118 Henry Street

One of the less obvious realities of old house restoration is, simply, you must replace rotten wood with good wood. The corollary of this reality is that the new, good wood must be anchored to old, good wood…sometimes difficult to find.

With the back kitchen wall, the massive sill is completely rotted thru, so not much old, good wood there to support the ceiling/roof.

The old drain pipe and notch to reach the original sink

This entire piece of sill, 3 2×10’s thick, is so weak it is cantilevered off of the foundation at the extreme right middle of the photo. It supports no weight, nor could it.

The search for good wood led us much further afield than we had suspected.

Note: this is in our kitchen

We’ve taken to calling it “Big Hole 2010”. Big hole relative to the previous floor hole, in the breakfast room.

Here is another view, this one from the addition side:

The abyss

The new 2×8 going from mid left to lower right of the photo is supported by foundation piers at multiple points. We will likely use this to our (weight bearing) advantage when construction begins.

Finally, with all the de-construction completed, we are ready to pour the footer for a new foundation pier.

Home made goodies on the way!

Tomorrow, Sunday, seems like it’s going to be about all the yard work we’ve neglected for the past 3 weekends. This time, we can’t use the land management excuse, the foot high grass is a result of old fashion laziness. For sure, we are cutting the whole 1/2 acre lawn, trimming the azaleas, and cutting up all the branches strewn about from the summer storms.

We accounted last post about the VERY under-engineered header built in the kitchen back wall to support the addition opening. With all the plaster removed, it’s worse than we knew.

White outline is the 1921 window opening

The laws of physics must have changed a bunch between 1921 and the 1970’s because the addition builders decided they could support the wall with a single vertical 2×8 and a double 2×4 header.  They cut 4 of the original studs from an exterior, load bearing wall that the original builders estimated would take 6 old fashioned, full size 2×4’s to support. Difficult to see in the photo, but the 2×8 is bowed about 1/2” from the weight.

We’re still mulling our structural options for this little problem.

A good part of the morning was spent removing plaster from the chimney.

He-Who-Shall-Remain-Nameless with WMD-C

The air hammer made quick work of breaking up the 300 to 400 lbs of plaster.

Excavating the chimney added more evidence to our deduction that their has been at least 1 other kitchen remodel besides the one in the 1970’s. On parts of the chimney, the different plaster layers were plainly differentiated.

Au naturel with scars

The plugged up vent holes tell us that the boiler for the steam heating unit was probably in the kitchen. Possibly, the cook stove and boiler were part of one apparatus, originally fueled by coal.

We spent much of the this weekend reverting the kitchen to what’s left of its  1921 heritage. One of our favorite parts of the un-construction process is the backward exercise in time travel to reveal original design and intent.

With the kitchen, for example, we now know that ours will certainly be the 3rd, possibly the 4th, remodel. Regards the back kitchen wall, now shared with the addition, many details of the original floor plan and design were revealed.

Circa 2004, still all about the 1970’s

With much of the intervening years removed, we found that the back wall used to have a window, apparently looking directly out to the back yard.

Original walls, chimney, and framing

Looking at the same wall from the addition

The dashed line is where a load bearing stud, a big old fashioned stud, was chopped to make the entry opening.

A close up of the terribly under-engineered, make shift header…sigh.

No wonder it’s sagging

Going into the addition from the kitchen, the PO’s had a couple of curved, carpeted steps. We took up the carpet early in our tenure at 118 Henry Street.

Poor design, originally covered by brown shag carpet

The rectangle in the addition floor is an access panel we cut, more about this in a sec.

With the stairs gone, we could see what was likely one of the prettiest aspects of the house, destroyed in the addition build: a big, farm style kitchen sink looked out the window into the back yard.

The water pipes came up to the right of the drain

You can tell the change in floor color where the cabinet for the sink was built, and, of course, where water leaked from the sink drain. 

Here’s the view from the access panel in the addition floor.

That’s a big, big piece of wood down there

The original sill looks to have been a piece of wood 12” tall by 4” wide. On closer inspection, it was completely rotted thru with water and termite damage.

No respite for the old house restorer

This destructive work of water/termite damage is a very common theme for us, examples, here and here.

With the de-construction vibe running strong, we persisted with the decoration revisionism, and continued removing the vestiges of the last kitchen remodel.

Photo-composite of cabinet removal activity

We decided to take the chimney even further back in time and remove the plaster. Carole and I both liked the warmth and texture of the original brick. We are going to leave it au naturel.

Trying to get a preview

A hint of things to come

How apropos that we found Ganesha this week.

Creator and Remover of Obstacles, Deva of Intellect and Wisdom