more decking

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

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"

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!

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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!

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

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

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

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

Follow the cypress-mulch path

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!

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

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.