An Old Tour of Our First Floor!

Way back in January 2002 I took a movie tour of the first floor of the "Crack House" and posted it to our web page at the time. Since then, for some reason, I took the links out of the web page and the files were removed from the computer because they took up too much space. It turns out that I left them loaded on my FTP space at AOL under an account that I never use and just recently (like yesterday) downloaded the files to the PC that we bought in 2006 that has oodles more drive space and have linked to from here for your viewing pleasure!

Living Room

Dining Room

Kitchen

I took a movie tour through the first floor on Thursday to show you how the rooms currently look so you can see the transformation that has been my nightmare. You will have to wait to view those though because we still have dial-up and the files are going to take forever to upload to my FTP space on AOL because they are quite large!

So, to make you happy while you wait I have posted this joke that was sent to me by a friend who generally tells really bad jokes. Maybe it will make some people think before they vote in future.

While walking down the street one day a US senator is tragically hit by a truck and
dies.

His soul arrives in heaven and is met by St. Peter at the entrance.

"Welcome to heaven," says St. Peter. "Before you settle in, it seems there is a problem. We seldom see a high official around these parts, you see, so
we're not sure what to do with you."

"No problem, just let me in," says the man.

"Well, I'd like to, but I have orders from higher up. What we'll do is have you spend one day in hell and one in heaven. Then you can choose where to spend eternity."

"Really, I've made up my mind. I want to be in heaven," says the senator.

"I'm sorry, but we have our rules."

And with that, St. Peter escorts him to the elevator and he goes down, down, down to hell. The doors open and he finds himself in the middle of a green golf course. In the distance is a clubhouse and standing in front of it are all his friends and other politicians who had worked with him.

Everyone is very happy and in evening dress. They run to greet him, shake his hand, and reminisce about the good times they had while getting rich at the expense of the people.

They play a friendly game of golf and then dine on lobster, caviar and champagne.

Also present is the devil, who really is a very friendly guy who as a good time dancing and telling jokes. They are having such a good time that before he realizes it, it is time to go.

Everyone gives him a hearty farewell and waves while the elevator rises...

The elevator goes up, up, up and the door reopens on heaven where St. Peter is waiting for him.

"Now it's time to visit heaven."

So, 24 hours pass with the senator joining a group of contented souls moving from cloud to cloud, playing the harp and singing. They have a good time and, before he realizes it, the 24 hours have gone by and St. Peter returns.

"Well, then, you've spent a day in hell and another in heaven. Now choose your eternity."

The senator reflects for a minute, then he answers: "Well, I would never have said it before, I mean heaven has been delightful, but I think I would be better off in hell."

So St. Peter escorts him to the elevator and he goes down, down, down to hell.

Now the doors of the elevator open and he's in the middle of a barren land covered with waste and garbage.

He sees all his friends, dressed in rags, picking up the trash and putting it in black bags as more trash falls from above.

The devil comes over to him and puts his arm around his shoulder.

"I don't understand," stammers the senator. "Yesterday I was here and there was a golf course and clubhouse, and we ate lobster and caviar, drank champagne, and danced and had a great time. Now there's just a wasteland full of garbage and my friends look miserable. What happened?"

The devil looks at him, smiles and says, "Yesterday we were campaigning...

Today you voted."

Back to Patching Holes

The "cottage" living room floor has been abused in the past. It had been abused by electricians and by HVAC contractors. The floor had 7 holes where socket boxes were once located and four holes for heating vents. The room is 16' X 15' in area. I have been busy this weekend reducing the number of holes in the floor and have finally got good at patching the holes. Buying a router was a step in the right direction also and actually using it was another. I patched up the floor so that we will end up with four floor boxes around the room and two colossal vent holes were patched also. The whole trick to patching these holes is to actually make them look like they were done by somebody else a long, long time ago. Well, that's my opinion anyway. That way they don't stand out too much. I am fortunate to have a lot of old wood to use and I was very fortunate to have a short plank of ash from one of the floors that I could use to patch some of the holes. I was also smart enough to save a bag of sawdust from one of our floor sandings to use as a filler. I mix it with linseed oil and push it into the gaps between floor boards before applying shellac or polyurethane to the floors. In this case I used it to fill the narrow gaps around the edges of the patches.
Any way. Here are some pictures.


This one is right in front of a doorway to the dining room.


This was one of three within 4 feet of each other. Don't ask me why.


This was a large vent hole. One board is ash, the narrow one (if you can actually see it) is pine.



This last one troubled me for a long time, which is why the floor wasn't patched sooner. It was a vent hole cut across several boards. No matter how much I would have tried to hide this it would'nt have worked. I don't have any wide planks of ash to patch it with and to attempt a patch with multiple boards running parallel with the floor boards would have made an obvious patch job look bad. One thought was to patch it with a nicely painted board with a stencil pattern on it and some molding around the edge to frame it nicely. The thought here was to actually draw attention to the flaw and make it pretty but that would have created a ridge where the "frame" would lie. Besides, we will most likely stick a piece of furniture over it so it would be covered anyway. In the end I found a piece of old pine that had been painted on one side. The paint was difficult to remove so I flipped the board over to reveal the unpainted side, sanded it and then cut the edges to conform with the irregularities in the vent hole rather then try to cut the vent hole square. I filled any gaps with my sawdust putty mixture, applied two coats of shellac and now I have to go buy a quart of polyurethane (because that is something I don't have lying around this place), to put over the patches because this is one of our polyurethaned floors. So, you guys all know that I patched these holes but if you saw them yourself you might just say that I am too young to have made these patches! Right, that'll be the day ....

The Bride of Frankenstein

I learned a long time ago that if I have a unique idea that involves constructing something that I should make two. One for me and one to sell. This concept was applied when I made the steampunk ceiling light for the powder room. Our ceiling in that room is quite low so our light is a mere 10 inches long from top to bottom.
I installed the thing this week and put in a carbon filament bulb so that the glow is easy on the eyes. Here is a picture.



I made a second fixture which I just put on ebay to see if there is an interest in this type of thing. This second fixture is 23 inches long and has the addition of a black wooden ball to make it a little more interesting. If it sells, great. I hope it covers the cost of all the parts for both lights. If it doesn't sell then I'll make another one from some more of the old copper plumbing pipe that I pulled out of the basement and put the pair of them in our second floor hallway. I may make some table lamps and wall lights to sell also if there seems to be a market for this kind of thing.
So with that all said, I present you with the "Bride of Frankenstein."



Isn't she a beauty?

My Latest Creation

Wha-ha-ha-ha-ha! (Maniacal laughter)

Egor delivered my box of back ordered parts today. I have been eagerly awaiting for these since December. I was finally able to assemble my wonderful creation for illuminating the mad scientists powder room. All I have to do is install it and add a light bulb. This thing cost me about $25 to make. $15 of that being for the glass shade and $5 for the shade holder. You know, it would be really cool if I could do this with one of those plasma balls that shoots electric bolts to the edge of the glass globe ...... hmmmmm?

Wha-ha-ha-ha-ha! (More maniacal laughter)

After 120 Years, Another First!

For the first time in what must have been 120 years (since the 1888-90 remodel), all the doors in the master bedroom actually close AND latch! When we bought this place, none of the doors would close. The assumption was that the layers of paint were way too thick to permit the doors to close. After stripping and finishing the doors, using the original hinges in their original locations and hanging the doors, they still would not close.
I had to plane and sand a little off the top just to get them all to close. I then rubbed bar soap on the top of the doors to prevent sticking and on these two shellacked doors I had to raise the strike plates slightly in order to get the doors to latch shut. I can't believe these doors never closed properly. I guess the Volkenand family didn't mind the doors not closing and after 1954 this was the front room of a second floor apartment adjoining the hall and a kitchen so closing doors wasn't important either.



This is the closet door. It wasn't worth the time it was taking to get the paint stripped off it. The top three coats came off easily with a heat gun so I left the original layer intact and sanded the surface before painting it. This is the same closet that took me 5 hours to wire in a switch and a light so that no cable is visible. I hate to think what an electrician would have charged to put a light in this closet. Of course it would likely have required the use of exterior metal track to put the wires in and not having to pull up any floor boards which is no fun at all!.

Got Crack?

It's annoying, no, it's really annoying when you spend all kinds of time in the summer repairing, then smoothing out your walls and ceiling, painting them with primer, insulating the attic and then, only then, when the weather gets cold, they crack up like hell! It looks like a plate tectonics map on my wall! Don't even mention the ceiling. The cracks are all hairline cracks. That is the only good thing. That and the fact that we haven't painted the walls with anything other than white primer. These cracks could have always been in the original wall and are now appearing because the weather got cold. On the other hand, since the attic is now insulated they may be forming because the air flow pattern of the room has changed for the first time in 163 years and the house is pissed off. Anyway, I already fixed them and it seems to be working. (I had to do something between coats of paint on a closet door.)Years ago I saw something on "Good Morning America" or something like it about fixing cracks in walls. One solution was to fill the cracks with latex caulk. I have done that before but these cracks are way too fine to fill with caulk. So I did the next thing that I remembered. I found the bucket of white exterior latex paint that I had stashed away in basement and, using a 1" brush, painted over all the cracks with three coats of paint. I made sure to fill the cracks with paint if it was possible. The theory behind this is that as the walls expand and contract the latex paint will stretch over the cracks and they shouldn't reappear through the paint. Of course when I came back to put the second or third coats on I would always find a few more cracks and I bet if I looked again today there would be even more. I would post a picture but with all that white it would be like trying to spot a white cat in a snow storm. Oh well. The way I see it the house is just living up to its name!

Enlightenment!

You know, over the years I have stripped and finished at least 13 doors and every time I complain about backache after having to lean over the thing for hours and hours as it sits on a pair of saw horses. Something happened this week though. I became enlightened. I don't know if I just had one of those "ah-ha" moments or if I was just paying attention to what was in the adjacent room but ..... I found a solution!


My back doesn't hurt today!

Now We're Hopp(er)ing!

Here is a pellet stove update for all of those folks out there who are thinking about getting one. Ours is working just fine. Our situation is a little different from the norm though. The primary purpose of our stove this year is to stop our pipes from freezing once again. So far, so good. We lowered our maintenance temperature from 55 degrees to 45 degrees way-back-when to reduce our pellet consumption in November when outside temperatures were well above freezing and we have been holding there since. We have noticed that, just like any appliance, there is a large amount of fuel consumption if we try to raise the temperature to a comfortable level. If we were to set the thermostat at 65 the thing would run on high for most of the day and night to achieve that internal temperature and switch to low when it was within 2 degrees. After reaching the desired temperature the thing turns off until the temperature drops 2 degrees and then it runs on low to maintain. To maintain a temperature the stove consumes maybe a bag of pellets a day. With super low temperatures outside it is sucking up more but hasn't exceeded two bags. We love it when it is above 40 degrees outside because it doesn't use up any fuel! Of course all of this would be different if we were maintaining a higher temperature.

There are some inherent problems related to pellet stove ownership though. The main one being that you have to keep the hopper full. If it empties the stove shuts down and posts an error message which is easily fixed after filling the hopper and pressing the "Retry" button. UNLESS ....... the temperature in the room where the thermostat is falls below 40 degrees. Then you have a problem. This has happened a couple of times to us but I have figured out a solution. Firstly you have to be sure the hopper is really full. This means you have to push the pellets down and back with your hand. Pouring them in and walking away does not the hopper fill! Next, you have to figure out what the room temperature really is because the thermostat reads 99.9 degrees and you have to get it to read at least 38.4 in order to get the stove to start up. I do this by placing an electric heater within 3 feet of the thermostat. Eventually the 99.9 drops to 38.4 and the start up message appears. A full hopper will keep the thing running for at least 12 hours at a medium/low setting trying to raise the temperature by 5 degrees. Sometimes longer. The space we are trying to keep warm is the first floor and comprises almost 2100 sq. ft of area. The second floor is maintaining at a lower temperature which varies with the outside temperature. The difference is usually between 6 and 10 degrees lower but this last weekend it dropped as low as 24 degrees after the hopper ran out of fuel and the house had almost 12 hours to chill because I couldn't get over to check on it. With outside temperatures at 9 degrees I have to be certain to check the thing twice a day sometimes. Don't worry though. The water is shut off to those upper floors after last winter's plumbing fiasco!

So, back in November we bought a ton (50 40# bags) of pellets for a little over $200 and are now half way through them. The next three weeks are going to be the crucial ones for consecutive days of below freezing temperatures. After that I can probably drop the maintenance temperature if I have to and cruise into March. We are hoping to only need the one ton of pellets this year. Next year, if we are in the place we will probably need closer to 4 tons with the second floor stove running too.
A few other things to note. Although the ash does not create a dust problem, the pellets themselves do when you pour them into the hopper. The ash pan takes about a week to fill up and the ash that builds up in the burning chamber needs to be vacuumed once a week. Each 40 # bag produces maybe a cup of ash so there isn't much residue at all. I guess we should start pricing wood pellets to see if the price drops near the end of the season so we can start planning for next year. Now if we could just pellet-ize kitty poop .........

Victorian Homes Magazine Visitors

You would think that by the time you are 40 you would be wise about certain things. Possibly even home improvement. Not us! While already owning a house we took a walk one day around the neighborhood and spied a huge old house that we had never seen before because it was winter and the foliage that hides it in the summer was on the ground. "What a neat old house" we said. "Just needs a little TLC" and "Oh look, a for sale sign."

One month later we were members of the "two house club" and had to evict some pharmaceutically inflicted individuals from two of the four apartments that we had just acquired. Almost seven years later we are still members of the "two house club" and our three year project has expanded into a journey of learning such wonderful and useful things like how to make beeswax polish, everything you ever wanted to know and more about shellac, making concrete counter tops and sinks and what plaster is really all about. No contractors are being used. None! We tried one plumber early on and his work failed inspection and a portion had to be re-done by yours-truly. As we say around here "Why pay someone to screw up when I am perfectly capable of doing it myself for free!"

Now, if you have a little time, go get a cup of your drug of choice and prepare to sit down for awhile as you venture through our nightmare. Here is a little tip;

if you just want to look at pictures of house pornography, click on the link to the right that says "Our New House - The entire Crack House story". Here you will find the original site that I established documenting our journey since 2001. I am always slow to update it though and I am a few months behind.

If you feel a little sadistic and want to laugh (alot) at our pain, then read the blog entries. When you are done, click on some of the 50 or so links I've listed because many of those people are in the same boat and every single one of them has followed our journey with sadistic enthusiasm!

Crappity Crap Again!

This has absolutely nothing to do with plumbing or houses in general. I've got that pox thing again!

"Aunt Sabine" tagged me with the “linky love train” meme, in which an ever-growing list of blog-owner names is supposed to chug its way through the ether.
The rules are simple: When you get tagged, you have to add your name below the person who tagged you and by doing so you are letting the list grow:

Limadang.com
RamblingMoo.com
blogginginmypyjamas
StylewithPassion
Chinneeq
Dora-zooropazoo
Babyshern
HiPnCooLMoMMa
Rachel’s Soulful Thoughts
When Silence Speaks
Dancing in Midlife Tune
Underneath it All
I am Dzoi
Hobbies and Such
moms…..check nyo
Choc Mint Girl
Amel’s Realm
My Thoughts
Rusin Roundup
Juliana’s Site
Max
Rooms of My Heart
Mariuca
Colin aka cotojo
Hanna
Francis & Deborah
The Alien Next Door
Aunt Sabine
This Old Crack House
A Great Pleasure
Twinsherry
Jeane Michelle
LynEcoVicki

So, here are my five picks, you can call me a bastard later!

The Devil Queen because John needs all the love he can get.

The Emery Restoration because this slacker needs to make a post sometime soon!

1616.ws because they need all the hits they can get to their site.

Area House because they've been slacking too.

Folksy Blog because she doesn't comment here as much as she used to!

It's not like you have to list 8 of your most embarrasing moments or anything!