118 Henry Street

Starring Alanis Morisette as God

We will most likely have another winter weather "event", but it sure feels like spring will be here soon. After 2 days of sub-freezing weather and ice, it was 46 degrees today, sunny, and most of the ice has sublimated back into the air. Although DeShawn's school was still closed, we drove into Charlotte and spent most of the day at my office.

Besides telecommuting Monday and Tuesday, I got a little more paint removed from the woodwork in the upstairs bathroom. The commute to Charlotte everyday is not a drain, but not having to do it sure gave us more free time around the house after work hours. Very soon, it will be time to call the plumber and have him cap off the water lines going upstairs so I can remove all the fixtures and piping.

Yesterday, Tuesday morning, we removed the 1/2" of ice coating the driveway with a hoe and broom. Tracy Vines of 116 Henry Street offered some rock salt but I was afraid of its effect on the grass and cats. Besides, how else am I going to get any exercise if I don't spend 3 hours breaking the ice off the driveway? God bless the Vines, they still haven't figured out how backward their (relatively) new neighbor is.

All the melting ice spawned a problem for us not usually found this far south: an ice dam. DeShawn discovered it despite his lack of vocabulary to describe. "It's dripping! It's dripping!" he yelled while bounding up the steps into the addition. It was definitely dripping, all down the front of the built-in cabinet (see the floorplan for physical reference). Less than 15 minutes after discovery and frenzied evacuation of the cabinet, we had collected a half gallon of water. I drilled a hole in the top of the built-in to speed the drainage and prevent saturation of the entire ceiling.

1/2" Ice on the driveway

Ice dams form at the bottom of a roof where melt water runs down from the warmer upper sections of the roof. The cooler lower section remains frozen longer and holds the melt water on the roof, saturating the shingles and creating a temporary leak. The Dixie version we spawned occurred where the flat roof of the addition abuts the fascia of the original roof at the back of the kitchen. Ice on the flat roof was catching the melt water from the original roofline and soaking the ceiling and built-in cabinet in the addition. Approximately 5 gallons of water all told leaked thru.

It's a common and frequent comment from every person who ever to try to restore or work on an old house but....What were the previous owners thinking??!! In this case, why would anyone build an addition with an absolutely flat roof? Not a sub-standard slope, not an oh-so-slightly slope, but a flat-like-a-tabletop non-slope on the roof.

In every forum about old house work, every book about home repair, and all the advice from any professional will always direct the novice old house restorer to focus on structural issues before starting cosmetic work, with VERY specific recommendations to fix roof and foundation problems first. So far, we've been getting by on the shoestrings put in place by the PO's to make the house sell, things like the latex roof sealant over the bitumen roof. Providing we get thru the spring rains, more attention on the foundation and roof is sure to be on the dance ticket for the summer.

4 and a half

Today was a day of "firsts" for 2004.

Our first winter storm blew thru the Carolina's over the last 24 hours. Sleet and frozen rain cover the grass and sidewalks about a 1/2" thick. The streets are shiny with an icy glaze. The school systems are closed in Charlotte so DeShawn and I will work/play at home tomorrow.

Funny how warm it was yesterday. The sun was very warm and temps in the 60's. We were outside almost all day. DeShawn rode his bike and played "monster" while I finished most of the excavation at the rear of the back bedroom.

The southwestern corner of our backyard is within a few feet of a hilltop and the yard slopes down toward the back of the house. Ground water moves from the hilltop straight down the slope to hit the back of the house at the back bedroom wall. In 1921, I'm sure the house stood up on the foundation well above the grade line. At the time, they probably didn't have a problem with ground moisture in the crawlspace under the bedroom and kitchen. 80 years and the accumulation of about a foot or more topsoil has created such a problem for us.

With all the rain, last spring brought us a phenomenon called "rising damp" where the soil under the house is so moist that the walls and timbers began to take up water. For days on end, the room smelled of musty dirt. The groundwater problem was made worse by 3 redtip bushes that the PO's (previous owners) had planted right outside the bedroom windows. The roots of the redtips penetrated the weakened foundation and sill, allowing even more moisture to get under the house.

Before Thanksgiving, I removed the redtips, pulling up all their roots and cutting them off at the house wall. And, after leveling out the ground behind the bedroom, dug a diversion ditch to catch some of the groundwater and direct it around the corner of the house. A half dozen wheelbarrows of dirt later, this temporary solution looked terrible but did help dry out the crawlspace quite a bit. Ultimately, the foundation and sill need to be repaired from all the moisture damage and previous termite infestations. The next step towards this project was to complete the excavation down to a level slightly below the sill on the foundation in this area. Thus yesterday's work.

Though not quite deep enough and still in need of enlarging a bit, we removed 8 wheelbarrow loads of dirt and clay from the area and got the drainage headed in the right direction. Even still, for all practical purposes, the back of the house is resting on the ground because of settlement on the weak foundation. Finally got enough soil removed so that I was able to pull up the siding and see the old clapboards and feel the sill. Check out the upper right corner of the newly finished floorplan to see where we're talking about. Around lunch time today, the sleet changed to rain and I used the opportunity to see how the drainage was working back there. It's definitely much better but unfortunately still looks like a big, square hole in the yard.

This work, like so much of what we've doing on 118 Henry Street, and on Carole's house since the autumn, feels more like maintenance than real restoration. It was VERY satisfying to get some of Carole's electrical problems straightened out. (By the way, her newly functioning back porch light works great!) However, it all seems more like "repair" than "restore".

While DeShawn napped today, I worked in the upstairs bathroom, continuing to strip paint from the woodwork. Stripping the flat trim with a heatgun and scraper goes very quickly and by the time he woke up, I had done the window trim and the base board under the sink. Not much longer and we'll have to remove the tub, commode and exposed water pipes to finish stripping paint. Very satisfying work and the first "real" restoration work of 2004.

Bathtub and toilet in the upstairs bathroom

 

Looking into the linen closet of the upstairs bathroom

Lake Charles by Lucinda Williams

DeShawn and I stayed in Chester today to do some local business. Besides getting to sleep in until 7ish, we got several important things accomplished. Check this out, from 8:30 am til 10 am, we went to:

1. the Department of Social Services and got his medical insurance approved.
2. the City Treasurer's office and paid some taxes.
3. the DMV and got my car registration renewed.

And, had breakfast at one of the local fast food restaurants. Those of you reading this who live in any kind of metropolitan area will undoubtedly be envious of the efficiency with which these governmental interactions were dispatched. Any one of these 3 functions could take most of a work day in Charlotte or Columbia.

By noon, we had even spent an hour in the historical section of the Chester County library. Daggone it, I love living in a small town.

All the work I've been doing around the house lately has been very minor and maintenance oriented. The need to plan for the spring/summer work has enticed me to finally do some documentation about 118 Henry Street. The most exciting thing I've put together so far is the beginnings of a floor plan. Here's a link to view a (very) preliminary drawing of the first floor: 1st floor floorplan. Shortly, the floorplan itself will be done (for both floors) and we will begin to add the utilities, joist layouts, etc.

While DeShawn napped today, I combined some of the information we got at the library with information harvested from the tax office last summer and conversations with my neighbors. The result is the beginnings of an historical timeline. A link to the timeline is here: historical timeline.

We'll be going back down to Columbia this weekend for round 3 and final round of electrical work on Carole's house. Last weekend, I rewired the back hallway and kitchen to remediate the back circuit that had originally downed the furnace. The only thing left to do for this weekend is connect up the back porch light. Carole's not had a functional light in her back hall or on the back porch for almost as long as I've known her so this is a bit of a big deal.

Last weekend, while traversing her attic for 5th or 25th time, I discovered one of the furnace ducts was leaking air in a very major way. Undoubtedly we will have a go at fixing that as well.

Such is the life of an old house.

P.S. Be sure to visit a couple of new cyber-neighbors linked in the "Personal House Restoration Sites". The Furrer's decided to keep their old house and install a basement (! that's right). The Chui's are restoring a beautiful little bungalow.

Happy 2004!

Carole joined DeShawn and I in Chester to bring in the new year. I'm mostly an old bear about staying up too late, especially during the colder months. But, with some gentle persuasion from Carole, I actually stayed awake until midnight on December 31; the first time in a couple of decades. There's a lot of hope in our non-nuclear family that 2004 will be a very good year all around. If the year's start was any indication, that hope is well founded.

The restoration theme for the holidays immediately past was definitely "electrical", set in a couple of old house attics. Working on Carole's electrical issues over Christmas got all my tools and focus directed towards some of the unfinished electrical work needing to be done upstairs at 118 Henry Street. Last August, we had some electricians re-wire the upstairs, effectively removing the need for the old knob and tube circuits on the second floor.

As I mentioned after they were done, I was truly ambivalent about their work. They provided me with a practicum with which could be applied all the book education that I'd acquired about electrical work. The less positive aspect of this practicum was that almost all of their work had to be redone (by yours truly) to meet building code. As of August, I had cleaned up approximately 2/3's of the work they had done. The remaining part was the lighting circuits for the bedrooms and bathroom that were fed from the attic.

In fairness to them, the attic wiring was not a safety hazard like the crossed circuit they left me with. But, with wires running willy-nilly, diagonally across the ceiling joists with no anchoring or protection, it was very disorganized and difficult to do any other work in the attic without stepping on wires. The finishing touch was that they forgot to wire one outlet when running the outlet circuit and, at the very end of their stay, had to wire it to the lighting circuit.

So, New Year's day and January 2nd was spent in the attic organizing and mediating the tangled mess. About 6 hours on the 1st and 4 hours on the 2nd got the outlet issue resolved and most of the spiderweb of number 12 wire taken care of. I learned quite a bit working in Carole's house and made good progress overall. Even put in a porcelain light fixture for future journeys to the attic!

Saturday, DeShawn and I spent most of the day outside. The weather was gorgeous with temps in the 70's. The Carolina's almost always have a January thaw week when the cold is broken for a bit with warm air from the Gulf of Mexico. This year, it came very early and well timed for the holidays. I experienced this phenomenon during my very first winter in North Carolina. In the last week of January, 1989, I was bouldering in shorts and a tee-shirt, perspiring in the 78 degree sun.

While DeShawn rode his new bike, dug holes in the yard, chased the cat and generally enjoyed the spring atmosphere, I blew and raked the last of the leaves from the yard. This was the third round of leaf maintenance so far this winter. The big pin oak (that's willow oak to you folks north of the Mason-Dixon line) nearest the house finally gave up the last of its foliage. Total amount of leaves this year was relatively high, probably because of the abundant rainfall in 2003. Based on past years, the bets are on my having moved about 5000 gallons of leaves, mostly pin oak.

Hope you all had a good holiday and wish you a needle pegged to the right on the Progess-o-meter for 2004!