Spelunking..ugh

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!

Bathroom mystery

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.

Down in the Catacombs

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.