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why do you have 4 fireplaces that seems like overkill even in a mcmansion; are they your primary source of heating?
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Oct 26, 2018 04:18
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QuarkJets posted:why do you have 4 fireplaces It's a Victorian, and Victorians just have buttloads of fireplaces because they can. There's a perfectly adequate hot water radiator heat system (original to the house) so the fireplaces are superfluous for heating, but are there because back then, you'd expect fireplaces in your living room and dining room for atmosphere, tradition, and perhaps supplemental warmth, and then the ones in the bedrooms are a sweet bonus (and easy to add because they're stacked on top of the downstairs ones and share chimneys). Also, the more fireplaces you have, the more awesome mantelpieces you can show off (all four are different).
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Oct 26, 2018 04:44
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Imagine asking someone named "Queen Victorian" why they have 4 fireplaces, haha. I bet that doesn't even count the one in the servants' quarters!
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Oct 26, 2018 05:17
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Queen Victorian posted:All four of my fireplaces are boarded up, but it looks like they all had gas inserts at one point. Also I peeked behind the board on one and it was full of bird skeletons (really need to get the chimney guy out for some chimney caps). You probably have real fireplaces with flues and stuff, as opposed to the fireplace-in-a-box thing that is more common in new houses. If they have already been converted to gas, your best bet is to take pictures of every setup and go to a fireplace store and discuss getting fake log sets for each fireplace. With a real chimney that has been converted to gas, you will have tons of options and can pick the log set you want for each one. The only downside is they are less efficient and you will still need to get your chimneys cleaned and inspected occasionally (although not like if you burned wood in them). I think it would cost about $500-$1000 per chimney to buy a nice log set and have it installed and have the chimney checked out and cleaned, assuming you already have a gas source available at each chimney. I have had a wood burning fireplace, converted it to gas, and now I have a prefab fireplace in a box at a new house. The real gas fireplace was probably the nicest looking and least pain in the rear end to deal with.
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Oct 26, 2018 05:47
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We have an addition/bedroom that we have turned into a playroom for my daughter. Previous owners set this up with electric heat registers, while the rest of the house is using steam radiators. The playroom is using a programmable thermostat. It's getting colder here in MA and I was wondering the proper way of heating this room. Is it safe to program the thermostat to a low temperature (let's say 62) and leave it running all the time, or would it be better to turn the heat on/off whenever the room is being used? Sorry if this question is wicked noob-ish - I've never used electric registers and the risk of a fire freaks me out 
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Oct 26, 2018 12:01
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Leperflesh posted:Imagine asking someone named "Queen Victorian" why they have 4 fireplaces, haha. I bet that doesn't even count the one in the servants' quarters! Oh crap, forgot to account for the servants' quarters! Those are up on the third floor, which is legit cold as balls because there's just one radiator in the hallway. There are no fireplaces up there, but nooks with ports into the chimneys for little Franklin stoves (long since gone). Definitely need to put something up there to account for no radiators in the rooms, especially if we want to use one for an additional guest room or a future kiddo room. So yeah, each chimney will have to do triple duty. Third room in the attic doesn't have a stove port, even though I guess it's close enough to the kitchen chimney (yeah we have three chimneys overall - kitchen chimney is currently just being used to vent the hot water heater, and we will use it to vent our eventual extractor fan. There is no kitchen fireplace - it was just the chimney for the old wood stove). This third attic room is southern facing so it gets sun warmth, but not quite enough. Might consider an electric baseboard unit or see if an as-needed space heater is enough. This room is my office/studio right now. Droo posted:You probably have real fireplaces with flues and stuff, as opposed to the fireplace-in-a-box thing that is more common in new houses. If they have already been converted to gas, your best bet is to take pictures of every setup and go to a fireplace store and discuss getting fake log sets for each fireplace. With a real chimney that has been converted to gas, you will have tons of options and can pick the log set you want for each one. The only downside is they are less efficient and you will still need to get your chimneys cleaned and inspected occasionally (although not like if you burned wood in them). Oh yeah, they're very much real fireplaces. Given the lack of chimney caps and the deteriorated, neglected condition of the old gas inserts, they are by no means in working order, for gas or wood (after removing inserts). All I know is that the chimneys haven't been plugged up (seeing as there are bird skeletons). We guess we'll be spending several grand to get the chimneys and fireplaces up to snuff and operable again - it's one of our splurge areas. Our flipper neighbor is rehabilitating another Victorian across the street (that had been made multi-unit and completely trashed by decades of renters) and they kept all the original mantelpieces but will be doing ventless inserts (probably a good option for them because that house is overall way more hosed up than ours). Those are definitely the cheapest and easiest (no chimney restoration/venting poo poo), but I don't think they're right for us fire-lovers. While wood-burning fireplaces downstairs would be great, I think I'd also be fine with the vented had one because zero effort for having nice-looking fires.
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Oct 26, 2018 14:17
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We somehow have two chimneys and no fireplaces. There's one that comes up through the kitchen that I guess might have vented an old stove in there, but any connections in the room were removed/hidden so it just serves the water heater. The second one comes up between the dining room and a side room, but again there's nothing visible in those rooms except some weird shaping in the walls. I dunno if someone in the past remodeled to hide it? Seems a little odd because mostly the house seems to have been preserved on its original plan. That chimney venting the boiler for our heat. We're getting a new combined boiler and heater and we're going to get them vented through the basement wall so we can seal the chimneys and not worry about having to have them cleaned, etc. Now I'm wondering if we have a fireplace hidden behind the walls somewhere. Pity you can't xray your house.
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Oct 26, 2018 14:25
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You can try buying one of those little wire cameras and make little holes everywhere for it to look behind your wall.
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Oct 26, 2018 14:35
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That's a good idea. We already finished painting the dining room, but the room on the other side is our wallpaper nightmare so there's no problem with punch some more holes there and doing some fishing before we finish it. I'm not sure I would actually excavate a fireplace if we found one, but it would be good to know.
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Oct 26, 2018 14:44
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Queen Victorian posted:the hyper realistic log inserts (there was a historic building I was in during wintertime and they had these merry fires going, and, despite having extensive fire building and tending experience, it took me a couple hours to realize the logs were fake) I’d like to know more. My gas fireplace is from 1992 and looks it.
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Oct 26, 2018 14:48
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Ashcans posted:We somehow have two chimneys and no fireplaces. There's one that comes up through the kitchen that I guess might have vented an old stove in there, but any connections in the room were removed/hidden so it just serves the water heater. The second one comes up between the dining room and a side room, but again there's nothing visible in those rooms except some weird shaping in the walls. I dunno if someone in the past remodeled to hide it? Seems a little odd because mostly the house seems to have been preserved on its original plan. That chimney venting the boiler for our heat. When we were shopping for houses, we came to realize that it's pretty common (depressingly so, in my opinion) to remove fireplaces to make more space in the room for whatever reason. Is that second chimney coming up in the middle of the house? And no fireplaces or walled-off protrusions where they would have been? If that's the case, you might want to make sure you don't have a huge column of bricks sitting on top of your upstairs joists... If the chimney is on the exterior wall and in between the rooms, there might have been corner fireplaces.
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Oct 26, 2018 15:01
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Soon after we moved in we got a chimney/fireplace inspection that ended with us paying $5k to get new chimney liners installed because we still had clay ones that were apparently basically gone. Since then, though, we've had trouble having a fire without it dumping smoke into the house. Recently I've had the most luck with doing an upside-down fire (kindling/smaller stuff on top instead of bottom) and opening a couple windows, but even then as soon as any wood starts smoldering it seems like it sends smoke right out of the firebox into the room. It doesn't help that the layout of the house seems to funnel smoke/warm air directly up to where there's a fire alarm, so even if there's not much visible smoke, it will go off. I'm used to my parent's house, which has a massive fireplace in the middle of a very open living room, so there was never any worry about smoke. Maybe I'm just bad at making a fire, but I just want to enjoy it without constantly monitoring and poking at it and then having everything smell like smoke for a couple days after.
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Oct 26, 2018 15:26
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We have an unused chimney that runs up through the kitchen, between a bedroom and bathroom, and out through the roof that used to vent the boiler. I’d love to knock it out and use it as a laundry chute as the laundry room is where the boiler used to be. My other chimney only has one fireplace left. There used to be one in the master bedroom but someone bricked over it.
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Oct 26, 2018 15:51
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We've had that happen when there's a cold downdraft in the chimney that prevents smoke from going up and pushes it back out your fireplace. My dad's solution has always been to roll up a couple sheets of newspaper, light an end, and hold it up in the flue to burn for a while to warm up the air in the chimney before lighting the fire. Or sometimes fireplaces are just poorly designed and smoke a lot. We've had that misfortune too.
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Oct 26, 2018 16:02
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Jealous Cow posted:Poly it. Thats the trendy thing to do recently. Wife doesn't like ther countertop. Time to open up the relationship.
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Oct 26, 2018 16:13
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Ashcans posted:Now I'm wondering if we have a fireplace hidden behind the walls somewhere. Pity you can't xray your house. I mean they xray commercial buildings all the time when they want to do extensive structural cement work. I'm sure it's totally safe and cost effective to do your house. 
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Oct 26, 2018 16:31
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Queen Victorian posted:Is that second chimney coming up in the middle of the house? And no fireplaces or walled-off protrusions where they would have been? If that's the case, you might want to make sure you don't have a huge column of bricks sitting on top of your upstairs joists... You mean like they cut out the chimney stack in the middle and just left the top half hanging? Pretty sure it's not doing that, the chimney runs all the way from the basement up through the roof and the boiler is hooked up to it in the basement to vent - if they cut the stack it would be venting into the walls, which, uh, I really hope isn't happening! There is still room for the full chimney to run in the structure. Here's a floorplan, please don't use this to kill me while I sleep ok:  I marked where the chimney's run with red. Both the dining room and the bedroom have weird wall lines which surround the chimney, my question is mostly whether there was ever a fireplace on that floor that was walled in/removed, or if it always just ran from basement to roof.It seems a little weird that it wouldn't have any fireplace at all given the age (1880). The chimney runs up between the bedrooms on the 2nd floor between the closets - it's not blacked out on the floorplan because they didn't measure the depths properly. The second chimney runs up through the back kitchen wall, I believe it would have been for a stove to vent into there; it also continues upstairs to make that weird protrusion in wall of the rear bedroom. I don't think that ever had a real fireplace, but I suppose it could have.
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Oct 26, 2018 16:46
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Ashcans posted:You mean like they cut out the chimney stack in the middle and just left the top half hanging? Pretty sure it's not doing that, the chimney runs all the way from the basement up through the roof and the boiler is hooked up to it in the basement to vent - if they cut the stack it would be venting into the walls, which, uh, I really hope isn't happening! There is still room for the full chimney to run in the structure. Ahhh ok - yeah I think you'd be fine structurally since it looks like you wouldn't have to compromise the integrity of the chimney stack to get rid of the fireplaces. There was definitely a fireplace in the dining room, probably one in the lower level bedroom, but I'm not sure about the upstairs rooms. There could have been stove ports, which are trivial to remove and wall up. Any patched areas on the floors? Could have been a hearth/stove platform at one point. Or small fireplaces. Also, love the super weird servant's quarters in the back. Do the butler stairs go straight into the bathroom?
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Oct 26, 2018 17:00
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There's no visible patching on the downstairs floors, and they're aged enough I'm pretty sure they didn't replace the whole lot at any point (our entry has this odd sort of cross-hatched wood tiling that is nailed down with rectangular headed nails, so I think its the original floor). If it was a smallish fireplace it could have all been behind the current walling, though. The upstairs rooms are carpeted, so I don't know what the floors look like in there. We're planning to take up the carpets but that's more on a 5-year plan once we deal with more pressing stuff. I guess when we get around to it we'll find out what's going on there, maybe we'll find some clues. Queen Victorian posted:Also, love the super weird servant's quarters in the back. Do the butler stairs go straight into the bathroom? If we ever remodel that area I have no idea how we would bring them to code though, there's not much room to expand them. Probably why no one has meddled so far!
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Oct 26, 2018 17:15
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I think when you remodel you just don't touch them. Not sure if you'd need a permit to redo that back bathroom if you ever wanted to and if that would create problems for the butler stairs. (Hopefully not - I think here we just need permits for adding new bathrooms) The real problem, I think, is that if you ever take those stairs out, you'll never be able to put them back in (unless you rat them in) because they're totally not up to code. Ours definitely aren't either (steep, narrow, no railings). Also our basement stairs are even less up to code - narrower and you have to limbo to not hit your face on a joist going down. Also rotten where they touch the perpetually damp foundation wall. We need to reroute these stairs for the kitchen remodel (from kitchen to hallway so we have room for the fridge) and rebuild the rotten section, so I hope we don't get hit with any code adherence poo poo over trying to fix them. This is the second biggest reason I put my foot down and stopped any talk amongst my dad and husband about removing our butler stairs - if we take them out, we can never have them back (legally). And now that we've been living in the house for a few months, it's abundantly clear that we use the butler stairs more than the main stairs - holy crap I love having stairs going directly into the kitchen. They don't beat secret stairs in the bathroom - that owns (especially for kids).
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Oct 26, 2018 18:06
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Oh yea, all our stairs are out of code, although not quite that badly. If we had to do something we could bring the front stairs to code (we'd have to bring the railing to proper height) and we have space in the basement to make those work. The back stairs though, like you said, we'd never fit them back in. I think we're required to have two stairways for fire code, so if we touched them we'd probably end up having to put a fire escape on the back of the house - that's what I've seen on other old houses that were remodeled inside. We'll just leave them as they are for now, they work fine and it's a useful back passage (although a little tricky if you're coming upstairs and someone is using that bathroom....) We just finished getting all the ancient electrical stuff brought up to code, which means that we can now get insulation work done. We couldn't before because knob and tube requires air cooling, so you can't pack insulation around it. We're also replacing the boiler and water heater. None of it is very exciting, but by the end of the year we'll be able to think about more comestic/fun stuff to work on instead. I love a lot of things about these old houses so it's mostly a matter trying to clean things up and bring them back to former glory. We're lucky no one came through in the 70s and gutted it.
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Oct 26, 2018 21:28
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Ashcans posted:None of it is very exciting, but by the end of the year we'll be able to think about more comestic/fun stuff to work on instead. I love a lot of things about these old houses so it's mostly a matter trying to clean things up and bring them back to former glory. We're lucky no one came through in the 70s and gutted it. Yeah we are in the exact same boat. Gotta fix some of the circuitry, especially the overloaded bullshit circuit that covers half of the main floor, including the entire kitchen and all its appliances (minus the pantry for some reason), and do moisture mitigation in the basement so it stops being damp and gross. That's an expensive job that's pretty much invisible, but necessary long term if we want the house to stand for another hundred years and be able to have a workshop and storage down there. Other than poo poo like that, there's the fun visible stuff like kitchen and bathrooms, and then plenty of cosmetic stuff (mostly stripping/refinishing and repainting). We bought this Victorian because we want to live in a loving Victorian, so yeah, tons of straight up restoration to how it was before. We are also lucky that no one trashed this place in the 70s. It had the same good owner from the 40s to the 90s, so I think that's largely what spared it. Owner who came after that guy had terrible taste and ideas, but thankfully was too cheap to do much more than hire lovely painters to paint the walls dumb colors and install lovely carpeting upstairs. I'm also incredibly glad this house was spared the more recent "open kitchen" update that's been plaguing old houses. We still have the separate closed kitchen and wonderful formal dining room (which would be totally ruined by being opened to the kitchen).
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Oct 26, 2018 22:25
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BoyBlunder posted:We have an addition/bedroom that we have turned into a playroom for my daughter. Previous owners set this up with electric heat registers, while the rest of the house is using steam radiators. The playroom is using a programmable thermostat. Anyone? It's gonna get cold tonight!
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Oct 27, 2018 00:09
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It's safe to leave it at a low temperature -- lots of people use electric heating and their houses last I checked weren't ablaze. This assumes they've got appropriate wiring, breakers, etc. I've never had an issue with it when I had electric heating, and it definitely sucks to come to a cold home because it takes ages to warm it back up if it wasn't running during the day. Definitely cheaper though.
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Oct 27, 2018 00:23
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Queen Victorian posted:I'm also incredibly glad this house was spared the more recent "open kitchen" update that's been plaguing old houses. We still have the separate closed kitchen and wonderful formal dining room (which would be totally ruined by being opened to the kitchen). So this is something I'm just less familiar with, but theoretically I enjoy open kitchens. Can you elaborate on why you prefer them closed off? And do you actually use your formal dining room? Growing we had them and they got used once a year and we had to dust them weekly.
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Oct 27, 2018 00:35
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DkHelmet posted:I’d like to know more. My gas fireplace is from 1992 and looks it. Oh I missed this! I know someone I can ask who very likely knows or knows where I can find out. I will let you know when I get some info.
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Oct 27, 2018 00:39
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Spikes32 posted:So this is something I'm just less familiar with, but theoretically I enjoy open kitchens. Can you elaborate on why you prefer them closed off? And do you actually use your formal dining room? Growing we had them and they got used once a year and we had to dust them weekly. I can understand not wanting to juggle a bunch of social interactions and have people get in your business while you’re preparing a meal. Plus if you don’t have an extractor it can keep smells from invading the rest of the house.
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Oct 27, 2018 00:53
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Spikes32 posted:So this is something I'm just less familiar with, but theoretically I enjoy open kitchens. Can you elaborate on why you prefer them closed off? And do you actually use your formal dining room? Growing we had them and they got used once a year and we had to dust them weekly. I generally prefer closed kitchens, but a lot depends on the house and its style, era, and overall configuration. In older houses like Victorians, the flow of the main floor is all about the interaction between foyer, parlor (living room), and dining room. As a guest in this house, you enter the grandiose foyer, are impressed and take off your coat, then go sit and socialize in the parlor, and then at dinner time, float over to the dining room where the help has set out a beautiful dinner. The operations of the house (aka the kitchen) were invisible by design. The kitchen was a utilitarian place that guests never saw. This entertainment flow actually really suits us, so we intentionally sought out houses with an old fashioned Foursquare layout (foyer -> living room -> dining room -> closed kitchen). We don't have live-in help like in the days of yore, but I can do prep beforehand and minimize kitchen time once guests arrive. I actually don't enjoy guests being in my kitchen watching or trying to help me cook. I also don't want the presence of a kitchen I've just been cooking in encroaching on the atmosphere of my dinner parties. I don't want to be looking at dishes or appliances while I'm enjoying dinner. I don't want to have to have the kitchen be on display. If I trash it making dinner, I want to be able to just close the door for a while, or if dinner's running late or I completely ruin something, I don't want my guests to witness or worry about it (one time hosting a friends Thanksgiving at our apartment with a closed galley kitchen, we completely hosed up our timing and probably ruined some things. We kept the door shut, opened more wine for our friends, and took turns tending to whatever disaster we'd cooked up in the kitchen - friends didn't notice or care dinner was late because they didn't know). Oh, I also don't want kitchen noises and smells permeating throughout the house. As for use of the formal dining room, we use ours literally every day because our kitchen is not eat-in. The kitchen is also pretty drat ugly in its current incarnation, while the dining room is gorgeous. My parents have a huge eat-in kitchen that's absolutely beautiful and has a fireplace and sitting area in it, but it's still closed to the rest of the main floor. They mostly eat in the kitchen and guests tend to hang out in the kitchen because it's huge, pretty, and inviting, buuut they still use the formal dining room frequently because they entertain frequently. So lots of reasons, I guess. But those are just my reasons. Not applicable to everyone by any means.
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Oct 27, 2018 01:18
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Queen Victorian posted:I generally prefer closed kitchens, but a lot depends on the house and its style, era, and overall configuration. I appreciate the rundown! I'm much more of a social cook, but I can see the appeal now.
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Oct 27, 2018 06:26
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100 HOGS AGREE posted:I have a fireplace but I would have preferred a wood burning stove. Fireplace insert! You are welcomed.
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Oct 27, 2018 15:03
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I bought a $25 off 200 Home Depot coupon the other day, but can't use it. Does anyone want it? Expires the 29th
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Oct 27, 2018 19:36
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Currently dealing with this, which is compounded by the fact that the utility cutoff valve is frozen and won't close. Fortunately I had these spare parts lying around and was able to get them wedged on to stem the flow until the water company can come fix their broken valve. 
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Oct 27, 2018 23:52
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why is there a pipe connected to your water supply line that just sticks straight up in the air by your fence?
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Oct 28, 2018 00:26
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My guess is that it held a sprinkler head once upon a time but the irrigation system doesn't have its own valve?
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Oct 28, 2018 01:02
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Every house I've ever lived in has had its own shutoff valve in the house for both water and gas, I don't understand why any homebuilder wouldn't put a valve at the point where the water comes into the house just in case.
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Oct 28, 2018 02:17
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100 HOGS AGREE posted:Every house I've ever lived in has had its own shutoff valve in the house for both water and gas, I don't understand why any homebuilder wouldn't put a valve at the point where the water comes into the house just in case.  None of the houses in my 1947 tract had anything beyond the city demarc. Mine now has one at the mpoe to the house. It really was a "why would the city valve fail?" sort of thing. Really common, and I bet doubly so because we don't have issues with pipes freezing.
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Oct 28, 2018 02:31
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Our house was built in the late 90s and has a city valve, a main shutoff valve, and an irrigation shutoff valve, but they're all outside next to the city valve. That seems like the most sensible place to have such a thing, putting it inside the house just means that you have a huge problem if there's any issue between the city valve and your shutoff valve But then I don't live in some frozen hellscape where you can't go outside some number of months each year because there are rampaging yetis or whatever
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Oct 28, 2018 03:01
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Elephanthead posted:why is there a pipe connected to your water supply line that just sticks straight up in the air by your fence? It was a spigot, and it was attached to the fence. Not sure why it was placed there, was like that when we bought the house. Relocating it has been on my to do list, but meh.
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Oct 28, 2018 03:56
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Sorry didn't realize you lived in the free south where building codes are the devils work.
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Oct 28, 2018 11:58
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Building codes are a thing here, but freezing weather isn't. Spigots out in the middle of a yard attached to a post or fence aren't all that uncommon.
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Oct 28, 2018 15:12
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