Some More of My Floor

The floor pictured in the previous post looks good but I want to say it is not perfect. Most people don't go around examining floors for flaws but many folks have indicated that they were inspired by how well they turned out and it gives them hope for their own floors. Some of the boards have deep divots due to the splintering dry wood and since this was obviously a problem for the owner of the property who painted the floors battleship grey back in the 1950s, in some of the grey painted areas the paint didn't sand out completely. Some of the deep red color didn't come out either. Here is a close up of one of the boards that illustrates this;

I made the decision to refinish the wood instead of paint the floors based on the fact that they had turned out satisfactory after sanding. They also look quite rustic and have old house character. I did not use stain on this floor. I used shellac for the color and then applied two coats of polyurethane over the shellac except on some of the divots I have had to apply 4 or 5 coats of poly in order to reduce the chance of some areas splintering. The build up of poly on the rough edges of the splinters reduces the roughness of the wood on these edges. Another thing that gives the floor character are the plugs I made for where the floor boxes were:



I couldn't match the wood since I don't have any scraps from this floor and you don't know what color they will turn out until you put shellac on them. I will be mounting external boxes onto the baseboards and the wires should be hidden by the shoe molding. I have to paint the baseboards first, though.

Here is how the adjacent room turned out after a coat of oil based KILLZ primer:

Now for the big clean up. There is a lot of dust in this house!

Never Thought It Would Look Like This!

In April I took this picture



Today I took this picture



Ahhhh, shellac!

NEWS FLASH

Breaking news! After 6 years of being maneuvered around the second floor. the worlds heaviest bathtub has landed on the first floor! That deserves a beer or three! I figured out a way to lower it without leaving large dents in the stairs. Finally, 30 years after the fact, I got to put my physics education to work. Now I truly understand the value of education. Rigging these pulleys allowed me to be able to actually lift the tub off the floor single handed.





My neighbors used the guide ropes attached to the tub to steer it through the door at the foot of the stairwell so that it ended up on the floor below.
Don't believe me? Here is proof!



Last June I described this tub and couldn't find anyone to take it off my hands. Now it is at ground level does anybody want it? I sure would hate to have to use it in the garden for a kitty bath or some kind of raised bed......

Progress Report

I am almost ready to sand the last two floors. I hope that by Sunday they will be done and I can finish working on my plumbing leaks so we can get the water turned back on so that we can give this place a thorough cleaning because it is very dusty!
I put this door back in and the molding back on. It makes a big difference.




When we bought the place this door was hanging out in the basement and I stripped and refinished it last year. Here is a picture of that Eastlake latch lock that I found for $4.00 last year and mentioned in this blog way back when. I gave it a coat of aniline tinted shellac which is why it is dark and shiny. It fit the existing screw holes in the door perfectly.



As you can see, I still have the worlds heaviest bathtub sitting in the middle of the floor.



I have tied a rope around it and have oiled up these pulleys to see if I will be able to lower to the first floor.



The plan is to attach them to the exposed beam in my "Gary sized hole" in the ceiling that I made last week. I bought these pulleys for a $1.00 at the end of some auction about 10 years ago and they have been sitting on a shelf in my garage. Their time has finally come! If this works it will be the most fun I will have had for $1.00 in a long time! If it doesn't work, well it will be the most fun I have had for a $1.00 in a long time!





I got the landing shellacked and urethaned as well as those upper three steps replaced. You see those lower steps? Those were done back when all I knew about was stain and polyurethane. I used to think they looked good. I shall have to see how the floor turns out in this room after sanding. Maybe I won't paint it after all. I'm thinking shellac again....... must be an addiction.

To Boldly Go....

Now that my rewiring is done I have to do all the projects that could wreak havoc on my floor after they are sanded. One such project is cutting an access hole into the ceiling of the extreme "cottage" bedroom so that I can insulate the attic and also run a cable to hard wire a smoke detector. This project involves removing a section of plaster, cutting and removing a few lath strips and about 3 inches of rock wool. The last time I checked it out, gravity was still working. Since this hole has to be made in the ceiling and the best place to be standing in order to make this hole is beneath it, you can guess where the plaster would be falling. Then when I wipe my face it will end up on the floor.
Here is the "Gary" sized hole that I made. Of course I just had to go up there.




Here is the mess I made making this hole. If you ever wondered what a decomposing sheep looks like, this is pretty close. (Hey look, that bathtub is STILL there!)



For all you people doing Google searches for "What does rock wool look like?" this should answer your question.
Oh this was me looking in the mirror after making the hole. The big "idiot" sign on my fore head is covered up by the "Dayton Dragons" hat. Good job I wore that mask, cough, cough!



So I ventured into the black hole in the ceiling to find new life forms and uncovered these




I wondered why the room below had a distinct odor of its very own. Based on the plastic bags used for nesting and the fact that these were above the rock wool, I would estimate their time of death as after 1954.... I suspect the little buggers that get into my third floor are descended from these guys.

The Electric Slide

Years ago when I was stupid and didn't have a clue about old houses I rewired this place. The electrical inspector pointed out that I couldn't put splice boxes under the floors unless they could be accessed readily through a removable floor board. If I planned to install carpet or laminate flooring then I would have to rewire the rooms to eliminate the splice boxes. What did I know? I was only replacing what already existed and been covered over with carpet for 40 years.

I am getting ready to sand the last two floors that require sanding. This means that I have to secure floor boards that have been removed for at least 5 years! Although I plan to paint these floors I don't know if there will be any other type of covering in the future so I have rewired my rooms to eliminate the splice boxes under the floors and used the wall boxes for spicing. While I was at it I installed boxes with three way switches into the brick walls. Here are some pictures of how I do that.




The wires are fed from the attic to the space between the door frame and the brick wall via a short channel cut into the plaster. They run inside the door frame to the boxes via a channel made by removing mortar between some bricks. Although my chiseling skills are quite good after all these years I am no Michelangelo, so the boxes are held in place by wedges of wood. Now I can walk through a door on one side of each room, flick the switch, slide through the room to the door on the opposite side and flick a switch again while singing;

"Don't wanna lose it
It's electric
Boogie woogie, woogie
But you can't choose it
It's electric
Boogie woogie, woogie
But you know it's there,
Yeah here there everywhere

I've got to move,
Come let me take you on a party ride
And I'll teach you, teach you, teach you
I'll teach you the electric slide

Some say it's mystic
It's electric
Boogie woogie, woogie
You can't resist it
It's electric
Boogie woogie, woogie
You can't do without it
It's electric
Boogie woogie, woogie
Jiggle-a-mesa-cara she's a pumpin' like a matic
She's movin' like electric
She sure got the boogie"

Isn't She Lovely?

Here is what a tankless water heater looks like.


Yes it IS one of the recalled ones... They won't come out and check the switch until it is installed.
What I did learn (again) was that you can't connect a GFCI socket using 12/3 Romex and expect it to protect additional circuts beyond it when the additional hot wire is on a different circuit breaker. The returning current from the common white cable triggers the GFCI and it won't work! Unfortunately most people reading this will have no clue what I just said until they try to rewire their kitchen or basement.... Let me add that it is probably cheaper and easier to buy a GFCI circut breaker. Especially if you are using 20 Amp sockets. I wish I did!

While I was busy soldering pipe I decided to extend the air release so that it can double up as an exterior hot water line at a later date. I'm always thinking ahead.
Does the water heater work? I don't know yet because the water is still shut off. I guess I could turn the gas on and see if the meter moves any so I could find out if that leaks!

It's a Good Job I Take Pictures!

Finally having this blog has paid off. No, I still haven't made any money off it but for once it is going to save me time and money! Why? Because of this post two years ago.

When I was replacing the fill-up valve in the toilet tank (because it froze and cracked) I noticed that my cold water line behind the shower had also popped again. This is the same line that gives me grief every year because it freezes and pops. Well, two years ago I took some pictures to tell you guys who read this about my plumbing woes and to get some much needed sympathy at that time. I never posted the pictures, it was way too traumatic for me. It is because of this picture that I know exactly which marble tile I will have to bust out in order to fix this problem!



Yay me! That means I can spend the time that I would have spent busting 4 or 5 other tiles doing something useful like banging my head against the wall.....

Oh, I forgot, phuck it! Phuck it! Phuck it! Phuck it! Phuck it!

Ebay Scoop of the Decade!

There was a book published in 1875 called the "Everts Atlas of Montgomery County. Around page 139 was a two page spread and a biography about the guy who built our house as well as an engraving of our place before it was Victorianised around 1890. I have a picture of the image HERE and a transcript of the biography in case anyone is interested. Of course it doesn't tell you about him being 39 years old when he married a 15 year old and her leaving him almost 20 years later and marrying a guy 15 years her junior, but that is another story.

Anyway, I know that I have mentioned how I search Ebay every so often for stuff I like from Dayton. Well, a couple of weeks ago I was the only bidder on this




The two pages about our man Sam! I would still love to find a copy of the book but this way I won't have to rip the pages out because someone already did it for me! You know this baby is gonna get framed and hung on a wall somewhere. It's pretty big so I know just the crack it will hide!

More House Archaeology

There is still a mound of dirt (really it is ash and debris from an old coal furnace) in my back yard from great well dig of 2006. This mound is getting bigger but it isn't because I am still digging the well, which has at least another 7 feet of dirt to remove. It is because I have been working on that collapsed stairwell to the basement. Every so often things wash out of the mound. A couple of weeks ago I found this



I looked for the patent but couldn't find it. There were over 300 issued on Dec. 10, 1867 so either I missed one or it was the one that was withdrawn. It is a little bit bigger than a quarter. If anyone knows what this was used for please tell me. I will add it to the box of other old stuff of little value that we have found in this place. My other thought was to use it as jewellery for a body piercing since before long it seems that may be a requirement for residency in Dayton!