To Cap it Off

This week I made a "floating chimney cap" to cover the opening of the chimney. I made a wood frame with scrap wood and placed it on a piece of insulating foam on the front porch. I wrapped some thin packing styrene around the base of a clay tile chimney liner and placed it at the center and proceeded to make some concrete using perlite and portland cement so that it is light in weight. The thing "floats" because it is not bonded to the chimney so it will expand and contract without cracking. The gaps are filled with fire proof caulk and it will be attached to the chimney with lime morter which is softer than the concrete. There is a slight slope from the center to the outside edges to allow water to run off the surface.



When I was done with the light weight mix I mixed some all purpose sand with portland cement in a 1:1 ratio and troweled that over the top surface. Once I put the thing in place I will trowel a similar mix on the exposed edges.




I will leave the thing in the frame until it is in place. I used a light weight mix because I have to get this thing out of this dormer window on the third floor and along that box gutter



To here



and it is a lot easier when the thing weighs 20 lbs instead of 100 lbs! You can see I already put a stainless steel cap on the chimney. This was to stop the rain from coming down the chimney. We used to get very little water in the fireplace because the brick sucked up all the water. Now, with a stainless steel liner it all enters the fireplace.

I am still waiting for our big bags of vermiculite to arrive so that I can pour that down the chimney to insulate the liner. In the meantime I installed our old time door bell and actually ran old style telephone wire that I salvaged from the house to service it. The old style wire is thicker than modern telephone wire. This cable has 4 wires not two so I will be able to add a second bell to the circuit if I need to at a later date. The bell works great but may not be loud enough to be heard throughout the entire house. We know the house is old (1845) and the ringer is old (1892)but the actual door bell displays neanderthal qualities! I think I'll call it "Sparky"!

For Whom the Bell Tolls.

I got an 1892 iron box electric bell on Ebay this week to use for a doorbell ringer. I didn't like any of the modern chimes or the way they looked, so I opted once again for that old timey stuff.



This thing arrived and I tested it using the transformer that controls my thermostat to the furnace and after hearing it work I mounted it on one of those wood bases that you can buy at a craft supply shop. (I just happened to have a few lying around, stained and varnished of course.) I wiped it with a little linseed oil to make it shine and screwed a hinged loop to the back so that I can hang the thing on a nail or a picture hook. I can use some of that old cloth covered copper wire from the primitive alarm system that I pulled out of the floor for effect as I wire this baby up!

Here is an old catalogue page of a similar bell.



I plan to place it in the hall on the second floor but if it isn't loud enough I might just have to buy two or three more and place them in strategic locations throughout the house! I wonder what the cats are going to think about this.......

A Different Class of Lowes

We were in Dublin, Ohio on Friday and had to make a right turn and turn around at an intersection in order to get back to where we had to go. Deborah asked a question that is always answered with a "Yes".

"Do we need anything at Lowes?"

To which I answered "I need ANOTHER bucket of joint compound."

So we pulled into the Lowes parking lot and I had to take these two pictures.



The front of the store. In Dublin you are Irish 365 days a year so I'm guessing the trademark "Lowes blue" is a banned color.

This is a picture of the eco-friendly cart return station that took me 5 minutes to find. I was looking for the traditional metal corral effect that we have in Dayton.



Once you enter the front door though everything looks the same. To my surprise the bucket o'joint compound was a good 50 cents cheaper than the Dayton variety. I guess it pays to have class. This seems to be one of those high development towns with lots of new buildings popping up all over the place. I guess the population just keeps dub'lin!

The End of an Era!

I can honestly say that after some 70 + years, the "Old Crack House" no longer has ANY rough textured walls and only two moderately textured ceilings (which I did to hide a few imperfections that I was too lazy to eliminate at the time). I have one less hole in the wall too! This was how it used to look;



One down, four to go!
Here is the rest of the room now with walls that are almost done;





Of course the ceiling still looks like crap and I guess you could say it has some texture!!!

A question I may be able to answer!

I got this comment yesterday fron "Alex" on my window repair post from last year.

I realise the trail has gone cold but can you help with a formula for making trowelling mastic to seal the space between a sash window frame and the stonework including under the sill? I recall the main ingredients are (sharp?) sand and linseed oil (boiled?) but don`t know the proportions or if any other ingredient is involved. The shops here only want to sell silicone cartridges and suchlike so your help would be appreciated.

Here is what I can tell you. From the 1909 Household Hints and Discoveries book I have;
Under the index "Putty" I found this.

Hardwood floor filler- The best filler consists of ground quartz mixed with linseed oil about as thick as white lead paint. The particles of quartz are angular and adhere to the grain of the wood.

and this;

After the priming coat is thouroughly dry, putty up all nail holes, dents, cracks and other defects in the surface with pure linseed oil putty composed of equal parts of white lead and whiting. Nearly all the putty sold at present is made of other oils than linseed (chiefly products of petroleum) and ground cliffstone sand. The use of such putty is the explanation of the yellow nail holes and cracks so often marring what is otherwise good work.
The addition of 1 part of powdered litharge to 5 parts each of white lead and whiting in the composition of the white lead putty above specified is permissible, and where convenient, advised.
The addition of the litharge assists in the drying and hardening of the putty.

Your other options would be to mix some lime plaster using sand and masons lime at about 2 parts sand to 1 part lime and using a tuck pointing tool to push into the gap. If the gaps are deep you can plug them with fabric, newspaper or fiberglass insulation. Another option is to use a can of expanding foam insulation to fill the space, cut away the excess and then use joint compound, lime putty or painters caulk to smooth over the surface. If your walls are stone and you don't want a messy junction at the seam, use masking tape on the stone to get a straight crisp line. You may also be able to apply a thin strip of additional molding to hide the gap.

I would be inclined to use the expanding foam and painters caulk myself because it insulates and seals without the threat of cracking later. My next option would be plaster and then painters caulk to smooth and seal the surface. Painters caulk is acrylic based and will smooth nicely with your finger or a damp cloth or sponge. I don't know anyone who inspects the edges of windows to see if the filler is authentic to the age of the house, especially after it has been painted or coated with shellac!

Smooth as a Baby's Bum

In my spare time I smooth out walls. I have done so many like this that I don't need to sand much anymore. I know I have stated in the past that I detest textured walls and ceilings and I have found that the easiest way to smooth out textured walls is to apply joint compound to them. Remember this wall?



Well as of last night it looked like this



Remember this wall too?



Well, it currently looks like this.



What does it take to do this? A strong arm, 4 days and about 4 buckets of joint compound per room. Is it worth it? That depends on whether you detest textured walls as much as I do!

Another Day at Woods Auction

Since we go to this place so often I have decided to post a permanent link to their site under "Additional Links" to the right of this page!
We spent Sunday at the auction. We have been going to this place for almost 10 years and Elizabeth has been coming with us since she was a baby. Today she bought her first items, with her mommy's help of course. The owner told her to hold her card up until he says that she can put it down but her mommy and daddy know better! You would think that she would be interested in little girl stuff. Here is what she bought



and here is Deborah trying one out.



Two oak rockers. One is arts and crafts and the other is mission style. If you want to know what the difference is, it was $20.00! We don't know where we are going to put them but I'm sure it will be in front of a fireplace!

What a Difference a Day Makes

Here is that one smoke chamber now.



Why am I so Anal? I wouldn't have been this thorough except for the fact that some inspector dude is going to look up here and we actually will be burning wood in this fireplace. I learned a very good lesson today though. Don't wear a white T-shirt while doing this kind of work;

More Chimney Lining Fun!

Two more chimneys got lined during the week. Deborah helped me get these things onto the roof through the access hatch and I got to steer them down their respective chimney(s) which is currently six and a half feet shorter than it needs to be and about 4 feet below the roof line. The idea being that I will build the remainder of the chimney around the liners versus adding to the chimney and not having liners that are long enough. The shorter liner with no insulation wrap went down without a hitch and dropped right into the smoke chamber where I could wrap some ceramic blanket around it and pull it back up into the throat of the flue and plug the remaining gaps with more ceramic blanket material. This plug then gets a couple of coats of refractory mortar to seal it properly. This chimney will get the vermiculite/Portland cement treatment which acts as an insulator and will re-enforce the structure of the chimney. No I don't have a cement mixer so all of this is done by hand and carried up a ladder in a bucket. Fortunately it doesn't weigh a whole lot so it is manageable.

The other liner was another story! This one had the ceramic blanket wrap and the armor mesh covering to protect it as it was lowered into the chimney. This particular chimney flue has a twist and a bend in it. Since the ceramic wrap adds another inch to the diameter of the liner I had to press the bottom end a bit to "ovalize" it so that it would go down the bend into the throat at the top of the smoke chamber. I had to compress about 2 feet of the liner before inserting it and as it was lowered it had to be lined up in the correct configuration so that when it hit the bend it would be properly aligned. Of course none of this mattered because we hit our first snag ten feet into the chimney. The good news was I hadn't plugged any of the holes that I had uncovered which had serviced wood burning stoves in the past.

After lowering the liner a mere ten feet it was stuck on a ledge of mortar that closed the opening at the twist point. The chimney is 12" X 12" at the top and most of the way down, but at this particular spot it narrowed to 12" X 9". Deborah held the flashlight as I whacked the end of a crow bar with a hammer through a 6" diameter hole in the side of the chimney. After about an hour I was still having trouble removing the mass of mortar that was causing the snag so I opened up the hole in the wall to this. This is in our second floor bathroom. (That's right, the one where the pipes freeze every year and mushrooms grow out of the ceiling!);



Now I could get a hand with a chisel and a hand with a hammer into this space and after a few whacks I had a box of this;



Deborah tugged as I pushed from the roof and the liner dropped another three feet before it got caught up again. At this point there was no turning back. I was unable to lift the liner back out so I twisted it and pushed. I'm sure if anyone was watching they would have laughed.at the strange man straddling his stump of a chimney hugging a large steel tube while twisting like a loon! It dropped another few feet and was ready to enter the 45 degree bend part where the opening narrowed to 12" X 8".

There is a large hole in the side of the chimney in the dining room. I uncovered it when repairing a bulge in the plaster. I can only guess that this was for a clean-out door.



I had to insert a 1" X 2" wood board into this opening and lay it on the bottom part of the flue so the liner wouldn't get stuck as I pushed and twisted the liner from the roof. Deborah stood on a step ladder with her hand on the wood to cause the liner to bend in the desired direction. After a little more pushing and twisting the liner was in. It was a little awkward removing the strip of wood but I got it out too. By the end of it all the view looking up into the firebox was this;



This will be plugged with ceramic blanket material and sealed with refractory mortar. You can see I have already started patching the smoke chamber. I wouldn't be so thorough except that a city inspector is going to shine a flashlight up here and I am better off doing the job right first time. Besides, we may actually burn wood in this fireplace so I know he is going to want to see the smoke chamber lined properly. I never expected that I would actually get this liner into the throat of the chimney. I thought I would have to seal it at the opening for the clean-out door so of course the liner at the top is sitting about 8 inches in the chimney stump so I need to get another 8 feet of flex liner to finish the job. The one next to it is extending about 5 feet out of the "stump" and can be sealed inside a tile liner when I finish building the chimney. I never was good at math. Just to prove my point, I have to buy 394 bricks and haul them up 3 flights of stairs, not the 170 I previously estimated.

As of today the liners are plugged and the first coat of refractory mortar is applied. I've run out of refractory mortar so it will be a few days before I can finish this. I must say that being cramped up in a fireplace applying mortar with a 1" putty knife for several hours is character building. I never realized that I could get so dirty either!

This Couldn't Happen to a Better Person!

I went over to the "Old Crack House" today to do some work on my chimney liners and confronted this in the back yard.




It is laying across the main power line to the house but hasn't pulled the line down off the wall!



Guess what I spent the day doing?
Let's all sing......

"I'm a lumberjack and I'm OK
I sleep all night and I work all day."