Ralph's House

More nookie

2009-06-15T22:52:00.003-04:00

Here is the bench, screwed to the wall but without its false paneling rails and stiles on the back or molding on the base.

I wonder about the height of the window. It has always seemed high for a nook window. Aren't they usually just above the table-top?

I ordered the floor- Armstrong Excelon tiles from Lowe's, where they are $30 a box with free shipping to the store. Online, some stores wanted $1.69 per tile, and then $200 for shipping (granted, I didn't call to ask if they could just UPS four boxes to me)

I thought I would get artsy with the shavings from the seat edge.

Breakfast Nook Bench 1

2009-06-12T21:38:00.005-04:00

I am totally proud of myself! I built something that's like real furniture! Like, it's made of more than just soft pine 2x4s!

This is the first (experimental) of the two planned kitchen nook benches. I made a couple of bone-headed measurement errors, though they were cheaply and easily fixed. My real hangup was the hinges for the bench lid. I have a bad record keeping hinges straight and even. After an evening spent plugging and re-drilling screw holes, the joint is even enough and I just hope the problem hinge will warp into place after it is sat upon awhile.

I didn't find furniture-grade wood for the curvy bench ends as thickly as I wanted it, and ended up buying 3/4" birch plywood instead. I'll see how it goes- if they feel cheap and flimsy when attached.

My goal as a novice carpenter is to have these benches feel as if they are original to the house, and as the original nook pantry woodwork has a rough, nearly primitive feel inside its guts, it doesn't concern me that I didn't use fancy joints, and that the bench lid is two pieces of wood (carefully) joined with braces. The bench's weight alone makes it very sturdy. Fat Cat is kindly demonstrating this.

Kitchen Update

2009-04-29T21:36:00.007-04:00

Here is where the new kitchen stands. The tile is now up to the middle of the window-the walls were too scarred to leave them bare, but I think it has a nice charm. I'm still working on painting the cabinets and we could use a replacement stove but it's no rush.

The oak countertops are my favorite new thing- I never thought wood was something appropriate to my messy, sometimes grungy kitchen. I used 6 coats of Waterlox, a tung-oil and resin-based finish. Spills wipe right up, even a day later, and there are no white rings or dark rings. Nothing soaks in. The finish dulls a little when water is left standing for a day, but you wouldn't even notice unless you peered closely. We treat our countertops roughly- though no direct cutting on them- and they haven't chipped yet. If they did, it's easy to recoat or touch-up.

So far we've probably spent 2800-3000 on this kitchen, for a complete re-do. I kind-of regret the new steel-look appliances- they seem cold and not very vintage! How do they look so great in period kitchen magazine photos?

Jason paints!

The pot rack.

Kitchen Archaeology

2009-01-12T23:35:00.002-05:00

Gross-ness aside, pulling out the 1970's cabinets exposed the original silhouettes of the first, very shallow, built-in cabinets and the location of the gas stove and its pipe.

All those white stripes on the right corner were supports for the shelves, and also the countertop, covering up virgin plaster. On the left, it seems the gas stove was not moved when the kitchen was last painted and vinyl-ed. So we can see the 1920s cabinets lasted at least until the age of the golden vinyl.

The sink on the right (unseen here) had a high back, judging from the height of the window. The hole for its inlet pipes is still in the ledger board at the base of the inside wall, since they ran up to the sink back from inside the wall.

The sink was bookended by the two built-in cabinets, the left cabinet being the one shown above. Nearly the entire wall above the countertop line was removed and replaced with drywall, two layers in some places, and this is where I assume there used to be the old white subway tile found under the house. When it was removed, it must have taken the whole wall with it. I'm replacing it on a more extensive scale, probably using in-store tile from Home Depot. It's $.23 a tile, and no longer has the wide spacers or rounded edge as it did just a few years ago.

Now With 98% Less Cockroaches!

2009-01-11T10:36:00.002-05:00

With all the holes now patched up, including the rat entrance around the old gas pipe and valve that are still sticking out of the wall, we have installed the base cabinets. Here are the cabinets we chose, from Ikea. The fronts, at least, are solid wood, and they fit our measly educator/non-profit employee budget at $1100. The full overlay is an acceptable substitute for the face-frame, for me.

The idea is to paint them, with appropriate bronze hardware, to match these in the breakfast nook. Not to make them blotchy like these partially stripped guys, but to paint the entire set in the same cream color. I should mention, I've tried every stripper method I know on this pantry; chemicals, heat etc., but the thing that worked the best, and cleanest, was just peeling off the layers with a razor blade. The layers are 1/8 thick in some areas, and they peel with diligent coercion.

Here is where we are now, about 36 work-hours into the project. The fronts had to be ordered and we are picking them up in a few weeks from an Ikea warehouse. The wood-colored post in the cabinet center is my own replacement of a part Ikea got wrong. I didn't feel like fighting with them over the phone about how they had given me an older cabinet and a 2009-model rotating tray. In the past their telephone customer service wasn't great.

The countertop and floor haven't been ordered yet because I thought I'd be pink-slipped this week in surprise cuts. It has been depressing to walk into the unfinished kitchen everyday thinking it might look like this for months. I don't know how I became lucky, because I'm usually not, and am sad to be losing so many friends and good people from my workplace.

I'm doing the plumbing myself. My mom asked me how that was different from the mess the flipper left us in, and wondered if I should call a plumber. But I've done code research, and if it really gets screwed up then I will call someone. Working in my favor is that every bit of the plumbing is exposed under the house, the drain already at the proper incline, and easy to install. In the crawlspace, however, the glue smells awful!

The Tubby Ticket-Finder and His Bakery

2009-01-10T14:09:00.004-05:00

This is my construction paper kitchen design. We watched a holiday broadcast of the newer Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and I decided on the scheme of the German bakery where the tubby ticket-finder meets the press. It had cream walls and pale blue tiles. We only had this brown paper, so this picture isn't accurate. I don't want a yellow sink. But, it's fun anyway. The chance of finding affordable pale blue subway tile is low, so unless some comes rolling my way off the back of a truck on the freeway, it will be Home Depot white.

Here is what we're really going to do, but in a more, dollar-store, version.

The Kitchen that Was

2009-01-08T22:54:00.016-05:00

Dear Ralph's lonely blog,
I am sorry I abandoned you. Really, there was nothing to write about. Now there is. On impulse, the Sunday before New Year's we bashed the kitchen cabinets into nasty, dirty pieces, making them into the appropriate 4' x 4' sections for the trash truck guys. This is what was underneath, yuck. These pictures were before breaking off remaining rot, decay and plaster. Since we moved in, the only thing between us and the crawlspace and the exterior walls was 3' of clear packing tape that I used to bridge this hole around the pvc drainpipe. I'm amazed we didn't see rats more often.

Rat Poop Before Sweeping:

Hole in the Wall Where Sink Used to Be:

The golden-color floor material appeared to be vinyl, and came right up. It was lain over linoleum tiles that may have been early to the house. Neither of them extended into the business portion of the kitchen floor. There, under the current beige sheet vinyl, are glossy fake parquet vinyl tiles, which peel right up with the sheet, exposing beautiful but very sticky wood floors underneath.

My guess is that someone redoing the kitchen in the 70's had the the really old stuff stripped off and refinished the wood floors. The old stuff remained under the inaccesible cabinet bases. But then, some recent fool put down the fake wood parquet tiles, maybe a renter. Why, when there is real, finished wood underneath?? Anyhoo, the real wood floor was made so sticky by those parquet tiles that I decided the layers should just stay. They will be a good underlayer for new linoleum tiles.

This is the new shimmed wallboard and 3/4" plywood under-cabinet floor patch.

Here is Jason wetting and scraping the popcorn ceiling. Yay!

More to come!

Small projects

2008-10-14T16:45:00.000-04:00

Deck railings still need to be built, but I made lattice panels to keep Pepper the dog from visiting the frogs under the deck. I hate, hate the diagonal lattice from Lowe's and HD. Or maybe I just hate that there is only one choice in lattice style. These instructions were useful, using my mom's pnumatic stapler. I've seen this style of lattice under front porches all over town, though mostly under victorians and 1910s houses. Sometimes I think what I really wanted was an even older house.

This is one of the old street markers. It's more aged than the house, I think. There are modern, taller, reflective signs planted next to them, but these still stick up all over the older areas of Jacksonville. This one is across the street from me in a park. All the paint was gone and it was mildewy so I finally re-did it. I debated using reflective letters from the hardware store but thought this way was more authentic. I enlarged the Arial font, cut out the individual letters and traced them onto the scrubbed, primed and painted post, then filled in the outlines with exterior glossy black. At least a full eight hours of work. There is another grungy one across the park, too.

Locksets

2008-10-12T15:06:00.011-04:00

Last week I moved the bed into a corner to make the bedroom look bigger. Last night I thought, "What this fancy new bedroom needs is a working door lockset so the door will stay closed." I pulled the invoice for the replacement bathroom lockset from a few years ago and looked up its sku # on Van Dyke's website. The price had increased $4, to $20! Yeep!

So I thought about the remaining five doors with original locksets and found that the only operating latch of the bunch was in the door separating the public from the private side of the house. If I switched this one with the bedroom set, then the bedroom door would latch closed. I was just about to install this in the bedroom door when I saw it had a single screw on one of the big flat sides, holding the box together.

I'd never been curious about the workings of the original bathroom lockset mainly because I was newcomer to old houses and the grunge that can go with them. I knew that if I opened the bath lockset, roach eggs and spiders and rust would pop out and stick to my face. Now, I don't care as much.

Undoing the box, I discovered it's really very simple inside. The guts are rough cast metal. The latches seen on the outside are brass. The 6 parts all overlap each other with cast pegs. There is no oiling necessary. In fact, these look like a great engineering project for elementary kids, like something you'd find in a toy catalog.

I'm glad I had bought that new $16 lockset for the bathroom, which is a room that's nice to lock, like in the movies when you're home alone and naked in the shower and a guy with a machete breaks in. But I can almost kick myself that a little $.35 spring, circling the peg under the end of the pink arrow and extending to the hook on the right, is the reason these five doors won't stay latched and closed. I could see how the lock works too, and now I just need to find a key. I assume all the locks used the same key. Cheap and simple solutions are super!

1930 census

2008-08-24T13:49:00.007-04:00

We've been stuck inside the house for three days this week during an endless tropical storm. By day two I'd read both my library books, cut two inches off my hair, and had had enough of Monopoly and Scrabble. I took advantage of the electricity and internet we were lucky to have and looked up the 1930 census record for the Mercks, the first census after this house and the one next door were built.

Many people in the area worked for the "steam railroad" or as clerks. The census taker valued the house at $7000, based on what the Mercks told them was their purchase price, I'll assume. The Mercks were the same age as me (Jason is a bit older than me) when they bought the house and "wife" Marion Merck is listed as "male". A few lines down is the house number for the now-empty lot where there is a storm-water pumping station. And it looks like the poor house next door to us began life as a rental, possibly doomed to stay that way.

Looking down the list most of the wives didn't have occupations outside the house. That Marion went to work as a saleswoman at a drugstore, and not even the one owned by her husband, is pretty cool. Prior to marrying Mr. Merck, she lived with her first husband, listed as a produce salesman, a few blocks from the first Merck drugstore. Here is a 1947 picture of the Merck store when it was located downtown, a few years before closing:

This entry has a lot more info. I found most of it by searching the old city directories at the main library.

More arachnaphobia!

2008-08-16T14:23:00.005-04:00

Ew. My mom read the last post and sent me these current photos from her yard.

Spider season

2008-08-14T12:51:00.005-04:00

Last night I dreamed I wrestled with one of these, a banana spider. They're usually out in June, making babies and living in 20-foot webs attached to your porch to catch the flying bugs attracted to the light. Which makes them even more fearsome to live with because you have to duck under them to bring in the groceries. I'm sure mailmen hate them. They aren't included in the average Florida tourist brochure, for sure.

From http://www.davidmichaelkennedy.com/

Living in the lawn are 2" fuzzy gray wolf spiders, which I think are fairly national, and also on the palmettos there are spiders which look like tiny turtles with lots of legs, which sit in the middle of their nets. They are kinda cute. Inside the house are tiny pindot spiders, sitting in the caulk space of tubs and sinks, waiting for wet gnats? My mom has bulbous tan spiders which look like ticks when full, living on her patio.

The point is, it feels like insects and arachnids are taking over everywhere you go, but it's just the humid jungle bug season. You can't do much about them and they always come back. I haven't actually seen any bananas at my house this year, which is super. Ugh. And neither of those are MY hands.

Canning (no painting)

2008-08-11T11:25:00.003-04:00

Not much new to report on the house this month. July and August in Florida are like January and February in upstate New York; you could go outside, but why would you? Although, to be fair sometimes you physically can't go outside in an upstate January.

The phone line was fixed at the pole by AT&T (the new Bell monopoly). The house system needs to be rewired too but the crawlspace is still drying out from all the summer rain. There is a temporary line from the wall box to the phone inside.

The paint bucket says not to paint above 90 degrees, which it is, so I've been inside canning things. What I really want is cheesecake in a jar with raspberries on top, but I've read you shouldn't can dairy. What I've done this summer is tomato wedges and sauce, baked beans, sweet banana peppers, ketchup, and grape and pomegranate jellies. The tomatoes were $11 for 30lbs from the farmer's market and the peppers were from the backyard.

Peppers, along with broccoli and butternut squash, seem to be the only capable crops in our yard. I've never had more than a few smallish tomatoes from a plant, the corn reached a whopping 12 inches high this year and legumes have leaf miners from the moment they sprout. The watermelon never flowered, and the tortured zucchini were stunted and died of a horrible overnight fungus as did the okra. It seems stuff planted in the traditional spring planting season doesn't grow fast enough to produce food before the onset of summer heat, our equivalent of first frost. Mom and I looked at the neighborhood garden last week and saw lots of tall okra and pole beans, high-heat crops, I guess.

What a cute dress!

2008-07-08T18:13:00.011-04:00

The bad news- the house next door sold at auction yesterday for $59000 to a slum company! And Lightning? Rain? knocked out our internal phone wiring. Then I fried the phones (I think) by crossing all the red and green wires while trying to shore the place up. doh! I've had a bad cold for two weeks, it wasn't my hands' fault. The good news is the house is feeling better because it just bought a new dress. The body color is silvery gray, the porch is lavender-gray for now, and the window trim is a little more purply-blue than before. The front has been primed and half painted. The stucco sucks up gallons.

I know, it doesn't look all that different. What's important is that everything is clean and shiny. And someone's making ketchup in the kitchen!

Ikea Kitchen Modification

2008-07-03T20:30:00.004-04:00

In the previous post, I had decided on an Ikea "Adel" front for the kitchen cabinets. It's too modern; its stamped rails and stiles are twice the width of the butler's pantry shaker door rails and stiles which I'm trying to match.

So, not being a huge fan of this mdf door and drawer front, and after looking around the IKEAFANS forums, I realized, 1. Because of the modular nature of Ikea, I can order their boxes with the fancy Blum slides, Euro hinges and drawers without having to order their cabinet doors. I would be fine living with cabinets without doors until we can afford the right doors. Anything to move the rats! 2. I can paint the more appropriate door, the wood "Tidaholm", to match, or can order unfinished shaker door fronts from Scherr's where they are familiar with Ikea measurements.

Here are great photos of a painted Tidaholm kitchen:
http://www.ikeafans.com/forums/attachments/photos/6126d1195228802-painted-tidaholm-cabinets-new-kitchen-kitchen-october-2007-b.jpg
http://www.ikeafans.com/forums/attachments/photos/6127d1195228818-painted-tidaholm-cabinets-new-kitchen-kitchen-october-2007-d.jpg

And a spray booth setup for the doors:
http://www.ikeafans.com/forums/modifications/11859-painting-tidaholm.html

I've been thinking also about not having a kickspace, instead filling the area with matching painted strips of plywood. Instead of doors under the sink, maybe a curtain. There are many details I could do to make the basic Ikea kitchen look more period, less Ikea. And then my homeowner guilt will be assuaged.

The Ikea Kitchen

2008-06-27T16:13:00.013-04:00

So, we had saved up vast sums of money. Vast sums for us, anyway. Realizing we'll never be rich and with the understanding that neither house nor neighborhood is a period gem, and also that I don't have the time to build cabinets, I decided to go with Ikea instead. This is the front I've chosen. The rails and stiles (false, mdf-molded) are wider than the plain shaker-style doors of the built in pantry.

"Adel" cabinet

I know, I'm an old-house traitor, but this at least honors the period, -ish, and the 1928 built-in ironing cabinet will be carefully covered by a tall pantry instead of being half-obscured by a refrigerator. A future owner can rediscover it. We're also opting for the period-ish smaller sister of this sink. The cabinets total was $1400, plus our "new" appliances now living at my mom's. Sadly, there is room in this layout for the leggy 1920's electric stove we passed up as being too large at the Salvation Army in January. Anyhow, this was the plan.

And then- we both became unemployed. Mine planned, him on a voluntary gamble. No new jobs in sight yet. No new cabinets. I'd love to just paint the old 70's ones, but renter abuse has caused them to be held together with tape. Dogs have chewed the stiles, feet have cracked the doors.

A week before my last day of work, Ralph was staring intently at the base of the cabinet next to the stove. I bent down and heard gnawing in the kickspace. And I felt depressed knowing how close we would have come to getting the rats out of the kitchen, i.e., using the pile of cash! to remove the rotted remains of the current sink cabinet and patching up the missing floor, wall, and joists over the crawlspace. Then, installing new cabinets with our pile of cash!

There was rat poop on the counter last night. All the kitchen cracks and blatant openings within reach are taped over with long strips of packing and duct tape. Tired of the rats! How do they survive in the flooded crawlspace, anyway? It's like Venice down there in the rainy season.

But I sure feel great knowing the rats love their kitchen Disneyland! Har. And it's good to know FHA loans have an excellent safety net.

Outdoor photos

2008-05-02T16:09:00.006-04:00

While I haven't been doing much to the house, the plants I planted in February are growing along. This year I decided to have more plants more adapted to my feast/famine climate and (who knew?) have needed less water as a result.

Since I didn't buy new dirt again this year for the vegetable garden frame, the plants doing the best are in pots on the deck. There are at least $10 worth in ripening native blueberries and 10 tomato plants in big plastic pots. Corn and zucchini are struggling along in the infill sand/clay mix in the side yard.

The twin house next door is in pre-foreclosure. It seems the silly asking price resulted from the owners taking a $55,000 home equity loan several years back, to redo something at their current house across the river. Adding that loan to its main mortgage of $124000 gave it a hefty price way more than any sane person would pay. One woman driving by saw the price written on the For-Sale-By-Owner sign and asked us if there was a swimming pool made of gold in the backyard. After 1 and 1/2 years on the market, it was listed by a realtor briefly in January, for $155,000.

The lawn hadn't been cut in months and after several calls to Jacksonville city services, an independent contractor (teens working for their dad) charged up a $500 lien, for 10 minutes with a riding lawnmower. They also mowed over the Sale sign since it was buried in weeds.

2nd Housiversary

2008-03-27T12:18:00.006-04:00

Today is our second anniversary of living here. I have a list of 54 items to be done to the house, and 14 have been crossed off so far (including the ones I crossed off after deciding not to do them). Per year, that's an average of ...oh never mind, that's too depressing to think about. Depressing like my conversation yesterday with the renter previewing the property next door. My old, recently broken fence stood between us as I watered my peppers and she said to no one in particular "of course, this fence needs to be fixed," and I said ashamedly, "That's my fence." Why mention the confluence of events: strong wind storms last week and careless renters bashing into the boards, and it being my first day off since November-I wanted to relax, not do fence repair! Despite words, the fence looks like it's been broken for years! Bad Kathryn! No wonder you get crap neighbors!

At that moment, since she was the first renter I've seen on that property in a month, who looked like a responsible person, I wanted to apologize for my peeling paint and the in-progress deck. I told her how long we'd lived here and it seemed her face got tight. Perhaps she isn't rehab-neighborhood material. Or maybe, now on my second day of vacation, I need to go outside right now and fix that fence if I want anyone good moving next door.

Sometimes it's easy to feel down about living in a rehab neighborhood, and I'm kind of a Debbie Downer to begin with. However, my sister is interested in the available house on the other side of us so last week we went tiptoeing around it. Literally tiptoeing, because the weeds and grass are so tall they obscure the "for sale by owner" sign that's been up a year and a half. We stood on their rotting back deck next to a weedy 2-foot hole in the ground, piles of rotting trash and falling-down roof overhang and my house looked darn good, like hot stuff! It could be much worse!

Updates!

2008-03-14T20:39:00.008-04:00

Since I don't post often enough, here are some updates. I've been doing little stuff but not much worth writing about. Little stuff like finally tightening a screw on a door hinge.

The heat pump was finally fixed in December. It was all of $85 for a replacement, warrantied fan. The fizzing sound I heard in the attic when I accidentally cut through the thermostat wire? Just the air handler fuse blowing. It cost $60 to replace. It just wasn't the $$ circuit board I lay awake worrying how to pay for. And they added 2 lbs of freon to the condenser. It's a "Coleman" brand pump, just like our camping tent. I had no idea they had a branch of home heating and cooling units until our cheapo flipper installed it here.

Speaking of our flipper-installed unit, we went to the local home and patio show a few weeks ago where we were willingly solicited by several AC companies. A guy came over last Saturday to give us a replacement quote. He was from the company whose booth representatives laughed at us. I told them 1. Our house is 80 years old. 2. Our house is not insulated because 3. the crawlspace floods 3-4 times a year (old creek bed) and is a happy place for mildew. When I said the heat pump was a Coleman, he said, eyebrows raised, "Do you live in a trailer?" (what, an 80 year old trailer??) When we walked away, fully aware of how dysfunctional we must be for having an old house, I heard "whooooeeee!" and lots of laughing. Their field guy was much nicer though, and commented on how clean and accessible the attic was, and told me he's seen far worse in old houses. He left me with a roll of aluminum tape and a $4800 system quote.

Outside of the ongoing deck construction, I've been working on the plant situation. I think flowers are great, but in this small yard there really needs to be lots of practicality. I made a border of sweet banana peppers between rows of dusty miller and hibiscus, and planted sage, dill and rosemary around some small plumbago. In the side yard is lots of parsley, some cilantro, dianthus and that herb which is supposed to be a good substitute for sugar and whose name I can't remember. I seeded basil around the plumbago but the rain has been pretty heavy the last 3 weeks so I need to redo it. I think we've had our last frost, though.

We've tried our third go at exterior paint colors. The colors are either too light, too dark, or seem too much like colors in the neighborhood to our north, where only the brave can live. The trick seems to be finding historical colors that won't cause a run-down drab look. Also, the stores which carry small sizes of trial colors are only open til noon on Saturdays. How can we get the swatches, take them home and view them in all lights, then go back for trial bottles then go back to buy the paint? Everytime I think "It will take 3 Saturdays just to choose the house colors!", I decide to do something else like pruning, instead. This weekend I hope to build and replace a fragile fence portion the renters keep knocking through, and then finish the deck framing.

Dusty miller and baby hibiscus. So unglamorous.

We don't know what to do about mulch because it
keeps floating away!

Moon Rising Over Gothic Picket

2008-02-20T19:50:00.003-05:00

It's the mooooon.

New stuff to write about!

2008-02-16T19:50:00.012-05:00

So I had a lengthy hiatus but did lots of things, and now there are projects, slightly unfinished, to write about.

Bathroom: painted, new light and new mirror cabinet ($8 from thrift shop). The new color IS peanut butter and I don't know how long I'll live with it, cause it's unflattering to me. And I keep craving grape jelly. The next coat will be lighter, and maybe not such an orangey tan. The trim painting is awaiting the wall choice so it could be awhile before the painting is completely finished. The window paint was incredibly thick; to strip it we used the ceramic heater and then after we both became dizzy, used a rotary sander to make lots of lead dust. So, not a project good for our health. It only stripped down to the smooth bottom layer of paint, a milk paint? which is very close to the peanut butter color the walls are now.

Color aside, the most important new thing is the shower rod; it's one continuous bar instead of the expandable kind with the joint that catches curtain rings. What a luxury! For only $6!

The new light fixture is 30's-esque, and wouldn't you know it, I chipped the sink somehow while painting. The curtain is a print of baseballs from last summer, my contribution to my husband's object-related superstitions about the Red Sox and their winning many games and having great luck. Its hanging in the bathroom must be the reason they won the World Series, of course.

Even if I think the color is too intense for such a small room, this is miles from the 70's dark wood strip vanity lighting and cracked plastic door hook, anyway.

The next picture is part two of the deck. It was precursed by debate over levels. We agreed that this section could be sunk down a step for a more private eating area. However, if we ever remove this pair of windows (where you can see the reflection of my hand) and replace them with doors out to the third section of the deck (see trash can), the third section would have to match the floor level of the house or be down a step. Mathematically it seemed best to keep part three at the height of the already-built first section, which matches to the back door threshold. But, if you wanted to walk from the first deck section to the third, you'd go across the corner of the second with a step down-half step ahead-step up. This seemed tedious to me so the deck will now be all one level.

New attic access opening

2007-11-15T11:35:00.001-05:00

Tired of the bugs in the closet and having to move boxes and clothing every time I needed to go up, I have moved the attic ceiling access to the hallway. It is a slightly larger, more accessible and much sturdier framed opening. The necessary angle to securely prop a ladder for climbing had left only stick people like me the ability to squeeze up through the skinny closet doorway and into the hole.

I took the drywall cut from the hallway and fit it into the closet ceiling, taped and mudded it so this is no longer a roach roadway. Despite my best effort to prop a thermostat wire behind a condensation pipe coming from the attic air handler, I did manage to cut through and apparently fry the thermostat. Since the outside heat pump fan has been broken since July, (blame it on bills and car repairs) when we eventually call the repair person I'll sheepishly explain my error. In the meantime we wear sweaters and blankets around the house. Well, I do anyway, to protect myself from Jason's cynical remarks about me and saws.

Old:

New:

It needs a new, larger plywood door and trim. A garbage bag taped to the ceiling isn't all that exciting. Jason's "new" closet will become bright aqua blue! now that I've patched up all the shoe gouges and tool scrapes in its walls.

A weekend of stripping

2007-10-29T18:49:00.001-04:00

While, yes, in need of some extra money, no one here lacked clothing for this stripping and the only pink lights were from my computer monitor suffering pink death. This weekend I tried both lye stripping, and the super-heated sort which I built from Ocean Manor House's instructions.

The goal was to strip the cold concrete front porch, a slab built on blocks and infill. One morning, months ago, the sprinkler was tucked away behind the porch swing when its timer turned on and the porch was doused for nearly an hour. Lifting up the rubber-bottomed doormat a few days later, the thick paint underneath sheeted off. I tried a similar path with wet towels overlaid with garbage bags but it didn't seem to work as well. So I wanted to try lye after reading around the internet of its usefulness on painted brick.

The recipies I read were mostly the same; two parts water to one part lye, and add a solution of flour or cornstarch to thicken. The biggest thing for me to overcome were the warnings to stand back, it will splutter when mixed! Don't breathe the fumes! (which were pretty noxious) So I expected fireworks! The lye was from Lowes, in crystal form for drain-cleaning, not flakes. Amazingly, the only thing it did was melt the plastic container it was mixed in. Through several glass jars I tried again, and added flour or cornstarch. The directions never specified when to add, and my flour solidified into funnel cake and the cornstarch looked like spray foam. I left the liquid part on the porch overnight, and now it has hardened into crystals.

Although equally as ineffective on the cold porch floor, the heated paint remover worked wonders on the interior wood. I have a layer of gold milk-paint underneath everything, so the heater only stripped down to that layer (like most of the store-bought chemicals I tried) but that was fine since I was aiming to restore moulding details and fully close thickened doors, not turn it to varnished wood. It is a good thing too, since I scorched the pantry doors on my first two tries. The best time for me to scrape was when the paint turned into bubbly cooked marshmallow consistency, which would be just before the crunchy tan part happens.

I think I'll continue with the heater for the interior and might just go buy another rubber and jute doormat to use to strip the porch, one 2x3 square at a time. The lye is almost gone anyway. With all the trouble I had keeping cat tails and feet out of it, it's probably for the best.

Top-down, bottoms up

2007-10-21T23:00:00.000-04:00

Ha! In your face flooding/thugs with guns/suicidal neighbors/crappy renters/burglars on bikes! Two blocks away (across the train tracks) is the #19 neighborhood in America to retire to in 2007! For those of you who wonder why/how we stick around, this must be the answer, brought to us by Money magazine. Rub off on us, Riverside property values!

In other soft news, I ordered on clearance four top-down-bottom-up roman shades for the bedroom. Our house is very near its twin next door, and a little bit higher, so its kitchen window and deck view is our bedroom. Sometimes I am ashamed our pillows get pressed against the windows since we lack a headboard, or wish for privacy when reading on the bed in the sun. These shades are great, and well worth the year I waited to find them at a good price. At night I can look wistfully up at the moon and the stars, and no one can see me and think I'm cracked.

The shades haven't been through the 12:15 AM barbecuing ritual yet, when our bartender neighbor gets home and sets up dinner on his deck with a 1200 watt camping lantern. I can always cover the backsides with Blackout. His house has been for sale for a year. Perhaps he will move sometime?

Pissy Post

2007-10-19T16:34:00.000-04:00

After waiting 1 1/2 months for a rescheduled landscape design appointment, I took time off work today to meet with the guy at the house. Something went out of balance just when I was leaving work, and then (not to let on about the state of our security) I sat in my car at the gate of my workplace for more than 5 min. waiting for it to open, while the guard was maybe staring into space in the tinted booth next to me. I frantically searched my cellphone for the nursery number but it was listed as "000-0000". Me. Useless.

So when I arrived home 10 min late, there was a message from the guy with no callback number. I tried 5 different numbers in the phone book before I got hold of him. He had been by, had "drawn the yard out" and said to come pick up the plans at the nursery. And then I said, "I was hoping to try to meet you so we could talk about traffic patterns and plants suitable for swampy areas and the limited light in my front yard." He said, quote, "I don't need to know nothing about traffic patterns."

I vented to Jason a bit later and he observed that my idea of a lanscape designer was not what this guy's idea was. Well, yes. I had a plot survey for him and the new house colors and even wanted to ask about shed placement. Guy wanted to hear none of it and talked over me. I found a new place in the phone book while I was talking to guy on the phone, a specifically "woman-owned" landscaping/irrigation/waterscaping business. I will give them a try instead.

The taste of slimy water

2007-10-18T22:35:00.000-04:00

Good news for me, the electric box in the laundry room won't need to be moved, and only the cable holes need readjustment. When I planned this out, I completely forgot about the dryer venting. It will go in the wall and through the attic now, but it's a shame because one of my only projects this summer was to install a pretty, flush vent in the stucco-drywalled sun porch window currently hidden by the dryer. But now I can reinstall a window there.

I'm still waiting for the crawl space to dry out enough so it's not sludgy and slippery to work under there on my knees. We thought about pumps and drain pipes but a low-tech solution occurred to me- why not raise the crawl space/swimming pool vent openings? Right now they are at ground level and make an excellent drain for storm water overflow. The crawl space bottom is 2-3 feet lower than the yard level. That might sound pretty stupid, but it seems to be the result of building up the yard with infill to encourage quicker draining. This explains why our 1928 driveway ribbons are 6" below the topsoil. And as this is Florida and we live on infill creek bed, maybe parts of the yard did indeed sink sometime and need refilling.

I can't say how many times we thought about moving during this week-long storm. But, improvements must be made so we're not flipping them onto a buyer as it happened to us. It would be super if those improvements don't include me trying to suck the end of the garden hose to make a crawl space siphon.

Jason will love this

2007-10-08T15:22:00.000-04:00

I have the day off (government contract-employee). I've accomplished nothing on the three-day weekend and desparately wanted to. So much so that I couldn't relax, knowing all these things are stalling. So while I can't knock out a wall, I can knock out a box. I took this thing out, in an hour :45.

Now when Jason gets home, I'll be sure to tell him that mice will be coming through the wire hole until I get around to moving the box 4" to the right and 1" higher. The plot is to switch the water heater with the stacked washer/dryer, enabling us to use the back door more easily. Oh, he's home now!

Isle Collins, in the strait of Murray No-Hill

2007-10-07T19:27:00.000-04:00

While I'm just itching to start the kitchen renovation by knocking out a false wall in the kitchen, I've promised myself not to do it until I have enough money to fix whatever I discover behind it. So that will wait indefinitely while our new (to us) appliances hang in my mom's laundry room. Then I'll build a couple of new cabinets, and am ordering all the doors from Rockler because I don't want to make them.

In the meantime, we got some rain this week. Maybe this is why our house is higher than the ones around us. Everyone else still had some yard left. The water was within a foot of the joists in the crawlspace. When the water got pretty high that night, some people in a dinghy hit the chimney wall on their way to the cars stranded in the picture below.

The microwave circuit breaker kept flipping that night. Reviewing my electric notes today, I saw the cable to that outlet runs under the house instead of through the attic like the rest of the runs. Everything else is fine, though my car has been wedged in a mud rut since Tuesday, as nothing is really dry yet. Most of the yard mulch is still hanging around, too. Mostly, this has taught me that when we build the shed, it needs to be at least 1' off the ground.

Kinda Like Twin Peaks? The ugly details

2007-09-15T00:39:00.001-04:00

Our neighbor across the street was found dead on his front porch this morning. Weird stuff has been happening there for several weeks. J called the non-emergency # at 5 AM last week on a very large white woman pacing the street in front of the neighbor's house and yelling, "Black Willy! Black Willy!" Eventually, a man whom we guess she was referring to emerged from the house. I don't think either of them lived there but we had seen her peeling out of the driveway several times in the neighbor's truck. I thought he was her dad.

We have met all the neighbors, wacky or not, renters and owners, and this guy seemed subdued and nice, and walked his cute little black dog 5-6 times a day in the park. He was a skinny man in his 50s and we think he was dealing or doing, or at least had a medical reason to be growing. Foil has covered one of their windows since we moved in, and we don't live in a region where heat loss is a problem.

Another house for sale? That would make it all 6 houses surrounding us. Maybe someone will buy all of them up and offer us a pile of money too, so they can build a mega-mansion or an apartment complex. It really is amazing.

Paint-your-own Pottery

2007-09-09T17:55:00.000-04:00

For birthdays we like to try new things, and I'd never painted my own set of dishes (outside of the fourth grade). I didn't manage to get a whole set of dishes done, but did make a plate, of the house, and some of its cats. I wanted to write something creative on the back but we ran out of time so now I have a record of the gas price on my birthday.

My sister made a box with a penguin handle and Jason painted a bowl for ice cream, which I'm sure will be used. The house looks about as lopsided as it actually is, so that is a win for my artistic skillz.

Landscaping help

2007-09-09T17:14:00.002-04:00

We went to a kind-of local nursery (across the river and south, Jacksonville proper is 2hrs in diameter) looking for zucchini and tomatoes, since it's time for our second planting season. I asked the man at the counter how much they charged for lanscape design. He said Mr. Trad draws them for free, you just have to buy all your plants there, and can use their installation service or do it myself over time. We are meeting at the end of the month. I figure it will be cheaper to have a plan than to plant things willy-nilly, right, Jason? I know I like formal plantings, but I think the house likes cottagey-plants. The lot is 50 x 100 with an incomplete city sidewalk, narrow original driveway and 4 fully grown fat trees threatening to eat power lines/fall on neighbor during hurricane Shoot Me Now. Our main needs include:

A barrier bed to keep adult walkers on the sidewalk and kids running to the park from cutting across our front walkway (if you're within spitting distance of my couch you are too close!)
A hedge to block out the neighbor's motion sensor driveway light
Plants which won't mind being flooded twice a year or only five hours of sunlight a day
Suggestions for pavement/shed placement (Me=clueless!)

Meanwhile, in the backyard, our spreading butternut squash vine has killed lots of grass but is popping them out like a bunny, and there are 15 broccoli babies from last year's seeds.

Picking our (noses) paint

2007-09-09T16:02:00.001-04:00

We took a few months off from working on the house, as it gets pretty hot down here in the summer. The new heat pump being broken didn't help much, so we spent much of our time elsewhere. In about a month it should be cool enough to go into the attic again, where I have some wiring and demolition for the bedroom closet planned. In the meantime, we're doing things to the outside of the house. Last weekend we tried out paint colors.

We picked a blue and white scheme similar to our own a few months ago. One day on the way to work I realized we liked the scheme because it was on a nearby 1920s building, a glass-cutting business. I couldn't have us copy something so nearby!

Jason gets really impatient with me all the time. I know I like mulling more than doing, but when I give in to his pressure it usually costs us money. To chose our new scheme, we picked up a small shrub's worth of swatches at the paint store. As I was being indecisive, he said he would end my agony by picking the colors himself and that would be that. He picked a trim color called Seahawk, which instantly made me think guy = dark colors = couch = beer = Seattle Seahawks. It looked alright against the house, especially with a copper color I chose. He said, "Let's go get it now" and against my better judgement we bought 2 gal of Seahawk rather than a sample quart. Of course, on the window trim it looks like the teal of our local NFL team. I tried to blacken it, hoping I had picked a similarly lamp black-pigmented paint, but it turned mucky instead. Now, blue is out and brown, red, green and beige are next, to match all the red brick houses around us.
Our house is so small and plain, with not much ornamentation. Our neighborhood is becoming bad. I'd like a careful but friendly scheme that doesn't imply "rental" or "it's okay to break in". Did I mention that a month after J was held up, someone tried to steal my 20-year old car? Since there is truth to the statistics saying painted houses and trash in appropriate receptacles helps with decreasing crime, I want to do all I can. It's a bigger issue than what colors I think are pretty. That's what is holding me up. This week we'll try some new colors, in sample sizes.

Plans for a 1920's kitchen

2007-06-10T17:07:00.000-04:00

The current plan for the kitchen is to restore the gas service and install a 20's-30's stove. Photos from the last trip under the house show the gas oven installed where the modern electric one is, and the water heater in its same spot in the laundry room as well.

Space is very tight in the laundry room - I believe it used to be a sunporch, perhaps screened, with the security back door in the kitchen instead. With this in mind, it would be a neat thing to get a smaller, on-demand water heater which wouldn't take valuable laundry floor space. At the same time we would restore/re-install the stove line, its business end being only 6 feet away.

This plan is just in its beginning phase; I haven't contacted a gas plumber yet. The supply pipe coming from the mound of dirt under the laundry room is corroded through at the surface, as happens here in Florida, and it may need replacing to the street. No longer do we have a meter, although our neighbors do and I'm going to check to see if it's still moving. This could cost $$$$! We would receive about $800 in cash rebates from our local gas company, though, for replacing those two electric appliances.

This is my rough drawing for the kitchen, pretty similar to the original kitchen of this house. I did a bit of research in the past year, including peering into windows of old houses for sale, looking at available period apartments, ebay sales, books and internet resources like Indiana Historical Society's model home collection; also online state photo collections from MN and FL. Much of it was surmised from house archaeology, like the 2, 12" deep upper cabinets, unpainted areas behind the current cabinets, and the rotted hole below/behind the kitchen sink.

It's clickable, but huge. The bottom drawing, a little undecipherable, is the other side of the room with the intact ironing board cabinet on the right. Somehow the drawings remind me of a Calvin & Hobbes setting.

Just reinstalling the chair rail will add instant 1920's value, cheaply. I can reuse our one intact base cabinet shell (1970's plywood) in virtually the same spot, with a new face frame. Multiple doors on a single compartment are annoying when those doors are separated by a face frame. I'm ready for demolition!

Cat count= 5 outdoor, 2 indoor.

House History, Part II

2007-06-10T16:15:00.000-04:00

Previously, I discovered the first owners of this house were the Mercks of Jacksonville's Merck Drug Co. I found out a little more about them from online research this weekend. Frank was 26 and wife Marion was 25 when they bought the house for about $7000, some months after they married in 1927. Marion was from South Carolina and was 18 when she married a produce salesman named John, living near the future Merck drugstore in the Springfield neighborhood. Frank was born in north Georgia in 1901, and died in 1983 in Ocala (about 1 1/2 hours southwest from here). Marion died in Ocala in 1988, days short of her 87th birthday. Frank's store partner, Edna Hullinger, was born in 1878 in Georgia and lived in an apt. next to their Main St. store. A theater couple, in scenery and box office, lived in the adjacent apartment. It does not seem Mr. Merck was of the Merck & Co. family; sorry, Mom.

Big Red Fish

2007-06-08T03:09:00.000-04:00

About this time 7 years ago, my friend Ali and I were between semesters of grad school, and with nothing interesting to do that night in a small Mississippi town, we went shopping at Walmart at 11 PM. I found a 6' long plush alaska salmon for $3. It was so weird ( sane people might say tacky?) I needed it. I wandered to the fabric section as I'm prone to doing, and found some flat brown netting which I thought would be ok curtains for my brown 80s apartment. I wanted 4 yards and the woman at the cutting table said "Now, some folks from a church just bought a whole lotta this for a play." That gave me the idea to put the fish in the netting and hang it from my living room ceiling. More like art installation than interior decorating. Now I agonize over authentic 20's paint color and curtains, and butterfly hinges vs mortised, and where to put electric outlets. And it isn't nearly as freeing or amusing as a giant toy fish stuck to the wall.

Spelunking..ugh

2007-06-03T16:07:00.000-04:00

I took no less than 44 photos during a recent trip under the house. No, I don't use drugs under my house. These photos here are the glamorous, beautiful cream of the crop. They are small in case you are eating.

This rusty thing I found under the bathroom. It's about 8" long and could be mistaken for a faucet except that, it's rusty and the "spigot" hole goes all the way through. Both ends look round but are actually a hex shape. Perhaps it's a bracket of some sort, maybe for the toilet?

Here, it looks like the bathroom gas heater (radiator?) was installed underneath the sink. Does this mean the house had a wall-mounted sink, not a pedestal? Our inspector did say the white PVC should be replaced with the less-likely to freeze CPVC. Luckily this year it was 29 degrees at the lowest, for about 3 hours. And it was a warm 29.

This photo shows rotted wood torn away revealing a 2-3' length of original mesh and mortar tile floor. Glad to see it's so very supported from below. I don't know how much will be salvagable. I would totally try to find green reproduction tile, or if not, buy a kiln and learn to make it, and then sit there and piece the tiny tiles together. I will not give up my obsessive quest. Perhaps American Restoration Tile would know something.

But here are some newly found hex and black tiles from below the floor, once buried in rubble and now back together with their mosaic tile friends. I bet the green would be prettier if it was sealed. It must be a border to the hex. The tops of the black baseboard tiles had whisps of white paint, possibly making a match to the scored false-tile plaster board pieces in the rubble, also painted white, meaning there was no water-repeling wall tile when the bathroom was built. I think the white subway tile was installed in the kitchen.

And some mischief with a sleeping cat. If we could train her unconscious to hold a pencil, maybe she'll learn to write!

Cornell U Human Ecology Photographs

2007-06-01T23:13:00.000-04:00

From up where we used to live, Cornell's library has made available online photographs of their home and institutional economics classes, homemaking apartments (5 weeks of learning how to properly clean and cook and even practice with a real loaner baby!) interior design, nutrition and agricultural fairs. Most photos date from 1910-1945. On their HEARTH website there are 1003 volumes of books and journals, mainly from 1850 to 1925, consisting of the stuff women's days were made like dressmaking, gardening, decorating and chosing colors for your home, and childcare.
From the HEARTH front page:

"Home Economists in early 20th century America had a major role in the Progressive Era, the development of the welfare state, the triumph of modern hygiene and scientific medicine, the application of scientific research in a number of industries, and the popularization of important research on child development, family health, and family economics. What other group of American women did so much, all over the country, and got so little credit? ... We must do everything we can to preserve and organize records and materials from this important female ghetto."
- Joan Jacobs Brumberg, Stephen H. Weiss
Presidential Fellow and Professor, Cornell University College of Human Ecology

Now he can see the racoon stealing his food

2007-05-31T00:23:00.000-04:00

Finally, light in the backyard with a new (old) porch light from Oklahoma. It looked a little Gorton's Fisherman on the living room floor but looks great outside.

Also, I discovered our laundry room (mud porch, utility room, etc.) is entirely bead-board on the walls and ceiling, all running lengthwise. It looks like a super pain to strip so we covered it back up with the fiberboard paneling for now. The jagged hole also goes through the kitchen wall. Hm.

Bathroom mystery solved!

2007-05-28T15:42:00.000-04:00

When I first looked at the marble chunk, "threshold" crossed my mind but thought, it's way too thick to waste as a threshold, and it's also set in wall plaster. I looked at the marble threshold in my sister's bathroom, c. 1926, 6 blocks away, and realized that I could see rough plaster around her doorframe edge. This morning I removed my modern wood threshold, and under the floor layers was a broken bit of matching marble still stuck to the 1" deep plaster threshold base, and also a gouge in that threshold to match my plaster/marble chunk. Most of the plaster surface is flat even with the hallway wood floor, but below the level of the green and white checkerboard tile. I'll guess because the marble chunk is 7/8" thick, it was probably beveled at the sides. I'd probably trip over it frequently. Perhaps people did and maybe that's why it was removed.

Bathroom mystery

2007-05-12T20:39:00.000-04:00

In the crawl space below the bathroom is a big pile of bathroom remodeling rubble. The stuff was probably swept down there while the built-in bathtub was removed during two different remodelings in the 1950's and 1970s, because most of the original checkerboard tile floor is still intact. In the pile are large pieces of sky blue, black and creamy white tiles. The white tiles are probably of the time of the checkerboard floor; they are stuck to a thick mortar base and, although not intact, could be of subway tile proportions. Perhaps the sky blue and black are from the 50's. Also, there is part of an old wooden door frame which could be the medicine cabinet or a vanity.

Anyhoo, during one hasty trip under the house, from this pile I recovered a broken chunk of fat whitish marble, 3x4-ish with a smooth face, securely stuck to a full thickness of wall plaster. There seems to be a very thin line of limey white between the plaster and marble. What could this be? We live in a very modest house, barely 1000 sq ft. I can't imagine a marble sink back splash or tub surround here. The thickness of the marble makes me think it was once a much bigger piece and I should try to find more of it, but even that can't convince me to go spelunking in the bombed-out ditch under the house. I'd rather go to the dentist. I'd rather x-ray the walls to see where the patched spots are.

You Know Your Police are Understaffed When...

2007-05-08T19:39:00.000-04:00

they ask your help in searching streets for the gun that was stuck to your forehead, and your missing wallet. Incidentally, yesterday was our 3rd wedding anniversary, and while I went off to buy some buttons, Jason went for his evening walk and was held up five houses down from us. The kids, who did it on a dare and were wearing white!, were caught thanks to a very observant neighbor who called the police before Jason even made it to the phone. Thank you, neighborhood watch! It really does work!

Rather than reform homeowner's insurance, (or fund education or environmental cleanup) our developer-friendly state legislature is trying to lower/eliminate property taxes to help homeowners on fixed incomes and vacation home-owners without homesteader exemptions (which, incidentally bring in lots of money). The missing money cannot be replaced by new taxation and this is creating a crisis in fiscally responsible cities and towns like Jacksonville, where property taxes are our largest source of revenue, $50-$85 million worth. Thusly, the mayor has asked departments to cut 10% of their staff, eliminating public health care, and has instituted a hiring freeze which includes the Sheriff's Office, already low on patrolmen.

This makes neighborhood watches invaluable. I've noticed anytime anything happens in the park across the street, like young kids trying to build a cardboard box camp with a camp fire, or the guy screaming at his cell phone, the police show up in numbers. It is odd to feel people watching from their homes when you walk down the street, but that's the best way, I guess. I do it too but always thought I'm too nosy. We do live near a "home" and the intersection of heavy-traffic roads so odd things and people happen frequently.

I worry about retaliation even though the guy was probably 15 and the detective said he was no thug. I'm nervous to be near the windows at night and well, I never answer the door when I'm alone during the day anyway. I am happy, though, to pay my full property tax.

What I Have Learned but Kept Secret!

2007-05-07T13:01:00.000-04:00

Looking through my google keyword log, I've noticed that the phrases directing people to Ralph's House are often phrases I mention but never follow up on. I'm sure this is true for many sites. I feel badly that people are directed here and waste .2 seconds of their time scanning my page to discover it has nothing to do with their issue. .2 seconds adds up! So, here is a list of keyword search phrases which I fear pointed uselessly at my blog, and then all the knowledge I know about anything. Actual information, better late than never?

"can I cover up an electrical socket with drywall"

No. Either cover the outlet with a flat plastic plate to block the outlet, from your local electrical parts aisle (this was done with my 220 wall AC outlet, which is still an active circuit although closed off in the 1980s) or remove the wiring and outlet, then patch.

"cauldron shop"

Try Jas. Townsend and Son, Inc., a great place for reenactment clothing. Also, Smoke and Fire.

"drilling in brick deck ledger" (common)

My bricks were too soft and fragile to attempt hammer drilling, so I dug for concrete-based posts right next to the foundation instead. However, you can rent a hammer drill from a local tool rental outfit. Sometimes they insist you rent a bit from them and pay bit insurance, sometimes they let you use your own drill bit. Either way, for us it would have been $60 for several hours' use. My mom recommends Red Head anchor bolts for concrete block. It involves pre-drilling holes in both the wall and your ledger board. The diameter depends on the type of material you are anchoring to. Maybe your hardware store personnel can help. Trying to hammer nails into your brick wall to make holes doesn't work well. This is a good link for general deck construction info: Hometime - they also have a video from the early 90s called, appropriately, "Decks".

"ralph houses"

Unless this is a fancy term for pub, I don't know of any houses where you can get away with this. Ralph does it weekly, and everyday when she ate that new cat food in the green bag with the commercial of the cat doing yoga. Its color didn't match our wood floor very well. I recommend buying food to match your flooring.

"attatching pergola to deck" (common)

Our plan of attachment is for the deck support posts to be the same posts supporting the pergola joists (see bottom of page). I think the latest Lowe's woodworking newsletter gives directions for a pergola (though a little more complicated than it needs to be, I think).

"decking" (common)

We used pressure-treated yellow pine from Lowe's and HD. Pine is plentiful around here. We couldn't afford to use redwood or spruce or composite. I didn't have a drawn plan, just went by measurements and sort of made it up. I say draw out a plan first.

"missing piece of popcorn ceiling"

Ugh, why would you want to replace a missing piece of popcorn? Take it all down!

"my brick home needs tuckpointed bad"

Tom Silva shows how to do this sometime in the 06-07 season of Ask This Old House. Although I'm fairly certain Kevin calls it "ass this old house".

Yes, you can put your water heater in the attic. It does just fine, and if it leaks, it was past time for you to buy a new one anyway! Naughty!

Fort Clinch

2007-05-06T12:54:00.000-04:00

Just to confuse my shiny, geometrically patterned Art Deco dreams, yesterday we went to one of our local coastal forts. Fort Clinch was begun in 1847 and never really finished, part of a 2nd tier series of fortifications built by Congress. It was used in the Civil War and WWII but never saw much action. On the first weekend of every month it's populated by men who talk about the place like they live, eat and work there and do not know the world from which visitors come. You think they're a little cracked in the head, but it's okay. It's fun, and their characters do seem to know about point-and-shoot cameras.

The guy who kept the outdoor fire going was heating and straightening bent window pulleys just like ours, and over the fire in the very hot kitchen was a cauldron of bean and chicken stew. Most of the structures were reasonably cool despite it being 90+ degrees in the open sunlight. On staff yesterday were the jailer, pharmacist/doctor, guards, and cooks.

Shiny, gold!

2007-05-03T14:36:00.000-04:00

This is the new light in the dining room. Labor was about 5 hours, doing touch-up paint on scratches, re-wiring (although I skipped re-wiring the little twist knob at the bottom), finding a plate to hang it from, and then hanging. And some more touch-up.

The gold paint was mixed from craft store liquid acrylic leftover from a medieval icon project in college. It has a metallic sheen. The light has 4-5 different shades of gold and amber, so I mixed in raw sienna and raw umber canvas paint to make the colors. It took an hour of patient mixing and painting in thin layers to match chipped and scratched areas to the lovely original brass, green and coppery color. Even though the original finish held up to a soft toothbrush and water, when I tried to gently flake off acrylic errors the first finish came with it in specks, exposing tiny bits of clean aluminum underneath. There was no going back. Then it was covered with two coats of Zinsser spray shellac with a yellowish tinge. The tinge was helpful because the acrylic paint touch-ups didn't have the same translucence of the original "brass" paint. I think there is no finish as beautiful as the aged original; it makes me angry to see the "Professionally Refinished" fixtures on Ebay covered in swaths of solid, bright colors that, at least on fixtures like mine, are nothing like the original, subtle polychroming.

There are companies online that carry replacement porcelain sockets and cloth-covered wire, like Sundial Wire and Savta, but I decided to try Lowe's first. Surprisingly they had the exact same porcelain sockets, and without the hard-wiring, but with a different bracket. Lowe's also had replacement candelabra sockets, for vintage wall sconcery. They didn't have the fake wax candles made of paper for the candelabra (just a note for my future project) or the cloth wire, but I went ahead and bought zip cord and twisted it into a similar look. One of the bulbs is an appliance bulb for now. The existing fan support -which was only attatched to the ceiling plaster, not to the box!- is now attatched to a new multi-use plate which is sandwiched between the light fixture's support and two metal rectangles included with the plate. I removed most of the chain after realizing that chaining it to a hook above the dining table (off-center in the room) looked silly.

Pretty!

Goodbye, 80's Ceiling Fans!

2007-04-30T11:46:00.000-04:00

That is, to electric ceiling fans, not to people who are fans of 80's ceilings.
J and I have had little time together lately, but his last show closed on Saturday so we decided to go out on Sunday afternoon. The idea was to walk around Jacksonville's Five Points neighborhood, where our old apartment was, but smoke from the Georgia fires just north had turned the sky the color of peach yogurt. You couldn't see the opposite banks of the river. So we went to Fans and Stoves, a Points antique store instead. While I was looking for an eggbeater and vintage glass bowls for my sister, I saw 3 shelves of old glass bottles. I thought, I have tons of those under the house! but to the right was this light:

I've been after this light for months but never wanted to pay the bidding price. Of the cast and painted designs that pop up on ebay, this one seems the least ornate. Hopefully a future Ralph's House owner might give this one a chance, as opposed to a fixture thickly covered with scrolling flowers, cut-outs, straps and Spanish shields. I wouldn't want to eat below one of those for fear stuff might be falling into the food. Ew!
So now we've set a type of lighting for the house and can start to acquire more fixtures based on this style. What a relief.

House Owner History

2007-04-26T17:10:00.000-04:00

The first owner of our house was N.F. Merck, either Noble Frank or Frank Noble. In 1927, he and his wife Marion lived with Horace Merck in the Springfield neighborhood, in Apt. 5 of a building on Main St. next to N.F.'s pharmacy, "Merck Drug Co." My mom, a nurse, became very excited when I told her about Frank, or Noble, but I don't think there is a connection to Merck & Co., (of Vioxx fame) which patented its name a decade before "Merck Drug Co." opened shop in Springfield. Merck owned this house for 5 years. His wife became a saleswoman for a drugstore chain, Lane Drug Co., at neighborhood store #76. It's possible that the Mercks left Springfield so Marion's commute would be shorter, while N.F. probably drove across town. (Maybe he parked his car in the garage footprint!) Merck Drug Co. moved downtown in the 1930s to what appears to be the block of buildings torn down two years ago to build the new main library and contemporary art museum, by Hemming Plaza. Interestingly, the 1927 directory listing for Merck Drug Co. advertised their slogan as "Drugs with a Reputation", which was then the slogan for Walgreen's Drugstores. I found a photo from 1947, four years before the drugstore ended, and the sign does say Merck Drug Co. All of Mr. Merck's previous residences are now parking lots, and in the 1940's he was just a post office box.

The house has since had many residents:

1934 - Vasco and Ethel Geiger, Vasco was a clerk.

1938-1955 - John H. Webb and wife Miriam. John started in lumber, and moved into poultry. He appears to have had the longest ownership.

1956 -1967 - A series of renters. The Webbs no longer live in Jacksonville. There is a different renter in the house every year for at least 12 years, many in the Navy, one a florist, one a stevedore, one who worked for local grocer Winn Dixie.

1968-1991 - The library closed before I could continue in the directories and indexes. Jason says if I keep this up, I'll open a portal to the underworld.

1992-2005 - Agnes Hogan. I'm not sure how long Agnes actually lived here; by the incoming junk mail there have been many renters in the past few years but Ms. Hogan's name has been on the property taxes as owner AND resident. Probably not legally. The house was purchased from her trust by Mr. Hazouri, the flipper. There is a small handful of infamous Hazouris in Jacksonville, one a mayor in the early 90s. I remember my mom snagged him in a parking lot after his speech at a US Navy event to shake hands and voice an opinion. His keepers looked nervous. My hair was unclean and I was skipping school. But I digress.

The first owner next door, in 1929, was JC Rawlins, a cashier for Cudahy Packaging Co.

Also, in the 1800s this southern part of the neighborhood was a cotton plantation.

There are still many more leads to follow, especially with the Merck Drug Store. Was he a black sheep in the American Merck family to be living in this small house, barely incorporated into the city, or a distant relative, or was he unrelated? It's all very interesting, and I haven't dug into any city-owned paperwork like tax or business records yet.

Friday night in the attic

2007-03-31T21:31:00.000-04:00

I feel guilty for kicking J out of the bedroom closet (I have a serious pajama collection). I hope I made up for it last night with this temporary light for his closet. Despite him being the primary wage earner, his closet is half the size of the other, and he shares it with holiday decorations and the attic opening. Poor J. Even worse, until we move the opening to the kitchen, everything in his closet needs to be portable for the ladder access.

I was so eager to surprise him with this light by the time he came back from rehearsal last night, I didn't even paint it. The light was $7 on clearance from Lowes, its main benefit being a sturdy wall-mounted arm. I wired it to an in-line switch and plug, which plugs into an extension cord (bad, I know). The extension cord goes into the attic, where the attic light is hard-wired on its own circuit right above the opening. There I screwed in a socket with an outlet for the extension cord. This way, the light and backer plate are completely unpluggable and removable so we can take down boxes and stick a ladder in the ladder-sized closet. This cost the same as those dim battery powered lights from Target. Still, this is a very low-wattage bulb, as lights in tiny spaces make me edgy. We'll get him a permanent, cooler ceiling light when we close this attic opening.

While I was in the attic, I poked around a bit. There are four stacks of puzzle boxes from the 80's and 90's. Lots of Charles Wysocki, and several mystery puzzles, like Murder She Wrote. I also found a Sears receipt from November 1992 for Reebok shoes, purchased by the previous owner, and a punched-brass Christmas ornament of a teddy bear. Then I sat on a joist and just looked around. It was so nice up there on a cool rainy night. Usually I come down the ladder unable to bend my knees because the pants are so thoroughly wet with sweat. But last night it was nice enough to make me want to finish the space! Hot times are coming soon, though, and even nights up there will be 100 degrees. Who needs ventilation? We do! Last week I looked at some local eaves and saw that between every other rafter, two 1 1/2" holes had been drilled about 6" apart, and backed with screen. This seems more economical than drilling holes and popping in those plastic cup vents, although those have larger holes=more airflow.

Wiring your own subway

2007-03-29T02:28:00.000-04:00

I have often wondered, as I race around the footstool and couch and basket of newspapers and floor lamp at the farthest corner of the house to answer the phone, why is the phone line installed on the fireplace? Is it so when the fireplace catches fire, the fire can call for help? Was this someone's attempt at wiring the intelligent house of the future? After researching on TOH's website, and here, I decided, I've got wire cutters, I'll go under the house and re-wire. It took the usual 6-7 project hours (never feels like a quality job unless it takes at least 6-7 hours) and two trips to Lowes. Now I have a fax machine in the office rather than on the fireplace bookshelf, and a corded phone on the kitchen wall so I can sit there, like in olden times, and talk on the phone. I made sure to call my mom to tell her what I had done.

Sometime in the past, when a cable-co. person was installing a line for the office, they guessed at the location of the wall and drilled through the living room floor instead. Rather than go back under the house and re-do the hole (oh that crawl space is nasty!) they continued to feed the cable up through the floor and drilled another hole through the wall and into the office. I removed it and paired it up with the phone cable in a correct new hole between studs and then attached a fancy new coaxial/phone line plate to the office wall. It looks like we're high-tech! And I used to be afraid of wiring. I'll use the remaining wall hole for another line in the living room, as it's a central location.

To add these outlets, I mapped out all our wiring. We have 7 phone outlets installed (only two working) and also two boxes with separate electric supplies. The house is only 1000 sq feet. You can stand at one outlet and spit to another. So why did the existing kitchen phone alone need a second phone line? Why pay monthly for another phone line when so many things around here needed fixing? Like, you know, attaching the kitchen sink drain to a drain pipe.

Phone wiring diagram, all non-right angles are the cables, including the one which circles around the eaves (see, no one else wants to go under the house either):

Then I decided to map our electric system in the attic, too, for kicks:
It's like a badly designed version of London Underground. Each color is a different circuit. The red is fabric from 1928, as is part of the blue. There are a few minor things that need to be done electric-wise, like three-way switches. Some people are afraid of sewing machines, I'm afraid of electricity. But I'm getting better.

Free undies!

2007-03-17T00:47:00.000-04:00

This morning we went out to mow and fertilize. In the ferns, just where our house meets the neighbor's, was an expensive new but probably used pair of men's white underwear. Our neighbor was locked out of his house at 4AM, probably a little wasted too, what with the window screens down and him yelling, but there didn't seem to be a good explanation for the nicely laid-out lingerie. By the time I realized what fun it would be to take a picture of the renter randomness, the underwear was gone.

I know the deck doesn't look so 1920's. Some may say the railing appears out of scale or too busy. Sometimes I like it, sometimes not. If only I could have Martha Stewart 1928, on call to answer my questions about lights and cabinetry and plants and dinner. I do tons of period research, but I hardly ever look at it. The research is more fun than planning the project. And I'm encouraged to be an impulsive shopper, although I move like a snail when making decisions.

However, the pine will only last 15 years in our climate (ooh, even less if a hurricane comes along! not that I'm asking), and then something else will go up. Besides, the deck rail is good practice for the eventual front porch railing, which will have wider, flat boards, closer together.

I have good pictures of a pergola, for the deck extension, from 1928. I will follow the picture this time. That helps me feel I'm making progress toward restoration rather than just adding on. And because our brick was too soft to attach ledger boards to, the only alteration done to the house was to knock out the top two steps, which were cracking up anyway. My theory on restoration is to only do things which won't cause future loss (i.e. cracks in the foundation) and can be reversed. Pergola:

Wow, I want a house for $696. Elmhurst #3 (top right) is most similar to our layout. Looking at this now, maybe beefing up the posts (hee says the vegetarian) will help my deck, and perhaps by adding more balusters? And window boxes with cascading vegetation. Totally. Or what if this car was parked in front of it?

Nearly a year in the house

2007-03-12T12:06:00.000-04:00

So it's about time I fixed what's been bugging me since before we moved in: the popcorn ceiling. Actually, it's more like sprayed-on, chewed-up oatmeal. It's just awful, especially when I go into houses our age and older, and see beautiful, smooth ceilings. Or even textured ceilings with patterns. It's nauseating lying in bed looking at it. If I had known how easy it was to remove it, I would have done it long ago. Now, I know it was applied in the 70's or after, because it covers the drywall which was applied to cover up the wall and ceiling cracks when the house went through its massive exterior face lift. However, I have not had it tested for asbestos. I don't necessarily recommend doing this without testing.

Recently, sections of it were loosening above the oven because of the steam, and I thought, water! Water took down our plaster when the AC unit's drain plugged (a few days after we moved in) so why not use it to loosen something attached to plaster? I squirted water in 2ft. areas on the ceiling with a spray bottle, waited about a minute, and used a spackling knife to peel it off in large sections. It didn't really drip while I was waiting, it absorbed so quickly. It peeled very easily in sheets and the new surface is nearly smooth because it was previously painted with enamel. This might be the stuff you can buy in five gallon barrels at HD; it seems like little smooshy pebbles encased in drywall mud. Or someone decided they didn't care for their oatmeal breakfast and spat it at the ceiling. Whichever. The recent layer of latex paint seems super important in the process; it holds water inside the oatmeal and helps the stuff come down in sheets rather than clumps.

Since the ceiling underneath is not entirely flat, bits of the mud-like stuff (plaster?) remain in divets on the enameled sage-colored ceiling, causing a splotchy look. I'll paint over it. It's very nice! I'd rather see the cracks in the ceiling (and fix them properly) than look at this stuff!

Steps to a happier, healthier deck

2007-03-07T18:03:00.000-05:00

Because, who wants to fall off the deck?

The balusters were cut as one piece.

This Old House #2615 described how to frame the balusters with lath and then mount them on the rails, rather than toenailing. Instead of staples, I used 1 1/4" self-drilling screws in my lath. These screws also secured the lath to the top railing, from the underside.

The bottom railing is screwed into every other baluster from the bottom, with 2 1/2" deck screws.

View from the underside, attatching rail to post.

This may happen to our deck someday.

Please take this cat home with you. Not only is he pettable, with parti-colored eyes; he now has carpentry skills.

A month of events

2007-03-05T13:16:00.000-05:00

The irresponsible and overwhelmed neighbors with the five kids (+ a new baby) moved out!! They left approx. 70 cubic feet of trash on their front lawn (all weeds anyway) which for three weeks has been steadily rained on and picked through by passers-by. The tenants threw out all their furniture, matresses, beds, and piles of cardboard boxes with junk inside. Last weekend they came back from their new digs and replaced interior hollow-core doors, and painted, and also tossed a dishwasher (they must have brought it with them from their old house?) As delicious icing on this tasty cake, an hour before the end of February they jumpstarted their mini-van with the flat tires, parked on the street since July. Goodbye!

I observed all the action while building the deck railings. There is one more railing to go, and then onto phase two, continuing around the side of the house. I was dumbfounded on how to build railings; I hate toenailing because I always split the wood, but then I saw an episode of This Old House's Boston House in which Tom rebuilds an old railing. I'm glad I decided to go with a common railing, anything fancier would have been even more frustrating with the bizzaro stair angles.

That white and brown tail at the bottom of the steps is another thing the neighbors threw out, literally. His carrier was also in the trash pile. He's very, very sweet, and has one blue and one green eye. Anyone need a great cat?

John Quincy Adams and Ralph did this to Ralph's pirate toy. They pulled down his pants and tore his brains out. I can't find his eyes. Sounds very piratey to me.

Some ugly photos!

2007-01-22T15:55:00.000-05:00

We don't use the fireplace very often, only twice this winter, and when we do, it's with a candelabra and some pillar candles stacked on bricks. Browsing through the Lehman's catalog, I saw this, # 600 Castable Refractory Cement, meant to replace missing firebricks. The product claims to last five years, so I might try to source actual firebrick and then use this to patch around the brick. Since our chimney is also uncapped, (what were they thinking??)I found a top-damping chimney cap . Most of our house improvements are DIY, but I don't know if these additions would make me comfortable enough to really use the fireplace. Having a hose and bucket handy may make it mentally easier in learning more about my fireplace while it burns. And of course, the whole thing needs to be cleaned and professionally inspected, & trees pruned back.

Continuing on the theme of "free", none of this is, but I'm sure it is much cheaper than having a professional insist it's entirely failing, not that it is at all, and is $4000 in repairs. Human beings have had fireplaces like this for several hundred years. In areas without a mason, handy people had to figure these things out for themselves. Why couldn't we attempt to improve the situation ourselves with lots of research and product assistance?

Here is the clay lining. The dark stripe is from today's rain. There is water damage, obviously.

There are several types of firebrick in the box. The Stevens Volcano (H. Stevens & Sons Co., Macon, GA? **see below) seems to be more brittle. All of the mortar, especially in the liner, should be tuckpointed, if not redone.

See? we do have a brick house!

Water damage, from open chimney. We have soft, water soluble bricks all over our house. Again, what were they thinking? This was built around the time of the stock market crash-maybe that's the reason?

**November 15, 1927 Atlanta Constitution
Milledgeville Pottery Plant Damaged by Fire; $50,000 Estimated Loss Milledgeville, Ga. Nov. 14 (UP)
"Fire which started from a stove in the molding room of one of the plants operated by Stevens, Inc., at Stevens Pottery, nine miles from here, partially destroyed the smaller plant owned by the company. The loss is estimated at $50,0000 by Walter S. Stapler, president of the organization. Stevens, Inc., which is owned and operated by heirs of the late W. C. and J. H. Stevens, manufacture firebrick at their two plants at Stevens Pottery. Mr. Stapler said that the fire will not materially affect the company as the larger plant was not damaged and plans will be made for the rebuilding of the destroyed plant as soon as the board of directors can be convened. The company has its own fire apparatus and firemen were at work soon after the flames were discovered. It was only due to the work of the employers who aided in fighting the fire that the damage was not greater, Mr. Stapler said. The building was partially covered by insurance. "

Ralph!

2007-01-21T22:58:00.000-05:00

Of plants and sinks

2007-01-19T13:52:00.000-05:00

There hasn't been much going on at Ralph's House in the last 2-3 months, except for great new back steps and hooks I installed in the laundry room. Not nearly the progress that would be if money and health were normal. Especially money. It's better to be sick when there is enough money to buy basics, let alone get me a lovely new router table with 3hp motor and shaker cabinet door/45 degree joining bits.

So we'll focus on free things for a while. This is the butterfly garden I planted a few months back; now it's nice and overgrown. It has purple Swedish ivy, sweet potato vine, yellow moss roses, a leggy plant with striated leaves and tiny white flowers which the bees love, irises and random marigolds. It hasn't attracted any butterflies, but it has attracted bees, lots of them, where there were few before. Subsequently, we've had lots of tomatoes and bell peppers this winter, 3x more than in the regular growing season. Last week I made tomato sauce with a pound. I think I'll keep this plot around. It makes the vegetable plots and compost look more attractive.

Parsley loves mushroom compost.

The NY Botanical Garden grounds are free on Wednesdays. They say they have 90563 vascular plant specimens. When I went up last week to move my sister to Florida, we visited. How do you make these things in miniature for a tiny corner-yard?

The bus from LaGuardia passes Demolition Depot, so we got off and looked. $$$.

Since dreams are also free, this is my dream kitchen sink! I want to acquire one before starting the kitchen cabinets. Here in the south, it's harder to find the salvage you see in the north and midwest. Here, new construction is far more popular and old building salvage gets put in the trash; when you do find stuff like sinks, stoves, doors, it's silly overpriced or in very bad condition, usually from rots, rust and other water damage. As in many towns, lots of early 1900's stuff was torn out in the 60's and 70's, from cabinets and plumbing (my house) to entire Henry Klutho buildings. Currently, Florida is besieged by developers razing swamp ecosystems, farmland and trailer parks, and the Jacksonville City Council seems pretty susceptible to their needs in the name of slick progress, similarly to what happened here in the 60's. Without the internet and vigilant citizens' groups, much of the historical buildings that give downtown Jacksonville its character might have been razed in the name of building a glossy new downtown. I think true progress and revitalization in a city involves embracing history, rather than just building 10 new highrise riverfront condo structures to bring in the winter tourists.

Anyway, in looking for this sink on ebay, as I've been doing for 7 months now, all listings have been in Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Michigan and the like. I kick myself every time I see a listing in upstate New York, where we used to live. If only I'd been psychic!

O-o-oh who are the people in your neighborhood?

2007-01-15T20:36:00.000-05:00

Speaking of creepy residents, a few weeks ago I was a block away (thankfully in my car) approaching a left turn in front of the train tracks. A hefty man with lots of jewelry crossed to the left, and walking 15 feet behind him was a tall, inconspicuously-dressed guy. He crossed very slowly in front of my car as I stopped for the turn, all the while looking at my car. I thought, "maybe he has my car, too!" because I always stare at my car when I see versions of it around town. But then, he paused at the left curb and turned to face me, then followed my face as my car made the left turn. Then he picked up where he left off, walking behind the first guy as they approached a convenience store. Weird! I made up several possible stories for them. Man and bodyguard? Stalker?

A block in the other direction is a main street in the neighborhod, though only two lanes wide. Many afternoons there are two girls standing on the corner, usually smiling and talking, while two guys stand across the street, looking more somber. Hooking? Easier done in pairs?

One morning soon after we moved in, I was getting in my car and saw a young guy, about 14-15 years old, on the street after our pocket park. He wore a dark hoodie, with the hood pulled up. I changed my route to drive past him, and he didn't hide the fact that he was looking in windows. I drove down to the main intersection for our neighborhood, waited for Amtrak from Miami to pass and made a right to circle back onto my street. Sure enough, the guy was standing at the end of what we'll call my driveway, looking into my backyard. I pulled up 4 feet from him, got out of my car, and went inside. He pretended not to see me and slowly ambled on down the road, eating cheese puffs.

We live a block down from a very poor "home". It has a tall chain link fence and the group of hundred-year-old houses are peeling but the grass is always mowed. In afternoons its gate is left open and people, mostly men, wander out, down our street. There is one man, who likes to stroll down the street, right up to where people are working in their yard, or walking their dog, and he immediately turns around and walks the other direction. A younger man about my age walks around the neighborhood yelling "WHAT!" There is also a couple who likes to lay in the park or right outside the home's fence, and make out.

So there, stories of people from the neighborhood. A cop lives three houses down from us, and I carry a cell phone, so I feel reasonably safe, but for months our ditzy new next-door renting neighbors let their pre-school son run loose. I caught up with him once down by the train tracks and talked him back with the promise of petting the fluffy kitty on our porch. A few minutes later, his father roared up in his car at the corner and yelled "git in the car!" to this kid, a mentally disabled 5-year old. I think the family found a lock for their door, thankfully. I debated calling child services but figured this newly-formed family of 7 had enough to worry about. The father is military, too and I'm sure the intrusion wouldn't have been nice at all, but maybe not as bad as losing his fiance's child. I'm glad they worked it out.

It's cat-on-a-post. The fireplace window is her favorite entrance. From there she watches me open the front door and call her, but won't move until I move the plants and vases and open the window above the bookcase. I'd been wondering how she got up there. Guess I can't cut off the excess post now.

Railing

2007-01-13T21:55:00.000-05:00

Our house is plain on the outside; all the brickwork and original stucco is hidden under the 70's stucco, and most of its limited period woodwork was removed with the installation of new electrical service and also when the stucco was put on and porch rebuilt. A passing neighbor commenting on the improved state of the yard even mistook her 1940s house as older than mine. We look like more like a run-down house rather than the more charming run-down bungalowesque house. Because of this, I'd like to have a different deck railing, that didn't look so everyday. Not only is it a deck, it's also our back entrance.

I think this Chippendale bench pattern would be nice as a deck railing, but slow to piece. I also wonder that if I made it, it would become convex and net-like, if one leaned against it.

Pockets of trellis squares framed into the railing?

The eventual pergola will give it some character too, but it won't be visible from the street.

more decking

2006-12-31T17:15:00.000-05:00

I planned on using concrete paving blocks and bricks to make a stair pad and a path, but J was outside and said, "hey, can you use this leftover bag of concrete for something?" And there it is, immovable and gray. You may see in the bottom picture how its lack of mobility could induce frustration in someone who has a picky personality; it nearly almost lines up with the stair bottom. It's just a visual thing; the pad does support the steps.

Here is John Quincy Adams, literally claiming the stairs. The stairs were only about 10 min. old but there she was and she growled when I called her inside for dinner. Maybe she growled because her name is John Quincy Adams.

Here you can kinda see how the stair bottom and concrete pad unevenly match. The stairs come off the deck at a slight angle; what angle that is, I do not know. Perhaps that's where the pad went wrong? Also, the sun was going down when we poured it and J was tired of me telling him what to do. With the house, it seems I'm the tactician and he's the grunt.

If the stairs were fabric, I'd make a pleat in the right riser, where the top joins the joist, and re-cut the top step from scraps. There would only be a slim angle of step to step on, then, but since the stairs are fabric, falling wouldn't hurt too much. Then pad & stairs would line up.

Anyway, the stairs avoid the cleanout and buried pipes yet stay in the logical flow of traffic. I'm very proud of my angle and use of skewable hangers. The Strongtie website listed an angled riser hanger but neither of the local Lowe's or HD had it. When I remembered the small hardware store on the corner I was cranky and three blocks from home and skeptical they'd have it either. Now I'm going to figure out the post location for the railings.

deck time-elapse

2006-11-28T13:42:00.000-05:00

My elaborate system of garden stake, chair and stool helped me achieve a decent square, within 3/8". All by myself, whilst J was at work. But really, it's job for the stakes and twine. The ledger board is on posts rather than be attatched to the house, because the bricks and mortar are too soft to support it. Which was a relief because the hammer drill was $60 per day plus bit rental.

4" Posts are cemented in, outside box mostly attatched. Part of the steps still remain, for my purist self, but we bonked up most of it and used the rubble to fill a hole under the house. The few salvageable bricks are going to be the footer for the steps. In an unrelated moment of frustration I found a mauve-y half brick that has "28" drawn into it, but I couldn't find its other half or its meaning.

Half of the deck boards are on now, with pretty fall leaves on top. The three posts (plus one later) will hold up the railings, and the steps come down the left side, curved to the right to miss the pvc sewer cleanout and buried pipe. J hammered in half the joists. Thank you, J!

Ironically, the only place in the yard with super green, thick grass (I thank the day in May when the sewer cleanout overflowed) is being covered up by this deck and its steps.

Eventually, another section of deck will come off the right side, ending below those double windows. On that section, I'd like to connect a pergola near the roofline, integrating the posts supporting the deck. The Jax Building Inspections Dept. said this requires a permit because it makes the deck more than 32" tall -- although my deck surface itself isn't more than 32" from the ground. Perhaps she misunderstood my explanation. Perhaps the inspector who comes for the shed can elaborate.

Resident opossum. It's so ugly and moves so slowly.

"Don't mind the cat"

2006-11-16T22:20:00.000-05:00

It was an indoors sort of day. So I made a neat improvement to our bathroom door. The door will close but nothing will keep it closed; the knobs didn't turn the latch. Ralph is very curious about closed doors, like most cats, and she loves the sound of all running water. She drinks from the sink, and sometimes from the toilet. I think she's just offended when we close the bathroom door. And no matter which guest is sitting on the throne, she pushes the door open to say hi. Last week I found a lovely new mortise set and with some modification to the setting in the door (notched out the knob and lock holes 1/4" more towards the jamb) I installed it. Everything is flush and it stays closed like a dream! I lock it just because I can. What fun to have privacy from the cat.

Look! It has a skeleton key! The key is far cooler than the thumb lock. And if I get tired of that I can switch this set to another door that needs latching capability (There are four more with lesser need). I'll try opening the original to see if it's anything I can fix.

I cleaned the paint off the knob hardware by soaking it in hot water with dishsoap, and then vinegar and a toothbrush seemed to put a nice patina on it. The other hardware I've cleaned in the house looks bronzed, but this definitely has remnants of a sealed shiny brass finish. Which maybe gives me a clue to the finish on the missing original light fixtures in the rest of the house? Another house we toured nearby before chosing this one has its original ceiling fixtures, polychromed, flowery brass. I'm waiting to repaint or refinish the door and trim until we decide what to do with the 2006 builder's-special bathroom.

J's leg is stronger than brick!

2006-11-11T19:30:00.000-05:00

Scratch the wimpy attic door installation, we went tough this weekend and whacked out the ant-infested back steps with a sledgehammer. The steps were several layers of soft bricks set onto a rough pile of concrete with many gaps serving as bug nests, and worsened over the years by tree roots. The tree wrapped itself around the corner of the laundry room, 10-ish inches from the steps, and was one of many cut down last year before we bought the house. Maybe the tree company wanted extra for the intricate work of dislodging the stump from the corner of the house. Maybe they just suck. The 2' tall stump needed to be reduced to make way for the 2x10 ledger board, so I carved chunks from it with the reciprocating saw. The heart of it is knotty, red and hard, as it's somehow still alive, and it took about 25 minutes to slice an 8x3 section out of the top. So I stopped short of my stump-removal fantasy. Enough was carved away to install the board for the new 7' square deck section, which replaces the steps and gives us somewhere to stand with the groceries while we unlock the door. By the time we get to the deck extension the stump should have dried enough to cut away.

We weren't sure what to do with the remaining rubble from the steps; few of the bricks in the step section were stronger than the ant-infested mortar holding them together. Especially the purple ones. We finished off most of them and are filling in the mystery ditch under the dining room with the rubble.

As a purist, it hurt to remove the original steps and metal tube handrail, but the steps hadn't been cared for, and accessing their poor-quality guts to stop the bug problems would have required the destruction of the brick sides anyway. There was a somewhat modern flyswatter embedded in an internal patch; perhaps the ants have been there for years. The mortar in the side sections was soft and damp, like white sandy clay and must have been ant tunnel heaven.

A bag of frozen brussels sprouts and three aspirin before bed worked great for J's minor leg+sledgehammer accident. J is concerned that if the step bricks are this soft (softer than his leg!), will the house foundation bricks hold the ledger board screws? I'm hoping so, they seem to be a different type and are still in good shape, despite the tree stump and roots.

From VanDykes Restoration I ordered a new mortise lock set, $16, for the non-functioning bathroom door latch. It had the option of a thumb-turn or skeleton key lock, and I chose the key. It seems cooler, plus you can peek into the bathroom when the door is locked!

Furniture Rearranging

2006-11-08T16:12:00.000-05:00

View from the back steps! See how the sky really sets off the phone lines.

It's intriguing to see my cat wrote a blog entry. Maybe I should give her a journal to purge her bug fantasies. In any case, I'm never doing a show at Halloween time again. For nearly four weeks straight I've done little cooking or bathing, trying day and night to finish clients' Halloween costumes and costumes for a show at Theatre Jacksonville. The show opened last Friday night and I've been recovering, and grooming. Today was a glorious day because there were no phone calls before 9 AM. Tonight we're going to see a movie and the fair is this weekend. It's super to be normal again.

This week I'm going to install attic stairs in the kitchen ceiling so we can turn the current attic entrance back into a closet, and start scraping and painting the exterior windows. The shabby shape of the exterior looks appropriate in the fall, though. Maybe we'll paint inside instead. I've also rearranged our dining room and nook furniture to make room for a tall cabinet Tolerant Mom and I claimed from a neighborhood yard. Hurray for mom mini-van. It originally was a bathroom cabinet, circa 1929. It's in nice shape and I want to integrate it into the kitchen re-do.

Since I was taking photos anyway, here is a glamour shot of another cat, sleeping on our clean laundry. Did she fall asleep doing yoga?

For the record, I do actually scoop Ralph's box regularly.

I am pretty.

2006-10-19T13:38:00.000-04:00

Hello, it is I, Ralph. I am writing this because K is too busy making party costumes and show costumes to bother writing. She thinks this will write itself. So I have decided to take some time to do this for her. Today I also need to chew my back feet, watch the squirrel near the fireplace, and sit on her. I am busy. The least she could do is scoop my box. However, outside my window she planted a butterfly garden, pictures of which I am including. I am grateful because everyone knows how much I like things that make bugs. I am a simple being who likes bugs, rodents and I like to chew them as well. Cockroaches taste like liver, but the little flat ones aren't too bad and fruit flies really have no taste. I am really excited to chew a rodent some day. But enough about me. Here are pictures she took last week. It was hard to get the card out of the camera, dumb buttons aren't user friendly and I don't have posable thumbs. I think they did that on purpose.

This is my broccoli. It is as excited to be there as I am excited to see it. They should make kibble with broccoli in it. Maybe I will make a letter campaign.

I am going to ask that my claws be trimmed. It is hard to type. Maybe I will write more later. I am pretty. This was fun. Goodbye.

Apartment dwelling vs. owning your own doors

2006-10-04T14:00:00.000-04:00

Apartment dwellers have certain habits that house-dwellers do not. When I lived in apartments, I noticed that people often would sit outside in their cars and honk the horn instead of finding a place to park on the street and manually fetching their passenger. In my last apartment, no one seemed to understand that the community recycling bin wasn't for socks and broken umbrellas. Having lived in apartments for the last 7 years and a dorm before that, it didn't seem right to turn the TV up loud enough to hear it in the kitchen, or to talk loudly in the hallways at 2AM. Now I can, and it's great.

We've always had an intercom or keyed entry system, and it has been years since random people could show up at our door. We never had trick-or-treaters. The only people who came to the apartment were people whose visits were planned, or whose arrival at our front door was delayed by the intercom and stairs. Now, it's an old habit of mine that because no one sees what I look like when I'm at home, sometimes I stay in half of my pajamas or wear paint-smeared winter clothing, or even leftover bits of costumey things (I'm a seamstress); whatever I pick up off the floor that speaks "utility" and doesn't come close to matching. These are my cleaning, research and sewing clothes. But people can knock on my door now, wondering if I can do some sewing for them, or could they mow my lawn, or would I like to join their church? And I don't know what to do without the buffer! It would take too long to run and put real clothing on. So I peep through the hole and usually open the door, and always feel embarassed afterward. People frequently ask if they've just woken me (at 2 or 3 in the afternoon). I need to learn.

Shiny floors, gardening

2006-09-25T18:04:00.000-04:00

Last week the office/sewing area was cleaned out. Miraculously, it still looks pretty clean, despite sewing projects and moving furniture to continue painting that lovely pub green on the walls. J's color choice. This week the shed area (dining room) was cleaned up, as well as the thicket out front.
It's nice to see our shiny floors. I'd say there is no storage space in these old houses, but the apartment we just moved from, built in 1915, had 3.5 closets the size of our current bathroom. We're not really messy people, but our only box-worthy storage space is the attic, average humid temp of 103, and the closet with the attic door.

There was a tree under the vines! And I'm elated that the trash collectors picked up all that extra tree in one visit. We're only allowed as much rubbish as will fit in a pickup truck bed. And everyone 'round here should know how much stuff you can cram in a pickup bed. Are we talking Nissan? Dodge? Half-cab?

It seemed that much of the ungroomed tree was old suckers, which I didn't cut away because then we'd have no tree.

Then I planted 4 broccoli, onions, 6 pinto beans and 4 zucchini. I'm worried that it might not be cool enough for broccoli yet; spinach doesn't grow well down here because of the warm temperatures, in containers or otherwise. I bricked in the compost pile because dog-walkers could see rotting melons and tomatoes from the street, mmm, and continued with the shredded cypress mulch. I've heard it's better than eucalyptus chips; its shredded state doesn't harm plant stalks and eucalyptus somehow retards growth, which you'd want for your weeds but not for the useful plants. Plus, it's cheap (I'd get the free stuff but where do we have space to dump a pile of mulch?). Most landscaping companies around here use cypress. I gave up on the aluminum flashing edging, it wouldn't stay straight, and bought black plastic edging instead. In the butterfly garden (the grave-shaped plot closest to the fence where the bags are) will be strawflower, some sort of bushy shrub with red stems and white flowers that bees like, and sweet potato vine, amongst other plants as soon as I can make up my mind. Someday it will all come together. I'm just making it up as I go. More and more, I'm thinking, why not get a professional consultation? Or at least try a rental tiller.

Ranting and raving about people, that's what I do best

2006-09-20T22:27:00.000-04:00

The house next door has been for sale for a month. It's a twin layout of our house, by the same builder in 1928 but with an 80's kitchen rather than 70's, plus a little laundry room and some of our swamp. However, I question its listing price for $60,000 more than our purchase price for Ralph's House, 5 months ago. The listing is $15,000 above Zillow's highest estimate for that house, which is probably $30,000 more than I would pay. At our other fence, that couple tried last year to sell their 1950s house for $224,000, left it on the market for 2/3 of a year, reduced the price twice, then turned it into a rental instead. In the past three months, five houses on our little block have been put up for sale. Four of the five don't even have logical prices; they're mind-bogglingly astronomical. This seems to be a current trend here in Jax. Do realtors bother to research the recent sales history of the neighborhood first? Anyone with a computer can do it on GIS mapping here in Jacksonville. It's fun to look up city-owned property. The land under Alltel stadium is worth $15 mil, apparently.

We received a form letter today from our recent realtor, and the first line read "it can take up to two years to sell a house now." Hm. Could there be a reason? Overvaluation? But like anything being sold, houses are only worth what someone will pay. Back in January every house we were interested in was under contract within a week of its listing on MLS, maybe because the prices still made sense. How does 8 months passing add tens of thousands of dollars? I thought the "bubble" was fizzling out.

These houses are just sitting... it's annoying how they're becoming rentals in a re-gentrification neighborhood as their owners become disappointed in the Florida boom. According to the city tax records, many of our neighbors purchased only in the last 2-3 years. This old, quiet residential neighborhood with broad streets and massive oaks was rumored to be the next big market in Jacksonville a few years ago, after urban neighborhood Springfield saw home prices spring 400% in the last five years. However, crack-hood Springfield's price spike coincided with the national rise, and also because of scads of free urban renewal money from city and state facade grants to people who bought those houses.

Aside from shaking my head at the crazy stupid prices, which were probably not set by the homeowners anyway, I'm sorry to lose our good neighbors. Maybe these otherwise sane, intelligent people who care about their property and have made the neighborhood a safe place, were just here to make money off a long flip, and fixed up their houses to that effect. Our great neighbors across the street told us as much about themselves. Which is sad - and they keep buying new furniture so I know their house is becoming smaller. I was hoping I'd moved into a community where people mowed their grass because that's what you should do, not because of future resale value. People are leaving in a herd, and renters with 4 cars and kids who hair-gel and flush our cats in their toilet are moving in instead.

Maybe I'm just bitter that my foray into buying my first house at an age when I planned on doing so happened to coincide with the real estate price boom. If I'd purchased this house last year when it was for originally for sale, I would have paid $44,000 less. It just seems so random to me. Zillow says our value is dropping $100 a month, but I don't care, I live here, it's not a piggy bank.
Please excuse my muddle and whining, and thanks for listening. If you made it this far you get a prize! kinda.
See the house next door.

Nice house. Pretty house. Sit.

2006-09-20T01:01:00.000-04:00

I keep checking Ralph's House to see if there's anything new and then realize I'm the one who's supposed to be writing it. Like, everyday I do this. Well, here house, take our gift to you this week:

The office and sewing areas (same room) are absolutely livable now, and mostly green. Before pictures exist but I'm not willing to share them out of embarassment. I'll say we hadn't been able to casually cross the floor since we moved in five months ago.
I start new employment in the morning. I'm sure the house is hoping I'll buy it a tool shed.

Being at one with nature

2006-09-12T23:50:00.000-04:00

Here is something interesting. For me, at least. Looking online for an older map of my neighborhood, one from around the time the house was built, I found this USGS one from 1918, pre-development. Holy cow, we're a swamp! Thus, the 12" of water to our front step is meant to be there and who are we to stop it?

X marks the spot.

Incidentally, the Florida Military Academy moved across the river into a hotel the year our house was built.

More photos of Door from a Dumpster

2006-09-09T22:55:00.000-04:00

Here's the door, primed and hung. The deadbolt is a fake deadbolt. It fit the old hole.

Here is a before-and-after. Notice how dark and cramped the little back-porch/laundry room is (that has nothing to do with all the stuff we've crammed in it) and then I open the steel back door (it opens all the way, there's just too much Stuff Meant to Live in a Shed behind it) . Voila! sunlight yet the animals and the AC can't escape. Dreamy fall afternoons here we come! It's like those 20's ads where the housewife is living in bliss because of the gloriousness of her kitchen.

As awkwardly as that washer and dryer are positioned, this 7-years-long apartment renter does think they are the best thing ever. When we come in from a hard day under the house or bailing water from our car, we can strip at the back door and pop the clothing into the washer.

Someday we'll get an on-demand, wall-mount water heater, move the electric panel, re-do the walls because patching cheap paneling is ugly, and can then move washer/dryer to the left. Half of the wall behind the washer/dryer is a large window opening that's been closed over with concrete board. One of our fantasies is to knock out this wall as well as the adjoining bedroom wall and make one big room. We wouldn't be able to finance this before we become an historic area next year, though. Add some more months-long steps with reviewing comittees and application fees.

I was encouraging Pepper to try out the new door!

Today on Fine Woodworking: Make a plank doorknob!

2006-09-09T18:50:00.000-04:00

Wednesday night we got lots of rain here. It seemed normal, like it rains sometimes and you don't think much of it. I went across the river to feed my mom's cat whilst she was away getting nursing continuing certification credits in Las Vegas (yeah, right, educational stuff in Vegas!). Fed the cat, got mom some groceries, came back and suddenly couldn't leave for the rain and lightning. I decided to stay and watch movies, and J called to say the yard was starting to flood so I might as well stay overnight with the cat. We've had some issues with our storm drain, so a little flooding wasn't unexpected. Two hours later he called to say water was up to the steps:

and that the car had flooded, he couldn't start it, and a neighbor had to pull him away from the drain. Why let the car stay there when the street started to flood I don't know. Actors....So realizing he'd need a car Thursday morning to get to work, I came home and we toweled and mopped out his car until 1:30 AM. Its warning lights are on now, and four buckets of Damp Rid are on the floor. grrrrr..rrr

Here's a photo of one of the funnel clouds on the river that day, about 1 1/2 miles from mom. The structure just behind it is our longest cable bridge:

However, everything is nice and green now. I'm very proud of hanging the square door in the unsquare doorway this afternoon! It's this door. Check out the plank doorknob! It'll suffice until I can find something short and vintagy that won't hit the real knob when the two doors are closed. A stile was starting to crack parallel to the bottom hinge, causing it to bounce instead of close, so I used long deck screws to clamp it to the door. It's not like it's our real door.

When I grow up, I'm getting a shed

2006-09-05T13:38:00.000-04:00

This is what I did this Labor Day weekend. I made my first dowel-assembly project, to see what I'd need to learn to build kitchen cabinets. I learned that I will need to build a guide for the circular saw. These shelves in the window of the laundry area/back porch are holding gardening stuff; the things that go in the future shed - lawnmower, power tools, paint, etc. are in the dining room, mostly on a shelf unit donated by my mom. Thank you, mom!

Here is the new retaining wall around the vegetable bed; the side closest to the house has a slight hill and I've been meaning to fix that for months. Now there is a two-brick high wall on two sides and I've been filling it with dirt taken from the leveled path. When I pull out this season's plants I'll add lots of compost and purchased dirt because our sandy soil isn't much good for vegetables. We're almost done with the mulch path, two more bags and it's done. I laid the mulch over weed cloth because without it the whole area would be weedy green again in two months. The path end will eventually connect with the driveway/deck concrete area.

This week's note in Florida wildlife (last week there was a 1/8" frog living below the bathroom) is a little white squooshy bead found in the path dirt. I thought it was leftover construction material or a large piece of vermiculite. I squooshed it for a bit and then it popped open and a baby lizard head flew out! I was traumatized enough and stopped the path for the day. It's really too hot to work outside anyway, and it will probably be so until October; it's the southern equivalent of our long winter months in Syracuse.

Despite the sunstroke, the garden's making great progress. The next garden plot, the weedy area closest to the camera, will be the same brick area but divided in half by a slight path, the half closest to the house probably becoming the compost pile. I'll take out the pathway bricks and use them for the bed, and try aluminum flashing bent in half for the path edging. Commercial aluminum is too expensive and plastic edging might not survive regular lawnmowing.

Way down at the end of the fence is our new back gate; we thought it would be a good idea to finish since we're babysitting my mom's dog this week, and the 5 next-door kids (most are old enough to know better) frequently come knocking at the back door... -WARNING! Rant!- At 8 in the morning asking to borrow DVDs...(we have maybe 10 total)...One even came by yesterday when I was working on the path and asked if I would buy him a movie. I wouldn't even buy movies for my own kids! They should be reading or playing outside. I suggested he go to the library. I wish the nurseries would put out the cypress trees so we could finish boxing in our "back" yard. We don't pester other people in their backyards! Just because you can see us outside, using dangerous power tools, doesn't mean we want to talk to you! Please stop breaking down our fence boards and kidnapping our cat!

Down in the Catacombs

2006-08-26T17:19:00.000-04:00

J and I today went under the house to clear out the pile of bricks left from the 70's house-lifting. We aimed for the useful whole ones. Many of them still had the mortar on them from when they were dislodged from the foundation, which, kinda scary because it's the same mortar on many of the foundation bricks, just brushed off in chunks. I don't feel compelled to leave them under the house so the foundation can be reconstructed; I've seen many older houses in Jacksonville on piers 6-8 ft apart. We took them outside and put them in the garden paths.

While we were down there (it's only my second time, it's not my favorite place) we took photos of the floors underneath the bath and kitchen. I was suprised to see the bath subfloor much worse than the kitchen; it looks like the original checkerboard mosaic tiles were on a bed of steel mesh that held moisture well and thoroughly rotted the floor around the tub. And I was right, the subfloor is completely gone under a section of the tub. The WDO inspector had shown us photos but their geography was hard to understand. The original tile floor is under the tile, subfloor 2 and the vinyl! Maybe it's salvagable! Or not! It's neat though!

Under the bathtub corner:
The meshed area is the original floor under the bathtub; the white speckly thing center is the corner of the tub.
Very thankful there's not much damage to the joists here, and some stuff was replaced by the flipper.

Selections from the pile of tile under the bathtub. The whitish tile is sky blue, and the mosaic is less gross than it looks.
Under the kitchen we found vinyl and linoleum scraps and this uncracked glass. We also found lots of vintagy bottles, toy dumptruck parts, a small plastic horse, a fishing pole, green plastic christmas tree stand, old bicycle basket, a bucket of joint compound that unfortunately was not a Bucket of Gold, 70's Busch beer cans, and Pepsi bottles. When I was sifting through the bath rubble, the world's tiniest frog jumped out. I thought it was a baby cricket. It was 1/8" square when sitting, a dark brown color.

A post about brick posts

2006-08-25T15:18:00.000-04:00

Maybe we'll do a cool broken-tile mosaic on the front steps, and of course the rail would be continued all the way around the porch. This rendering happened because last night I wondered if the brick was still inside the columns. Nope, they're plywood. So I've worked out how to make them reappear with wood columns above, something to dress up the house front. I’m also thinking of putting trim around the windows since the original window trim is hidden under the fake stucco. This will make the windows look less cavernous and make us feel less Flinstones. The sidewalk is a great width but stick-straight and covered with some sort of whitening cement which is wearing away, especially when you pour vinegar on it.

That's Fluffy, a volunteer cat. She's been hanging out here for weeks but actually lives two houses down. She's very affectionate but doesn't like Ralph. There are two other volunteer cats as well.

So far, this one is my favorite

2006-08-23T17:03:00.000-04:00

Follow the cypress-mulch path

2006-08-22T20:40:00.000-04:00

Our Paint program does helpful house things.

We're deciding paint colors and whether we want to change the porch shape. We think there used to be arches because houses in the neighborhood with the same layout and brick issues, like the house next door, have two arches on the front of their porches and a side entrance. The front view of their arches are formed with the butt-end of the bricks, and the space from the porch corner to the bottom outside edge of the brick-end arch is exactly the front width of our columns, if that makes any sense. Our porch may also have had a side entrance.

One thing I can't figure out is why our house is at least a foot higher from the ground than its brothers and sisters. Yes, and why we have yard where everybody else has a little room next to the back door! Maybe they ran out of brick. It would have been a kick-ass place to keep the cat box.

I built a compost bin and dug a path to it yesterday. Anywhere we put the bin it would be easily smelled by neighbors so it's by the house.

We're filling the path with $1.70 concrete slabs from Lowe's, embedded in shredded mulch. This seems more removeable and less messy than chipped rock, and simpler than continuing our brick path. Although, we seem to be having a boric-acid-proof carpenter ant problem... guess they'd live under brick too, though. Florida is the perfect climate for those guys. The vegetable bed's getting elevated and duplicated on the side by the camera.

The end of the yellow brick road (it's actually a peachy terracotta)

door from a dumpster!

2006-08-19T21:51:00.000-04:00

This week we dug a path from the side gate past the vegetable garden; the St. Aug grass was mostly dead from chinch bugs anyway. Something mysterious had been sucking the life from the grass and one day I saw a whole bunch of bugs sunning themselves on a wall, trying to tan, I guess. I thought they were odd and harmless and occasionally killed them with homemade insect soap, but today I saw the Garden Q&A in the paper and have taken steps. At least the steps to the hardware store; the poison is sitting on the kitchen counter next to the sprayer. Job for tomorrow.

J cleared out our wood resource pile in the back corner after I discovered carpenter ants in the logs this week. I'd hoped to use them to build an elevated vegetable bed but know now that's foolish. Last week I found a colony of them living in the roots of the fig tree I got from the Jacksonville Fair last year.

Mom and I went dumpster-diving in Springfield, an area of Jacksonville that's undergoing significant rehabbing (see restoration on 7th blog). Most of the stuff that comes from these beautiful old houses isn't fit to be reused, often tagged or peed on or held together with chickenwire and roofing nails, or the original interior parts are long gone and patched over with ancient vinyl flooring and random boards. But we found some exterior doors, the most sturdy one we put in the van. I scraped it, filled the nail holes and sanded & primed one side. The knobs are solid copper. If I can bring myself to do it, I'll knock out the half-door glass pane and install screen instead. Either way, it's going in place of a screen door on the back of the house, to cover up our ugly new steel door from PO.

House Tour

2006-08-15T00:51:00.000-04:00

The house is set up in an H, with public places to the right of the front door, and two bedrooms and bathroom on the left through a privacy door and hallway. The French doors between the living room and dining room were removed when those rooms took on wallboard to cover the wall cracks from the sinking chimney in the 70s. The only evidence of the doors is the metal plate in the floor meant to catch the sliding door bolt. It looks like a smiley face.

The house is a block from the Miami-Washington D.C. train tracks used by Amtrak, the I-95 of the East Coast train world. Once I counted 23 autotrain cars while waiting at the local 8-way intersection, so the autotrain popularity is better than I thought. I hope Amtrak can stay afloat, I love the thought that I could jump on the back and ride to other places. And think of the celebrities who came through here in the 1920s and 30s! Jacksonville was a happening place back then, on the tour for most major music acts and movie stars.

Major renovations were done to the house in the 1970s, both interior and exterior, with an eye for respectfully keeping similar fixtures and features as the originals, while seemingly saying those features were incompatible with modern tastes, like the fireplace wall sconces. This is understandable, most people don't want to live in a museum; like all restorers I just wish stuff had been moved to the attic instead of being discarded. I am grateful they cared for the house, though, and didn't alter too much. I too like dishwashers, central AC and 40-60 watt bulbs, but as long as the spirit of the 1920s can be maintained, I'd like to make it so, despite my affection for modernist concrete.

There are two electric outlets per room, except for the 7 in the kitchen. There is no attic ventilation except for one gable-end's louver panel. When this 1047 sf. house was built in 1928, there were 12 doors, two phone outlets, and 2 or 3 electric circuits.

Butler's pantry/breakfast nook (no seating in the nook). The dining room is beyond. In the breakfast nook the area above the pantry and adjoining bedroom closet has been walled-off, and in the attic it is a cut-out in the attic floor.

The dip is made with plaster and lath; maybe an original alteration to the house? There doesn't seem to be a reason to have subtracted this storage space. The pantry in my last apartment, c.1914, had doors and shelving up to the ceiling. It's interesting that the pantry shelves are held up with top sections of the original baseboard molding.

In the kitchen, a popular 1940's green color is behind the top cabinets, and a peeling, paler 30s color below, where there are stripes from the shelf supports attatched to the wall. You can see by the patching ghosts that there was a chair railing around the room, the first layer of paint being olive green above the rail, and tan-gold below. The same green is the first layer on the bathroom walls (although substantially altered by light and time by the fact that it does not match the bath floor tile by any stretch). The gold is the same color as the first paint layer on all the house woodwork- and is possibly milkpaint. Also, there is an ironing board alcove with top and bottom doors; no ironing board exists but it has a shelf for the iron. An original phone outlet is directly below. The wall with the two windows above was altered sometime to be 2 1/2" fatter, maybe due to plumbing or wiring modernization.

Here is what seems to be the original kitchen layout:

The cabinets currently are really inefficient with tiny shelves and doors, especially the 4" door above. And partially rotted. We don't open those two doors under the sink.

There used to be a swinging door between the kitchen and breakfast nook. Sometime a pass-through was cut between the walls so that there would be more light in the nook, and the door was removed. Its post swivel is still in the doorframe.

One of the first kitchen floors was linoleum in a beige color with sparse blue and red thread-like streaks. Underneath it is the same wood flooring that continues throughout the house. The diagonal subfloor strips and finished floor were laid down before the interior walls were framed, so you can follow a board underneath a wall and into an adjoining room.

Volunteer kitty John Quincy Adams sitting in our excavated driveway ribbons. They need to be re-done.

Bathroom, between two bedrooms; walls and floor retiled by flipper.

The original green and white 1" checkerboard tiles are underneath old vinyl, underneath the new tile, making a 3", step-up sandwich. The floor's bottom layer of wood subfloor has halfways rotted away, especially near the tub pipes and toilet waste pipe. I'm thinking PO was allergic to plumbers. The first tub was a built-in, however, this one is new.

Based on the wall patching, it looks like there was a light on either side of the medicine cabinet, and possibly one above it. Parts of the original medicine cabinet are in the crawl space below the bathroom, in a pile of sky blue and black 50's tile fragments. It appears to have been an inset cabinet above an alcove, like this one:

This alcove shelf matches exactly our phone nook shelf. We probably had a similar sink and I don't think our walls were tiled, either.

Living room; bookcases used to have doors. The hinge ghosts show the same style as the pantry hinges. It appears the bottom shelf was filled in with drywall. Hearth tile was taken out and replaced with edgeless, cheapo field tile. I'd like to replace it with some from here. There is no chimney cap but it does have a clay liner.

The fireplace mantel is two layers of the original crown molding. It's hard to tell if this was an original detail or something done when the house's style became "modern" in the 70's, perhaps recycled from the molding which was removed from the dining and living rooms. Original-esque baseboard and crown moldings need to be reinstalled. The flipper's men did a horrible measuring job on the new baseboard and didn't even bother patching it. It was installed after we'd put a contract on the house.

The wall sconces seem to be a modern (70s), simplified version of the common 1910's-20s sconce with an arm and shade.

Back bedroom, identical measurements as front bedroom, flipped. This closet ceiling (door on the right) has been closed-in and the cedar siding has been drywalled-over. The original baseboards and crown (picture hook-supporting) molding are in here.

Back bedroom looking toward dining room door. Little Moroccan-looking phone alcove in hallway.

Lilly, intentionally planted at the front left corner of the garage opening. The one-car garage still existed in 1951, according to the Sanbourn fire maps, but is long gone. Its deep concrete-block foundation still exists, and we think it had a wooden floor.

More Tree Stuff

2006-08-14T21:44:00.000-04:00

Here is the house (big box) last fall before we bought it. Many species of trees, some dead, so densely packed into the yard.

The small box is the street signpost, a 4' tall obelisk. The street names are long worn away and someday I'm going to stencil them back on.

Archaeology

2006-08-14T12:55:00.000-04:00

In the backyard we're going to knock these out and put in an elevated open deck area (obviously not period but popular in Florida) with pergola. The steps are too narrow, a little scary when you're carrying stuff.

Shed location. The lawnmower is now in the dining room. J is measuring the backyard in human scale, like when you see a quarter on an object in a photo. Where he is standing there is a garage foundation that's well entrenched, cinderblock 3 feet deep but no floor. There are driveway ribbons in this photo, buried under 5" of St. Augustine grass and dirt. We've removed most of the scrub trees here in time for hurricane season but the big dark one still leans over our neighbor's house. One mystery is all the plastic and metal tent stakes we've found in the back/side yard.

The POs seem to have had no regard for tree placement and maintenance. Every tree on the lot is growing, whether planted or volunteer, in a strategic location to the power, phone or cable lines, or into the foundation. Two months ago the city came and did its chop job on the ones under power and phone lines, cutting all heck out of one tree. It now looks like a stick with a saucer on top, they left so little of the limbs. Not the tree's fault of course but of the PO who allowed it to start growing there. I'm not sure if the historical ignorance of these trees is what led to the wall crack in the house fixed in the 1970s. The house is actually brick but due to 1. the sand/clay soil or 2. naughty trees a large crack developed in the living room exterior and the house started to separate. The solution was to wrap the entire house in steel mesh, tack it down to the brick, and cover it in cement-type stucco (tho it's not waterproof stucco and the mesh sometimes rusts through). This fix seems to be fine though there is a mess of bricks in the crawl space as one section of the wall was removed. Above the porch the stucco/mesh is the only thing separating the attic from the wide world.
In any case, it's tough to dig anywhere in our yard from the dense network of roots. Glorious trees:

Next on our list:
Paint house
Expand vegetable garden, build elevated beds
Path through yard (front thru gate to back?)
Build shed
Build deck
landscaping of some sort
re-work the kitchen. House was a rental, and poorly maintained. No one realized that the kitchensink/dishwasher greywater was going through the wall and onto the joists instead of out through a pipe. One day I was watering the tomatoes outside the kitchen wall while J was washing dishes and I heard trickling and dripping and called the home warranty people. The rot hole in the joist/wall is big enough to stick my head and a family of rats and a legion of cockroaches through. And also we have cramped cabinetry in the kitchen.

Ralph's Small House

2006-08-14T01:43:00.000-04:00

Here at Ralph's House, we're working to renovate a 1928 bungalow-ish house on the outskirts of downtown to the best of our abilities. Currently we're working off a private-school elementary teacher's salary and the know-how of his wife. Lately it's been 96 degrees + outside so our efforts have been limited to peeling 70's wallpaper and cleaning up after the house-flipper's non-code job inside. Before it got hot outside, we installed a fence around our corner lot, the pre-built "french gothic" from Lowes. It's worked moderately well- it used to be whenever we worked in the yard, passers-by would stop to ask us for money. As if.

I'm a purist, which really gets in the way of making decisions. It's as bad as, "if I remove the 1/8" paint buildup on the window frame which cracks further every time I open the window, I am removing this house's history." It bothers me that contemporary ideas about restoration are always changing; I'd like to make a snapshot of the house from 1930. Somewhat not wanting to live in a museum, we need to find the line where period meets modern day function. The original interior paint colors are drab and depressing, and the color combinations, while fascinating to think about in context of their times, are jarring to live with. I guess this is something every restorer has to deal with, and really, it's the journey that's the fun. I think so, anyway.

Fence and vegetable garden.