Confession is good for the soul!

I confess.....it ain't warming up before April. I bow to the inevitable, and put the storm windows up today. Also decided since I am going to be cold I may as well warm up my gizzards:

Back from the dead!

A little progress here, mostly just trying to keep my head above water, I'll start posting some of the little things just so it looks like something is actually getting done around here. Meanwhile, happy gobbler day!

Colonnades!

 The WINTER THAT WILL NOT DIE is passing at last! Time to do more work on the house!

There were colonnades between the two front rooms sometime in the past, but they have been gone as long as anyone alive could recall, because the floor settled and the doors wouldn't stay closed.I had a set lined up about the time I bought the place but some SOB did me out of them, so the search has been on ever since. Through an interesting set of circumstances I wound up with colonnades for the front rooms. Although dirty, the price was right and the finish is reasonably decent, and is a close enough match to what's in the front rooms they will look pretty sharp.

 The columns are AWOL; they have been for a while, too-the stain on top is as dark as the sides, with only the barest footprint to be seen in bright light.

There are some broken pieces in the doors, which are “leaded” with zinc instead of lead came. Zinc has the advantage of being lighter and stiffer than lead, so the doors won't need re-enforcing straps across them like lead might at that size.The glass is pretty wavy and has lots of character, and has a sort of interesting variation on the usual diamond and vertical bar theme. When the time comes I will probably have the Glass Shop in Emmetsburg repair them-Lee is a very good stained glass artist.

There was a broken hinge on one of the doors, which will be addressed in today's post. The hinges are half-surface mounted little butt hinges with a two tone copper Geneva finish. The bottom one on one side was missing half that went on the jamb. If they were hinges I could lay hold of easily, or full morticed so replacements wouldn't be so glaring I would have replaced them all, but plan B was to find a hinge to take apart and supply the missing half.
Thanks to N D Millwork in Paullina, the missing hinge and lots of the pieces of trim-work cease to be problematic.

The hinge in question has only three knuckles, which is easier far to match than a five knuckle one, and the half missing has the long centre knuckle, so I took the donor hinge and filed enough material from the pin to allow it to be driven out. The centre knuckle of the donor hinge is slightly shorter than that of the original, so I will file down a bronze clock bushing to take up the slack. I am going to hold off fixing the glass doors until they are fixed in where I want them. Hopefully the next project is getting the damned kitchen level so I can start in there!

There it is, in all of its half-fixed glory!

Plaster dust in the morning

Taking plaster from the kitchen walls. No pictures because the grit will wreck my camera. I wish I could post the smell so everyone could share that with me! Instead, have a picture of the door I got for my dining room.

Up and away!

Got the jack under the devil under my kitchen. The timber sank a little more than a quarter inch into the devil before it began to raise the who bastardly affair. Some people would say it means I had a quarter inch of bad on the devil, but I am a pragmatist and say that means there are seven and three quarters of decent material.

Some past jakassery includes a chunk out of the devil for an air register, and a few floor joists that are not too good that were cut for cold air returns and gas pipe. I gt the wood, but I need to come up with a couple of lolly columns to put in place of the tree trunk that is there now, and raise the whole works another half inch.

Tomorrow I am going to knock more plaster from the walls right over the jack so the whole works is easier to deal with.

Kitchen or else!

One of the biggest stumbling blocks for the kitchen projects was a chimney that was right in the way. It came out about five feet in the air, and had flues into three different rooms, with plastered surfaces in two of them; the kitchen and the back bedroom. It was dragging the whole works down, and making plaster buckle and that. This is hardly anything new; the wall paper behind the top trim of the built-in cupboard is anti-godlin to the world and God alone knows how long it's been back there. Some long time ago the top was removed, so at least it didn't go through the roof, but there was still plenty for us to fuss with.

Enter my two good helpers, Michael and Madi; neither one is afraid of hard work, so Saturday they came over, we moved enough junk out of the way to get to the offending parts, stopped for dinner, when we all ate my Italian roast beast and fried green beans with home made salsa and blue corn chips, then we took the gas line off of the cookstove and covered the poor old beast in heavy blankets and put it out of the road and dug in and began to remove the swine of a chimney. I had already pulled off a good part of the molding nearby to strip paint from, and most of the plaster around the chimney in the kitchen side was so loose it fell off when the wallpaper quit holding it together,

Two chisels and two three pound hammers were pretty much all it took to do the deed, with plenty of time between breaking bricks out to scoop the fifty years worth of ashes and mank out so it wouldn't permeate the place anymore than it already had. The biggest pain in the bum was getting the first break made, after which the rest came out like legos. The bricks went out the door in five gallon pails, and might get used to drain a concrete slab getting poured there next spring. Madi somehow managed to get a tin pipe that was buried behind my dining room wallpaper out without so much at wrinkling the paper!

For no more chimney than there was, it sure seems like there was enough dust and that-my shop vac died, and the other one got lent out and returned with three coffee filters and a rubber band for a filter, so we had to hillbilly it a little. I ran the exhaust hose from the one that wouldn't work to the intake of the one with no filter, so it would use the filter and collection tank of the burnt out one. Sort of awkward, but worked out well in the end.

When the deed was done we all looked like coal miners, and I stood in the shower until the water boiler was exhausted, as I am told the other two did as well.










Next it's time to jack floors!

And the Fat Man lived through most of the winter.....

.....if winter ever ends I could say there was another one behind me. No outside progress. None; I hate the cold and dank weather so I hibernate. Managed to scrounge a lot of lumber from the old man's and a pretty nice tool bench for down cellar. Now I can get all the tools in one place to keep them from underfoot here. The kitchen is getting leveled next. It will happen. Will. I am done fooling with it.

Pictures as soon as I can.

No posts, but plenty going on!

Busy! The north half of the roof was replaced in late July. My homeowners' insurance had excluded it from coverage and it looked like hell so now was the time to do it. Here it was, in all of its patched up glory.

Rather than strip all the way to the sheeting, because the sheeting is spaced for cedar shingles, we elected to try an idea out on the porch roof, where we did strip to the wood roof, which was still pretty good, replace the lowest four feet with new sheeting to match the level of the wood shakes, and roof over that. It worked very well.

The fascia board and soffits were given a little attention about then, too.

The old roofing took up one full sized dumpster, and the place immediately became a good deal more palatable for the three houses worth of neighbours that I care about to live with.

I also put some Florentine glass in my lower bathroom sash, because the window goes almost to the floor and I don't have a plan in hell of replacing it. This was a little more involved than it sounds because I had to refinish the sash, repair the corners, and replace the manky old weight cords.

More as I do it!

Chaz

Making Lemonade!

So the inside door between the house and the porch is the original one, beveled window and all. The only thing I changed was putting porcelain knobs on to keep the long-snouted hound from opening it with his big mouth, which he could do with the old metal knobs. The wood screen door was salvaged from my grandma's old place. My cousin gave it to me when it became obvious he wasn't going to use it.

The door that goes from the porch outside is the original storm door off the house, from the days before the porch was enclosed.
Even though that door is trimmed off funny, manky looking and that, I want to keep it, warts and all. And it has good bones. It also had the original wavy glass.
Had. I took the thing off last week to heat gun paint off, to either stain or repaint it, and was coming along just fine. Then I hear a "whapp" and feel a sting, and come to find out I put my fat elbow clear through the window. (*&^%$!




Enter Lee Beem, from the Glass Shop, in Emmetsburg. He could have cut me a piece of regular glass for not much money, but nooooo. I have to cause trouble all up and down the line. I stopped in down there and he had a chunk of blue stained glass pretty close to the right size. It was still under ten dollars.
The pattern is Florentine, which has been around for a long time. Here it is, in all of its teal glory, enough to make the woman across the corner's head explode. see clear from the street.

In slightly-related vein, I have an acquaintance who doesn't knock, but barges in and once in bellows out "knock-knock!" at the top of his voice. Well, he will get corrected right quick. You see, I took the door knobs off  to work on the door, and leaving them off will fix his little red wagon!

Soon as the heat lets up I'll finish heat gunning the door and decide if I ought to paint or stain it.

Hot Diggity! I got something done!

This is the place right after I got it. The PO did all she could to keep it nice but just didn't have the wherewithal to keep up with the upkeep. Another year and it would have been past saving. The most recent big project around here is getting the old gal painted and the pile of rotten or otherwise scurvy wood replaced before it falls in the hole. Of particular concern are the a) fascia boards and the b) front porch windows. The fascia boards are half done. Remaining are the two six-footers on the front porch and the two foot section on the southeast corner. The windows on the porch are another pot of socks. On the main house the storms took the brunt of punishment for the house, and the windows turned out pretty good, but the porch has no storms, or rather the windows are all storms, and used as the regular window. There are three that are needing help like yesterday.

Each time I do work on this place I gain more respect for whomever built it. The porch windows came out easily, and looked as though they were designed to replace with a minimum of fight and fuss. My neighbour and I had all three windows out in five minutes. Two are repairable, one had the pickle. When a local glass man sold his shop I snagged some old wood storms from him, and one fit, with the addition of a chunk of 5/8" to the bottom. Primed and in, you wouldn't ever know it was replaced. The other two will get the bottom inch cut off and a piece added to combat the decay in their corners. The sill is 1 5/8" thick and 8" deep, and had some rot in it. We couldn't get it removed without a pile of misery, and the bad spot didn't have to bear any weight, so we primed hell out of it and put an aluminum skin over it.

The sash were then glazed and primed, and put back in. The glazing was soupy and wanted to stick to the putty knife-we had a hell of a time keeping it on the window and off of the blade. Next time I am putting the tub in the ice box a few hours before I start in glazing.

Next up, staining and refinishing the porch door. Yippie.

I ain't dead, I swear!

Since it seems that houseblogs is no more, I find I have not kept up on the blogs I used to follow. Since I can't easily keep up on anyone else's, I don't post on mine as much. Ugh! I sort of notice a few others are the same. If you want to, I found a place at http://www.homeownerslike.us/. I am pretty sure www.brooklynrowhouse.com has some part in it, I have actually belonged forever but forgot about it till houseblogs went down. If you like it, can you spread the word? I have no vested interest except reading about house projects. Also, can someone tell me if a site like thhe old houseblogs site is around someplace?

Cheers!

Chaz

3rd Annual Bungalow Blog Tour

Previous Tour Stop: http://bungalow23.com/2011/05/14/3rd-annual-bungalow-blog-tour/

Thanks to Stucco House, the tour commences! Well, it's that time again! A lot has happened, some big, and some not so big.



I still miss my hound. I haven't gotten another dog-I may not, it's too soon to tell. The new one'll have some big paw prints to fill if I do. I am thinking I'll look into a rescue shelter dog. Probably another long-snouted hound. Why change a known ticket, eh?

Before any dogs, though, the yard has to be fenced in and the house gotten a little farther than I have it now. For the time being, I'll just borrow the neighbors' dogs when one needs petting or such.


I came across a little wooden grainery that is going to be the clock shop eventually. It takes forteen by sixteen feet, and has plenty of room for a loft up above for keeping junk that may actually get used in repairs. Building Savers in Emmetsburg brought it up by truck, and set it on the blocks, and now the rest is up to me. It needed a roof as it was, and will need siding help too. I bought steel for the roof before this latest asininity with fuel prices, so I didn't get clipped too hard on that. The rest of the lumber is second-hand going into its revitalization. This is in keeping with my no debt-no waste policy of living here.

The plan it to leave it twenty four inches off the ground, so I can use the space under it for ladders and that. There are to be lean-to's on each side, one for the mower and that, and the other for odds and ends that aren't going to be inside. The siding on it now it pretty well had it. My cousin had a storm hit his farm, and the insurance company made him replace all the tin on the barn, so he gave me the old, which was still good. There's my siding! My dad has friends that always want wood gone from their place. There's the framing and that! Three old storm doors from the trash? There the walls for the lean to. Got the windows and everything already in!

Ever wish you could pick your neighbors? Well, I got to! Here's how it happened: My little red shed is slated to become the clock shop as soon as the roof and windows are made sound. I hired a friend to come tin the roof, and he liked the house north of me. It was empty, and frankly I had little hope of it ever being lived in again, but he and his wife bought it! Let me tell you, I lucked out in this neighborhood!


Grannie's cupboard turns out to be ideal for pianola rolls, along with a few other parlor-y odds and ends. Some son of a snake weaseled me out of the colonnades I had lined up, so I get to find another set. Oh, well. Sucks to be him. I got to get on the stick and get the pianola or the organ working now. Either one will play rolls, and wither one would be nice to have when I want to play something. It doesn't look like there are that many rolls, but the whole bottom is full too, and there are a whole pile of the things.

The old clock from my first shop wound up over the ice box in the kitchen. I can see the thing from a mile off, and it doesn't make any noise on the hours. In a fit of creative zeal, I reverse painted that lower glass. The cat frightens little children.


See my pretty new plumbing, replacing all of the old galvanized? I was so tired of that old mess I got a mad on one day and tore out the whole pile and we ran new lines. We sold all the old en masse to a local scrap dealer, who was more than happy to make it dissapear, and from there it is has passed into dim memory. I am so happy I could grow a tail to wag it! Now onto the shower ring!

Here is another, showing the old in the background and new in the foreground. Dispite the putrid-looking ducts the furnace is new.

Here's the back bedroom, where my den is at. See how nice and settled in it is? Note the peeling paper and scrody looking walls! Settled in. Ayup.....life is good, here on the bungaloo route.

Next Tour Stop: http://ittybittybungalow.wordpress.com/2011/05/12/3rd-annual-bungalow-blog-tour/

No More Dog in the Dog House

My poor old doggie died.

He started slowing down this last fall, and by last Wednesday it was plain he was in more misery than he deserved. We took him to the vet, and it turned out he got arthritis in his back, and two of the bones near his tail broke. That meant he couldn't use his back legs without lots pain. The vet said this condition would rapidly become worse, and even in humans meant a wheelchair and lots of narcotic painkiller.

Two shot syringes and five minutes later it was all done, and we buried him out by his doghouse with his long snout pointed to the road like he always lay.

He's out of his suffering, but it's too quiet around here now. No clicking toenails or sniffing snout makes for one still damn house. No living furnace on the bed means I am up earlier because it's too damn cold to linger.



Work at the house goes on....If the basement door ever thaws out we got the kitchen floors to level.

Landfill bait?

Some people collect cats and dogs, and some get odder items sent their way.





This was headed to the landfill, so like the fool I am I told him to load it up and I'd take care of it.

It is an old Fischer, from sometime in the mid twenties.

It still has the ivory keys, and the action is decent.

The wood case has some neat detail but it is dry and sunburnt.

The pin block has some loose pins, and therein lies the reason he didn't want to dink with it.

Look at the legs!

And the matching stool!

Interesting lines.....

Brass furniture.

I have an oak Cable Euphona player piano ahead of this one in line, so it'll lay for a while before I get to it. More projects! Yippie.