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.