118 Henry Street

We were supposed to go to Middendorf SC today to celebrate the holiday with Carole’s maternal side of the family. The first time I met Carole, she told me that her people sprung from the dirt at Middendorf. Turn off SC 1 at the remnants of an old store to reach the farmland that the Catoe’s have occupied and worked since well before the Civil War. Most of the living Catoes of Jean’s, Carole’s mom, generation were born within 200 yards of the little brick church at the front of the acreage. The cemetery between the railroad tracks and the church is populated by Catoe’s from several past generations. There was a time when Carole’s father said he wouldn’t be put to rest in that cemetary with all them Catoes, but I think he’s mellowed and relented that position the last few years.

A gray, windy November day like today set the stage for my first trip to Middendorf. Carole and I had been dating just over a year. She was anxious in all senses of the word to show me off to the extended family. We spent most of the time, except eating, outside, in the side yard of Aunt Delores’ and Uncle Stanley’s (past on) house, directly adjacent to the cemetery. Many of the old men related by marriage, not blood, to the Catoes, loitered out there with us, away from the heat and activity inside the house. Including Duecey, Carole’s dad. My father died on a cold, cloudy November day like that first trip to Middendorf. I guess that why my memory of that visit is dominated by the thoughts of Duecey silently crying as he and Jean walked thru the graves in the cemetery.

DeShawn is sick. That’s why we didn’t go today. For the second time in as many weeks, I had to pick him from school early and take him to the doctor. As of right now, we don’t even have 24 hours of antibiotic in him, so he’s still feeling clammy feverish. Carole’s making Thanksgiving for us here. We’re still functionally stove-less, she’s using the grill I refurb’ed for our Hillarity get-together. Stuffed chicken breast, raw broccoli and carrots, rice and dressing will be followed up with “worms and dirt”, gummy worms in crushed oreos. We’re to use the white-washed table I rescued and some antique high back chairs Carole bought for dining room furnishings in, what DeShawn calls, the “green room”.

Our little Thanksgiving, 2003

Speaking of, the soiree we held in conjuction with Chester’s Hillarity Festival was quite satisfactory. With minimal preparation, Carole, DeShawn, and I entertained a dozen or so invitees. Mostly from our pool of friends and family in Columbia, and my son, Ben, from Charlotte, everybody got a chance or two to visit the festival going on a couple of blocks from the house. The weather was prefect autumn with clear sunny skies, about 68 degrees mid afternoon. We setup a table by putting together a 100 year old door from Carole’s house and a couple of metal saw horses next to the refurb’d grill. I spent every bit of the daylight outside except for the nickel tours of 118 Henry Street. Since most of our contact with friends and family occurs in Charlotte and Columbia, DeShawn was particularly impressed that folks were coming to visit us in Chester.

Ben and Liz, my twins, visiting during the Hillarity Festival

This past weekend, contact with friends and family was in Columbia. Last week was DeShawn’s 4th birthday, so we went to Chuckee Cheese with him on Saturday. Of course, he had a big time, though, my suspicion is that his current illness may have originated there. The little party in Columbia closed a week of small celebrations for him. Prior Saturday, his mommy gave him some presents. Tuesday, his class at school celebrated. Tuesday evening, we had supper with his Uncle Ben, who gave him several presents. Wednesday, his actual birthday, he and I went to the movies.

While in Columbia, I spent some time with Duecey and Jean. Because of helping Carole with her plays, I’d been neglectful in regard to visiting them. We had some high quality time just sitting in their living room, talking. Duecey gave me some old window sashes he’d collected. These windows have become the latest side project at 118 Henry street. I’m going to do some basic repairs and replace the panes with mirror glass. With the sashes turned upside down, the sash lifts will act like coat hooks. Hopefully, the rebirthed windows will find appropriate homes in an entry hall or mudroom somewhere.

The middle school where Carole teaches starts the fall semester next week. The time machine of summer holidays is about to disembark us straight toward winter. Yet, the childhood paradox persists and the individual days seem long, sometimes laborious. At work this past week, we had new org structure, new team, and new teammates. Every day filled to the overflowing. At home, we had a lot of questions brought on by a recently dismissed teacher at DeShawn’s preschool. Still, progess continues….

Using phosphoric acid rust remover, a green scrubee, and some Rust-O-leum clear laquer, I’ve come to grips with another overanalyzed application of The Restoration Paradigm (capitalized for the first time in print; signifying not so much its importance, but more to the shear amount of processing time spent thinking about every decision to be made concerning work on the house…sigh). Most of the brass fixtures such as door and window hardware at 118 Henry Street are, in reality, brass plated steel. Simply cheaper to buy, plated hardware satisfied the decorating fashion of the time across most of North and South Carolina. Only in the heart of Charlotte or Charleston was solid brass hardware more common than plated. Some of the plated versions are so well done that only a magnet knows for sure.

There is, to my eye, a beautiful patina to the aged plated hardware. Caused by variations or wear in the brass overcoat that allow the underlying steel to oxide, the surface varies in coloration from a steel grey to almost new brass. Patterns of color can be as extreme as leopard spots or marblized brass in appearance. One of the asthetic corollaries of The Restoration Paradigm is that I own an old house and it should retain the ambience and impression of an old house. Thus, having the hardware re-plated is not an option.

The problem is that the steel’s oxidation will utimately exfoliate all the brass plating if not suspended. Enter the phosporic acid to remove the existing oxidation and chemically condition the exposed steel surface. And, enter the clear laquer to prevent the steel from being exposed to the air and continuing to oxidize. A side benefit of the coating is the bright shine that brings out the colors similar to the effect of a glossy photograph. After experimenting on the window sash lifts in the west bedroom, I’ve decided to expand the program to all the hardware in the house, retro-treating the 3 sets of door hardware in the west bedroom. We’ll see how long before the doorknobs, sash lifts and other parts touched by human hands will need a re-application.

Shimming the uneven ceiling in the west bedroom has proven to be relatively easy. Only one futile purchase, a couple of failed experiments later and we are currently 2/3rds of the way toward the final drywall. Turns out, the 1/4″x2″ wood slats weren’t a completely futile purchase, I may be able to use them as replacement plaster lathing on the chimney wall in the east bedroom. For the west bedroom ceiling shims, I’ve ended up with 2″ wide strips of 1/4″ wallboard screwed along the ceiling joists. Stacked 2 or 3 deep at the high end of the room, tapering to none at the low end of the room, there is a nice gradual transistion to level. Cutting the shims and screwing to the joists has gone amazingly quick. On the geologic time scale of house restoration at 118 Henry Street, we may be doing the final ceiling drywall in a record 2 weeks or so. Blinding speed compared to 11 months to restore 3 windows!

West Bedroom ceiling shims and restored window

Last night, I realized that the sitting room downstairs (currently DeShawn’s playroom, eventually to be the library/study) has similar ceiling topology.

Lastly for the week, We had the electricians rewire the upstairs this weekend. Beginning on Friday at 8ish AM, they, the 2 of them, worked a total of 17 hours, finally calling it quits yesterday at 6ish PM. By their estimations, the job took about twice as long as they anticipated. It is very, very rare that I feel genuine ambivalence, the true conflict of emotions so pronounced that I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. This experience with electrical work generates simultaneous reactions in me of “dammit, I got screwed” and “what a great job/experience”.

Here’s the litany of darkness:
1) They misdrilled and punched a very big hole in the upstairs bathroom wall.
2) Their first plan for bringing new wires from the breaker box thru the wall to upstairs failed miserably after 3 hours of drilling, poking, and fishing.
3) Their second plan for bringing new wires from the breaker box to upstairs was devised by me after they left Friday night. This one succeeded, by the way.
4) Their wiring in the attic flagrantly violates the National Electrical Code by laying diagonally across the joists. In fact, there is nary any evidence of staples or any other wire fastener in all their work.
5) I spent an additonal $50 in materials and all the afternoon today cleaning up about 1/2 of the Code Violations.
6) They left me with a cross connected circuit. In simplest terms, one of the new circuits shorts out one of the existing circuits. Their solution: cut one of the new wires. While working in the attic this afternoon, I solved the logic puzzle that created the cross connect and will correct this week.

And, in the true spirit of shoganai, here’s the litany of light (pun very much intended):
1) Half the cost of similar work in Charlotte or Columbia, even with my 10% gratuity.
2) No more knob and tube wiring upstairs! Less than a 1/3rd of the house remains on the old wiring now.
3) DeShawn was wonderful, occupying himself throughout most of the chaos and never getting in the way.
4) Although with a dose of science, most of the effort I witnessed during the work was art. This was confirmed by code violation mitigation today.
5) Part of what I paid for was education that I got.
6) Learned a lot more about the house, specifically the internal structure and infrastructure.

The multi-hundreds dollar question: will they be back for the service upgrade and remainder of the wiring? The folowing answer from a person who has said that the best thing that every happened to him was a broken back. Candidly, I don’t know.

Spent this weekend working on areas of the house that have occupied most of my time for the last 20 months: the (planned-to-be) upstairs sitting room and the yard. The upstairs sitting room was originally a bedroom. The family that I bought 118 Henry Street from had used it as a boy’s bedroom for 30 or so years. I’m using it as a classroom and laboratory for learning many of the restoration techniques needed to work on the house.

The current milestone for the room is to finish the window restoration. There are four double sash, 6-over-6 wooden windows with brass weatherstripping. The destruction phase of window restoration starts with disassembling the windows down to the frames, removing the weatherstripping, weights and pulleys. Next, removing all the glass from the sashes and stripping all the paint from the sashes and frame. The window sash trim is saved but the middle parting bead and weatherstripping are completely destroyed in the process. Total time for destruction phase: approximately 3-4 hours per window.

The construction phase of window restoration begins with gluing and clamping the joints in the sashes, then epoxy repairs for all the cracks, checks, gouges and other damage. After sanding the sashes and frame, two coats of acrylic primer are applied. Next for the frames, 2 coats of the final color paint. The pulleys are driven back into the slots near the top of the frame and the weights are rehung using cotton sash cord. Brass weatherstripping for the top sash is done at this phase too. Total time for frame restoration to this point: approximately 2-3 hours per window. There’s a little more work to be done to the frames during the final assembly of the window.

The sashes still have significant work left at this point. The glass is put back in place using a small bed of silicone caulk on the rabbits. Instead of glazing compound, I’m using a 1/4" window bead trim to hold the glass in place. The window bead is mitered and nailed in place using 1/2" brads. My attempts at using an electric nail gun for this have completely failed, so I’m placing and driving each nail individually; ten per pane. Developing the skill to drive the 1/2" nails less than 1/8" away from the glass panes is a source of great pride to me. A bit of silicone caulk is used to fill any gaps between the miters or between the window bead and the sash rabbits.

After applying two coats of final color paint to the sashes, I cut and nail on the pieces of brass weatherstripping. There are three pieces of weatherstripping on each pair of sashes and four pieces on the window frame. I’m amazed and very pleased at how well the weatherstripping seals the windows from air leaks. Total time to restore the sashes: approximately 4-5 hours per window.

Final assembly of the window consists of hanging the top sash, installing the middle parting bead, nailing in the frame weatherstripping for the bottom sash and hanging the bottom sash. The refinished sash bead is nailed back into place and the final step is any paint touchup that is needed. Total time for complete window restoration: approximately 10-12 hours per window. Total cost per window: $50-$75.
For the upstairs sitting room, I’ve already done two of the windows completely. The frames have been restored on the other two windows and as of today, the remaining four sashes are repaired and primed, ready for putting the glass back.

Some notes for you readers who may be questioning my sanity for this amount of work and wondering why I don’t just replace them:

• The current windows have lasted over 80 years with virtually no maintenance except painting. I would expect them to last another 80 years after the work I’ve done on them.
• At $50/hour, total restoration costs would be $550-$675 per window. Anyone who has priced quality replacement windows can tell this is not out of line for top quality wood windows.
• The current windows and glass are irreplaceable architectural antiques. Why not restore them?

For more information about window restoration, see the link for Historic Home Works in the links column.

Regards the work on the yard, I cut down another tree. My 1/2 acre had 33 trees when I moved in. Many smaller trees were growing in the shadow of larger trees, some were stunted by disease and some had never been trimmed in any way. The 10" diameter, 50′ tall pin oak I cut down today is the 12th tree removed. There are still 2 more I’d like to see cut but will need a professional arborist to avoid collateral damage to fences and other trees.

The tree I cut today was rooted not 8′ away from a very old pin oak that’s almost 3 foot in diameter. Both trees were suffering from the proximity but the smaller tree was much more lopsided and bent. Trees are like any other cultivated plants, they must be thinned and pruned for the healthiest life.

One last event of note for this week was replacing the hot water heater. DeShawn, my grandson, and I had been doing without hot water for over a week while I found time to take off work and be home to call the plumber. The bad news: $500 and the old water heater couldn’t be removed from the crawlspace because of the gas pipes hanging too low. The good news: hot water, of course!