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)