New attic access opening

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 an (IKEA) 1920's kitchen

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

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

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

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

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

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!

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

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...

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!

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

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!

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!

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

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

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

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!

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

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

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

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!

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. "