October of last year I laid the new oak flooring in the side hall but I never finished the last row.

It only took about an hour to install the final row of flooring, but last year I spent two sixteen hour days on it and by the time I got to the last row, which I had to rip down to the right size, I was just too tired to finish.

With the floor finally finished I turned to the chair rail. I was originally going to have some made for me but once I looked closely at the profile I realized that I had a router bit that could do it in two passes.

It's an almost perfect match to the original. Next I finished the sheetrock above the chair rail.

The trim that makes the bottom part of the chair rail will have to be made, I cant do it and there is nothing even close at the store.

Here are a few pics of the side hall now.

Left to do still is the trim for the bottom of the chair rail, picture rail, and crown. Oh, and replicate a leg for the Empire dresser...

Finishing the Main Bathroom walls

2011-12-01T09:37:00.001-05:00

The other project I worked on during my week off was getting the walls done in the main bathroom.

This has been like this since '09. I finished hanging the sheetrock then taped and mudded the walls.

Then I put up a coat of primer.

I liked the sink vanity I had on this room, it was an old oak dresser that I converted into a vanity, but my wife really wanted another one I made in here instead.

This is the very first piece of furniture I ever made. I made it back in '05. It was an old desk originally, I built the doors and the mirror onto it. The spindles are from the footboard of my wife's grandmothers bed. (The footboard was all that was left of it.)

I also installed the chandelier.

It is solid brass including the candle covers.

I still have to install 1/4 round on the ceiling, Wire up the outlet, caulk, cut in the primer, paint, and strip and paint the door.

Dining Room

2011-11-28T18:34:00.000-05:00

I took Thanksgiving week off to finish up some projects around the house.

The Dining Room was what I really wanted to get done the most. It has been half done since I moved the wall to make more room in the kitchen almost three years ago.

Here is what it looked like at the beginning of last week.

First I moved everything but the furniture out of the room, then I moved the furniture to the center of the room.

Next I scrapped the peeling walls above the picture rail. Once it was all scraped I mudded above the picture rail completely around the room.

With that done I worked on the door casings for the exterior door and the door that leads to the hallway.

The casings on the door that lead to the hallway had separated and were loose. I removed them and reinstalled them properly.

Next I worked on the door casings for the exterior door. You may remember in previous posts that the original doorway was closed off in the past and I reverted it back to a doorway.

First I finished mudding the area.

Next I began working on the casing and rosettes. the only two rosettes I had left were both split in half. I used my doweling jig and glued them back together with dowels.

Once they were dry I installed them above the door along with the casing.

Next I installed the picture rail on the wall that I rebuilt.

With that done I was ready for paint. I went around the room and glued down any loose wallpaper.

I really hated to paint over the wallpaper but there were just too many places where the paper was in too bad a shape.

First I primered and painted the trim.

Then I primered and painted the walls. It turned out that there was something wrong with the paint I chose, it was way lighter than the paint sample at the store. I didn't have a choice though and had to use it. I painted on Thanksgiving morning so we had to hurry and get the furniture back together for Thanksgiving dinner so I didnt get any pictures until after the dinner.

I also had to do some last minute electrical to get an outlet in for the china cabinet light.

I still have a lot of wainscoting to caulk and paint, I need to have some casing replicated for the door to the kitchen, and the ceiling needs to be primered and painted.

Dining Room Door part 2

2011-10-12T08:30:00.001-04:00

A year ago to the day I rebuilt the dining room door. You may remember that this door was rebuilt as a window at one point and then closed in altogether.

I rebuilt it as a door as it was originally and installed an old french door that I had on hand.

As you can see it was missing many panes of glass and was in terrible shape. I installed a door knob and replaced all the broken panes except two that were only cracked but that was it.Not long after installing the door it started separating on the hinge side at the dowels so we stopped using it. It sat that way for a year.

Since the weather has been so nice lately I figured this was a perfect time to fix the door.

I removed the door and pulled it apart, then glued and clamped the door back together. Once it was dry I filled all the holes with wood putty, then sanded the entire door down.

Then I primered and painted it and reinstalled the door.

As you can see I need to finish the inside door casing.

The door works great now. I will be getting a screen door for it very soon. I will add brackets to the screen door like I did on the screen porch a while back.

Baby Gate II

2011-09-07T08:03:00.000-04:00

Over the weekend I built the upstairs baby gate. You may remember earlier when I built the baby gate for the bottom of the stairs.

I built this one a few inches shorter to match the railings upstairs. I used the same walnut balusters that I used for the downstairs gate and poplar for the frame again.

Here is a picture of it ready for primer.

Once it was primered and painted I made another handrail out of heart pine.

Here is a picture of the railing after the rough cuts were made.

I dont have a round-over router bit of the correct size so I'm having to make the cuts on my table saw then round them over with a sander. After this picture was taken I used a dado blade on my table saw to make the recessed cut on the bottom of the railing so it will fit over the top of the gate, sorry I didnt get a picture of that.

Once the railing was sanded I used Red Chestnut stain from Minwax to get the correct tone to the wood then put on a coat of poly.

Once it dried I installed the railing then put up the gate.

Here are a few pics.

As you can see from the pictures I still have a lot of work to do upstairs. The railings and the balls on top of the newels will be stripped and stained, everything else will be repainted.

Stump Removal

2011-08-25T10:52:00.000-04:00

The stump removal company came out last Saturday and removed the stump.

It only took about 40 minutes to grind it to mulch. I used some of the mulch for the beds in my front yard as oak mulch is great for retaining water.

Before the stump was ground down I counted the rings on it several times and got an average of 109 (it's very hard to count the rings as they are very close together and very faint). So the tree was probably planted sometime around 1902. I know the house was built sometime between 1895 and 1902 so the trees were either original to the house or planted not long after it was built.

Oak Tree Removal

2011-07-28T11:09:00.003-04:00

There are two very large Oak trees in front of our house. I'm pretty sure they are as old as the house. There used to be three but one was hit by lightning years ago and came down. I removed the stump from that one last year with the help of a friend and his back hoe. The root ball was over 6 feet in diameter and lifted the front wheels of the tractor 4 feet off the ground when we picked it up with the back hoe arm.

The next tree over (the one that would have originally been in the middle of the three) was starting to look really bad, there is a large rot hole at the top of the trunk where a large limb had fallen off many years ago. It's been getting steadily larger over time.

I've become increasingly concerned that the tree will come down on the house in a storm so I spoke with the city about taking it down as it's in the right-of-way on their property. The city council voted to have an arborist come out and make an assessment of the tree and go ahead and take it down if that's what the arborist recommended.

The arborist came out and immediately recommended that the tree come down. The city got the tree removal service out a few days later.

Look at that trunk, almost all heart. Too bad I dont have a sawmill handy.

They had to cut the trunk in half because it was too heavy for their crane to pick up.

I hate to see the tree go but it was becoming too much of a danger to the house and us.

Dining Room Wall sheetrock complete

2011-07-25T09:17:00.000-04:00

I finally completed the sheetrock and mudding on the Dining Room wall.

I'll be pretty busy at work this week but hopefully I can squeeze in some time to get the picture rail hung and then primer the wall. It will probably be this weekend before I can scrape, primer, and paint the entire room.

Baby Gate

2011-07-23T09:22:00.000-04:00

Yesterday I finished up an important project.

Our little baby is not a baby any more. She has been getting around on her own for some time now.

One of the first discoveries she made was the stairs. She loves climbing the stairs and has done so by herself on a few occasions now. We started walking her up the stairs at night and down them in the mornings so she could get used to them but in the meantime it's just way too dangerous for her to try to climb them by herself.

So we put up one of those cheap baby gates, but it was ugly and a pain to go up the stairs, especially if you have anything in your arms.

I decided to build a baby gate that would look like it was original to the house. I didnt have time to turn baulisters to match the existing ones but I found some in our local antique mall that would work.

They were beautiful walnut baulisters from the 1840's which made it very hard to paint over them but they were the only ones I could find.

I used poplar for the frame and spaced the baulisters very close together. Then I made a hand rail out of some old heart pine. I stained the hand rail with Red Chestnut from Minwax to match the existing hand rail, then added a coat of amber shellac, then a coat of poly. Here is a picture before I finished the hand rail:

Here are the finished pictures:

I still need to install a latch on it. For now I left a little extra on the edge of it so it's tight, that way she cant open it, but with as quick as she learns things I need to hurry up and get a latch on it.

Now I need to build one for the top of the stairs.

House History Update

2011-07-21T09:46:00.003-04:00

I've updated the House History page with a lot of new information that I've found recently. You can click the tab at the top of the page or just click here: http://woodbury-house.blogspot.com/p/house-history.html

Dining Room Walls

2011-07-20T07:33:00.002-04:00

Two and a half years ago I moved the wall between the Kitchen and the Dining Room three and a half feet to make more room in the kitchen. I put sheetrock up but never got around to mudding it.

Yesterday I finally decided to finish it. I had to put up a few small pieces first. Then I taped and mudded it.

Today I will sand and put up the second coat.

On another note, we have unfortunately decided to paint over the wallpaper. I really liked it but it has a lot of issues. I would just tear it off the wall, it's vinyl and comes off real easy, but there are two other layers underneath and they are paper. That's a nightmare I dont want to get into right now.

Finishing the brick walkway

2011-07-07T08:54:00.000-04:00

After spreading sand over the bricks and waiting two days for a vibrating sled compactor to become available I finally went ahead and raked and swept the sand down in the cracks as best I could. As it settles I will add sand to the cracks.

I should have swept the rest of the sand off the bricks before taking these pictures but I didn't.

I will eventually run the walk all the way out to the sidewalk.

Bricking the front walkway

2011-07-05T08:22:00.000-04:00

We've been wanting to tackle this project for a while now. The front walkway was nothing but weeds and broken concrete.

Across the street from us is the old Woodbury Oil Mill, it was built in 1902, now it's a fertilizer plant. A section of one of the brick buildings collapsed a few years back and all the brick was left where it fell. I asked them about it and they told me that I could take as many as I needed. Perfect! The brick is from the same era as the house.

I began by breaking up and removing all the concrete, below is an in progress shot..

With all the concrete removed I leveled the pad.

The ground slopes downward towards the right in the above picture. The soil is a combination of gravel, coal, and a little bit of dirt mixed in, needless to say it was quite hard to level off. I had to borrow a tractor from a friend to get it level.

Next I put down a layer of sand then began the process of laying the brick... well almost, first I had to gather up the brick, then scrape all the old mortar off of them.

Here is an in progress shot, I'm using two rows for the border then a standard stretcher bond pattern for the infill.

It took all three days of the three day weekend but I finally finished it.

This afternoon I'll get some more sand and fill in the joints.

Porch Update

2011-06-15T08:29:00.000-04:00

I finished painting the white trim area on the porch and finished up installing the drip edge.

This is how the porch looks as of now.

Next I'm going to turn my attention to the upstairs balcony.

Installing drip edge on porch roof

2011-06-09T05:12:00.001-04:00

Yesterday I began installing the drip edge on the porch roof. I should have done this last year when I installed the shingles but for some reason I didnt.

I had to cut the drip edge for the curved section of the roof. It's sort of like a kerf cut.

I was able to complete about 2/3 of the roof. I still have to paint the other part before I put the drip edge up.

Before

After

Screen Porch

2011-06-06T08:47:00.000-04:00

Over the weekend I worked on the screen porch. I had mentioned earlier that there was one small section that I didnt get screened in because I needed to finish framing it in. When this was a sunroom this section was just closed off, there wasnt a window here. You can see the section I'm talking about in this picture from last week. It's the small strip between the column and the wall.

Here is the basic framing.

Instead of hacking up the trim on the columns as was done previously I cut the framing to fit around the trim.

You can see the missing trim that was cut away previously, this will be replaced later.

I added beadboard to the top to match the rest of the porch then primered and painted it and installed the screen.

There are still lots of little trim pieces to add to it but I needed to hurry and get the final screen up.

With the porch completely screened in we cleared the room out and pulled up the masonite that was stapled down to the original floor. It took about an hour to pull out all the 1" long staples from the floor.

With that done we brought our wicker furniture in.

The next day I began work on the brackets for the screen doors. We still have one original screen door on the house, it is on the upstairs front porch door. The screen door is built the exact same way but it has some very nice brackets on them.

I removed one of the brackets to use as a pattern.

Sixteen brackets later and I primered and painted them.

Then installed them.

Man, what a difference it makes. Soon I'll build a screen door for the front door, then all the screen doors on the house will match.

Columns complete

2011-06-02T08:10:00.000-04:00

Yesterday afternoon I finished painting the columns. I still have some trim to install on them but that needs to wait until the railing and balusters get installed.

I also attached the aluminum screen to the doors, installed them, and installed the screen all the way around the screen porch (except for one small area that needs some more framing). Hopefully today I can scrape, primer, paint and install the trim that covers the edges of the screen.

Front Porch Work

2011-05-31T09:34:00.000-04:00

Well I've finally gotten back to work on the house. It feels really good to be accomplishing things on the house again. It's been almost 6 months now... I took the entire week off last week so I could get the front porch done.

I was so excited about getting back to work again that I forgot to take pictures the first few days.

I started by clearing out the screen porch area, it had become a holding space for new antiques in need of restoration. Then I began installing the 2x4 framing that the screen will attach to. While I was doing this I had some help that was scraping old paint and primering on the rest of the porch.

There was an area of the framing on the screen porch that was missing. It was made this way but I still cant figure out why. Anyways I built the sill just like the rest of it. Here is a pic of it (sorry, no before pic).

I will fill the seams in with bondo and sand it smooth.

I found a nice set of wood screen doors at Home Depot for $20 each! I had to widen the doorway by 6" and cut down the doors by about 4" for them to fit. I used a dowel jig to reattach the top part of the door.

In the above picture they are just sitting in place. I took out the fiberglass screen and will be using aluminum screen in it's place.

Next I got back to stripping the columns. The last time I worked on the columns was last year, you can see those posts here, and here.

The double column at the right side of the stairs had a lot of rot at the bottom. Unfortunately there was no saving the bottom section. The wood used in the columns is 1" and 1 1/4" thick so I bought 2x6's and 2x8's and ripped them down to the correct thickness. Here is the rebuilt bottom section, as I mentioned before I didnt get pictures for the first few days so I dont have a before picture of the column base.

Then I installed the top part of the column and primered it. The capital of the column was also rotted. The way it's built it has a large block of wood in the center and the decorative trim is attached to it. The large block of wood is what was rotted. I used an old sill beam to get the correct size piece of wood I needed, 3 1/2"x6 3/4"x18". I ripped it to size then attached the trim to it.

Then I installed the column.

The capital is built wrong so I'm going to need to take it back down and rebuild it.

Another capital had a lot of rot so I had to rebuild it as well. This one is not near as complex as the double one.

As you can see from the picture above there are only two original pieces on this one. I ripped the block of wood to size then cut out the decorative trim by tracing an original piece from another capital on to a 1x6, then cutting it out with a jig saw. I used wood hardener on the original piece that had some rot.

Next I finished rebuilding the soffets and facia on the porch roof. Here is a before picture of one of the areas.

And here is after installing the soffet and facia.

The spray foam is a small area of rot that I couldnt cut out. I filled it with the spray foam then I'm going to cut it down and cover it with bondo then sand it smooth. I still need to install the facia trim in two areas that you can see missing in the pic.

In the before picture above you can see that the ceiling was missing from the front part of the porch. That was the next thing that I installed.

With all the columns finally installed I began painting them.

I finished four columns before it got dark on me. I will finish painting the rest of the columns this afternoon then finish painting the screen porch area so I can install the screen.

Atwater Kent Model 10C

2011-04-13T08:37:00.000-04:00

Sorry, this is not a post on the house progress. I am pretty much done with my hiatus though and will be getting back to work very soon.

This post is about an old radio that I just bought. It is so cool that I just had to share it here.

Here is how I found it at an antique mall:

I'd never seen anything like it and was immediately interested. It turns out that they are quite rare.

It's an Atwater Kent Model 10C radio in a Pooley cabinet from 1924. This was very early in the history of the radio era, the first radio station started broadcasting in 1920.

The radio is tuned by all three dials, the knob in between the first and second stage controls the volume. The knob on the right below the tubes also controls the volume somewhat. Not sure what the knob on the first RF coil on the left controls.

After bringing it home I started cleaning it.

Here is a picture of the radio removed from the cabinet:

As you can see it's quite dirty. The radio by itself is called a breadboard by the way.

Here is the radio after a bit of cleaning:

The cabinet needs a lot of work, I'm going to have to remove and replace a lot of veneer and refinish the entire cabinet.

I cleaned the radio with a damp cloth but it still needs a lot more cleaning and I'd really like to get it working. It's missing 3 vacuum tubes which aren't cheap. I've found a few sets on E-bay but they run about $250 for the whole set of 5.

I'll take more pictures once I have restored it.

Airstream Break

2011-02-07T13:50:00.000-05:00

We're taking a break on the restoration of the house as we've bought another Airstream and are trying to get it restored before we go camping next month. It's a 1969 Airstream Sovereign just like our first one.

Attic Insulation

2010-12-21T06:11:00.001-05:00

This is one of those projects that I'm extremely glad is over. With the cold weather back for the winter I finally decided that I had to do something about the insulation. Our heating bill last year was sky high. I've already noticed some difference since I caulked the entire outside of the house but I knew we could do a lot better.

The attic was a huge mess.

It seems that over the years when the roofers would replace an old cedar shingle roof with a new one they would leave whatever dropped in the attic. There was also a ton of old coal dust. This was the worst. It has the consistency of baby power so it gets all over everything. I was completely black from head to toe for the three days it took to clean the attic out.

I started by using a large metal dust pan to scoop up piles of the debris and dumped it into a trash can. Then I would cart the trash can down stairs and outside and dump it into large contractor trash bags.

Once the large debris was removed I vacuumed up the rest with a shop-vac. When doing this it's imperative to use vacuum bags, otherwise the coal dust just clogs up the filter almost immediately.

After three days of this hell it was finally done and I was ready for insulation. The insulation only took about an hour and a half.

I think I have close to an R-19 value right now. In a few weeks I'm going to double the amount and go to R-30.

Exterior paint progress

2010-12-02T07:03:00.001-05:00

Here are a some pictures from a few weeks back. I had my brother in law over for a day to help me out.

I stopped working over Thanksgiving and haven't had a chance to do anything since, I've been too busy with work. I'm hoping to get some things accomplished soon though.

Paint!

2010-11-16T09:20:00.000-05:00

Finally, after weeks of prep work, The final coat of paint is on the house! I still have a lot of trim to paint and I haven't even started on the porches yet but this is a big milestone for the house. It's been a patchwork of colors, primer, and bare wood for years now.

Here are a few pictures:

(Sorry for the blurry pictures, I think something was on the lense of my camera phone) I had to make a lot of repairs to the siding, here I replaced the bottom two boards, there was one board completely missing and the other was splintered beyond repair. I installed Hardie Board to replace them. It's really a great match, you cant even tell that it's not original.

Here is a shot of the south side of the house during the caulking phase:

Here are some pictures after painting:

There is still a lot of trim work to do on the Sunroom, once all the woodwork is done it will be painted the trim color (Valspar Homestead Resort Jefferson White)

The color is still a little brighter that I wanted and a little too orange but I can live with it and I think it will look great once the trim is cut in.

I'm hoping to have all the trim cut in by this weekend, then it's back to finishing the front porch and columns.

More house caulking and main bath sheetrock

2010-11-08T07:50:00.000-05:00

Work has been steadily progressing on caulking the house. There are now only two walls left to do, our back bedroom wall and the front guest room wall.

Here is an in progress shot of the master bedroom and living room wall. This wall is the hardest to get to because of the power line running in front of it. The ground slopes away on this side of the house so it's also taller by about 4'.

We had to use an extension ladder on top of the scaffolding to reach the peak. We use two walk boards, one below the other to hold the ladder in place. The upper walk board is clamped into place and the ladder is wedged against it so it cant move.

This is my helper on the ladder caulking at the peak of the gable. I'm glad he's not afraid of heights because I wasn't about to get up there...

Over the weekend I also continued the sheetrocking of the main bathroom. I noticed that a lot of cold air was getting into the house through the open walls.

This door goes to the Study. I dont need a door here so it's getting covered over. I pulled the casing off and sheetrocked over it. I will frame it in from the other side once I start on the study. I had to ad a lot of 1x6's to the wall to shim it out.

This is as far as I got, I had to turn my attention back to caulking the house.

All the work I have been doing lately, laying the floor in the side hall, putting up sheetrock in the bathroom, caulking the outside, has really helped with keeping the cold out. It's been getting down to 27 each night but it's been staying relatively warm inside. The heating system doesnt have to work near as hard to keep it at 65.

As soon as the house is completely caulked we'll be spraying on another coat of primer then brushing on the final coat of paint.

Caulking the house

2010-11-01T08:30:00.002-04:00

Yesterday we began caulking the house. We were able to get the entire side of the 2 story section done.

It may not be obvious in the picture but the caulking makes a hell of a difference in the appearance of the house.

Hopefully we can finish caulking in the next few days. Once that's done I'm going to apply another coat of primer then paint.

House History

2010-10-29T19:23:00.000-04:00

I have added a few tabs at the top of the page with information about the house. One tab is for before and after pictures (not done yet), and the other is for house history. I have added a lot of information to this page but I'll also be adding to it over time as I find out new information.

Here is the direct link to the page: House History

Side Hall Floor

2010-10-18T08:37:00.000-04:00

This is a big project that I have been needing to get done for a while. Especially now that it's getting cold out. The cold air comes up through all the holes in the floor so this project had to get done.

As I've mentioned before the side hall was converted into a bathroom in 1928, last year I tore the wall down and turned it back into a side hall.

The Red Oak flooring on the first floor was installed over the original floor sometime in the 40's so the side hall didnt get done since it was a bathroom at the time.

I started by tearing up the plywood.

and found linoleum underneath.

I pulled that up and the original flooring under that was pretty rotted, which I had expected, so I pulled that up.

Of course most of the floor joists were rotted and hacked up and patched so I tore out the rotted ones and installed new ones. I used 2x8s ripped to a full 6" to match.

I took this opportunity to do a few other things under the house that needed to get done. I dug out a large area under the ducting so I could have access to underneath the bathroom, I ran some electrical from the bathroom, and I removed the 2 return vents that the moron HVAC guys had put in. They will be relocated to the dining room.

After that I put the sub-floor in with old 1x boards that I had.

Then I pulled up the old red oak flooring on the other side of the hall.

Then laid down felt paper.

Then I began the flooring. For the door sills that go to the bathroom and the sunroom I used 5" wide oak flooring. I kept the tongue on the sill so I could lock the flooring into it since it has grooves on the sides.

Here are some shots of the progress.

I still have a little strip along the wall to finish up. Not sure yet when I will be able to sand and finish it.

Dining Room Door

2010-10-12T08:35:00.003-04:00

In our dining room there are some shelves in what used to be a window, that was originally a door. I've been using it to store tools, nails, and other miscellaneous junk.

I thought about returning it to a window but to do that I would want to make it the same size as the rest of the windows in the house. This would require tearing out a large portion of the wall and a lot of re-framing.

So I decided to go back to a door instead. This would require a lot less work and it would return it to the way it was originally, I'm a big fan of returning things back to their original state whenever possible.

I started by removing all the tools and junk, then I removed the shelves and casing.

Next I removed the window framing.

Then I installed a sill, built the door casing, cut the door to the proper size, mortised the door and the jam for the hinges, and hung the door.

I still have a lot left to do, I need to install the inner door casing, plinth blocks, and rosettes, trim, install glass in the missing panes, install a door knob and lock, and caulk, primer and paint everything.

Lattice and gates for the deck

2010-10-11T09:51:00.000-04:00

This weekend I put up the lattice under the deck and built a pair of gates.

In the above picture the lattice is just resting in place. It, along with the deck will eventually be stained.

Our garden is coming along nicely. The Mustards and Lettuce are just about ready to pick.

Workshop Electrical

2010-10-06T08:25:00.012-04:00

I got a lot done on the shop over the weekend but most of it was the boring, non-picture worthy kind.

I dug a trench from the house to the shop and ran electrical in conduit.

Then I wired up the shop with lighting and outlets.

I spent yesterday and the day before arranging the layout and building workbenches.I also picked up a few new tools that I will be needing. I picked up a Wood Lathe, a 6" Jointer, and I traded my smaller table saw for a larger one.

I will have pictures of that in my next post.

Workshop Doors

2010-09-29T08:30:00.002-04:00

The only thing I had time to do yesterday was frame out the doorway and throw up some doors.

The white door is pretty hacked up but I will be repairing it later on so it will match the other one, I just needed to get a door up for now.

Next it's on to the electrical...

Workshop Windows

2010-09-28T08:30:00.002-04:00

I managed to get both of the windows installed and trimed out yesterday.

I still need to install the head casing on the outside of the second window.

Next it's on to the doors.

Workshop Tin

2010-09-27T08:26:00.001-04:00

Yesterday I got a bunch of tin from a friend in town. Rain was on the way so I had to hurry to get the roof on in time. I just barely finished the roof before it started raining. I did the walls in the rain.

The roof is new tin, I decided to use old tin for the walls to better match the existing structure. I had just enough to do the front and side walls but I had to use new tin for the back wall. Once the entire shop is complete I will paint everything so it will match better.

Here is a shot of the new section from the inside. The center braces are temporary, I still need to install some support bracing to the rafters.

Next I need to frame out and install the windows and doors.

Hen nest boxes

2010-09-23T08:50:00.000-04:00

I haven't had time to get tin for my shop so no real progress there. In the meantime I built some nest boxes for my hens since they havent had anywhere to lay.

These are Black Copper Marans eggs. They are the absolute best tasting eggs there are.

As you can see they were thankful.

Workshop progress & house paint

2010-09-20T08:41:00.011-04:00

Work has been progressing on the workshop. I've had a lot of other things going on though so it's not been at the pace I'd hoped for.

After my last post I went and got the rest of the wood that I needed and installed the floor joists...

and the flooring. The flooring is yellow pine 2x12's.

I removed the original back wall of the shed to be able to tie in the new section.

Next I started the framing.

I prefer to build my walls in place instead of on the ground then raising them up. The wide opening in the picture is for a set of double doors, each is 2' wide.

The opening on the back wall is for a window. I'm also installing one on the side wall. The windows are 3 over 1, they came from an old farmhouse in Calhoun, Ga that was being torn down.

After the walls were framed up I installed the ridge beam...

and then the rafters and purlins.

Now I just need to get some tin so I can put the roof and walls up.

Meanwhile, while I was doing all of this I had a crew scraping and primering the house.

Chickens! ...and a workshop

2010-09-13T08:13:00.000-04:00

I've been working on two big projects over the last 5 days or so. The first is a chicken coop. We've decided that we want to try raising chickens, mostly for the eggs.

We decided to put the coop next to the barn.

The overgrown area to the left of the barn is the spot.

I completely cleared out the area and then built the coop. I dont have any during pictues but it's basically built out of pressure-treated 2x4's for the framing, chicken wire for the sides, and tin for half of the roof and plastic fencing for the other half.

The area beyond the coop and to the left of the barn will be closed in for another coop soon.

The chickens we are concentrating on are Black Copper Marans, they have very dark, reddish brown eggs that are supposed to be highly prized for their excellent taste. Here is our Marens rooster.

We also have some Dominickers, Cochins, and a few Silkies.

The other project I began working on is a workshop. I really need a place to work and to put all my tools.

The shed behind the kitchen is nice but at 11x11 it's too small.

What I decided to do it tear down the lean-to on the back side of it and add on to the main structure. I will be adding on another 11'. So it will be 22x11. The 11 is a bit smaller that I'd like but I think it will be ok.

The lean-to was so rotted that it only took about 15 minutes to completely tear down by hand. It took longer to haul away the debris.

I pulled up the old blocks to reuse for the new foundation. I had to use a few new blocks.

Next, I pulled the bottom piece of tin off the wall to install the ledger board.

Then I setup the rest of the framing for the joists.

That was as far as I got last night. I was three joists short anyways. I will get them on the way home from work today and also the flooring, I will be using 2x12's just like in the original portion of the shed.

garden

2010-08-31T07:31:00.000-04:00

We've been working on a vegetable garden in our back yard. We're going to plant late season crops like broccoli, Collard and Mustard Greens, lettuce, and a few other things. We bought most of them as plants, the rest I started from seed a few weeks back.

I tilled up a small area in the back yard next to the barn that's about 35'x20'.

Then I put up a chicken wire fence.

This is our two Danes checking out my work.

Once I rake it out and hoe the rows I will plant everything.

Work continues on the columns

2010-08-27T08:27:00.010-04:00

I am slowly getting the columns done. So far I have 4 of the 8 1/2 columns that I took down re-installed.

I'm making one change to the columns as I put them back up. The cap where the top and bottom parts of the colum meet is a weak spot. The cap is nailed to the bottom part of the column then the top part is toe-nailed to the cap.

I know it sat that way for over 100 years without a problem but I feel better adding a little structural staility to this area.

What I'm doing is taking a small 4x4 piece and screwing it to the base with 3" deck screws. I then screw a 3/4" piece of flooring to the 4x4. This makes 4 1/4", the size of the opening in the top part of the column.

I then take the top part of the column and slide it over the 4x4 and secure it into place with more 3" deck screws. This also has the added benefit of repairing the caps, most of which are split in half as you can see from the picture above.

I got a little bit ahead of myself and started installing them before primering. Hopefully I can finish all the columns by this weekend. That may be a bit of a challenge though, the double column by the steps has rot at the base, and the capital is rotted on the single column across from it.

Porch Columns

2010-08-23T08:31:00.000-04:00

I decided to get back to work on the front porch columns. They have been sitting outside in the elements since I took them down way back in March.

I didn't get many pictures of my progress. Here is a picture of one of the columns during scraping.

This is the top half of the column. I am completely removing all the paint from the columns so it's a very slow and tedious process. I completely stripped, primered and installed one column and stripped half of another column before it got dark.

Here is a pic of the column installed, it's not a great shot since it was dark before I remembered to take the picture:

Side Hall Wainscoting

2010-08-19T09:36:00.000-04:00

Last night I finished the side hall wainscoting. In an earlier post I had shown how someone used black tar to stick paneling to the wall. This tar was all over the wainscoting. Here is a picture from last week, you can see the tar covering the wainscoting:

You can also see the missing boards to the right. These were removed to run the plumbing, electrical, cable, and the vacuum line.

The 3" drain pipe sticks out slightly from the wall so I couldn't just slap a board over it.

I had to remove some material from the back of the piece of beadboard for it to sit flush. I did this with a table saw.

Here are the boards test fitted into place:

The last board will need to be ripped to fit. I am not going to install the 3 boards that cover the vacuum line yet because I still need to tie it in under the house so I want to leave it open for easy access.

With all that done I got to work removing the tar. I started by using a heat gun but the tar just got very gooey and was making a worse mess. The best method I found for removing it was to use a very sharp scraper. I had to re-sharpen the scraper every 5 minutes or so but it worked pretty good.

Notice the outline on the wall? Looks like there was a large radiator here before it was converted to a bathroom.

Once all the tar was removed I sanded the boards smooth and then primered and painted them.

Next I need to get the chair rail and picture rail made. I also need to buy the oak T&G flooring, I am going to pull up the existing flooring all the way up to the edge of the main hall and then lay the new flooring down.. Before I do that though I need to fix the sub-floor just to the left of the bathroom door. The toilet sat here so it's in pretty bad shape.

Hall Corner

2010-08-12T08:17:00.002-04:00

I've finished the outside corner where the two halls join.

I sanded and put the final coat of mud up on Tuesday.

Then last night I did the final sanding and painted it.

Next up I need to finish the side hall. As you can see from the pictures above I have a lot of work to do on the beadboard. The side hall was turned into a bathroom in 1922, at some point after that the beadboard was covered up with paneling that was glued to it with some kind of black tar. It's this tar that I need to remove before I can paint it.

I also need to have some picture rail and chair rail replicated for this area as the original is long gone, it was most likely removed when the paneling was put up. The gap between the sheetrock and the beadboard is for the chair rail. I also need to find some crown for the ceiling.

Main Hall

2010-08-10T12:33:00.000-04:00

I worked on the hallways over the weekend. I finished the main hall and almost finished the side hall.

After the final coat and sanding of mud I primered everything.

The corner between the two hallways is coming along.

It needs a sanding, one more coat of mud then a final sanding.

I went ahead and painted the main hall to get it done and out of the way.

I'm hoping to finish up the side hall in the next day or two.

Side Hall

2010-08-02T10:13:00.000-04:00

This weekend I worked on the side hall. Here is a pic of how the hall looked last year:

I knew I wasn't going to finish it on my own so I hired on someone to help me. We took down all the plaster and lathe, then put up a few 2x4 studs in the corners, then put up sheetrock, then tape and mud.

Here it is after this weekend:

The small gap between the sheetrock and the wainscotting is for the chair rail that I need to have cut. I'll sand today and put up one more coat of mud. Then I can do the final sanding, primer, then paint.

Parlor

2010-07-31T07:51:00.000-04:00

The Parlor is the next room I've started on. All of the wallpaper and trim is stained yellow from what appears to be years of cigarette or cigar smoke. A few weeks ago I started scrubbing the wallpaper and it looks like I will be able to get it clean enough to save.

I'm using bleach and a scrub pad. I still have about half the room to go.

I went ahead and prepped and painted all the trim over the last few days. I dont have a good before picture of the ceiling but here it is after I scrapped all the loose paint off:

And here it is after painting:

All the trim is now complete. I still need to scrape the paint off the windows and a few areas need some caulking.

I pulled the fireplace mantle off the wall because I intend to strip it down and refinish it. In pulling it off I've discovered that the mantle is oak. The mantle is just leaning on the wall for now:

I also found a piece of original hearth and surround tile:

The red brick looking tile was installed sometime in the 40's when the oak floors were done. The floor was laid over the original pine floor so the brick tiles were just put over the original green glazed subway tiles to bring the hearth up to the same level as the oak floor. I am going to tear up the red tile then carefully remove the original tile then lay down a new mud bed then reinstall the original tile. I need to find some salvaged green tile for the surround though since that was removed.

Foyer and Side Hall

2010-07-26T09:06:00.001-04:00

Wow, almost 2 months without a post! Things have been hectic around here lately. I have done some work on the house though. Two of the projects I have been working on are the Foyer and the Side Hall.

I've been dying to get the foyer done because it's the first thing everyone see's when entering the house. Here is a picture of how it looked before.

What you can not really see in this picture is the condition of the paint. The white trim is scratched, chipped, and stained and the red is just way too dark for this room.

I spent most of the last two days repainting all of the trim and the walls. Here are a few pictures of what it looks like now.

In the third picture you may have noticed that the front door is not repainted. I am holding off on doing that for now because I am debating on stripping and shellacking it.

You cant see it in the pictures but I removed all the carpeting from the stairs, they were carpeted above the first landing with a nasty old green carpet. The treads are in great shape except for a few paint stains. That shouldn't be too hard to remove.

The other project I have been working on is the side hall.

I ran a 2" PVC vacuum line in the wall for the whole-house vacuum I intend to install in the future. This runs up into the laundry room in the attic.

I also ran some string in the wall for anything I may need to run in the future. One thing I need to run is an Ethernet cable for the video surveillance system I will be installing in the near future.

With that done I started putting up the sheetrock.

The side hall is in the back part of the house where the ceilings are 11', the main hall is 10'. The plumbing from the upstairs bathroom runs down this wall but it comes out from the bathroom floor into the side hall up near the ceiling. I had intended on boxing this in but was not looking forward to it.

Instead we decided to just paint the PVC pipe black to make it look like old cast iron pipe and leave it exposed.

I still need to put up sheetrock behind it but I think it will look fine.

Back to painting the house

2010-06-02T09:18:00.000-04:00

Things have been hectic here with the new baby but I have done some work. Most of it has been in the yard. I cleared almost the entire back yard of overgrowth and removed a bunch of stumps including the monster in the front yard. I will post pics of that later.

Yesterday I got back to work on painting the exterior.

I will post more pics as the work progresses.

Our new baby

2010-05-17T11:00:00.000-04:00

Sorry for the long delay in posting. On May 6th we welcomed our new baby girl, Payton Victoria, into the world.

The only work I've done on the house is to the yard. I've been busy clearing it out and planting some dogwoods and Crape Myrtles.

Hopefully I will be able to get back to work on the house soon...

House Painting

2010-04-29T08:54:00.002-04:00

Yesterday I painted the front first floor of the house.

House painting and other things...

2010-04-26T08:32:00.001-04:00

Even though I haven't posted in over 10 days a lot has been going on here.

I finally finished laying the insulation and sub-floor for the laundry room/attic.

We also decided to hire out the scraping and primering of the house since we are running out of time before the baby is born.

It doesn't even look like the same house with some primer on it. It's about half way done now.

Last night we installed the attic stairs that go to the main attic. The main reason for this is not really storage but the huge amount of debris up there. It's full of 120 years of coal dust, bits of cedar shingles, and mortar from the chimneys. The coal dust and other debris is slowly sifting down through the beadboard ceiling and getting all over everything. The existing attic access was barely large enough for me to squeeze through, let alone a shop-vac.

Here is the opening framed out.

Here is the stairs in place.

I will clean up the ceiling and add the trim later.

This morning I painted the porch floor. It's a Valspar porch paint, the color is brownstone.

Paint colors for the exterior

2010-04-16T09:12:00.000-04:00

We picked out the house colors and decided to start on the porch area to get an idea of what it will look like.

I also got one column finished. I primered it and painted it with our white trim so we could then experiment with the accent colors.

Our accent colors are a medium blue and a dark maroon. It's a lot harder to decide where to put accent colors than I thought. As soon as we've come up with the final color scheme for the columns I'll post a picture of it.

Stripping the columns Pt. 1

2010-04-12T08:36:00.000-04:00

I cut the curved section of the floor boards the other day but I didnt get any pictures of how I did it. I went back and forth on how to measure to get the perfect cut. The floor boards need to be 2 1/4" out from the joists, 1 1/2" for overhang and 3/4" for the facia board I will be installing over the joists. Because the joist is on a curve and the floor boards are straight you cant simply measure the distance out from underneath and subtract 2 1/4".

I toyed with a lot of ideas, all of them very complex but in the end what I came up with was very simple and worked perfectly. What I did was take an 8 ft section of quarter round and clamp it first on one end just before where the porch starts curving, 2 1/4" out, then bent the quarter round all the way around to the other side. I checked the measurement in the center of the curve to make sure it was 2 1/4" out from the joists. Then I traced the curve with a pencil to make my cut line.

Then it was just a matter of making the cut with my jig saw.

I still have a few small floor pieces I need to glue and nail at the center.

Next I turned my attention to the boxed beam in the gable section. Most of it was rotted and needed to be replaced. I took out the old beam and started installing the wood for the new one.

With that finished I could begin working on the columns.

I'm hand scraping for the most part. Stubborn areas get the heat gun.

Here is the upper section of the first column scraped.

The capitols are in really bad shape, they are covered with tons of layers of paint so I'm going to completely dismantle each one to strip the paint.

Once it was completely dismantled (didnt get a final dismantled picture) I started scraping each piece. I had to use the heat gun for most of it.

Here is one section stripped of paint and put back together.

This was as far as I got last night. Stripping all the columns is going to be a long, painstaking process but in the end it will be worth it.

Porch floor

2010-04-06T11:57:00.000-04:00

I finished the porch floor yesterday. It took two days to complete.

For the curved section of the porch I laid the new floor the same as the old one was. I started by adding 2x10's laid flat in between the joists for the edge of the floor to rest on. Then I snapped a chalk-line from the corner of the house to the center of the curve.

Then I took a straight piece of flooring and temporarily nailed it along the line. This gave me something to butt the mitered ends of the flooring up against.

Once all the flooring was laid on that side I removed the nailed down board.

And then began on the other side.

Here is the finished floor.

If I have time today I will cut the long ends of the flooring and finish installing the trim boards. Then it's on to the columns.

Framing the porch floor

2010-04-01T08:46:00.004-04:00

The front porch is now completely framed out.

I used pressure treated lumber on all the outside edges. The rest is a mix of Pressure treated lumber, original lumber and full dimensional antique lumber given to me by my friend up the street. I used joist hangers on all the straight joists.

I should be able to start laying the flooring on Friday.

Demo-ing the porch floor

2010-03-31T08:36:00.002-04:00

The next part of the porch project is the porch floor.

There is a lot of dry rot in many areas of the floor.

First I braced the roof and removed the rest of the columns, here is an in progress pic.

Then I ripped the old floor out.

With the floor boards out I started removing the rotted joists.

Then I began laying in new joists. The joist at the curved part of the porch was especially tricky. I had to cut curved sections out of 2x8's and 1x8's and them sandwich them together.

I finished it off with a few layers of deck sealer since the 1x8's aren't pressure treated.

I've just about got all the joists in on the section in front of the door but I wasn't able to get a picture of it because I worked until dark again.

Shingling the front porch roof

2010-03-26T10:50:00.001-04:00

I finished felting the roof on Wednesday.

Then finished the flashing. When I was flashing the area by the balcony I discovered more rot so some floor boards had to come up.

...and be replaced.

I will go back and finish felting this area later.

Next it was on to the shingling. I started in the valleys, I used a half-weave. This is where you lay the shingles on the smaller roof first overlapping on to the larger roof then snap a chalk line in the center of the valley and shingle up against the line for the larger roof.

The next part was shingling the curved part of the roof. This turned out to be a major pain in the ass. I had to cut each of the 3 tabs apart and notch the edges of each one. The angle of the notch got progressively sharper with each course.

and yes, as you can see in that last picture it was raining again.

I finished the shingling last night but it was too dark for pictures so I'll take some later today.

Finally!! Front Porch Rebuild

2010-03-22T09:06:00.013-04:00

I've been planning this one for a long time. The front porch had a lot of rot and was starting to leak pretty badly. I had originally planned on doing the entire porch over one weekend with the help of my family but once we started it turned out to be a much bigger job than anticipated. I took all of last week off with the intent of scraping, primering, and painting the house but I ended up using the entire week for the porch.

My dad, uncle, and one of my brothers came down last weekend to help out. Before they came out I pulled down some of the rotted beadboard ceiling above the door to see what it looked like in there.

This is what I found:

Not good. Once my family got here we started the demo:

More rot

This is the hole my leg made as it fell through the roof

This entire area is rotted and needs to come out

Tearing out the rot

These next two pictures are what's left after tearing out all the rotted wood:

The worst part is I thought the porch would have been framed with at least 2x4 rafters but it wasn't. The roof is made up of the beadboard ceiling, 1x4 purlins, and plywood sheathing. Thats it! The only area that has actual framing is the front gable.

Well to rebuild the porch with framing would entail ripping the entire thing down and building it from scratch. I dont have the time or the money to do this, besides, the porch lasted 120 years like this so I think it's ok to rebuild it the same way.

After ripping all the rot out it was time to start the rebuild. The first thing we concentrated on was devising a better system for holding the small balcony up. Originally it was just sitting on top of the beadboard so needless to say I wanted something a bit stronger.

What we came up with was a cantilevered beam made up of three sandwiched pressure treated 2x6's.

We nailed this beam into the joist in the ceiling. Next we installed the front joist. The original was so rotted I pulled it apart by hand to remove it.

With that installed we framed out the balcony.

With the balcony done we installed the new ridge board. The original was a 1x4, we used a 2x4. Then we installed the rafters.

Next we turned our attention to the beam that sits on the columns. Two entire sections were completely rotted. We pulled them out and replaced them with three 2x6's sandwiched together.

At this point the weekend was over and my family had to leave, I hated to see them go but they were a HUGE help.

For the next two days my father-in-law came over to help me. We began working on installing the beadboard ceiling. All the replacement beadboard I'm using I got from a friend in town. He recently bought two old houses, one of them was not savable so he decided to dismantle it and use the wood to restore the other one. I spent the entire day on the Friday before my family came over removing the beadboard and flooring I would need.

With the beadboard in we laid the 1x4 purlins down and screwed them in with 1 1/4 screws. We also laid the purlins on the gable and started building the valleys. I laid aluminum flashing on top of the valleys (not shown in the pics).

The next problem we worked on was the curved beadboard ceiling section. A part at the top had fallen in and was just hanging.

First we braced the ceiling back into place, then we used strips of plywood that were kerf cut on the back to hold it in place.

With the ceiling finished we started laying the sheathing.

This was as far as we got before the day ended and my father-in-law had to go home. He was also a HUGE help and I was sorry to see him go.

From now on it's just me.

The next day I continued the sheathing in the rain, it rained all day.

This is the balcony, I used flooring for the decking. The buckets are to catch some of the rain pouring down off the roof.

The next thing I did was to level the entire porch roof and remove some of the columns. Note how in the before picture the roof slopes in on each side towards the gable in the center. I had to raise the entire gable by about 3".

Before leveling

After

With the roof level I began installing the small facia trim just under the plywood. The original had a routed edge along the bottom. I found a router bit that almost perfectly matched the original profile.

Here it is installed along the curved edge of the roof. This was no easy task.

Just when I thought I was done with the rot I found more. The beadboard ceiling in the side porch area was completely rotted and had to come out.

With the rotted boards removed I installed replacements.

Then laid down the 1x4 purlins.

We intend to install a ceiling fan here as this will become a screened in porch so I needed to run the electrical for it. Because there is so little room in the ceiling I had to come up with something that would fit. Even a pancake box wont fit so what I ended up doing was drilling a small hole for the wire then I took a light fixture bracket and screwed it down to the top of the ceiling above the hole. I then screwed in two screws through the screw holes in the bracket and through the ceiling. Then I removed them and screwed them back in from underneath. I will use these two holes to secure the ceiling fan to the ceiling.

With that done I finished installing the sheathing. As you can see it was once again raining...

Next it was on to the felt and flashing.

This is as far as I got. Unfortunately I have to go back to work this week so it's going to be hard to get this finished.

I still need to finish the felt and flashing, shingle the roof, remove the rest of the columns, rip the floor up and install the new flooring, then repair and reinstall the columns. Then of course there is all the small trim work that needs to be installed.

New Washer & Dryer

2010-02-26T09:06:00.001-05:00

We finally broke down and bought a new washer and dryer. I started noticing a little bit of water on the pan below the washer and it was starting to make a loud squeaking noise occasionally.

We found a really good deal on the Maytag 5000 series set. This set uses steam in both the washer and dryer.

It was hell getting them up the stairs, especially the washer, it must weigh 3 times as much as our old washer. At each landing I had to remove the hand truck and reposition it because they were too big to turn on the landing. I also had to remove the door frame to the laundry room to get them in, there was literally no room on either side when I squeezed them in there. In the end it was worth it though, they are awesome. They use much less water and electricity, are super quiet, and clean great.

Upstairs bathroom is complete

2010-02-01T09:06:00.005-05:00

Well for now anyways. I still have a few small things left to do like some caulking, I need to paint the ceiling and I'll probably put some crown up too. I also need to find a mirror or small medicine cabinet and a satin nickel towel bar and toilet paper holder. I also need a light fixture for the ceiling (there's a bare bulb there now) and possibly one above the sink. And I need to install the baseboards too, they will be travertine.

Here are a few pictures of the work done over the last few days.

Here is the room after the second sanding of the mud. The window in this room is in very bad shape. It wasn't built properly in the first place and now it's falling apart. I an going to completely rebuild the window in the spring or early summer but for now I'm just cleaning it up and putting some new casing on it.

Here's the new casing on the window.

Next I painted the room, we found another can of oops paint that was the perfect color and even better it's semi-gloss. After painting the room I began installing the plumbing for the fixtures.

Installing the sink faucet was a huge pain in the ass. First the center hole on the bowl was not big enough for the faucet to fit through. I had to grind it out with my dremel, the bits I had were very cheap and china is very hard so I went through about a bit a minute but I was finally able to enlarge the hole enough for it to fit.

So then I finally get the entire faucet together and realize that I need to take the handles back out to be able to bolt the bowl to the wall. Now with the bowl up against the wall there is almost no room to work so putting the handles back in took a while. The next issue is that there is so little room under the sink that it was very hard to install the braided hoses without them kinking. There are two that go from the faucet to the handles then two that go from the handles to the supply valves.

I finally got it all together, here is a pic of it.

I think it looks pretty good, by the way we got both this faucet and the shower kit on closeout for about $160 total.

Here are the rest of the bathroom pics.

Sink

Toilet with antique toilet seat

The completed window.. for now

I figured I'd add a picture or two of what this bathroom looked like originally.

Upstairs Bathroom

2010-01-28T09:13:00.000-05:00

The grout is cured and I sealed the stone yesterday. I took my first shower in it this morning and it's awesome!

I finished putting up the sheetrock yesterday also. I still need to mud it though. Then I can paint and install the sink and toilet.

Shower is complete

2010-01-25T09:06:00.001-05:00

I finally finished the shower.

Now I just have to wait three days for the grout to cure then I can seal it. In the mean time I'll be hanging the greenboard and installing the toilet and sinlk.

Bathroom Floor

2010-01-22T09:06:00.001-05:00

Yesterday I finally got around to laying the bathroom floor. I had temporarily installed the toilet a few months back so I removed it first.

Then I laid down the backer board.

and then laid the travertine.

Today I'll finish tiling the curb and hopefully grout everything.

Shower Walls

2010-01-19T09:06:00.001-05:00

The shower walls are done with the exception of the bottom row. I will finish that on the next day or so once the rest of the wall is completely set.

The flash is making the filled in portions of the travertine look glaringly white but it's not like that in person. Maybe once I seal it it will look better in pictures.

Once I finish the bottom row of tile I still need to tile the bathroom floor and the curb, then it's on to grouting.

Shower Floor Tile

2010-01-15T09:06:00.003-05:00

Yesterday I laid the floor tile in the shower. The tile is 1 3/4 x 1 3/4 Noce tumbled travertine.

I laid out the sections around the drain first and made all the needed cuts.

Then I mudded and laid the tile.

Next it's on to the walls...

Finishing the mud bed

2010-01-14T09:06:00.003-05:00

I finished up the mud bed yesterday.

First I finished installing the backer board.

Then I installed the wire mesh around the curb.

Then I started laying the mud.

This is what happens when you leave for a half a second and you have a curious kitty in the house.

Here is the finished mud bed.

It should be ready for tile this afternoon.

Shower Liner

2010-01-13T09:06:00.002-05:00

The shower liner is in and most of the backer board is installed.

Shower mud bed

2010-01-11T09:06:00.002-05:00

I've finally began working on the upstairs shower.

First I had to rebuild the wall the plumbers took down to run the lines.

Next I put aluminum flashing all around the edges of the shower since there was a small gap between the floor and walls. Then I put down felt and wire mesh.

At this point I realized that I needed to fix the hole in the back wall before I put the mud down.

This hole was the original access to the attic above the dining room and kitchen. The boards I took from the new access in the nursery fit perfectly.

The mud came next.

Getting the mud perfectly smooth and sloped was hard, my trowel was too big so I ended up doing most of it with my bare hands.

Here is what it looks like this morning.

Looks like it's just about dry. This afternoon I'll put the liner down then the final mud bed.

Kitchen Paint

2010-01-06T09:14:00.000-05:00

For the past few days I've been working on getting the kitchen ready to paint. Sorry I dont have any work in progress pics... First I mudded and sanded the walls then began working on the trim. The door and window casings were in horrible shape. I had to scrape and sand them first. Next I installed them, fixed any holes and cracks with wood putty then primered them.

Finally I was ready to paint. The color is a goldish yellow. We picked out the color then found almost an exact match in the oops section. It saved us more than half and to top it off it's Valspar's premium paint.

I also sealed the backsplash with two coats of sealer. All the switch plates on the backsplash are oil-rubbed bronze. The plates in the rest of the kitchen are painted wood.

Here are a few pictures:

Left to do in the kitchen is install the crown on the ceiling, install the crown on the cabinets, install the light bars, and install the toe kicks. I'll be moving on the the upstairs bathroom next though. I need to get the shower built ASAP, the downstairs bathroom is an addition on the outside of the house and isn't insulated very well so it gets very cold in there. This makes it hard to take baths.

Kitchen Backsplash pt 2

2009-12-30T09:06:00.004-05:00

Yesterday I laid the grout for the backsplash. The float I had was too big so I had to use a mud spatula and the grout was runny so it was a messy job.

Here are a few after pictures:

I guess now would be a good time to unveil the new island we got:

In two days I'll seal the grout.

Kitchen Backsplash pt 1

2009-12-29T09:06:00.004-05:00

Yesterday I began working on the kitchen backsplash. I put this off for a long time because I thought it was going to be a real pain to install. It turned out to be quite easy. The only thing is, once you start you cant stop so it gets a bit tedious after a while.

Here is a picture of the first section, most of the cuts were just cutting the tile in half for the top and bottom of the diamond portion. The only other ones were around the outlets and a few at the ends of the walls. I'm using 4x4 Country Beige travertine with a 1/16th in. grout line.

Here are a couple after pictures:

We will be hanging corbels under the edge of the cabinets on either side of the hood vent, that is why some of the pencil trim looks like it's missing on either side of the framed in area in the picture below.

The black circle is the water line for a pot filler.

This afternoon comes the grout.

Nursery

2009-12-28T09:06:00.004-05:00

Sorry that it's taken me so long to get a post together. A lot has been going on lately. We had to get our other house emptied out so we could put it up for sale. This took over a month, we have way too much stuff. We didnt have anywhere for it to go so we ended up getting a booth at a new antique mall that opened up here in Woodbury. It's worked out quite well as we've sold a lot of the extra antiques we've collected over the years.

I have managed to get some work accomplished on the house though. I finally wired up a light in the upstairs bathroom. Tiling the shower and finishing the bathroom is the next project I have lined up. I should be able to start on that by next weekend.

One of the projects I was working on is the Nursery. My wife is pregnant and the baby is due in late spring so I had to get this room completed.

Here's a couple of before pictures to show what I started with:

The paint was flaking everywhere so I had to scrape and sand very thoroughly to remove it all. I also had to frame out the doorway to the laundry room that is seen in the picture above. You can also see some holes in the wall that needed patching.

Then I primered and painted everything.

Here are a few after pictures:

There are still a few things left to finish off. There are a few pieces of trim left to install, there are still two small holes in the wall to fix, the doorway and door to the laundry room needs to be primered and painted, the steps to the laundry room need to be built (the ones in the picture are temporary), the electrical in the entire room needs to be wired, the oak chest needs to be painted white, the floor needs to be painted, and we need to find a nice large plush white rug. We also need to get a mattress for the bed and finish decorating.

The other project I've been working on is the kitchen backsplash but I will save that for the next post (tomorrow, not 3 months from now hopefully!).

Living room wallpaper

2009-10-07T14:06:00.000-04:00

I've been working on the living room for the past few days. Here is the last picture I posted of the living room back in june.

Just after this I had done a lot of work on the room but was then diverted off to other things so I left the room unfinished. There were at least 3 layers of wallpaper on the walls and multiple coats of paint between at least 2 layers.

The original plan was to remove all the wallpaper and paint the walls. This proved a lot more difficult than we had originally thought.

The ideal solution wold have been to buy some awesome Bradbury & Bradbury wallpaper and hang that over the old wallpaper, but because I'm not made of money that wasn't an option.

The solution I found was paintable wallpaper. The plus is that it's cheap, we got it on clearance for $10 a roll. The minus is that you have to do twice the work, first wallpaper, then paint.

I had gotten as far a wallpapering about 70% of the room before I had to move on to other things a few months back. Since we spend most of our time in this room I decided it was time to finish it.

First I patched up a few areas of the plaster that needed it.

Then I rolled on a coat of wallpaper primer.

And then I installed the wallpaper.

Once the wallpaper was dry I was able to paint. First I painted all the trim, then rolled on the paint, then cut in. That took longer than I had anticipated because the trim paint took a lot longer to dry than I thought. I think it's because it's semi-gloss. I'm used to satin, which drys fairly fast.

Once it was all dry I moved our furniture in.

I have not done anything above the picture rail yet, there is wallpaper up there that needs to come down then I'll paint it a very light tan, almost white.

Front porch issues

2009-09-30T09:06:00.001-04:00

Our front porch is really getting bad. I dont think I'll be able to hold off on fixing it for much longer. The other day we went out for a while and came home to a large section of the ceiling laying on the porch. I didnt get a picture of the mess but here is the hole.

Once I cleaned up the mess I decided to go ahead and patch the floor in front of the door since I was already out there.

This hole has been there a while, I've just had plywood over it. I had brought some old tongue & groove boards over from the house in Griffin last week for this purpose.

It's just a band-aid until I can get out here and rebuild the entire porch. I may throw a coat of paint down in the meantime so as least it will look better.

Sunroom Interior

2009-09-29T09:20:00.000-04:00

I had family over this past weekend for a big cook-out so I had some things I needed to finish up before then. One of them was the sunroom. The doorway between the sunroom and living room was still not framed out, none of the french doors were hung, and I still had nothing on the walls.

First thing I did was frame out the doorway. First, I made the sill.

Then I framed the doorway and installed the french door.

I used some original plinth blocks on the inside. I dont have any spare fluted casing though so I had to go with plain for now. I will be having some milled to match the original down the road, once I do that I will replace these and install rosettes in the upper corners as well.

I also installed the french doors that go to the hallway and to the deck.

All of these french doors are salvaged. The doors that lead to the hallway and living room were a pair that came from an old 1906 farmhouse that was being torn down. The smaller door that leads out to the deck was one I found online for free.

As with the screen doors, they all fit the width but not the height of the door frames. These were all too long though and had to be cut down.

I found a really great mortise lock while at a flea market, I got it for $3. It has a dead bolt built into it. I installed it into the door that leads to the deck since this is an outside door. I used an antique set of rosettes and door knob to give it more of an original look.

I still need to find an escutcheon for the dead bolt part of it and finish sanding around the knob. I had to use wood putty to cover the old holes in the door.

The other major undertaking was the sunroom walls.

Some mold had appeared on the inside walls of the sunroom. This was because of a drainage issue that I am working to take care of. I scrubbed the mold off with bleach then primered the inside of the walls.

As you can see in the above picture I also had to run all the electrical in the walls first. I also sealed all the cracks with expanding foam.

Then I insulated the walls.

I was going to use grooved plywood on the walls but instead went with a press-board material that looks like cedar planks.

There is still a lot left to do in this room. I need to insulate the ceiling and put up beadboard, install all the window trim, then paint the room.

Old letter find

2009-09-25T09:06:00.004-04:00

I found an old letter from J. A, Aycock whom I believe to be the original owner of the house. I found it, of all places, online on e-bay. The letter is to a John W. Park. He was an attorney and was also president of the Georgia Bar Association.

The letter was about Mr. Aycock not being able to repay a debt right away. Not sure what he would have needed an attorney for but I sure would like to know. It's dated June 14, 1902.

The really interesting thing about the letter is that it is written on Mr. Aycock's letterhead. As it turns out he was a contractor and woodworker. If he was the original owner of the house and was the builder then that would explain all the nice wood moldings in the house. I've been told by locals that there used to be a lot more elaborate moldings in the house "the likes of which they've never seen before". Unfortunately they were all stolen when the house was being rented out by the previous owner.

Screen Doors

2009-09-24T09:06:00.009-04:00

With fall coming I realized that I better get to work on the window screens and screen doors. There's nothing like opening up the entire house on a nice fall day.

But there's a problem...The only original screen door on our house is the upstairs balcony door:

It's going to need some sprucing up but it's in good shape otherwise.

Unfortunately, all the other screen doors are long gone. I had some other old screen doors in storage at our other house so I went and checked them out. As it turns out they were the perfect size width-wise for the house but two were too short and one was too long height-wise.

I found the front screen door in a trash pile at the curb in front of an old house in Hampton, Ga. It's 36" wide and 79" high, it needs to be almost 87" high so I ended up adding 4 1/4" to the bottom and 3" to the top.

Bottom

Top

Then I installed it after sanding and painting it:

I will be replicating the decorative corner brackets that the upstairs screen door has and install them later.

The next screen door was the kitchen door. This was a left over door from our other house. It was 34" wide and 82" tall. This is the correct height but the bottom was cut crooked so I had to trim it off and then add a 1" piece.

Then after sanding and painting I installed it:

I will replicate decorative brackets for this one also.

I'm holding off on the third screen door for now, it will go on the sunroom door. It's 30" wide and 7" too tall. Cutting it down to the proper height will only leave an inch or two on both ends. I dont think this will look good so I'm just going to set it aside for now.

Kitchen projects

2009-09-16T09:06:00.001-04:00

We've had some rain so I've turned my attention indoors for a while. There are lots of little projects in the kitchen that need finishing up.

The window weights in the big kitchen window were broken so that was the first thing I did. The window casings were already off from when we gutted the kitchen so it was fairly easy to remove the window and re-rope the weights.

The sill was damaged so I removed it so I could repair it. I didn't get a picture of it when it was broken but it had split on the left side about 6 inches to a knot and broken off into a couple of pieces. I glued and clamped it back together and put about six 2" nailgun nails into it.

Here is a picture after I filled the knot hole in with putty:

Then I filled in all the cracks and holes with wood putty:

All that's left to do is give it a final sanding and reinstall it.

The next thing I did was finish sheetrocking the kitchen. Here is one of the areas that wasn't finished:

And here it is finished:

I also finished the area above the kitchen door:

Now all that's left to do on the walls is mud, sand and paint.

2009-09-13T09:06:00.001-04:00

The paint scraping and primering is moving right along...

Toilet Seat

2009-09-12T09:06:00.001-04:00

Yesterday I Refinished the antique toilet seat for the main bathroom. I got the seat with an antique toilet a few years ago for $10. The toilet will eventually go in the upstairs bathroom but I need the seat for the main bathroom.

It had sat outside for years so it was in very rough shape. It had literally come apart at the seams. The lid had only come apart in two places but the seat was in like 20 pieces. I sanded the seams down and glued and clamped it back together, I did that part last year but I didn't get any pictures of it though, sorry.

Here is what it looked like yesterday before I refinished it:

I removed the hardware and let it soak in some TSP. Then I sanded the lid and seat down and then gave it about 5 coats of amber tinted shellac.

Once that was done I scrubbed the hardware down and put it all back together.

Here's a picture of it on the toilet:

It's going to need a few more coats of shellac to match up with the tank better but for now it's ok.

Of course I was also working on the scraping and painting of the house yesterday. This was how far I got:

Finally! That horrible peach color is almost gone!

Scraping paint sucks!

2009-09-11T09:06:00.001-04:00

Here's what I accomplished yesterday:

It doesn't look like a lot but the area I'm working on now has a lot more loose paint than the area I did the day before. The lower half of the second floor appears to have had primer put on over the old paint sometime in the past. You can see it in the above picture to the left of the window. Because of this the old paint is sticking in large chunks and is very hard to scrape off.

Once I get above this line it should go a lot quicker, the old paint is barely hanging on there and should come right off.

The other thing I accomplished yesterday was to install one of our porch lights, we have two of them. The other one will go on the other side of the window.

Primer

2009-09-10T09:06:00.001-04:00

Well I've finally decided to start primering the house. I cant paint the house until I've rebuilt the front porch but at least I can primer it so it doesn't look so bad.

So far I've gotten most of the first floor front done:

In the first picture you can just see another project I recently finished, the mailbox:

I used a cedar post and then put on a coat of amber shellac. The numbers are oil-rubbed bronze.

I've also been working on the electrical in the house. I've gotten the upstairs hallway light wired up and also our bedroom ceiling fan:

Today I'll be back at work one the primering...

Finishing up the fence... for now

2009-09-08T08:27:00.008-04:00

I finally finished the fence this weekend. I still have more fence to put up but I have the back yard completely closed in so our dogs can go outside and run when they want to now.

Here is a picture of the Plat with the fence drawn in:

The green lines are the sections of fence that are complete, the blue lines near the back of the house is a smaller 4' fence I built to section off the side yard from the rest of the yard. The red lines are the sections of fence that I haven't done yet.

The final section that needed to be completed since the last post was the smaller 4' fence. This fence surrounds an old brick patio that I discovered.

First I put in the posts:

To do this I had to cut the boxwood bushes way back, as I cut the bushes back I discovered a brick walkway between them that leads out to the side yard. I had planned on putting a small gate in the middle of the fence but I moved the location to the edge to line up with the walkway.

By the way, the brick patio is under all the weeds. leaves, and dirt in the pictures, I haven't finished uncovering them yet. The patio appears to be about 15'x20'.

Here is a picture of the newly discovered walkway and the new fence behind it:

And here are two pictures of the 4' fence and patio area. In the second picture you can make out a small portion of the patio under the dirt, it's a basket-weave pattern.

The boards over the opening next to the house are temporary, I will be putting in a set of double gates here. Also, I left the fence posts long for now because I haven't decided what to do with them yet. I may cut them off at 6' and mount lights on each one or I may cut them lower and put some kind of topper on them.

Once the fence was finished I turned my attention to some indoor projects. The side hall was closed off with a wall to make a small bathroom in the early 20's, they also added-on a larger second room at the end of the side hall from what used to be a porch. there was no need for a 2 room bathroom so I tore down the wall back in March to return it to a side hall.

This is how the side hall has looked since then:

I finally got tired of looking at the bare lathe and hung the sheetrock. I still have more of it to hang though, hopefully I can finish that off today so I can mud it.

I also wired up the ceiling fixtures here and in the main bathroom. For now I just have some art-deco looking fixtures that I found in the upstairs bedrooms. We'll be looking for antique chandeliers to replace them soon.

The finish looks brass in the picture but it's actually nickel.

I'll be doing more electrical today.

Fence Gates

2009-09-04T09:06:00.001-04:00

I haven't had time to post in the last week but I've gotten a lot done on the fence.

Last weekend I worked on the double driveway gates. I had someone weld up 2 frames out of angle iron for the gates. They are 10' by 5' each.

I painted them and the hinges with Rustoleum gloss black paint.

Then I attached one dog-ear picket to the edge of the frame so I could attach the hinges.

Then I was able to prop the gate up against the post, I used a piece of 2x6 clamped to the edge of the gate to hold up the other side.

I used 6" hex head bolts to attach the hinges to the post.

With the gate hung I attached the dog-ears to the frame. to do this I had to first pre-drill each hole in the angle iron then screw the dog-ear in with deck screws.

Once I install the automatic gate openers I will finish off the little things that need to be done.

I've also completed most of the fence line.

I found this rat snake the other day while working on the fence, it looks like a rat or a squirrel bit him in a few places. We cleaned him up a bit then took him a few miles down the road to a creek with a lot of woods around it.

More fence pics

2009-08-26T09:06:00.001-04:00

The fence is coming along nicely.

I'm hoping to have the yard completely enclosed in another day or two.

More fence work

2009-08-25T09:06:00.001-04:00

I was back at work on the fence yesterday afternoon. I didnt get near as much done as I'd hoped.

I worked mainly on the back fence line.

I added the stringers to all the posts and put up about 2 1/2 panels of dog-ears.

The picture above is of the gateway at the side of the house. I finished up the small section next to the house. Hopefully today I can build and install this gate.

Back to the fence

2009-08-24T09:06:00.001-04:00

This past weekend I got back to work on the fence. I've been working on the section in the back yard. This area is very overgrown and took quite a bit of time to clear out.

The above picture is the far back property line, our barn is about 6" over the line so I have to build the fence into the side of the barn to keep it inside the property line.

This one is the back right property line looking back. The line breaks right at the oak 40' before turning and going up to the street.

Here is the back property line with the posts in the ground, I'm digging all the holes by hand with a post hole digger so it's slow going.

The last two images above are the posts on the right property line. hopefully today I can get the cross braces up and start on the dog-ear pickets.

Laundry Room

2009-08-12T09:06:00.001-04:00

I stopped working on the fence for a little bit to work on the Laundry room. I had to do this because we were quickly running out of clothes.

The first thing I did was run all the wiring in the floor that needed to be run, this includes the wiring for the overhead lights in the Dining room, kitchen, and bathroom below. With that done I laid R-30 insulation down and installed the sub-floor over it.

Here is part of the sub-floor going down:

Next I built the knee-wall where the washer/dryer will go.

I also installed the sub-panel, this will feed the upstairs rooms.

Here's a question for you Electricians out there, is this sub-panel wired correctly? The main panel is wired with a neutral ground so I added a wire between neutral and ground in this panel.

Next I hung the sheet-rock in the washer/dryer area. installed the dryer plug and vent hole after this picture.

Then I set up the washer and dryer.

This is all I'm going to do on this for now, we have a working washer and dryer and there are more pressing things to do... like maybe getting some electricity to the upstairs bedrooms. We're using flashlights to get around upstairs at night right now.

Fence pt. 2

2009-08-04T09:06:00.001-04:00

Work continues on the privacy fence.

The section of fence in the picture below runs along the carport. It's a tight squeeze between the carport and a large Pecan tree. The tree is directly on the property line.

As you can see I had to get creative with the fence here, I'm hoping that the tree is just about done growing...